The Real Effect of Narcissistic Parenting on Children

It's my experience with my mom... except I just can't see her in most textbook descriptions.

The text book descriptions make the person sound evil, almost intentional.

My mother just seemed seriously unhappy. It's like everything you do hurts her so much that she has to hurt you back twice as hard, but she never can evaluate if she actually managed to get there that she can't stop pushing it.

I'm convinced that she doesn't know what she's doing. It's not just a question of empathy towards others, it's also as if she had no self awareness.

She doesn't want to look bad in public, but she is not attention seeking. I think she is always hurt by others because she doesn't see that people are separate from her... If someone is attentive to a task, she won't see their point of vue: they are doing something that requires attention. She'll see that she wants to talk to them and they are ignoring her.

If someone goes for a walk when she wants to clean the dishes, she won't see that the person might have indigestion and want a break before getting things done, because in her head finishing the dishes after
a meal before doing something else is unthinkable. It breaks her routine and instead of thinking that others may have different routines, she'lll say that they left her with all the work.

She visited me in my housenonce amd I said let's leave the dishes and go visit, I'll do it when you're gone. She couldn't. She did the dishes and told me the whole time that I was maling her do it and I repeated the whole time, leave it let's go... She couldn't see how rigid it was that she couldn't leave me to do the dishes when I wanted after she was gone iny own home where it would not disturb her later.

Some of it is just extreme habit
Yet, she break some rules... like you said about health. I had asthmay entire childhood but she wouldn't bring me to a Dr because she was afraid he would ask her to stop smoking.

Anyhow, I still have asthma!

I want to say I’m sorry. No child deserves to grow up that way.
After reading this I began thinking about my aunt. I never thought Of her as being a narcissist possibly only as a undiagnosed bipolar. Anyway, it’s been frustrating for me to just learn to love myself. I feel like it’s just something that will never go away.
My mother and father also fit into these descriptions, is possible to have multiple family members?
And at what point do you have some of these tendencies bc that’s what you learned? How do you handle it?- yes a narcissists child. I need to always work on myself bc who I am isn’t good enough.
I recently passed my boards for Nursing and one would think I should be proud of myself. I said after I passed Nursing school with honors that I just had to take my boards to feel accomplished, after I passed my boards, I now say once I receive my license number. When will I be proud of me? When will it not matter that my mom hasn’t said congratulations to me?
I just wanted to say I found your descriptions to be interesting and something to talk about with my therapist.

Appreciate the list you've put in your comment above. I got a lot from it .
Cheers
PG

Every word in your comment I have experienced in my family. Every word. Even down to the sexual abuse from an older brother.
After finally telling my mother of the abuse in my 20's she did and said nothing to my brother. He continued to be her favorite child, (his birthday is the day after hers).
And the rage is real, I confronted my brother in my 40's over the sexual abuse and how he never acknowledged it he went to my mother and father and told them what he did and to this day they feel that I should've just kept this abuse to myself for the sake of the family and how they would look to others knowing what happened to me as a child.
My mother now hates me and my children (2 girls), because now family members are aware of the abuse and her role in ignoring it. My father for whatever reason is going along with whatever my mother tells him despite the fact that he knows this woman has lied all their married life. As for my brother well, he's pleased with the fact that my parents still love and support him knowing what he did to me.
Frankly I believe my mother was hoping that this family secret wouldn't come about until after she died.

Needless to say, I'm glad she's still around to witness the fall of this false pristine family image she spent so decades working towards.
I no longer speak to them anymore...its funny all my life I always felt or my family always made me like I would never survive without them and their input when in actuality my life has never felt better because I'm trusting my instincts and feelings now. Which is something my family tried desperately to erase from me since the age of 4.

Jaybird, thank you so much for your fantastic examples of how your narcissistic mother behaved. I have so many examples from my own childhood that I could literally write a book listing them! I'm you could, as well.
I struggled for so many, many years not actually living life, but merely existing in survival mode, because my psyche had been so damaged as a child. But it has taken so many years of therapy and doing my own self-healing work to even realize that I had been damaged. My mother programmed me to believe that I was the most awful, horrible human being on earth, and that I was the cause of all of the problems in the family. What a revelation to find out that it was HER all along, not me!
I am happier now, and have a stronger sense of myself than I ever have before. I still have struggles, but at least I can operate like a relatively normal person in the world today, and I don't feel suicidal all the time, like I did for so many, many years. I still am in contact with my mother, but it is on a limited basis. Once in a while, I find myself falling into her spider's web, and I have to remember that she can't be trusted, and I need to guard myself against her.
Anyway, I just wanted you to know that it is so comforting to know that some other people, like yourself, know exactly what I went through as a child, and how difficult it is to overcome our programming. I don't talk about it much to others, because most people just don't get it. Unless you've been through it yourself, you really can't understand the damage being raised by an extreme narcissist causes.
I'm truly sorry that your mother was so horrible to you. Those were awful and mean things she said and did. You didn't deserve it!

