Sanctuary for the Abused
Friday, May 06, 2022
Narcissistic Mothers
By Cyndi Lopez
There is a special place in hell for narcissistic mothers. Ms. Plath herself indulged in the ultimate narcissistic act when she committed suicide by sticking her head in the oven while her two young children were asleep in the same apartment. How thoughtful of her to have sealed off their rooms with towels so that the fumes wouldn’t consume them too. She needed someone to live on to remember her and care that she was gone.
Narcissistic mothers do not have children for the same reasons the rest of us do. They do not look forward to the birth of their child because they can’t wait to see what they look like or what type of personality they will have or who they will become. No, they have children for one reason only: More mirrors. They have children so that the children will love them unconditionally, not the other way around. They have children to do things for them. They have children to reflect their false images. They have children to use, abuse and control them.
They don’t see their role as a mother as life’s biggest gift. It’s a burden they didn’t expect. They thought they were creating little “mini-me’s.” They didn’t take into account the fact that somewhere around age 2, these spiteful, ungrateful (in their minds) little creatures start to develop their own individual personalities and wills of their own. For the rest of us, that’s the best part of being a mom — watching our children grow into increasingly independent, confident, free-thinking individuals. For the narcissistic mother, each step away from her is an absolute act of betrayal.
Children have emotions that they express quite freely. This annoying practice is squashed as early as possible since narcissists cannot handle emotions. “What is wrong with you?” and “You’re so oversensitive” and “You’re overreacting” are common phrases uttered to children of narcissists.
These mothers end up resenting all the work that goes into raising a child, having no use for them unless they are achieving, doing something or otherwise reflecting their false image onto them. Children are a nuisance to them, taking precious time away from their own agendas. They don’t like to have to shop for clothes for their children, prepare meals for them, do their laundry, pay for daycare, enroll them in activities, drive them to friends’ houses, throw birthday parties, pay for their college educations or protect them from abuse.
They will smother and overprotect their children under the guise that they are taking care of them. They will fail to provide age-appropriate information on such things as menstruation, personal grooming (make-up, hairstyles, shaving, etc.), budgeting money and dating. This all serves to keep her children under her control as long as possible. If they are ill-informed and overprotected, they will not feel confident to grow or move further away from her.
They will use their children as slaves. They will delegate all household chores to the children as early as possible. They will insist that they pay for their own personal items and clothing as early as possible. Older children will become responsible for younger children. No matter how many of her responsibilities her children take on, it will never be enough or be done well enough. They expect perfection and constantly remind their children that they fail to meet this expectation.
Of course, they train their children to believe that they are the ideal mother. Any evidence to the contrary is to be kept secret at all costs. They will behave much differently toward their children in public than they do at home. They will vehemently deny any wrongdoing on their part and most likely blame their children, completely rewriting history.
Narcissistic mothers don’t stop being narcissists when their children become adults. They will play siblings against each other. They will compare siblings. They will talk to siblings about each other. When they have a problem with one, they will talk to another about it.
They are jealous of their children’s successes, even though they brag to others about them (‘see how great MY kids turned out’). They will make snide comments if they think one of their adult children has a better marriage, house, job, etc. than they do. They are thrilled when they perceive that one of their adult children has failed in some way (although they never tell others about these “failures”; it reflects poorly on them). They are more than happy to assist when necessary because that makes them look good, plus, there is an added bonus of having favors to collect on. Asking a narcissistic mother for a favor feels like selling your soul to the devil. It’s emotional extortion.
These mothers steal their kids’ childhoods, identities and future healthy relationships. They will keep on taking and sucking the life out of their children for as long as they live, if their children allow it. It is incredibly difficult and painful to acknowledge that your mother never loved you without blaming yourself — she raised you to blame yourself for everything. But it is necessary to put the blame where it rightfully belongs in order to insure that this insidious disorder isn’t perpetuated generation after generation.
