“Come into my parlour,” said the Spider to the Fly: How a narcissist traps us … and why you could be a prime target

Before getting to how best to practically go about escaping narcissists, I have been advised that it would be good to have some information on how we end up with them.

Actually, to say that we simply ‘end up’ in a relationship with a narcissist is often inaccurate. I have already shown how these people abuse and manipulate their way through a relationship – and their method of initially attracting suitable prey, so to speak, is not much different. It involves showmanship that is terrifying in its precision and realism. The mask is specifically designed to work on you.

They may dazzle you with an impressive display of their wealth or achievements at first. Usually, they also push the speed of the relationship very early on. You may ignore the alarm bells that this should set off because you feel so awed and ‘swept off your feet’ by their flawless exterior and the things they offer you, even though you barely know them. They may attempt to distract you or good-naturedly argue with you if you say anything indicating that things are going too fast for you.

Don’t buy it. Anyone who is truly interested will listen to what you have to say and will not rush in, ‘blinding’ you with grandeur to make you lose your head. If you feel flustered, blindsided, or pushed in any way, take that as a warning sign and don’t be swayed into giving in to anything you don’t want. That goes double if anyone shows their temper or treats you disrespectfully just because you failed to give in to one of their demands or failed to be impressed by something they assumed you would fall for. In that case, don’t even wait for a second round – walk away  IMMEDIATELY

If you are already in a relationship and know or suspect that your partner is a narcissist, then it would be worth thinking over your past relationships, and the dynamics within your family of origin. Those with a narcissistic family member, or dysfunction within the family of origin that has led to low self-esteem in themselves are particularly vulnerable to circulating narcissists on the prowl in all areas of life.

In my case, I did not even think to question my upbringing in any kind of detail until I was 9 years into a relationship with an emotionally abusive and violent man, and starting to figure out why I was there and how to get out. When I looked further back in my life, the roots of those circumstances could be found in the fatal combination of my emotionally hungry father, who leaned on me to compensate for the unavailability of his own mother and wife; and my mother, whose jealousy of the attention he paid me led her to treat me with what often amounted to emotional cruelty and indifference.

The result: I was primed from an early age to seek relationships with people who embodied the characteristics of one or both of my parents. The man I married turned out to be the latter. He had both my father’s need for attention and my mother’s emotional unavailability/coldness. Growing up in such a setting, I was a sitting duck for any passing narcissist.

This isn’t very positive sounding stuff at first glance – the deeper you go into the past in many cases, the more damage you may find. But even if you have a dysfunctional or narcissistically poisoned family of origin as well as a past full of relationships in which you have been abused or taken advantage of, the situation is by no means hopeless. Finding out that something was damaged means you can take steps to heal it and put it right for the future.

No matter how one or more narcissists have affected your life, I would recommend trying to find a good counsellor to help you figure out for yourself who YOU are, independent of them, and to help you repair the damage that contact with them has caused you. I myself have had, and am currently having, counselling. I also know a lot of people who have found it helpful for them. Sifting through the past can take a lot of time and energy, and it is often easier to do that with the support of an experienced person.

I may come back to this topic in future, but that’s it for the moment. I hope it has been helpful. Thank you for reading.

(Photo credit: flickr.com)

A Family Affair: The Narcissist’s Family and How it Works

At the beginning of my relationship with my husband (then boyfriend), there were a few MASSIVE red flags from his family that I missed. Looking back they are incredibly obvious, but in the state I was in then – still reeling from having been devalued and discarded by my mother and father – it is not so surprising that they went unclocked.

One of my boyfriend’s younger sisters back at his family home (abroad, in a different culture) had learned that we were in a relationship, that things were getting serious, and that marriage had been mentioned between us. I heard that she’d said to him about me, “Well, as long as she loves us the way you do, I don’t mind what she’s like.”

Might look fairly innocent at first glance. I mean, she’s talking about sharing love, which is something positive, right?

Wrong.

Why? Well, when a member of a narcissistic family talks about ‘love’ they don’t always mean it in the same way as the rest of us might. They often mean ‘service’ or ‘unquestioned obedience’ instead of ‘love’.

Firstly, my husband’s sister, who is 5 years younger than him, thought it was fine for her to butt into his life and start judging which of his girlfriends were and were not OK by her. I did actually ask him about what I thought was her strange behaviour later, and discovered that both of his sisters had interfered in his romantic life before the younger of the two made this statement about me. A previous girlfriend had actually been dumped by him on their say so, and for apparently no other reason than their having said they “just didn’t like her”. Not only that, but my boyfriend openly defended their behaviour, and said that, as his family, it would have been weird for them NOT to exercise their right to such interference! (he made it absolutely clear, too, that he considered it their right as much as they did).

