Hope For The Scapegoat Daughters Of Narcissistic Mothers

When scapegoat daughters of narcissistic mothers begin to understand the truth about how a narcissistic mother behaves, we start to question our very identity.

Sometimes you don’t believe what happened to you.

We get stuck in this place of ‘what if it’s not true?’ or ‘what if I’m the narcissist?’

I started to question myself, every decision I’ve ever made, and realized nothing she has ever done was in my best interest.

When you realize your mother is a narcissist, it turns your world upside down.

For our whole life, we’ve not only taken all the blame for her behavior but we accepted it as the truth.

It’s ingrained into your very being.

I had to come to terms with the truth.

My whole life, since birth, has been a lie.

That’s not an easy thing to face.

That’s not an easy truth to swallow.

You don’t just ‘get over it’ and move on.

Surprisingly, I’ve found the most comfort for this in Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power Of Now.

It explains nothing is as it seems and it shows you a better way to deal with everything going on in your mind.

Most people will not understand and will give you terrible advice.

The worst thing they can say is crap like this:

• “Oh, but your mother loves you.”
• “You only have one mother.”
• ‘She’s only doing what she thinks is best for you.”

Um, no.

These are just more lies that give us a false sense of guilt.

She has never had my best interest in mind and isn’t capable of loving other human beings, including her own children.

If you are the scapegoat daughter, then please hear this…

It is not you who’s unlovable.

It’s not you that is so awful even your own mother can’t love you.

The truth is your mother is so broken and beyond repair that she can’t love anyone.

Not just you.

It has nothing to do with you, she can’t love ANYONE.

The scapegoat daughters of narcissistic mothers have to mourn their mother’s death while she’s still alive.

Only the women who have experienced this can understand what you’re going through.

I would say over 90% of the population has no idea what life would be like to grow up without a loving mother.

We, on the other hand, have no idea what it’s like to grow up with a loving mother.

They will never understand.

Stop listening to them.

They can’t help you, and more often than not, they do more damage by quoting the rules of society.

Society’s rules don’t apply to us.

We are better off without our mothers.

We would’ve been better off with no mother at all, so we make our own rules.

We don’t grieve for our mother, we mourn the mother we thought we had.

The mind struggles to accept this.

The brain starts spiraling out of control as it tries to make sense of it all and find a solution.

It collects all the pieces you’ve discovered so far and puts them back together again.

You might call this thinking, but this is what my brain is like.

As I heal from the trauma and question myself, my brain has this instant response that proves the truth to me over and over again.

This did happen, it is real, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it now.

It happened to me or the little girl I used to be and once you start to see it, you can’t unsee it.

I seem to disassociate from my past selves.

Here’s the thing, I blocked out most of my childhood and I was convinced I couldn’t be a good mother.

This is a common theme among scapegoat daughter of narcissistic mothers and it’s yet another lie I’ve dissected in this journal entry.

When I got pregnant, she said she was too young to be a grandmother, and she wasn’t going to be called grandma.

Little did she know how right she was.

I would also like to point out daughters who have good relationships with their mothers don’t give up their children.

Daughters with good mothers have emotional support.

Their mothers would never even consider giving up their firstborn grandchild.

Narcissistic mothers are the opposite of this and do everything in their power to destroy any hope you have of making it on my own.

Anytime I tried to assert my independence I was ferociously attacked for an undetermined long period of time.

She would drag these arguments out for as long as she could remember them, sucking every last drop of supply she could out of it.

It makes you want to claw your skin off because you have no other choice but to sit there and listen.

I would chew my fingernails until they bleed just to get some relief.

How was I going to raise a child by myself when I was dying inside?

I was looking for love in all the wrong places with men who treated me like I was used to being treated at home.

It was familiar to me.

It felt like home.

How was I supposed to know that isn’t what home is supposed to feel like?

I soon found myself in yet another impossible situation.

I had a drinking problem, a bad one and now I was being stalked and harassed not just by my narcissistic mother but also by this crazy bastard.

Once again I was owned, not loved.

He’d already gotten violent with our daughter and she wasn’t even a year old.

I was presented with another option.

My mother handpicked a couple to adopt my daughter from our church and of course, I a twenty-year-old with nothing couldn’t compete with that level of godly perfection.

The first reason I agreed to adoption was to release and protect my daughter from having a father like that.

The second because I truly felt I had nothing to offer her but my love and I did it because I loved her more than anything in the world.

I wanted her to have a chance and a choice I never had.

By the time I gave her up we were already bonded and after fifteen years she came back.

I was ready and waiting.

Since then she’s become my greatest ally.

I thought my family would be thrilled to have her back in our lives.

Not for a moment was I prepared for what I saw that day.

My mother viciously attacked my daughter right in front of me.

She racked her over the coals for something that happened three years before, just like she used to do to me.