SOURCE
FACEBOOK GROUP FOR DAUGHTERS OF NARCISSISTIC MOTHERS (MUST BE TOTAL NO CONTACT)
I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have none of the selfless love of my mother. I have none of the plodding, practical love. . . I am, to be blunt and concise, in love only with myself, my puny being with its small inadequate breasts and meager, thin talents. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world. – Sylvia Plath
There is a special place in hell for narcissistic mothers. Ms. Plath herself indulged in the ultimate narcissistic act when she committed suicide by sticking her head in the oven while her two young children were asleep in the same apartment. How thoughtful of her to have sealed off their rooms with towels so that the fumes wouldn’t consume them too. She needed someone to live on to remember her and care that she was gone.
Narcissistic mothers do not have children for the same reasons the rest of us do. They do not look forward to the birth of their child because they can’t wait to see what they look like or what type of personality they will have or who they will become. No, they have children for one reason only: More mirrors. They have children so that the children will love them unconditionally, not the other way around. They have children to do things for them. They have children to reflect their false images. They have children to use, abuse and control them.
They don’t see their role as a mother as life’s biggest gift. It’s a burden they didn’t expect. They thought they were creating little “mini-me’s.” They didn’t take into account the fact that somewhere around age 2, these spiteful, ungrateful (in their minds) little creatures start to develop their own individual personalities and wills of their own. For the rest of us, that’s the best part of being a mom — watching our children grow into increasingly independent, confident, free-thinking individuals. For the narcissistic mother, each step away from her is an absolute act of betrayal.
Children have emotions that they express quite freely. This annoying practice is squashed as early as possible since narcissists cannot handle emotions. “What is wrong with you?” and “You’re so oversensitive” and “You’re overreacting” are common phrases uttered to children of narcissists.
These mothers end up resenting all the work that goes into raising a child, having no use for them unless they are achieving, doing something or otherwise reflecting their false image onto them. Children are a nuisance to them, taking precious time away from their own agendas. They don’t like to have to shop for clothes for their children, prepare meals for them, do their laundry, pay for daycare, enroll them in activities, drive them to friends’ houses, throw birthday parties, pay for their college educations or protect them from abuse.
They will smother and overprotect their children under the guise that they are taking care of them. They will fail to provide age-appropriate information on such things as menstruation, personal grooming (make-up, hairstyles, shaving, etc.), budgeting money and dating. This all serves to keep her children under her control as long as possible. If they are ill-informed and overprotected, they will not feel confident to grow or move further away from her.
They will use their children as slaves. They will delegate all household chores to the children as early as possible. They will insist that they pay for their own personal items and clothing as early as possible. Older children will become responsible for younger children. No matter how many of her responsibilities her children take on, it will never be enough or be done well enough. They expect perfection and constantly remind their children that they fail to meet this expectation.
Of course, they train their children to believe that they are the ideal mother. Any evidence to the contrary is to be kept secret at all costs. They will behave much differently toward their children in public than they do at home. They will vehemently deny any wrongdoing on their part and most likely blame their children, completely rewriting history.
Narcissistic mothers don’t stop being narcissists when their children become adults. They will play siblings against each other. They will compare siblings. They will talk to siblings about each other. When they have a problem with one, they will talk to another about it.
They are jealous of their children’s successes, even though they brag to others about them (‘see how great MY kids turned out’). They will make snide comments if they think one of their adult children has a better marriage, house, job, etc. than they do. They are thrilled when they perceive that one of their adult children has failed in some way (although they never tell others about these “failures”; it reflects poorly on them). They are more than happy to assist when necessary because that makes them look good, plus, there is an added bonus of having favors to collect on. Asking a narcissistic mother for a favor feels like selling your soul to the devil. It’s emotional extortion.
These mothers steal their kids’ childhoods, identities and future healthy relationships. They will keep on taking and sucking the life out of their children for as long as they live, if their children allow it. It is incredibly difficult and painful to acknowledge that your mother never loved you without blaming yourself — she raised you to blame yourself for everything. But it is necessary to put the blame where it rightfully belongs in order to insure that this insidious disorder isn’t perpetuated generation after generation.