I know, after living with a spouse with NPD, that you don't get complimented very often, so let me compliment you. You are very articulate, and you should write a book about your experience with your Mom. My boys are getting their identity in life through me, their father, the responsible parent, but their NPD mother has done her damage. The examples you gave were incredible in explaining the "boots on the ground" battle that children go through with a narcissist. Spouses of a narcissist wined up feeling as much like a child as their kids if they are not familiar with how they are being victimized. I will say it again though jaybird, thank you for your comments.

Thank you. I am a messy mix of emotions right now - I am 48 and I just realized what my mother is and how I have been manipulated and - I hate to admit it - abused all my life. I do not live close to my mother, she is in EU, I my husband an my son live in Asia. Powerful tool for guilt tripping in her hands - “you took my only grandson away” for instance. I have visited her every summer or Christmas vacation for 20 years with my son and husband, bearing gifts and giving her money, trying to establish a connection between her and my son, trying to show him “ hey, you do have a grandma, you do have family here, you belong here, too” only to be criticised about my parenting, the imagined behaviour of my son, the amount of homework I had to carry (he had school asignments that had to be done, no excuses). She did lash out at him every time (but with me as a shield between them I think he did not much realise it). The last visits though were exhausting. Her attacks increased and became vicious. The last time - 2 years ago, when I vowed to never visit again - she made him cry. He was 19 at the time and living independently as a Math student, having As all around and never getting into any kind of trouble. It broke my heart.

My son entered graduate school this year - he will start in spring - and when i told my mother, she snarled that all cretins do masters these days and why does he need that for, anyway, he should go to work not parasitate his parents. My mother was a high school teacher and always bragged about her two diplomas, ignoring the fact that I have a master and i teach in college and my husband has a ph.d and basically is a rocket scientist.

I feel like I am ranting but…

I suffered from severe depression for 15 years now but only now I　got to the root of the problem - it’s her - and I am still in shock to have seen the reality. And I really do not want to see her anymore.

I just found this description of narc mothers on parrishmiller　that describes mine point by point, no exceptions. Reading it I had, and still have flashbacks of how we interacted to the present day.

More than that I just now have admitted what I always knew, deep inside, that she did physically and mentally abused my grandfather, her own father. Nobody knows this, she only did this abuse for me to know and see, correctly assuming that I could do nothing to stop it. I was just turned 18 and went to univ. when my grandmother died, and my grandfather was very lonely and very depressed. Whenever he came to visit our house he was preached that he should learn to live by himself and sent back home. He was 80 at the time. When he had an accident, years later - I was already living in another city after graduation and dealing with a new job and struggling to pay the bills - he was forced to move in with my mother. After all, she had the space and living alone herself (she is divorced and remained single to this day). From that day until his death at 99 he was shoved in a room, never taken outside ( “ i cannot carry him up and down the stairs” , “ he is too frail to walk outside” etc) never given true medical care. He was a professor and a scholar and a researcher, he loved to read and write - when he lost his eyesight due to cataracts he was never taken to have the operation; he was never, before that, taken to ajust his reading glasses and she derided him when he tried to read using a magnifying glass. She limited his world little by little while playing the martyr daughter who takes care of her elderly and senile father - which he was not. I tried to suggest one or another - I am not entering the details - only to be shut down (you don’t know the truth, you don’t know how hard it is, he terrorizes me, you are an egotistic monster and I sacrifice myself for everybody etc). Once I got my own place I did think to take my grandfather with me. But for that I would have had to explain why to the rest of my family who really believed that she is a martyr and to my husband, who knew nothing about it, and to my in-laws, controlling and interfering narcs themselves. And my husband and I were living in an appartment that was theirs at the time (which we later bought from them).

We had to distance ourselves from them so we left the country and the freaking continent they were in, with nothing than two suitcases and a baby abandoning absolutely all material posessions we had there - and we were made sure that we were not entitled to have anything - and started from zero.

I was determined in my leaving after one of my mother rages right on Cristmas 20 years ago, when she accused me of being an egotistic monster (again!) among others and making sure I know that she has always been reading my diaries (my highschool diaries were kept hostage by her, I was not allowed to take anything with me, not even a picture, when I left her home at 18)

We did visit, though, as I said, like true trained monkey children of narcissists, but of course nothing changed. My grandfather retreated into himself more and more and I was not allowed to be alone with him anytime I visited.

And one day I got the news that he broke a hip, had a delayed and unsuccessful hip surgery and is bedridden. She told me when we next met that she shoved him back into his room (and he fell and broke his hip) and closed the door and did not check on him because she was having guests and “ he was being nosy” and she was stressed. Also “ stress” made her insult him in front of only me, hit him and punish him. AND I DID AND COULD NOT DO ANYTHING.

I do not know how, if ever, I will come out of this. I alternate between anger and sorrow and numbness.

I need help, even if I the only thing i can do right now is writing here.

Your comments are chillingly accurate!

