Other causes of voicelessnes?

[Raggedy Ann]

Hi all,

I found this web site and message board a couple of days ago.  Wow!  Voicelessness so well describes how I feel during my darkest moments, the "emotional storms" that have plagued me with increasing frequency the last few years.  It's taken me a lot of years to recognize that's how I feel, but in therapy recently I was able to describe that deep down I feel that I don't matter, and I even found that phraseology in a thread here somewhere.

I know that the source of this is my mother, however, reading all of the descriptions, as well as the formal description of NPD, she definitely was not an N.  Or at least not a typical one.   Are there atypical Ns?   Or are there other recognized avenues by which a person ends up feeling voiceless?  As many here have expressed, it is comforting to know that there are others who understand the pain (even as I am sorry for the experiences that cause them to understand), but I have yet to know of anyone else who was raised in a way at all similar to mine.  Perhaps it doesn't matter, how we get here, but I'm sure tired of feeling so odd!  Let me try to explain.

In looking at the psychological lingo, the best I can come up with is that my mom had severe Generalized Anxiety Disorder, with some Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Hypochondria thrown in.  (This is just my interpretation, not a formal diagnosis.) These things led to one common theme I see over and over in so many of your posts about your Ns - everything was always about her; her fears, and what *she* needed to soothe them.  The good part about this is that unlike so many of your Ns, she wasn't necessarily trying to use me to build up her ego,and thus she really had no need to tear me down.  I got plenty of compliments and nuturing as to my talents and abilities, and I really don't think these were to glorify her in any way.  The bad part about it is that she did end up inflicting just as much voicelessness upon me, which led to the same sense of emotional void, self-esteem issues, lack of emotional maturity, etc. etc.  And, what she did was even that much harder to see and recognize because it was always couched in terms of how much she loved me.  There was no (or at least rarely) clearly abusive (either physically or verbally) behavior to sink one's teeth into to say "this is just not right".  No, her manipulations were so far under the covers, so to speak, that for years  I had no idea I was being manipulated.  And when I did, there was always the specter of my poor, poor, terrified mother who *loved* me so much that she couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to me, and if she wasn't with me she was always afraid I would be in a car accident, or kidnapped, or any other nameless danger.  She almost never told me that I was bad, unworthy, worthless, or any of those other terrible things many of you have talked about.  No, she got me to tell my*self* that by being so pitiful.

My mother's list of fears were long, and esp included high anxiety if I was out of her sight.  As you can imagine, this was fine when I was very small, and as far as I can tell and have heard she was a perfectly fine, loving, attentive mother when I was an infant.  The problems started and escalated year after year, however, as I had a growing need for normal development and independence, developent of self and separation of identity.  The older I got, the greater the dischord between my developmental needs and how she wanted me to be.  Oh, she could tell you that she was "over-protective" of me, but that didn't change her demands, and I don't think she ever really accepted how dysfunctional it was.  

What's most remarkable,looking back on it now, is just how little I did rebel.  Oh, I pushed and whined and cried about a few things, but most of the time I didn't even attempt to go beyond the unspoken bounds.   I was a good girl and didn't even try.  For example, I just accepted that I must come home straight after school, and not expect to spend any appreciable time at friends' houses.  I didn't have many friends anyway, since I was so undersocialized and not given many opportunities to make them.  How do you make friends when you spend most of your out of school time with your mother?  I do realize now that she also did subversive things to discourage my friendships.  Like the time a new girl joined our 5th grade and I liked her.  When I found out she lived just a few houses away, I was uncharacteristically bold one day when the new girl invited me to her house after school.  I got home, told our housekeeper where I would be (don't think from this we were rich - but my mom was so exhausted most of the time from her fears that she thought housework was a major, major imposition and was thus willing to pay someone else to do it) and went off.  An hour or so later you could hear my mother's hysterical calls for me after she got home from work and ran up the street.  She acted like I had been missing for hours and there was reason to think I'd been kidnapped or something.  I kept protesting that I had told the housekeeper where I was, but she still acted hysterically frightened and made me come home right then.  My new (and short lived) friend looked at her with horror and I never got another invite.