SOURCE
FACEBOOK GROUP FOR DAUGHTERS OF NARCISSISTIC MOTHERS (MUST BE TOTAL NO CONTACT)
Labels: abusive, adult children of narcissists, emotional abuse, emotionally abusive mothers, mothers, narcissistic parent, selfish
Monday, September 10, 2018
Messages the Abusive Mother Sends to Her Children
Messages the Abusive Woman uses to Control her Children:
I am a wonderful mother and you owe me for having taken care of you and raised you because I sacrificed so much for you. You are responsible for my happiness and I should be the central person in your life for the rest of your life.
You owe it to me to tell me everything that is going on in your life so that I can use it to manipulate and control you and give you guilt.
If you try to pull away from me and become strong, healthy and independent, I will come on stronger…calling you more and more; talking to relatives (siblings) about you so they will call you and make you feel guilty; make myself sick so you will have to communicate with me because you will be afraid I might die and you would take responsibility for this (of course, I want you to believe this because it works every time); use every guilt trick I can think of, embarrass you with my outrageous behavior. I disregard normal cues to back off, shut-up, change or compromise. If anything, the cues you give make me come on stronger, using guilt and the distortion of your belief systems that I taught you as a child. I will hound you until I get my way, no matter how long it takes or the extent of the outrageous behaviors I must go through to do this.
I have a right to invade your privacy as a person because you are an extension of me. You have no self and I will never let you have a self, if I can use guilt or manipulation to keep you from having one.
I really don’t like you… I am really incapable of liking or loving anyone but myself.
I believe you should give me unconditional love, respect, time, attention. However, I will rarely give you any of this because you don’t deserve it because you have never given me enough. I will make you believe that if only you will do whatever it is I want that day that I will give you love and like you, but I am acting and conning you.
I will get my way no matter what it takes because I deserve to get my way. Your needs (you shouldn’t have needs except to serve my needs) are unimportant and I don’t even notice them except to use them to manipulate you.
I will give you gifts, but they always have strings attached because if you try to do something I don’t want you to do, I will remind you that you owe me. I am incapable of getting joy from giving a gift freely. I am incapable of empathy or caring that someone else is hurting, especially you. In fact, if I can make you hurt to get you to do what I want, that’s great!!!
How dare you even think that you can have an intimate relationship with someone besides me, especially if they are strong, independent people who teach you what I really am about? I will do whatever it takes to disrupt those relationships.
You do not have the right to be happy if I am not happy. In fact, your happiness should only depend on making me happy…nothing else.
I really don’t care if you are successful or not, except if I can use your accomplishments and brag about you to make me look better or I can use the money you make. In fact, I would rather you would be dysfunctional, divorced, alone, et cetera and living near me so that I could use you for my bidding. If you are weak and unhappy and guilt-ridden, you are easier to use. I also love complaining to those around me that you treat me very poorly and are ungrateful because this gets them to feel sympathy for me.
I don’t want you and your brothers and sisters to be happy and like each other. It serves my interests more if I can play you against one another, because when I do that I am the center of everyone’s life and I get attention and what I want.
I love to create chaos. I don’t want people around me to be happy, stress free, and content. If I sense that you are happy, I am going to use every trick in my book to make you miserable and upset. I don’t want you to have friends. I should be enough for you.
Your opinions and decisions are poor compared to mine. If you would just listen to me and do everything I say, then you would be smart. I know what is best for you.
Reality is what I tell you it is. This has nothing to do with the truth or what really has happened. I can change reality by believing it is different.
I am a master of behavior modification. If you do what I want, I reward you…perhaps by occasionally saying something nice or kind to you or maybe by just not harassing you. If you do not do what I want, I will do everything I can to make you miserable until you give me what I want. I really don’t care what this does to you because your ability to be happy should always depend on whether I am happy.
I intentionally keep you hypervigilent as to my moods. You should always be aware of whether I am happy so you can do whatever it takes to make me happy, if I am not. Of course, I am never really happy. I constantly change what it is that would make me happy because I rarely want you to feel successful in making me happy, except when you are my puppet and do everything I want you to do. It is easier for me to control you if I keep you feeling inadequate and unsuccessful.
