rosem1111's comments

Dealing with a Narcissistic Family Member - Blog Entry

29 Jul 2008 08:20 PM

I also am dealing with serious issues, as is CPDCOPPURR . As I am dealing with different close and extended family members, the diagnoses that could be applied vary. NPD certainly figures highly. BPD and bi-polar issues are there on my side, from a daughter to my mother and further and I am struggling to categorise correctly.

I think my husband is narcissistic also, with a sadistic streak that also seems to be shared by my narcissistic + ? daughter, and a number of members of his narcissistic family (but not all). My family does not have the sadistic streak. My son and husband also seem rather like Asperger sufferers. My son needed a lot of support from me for years.

I still struggle to see what is true about what is going on though it is there as I am so easy to put down, confuse and plunge into despair and self blame, doubt and upset. The strange thing is that I am actually reasonably bright and educated. So why do I feel so inadequate and can be taken as being quite dumb? Actually I seriously wonder if I am really dumb and incapable and that anything that suggests otherwise is just an error.

I need to find ways to be more self confident and to take better care of myself and do what I want to and feasibly could do. But I have never totally given up. Now, though, decisions I am not making and actions I am not doing could end up in serious consequences for me, such as not doing health checks for symptoms or preventatively, or securing my share of the marital money when I know my husband may terminate the marriage and take all the money. I have never been diagnosed with a mental illness though I have suspected I have had all of them at one time. Somehow I get seen by outsiders as normal. My husband says I am "crazy". I wonder if he is right.

When Your Child's Grandparent is a Narcissist - Blog Entry

29 Jul 2008 07:26 PM

My mother is elderly now and I too could potentially write a book about all the things she has done since I was little. I realised I was "older" than her when I was 5 years old. At 6 I decided to keep my deeper thoughts to myself and not let on to my family, including extended how "old" I really was. All my mother's family has issues. My father coped largely by being absent a lot. I was the oldest and parented my younger siblings a lot.

I learned that I could not trust her with my children when they were very little. The turning point on that one was when she left my toddler son, my oldest of four, alone in the bathroom in a tub of water. Luckily I was home too. I told her nicely that this was not a safe practice and she denied that this was true .

One time I came home where she was minding my then two children, to find my son, at 3 years, cowering in terror under the dining room table. She had suddenly flipped into raging mode and was pacing around yelling "Number 96, he's an idiot...." Turned out that 96 was on the football jersey of a neighbour's visiting adult son and who had repeatedly kept kicking a football into our yard.

Four years later came the last straw re her minding my children. I came home, baby number four in my arms, to find her flipped into rage again and this time it was focussed in white heat on my oldest daughter, then 5 years old. I came to the outside of our back gate, hidden by the high fence, to hear her non-stop haranguing of this girl as she used the trampoline. Then she realised I was at the gate and motor-mouth harangued this child to open it for me - "Go an open the gate for your mother; hurry up open it; oh you can never get anything right; blah, blah, blah..." I was really, really,shocked.

Then I went through a host of strategies to get my mother from earbashing my daughter with lethal, personalised abuse like torrents of lava. I started off thanking her nicely for looking after the children and asked her if she'd like to join me for a cup of tea. It wasn't until I got to strategy number 5 that I got her off my daughter's back and pouring that same personalised venom onto me. I, totally without meaning to and out of character, ended up telling her she had the devil in her and I ordered him to get out. She went kaboom!!!! And I got verbally attacked big time. I blocked my ears and had this image of her as a gigantic raging brown bear standing on its rear legs attacking me. Whew! It really got my adrenalin pumping.

After that, 15 years ago, I never let her mind my children again and I have had only as brief, as I can, periodic contact with her. She has not become normal, but she varies in how bad she is. But whatever happens, it is all about her, even if she acts as if she is being nice. Now that she is old, my three, now big, girls sometime ring her as a kindness. As always she talks non stop and at them. She talks "out" whatever family news or memories are currently on her mind. She is big on replaying memories and always has been. She does not interact except to check if one is LISTENING. She will not stop or agree to end the conversation. I have had to teach my girls to hang up firmly after delivering the parting cues and niceties, even if she is still talking (which you can guarantee she will be). They are very confused about her.

The Aging Narcissistic Parent (1) - Blog Entry

29 Jul 2008 06:36 PM

I have had difficulties all my life and still am not sure what is because of me or outside actions impacting on me. It has been a case of now you see it, now you don't, but I am a survivor after a fashion and have kept trying to cope. Some times are worse than others. I am in one such time now though not just because of my elderly narcissistic mother (but is she?: now I see it, now I don't). My husband and two sisters in particular seem to be narcissistic and I suspect one of my daughters is. So there are a range of problems I need to cope with, some quite serious as whether I should divorce my husband (for significant reasons).

Currently my mother is back in hospital. It doesn't seem that there is a serious problem. She just sat on the side of her bed two days ago and announced (she "announces" things) that she couldn't move.

This is how my visit to her last night went: She talked in a loud voice at us, her visitors - note the "at", but that's typical - she always talks at people. I think her voice was extra loud as there were these other patients in the room and she is a drama queen, I'd say, never so happy as when she is the center of attention.

She talked about how x rays showed her knees weren't broken (why should they be?) and talked of how she expects to be in hospital for quite a while. She touched on maybe not going home. She started talking about how a pair of angels on her sideboard are for two of my girls and started to cry. Can't say I felt sympathetic. I felt guilty afterwards after we left, though it was such a ....well, you know, another drama; a con. She stopped when I asked if she was planning on dying. Actually she looks pretty good. She starts physiotherapy tomorrow. I said "Good" :) . She won't need it for her tongue. I think she is enjoying it where she is. And she has a good view of the nurses' station. Should keep her amused and up to tricks.

There was an incident when one woman had trouble getting back into her high bed. She got stuck sitting on the edge and looked as if she might slip off. She called out to the woman in the next bed for assistance and I heard and realised something was wrong. I asked mother to shush indicating there was this problem going on, but mother just kept talking and talking, launching forth more about whatever crossed her mind - it was not intereactive in the slightest. I asked her to shush again, saying there was a problem. I had to butt into mothers talking to do this and she did not like this and kept talking. I butted in again and my mother snapped that the two women were just talking. It was obvious they were not and I said so. Mother started repeatedly bellowing at the woman to push her call button but it was obvious she was needing both hands to stop falling off the bed. My (narcissistic also?) told mother off (as she is wont to) and said her loud voice was embarassing "people". It wasn't embarassing me; I just wanted the focus to go where it should be. But mother's loudness is hard to take, as is her constant talking. It makes me more queasy than embarassed. I find it stressful. And it detracts from trying to deal with something.

Everyone else realised there was a problem and my sister told her daughter to get a nurse. I would have if I wasn't hemmed in. Then the nurse came and struggled to get the poor woman into bed. It was awful as she has little strength though she really struggled and the bed was so high and sloping. She almost rolled off the bed head over heels. I got a good look at her legs right up to her knickers. The poor woman was 90 years old ! That would have been some fall.

Mother resumed her monologue. I decided I had had enough and made my exit with a quiet assent from husband, simply saying civilly that I had to go.

A relevant word may be narcissistic. A word that will be used is dementia. I don't know how those poor women in her room can possibly stand her. They are frail but not senile. I certainly find her just too much. And I am currently feeling very burdened.