Of course, ASD is on a spectrum, and there are plenty of individuals that are doing relatively OK, but they are still socially impaired compared to normal humans. As you moves down the spectrum, thing begin to look bleak.

Both my mother and father are very dysfunctional. What a team they make! But they have somehow gone under the radar of the child welfare, probably because there haven't been any drug abuse, and outward they appear to be just very shy and somewhat "strange". And we kids just thought their behaviour was just normal, being dead scared of my parents was just the way it should be!

My mother is basically like a female version of Adam Lanza - on steroids! No, she hasn't killed anyone, but in her mind she has killed tens of people. She is just insanely hatefull. I could be physically punished for the slightest thing; I remember having my pants dropped and being spanked just for tilting a glass of milk! Sheer accidents would alwayst be harshly punished. And when my dad returned home, she would complain to him and he would of course always take her side, no matter what. Any "discussion" with her would end when she exploded after a few seconds, turn her back and say "don't talk to me!", and then sulk for several hours after. She is a world champion of passive aggression. One afternoon, when she felt we were a bit slow to clear up our toys from the living room, she exploded and stormed out of the house, while more than indicating she would never come back. All my father coud say was "that's what happen when you don't listen!" Of course she turned back in an hour or so, stii furious, saying nothing but sending us the "look that could kill". She had probably just been right outside the door all the time, feeling sorry for herself.

I can't remember a single time I received a hug or kiss from my mother, let alone being told I was loved, not a single time!

And of course she has absouletly no insight at all! She suffers from severe ASD, OCD, several anxiety disorders, extreme insomnia and an extreme mix of several personality disorders: I even suspect she has Fragile X syndrome or some other genetic disorder, because both she and several other members of our family looks strange, with narrow face, big nose and weak chin, But the only thing she will admit is being "somewhat neurotic" and having a "nice girl syndrome"!

Even my father is pretty close to being as mentally ill as Adam Lanza was. He is probably just "inches" from being a totally non-functional autist. He has a very low IQ, and any attempt of having a serious conversation with him ends in "I don't understand any of that". He too has no insight at all, and the low IQ combined with extreme sensory and anger issues is extremely toxic. Just normal noise from normal children play was enough to trigger some real hair-raising outbursts. Where a normal father would probably just calmly say "hey, kids, can you be a bit more quiet?", he would just explode, follow up with a look that could kill and often being physical abusive, too. There was never a warning, always from zero to houndred in a split of a second. Apart from being a mentally retarded autist, he probably also has some severe version of ADHD and even possibly Tourettes, he very often have some strange grimaces. He can hardly say a whole sentence without swearing or adding a "my god", while rambling away, having very poor articulation. Having no insight at all, he is of course very critical of other people, and the "conversations" he has with my mother is really out of this world. They think they are basically flawless, while everybody else is of course anything but that.

Both were (and still are) extremely unpredictable, and in my entire childhood I was scared to death of them, always walking on egg shells just to try not provoke them, but they somehow found a reason anyway. During my entire childhood I was looking forward to the day I could physically fight back. But even as an 6 foot and 200 pound adult I was scared of them, and was very sensitive about what they said. Worst of all, growing up in an environment like that, I thought this was normal, I thought this was just the way parents were! After all they didn't drink, they didn't do drugs and they exercised and was in generally good physical shape. In a perverse way, I was proud of them! Talk about Stockholm syndrome!

But now, in my 50ies, having been diagnosed with Aspergers myself and having all sorts of mental "trouble", suicide thoughts, depression and anxiety, I have realised what really went on. And I see that my whole family have been affected. My brother, too, is undoubtedly on the ASD spectrum (with a strange look), but he is high functional and has both a family and a job. But even his son is clearly autistic, even he with that "Fragile X look". My sister seems to have got the best of it, but she too is struggling with sever insomnia, perhaps indicating a touch of ADD. But her son is a non-functional autist, and even her daugher is very likely a severly affected aspie. My son, too, is clearly an aspie, but a high functional one. My daughter seem to have been "spared", but she struggles with anxiety and depression.

What a mess!

Thank you for your comment, Richard. I agree with needing to be careful with who we get involved with. Good advice for anyone, but particularly for people raised by narcissists. I only found out about narcissism a few years ago (after having been to multiple therapists and psychiatrists over my lifetime, and none of them ever mentioning that this could be why I was having so many problems!) Now that I understand the truth of who and what my mother really is, and the damage she did to me, I can now look back on my relationships over the years and see that there were definitely a few narcissists in there! In those relationships, I felt the same way I did growing up with my mother. It makes so much sense now.
Thank you for your insight, and I am truly sorry that you had it so bad growing up. It is truly a soul-crushing experience, and I hope that you have experienced some healing in yourself, and that your life is better now.

Ns are, by definition, toxic and abusive. I really can't think of a single example I have heard of of a narcissistic person with whom a child (including an adult child) could have a good relationship. People capable of healthy relationships are not Ns!