I could feel my eyes start to glaze over, and I had to catch myself from almost checking out so I could defend my daughter.

It was an automatic response I used to do as a child when my mother would go at us while we were trapped in the car.

I still struggle with driving and being in a car.

But this time, something in my head unlocked, like a vault, rusty, covered in dust, it started to shudder and crack itself open.

I didn’t know my mother was a narcissist at the time, but my brain knew I had to break free of this woman once and for all.

If not for me, then for my daughter.

I wasn’t about to let her do it to the next generation.

Nobody wants to face their mother is a narcissist, and their whole life has been a lie.

Many scapegoat daughters of narcissistic mothers don’t know anything about narcissism until we start looking up our own symptoms, trying to fix ourselves.

I was trying to fix whatever was wrong with me and that’s what lead me to the symptoms of narcissistic abuse.

You don’t just find out your mother is a narcissist and then go no contact the next day, it’s a process of elimination, and no contact is the last resort.

I had no choice.

By the end of the holiday season, I couldn’t bring myself to ever speak to her again.

I stopped speaking.

I stopped fighting to be heard.

And this time, I was silent by choice.

I wasn’t aware once you stop the abuse, the real work begins.

I did not see it coming.

You wish she was dead and once she’s dead, you’ll be free, but no, no, you won’t be.

She has to be purged out of your head, and believe me, your body and mind want to purge it.

Your soul doesn’t want to carry the weight of it anymore.

This purge lasted a year and a half for me.

My head spun from the minute I woke up to the minute I laid down.

Even in my sleep, I was dreaming about everything she’d ever done to me.

The mind knows, and the subconscious remembers everything.

You’re thinking of every possible way to solve the problem and every time you come up with the same answer.

All roads lead to one thing.

Your mother.

For the scapegoat daughters of narcissistic mothers, I want to bring you hope.

When you’re in the cycle of madness, and you’re being consistently abused, there is still hope.

Even if you’ve gone no contact and your heads spinning so fast you don’t know if it’ll ever stop, there is still hope.

It will stop.

Her voice in your head will stop.

There will be a moment in your future where you will experience the world standing still, and you feel yourself heal, just a little.

You experience you can heal.

That you will heal.

And in this moment, everything will change.

When you’re raised by a narcissist you’re attacked so much and so often you never have the chance to heal between blows.

When you understand what it is to be the scapegoat daughter of a narcissistic mother, a few things will happen:

1. First, it’s a devastating thing to face, especially when you realize how meaningless it all is.
2. Then the guilt sets in, brought on by the rules of society.
3. The reality of this condition your mother has is brutal. Once again, you may find yourself without any other choice, and you have no other option but to go no contact.
4. You stop feeling helpless, you stop accepting the blame, and you start figuring out how to save yourself.
5. Beware once you see it, you can’t unsee it, and you can’t go back to the way things were.

I was pretty horrified when I grasped the full extent of what was being done to me and how senseless it all was.

The last encounter I had with my mother was when she attacked my daughter.

This door inside my brain swung open, and all these facts and memories and emotions came flooding out.

It didn’t stop for at least sixteen months.

It takes a long time to process a lifetime of abuse.

And yes, I was starting to get worried, but I’m stubborn, and there was no way I was going to a therapist.

I was trying to get people out of my head, and I didn’t need anyone else poking around in there.

More than anything, I wanted to be left alone as I privately struggled every day to purge her negative, nasty voice out of my skull.

Once my brain was done processing and doing its thing, it stopped completely, almost overnight.

Her voice was gone.

They say the voice in your head is of the person who raised you.

Imagine how awful a voice like this can be for the daughters and sons of narcissistic parents.

One of the greatest blessings I’ve ever received was the day her voice stopped screaming at me inside my head.

I am free.

But what if you need more to help set you free?

What if what happened to you was much worse than what happened to me?

Final thoughts…

Recovering from this kind of abuse is exhausting, and it can be debilitating.

In some cases, it can cause brain damage, but with the right help, you can undo the damage, and you can heal.

Now, if you’re not interested in therapy any more than I was and you love to journal or write, I have another option.

Starting a blog is the most fulfilling hobby I’ve ever had in my life and I love it.

I think everyone needs a creative outlet and creating a website is a never-ending project that can live forever.

Start your own mental health blog using your journal as inspiration (it’s cheaper than therapy).

And please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, I know you’re out there sisters, talk to me.

Also, if you can’t go no contact for whatever reason here are 4 alternatives you can use to protect yourself.

When you’re dealing with narcissistic abuse sometimes you need help. Making the decision and committing to therapy can be a big ask but what if you could do it from home at your own pace?

It called Online-Therapy (20% off affiliate link).

• You don’t have to meet them in an office.
• 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.
• All your information is highly confidential and secure.
• 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.