Although I constantly strive to make you feel guilty, I am incapable of feeling guilt. Why should I feel guilt? I am perfect and never wrong. I also don’t have a conscience. Why should I feel guilt? I am always right. I am entitled to do whatever I want to do regardless of laws and rules because I am superior to everyone. Laws do not apply to me.
I will treat your children much better than I treated you to teach you that you should have given me unconditional love and there is something wrong with you.
I have instilled in you the sense that I am extremely powerful, unable to be defeated, smarter and more competent than you; better than you at everything. I will never give up to get my way and it won’t be worth the price you will have to pay for not giving me my way. I have instilled in you a sense of incompetence, insecurity, powerlessness, and an inability to compete with me. I have intentionally kept our relationship as one of mother to small child so that you will quake when I am unhappy and give me my way to satisfy me and always be trying to please me in order to get me to love you. Your non-verbal sense of me is that I am powerful, scary, dangerous, superior to you, smarter and more capable than you and that you cannot take me on as an equal ever, even as an adult. When you were a young child, I made sure that you were unsuccessful in having your needs met when you were dealing with me time and time again so that you came to believe that you could never be successful in meeting your own needs before mine.
Nancy Davis, Ph.D. © 2005
Labels: abuse, blame, delusional, emotionally abusive mothers, gaslighting, mothers, narcisstic mother, selfish, toxic mother
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Good Mothers & Their Allies vs. the Family Court and the Abuser
This introduction is adapted from a section that Bancroft wrote for Disorder in the Courts: Mothers and Their Allies Take on the Family Court System, an e-book available from California NOW.
by Lundy Bancroft
There is no love deeper, more complete, and more vulnerable than the love that caring parents feel for their children. There is a bond so strong that it can be hard to tell exactly where the parent ends and the child begins, and the line is even harder to draw when our children are very young. Mothers have an additional bond from having carried their children inside of their bodies and having given birth to them, and more than half of mothers have experienced a deepened attachment through breast-feeding their babies. And mothers are, in the great majority of cases, their children’s primary caretakers, especially during their early years. All connections between caring, non-abusive parents and their children are so important as to be almost sacred, but there is usually a particular quality to the mother-child bond. That life-giving and sustaining connection deserves the full support and admiration of communities and nations.
And just as there is a special beauty and importance to relationships between mothers and their children, there is a special and extraordinary cruelty in the abusive man who attempts to break or weaken the mother-child bond, whether by turning children against their mother, by harming the children physically, sexually or psychologically, or by attempting to take custody of the children away from her.
Children need protection from their abusive parents. In the realm of custody litigation which involves abuse, the abusive parent tends to be the father while the protective parent is usually the mother, because most perpetrators of domestic violence and of child sexual abuse are male. We don’t know that much about what happens to protective fathers, since their cases are much less common, but we know that protective mothers frequently encounter a system that is insensitive, ignorant about the dynamics of abuse, and biased against women. In this context, mothers sometimes find themselves being forbidden by the court from protecting their children from a violent, cruel, or sexually abusive father. And this outcome is a tragic one, for children and for their mothers.
On behalf of the hundreds of people across the continent who are currently working for family court justice, I want to communicate to you our caring and solidarity with the challenging road you have ahead of you, as you fight to keep your children safe in body and soul. I want to let you know how critically important we believe that project to be, and how much your children need you to stand up for their rights and their well-being. You deserve admiration, not criticism, for the courageous risks you are taking on their behalf, and for your determination that all of you should have the opportunity to live in freedom and kindness.
Our society is currently giving mothers a powerful and crazy-making mixed message. First, it says to mothers, “If your children’s father is violent or abusive to you or to your children, you should leave him in order to keep your children from being exposed to his behavior.” But then, if the mother does leave, the society many times appears to do an abrupt about-face, and say, “Now that you are spilt up from your abusive partner, you must expose your children to him. Only now you must send them alone with him, without you even being around anymore to keep an eye on whether they are okay.”
What do we want? Do we want mothers to protect their children from abusers, or don’t we?