All this should have set deafening alarm bells ringing for me. However, in my fragile state, all it did was make me think that I should try even harder to stay on the right side of the family so as not to lose my boyfriend. And so began my downward slide into their creepy world…

Secondly, in her comment about ‘love’, what my would-be SIL really meant was, “Well, as long as she is prepared to be a doormat and always come second to us, “The Worshipful Family of Origin”, I don’t give a damn about anything else.”

The general attitude when we got engaged and married seemed to be that I should consider myself lucky to have been chosen to be his wife and a part of their family.

The trouble with that apparent luck was that it was strictly one-sided and came with iron chains. He was the family prince/servant, and I was his whipping boy. He had a love/hate relationship with his family. His father was also a demanding narcissist. When the family pushed my husband too far with their demands, he would rather take his frustration out on me than insist they lower their expectations or change their behaviour. At the same time, he was obsessed with the adoration they would pour on when he did things for them. I was expected to go to frankly ridiculous lengths to collude with him in keeping them happy, while all the time knowing I was never really ‘one of them’.

And it worked in exactly the same way in reverse. Whenever my husband’s reputation was threatened or it seemed like his time or attention was being ‘stolen’ by someone or something else, the family would rush to his defence, closing in on itself to the exclusion of outsiders – including me – like Roman soldiers in a protective testudo or tortoise formation (see below).

 

Testudo or ‘tortoise’ Roman battle formation

 

This behaviour is typical of the narcissistic family, no matter which family member(s) are in the narcissistic roles. It could be one parent or both, one child or more, or even a revered grandparent, aunt, or uncle. The narcissist keeps family members possessively close at all times, and teaches them that it is not appropriate to share or discuss family matters with outsiders. This was the behaviour that my father-in-law excelled in, as did my husband. There is rarely a good reason given for this rule when it is stated, and here’s why: the clannish attitude only exists to preserve the narcissist’s domain and ensure that they always have a cover for the abuse they inflict within the family. They are safe because everyone has been indoctrinated never to talk, always to defend the narcissist and the family, and they are simply too brainwashed, and often frightened, to do anything else.

As a non-narcissistic member or in-law of a narcissistic family, you may be told not to “air the family’s dirty laundry in public”, or shunned or punished for talking about the family to other people. The narcissists, along with the other family members they have roped into enabling their abuse and supporting their image, are terrified of the truth getting out. If you speak the truth without fear or shame, you threaten them.

If you find yourself in a narcissistic family either by birth or by marriage, you have a choice to make. You can only change yourself and your behaviour, because the family you are part of will likely NEVER change one bit. As well as leaving a marriage to a narcissistic man, I left a narcissistic family of origin. I’m not going to lie – it wasn’t easy. There were times when I questioned if I was doing the right thing, missed my family members despite what had gone on while we were still in contact, and had several occasions of thinking I would give them ‘just one more chance…’.

But I soon realised that, if I wanted to be my ‘real’ self, I had to leave them behind. The life I had had with them was no life at all, really. Trying to be something I was not just to please them, lying about our family and about my true feelings all the time just so they wouldn’t get upset, having to conform and pretend and worry and cover up… it was exhausting!! And above all, it was totally unnecessary. Nobody should have to live like that.

A narcissistic family may well accuse you of ‘abandoning’ or ‘betraying’ them if you decide to limit or cease contact with some or all of them. Let them. They are only feeling threatened and angry because you are no longer conforming to type and holding your place in the dysfunctional family scheme of things. They thought they had you well-educated to serve them, but now you have seen the light and had enough.

You have the right to be and behave as your authentic self, and to tell the truth about anything at any time. That is especially true of any abuse you have suffered. What narcissistic families engage in to protect themselves is abuse. The forced deceit, shaming, and fakery are all emotionally abusive behaviours that you have the right to live without being subjected to.

One last thing: perhaps other people think that your family is the best family in the world, and you are worried that nobody will believe you if you have to tell them why you cut off contact? They may not believe you… but that doesn’t mean the abuse didn’t happen.

The only thing that matters is that YOU know what really happened, and you are taking steps to protect and distance yourself from the cause of it. Let other people think what they may – they didn’t have to be part of your family. Do what you need to do for yourself, and let the rest go. This is YOUR time. There is nothing wrong with looking out for yourself. Do not confuse ‘self-care’ with ‘selfishness’. Self-care is an important thing for us all. Get plenty of it!

I hope this has been helpful. Thank you for reading.

(Photo credit: imgur.com)

Sleeping with the Enemy Part 2: What to do if you suspect your partner or spouse is a narcissist

Finding out that you are or may be in a relationship with a narcissist can be a time of mixed feelings. You might feel relieved and even mildly elated at finally being able to put a name and cause to the abuse you have suffered, and at discovering that there are others who have suffered the exact same things; you may slowly begin to feel other feelings which were previously swallowed down because your abuser forbade you to have or express them, e.g. anger; and it could even dawn on you that you do not want to stay in your current relationship much longer.

