Narcissistic mother

In general, you can assume that your parents want the best for you. But if, like me, you were unlucky enough to be born in a family with a narcissistic mother, that is not so obvious. Now as an adult, I still experience the effects of an extremely destructive childhood…

My narcissistic mother

The family I grew up in seemed to the outside world a neatly prosperous middle-class family. But behind those facades were several hidden dramas.

My father lost both parents during the Second World War. His war trauma left him with depersonalization. He developed into a vulnerable person and was probably easy prey for my narcissistic mother.

From my earliest childhood she told me that I would grow up to be just like my Dad. Then she went the extra mile by saying I’m going to get worse. Apparently that was the path she had mapped out for me…

To the outside world, she played the caring wife who took care of her pathetic husband. Behind the scenes, she just broke him even further. I guess I should have succeeded him as her pathetic son.

When I was two I got a sister and the family consisted of four people. We were played off against each other without knowing it. When she did something I was punished. And as I learned later, that was also the case the other way around. We both had the feeling that the other was favoured and so we hated each other.

Me me me!

It all got much worse when I started having back problems at the age of 11. Therefor I had to go to physiotherapy once a week and do exercises at home every evening. I did these exercises with my narcissistic mother…

The exercises consisted of throwing a ball. Mum threw the ball to me and I had to catch it and throw it back. When something went wrong, she started a furious tirade. “You dirty egoist!” she yelled at me hysterically. “Me me me!”.

I had no idea for if what I deserved this treatment. But if she said so, it would be. “Wait until you get to secondary school,” she continued, “They’ll teach you that. They’ll beat you up!” The aggressive gestures she made and the grim face she drew with it are still burned into my retina.

And so it went every evening! I knew exactly what was going to happen beforehand, so I had great anxiety in advance and caught the ball as if numb. This seemed to be a reason for her to go the extra mile. I didn’t have to count on grace.

The word ‘egoist’ became an obsession for me. I had no idea what it meant, but if your mom says you are, it must be the truth I thought. It was so bad that whenever the word egoist was mentioned anywhere else I got a red head. One time I looked it up in a dictionary at school. “Selfish” was the meaning. Today I know that not me but my narcissistic mother is the egoist. But it’s still a loaded word for me.

Bullied at school

Instead of a safe family, I grew up in a hostile environment, which made me extremely vulnerable. And what happens to vulnerable children at school? They are bullied. When I told I was bullied at school, my narcissistic mother always sided with the perpetrators. She told me it was my own fault.

On the other hand, she again played the caring mother who wanted to solve it. Sometimes a teacher came to our home to talk about it. But then she made remarks that make me look bad to the teacher, making things even worse. At first I thought she made those comments out of stupidity. But now I know better.

“Just pull their hair”

One time my narcissistic mother said “Defend yoursef better” and “Just pull their hair”. I did that the next day and it turned out to be an effective remedy. From now on they knew they could no longer mess with me with impunity. Not that the bullying stopped there, only most didn’t dare to fight with me anymore. Instead, they scolded me and then ran away.

But one day I was ambushed by a group on my way home. One of them had a hard object in a bag with which he hit me on the head. When when I came home upset I didn’t have to count on any sympathy from my narcissistic mother.

It was my own fault again. “You pull them by the hair, isn’t?” She seemed to have forgotten that she herself had advised me to do so. According to her, my attackers had the intention to teach me a lesson. “And now you’re not sad because you have pain…” she continued her tirade, “…but because you lost!”.

As a child you tend to believe your parents and so in all my sorrow I thought it must have been my own fault. When Dad showed some compassion later on and asked what was going on, I reacted negatively. Mom said I was the one to blame, wasn’t it?

Me to a boarding school for difficult children

Just before I was about to go from primary school to secondary school, my narcissistic mother came up with the disastrous plan to put me in a boarding school that summer. As I would later discover, she portrayed me to the general practitioner as an aggressive child which could no longer remain at home. But the one who was aggressive was my narcissistic mother herself!

It may be clear that as a vulnerable child I would be completely destroyed in a boarding school. But after all, my narcissistic mother had a plan for me…

Here I was saved by the bell, because there turned out to be no place for me. Instead, a woman came to our home for an interview. She determined that I was just going through puberty and that there was nothing wrong with me. Unfortunately, my narcissistic mother was not unmasked and was able to continue her mean game for many years to come.

Dad to the mental hospital

After failing to get me into a boarding school, she turned her attention to my Dad. Now it was him who had to leave the house and go to the Psychiatric Department of the General Hospital. My narcissistic mother blackmailed him by threatening with a divorce.

After the Psychiatric Department, my Dad returned home for a short time, but again he had to be admitted under threat of divorce. This time in a mental hospital. Later Dad would tell me that the doctors in the mental hospital saw through my narcissistic mother.

“She’s out for a divorce and she’s only coming here to destroy you even more,” the doctors told Dad. He didn’t want to believe that at the time. “Well you’ll find out then,” replied a doctor. Also they said they had the wrong one here. Not Dad but my narcissistic mother belonged in their institution.

