Mother with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Struggling.

[Guest_9043]

Hi all,

I could not sleep even though I'm utterly exhausted so thought to get my thoughts out here. I am 40 years old. Late in December last year I finally realised my mother had been abusing me for a long time. I decided to cut all contact virtually immediately. I do not regret that. Last night I came to the full realisation my mother has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Reading about daughters of mothers with NPD finally put some pieces of the puzzle together. I have a name now behind the reasons for my mother's abuse of 34 years towards me. I have read that many don't discover this till later in life. I KNOW now it was definitely abuse and an explanation for mother's cruelty to me. No wonder my therapist said it is like you have been brainwashed in some terrible cult. She did not know my mother has NPD either.

I'm truly struggling with this. Many pennies dropping at once and my head can't stop spinning. I am feeling beyond angry. NPD is a horrible disorder. The thing is they are never responsible for anything. Anyhow this is very new territory for me sadly. I feel like I can't breathe, just be

[Guest_9043]

I fell asleep typing before I could finish. I feel beyond terrible today. Can't remember what I was going to write.

[Soberlicious96]

Dear 2quik,

Well done for reaching out and getting help with such a difficult, and devastating realization.

I must admit that when I saw your comment about "Many pennies dropping at once and my head can't stop spinning. I am feeling beyond angry" I found myself strongly identifying with that statement, although for a very different reason. I had found out that my fiance was a pedophile. Until he was charged, I'd had so many questions and uneasy feelings about the way he was around children, and their families. He never seemed harmful at all ..... it was quite the opposite. He just seemed, to me, overly attentive to them. And on the say he was charged, I felt exactly what you said above; all of a sudden it all made sense. All of a sudden I realised all the times that he'd said things that I thought were 'a bit off' or even outright lies. And I too was BEYOND angry. I was RAGING full of of anger for many months afterwards, seething to my very core. And so incredibly hurt and broken.

BUT I did manage, with lots of help from counselors, psychologists and friends and family, to rebuild myself and my life to the person and the life I have today.

Just remember to be gentle with yourself, and do only what you can do when you can do it. Take it a day, an hour or a minute at a time. If all you can do is eat something and stare blankly at the TV, then so be it. Recovery is not an overnight process. but with help, you can get to a better place.

Keep up also with seeking and utilizing all the support you can muster. That's what it's there for; for you to rise above this and live the best life you can.

I wish there was more I could say, but I am no professional of any kind. Just a fellow human being who has sought recovery from life's awful things.

Take care, and please feel free to come back here as much as your like. And know this; I'll be thinking of you. xo

[ElectricBlue]

Hi 2quik,

As someone who has only recently discovered my mother is a narcissist I can totally relate. I think the best pieces of advice I have had are:

- Stop hoping that your narcissistic parent will change — you can never change them.
- Allow yourself to grieve the parent you never had.

I am still working through my issues but now that I have identified the issue I feel like I can move forward. Just know that you're not alone 🙂

EB

[Guest_9043]

Hi Soberlicious,

Thank you for sharing your gut wrenching story. I always am the one to support and care for others when they "drop bombshells" placing my worries aside as if they are completely insignificant. This is something I am not going to do here. I am in real trouble and pain. I am going to take what is on offer for me because I truly need it. In saying that I do still care and my empathy is still switched on. I am really sorry that this happened to you and I am glad you received so much support to get through a horrendous time.

I feel like a little girl that has suddenly been taken from her family because she was unsafe and an adult has told her what is wrong with her mum and why she needed to be taken away. She still doesn't quite understand and why would she? My adult self is incredibly mortified and disgusted. I feel like I am living a waking horror and I have had nightmares the lat two nights. Last night in a dream I hurt my mum and in my sleep I hurt my poor partner. It did wake me up when I did that and I was so horrified I had hurt my partner.

I am trying really hard to remind myself I am not there anymore, it is not working so well. It feels like it is happening now. I have a lot of negative self talk and denial going on. I think the negative self talk is my mother, not really me. The denial, more than likely years of gaslighting from my mother. The thing is why did I not see it? I mean I can understand not being able to see it when no one made me aware of it or for whatever other reasons, I ask myself though why did I not see this. I am angry it went on for so long and I did not know sooner. I think my mother was the queen of getting everyone including myself to feel for her and her own suffering even when it was me that needed the support and I went without.