Here are some things that it is beneficial to know and do if you have discovered or heavily suspect that your partner or spouse is a narcissist:

– Don’t tell them that you think they are a narcissist. In fact, don’t tell them, their family, or anyone who knows them intimately and may broadcast what you have said. I told my sister-in-law that my husband had hit me, hoping that she would help me to help him to get better. What actually happened was, she said I must have provoked him, and took his side. You will get NO help worthy of the word from a narcissistic partner’s family, so it’s better not to expect any. Whenever the sh*t hits the fan (pardon my French) and the unblemished reputation of their perfect darling so much as looks as if it might come into question, they will stick together like glue, and leave you out in the cold.

It probably sounds very contradictory to say that keeping your knowledge/suspicion quiet is the best option. After all, if someone is ill, isn’t it better for them to know so that they can get well? With any other kind of illness that would be true. But telling a narcissist that you know what they are is likely to be met with, at best, outright (and permanent) denial and, at worst, an intense rage attack. You may even get both. Don’t put yourself at risk – it’s not worth it. By their very nature, narcissists are extremely resistant to even acknowledging that they have a problem, never mind the idea of changing or getting help for it. It would be good to confide in a friend you can trust (preferably not a mutual friend of yourself and your partner) or online support group, but be prepared for the possibility that the person you choose may not be aware of what being a narcissist is all about. They may try to say that your partner “doesn’t mean” to behave in the way they do, or something similar. In these cases, trust your own intuition. If you are feeling controlled or abused by that person according to the criteria outlined in my first post on this blog, then the chances are that you are right to suspect narcissism, and in any case right to feel that their behaviour is unacceptable.

– Realise that they will never change. Perhaps you are reading this and thinking, “But I love him/her so much… surely I could do something?” Well, I believe you 100% that you love your partner very much. It’s natural to want to do everything you can to help the person you love. I’ve done that too. The problem is, narcissism cannot be overcome by love. I spent ten years trying to ‘love’ a narcissist into getting well. None of it worked, because my husband could neither really see nor hear me in my own right. He could not appreciate anything that was done for his benefit, because he expected to be served by rights all the time. Your love for your partner is important in itself, because it comes from YOU and shows that you are a good person, capable of loving another. This is still every bit as true even if your narcissistic partner refutes the fact that you love them, or just fails to acknowledge it at all. Value your own goodness, but don’t expect the narcissist to recognise it or reciprocate – you will wait forever.

 

 

– Learn how to shield yourself from their tactics. This is essential whether or not you have decided to leave your partner. Much of what you can do to shield yourself is dependent upon knowing that the narcissist’s main goal is to control everything about you – how you feel about yourself, your appearance, your work, your time, your money, etc. Once you know that, you can start to limit the damage done by their abuse and find loopholes in their behaviour that can be used to your advantage, to carve out little ‘pockets’ of freedom and breathing space.

For example, at one point my husband had beaten me down so much that I couldn’t work, and just stayed in the house all day instead. He probably thought that he had me sufficiently isolated. But he still had to go to work himself every weekday, and while he was gone I was free. One day I stopped feeling bad and realised that during this time, I could visit whichever online support group I wanted, wear whatever I pleased, etc. Sure, it used to all have to stop at around 5pm for him coming home, but that was how I first started building my independence. Soon, I was looking for more little ways to be free – when he was busy taking a shower or in the bathroom, cutting the grass, on the phone to someone else, or engrossed in work at his desk, I would do something small that was just for me: quickly checking my online support group site, or reading something I liked but that he would insult if I read it openly in front of him. In this way, I developed a small ‘life’ of my own away from him. It wasn’t much, but it gave me the push I needed to eventually get a residential job through the internet and leave my husband for good.

In doing these things, though, be careful! Always check and double check that your partner is really otherwise occupied before you do something that may aggravate their abusive behaviour if they walk in on you. Of course it’s never right to have to hide who you really are, but for your own safety it’s best not to openly flaunt anything that triggers your partner’s violence or rages while you are still in the situation. Clear your internet history after every occasion of visiting an online support site or looking up anything that you don’t want your partner to find, e.g. pages about narcissism or abuse. Don’t leave books or anything written down on the subject in full view at home. And just in case you are ever forced to hand over your email password to your partner, create a separate email account that they don’t know about for joining support sites and communicating with other people online.