I still find it astonishing today that these doctors caught on but they didn’t ring the alarmbell! Knowing that this monster had two children in her care, they should have reported this to child protection. But my Dad was their patient and they had nothing to do with the rest, so they did nothing. And our narcissistic mother was able to continue her devastating work…

Will my dad come back home?

In the summer of 1983, Dad came home in the weekends. The intention was that he would stay at home a little longer and eventually be completely home again. At the beginning it all went well and life seemed to get a little better again. But of course my narcissistic mother didn’t like that…

She started behaving more and more erratically. At the slightest hint, she had a fit of rage and flung the crockery around the house. I well remember when we had dinner. Mama said nothing and there was an icy tension. After dinner she put the plates in the dishwasher. Dad said “never mind I’ll do that later”. Under a hysterical scream, the plates flew not into the dishwasher but through the kitchen.

She then pretended to be the victim herself and sought comfort from my sister. This act was performed daily during this period.

The hero of my narcissistic mother

A week before my Dad would come to live with us permanently again, it came to a climax. We had a visit from an uncle, a half brother of Dad. He was an arrogant and authoritarian person. Someone with open narcissistic features.

My narcissistic mother seemed to adore him. Later my Dad told me that she already adorate him since they were dating. Incidentally, during the period when Dad was in an institution, this uncle regularly came to stay with us without his wife…

Now I know that a narcissist often has a ‘hero’ in which they see perfection. This is their role model and when someone says something negative about their ‘hero’ it leads to great anger by the narcissist.

My narcissistic mother, my sister and I were in the kitchen when suddenly we heard a lot of screaming from the living room. The uncle yelled at Dad. He ends his diatribe with the words: “And I won’t come here again as long as you’re still here!”. That same day, my narcissistic mother kicked Dad out and filed for divorce. The doctors became right.

The divorce

The time that followed was the darkest period of my life. While the divorce proceedings were underway, Dad stayed again in the psychiatric hospital. After a while he contacted my sister and me. This was first done by telephone and later we went to visit him in turns. During this time, our narcissistic mother tried to turn us against him.

It was so confusing. Six months ago things seemed to be going in the right direction. The sun shined behind the clouds. But suddenly those clouds had turned inky black and a heavy thunderstorm had broken out. I felt it was Mom’s fault, but she kept telling me that it was Dad’s fault. Looking for an explanation, I convinced myself that my narcissistic mother had given Dad plenty of opportunities but that he had screwed it up himself.

The first time I visited my Dad in the mental hospital was confrontational. I saw my Dad as a broken man filled with grief and incomprehension about what had happened to him. It was this day that my view tilted. I saw my father’s grief and my narcissistic mother’s harshness. An attempt to arouse his situation in her understanding of Dad was in vain.

Dad comes to live opposite us

In March 1984, Dad left the mental hospital. At the time, my parents owned two properties that unfortunately faced each other. By prenuptial agreement, they both had a property put on their name. That’s how Dad came to live in the building that was on his name, which actually made us neighbors.

My sister and I went to see him daily for the first week. One time, when we returned, our narcissistic mother was talking to a female neighbor. “It will soon be nice and quiet, the children are going to live with him” she remarked cynically in front of us. And so it went on for a while. The neighbor was completely on her side and thereby made herself the flying monkey of the narcissist.

After these words I felt ostracized by my mother and went even more often to my Dad. My sister did the exact opposite and withdrew. Every night I faced the wrath of my narcissistic mother. When I returned I was greeted with “so defector”. A whole series of accusations followed.

If I went against that, it all got a lot more worse. Especially when I dared to say something about Dad’s half-brother. Then she exploded with anger. “There’s nothing to criticize about him!” she would often yelled at me. Now I know why she reacted that way, I attacked her “perfect hero”.

Backstabbing tricks of my narcissistic mother

I once had a phase in my youth where I liked to walk around in army clothes. I actually left that phase behind me already, when my narcissistic mother had laid out my army clothes one morning. When I came out of school I wanted to wear something else because I knew Dad would not like it because of his war trauma. But she didn’t let me change, I had to go to Dad in army clothes. Dad asked me why I weared army clothes. I remained silent, shrugged my shoulders and didn’t tell him mum forced me to wear it.

Also, my sister and I were pitted even further against each other during that time. One of the strongest examples took place at Christmas. My sister and I went to see Dad on Christmas Day. The next day, like every day, I went alone to see Dad. When I returned in the afternoon, well in time for dinner, the wrath of my narcissistic mother awaited me.

She allegedly reserved a table at a restaurant that they had to cancel. That was certainly my fault because I was too late. I hadn’t been told anything about that dinner, nor had she told me that I had to be back before a certain time. As a result, both my sister and my narcissistic mother were angry with me, because I mess up the dinner.

Today I think this was one of her villainous tricks to play us off against each other.

