The narcissistic mother denies her child emotional support for their entire lives.
When you go to her with a problem, she’ll twist it all around so she can attack you for it.
Instead of facing the problem, a narcissist will alter the facts of reality so they can put all the blame on you and then shame you for it.
For example, as an adult, you go to your mother and tell her someone at work is harassing you.
Within the first sentence of you trying to explain what’s going on, her wheels are already spinning.
If you’re dealing with a covert narcissistic mother it could go something like this:
- It’s not that big of a deal.
- Well, you should do a better job.
- Are you sure you’re feeling okay? You seem pretty sensitive.
- Maybe that’s not what he meant, and you misunderstood.
- You should go a see a doctor who can help you with “your mental problems.”
Anything you say, she’ll say the opposite.
Your needs will be opposed if not outright dismissed unless they’re perfectly aligned with her agenda.
This can seem like you’re simply dealing with a negative person, but for children like us, this was every day of your life and every interaction you have with your mother into adulthood.
Every time you dared to open your mouth to express emotions or feelings and say how you felt, it’s shot down, disproved, and dismissed.
Normal parents give each child emotional support daily.
It’s natural and healthy to go to your parents for support.
However, going to the narcissistic mother for emotional support is more like getting stabbed in the chest over and over again.
My advice?
Stop.
Stop going to her for emotional support.
You’re behaving like a healthy rational adult who needs some sound advice.
Unfortunately, your mother is not mentally well or rational.
Find a normal, intact, healthy human being to be your voice of reason.
Someone who can build you up instead of tearing you down.
The last thing you need is someone who denies your reality and dismisses you.
It leaves a huge void in your life, so I am always open to bringing in healthy, loving mothers into my life to help me reparent myself.
Watching loving mothers can be painful too, because you know it wasn’t like that for you.
You wonder why your mother can’t get better, you think of the woulda, coulda, shoulda’s, but it’s still a good idea to bring better examples into your life.
How a person without narcissistic personality disorder provides support:
- Girl, you gotta get outta there, it’s not worth it.
- Are you kidding me? He can’t talk to you like that.
- You don’t get paid enough to be treated that way.
- I think it’s time to get out of there if you’re this unhappy.
This is emotional support. It’s not that hard, and it doesn’t cost anything.
It doesn’t make sense to deny your child in this way, and that’s the disorder.
And yet, we have no idea what it would be like to be emotionally supported by our mothers on a daily bases much less once and awhile.
I can count on one hand how many times my mother gave me emotional support, and it was pathetically useless.
The narcissistic mother uses projection and blame, maliciously.
We all use projection to a certain extent.
My husband and I love nothing more than to find a way to blame each other for something that was absolutely not the other one’s fault.
I think this happens early on in a marriage and can cause a lot of problems, but we have good communication, so we laugh at each other now instead of taking it seriously.
That’s normal.
He takes responsibility, and so do I.
With a narcissist, they will take exactly zero responsibility, and if you don’t except all of it, there will be hell to pay.
Your behavior is always in question and needs improvement while their’s never changes and stays exactly the same.
For me, it would be extremely painful to live in a state of zero growth.
How can there be no growth after decades of promises?
That’s not damaged.
That’s broken.
Narcissism is more than a mental illness.
Even if you can’t fully recover from mental illness, you can at least get the tools and learn the skills needed to manage better, and you can improve.
A narcissist can’t do that.
They can’t see the problem is with them, and they will sure as hell never accept such a thought.
It’s not because they won’t, it’s because they can’t.
The introspective part that makes you take a good look at yourself doesn’t exist for them.
They have missing pieces.
You’re not dealing with a healthy and whole personality.
It’s hard to digest you were raised by a person who was lacking in so many ways.
The truth is like a slap in the face because if she lacked all of this, that means you lack some of these things in a big way too.
Broken is not the same as damaged, bruised, or injured.
It can’t heal, and it can’t be fixed.
The only way to win this battle is to once again turn into yourself and change how you react.
If you come from a narcissistic family, this isn’t hard to do.
You’ve been adjusting your behavior for a lifetime, trying to avoid pain or receive conditional kinds of love from your parent.
We already have this tool and the ability to do this.
You can change your behavior quite easily if you decide to do it.
What happens when you confront a narcissistic parent?
Nothing good.
You won’t get the validation you deserve.
They won’t suddenly see the light and feel terrible for how they wronged you.
According to a study from Kim Saeed, when you tell a narcissist they hurt your feelings, it registers about the same as asking them to pass the salt.
There’s no there there.
They are masters at altering the reality of a situation to fit their agenda and will have no problem telling everyone you’re the narcissist.
She’ll completely annihilate you before you wake up the next morning.
As a young child, I accused my mother of being a liar, I knew she was lying, but I couldn’t prove it.
I couldn’t even prove it to myself, and thus the spiral of madness continued as she swore she’s never told a lie in her entire life.
The narcissistic parent knows your every emotional weakness.
Instead of giving a child emotional support, they use it to manipulate and control.
They know you experience normal emotions like compassion, empathy, and guilt.
They abuse you knowing how to use these emotions against you.
A narcissistic mother enjoys toying with people emotions, especially her children’s.
If this was coming from a stranger or your worst enemy, it’d be different, but this is your mother.
Giving a child emotional support encourages independence and builds a strong sense of self.
When you’re raised by a narcissist, being your true self is not okay.
By that, I mean, it’s never okay, and every time you showed your true self to your mother, you were degraded and humiliated without fail.
The narcissistic mother will do unbelievable and insidious things trying to destroy that light inside of you.
If you’re reading this, then she’s no longer winning.
You might have been isolated and alone, but you’re not anymore.