With verbal abuse, the easiest way to silence a narcissist or stop a rage is to agree with what they are saying. Don’t mistake me; I am not asking you to actually believe what they say when they are abusing or criticising you! They are still spouting absolutely unnacceptable nonsense. It’s just that, outwardly agreeing with a narcissist takes away the fuel for their rage while arguing with them feeds it. Agreeing instead of arguing may save you from further verbal or physical attack. It will also save your breath – a narcissist cannot hear you when you try to argue back at them anyway, because they were already convinced that they were the one in the right before you started. It may not always work, but I have been in situations where it has, so it is worth including here.

– Consider leaving the relationship. I will say again what I said earlier on – narcissists never change. I hoped, prayed, and bargained with God to try and make my husband change. He didn’t. He is quite literally ill, and nothing I or anyone else does can change that. I experienced most of the behaviours outlined in the first post on this blog, and after years of thinking that all that must be my lot in life, I decided I deserved better.

If your partner does things to you which are on that list, they may or may not be a clinical narcissist. But that fact is really neither here nor there. All you need to know when deciding whether or not to leave, is that someone who behaves in those ways is not a person who loves you. You deserve better.

They may say the words, ‘I love you’ many times or not at all. They may turn up with roses or chocolate after every fight. They may not seem ‘bad’ all the time. But they will always turn nasty again. They will start another argument over nothing, or make another critical remark to you, or make you feel bad about yourself, and the abuse/make amends/honeymoon period cycle will start all over again. This is how they keep you hooked. You are always looking straight past their abusive behaviour and waiting for the next apology or proof of ‘love’ to make things seem all right again. This is why we say, “Well, she’s nice to me some of the time,” and “He isn’t always badly behaved.” That is what they want us to think!

Read the list of behaviours in my very first post at least one more time. Is there anything at all that you recognise in your partner?

If so: YOU DESERVE BETTER – FAR, FAR BETTER.

And the only way to find better than the narcissist you are with, is to leave them.

I will post a separate entry on the practicalities of escaping a narcissist soon. Thank you for reading.

(Photo credits: hedgedruid.com, tumblr.com)

Sleeping with the Enemy Part 1: How to tell if your partner or spouse is a narcissist

 

I remember two events in my married life like they both happened yesterday.

The first: I have my back pressed against the hallway wall in our flat, while my husband clamps one hand around my throat, and makes a fist out of the other in my face, asking through clenched teeth if I want him to punch me. I am struggling to breathe. This is my punishment for not doing the washing-up before my husband got home from work.

The second: I am standing warily outside the door of our flat’s kitchen, too afraid to enter, as my husband stirs a pot of food on the cooker. He turns and glares at me. “Do you want some?” he jeers. “Go and buy your own food,” he commands, knowing that I have no money of my own. “This is mine. And from now on, you should ask my permission before you eat anything. I buy everything in this house. Don’t you feel ashamed?” This is my punishment for not having dinner ready when my husband got home from work.

 

On both of these occasions I felt powerless, and afraid, but also guilty for upsetting my husband. These two events occurred several years into my relationship with him, and by then my whole life had become about him.

It was my life, and yet all I ever thought about was not making him yell, having to have dinner ready at a certain time or he’d be upset, having to be back in the house at a certain time or he’d be upset, not forgetting to do what he’d asked me to do (to the letter) before leaving for work that morning or he’d be upset… every single thing I did was dictated by his likely reactions, his likes and dislikes, and where he wanted me to be/what he wanted me to be doing.

That’s living with a narcissist.

The physical abuse was a nasty, frightening, and painful part of what went on for me, but what made my husband a narcissist was the control he wanted over me. He wanted my mind permanently on him in an abnormally obsessive way, and at times he used physical force or threat to “put me in my place” when I had apparently failed to keep up with his every demand. But the physical abuse was mostly a means of getting back the control that he felt he was losing. The real damage he did to me was psychological.

 

Some things my husband did:

– He would keep me short of money. I would have a little bit in my bank account that he would put there and tell me not to touch it because it was there “in case I die, because you’re so useless you won’t be able to survive without me.”

– He would tell me all the time how much I needed him, and brag that my life was only as good as it was because of him. And his abuse was so thorough, that by the worst period, I couldn’t even argue with him on that. His behaviour turned me into such a nervous, forgetful, shy, self-doubting shell of a person that I honestly believed that nobody would want me except for him, and that I was useless without him.

– He would criticise my appearance constantly. Once he walked off in a tantrum and left me standing in a clothes shop because a jacket he had seen on the rail and wanted me to wear didn’t fit me. When I caught up with him later, he bizarrely blamed ME for not magically fitting the JACKET. That is a great example of just how self-absorbed, illogical, and childish a narcissist can be.

