Here is how I handle it.

First I had to recognize that it was her, not me. When your mother is like this, you internalize this voice that tells you something is just terribly, inexplicably wrong with you and you aren't good enough in various ways. It hit me like a bolt of lightning one day in my late twenties, that there was nothing so terrible about me. She had been wrong.

Then you have to recognize that she will not change, and then you have to grieve. You have not had and will never have the mother that many others have.

Then you draw very strong boundaries. If you choose to interact, do not confide in her and do not expect any empathy or support from her. Keep everything superficial. Do not let anything she does or say go past your boundaries. Acknowledge that she's going to continue doing and saying things that make you feel bad, but you can learn to handle them.

Finally, become your own loving mother to yourself. Any time you are upset or feel you could use a loving, sympathetic mother's words, speak them to yourself. It's amazing.

Anonymous wrote:I own the book also. It's devestating to realize you will never have the mother you want: caring, loving, kind, and concerned with your well-being. For too long, as with any abusive dynamic, I truly felt as though I was fatally flawed, and if only I were thinner/prettier/more successful/more interesting my mother would finally love me the way I'd always wanted and needed to be loved. Of course, no day like this came. If I was down on my luck, my mother would se to take some sort of perverse pleasure in that and/ or pile on. If I was riding high, my mother would make subtle commments to disparage me and my situation, or somehow compare herself (favorably) to me.

It took a long time to reaalize this unhealthy dynamic - she's my mom, and this is how I was raised, so for me it was normal to be constantly criticized, belittled, demeaned, or otherwise ignored. Having a daughter of my own is what it took for me to see how truly deranged she was and is.

I no longer have any sort of contact or relationship with her.

I'm sorry, OP. Good luck on your journey.

+1 this is my situation too. OP, my siblings just have a relationship with me and don't initiate conversation about our mom. They continue to have a relationship with her, but I think they are better at setting up boundaries. I'm terrible at it. The problem I have is that I have little support from my in-laws. They think she is wonderful and can't understand how it could come to this. It feels so patronizing and undermining when I hear their disbelief.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I was hoping to hear more from people who are sharing in this experience rather than a bunch of posters criticizing whether or not the label or accurate or appropriate. Especially, since those criticizing don't seem like they read this book and/or have a narcissistic mother themselves. You don't know my mother or my experience so please stop dismissing myself and others.

To the PP who have responded with similar experiences, it sounds like all of you have ultimately cut ties with your mother. How does that affect your relationship with your other family members?

Mother from Europe, father from Middle East. She had money he did not. She could do no wrong. I was 3 months old when she left to study in England. Life was good for me when she was not around. She would come in the summers and stay for a month or so. I remember her saying "what have you done to her". she looks so fat. I was not thin but definitely not fat, at least not then.
Fast forward, when I brought my report card with 20/20 in almost every subject, it's because the school was not challenging enough.
When I won international piano competitions, it's because my teacher was part of the jury.
During one of my concerts, she took the hot iron and ruined (burned) my shirt which was rubbery. When I got mad at her, she cried, called my dad who yelled at me for making her upset.

when she came to the USA, she claimed she had 2 children ... I was 13 then and could have gotten my green card when she got hers (through her job). People were surprised as they did not know she had a daughter.
Once after one of my concerts a lady came to me and told me that years ago, she and her son had attended one of my concerts in my country. Her son had been interested in meeting me. I was 19 then. My mother had told the son and the mom that he looked like a really nice young man and that he deserved to be with a girl who would be a proper housewife, not someone like me.
Of course she introduced me to my husband (trying to divorce) who is self absorbed, lazy and quite abusive.
As my child gets older he will decide with whom to live.
My mother told me that no one divorces in our family and that if I do, she will testify against me saying I was mentally unstable.

My heart goes out to anyone with a narcissistic mother. I most likely have a narcissistic father whom my mother divorced after 25 years of marriage. The only thing that saved my sanity many times was having a caring mother to lean on and listen to me. I am truly sorry for any woman that doesn't have this.

PS. As for my narcissistic father, after many failed attempts at a normal relationship over the years (I am in my 50s), we don't have contact. Tigers don't change their stripes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Personally, I think "Narcissist" (along with Borderline Personality Disorder) is an overused term used by many amateur psychologists to justify their dislike (an avoidance) of a particular individual...

I'm not familiar with the checklist that your referring to though. I would need a link.

Yes, internet doctoring.

So what? If someone's behavior hurts you, what is wrong with trying to find a name for how it's doing so, especially if it helps you draw better boundaries?

It is bad only in the sense that you are labeling a person (possibly unjustly) with a mental illness thereby absolving yourself of any responsibility for the bad relationship between the two of you. Of course, sometimes the label applies.

pp here. I'm also the pp whose DH cut off his mother. Really, I get where you are coming from. It is hard to imagine doing something so extreme. I would have had no sympathy if I hadn't seen it from up close. My family does not get it either. You really should count your lucky stars, as I do, that you had parents who didn't screw you up so badly as all that. I don't know a single person who's had to cut off a family member who considers themself to be blameless or absolves themself of responsibility. That's a total straw man and that you'd put it forward proves you have no clue. They are just trying to stop the sore from opening up over and over. So please just go away and let the people who have had the experience talk amongst themselves. Stop imposing your normal family dynamics on situations you don't understand and making people feeleven shittier than they already do.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I was hoping to hear more from people who are sharing in this experience rather than a bunch of posters criticizing whether or not the label or accurate or appropriate. Especially, since those criticizing don't seem like they read this book and/or have a narcissistic mother themselves. You don't know my mother or my experience so please stop dismissing myself and others.