Why did I not see it back in 2003 when I sat with a psychiatrist for three hours getting a detailed report done about my life and it extensively wrote about my childhood. Why did I not see it then? Why did I make excuses for her, for any of them? Why didn't I look at it and wake up to myself and see the reality? I understand what you are saying about being gentle on myself and why that is necessary and OK for me. It is just that I feel too angry to stay still. I have been robbed of 40 years of my life and I see it as robbing me of more time by just sitting still and not living. My life, my entire life has been absolute hell in a handbasket. I cant even cope with this.

[Guest_9043]

Thank you EB,

Best of everything on your healing journey.

2quik.

[Soberlicious96]

Dear 2Quick,

It sounds as though you are punishing yourself for what you did not see and did not know ........ and that is a very unfair way to treat yourself.

Look at it this way for example; you may have ridden around, as a passenger, in the cars of you parents, older friends and or siblings or your parents friends, or whatever, for 20 years, but then suddenly one day you are in the drivers seat, learning to drive, yeah? But you had never driven before that, yeah? So how could you possibly know how to drive when you had never done it before? How would you supposed to know all about all the pedals and levers and all the things of the dashboard if you've never had to understand that stuff before?

Understanding others - be it a parent, a sibling, a friend, a co-worker or other person in your life - does not happen overnight. And there are as many different types of people as there are cars.

And when you're a child, there are some things that will never make sense until you are a grown up.

One the reasons I really struggled to 'recognise' the warning signs of my ex fiance and his behavior around children, is because my vision of what an abuser 'looked like' was skewed from my own childhood experiences ...... my uncle had sexually abused me when I was a child, and in my mind he was a monster. Nothing at all like the all-charming man that my fiance was. My fiance, therefore, did not appear to be a 'monster' at all.I could hardly believe I had been silly' enough to grow up and fall in love with the very same type of person that I had hated so much as a young person.

It's a long, arduous and confusing journey in learning to separate the innocent child-like view of the world and the people in it, to the adult view of all those 'undertones' and subtleties of deception and sick, harmful behaviors of others. And that does NOT mean that the world is full of sick people. It's not. Most people are actually quite good, helpful and kind. But yeah, learning to decipher the good from the bad is the hard part. Especially when you have grown up with it, like I did growing up with a sexually abusive uncle.

But it IS possible. There ARE good people out there. And the way that I began to find the good sorts was to listen to my gut more. If my gut said "this isn't right" then I backed away from them. And I also stopped berating myself for choosing self-protection. Well, eventually I did anyway.

Take care. Be gentle with yourself. Here for you. xo

[Guest_9043]

Hi Soberlicious,

I don't think I am punishing myself. I think it is a shock to my system and it is all making my head spin a lot. I was talking to my partner last night and I said why did I not see this happening. We had just finishing watching a youtube video on C PTSD which I fell asleep watching. She said because you were not taught this. You were not taught to watch for red flags. I've thought about it and she is right. I was not taught this and not taught watch for red flags. After so long it becomes your norm that you think it is normal. So it is a big shock when you discover it certainly never was and never will be. I know it was not my fault. Your anology fits the description of what it means to just not know. Thank you.

The thing is there is going to be a lot of things that do not make sense. There are going to be things I will never have answers to and that is something I will have to live with. I definitely know trying to understand my NM head or why she did things is pointless. It will just cause further harm to me and pain that I am already in. I feel perhaps that it is just best if I focus on the damage that has been done as a result of her choices and her abuse. It's a sad reality. In some ways this is going to eventually lead to closure for me and me moving on with my life without her in it.

I have so much empathy for what you went through as a child and an adult. As you said cars look different. There was a picture in your mind of what a monster looked like and he didn't look anything like it. You were not stupid, you were betrayed, lied to and abused in your own way by this man. (I wanted to call him a few names but will not here) It was not your fault.

For me I do have trust issues. I have great difficulty trusting people. It's thick set in me. I don't blame myself or berate myself for this. Courtesy of both parents betrayals, I do have trust issues. I do also have a good gut radar though (intuition). If I get a bad feeling I don't hang around if I can get away. I don;t try figure out why, I just get away as fast as possible.