– Once when I failed to orgasm when he wanted me to during sex, he slapped me so hard on the side of the head that it stung, then put his hand tight around my throat and seethed, “Concentrate!” evilly in my ear. Whether I enjoyed it or not, he wasn’t going to stop until he’d got what he wanted – typical narcissistic behaviour.

– He would criticise how I did things and tell me what to do all the time. From the number of sheets of toilet paper I used, to the clothes I wore, to the food I cooked, to the way I did my hair, he would try to dictate it. The words he used most often were: “You should…” “Why can’t you look/be more like…?” and very often judgmental statements such as, “You are the most untidy person I have ever met!” “You’re disgusting.” “You look a mess!” “I’m ashamed to walk down the street with you/take you to meet my friends.”

– He would talk SO kindly about me to other people, and praise me to the skies when with friends or colleagues… and then talk to me personally worse than he would have done to a dog. At times, I couldn’t believe the contrast. When we were out with other people, I would be largely safe from criticism, but in private he had a tongue like a razor. I felt like I was living a lie, and that nobody would believe me if I told them what he was REALLY like when it was just me and him.

– He hated me having a job. But instead of coming out and saying, “You can’t work,” he would sneakily make life hard for me so that I gave it up on my own instead and he couldn’t be blamed. He would criticise my hours, berate the type of work I did, say it wasn’t “real” work if I didn’t get paid for it, etc. He would even just go into a bad mood sometimes to make the atmosphere tense at home so that I would feel unsteady and spend all my time and energy wondering what I had done to upset him, instead of focusing on good things that were happening for me. The last one is classic narcissistic behaviour – trying to bring the attention back to themselves all the time. These were all ways of sabotaging my work and stopping me from having a job which might lead to enough financial independence for me to up and leave him. Narcissists beat you down so that you stay close to them and they can carry on abusing you.

 

Do you recognise any of these kinds of behaviours in your partner or spouse, be they a man or a woman, regardless of the type or level of commitment of the relationship you are in? Please note that I am only asking if the kinds of behaviours are similar; for example, their words and actions do not have to be exactly the same as those I quote above.

You may have only just met each other or have not been together long; or you may have been a committed couple or married for many years. Either way, the chances are that if you feel as though you are being manipulated, controlled, criticised, and imprisoned, then you most likely are being treated in those ways, and it is almost certain that you have a narcissistic partner.

In my next post I will possibly expand on this list of behaviours, and also suggest what you can do if you believe you are in a relationship with a narcissist. I hope this has been helpful, and thank you for reading.

(Photo credit: stock-clip.com)

There and Back: Quotes from those who have lived in the hellish shadow of a narcissist

I have kept the authors of these quotes anonymous, to protect their identities. If, reading their words, you can relate to their feelings and experiences, you are likely to be under the influence of one or more narcissists. I may edit this post in future if even more useful quotes come to light. Thank you to everyone quoted here for their wisdom!

“The Powerball Lottery here was recently up to 560 million. I think everyone I know bought lottery tickets. But, realistically, the odds of winning are ridiculous. It ‘could’ conceivably happen, but it’s not something you would ever count on or plan your life around. Imagine how silly if I ran up debt or didn’t get a job or education because I was “gonna win the lottery”. But we do this, in our relationships. People ‘can‘ and ‘do‘ change, but the odds are so rare that you can’t ‘count‘ on it happening. It’s foolish to spend your life waiting or hoping for someone else to change. And this is even more true about narcissists. Narcissists don’t change because deep, deep down inside they believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong.”

“We’d been having problems with John’s family… John’s mother, particularly, couldn’t seem to cope with the idea of ‘losing’ him to me, and was trying to do everything in her power to keep hold of him. The family (there were three siblings and John’s dad besides) were all similarly possessive, refused to respect our status as an engaged couple and really didn’t seem to want us to get married. Their expectation was always that John should put me second and them first, and should go home to visit them all the time, go on family holidays, cancel other commitments to be with them and so forth (all the ‘kids’ were between 23 and 30, yet they still insisted on these frequent family gatherings where the dynamic – creepily – didn’t seem to have changed since they were all about 8 years old). The parents, particularly the mother, seemed to be entirely living their own lives through their children, and couldn’t seem to let them go in the way that normal parents do.

