Daughters with narcissistic mothers are fighting back in ways that no one sees.
Narcissistic mothers do so much damage to their children we question whether we should bring our own children into the world.
Some of us refuse to have children because we know things about the world most people will never experience and most of the time don’t even believe people like this exist.
Daughters with narcissistic mothers are isolated from the world.
Concentrating in school is a lost cause when you’re basically in a fog most of your childhood. Making friends is impossible when you’re not allowed to have them.
There is no support system outside of your mother; outside of her, you know nothing.
You won’t be close to your siblings since everyone else is traumatized and doing their best to get through the day. There’s no emotional support or anyone to help talk you through things in life because no one is allowed to influence you.
By the time you develop some awareness, you feel like you’ve been left in the dark.
Your feelings don’t matter, your voice doesn’t count, and the only way to get scraps of love is to always be agreeable.
Agree or be punished…
Daughters with narcissistic mothers can never win their mother’s approval.
I wasted a lifetime trying to please my mother, so I too would be considered loved and loveable.
Meanwhile, she’s doing everything in her power to make sure I can never measure up.
Imagine being put down every single day of your childhood.
Imagine everything you do, everything you say is criticized and invalidated on a daily basis.
Now tell me, how do you recover from that and act like a normal adult?
You don’t.
Narcissistic mothers make sure everyone in the family blames you.
Many of us never know the truth and never recover.
The family is 100% unanimous and agreed on one thing; you’re the problem.
You have no rights, no way to defend yourself, and judgment has been passed. By the time you realize what’s happening, it’s already too late. Your only choice is to accept that you must be the problem because you’re the only one who doesn’t think so.
Eventually, you’re convinced you’re a terrible person, and you must be if you’re own mother doesn’t love you.
Deep down, you carry these lies with you, you believe them, and this is what convinces us we can’t be good mothers.
The reality is your whole life is, in fact, a lie.
Everything you know and everything you’ve been told is 100% false.
This journal is the story of my life, and only daughters with narcissistic mothers will understand what it feels like to sabotaged since birth.
With this kind of mother, you don’t need enemies.
They need to see their children fail and feel like failures so they can feel better about themselves.
She becomes extremely jealous of her daughter’s youth.
She will do anything to destroy her daughter’s self-esteem, self-worth, and self-love.
And yes, all of this is to serve one ultimate purpose, to make her feel a little better inside.
No one is allowed to be better or more right than her. Being right is the only thing that matters to a narcissistic mother and what is right doesn’t matter at all.
When she’s bored, she loves to play her favorite game of messing with your emotions. It’s so simple and yet almost impossible to understand. What kind of a mother purposely plays games with her child’s emotions just for fun?
There’s really no more to it.
That’s it.
You find out the only reason you were abused your whole childhood was so your mother could entertain herself when she’s bored or have someone to blame so she doesn’t have to take responsibility for her behavior.
She’s not a good mother, she not really a mother at all. It’s the ultimate betrayal because you realize she’s your worst enemy and all you ever did was love her.
The deepest kind of sadness.
This is something I’ve been aware of my whole life. I’ve carried this sadness with me and never understood it. When you’re raised by a narcissistic mother who doesn’t have the ability to love you, it leaves a permanent sense of sadness.
It lives there inside you, with your soul. Your soul knows this is not a loving mother, and it’s always known if you look deep enough.
When this kind of sadness sits for too long, it turns into rage.
It stays there to remind me that in this life, I will never experience what’s it’s like to have a loving mother and it’s way past time to start protecting myself from her.
When you get to this anger stage it’s there for a reason and it turns into your best defense against narcissistic abuse.
If you can’t trust you’re own mother, what do you do?
You question every decision you’ve ever made because you were taught to believe you could trust your mother.
You were taught to believe everything she said and did was in your best interest.
But it’s a lie.
Children with narcissistic parents are traumatized.
Traumatized children grow up to be traumatized adults.
You, of course, are entirely unaware of this and have been lied to your whole life about what a loving mother feels like.
You don’t have an idea what it feels like to be loved by a mother, and you have no idea how to be a mother.
Half the time, you wonder if you are your mother.
I would never want to treat a child the way my mother treated me, and I wasn’t prepared when my two babies came into the world.