To the PP who have responded with similar experiences, it sounds like all of you have ultimately cut ties with your mother. How does that affect your relationship with your other family members?

pp who posted about her DH's experience. He never was close to his sister and that continues. She vacillates between supporting his choice and chewing him out about it (she's no prize herself). Luckily she's pretty incommunicado so it's not more of an issue. One of his uncles/mom's brothers gets it, one doesn't. Things are cold with the latter, but not 100% cut off. I don't think the actual cut off damaged the relationships though. They seemed pretty similar beforehand.

Anonymous wrote:Can someone post a link to what is considered a narcissist mother?

http://www.willieverbegoodenough.com/narcissistic-mother-survey/

Some of you may find this site helpful -

http://www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I own the book also. It's devestating to realize you will never have the mother you want: caring, loving, kind, and concerned with your well-being. For too long, as with any abusive dynamic, I truly felt as though I was fatally flawed, and if only I were thinner/prettier/more successful/more interesting my mother would finally love me the way I'd always wanted and needed to be loved. Of course, no day like this came. If I was down on my luck, my mother would se to take some sort of perverse pleasure in that and/ or pile on. If I was riding high, my mother would make subtle commments to disparage me and my situation, or somehow compare herself (favorably) to me.

It took a long time to reaalize this unhealthy dynamic - she's my mom, and this is how I was raised, so for me it was normal to be constantly criticized, belittled, demeaned, or otherwise ignored. Having a daughter of my own is what it took for me to see how truly deranged she was and is.

I no longer have any sort of contact or relationship with her.

I'm sorry, OP. Good luck on your journey.

I knew I shouldn't have opened this thread. I'm tearing up at this. The bold is exactly my experience. I try not to think about it, but, for example, my daughter and I spent Easter at a friend's house. Seeing my friend with her mother and their perfectly normal interactions made me feel a little sorry for myself all over again.

This was my experience as well. I look at my relationship with my mother as before (I knew about NPD) and after. Until I read McBride's checklist, I wouldn't have put the "narcissistic" label on my mother because she is SO MUCH the MARTYR. But it's all an act. She is a full blown NDP on every checklist I've now read, not just McBride's.

I have not gone NC because I have a child who loves his grandma. He was 5 or so and I was in my early 40s when I found the McBride book and started figuring this out. What I have done is limit the number of times we see her. I make sure I'm never alone with her. I don't really talk to her at all, I just say enough, "mmms" or "hmmms" to be polite.

I could write pages on her cruel and ABUSIVE behavior and the different things she did to me at every stage of my life. Of course, she was preoccupied with my weight, and when (at the age of 10) I finally lost weight, she both refused to acknowledge it and sabotaged my efforts to keep the weight off. That's the tip of the iceburg.

I HATE that I spent so many years trying to be someone she would find acceptable. The truth is that nothing I ever could have done would put me in that category. Even now, when she must know I can hardly stand to be within ten feet of her, she does not stop with the "digs" or any of her other game playing bs.

I think the only answer is therapy, which I've been putting off due to the cost.

Anonymous wrote:Can someone post a link to what is considered a narcissist mother?

http://thenarcissisticlife.com/do-i-have-a-narcissistic-mother-21-signs-of-a-narcissistic-mother/

Anonymous wrote:Can someone post a link to what is considered a narcissist mother?

14:47 here. I am tempted to just post a photo of my mother as the answer to your question, lol, but here is a more helpful resource:

http://parrishmiller.com/narcissists.html

Can someone post a link to what is considered a narcissist mother?

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I was hoping to hear more from people who are sharing in this experience rather than a bunch of posters criticizing whether or not the label or accurate or appropriate. Especially, since those criticizing don't seem like they read this book and/or have a narcissistic mother themselves. You don't know my mother or my experience so please stop dismissing myself and others.

To the PP who have responded with similar experiences, it sounds like all of you have ultimately cut ties with your mother. How does that affect your relationship with your other family members?

14:47 here. Surely you know that when we are dealing with the exploits of narcissists, the stories are often so awful that it is hard to even think of them, talk less of type them. Twice now, I started to type about some of the awful things my parents have done and I couldn't make my fingers release the words.

True narcissists destroy lives. You get away from them or they ruin you. If you have one in your life, you have no choice but to escape if you want any kind of life at all. If this is the kind of person your mother is, then you had better run far.

Cutting off both of my parents has alienated me from virtually everyone else in my family, except my siblings (who know what I am running from). Two of my siblings have cut off my parents too. Two of my siblings choose to keep my parents in their lives because of the financial rewards and because they, themselves, exhibit the same malignant personality traits. I miss my extended family so much, but I am never going back.

OP here. I was hoping to hear more from people who are sharing in this experience rather than a bunch of posters criticizing whether or not the label or accurate or appropriate. Especially, since those criticizing don't seem like they read this book and/or have a narcissistic mother themselves. You don't know my mother or my experience so please stop dismissing myself and others.

To the PP who have responded with similar experiences, it sounds like all of you have ultimately cut ties with your mother. How does that affect your relationship with your other family members?

Anonymous wrote:I didn't have to read a book to recognize my mother's malignancy. She is easily the meanest, most selfish and untrustworthy person I have ever met in my life…next to my father. What's worse than one narcissist? Two. My childhood experiences are movie-worthy, but I don't care to share them with others. I have just put it--and my parents--behind me.

PP here. I should say that I think my mother's personality traits are more borderline personality disorder, whereas my father is the family narcissist/sociopath. I tend to be dubious of others who diagnose their parents because, often, the parents are assholes, but not extremely wicked, awful types. Some of the things my parents have done to others makes me fear for their lives because people can't keep just wrecking lives like this with impunity forever.