John, at times, seemed to be able to see what was going on, and promised me repeatedly that he would do something about it, would stand up to them, and so forth. I trusted him to do so, but when we were away with them on holiday, the parents managed to engineer a horrible row where they accused me of being a gold-digger (not that John really had any money to speak of, just an ever-growing overdraft), of taking John away from them, of pushing him around, and various other things. I stood up for myself, quite indignantly, but rather than supporting me, John tried desperately to get me to apologise to them. John seemed to be completely brainwashed by his parents whenever they managed to talk to him on his own, and afterwards I found that it was like talking to a completely different person. We’d both agreed to return from holiday slightly earlier than the rest of the family because of other commitments (this had occasioned a tantrum of epic proportions from John’s mother when we announced it the previous week), but the parents persuaded him that he needed some ‘space’, and despite my pleas (knowing that they would use the opportunity to get their claws into him and finish off the relationship entirely) he remained with them. The following week I received a letter from him – so unlike his usual messages that I’m certain it was dictated by his parents – ending the engagement for very vague and unspecific reasons.” (A woman describing the end of her relationship with the heavily-enmeshed son of a narcissistic mother)

“He looks perfect on the outside – other women will come up to me and say they wish their men acted like him – but that’s exactly what it is: an act. In private he has been criticising my every move that doesn’t fit in with what he wants. Over the last 9 years, I can’t believe how much of my life has been eroded due to depression and his controlling behaviour.”

“Choking is the most dangerous (and narcissistic) abuse of all. They are taking away your right to breathe. It’s like a tiny murder every time.”

 

“At the bank today, my wife told a few complete strangers standing next to us at the counter, “I never let him have any money!” They looked at her a little oddly, but said nothing. Perhaps they eventually assumed that she was joking good-naturedly… but it’s true. She takes my salary and gives me an allowance. I just wanted the ground to swallow me up. Also, when I use the internet, she accuses me of wanting to contact my ‘girlfriends’ when I am doing no such thing. I can’t do anything without her making snide comments or looking over my shoulder.”

Thank you for reading.

(Photo credit: layoutsparks.com)

Helpful Sites and Pages on the Narcissistic Mother

In addition to my previous post, here are some sites and pages that I have found helpful in researching narcissistic mothers. Many contain information that I haven’t even touched on, and this list is by no means exhaustive. I will update it as new resources are remembered or found:

http://parrishmiller.com/narcissists.html Very good for identifying characteristics.

http://daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/ Ostensibly one for the girls, but may prove useful to guys also.

http://www.lightshouse.org/the-narcissistic-parent.html#axzz2IXSZAiFD Part of a larger site with info on other types of dysfunctional parents, too.

http://thenarcissistinyourlife.com/severing-relationship-with-narcissistic-mother-your-healing-begins/ In few words, Linda Martinez-Lewi provides a devastatingly vivid portrait of life with a narcissistic mother. She also suggests how the total severance of such a relationship may be necessary for the healing of the child.

http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/adultchildrenofnarcissisticparents Being a member of this group personally, I can vouch for the comfort, knowledge, and empathy to be found here.

http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/adult-children-of-narcissistic-parents The ‘sister’ group of the above forum, with many of the same benefits.

http://www.dailystrength.org/c/Physical-Emotional-Abuse/support-group Having a narcissistic mother is to endure emotional abuse, and in many cases physical abuse as well. A non-judgmental and friendly forum with lots of people in (and out of) all sorts of abusive relationships supporting each other.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shame/201210/shame-unrequited-love An exploration of how a mother’s failure to mirror her baby’s emotional expression (as narcissistic mothers fail to do) can result in a persistent feeling of ‘basic shame’ in her children.

http://postcardstoanarcissist.wordpress.com/daughters-of-narcissistic-mothers-2/ Written by a woman for women, this is quite a female-oriented page, but some of the info is gender neutral. Part of a larger site with lots of links to other information about narcissism visible at the top of the page.

Malignant Maternity: When Your Mother Is a Narcissist

One of the most chilling episodes of the US crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is “Turn of the Screws” (S. 4, Ep. 21) in which narcissistic mother Raina Press kills her daughter, 13-year-old Tessa Press, with a shovel for the apparent ‘crime’ of stealing too much of the attention of Raina’s boyfriend Justin. Raina then dumps Tessa’s body outside of town without a care in the world, and proceeds to act as if she hasn’t a clue what has happened to her daughter. When the shovel turns up as viable evidence of her involvement in Tessa’s killing, however, Raina shows her true colours while being interviewed by CSIs Willows and Brown:

Raina Press: I bought Tessa a bus pass, and that little slut still gets my guy to pick her up after school. We all know why.

CSI Willows: Why don’t you tell us?

Raina Press: She was trying to steal him from me. Justin was the best thing in my life.

CSI Willows: No. Your daughter was the best thing in your life. (Willows gets up, disgusted, and heads for the door.)

Raina Press: You didn’t know her!

CSI Willows: I do know that she was thirteen years old. A child. (Willows walks out of the door.)

Now, probably not many narcissistic mothers would go quite as far as to commit actual murder. But many inflict severe damage every day that leaves their children and often also other family members feeling emotionally and psychologically attacked and ‘dead’ inside time and time again.