Social phobia

And so I grew up to be a vulnerable person, just the way my narcissistic mother wanted me to be. When I was 29 I was diagnosed with social phobia. I now dare to say that this is the result of my destructive childhood. But it would be another 18 years before I would find out that my narcissistic mother played a big part in this.

When I once did an IQ test, I turned out to have an IQ of 132. With that I could have gone to university and now have a good job. But after a childhood where every ounce of self-confidence had been taken away from me, I didn’t even dare to think about it.

My narcissistic mother exposed

We are writing early 2015, a few months earlier I would have turned 47. I live alone and have a reasonable relationship with my mother at the time, as long as I don’t start talking about the past. Over the past 25 years I have had that ability several times, but every time I end up retreating while she react aggressively.

Whenever I ventured to talk about the mental abuse she always respond with anger. It was always others’ fault, she never did anything wrong herself. And I was also repeatedly accused of being too hard on her. “Why don’t you do that to your father?” I was always told. Well, my father doesn’t get hysterical when you confront him about something.

She always believes she is being treated unequally. In recent years she has broken off all contact with various people because she believed she was being discriminated. The malicious jealousy of the narcissist…

Every time I made an effort to talk to my narcissistic mother about the past, I was frustrated. It gave me the paralyzing feeling that I would never be able to talk about it with her.

The first cracks in the relationship with my narcissistic mother

Already a few years earlier, the first cracks came in the relationship with my narcissistic mother. In 2008 she had found a new victim, a widower with whom she started living together.

Once I was with them the conversation turned to fireworks. Mom reminded me of an incident at school where fireworks I had in my jacket exploded during one of the daily harassments. “Didn’t they drag you across the floor?” she asked. When she came to my house a few days later, I told her that I found this very humiliating. “I can’t say anything anymore, I’ll put a clamp on my mouth,” she shouted in an aggressive tone.

Shocked by this reaction, I mentally locked. It was still the old song, if you let her know you don’t like something she does she gets angry. Bad memories that I had suppressed until then resurfaced. The verbal abuse during the exercises for my back, the divorce…

From that moment on I didn’t visit them very often anymore. I couldn’t bring myself to play the game of harmonious family life anymore. But for the time being I didn’t venture another attempt to talk with her.

The last straw

Early 2015, the subject accidentally came to talk when my narcissistic mother visited me alone. First up was the divorce and the fact that she was constantly calling me a defector. “You were a defector!” she responded hysterically.

When I told her later on that the verbal abuse during the exercises was one of the most traumatic experiences of my childhood, she exclaimed scornfully “Ah ah ah, a trauma! What kind of trauma should I have?”.

Although I mentally locked at that moment, for me that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Shortly afterwards I let her with the choice, either she would face the facts and finally talk with me in a normal way. Or she would lose me too, as my sister had cut off contact with her years before.

That was on February 10, 2015, I haven’t heard from her since that day. So she clearly chose the latter…

Unmasking the narcissist

It was during this time that it dawned on me that there must be something seriously wrong with my mother. How could it be that someone would rather cut contact with their own children than admit a mistake? I went looking for an explanation and delved into all kinds of mental disorders.

I read about psychopathy, anti-social personality disorder, borderline and much more. There were similarities in various disorders, but too little to make conclusions.

The more I read, the more I start to doubt. Was I looking for something that wasn’t there? Maybe my mother is just a difficult person. The hope that I would find an explanation for her behavior started to fade. Until I came across an article about the Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

This was not a partial recognition, this was an almost 100% recognition. My mother’s behavior was described in every little detail. I was stunned. Would this be it then? But there was one thing I couldn’t place at first. I had never recognized the narcissist in my mother.

The image I had of narcissists until then was the inflated personality. Show-offs that you immediately recognize as a narcissist. As I learned more about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, I discovered that there are also covered narcissists. It may be clear that my mother belongs to this category.

Not the only victim of my narcissistic mother

But I am aware of the fact that I am not a psychiatrist and therefore not allowed to make a diagnosis. It could also be that I wanted an explanation for her behavior too much and that I suffer from tunnel vision as a result.

Just to be safe, I let my sister read some articles on Narcissistic Personality Disorder. In order not to influence her, I did not tell her beforehand what my thoughts were. She also immediately recognized our mother in this. She even managed to name a few characteristics that I hadn’t thought of or even knew about in the first place.

The conversation with my sister also showed that we are not the only victims of our narcissistic mother. She also mentally abused her grandchildren. She once looked after my sister’s children when the daughter accidentally knocked over a bottle of the son’s milk. As punishment, our narcissistic mother forced her to lick the milk off the floor…

The turning point

And so I discovered that my life has been manipulated by my narcissistic mother since childhood. How different could it have been if I was born into a normal family? A family in which your parents try to protect you and stimulate your talents. Instead, I was plunged into misery and my self-confidence was taken away from me.

But as I get older, my confidence grows. In 2018 I took the decision no longer to be a victim but a survivor. Since that moment I take responsibility for my own life and work to change my life in a positive direction.

Do you also have such experiences? Leave a comment below or tell your story on the forum.