I was beaten down with absolutely zero emotional support or any support of any kind from my family.
It was easy to convince me I was a bad person and could never be a good mother.
I gave up my children to save them.
My children didn’t bond with their adoptive family, and it didn’t go well, but I know and you know it was the lesser of two evils.
I would choose men who treated me the same way mother did, to fill the void. Being treated this way was familiar to me because that kind of abusive interaction is what home feels like.
By signing those papers to give up my children, it gave them one thing I never had.
A choice.
Their fathers couldn’t touch and neither could my mother. They were safer without me than with me.
Today as adults, I remind them both they don’t owe anyone anything. A piece of paper may change your name and make you live with some people until you’re eighteen, but after that, you’re free.
I patiently waited fifteen years to see and speak to my children. It wasn’t hard to win them back because my love for them is the purest thing I have.
Narcissistic mothers take away a child’s right to be human.
When you’re raised to believe you’re bad and you’re attacked daily by a narcissistic mother, you were never given a fair fight.
You never had a chance.
In some ways, our lives seem to happen to us instead of us making our lives happen.
We end up being forced into adoptions, and many times, the narcissistic grandmother tries to legally adopt the children after she single-handedly destroyed her own daughter in unexplainable and insidious ways.
A narcissistic grandmother will do anything to be in control, to keep control, and will go to any length to destroy her own children.
They will lie, cheat, steal, call the cops, and turn you into child protection services if you refuse her access to her grandchildren.
It’s insanity.
She will do everything in her power to turn your children against you.
If she can’t do that, she’ll systematically chip away at their self-esteem, choosing a favorite and a bad one for narcissistic supply.
My purpose is to break this cycle and stop this from happening to the next generation. My grandchildren will be free from all of this.
What daughters with narcissistic mothers are up against.
This illness in your family has been going on for generations. It didn’t start with you and not because of you. It’s been going on for hundreds of years and if you’re here you’ve been chosen for a very important task.
This kind of abuse doesn’t stop until someone wakes up and puts a stop to it.
One of the worst things that can happen to the daughter of a narcissist is to have her children ripped away by the mother who abused her.
Would you be able to recover if your children were turned against you by your own mother?
These are not the kind of wounds that heal.
The best thing about kids is they believe the truth when they hear it in their mother’s voice.
Children with loving mothers sense these things.
Just like children with narcissistic mothers sense something is wrong, but they don’t know what it is.
Final thoughts…
The ultimate sacrifice is doing what’s best for your children no matter what the cost is to you as their mother. Protecting the next generation is the only thing that matters because we would never want our children to experience what we went through.
My children are young adults now and my only mission is to help them heal, so before I die, they can be whole and live their best life.
The truth is the daughter of a narcissistic mother can be an excellent mother.
A better mother than the one she was given because of the pain she suffered as a child.
If you make a mistake (as all mothers do), the guilt is brutal, but it makes you better.
Many of us still choose not to have children for fear of continuing the cycle of abuse.
We understand damaged people raise damaged children, and if I did to my children what my mother did to me, I would never forgive myself.
For those of you who choose not to have children, I want you to know I understand and you have my respect.
For those of you still fighting to get your babies back, please know we can hear you, because we are just like you, and you are not alone.
Need support?
It’s tough trying to recover from this and straighten it out on your own. That’s the hard way.
(RTT) Rapid Transformational Therapy and Uncompromised Life with Marisa Peer is a lifeline for you. A personal session with an RTT Practitioner is like ten years of traditional therapy in an hour and a half. You can check out my homepage for more information and sign up for a session.
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You don’t have to be face-to-face. They’re available and on-call for you Monday-Friday, so you don’t have to wait for an appointment. It’s affordable, and you pay much less than seeing a therapist in person.
Post like this and narcissistic support groups are no substitute for therapy.
You summed it up. I have two children and it hurts everyday wondering if I’m being a good mom. It hurts wondering if I’m a good wife. It hurts making decisions because I can’t make the wrong one.
The only thing that could go deeper is the narcissist family tree. I had the father who said “keep the peace” which is equivalent to “lay there and take it.” We had the flying monkeys who made fun of everything I did which gave her ammo. Then of course the golden child who could do no wrong while
I had my windows nailed shut for GC actions.