The sad result of this double-bind is that many mothers who take entirely appropriate steps to protect their children from exposure to abuse are being insulted by court personnel, harshly and unethically criticized and ridiculed in custody evaluations and psychological assessments, and required to send their children into unsupervised contact or even custody with their abusive fathers. And sometimes these rulings are coming in the face of overwhelming evidence that the children have both witnessed abuse and suffered it directly, evidence that would convince any reasonable and unbiased person that the children were in urgent need of protection. Family courts across the US and Canada appear to be guilty day in and day out of reckless endangerment of children.
Fortunately, there are also many women who do succeed in keeping their children safe post-separation. Some manage to persuade judges to grant the mother appropriate right to keep her children safe. Others lost in the early stages but do better later, as the abuser finally starts to show his true colors over time. Some women find that they succeed best by staying out of court, and using other methods to protect their children, such as waiting for the abuser to lose interest and drop out, or moving some distance away so that he will tire. Some women find that what works best is to focus on involving their children in supportive services, connecting them to healthy relatives, and teaching them to think critically and independently, so that they become strong children who see through the abuse and manipulation.
There is no formula that works for everyone. What strategies will work best for you depends on what your local court system is like, how much support you are receiving from friends and relatives, how much internal strength your children have, and how much (or how little) damage the abuser has already succeeded in doing to your relationships with your children. And each abuser is different. Some, for example, can be placated if they feel like they have won, and will gradually drift off, while others will never be satisfied with anything less than completely alienating children from their mother. Lawyers can advise you on court strategy, therapists can share their insight into children’s injuries and healing processes, but ultimately you have to rely most on your own judgment, because you are the only expert on the full complexities of you specific situation.
As you make your way ahead, I hope you will put a high priority on taking good care of yourself. Seek out kind, supportive people who are good listeners. Nurture your friendships and family relationships. Try to step through the stress long enough each day to spend some time showering your children with love if they are with you, and make sure to play with them, not just look after their needs. Notice what you have already done well, as a parent and as an advocate for your children. Give yourself credit for your own strength, and celebrate the fact that your mind is getting free of the abuse, even if your children are not free yet. Cry out your sorrows when you need to, sob into a pillow behind a closed door so you won’t upset your children, but do sob, because your heart needs the cleansing relief of those tears. And then build on your strengths and accomplishments to keep fighting.
I wish the “justice system” dispensed justice, but where it comes to child custody litigation involving abusive fathers, outcomes are mixed at best. With adequate knowledge and planning, and especially if you are among the fortunate mothers who are able to obtain competent legal representation from a lawyer who understands what abusers are like as parents, you may be able to keep your children on the path to healing. If your case goes poorly, there are still ways that you can help your children feel your love and support surrounding them, and give them the strength to survive their father’s destructiveness. But regardless of the outcome you experience personally, you might want to keep the following points in mind:
- The custody system in the US and Canada is broken. You are not the only person who has experienced unhealthy and biased responses, and you are not the crazy, paranoid, vindictive person they may be painting you as.
- Other women need your help to change that system, so that protective mothers start receiving proper respects for their rights and their children’s rights.
Depending on where your own case stands currently, you may have trouble imagining any involvements right now beyond your day-to-day survival, and your efforts to keep your children functioning. But involvement in social change efforts is not necessarily separate from personal healing. Many women have found that when they become active in the protective parents movement, raising their voices loudly for the custody rights of mothers who have been battered or whose children have been sexually abused, their own healing leaps forward.
Breaking down personal isolation sometimes goes hand in hand with breaking down political isolation. So I offer suggestions here not only for ways to carry on your own fight, but also for avenues to join forces with other women (and male allies) who are working for social justice, so that protective mothers and their children can stop being torn apart.
I want to express my personal gratitude to you for your efforts to protect your children from abuse, and to raise them into caring, kind, humane values. The whole world benefits when you fight for your children’s rights, and for their freedom.
Protective mothers are some of our society’s most invisible and most important heroes, even while they are treated so often, in a bitter irony, as villains.
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Labels: abusers, abusive fathers, child custody, co-parenting, coparenting, family court, mothers, narcissist, parental alienation, psychopath, sociopath, visitation
