As the primary caregiver of children mothers play a pivotal role in children’s lives.
So what is the experience for children growing up with a narcissistic mother.
Narcissist mothers show these signs inside the family unit:-
- Great sense of entitlement
- Self importance – superiority – believe they are above others
- Seek constant admiration and attention from others
- Have a lack of empathy – ability to see things from someone else’s perspective
- Exploit their children
- Put others down to elevate themselves
- Are hypersensitive to criticism or feedback
- Have little to no self reflection therefore are unable to recognize the damage they are causing
- Their love was conditional
- Your feelings and needs are not as important as theirs
- Will gaslight you (making you doubt your own reality)
- Child are held to unrealistic expectations
- Appearances to the outside world are more important than the child’s needs
- Will compete against you
Narcissistic abuse can especially harm daughters creating these issues:
- Low self-esteem
- Emotional well-being problems
- People pleasing behaviour
- Perfectionism
- Anxiety and depression
- Feelings of shame, unimportance and insignificance
- Difficulty to set boundaries
- Development issues including relationship problems
- Trouble making decisions
- Self destructive behaviours
- Struggle with self identity
- Difficulty with emotions
- Prone to being manipulated with guilt tripping
- Often used as the scapegoat of the family
Being raised by a narcissist is a toxic environment and it generates some patterns of thoughts, beliefs and behaviours from not being allowed to be yourself. This takes its toll and its worth doing emotional work to unpack and heal.
What can you do:-
- Know your rights and set firm boundaries
- Don’t get sucked into their drama. Don’t allow their drama to take up emotional space inside your head
- Need to emotionally disconnect
- Do not REACT to their behaviour in front of them
- Need to start driving what is happening in your life and not constantly reacting to their never ending drama
- Don’t waste your time trying to change them – they don’t want to change
- Keep conversations superficial and light and don’t expose your vulnerabilities as they can be used later against you
This is some language you can use with them to support your own well being as words have power:-
“I’m sorry you feel that way however….. ”
- “We both have a right to our own opinions”
- “That’s your choice and this is the consequence of your choice”
- “Please don’t speak to me like that otherwise I will remove myself”
- “I can’t control how you feel about me”
- “I hear what you’re saying however….”
How does someone become narcissistic. There is nature and nurture and the narcissist is someone who is emotionally damaged and who was subjected to extremes of parenting and was either over indulged as a child or neglected, either way their emotional needs were not met. They learnt to bury their true self-expression in response to early injuries and replaced it with a highly developed false self. This involves exaggerating their own achievements and putting down anyone that is perceived as a threat. They appear to love themselves and act superior but in fact are full of self loathing. Having said that you still do not need to accept abusive behaviour from them. The tools above will support you in setting healthy boundaries around their behaviour if you choose to have them in your life at all.