After my father cheated and finally
left the woman who abused me in every way and continues to say “keep the peace” I finally left. When my mother told me to give up my last dream in life my wedding cuz no one cares about me and refused to talk to me cuz I did what she asked me to and communicate for her to her husband.
Now I walk around and am told “they are your family” “family is forever just get along.” Or I’m ignored and avoided by ppl I have known my whole life. I have three failed suicide attempts and self harm marks from teenage early twenty years that no one noticed for years and said I deserved it all cuz I’m emotional.
No one is interested in hearing my side and I don’t spread it but they are all ready to tell me to “keep the peace” my trigger cuz it says “lay there like a good girl and take it.”
I haven’t worked through my rage completely especially when my father has re-traumatized me with his new family. I fight back now by setting boundaries and sticking to them. I am classified as a naughty word and have been abandoned and I trust no one.
I am growing and moving past and for my children I am ending the “generational curse” and they will know they are loved and wanted by their mother and father and each other and that they can reach for the stars and I’ll be there to help!
Hi Tay,
You were getting it from every direction and I firmly believe that just because you were born into a family doesn’t mean you were meant to spend the rest of your life with them. The good news you would never do this to your children and the next generation is safe. You’re a generational curse breaker, and that not an easy thing to do or be.
I learned what my mother was while trying to heal from my sons suicide 5 years ago. I have cut ties with my whole family. All anyone ever said to me was “just try to get along with her” or “you and your mom, always at it”. No. I was a child. I was a fucking child you heartless pieces of shit. In therapy, doing so much better and finding who I am. I miss my son so much. When I think of any of the few times she had access to him and how she treated him, if she wasn’t a frail 80 year old I’d kill her. Truth.
Hi Bonnie,
I’m so sorry you lost your son, there’s nothing worse than losing a child. I feel what you’re saying about your mother. I’ve never had that feeling about another person in my life and when she attacked my children I snapped. I could never harm a person because I’m non-violent but it is a powerful rage. I’m glad you’re getting through it, and for what’s it’s worth, I truly believe your son is in a better place now. “We” on the other hand have more work to do so we can make this invisible abuse visible. You’re not alone and we’re in this fight with you. Thank you for sharing your truth.
Im sitting here in tears because I have never read something so accurate with what im dealing with in life. My adult son will no longer speak to me which has caused major depression. My NM has turned my whole family against me.
Hi Wendy,
My whole family is against me too. I don’t miss them but when you lose your connection with your child it’s awful. I definitely know what that feels like and it’s the worst. If you’re ever interested in trying an RTT session let me know. It’s the only thing that’s ever worked for me. First things first, you heal you, and then everyone around you will benefit from that. We have to heal ourselves first so let those tears come to the surface and fall, it’s better to let it out than holding it in.
Your post hits so close to home. I remember the first time I came across an article, on narcissistic mothers. I was actually looking up what was wrong with me, since I was always told, “ther is something just wrong with you, but we will figure it out.” I hit me like a shit ton of bricks. Just knowing that there are people out there, just like me, was frightening, but soothing, all at the same time. Thank you for putting yourself out there. I will do the same, at some point
Hi Lauren,
That’s exactly what happened to me and I think we’ve all felt the shock and awe. I’m glad this helped. Thank you for sharing because yeah, it’s just like that.
I have never felt like anyone understands or could even fathom what it is like to have a mother who doesnt love you, and ive always thought it was me who was the problem.
I was manipulated into allowing my mother full custody of my daughter and it has been the worst mistake.
The pain i feel from not being able to protect my daughter (the one person in the world that gives me peace) from the woman who abused, tormented alienated and emotionally and physically destroyed me is the consuming and i feel powerless and hopeless.
What can you suggest i do please i am literally blocked mentally from being able to choose my next life moves and how and why im even bothering to wake up every morning.
Hi Bianca,
Hey, I have been where you are. You’ve been manipulated into thinking that you’re the problem and now you find out it’s all a lie. I don’t if there is a possibility for you to get your daughter back but that would be my life mission going forward. Giving full custody is not the same as signing away your rights so keep that in mind.
I would like to point out that your mother wants you to think you’re powerless and hopeless, I’m sure she has you right where she wants you. I would also suggest documenting her behaviors from now on so you have dates and times of her abuse to show the judge.