I thought my mother loved me when I was growing up – or, more accurately, I wanted to believe she did. That was probably partly due to my innocence, and partly due to her skill in passing off everything she did as being in my best interests. You will hear a lot of narcissistic mothers utter the phrase, “I’m only saying/doing this because I love you.” Those words mask and apparently excuse a multitude of sins. I say apparently excuse because, looking back, my mother engaged in behaviours that were very hurtful, invasive, and devaluing, and these had quite serious consequences for my well-being as an adult. There is nothing remotely excusable about that.

Things a Narcissistic Mother Says and Does

– She competes with her children, and/or forces her children to compete for her ‘love’. My mother did both of these things regularly. She was forever threatening me with the words, “Wait until your dad gets home!” and ‘telling on’ me to him to provoke him into being angry with me, so that she could triumph in his eyes as the one in the right. Rather than behaving as his parental equal and disciplining me fairly herself, she preferred the childish satisfaction of winding Dad up and watching me get the brunt of it. She competed with me for my father’s attention, apparently enraged, much like Raina Press, that he gravitated towards and leaned on me emotionally in response to her undemonstrative coldness. She evidently thought that the balance needed to be redressed, and set about doing so in her own sneaky and vindictive way.

And it didn’t matter that I didn’t have actual siblings for her to compare me to; she would simply find me temporary ones wherever we happened to be at the time, in the shape of other people’s children. She would say, “That little girl always talks to the waiters!” “You don’t see that little boy making a fuss!” I ended up feeling inadequate and disliking these other kids, as any kid probably would, but it was her influence creating the inadequacy and animosity that I felt. Until she tried to cause trouble, I felt quite happy in myself and pleasantly disposed towards them. This is how the narcissistic mother creates chaos and grinds you down, making sure you keep trying in vain to reach her impossible standards. This is how she makes you dependent upon her, until you start perversely believing that you actually need her and her damaging behaviour! You get caught in the cycle of hoping that if you are just enough like others whom she compares you to, THEN you will have earned her love. The sad thing is, you shouldn’t have to earn it.

If you have siblings and a narcissistic mother, she may well try to drive a wedge between you to satisfy her own twisted need to feel more valuable because you are all competing to impress her. She may choose one or more of you to be her favourite children, and make one or more of you the ones who can’t do anything right. Be very aware that she is the one setting up this sick little scenario, and don’t let it turn you against each other – that’s just what she wants! My own father and his brother were drawn into an almost lifelong silent feud with each other, all because their mother had labelled them the ‘clever’ one and the ‘useless’ one when they were children. It was just her selfish, meaningless opinion, but it tainted the way they saw and interacted with each other into their middle age. They only started to have a better relationship after she died, when she couldn’t poison things between them any more.

– She invades her children’s privacy. Telling you how to live your life as if you had no choice or opinion in the matter, reading your diary, snooping through your private things, insisting that you undress and/or bathe in front of her and getting upset if you protest… narcissistic mothers do all of these things and more. When I still lived with her, mine would barge into my bedroom without knocking while I was getting changed. She continued to do so even after I asked her not to. Her reason? “We’re all women, we’re all the same!” No doubt true, but it was still no excuse for her to be there staring at me when I didn’t want her to be. She also found my diary and opened it, shaming me by reading aloud my private thoughts in front of me in a mocking fashion.

Why does the narcissistic mother do this stuff? Well, to her, you are not her child to be loved and nurtured into a whole and happy separate person; you are a possession. You don’t have rights, you don’t have feelings, and you sure as hell don’t belong to yourself! What she wants is to erode all the healthy boundaries that should exist between you and her as independent people. That way, you can be easily controlled, and you won’t get any silly ideas about leaving her or not doing exactly as she wishes all the time.

– She invalidates her children. This follows on from the invasion of privacy. By eroding the boundaries between you, the narcissistic mother effectively invalidates your existence as a person in your own right. She will also invalidate your feelings and needs, when you have them. When I was younger and got upset about something, my mother would say things like, “You’ve got a very vivid imagination,” and “I think you’ve been reading too many magazines.” ANYTHING except acknowledging my upset for what it really was: feelings needing to be heard and understood, and comfort needing to be felt. When I went to her and asked for physical affection, she would usually either push me away, saying, “Don’t be a baby!” or respond with a gesture so weak that it was hardly worth making at all. I got little, if any, of the emotional or physical mirroring that is meant to occur between mother and child. But that is the narcissistic mother’s whole MO. She expects her children to be her mirror alone, and to have no needs of their own.

This post basically describes the narcissistic mother and her main behaviours (though by no means all of them). In future posts, I will address what your options may be if you find yourself dealing with this kind of mother, and offer some ways in which you might deal with and protect yourself from her. Thank you for reading.

(Photo credits: ALAMY and themomcrowd.com)

Why Soul Reclaim?

