epiphany1's commentsComments On: EverythingArticles Blogs Journals Photos created by: Everyoneepiphany1 Escaping the Trap of the Narcissistic Mother - Blog Entry10 Sep 2008 12:23 PM I realized after writing my comments that it was a very much up to date blog. My mom lost her mother several years ago, and, my dad, who suffers with Alzheimer's has had to be placed in a nursing home. I have noticed that Mom is much worse now that those two people are out of her life. They definately kept her in check. She is on her own now and at times I feel like I am dealing with a two year old. She recently ruined our Labor Day cook-out by getting her feelings hurt when my 28 year old daughter didn't pay enough attention to her or thank her enough for money she had given her for her birthday. She spent the entire day criticizing me and belittling everything about the cook-out, then left abruptly and would not have anything further to do with my daughter who was in for a 2 day visit. It didn't bother my daugher at all, but, of course, it tore me up. That is why I started surfing the web to see if anyone else had to play parent to their parent. I am so glad because after reading all of these blogs, I realize I am not alone, and, I do not have to continue to be a victim of her abuse. Escaping the Trap of the Narcissistic Mother - Blog Entry05 Sep 2008 12:07 PM This article is rather old and I don't know if anyone is still reading it,, let alone blogging, but, I have been surfing the net today to try to figure out what is wrong with my mother and suddenly I ran across NPD and I realized that my mother suffers from this very illness. All of my life, I have been the victim of my mother's constant criticism, her constant need for attention, her unhealthy obsession with religion, and her need to constantly hurt my feelings as well as anyone elses that she so chooses using "concern" as her excuse for doing so. Now, she has started on my daughter and because my daughter refuses to give in to her unreasonable demands to be treated like royalty, she has decided to punish me. Reading these blogs has helped me to come to terms with what I am dealing with and for the first time in my life, I can see that I am not imagining this, she truly does have a mental illness. Thank you all so much for sharing. I have made a success of my life in spite of my mother's inability to nurture and be a healthy caregiver. It is so wonderful to have an outlet such as this to share with others the common torture of being raised by someone who is so self absorbed they cannot even let go of themselves long enough to think about their own children. My mother is exactly the way a narcisstic parent is described...she considered me an extension of herself and has held me back as much as possible so that she can use me as her little worker bee to do her bidding and if I balk in any way, she uses guilt, tears, tantrums or whatever else she has in her bag of tricks to bring me back in line. I do it now, because I am afraid if I ever were to open up and say what I wanted, it would throw her into a stroke and I would have to live with that. She is a mean, calculating and unfeeling person who I believe does not have anything inside. She stays gone all of the time and I have said time and time again that it is because she cannot sit by herself for very long at a time without having to think about what she really is. She puts me down every chance she gets, but, I have been told, she brags about me to her friends because it builds her up. When she comes around me, all she talks about is herself or one of her friends' children and how great they are, rich they are, accomplished they are, and, how well they treat their mother. She is obsessed with religion and has told me for as long as I can remember that the world was going to end...to the point that as a child, I never believed I would live long enough to be married and have a family. How is that for living a dysfunctional childhood. I hope that I have done better with my daughter. I have tried to give her the apron strings and the eagle's wings as best that I could and I have tried very hard to give her the fearlessness I do not possess as my mother taught me to be afraid of EVERYTHING. Thank you for allowing me to vent...there's 49 years of it built up inside and just getting it down here has made me feel 10 pounds lighter! |
|