It’s going to take some hard work to put your life back together and get back up off the floor. This is by far one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through and you can email me anytime if you need to talk, vent, or be heard by someone who understands. I’m so sorry this is happening to you and the worst thing is not having a support system to help you through this.
I would be more than happy to brainstorm solutions with you so email me anytime at [email protected].
god you just explained my life except I made the mistake of allowing my mother to financially care for myself and my child who is special needs once I informed her that I didnt feel she could physically handle my son if I were to die she now has removed myself and my son from her trust I’m beyond angry . she was one who would have me arrested instead of grounding . My mom is narrcacist plus lupus plus alcoholic she is pushing my buttons and yes anger is arising again that I worked years on . I’m at a loss and so worried about my sons future I cant work and she knows this. its to the point I will not get her degrade me in front of my son I cant bite my tounge anymore .but thus fucking myself .
Hi Jenn,
I worked on my anger for years too, but it never goes away. Your anger comes from self-protection and the need to also protect your son.
Please read my post about the rage and sadness and see if that helps you use your anger instead of burying it. That anger is a resource and once you understand its purpose there’s a huge shift in your mindset.
She wants you in a constant state of turmoil so focus on taking that emotional power away from her.
She’ll always stay the same, but you can’t because you’re meant for more.
I understand so much more of myself now. This article makes me feel understood more than I thought I ever could be. I also know that I am not alone. It is real and I can find help. Thank you so much. You made my day.
Hi Jana,
I’m glad you found some answers today. Thank you for taking the time to comment.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and feel a sense of being understood more than I ever have.
The codependency and people pleasing needs my mother created in me, gave me a desire to study psychology and to once be a therapist. I have dedicated a large amount of my personal time to following the development of a mental health Illness finally being named for this parental narcissistic upbringing- Complex PTSD. I have put a lot of hours into studying the deep brain and hormone dysregulation we survivors have, have dug into the top researchers who study this c ptsd, and found various opportunities to find healing for free.
Bessel Von Der Kirk and Pete Walker have written helpful books and I actually found that working with a ‘fellow traveler’ in ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics, drug addicts, or dysfunction families). Alcohol and drug abuse are not required to take fellowship with the group…only very extreme family dysfunction is required. It wasn’t until I worked the steps in this program that I finally shed away most my codependency behaviors.
I went no contact a year before my mother died (didn’t know she was going to die) and then found out 7 months later that I was pregnant.
I had a female dog of 11 years at the time who I had an extremely close bond with and it was my relationship with her that allowed me to slowly gain confidence in myself to be a good mother.
Now my daughter is 10 months old and she’s a very happy baby and I admittedly often fear how the different stages of growing up could bring out parts of my mom inside of me. And for the first 6 months, I beat myself up even though I was doing an amazing job.
Becoming a mother has actually taught me how to do routines and allowed my inner child to finally play and securely connect with someone (my daughter) without fear of abandonment or fear of being intentionally hurt. I get to see myself act out the love I never got and give and get back the love I’ve longed for from my mom since I could remember.
In many ways, having a child has healed parts of me. Also, my mother actually developed her narcissistic personality from the abuse and neglect of her narcissistic father.
So, life can always present different circumstances and opportunities. I encourage women of narcissistic mothers to have children if they truly feel like they’ve healed enough of their wounds to at least be able to pour out live to a child on a regular basis.
Anyway, I read so much scientific and impersonal descriptions of what we have experienced that reading this was more enjoyable than anything I have read in a while. Keep sharing your experiences because it fills a little part of the void just a little more when survivors like us can read a personal experience and actually feel understood!
Look into complex ptsd and EDMR therapy. They say that much of our trauma is lodged into parts of our body and stuck their because traumatic experiences don’t get filed away the same way as normal experiences. Anyway, great article’
Hi Tiffany,
Thank you so much for your insight and what it’s like as a new mother under these conditions. We crucify ourselves for even the slightest mistakes.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of understanding C-PTSD and EDMR is on my radar. I’ve heard good things about it.
I agree the science is cold and impersonal and part of my motivation was to bring some depth because it irritates me how hollow it is, science has its limitations.
The truth is anything is possible and anything can happen, there are no hard and fast rules, and we really need more therapists with your experience we can trust.