Baggage reclaim is for airline passengers. Soul reclaim is for those who are going through or have gone through the uniquely traumatic experience of having one or more narcissists in their lives. It makes no difference how long or short your relationship with a narcissist is/was, or what the nature of it is/was. These very toxic people affect everyone they come into contact with, and they can often inflict a lot of damage and pain with seemingly no effort at all. I have seen and heard the detrimental effects of living with and relating to a narcissist described as ‘soul rape’ and ‘soul theft’, as well as wishing to use the same words to describe the experience myself. These are graphic ideas, but necessarily so – no warning can be strong enough against the havoc that a narcissist can wreak in the lives of those surrounding them.

A narcissist could be your partner or spouse, your parent, child, sibling, or any other family member. They could be someone you consider to be a friend, a work colleague, landlord, or boss. They could be anyone you know.

What is a narcissist?

The term ‘narcissist’ is misleading in some ways. We may think that a narcissist is someone who loves themselves excessively – but healthy self-love is exactly what these people DON’T practice, because they don’t know how. Instead they seek to drain others to fill their own emptiness. The trouble is, they are never satisfied… and they will not see you as a person in your own right; only as a source of supply, the never-ending supply of adoration, obedience, and subservience that they require. They will drain the life out of you, unfortunately sometimes literally speaking.

Emotionally abused in childhood by either excessive pampering or neglect, they have never grown up. They basically mask a core which is empty of everything except self-hatred, and hatred and anger towards their abusers and other people, with a perfectly gilded outer appearance.

They can seem outwardly charming, affable, confident, and capable… until someone upsets them or they don’t get their own way, that is. Then the mask slips and the rage unleashed will beggar belief. Think of an adult engaging in the kind of tantrum that a child might have in a supermarket, and you will have a good idea of the behaviour involved. Mentally and emotionally, they are children in adult physiques.

How to recognise a narcissist

There is plenty of stuff already written online about the ins and outs of clinical NPD or Narcissistic Personality Disorder by people much more qualified than me to describe and diagnose it. Googling these terms will get you what you need if you are seeking a more detailed description. But from my own experience and observation, you may be dealing with a narcissist if:

– The person does not exhibit empathy. For example, do they listen attentively when you have something to say or a problem to share, and acknowledge your feelings about it? Or do they ignore and/or interrupt you and talk about themselves or someone else instead? Inability to empathise is the number one trait of a narcissist. Even if they don’t have all of the other traits, they usually have this one.

– The person behaves in an arrogant manner. Do they always want the biggest and best of everything, often at other people’s expense? Do they frequently talk about and exaggerate their achievements or attractiveness, or put others down to make themselves look better? Have they fabricated events and qualifications just to garner attention?

– The person’s behaviour is different in public and in private. Have you noticed that they appear to treat others better than they treat you? Do you ever feel that you are the only one who knows the real them, and that other people would not believe you if you were to tell them how that person behaves when they don’t have a public audience?

– The person makes everything your fault, or someone else’s fault, and never their own. It doesn’t matter to them who was actually responsible for what happened; a narcissist will never admit to being imperfect themselves, or worry about attributing mistakes to the wrong people. If you are lucky enough to get one of the (rare) attempts at an apology from a narcissist, it will be along the lines of, “I’m sorry you were hurt,” which sees them take no responsibility at all and their image remain untarnished, rather than the sincere apology, “I’m sorry that I hurt you.”

– The person breaches your boundaries. This can include literally telling you what to do and how to live your life; ignoring your specified wishes; using/giving away your time or property without your consent; invading your privacy (including checking computer histories, spying on your activities, opening your mail, and demanding passwords or access to email accounts); controlling your finances (by withholding money from you, taking your salary, spending excessively, forcing you to take on debt in their name, exhausting credit that is in your name, or putting everything in their OWN name so that you cannot access it without their knowledge); telling you that you cannot work or sabotaging a job you already have (by arguing with you about it, calling you excessively at work, insulting your job to demoralise you into giving it up, etc.); engaging in lying, cheating, fact-twisting and gaslighting (the manipulation of the truth to cover their tracks and make you doubt your own memory of events), name-calling, hurtful personal comments, physical and/or sexual abuse or the threat of such abuse, violence around you even if they do not physically touch or strike you (e.g. throwing things, punching walls, threatening or succeeding in the damage or destruction of your possessions or property, or hurting pets/others close to you.)

It is my intention in this blog to provide regular posts on how different narcissistic people may impact our lives, how to recognise that this is occurring, and what can be done about it once it has been identified. I will do my best to cover as many different instances of narcissism as possible.

I hope this is helpful. Thank you for reading.

(Photo credit: livinghealthyworldwide.com)