As for good people. This is taking me time to trust that. Most of the time I am scared. I still have a lot of work to do in therapy. I have just begun almost five weeks ago now and will keep going. I have a lot more support in place for myself now and that is helping me to trust and make better, healthier decisions for my life.

I hope you write again,

2quik.

[Soberlicious96]

Dear 2quick,

It sounds as though you are certainly working on turning your life around by getting all the support that is available to you, which is great. I also found it quite positive that you are tuned into your instinct and leaving a person or situation when your gut tells you to. I think that is such a wonderful tool/ability to have and make use of, given what you have been through. As you said you "also have a good gut radar though (intuition). If I get a bad feeling I don't hang around if I can get away. I don;t try figure out why, I just get away as fast as possible." I really do think that is, and will continue to be an amazing source of strength and comfort in this journey forward; onward and upwards from here on in!

I did however feel a little bit of 'concern' when you said that you "feel perhaps that it is just best if I focus on the damage that has been done" ..... it just made think that if you are focusing on the problem, then you may perhaps miss an opportunity to find a solution, or, if you like, the chance to take another step away from the damage caused. Does that make sense? I guess what I am trying to say is that perhaps if you practice switching your focus from the damage caused (when you catch yourself thinking about that kind of stuff) to the building and growing in your support network, and on your abilities in making better decisions, that THAT will help you to surge forward and grow stronger, yeah?

And yeah, there will always be things that can never be explained. That is a very unfortunate part of surviving any kind of trauma and abuse. I too have questions that will never really be answered. For me, at those times, I have a little prayer/mantra that helps me; ..... "(God/Higher Power/Guardian angel etc) Grant me the Serenity to accept the people I cannot change, courage to Change the one I can and the wisdom to know that one is me". I am not a religious person though so please don't go thinking I am trying to 'convince' you of anything you don't wish to partake in. It's just a little prayer/mantra that works for me. Plus, as you said "trying to understand my NM head or why she did things is pointless. It will just cause further harm to me." And I must say, ain't that the truth. As I often say, living in my own head is hard enough some days, let alone giving away 'free rent space in my head' to someone who is just not worth it.

Anyway, must go now. running out of room. Sorry. Take care. I'll still be thinking of you. xo

[Carinya]

I feel your pain. You wrote that back in March and hope you are doing well? I am 49 today and have only this year through a psychologist realised that all these issues I have had with my mum and my two sisters are due to my mum being a narcissist. It is so relieving knowing that you have not made situations up in your head and what really happened and how you were treated was real and it was emotional abuse. My mother is so good she has my two sisters in her web, my middle sister is the golden child and my youngest has become narcissistic herself so as to be close to mum and my dad enables all this behaviour and believes everything my mother says. I tried to set boundaries but I was still finding myself in the foetal position after I had spoken to her. My mother recently found out something second hand and felt I should have told her but it was not my story to share. She was so angry and only cared what she looked like not what this poor person had gone through, what we as a family had gone through it was all about her and her image so she chose 12 weeks ago from that issue not to talk to me and my sisters have followed and my father. I live in the country so my dad would say he was coming down to mow his shack lawns and come and visit me as she was always so jealous of our relationship so it was easier for him to just pay me a quick visit without it effecting her but today he has not even text me for my birthday. They gave me a present that dad delivered personally only because he was going to there shack so ticked the box and dropped them off. My sisters whom I have not heard from in months left messages on my phone with so much fluff like nothing was wrong. My mother rang with the whole Darling blah blah. Don't ring me because your just ticking the box it is more hurtful than no call. One again she gaslights me and I am a mess crying all morning when i should be happy. She is such a nasty women. She took away my childhood and any time I re build my confidence she comes in and bury's it. I just don't get how a mother could be so cruel to there own child. I have three incredible kids and we are strong family I can't even begin to think about not being there for them, being empathetic, kind, compassionate, listening and guiding them. Today is a tough day but in saying that seeing a psychologist has been incredible and helped me to realise what I say is true. I am finally being validated. She will never change.