That’s what this blog is for to connect all of us together, to spread the word, to make people aware.
And above all else to stop blaming the child for bad parenting. Blaming the child has been going on for years, and it’s ridiculous.
Final thoughts…
You should know the light inside you, the being that is you, can’t be destroyed.
I thought mine was dead.
For a very long time, I thought it was gone, and this was it for me.
But it wasn’t true.
It was starving.
And it needed to be fed.
Need support?
It’s tough trying to recover from this and straighten it out on your own.
To speed up my healing process, I got into life coaching, and it changed everything for me.
I took it a step further and became a life coach so I could learn how to help other people like me.
Coaching actually works, and it works quickly when you use a specially trained coach. Check out my page here to learn more about it.
When you’re dealing with narcissistic abuse, sometimes you need help from a licensed psychologist. If you have more severe symptoms like debilitating depression, PTSD, or C-PTSD, you can connect with a professional therapist online.
Try Online-Therapy (20% off affiliate link).
You don’t have to be face-to-face or meet them in an office.
They’re available and on-call for you Monday-Friday, so there’s no waiting three weeks 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.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience. As a daughter of a narcissistic mother, I have found it very difficult to put into words what my upbringing has done to me, and what I battle internally daily. I am 61, and finally got to the core of my living problems 4 years ago. To be able to put a name to it, and find that others feel and have gone through the same as myself was amazingly liberating, as well as reassuring that I wasn’t insane 🙂 No contact is the only way to go! And although you will go through the stages of grief, and guilt (my Mother used guilt my whole life in order to control my life) is very difficult as well as confusing. It is well worth it. I have come to accept that I will not be entirely free of this, but the freedom is in knowing what it is. I can be proud of the strength that I actually have to have endured this far (I am 61), and to look forward to flourishing, and yes! getting to know who I really am without negative interference!!! Wow!!! I had know idea what I was going to say when I started this comment. There it is <3
Hi Wendy,
Most of us don’t find the truth until later in life, if ever. I can tell you I’m not going to waste any more time living in a lie and intend to live my life to the full from now on.
The oppression we suffer in unbelievable. Freedom is everything and I’m sure you know how good it feels to finally be allowed to grow.
Once we figure it out there’s no stopping us. The strength I find in women like us is also incredible. No one should have to be that strong but we are tough as hell and we will fight to the death for our freedom once we realize what’s going on.
Thank you for sharing, comments like yours fuel my fire.
Wow! What an insightful article! I didn’t understand my mother was a narcissist or I was an empath until adulthood and always could not understand why she would flip things on me all of the time. When you spoke about the non-emotional support, it could not have hit closer to home. I was having some difficulties in my marriage a few years ago and turned to her for emotional support. I was more or less trying to figure out scenarios if my marriage wasn’t able to work out. Well, after sharing every vulnerability with her, instead of just saying she would be there for me, she called my children and told them that their parents were probably getting divorced and they should come right over to talk about it. Who does that?? Not only is she is a narcissist, but so is my brother. My mom and step-dad have lived a life of enabling him in some sick, twisted codepency. I also learned much later that my mom never healed from her own “abuse” of her childhood and wasn’t happy with her own marriage and turned into a vindictive, spiteful, bitter person who didn’t want to see me happy because she wasn’t happy. She chose to escape her own childhood by running off with the first boyfriend she was close with and it was doomed from the beginning. But needing a way to support me and my brother, married my step-dad because he was financially secure with a pension, but also disabled. She became resentful to being a caretaker and not being able to do the things that most normal couples do. Instead of trying to improve herself, she began to take on a codepency with my brother who is an addict. Because living with his problems were easier than facing her own and being accountable. It has been an eye-opening experience for me, but also very empowering to know that I am NOT the problem. Her responses are all very similar. I’m too sensitive or she’ll find some passive-aggressive comment to off-set validating my feelings. Or she will make it all about herself. She is a genius at manipulation, as well as my brother. They both have different realities and always opposite of what’s really truthful. I choose to love them both unconditionally, but I don’t have relationships with either. That type of abuse is not a relationship. I know I will never get a response from either of them that will ever make anything better or improved. And I don’t need it. Just knowing how much power I give myself by choosing not to engage with them is an indescribable feeling. And now I educate my kids on self-worth and what’s acceptable and the choices they have. All 3 of them have been awakened to the reality of seeing them for what they are and I encourage them to make decisions based on their feelings, not feeling obligated. I would never suggest to not have a relationship with them, but awareness is power and they’re very educated on the dynamic of narcissism. Thank you for this article!
Sounds like you’re breaking the cycle with your kids, thank you for sharing your story, it all helps.
I am 60 and I just came to the conclusion that my mother has been a narcissist her whole life . Recently upon liquidating my late father’s estate she gave absolutely everything to my brother . He is not in need as he’s been given everything his whole life . I am living on a pension that makes poverty look appealing . When I had the audacity to ask why they had done this to me , she told me that when she died I can have any loose change that might be in her purse . I don’t intend to ever speak to either of them again . The pain is like a physical blow .
Hi Rita,
Before I went no contact I had to be willing to give up my family and my inheritance. It was either stay for the money or leave with nothing. If your mother could be that awful I’m sure you’ve suffered in unspeakable ways. I will always remember the last blow that took a week to recover, after that I was done. Personally, I couldn’t take my siblings share and not feel like a piece of garbage. One yr no contact my life completely changed, over two yrs and my life is so much better without her in my head. I’d rather be poor or dead than have her in my life. Thank you for taking the time to comment. I’ll be thinking of you and sending strength. Give yourself all the time you need to heal, this kind of psychological abuse can be debilitating.