There's multitudes of stories in the same vein that I could tell, but I think you get the point.  One good incident like that and it would be months if not years before I'd dare do anything to scare her so again.  But in the meantime, my frustrations were growing,and I realize now that it was being pounded into me at a subsconsious level that my needs didn't matter.  That her anxieties must be soothed at all costs.   And that I was a terrible daughter if I didn't stay by her side, hold her hand, tell her she was OK, that she wasn't about to pass out, that the car driving by at night wasn't deliberately shining it's lights in our window, that the leftovers smell just fine and aren't spoiled, and on and on and on.

So by now you are probably wondering if and how I ever broke away.  The answer is that yes I did, but at a great cost to me emotionally.  I understood that at my deepest level even at the time, but without really understanding why it cost me so much.    Basically my mother was so unable to loosen the ties to give me even a modicum of adult independence, that I built up enough anger to allow me to physically go.  When I finished college I didn't even interview for a job in the same town as her, and I took a job 2 1/2 hours away.  Given her fears about driving on expressways, and her generation's inhibition to make lengthy "long distance" phone calls too often, this was enough distance to give me some freedom.  She whined and cried about it, and it was only then, when I dared to break the rules that I saw hints of the types of behavior that so many of you here post about.   But only hints.  Mostly it was poor pitiful me guilt stuff.  Only a couple of times was it openly hostile.  But it didn't take much to throw me into a tizzy.

See, despite having made a physical break, it has taken me 2 years of therapy to realize that

a) I never truly emotionally separated from her, and have been carrying  around a huge burden of guilt and shame for daring to leave my poor mother who *loved* me sooooooo much.

b) I am carrying around inside of my psyche an extremely wounded little girl who thinks she doesn't matter, and who I myself have shunned and hated because she has needs that conflicted with my mother's and my mother's must be attended to always.

I am now in the process of trying to get in touch with that wounded little girl.  Just recently I had a breakthrough in that for the first time I have actually been able to empathize with her and her situation.  I disliked her so much before that I couldn't even do that.  Now the challenge is to actually connect with her, learn to like her (which means liking myself!), and give her a voice.

In the meantime my mom died unexpectedly this past February.  That's a whole story in itself, in terms of what happened surrounding those events and another aspect to our homelife that added to the voicelessness, but it's getting late and this post is already long enough.  If anyone wants to hear more, I'll add to it.  But for now let me say that despite what you might think, the death of the person who caused your voicelessness does not necessarily resolve it.  There was a time when I thought it would.  That I would be spared having to either find a way to deal with her, or cut her off from me totally as some of you have so bravely done or are trying to do.  In fact, there was a time when I was in so much pain that I told my therapist that I wished she were dead.  I hope that doesn't sound terrible and cruel to you all, but I think that you people here are the only ones who could understand such an emotion.  What I have discovered since my mother's death is that no, I did not really want her to die.  And that it really hasn't solved anything.  I still have the emotional wounds, and I still have to do the work to try and resolve them.  And now I will never have the chance to make any sort of peace with her, except in my own mind.  I am now seeing that I might have been able to.  Might have been able to with enough separate emotional healing and setting of healthy boundaries, instead of the anger and defensiveness that I had been using prior to get the separation I so desparately needed.

But, her death is only one of the many things about her that I cannot control.  As the wise ones of you here say, I can only control my reaction to it, and everything else.  

Oh, one last little anecdote to explain my chosen username.  My mom always loved dolls, and after I left home after college she started "collecting" them.  I put that in quotes because she had no interest in them as collectors items, their value, what artisit creatd them or anything like that.  It became an obsession, and as her companion of 30 years sadly said to me the week of her funeral, as I sat in her house where you can barely find a place to sit among the hundreds of dolls, every one of those dolls was me, or her sad attempt to replace me, who was her living doll.  She was always so disappointed when I was small that I didn't like dolls, because she'd have loved to shower me with them.  As it was, there was one doll, a Raggedy Ann, that I did always like, and when she started her "collection" she bought a number of them.  "Raggedy" describes my emotions so well on many days, and so here I am,

Raggedy Ann

[Anastasia]

Just read your post and have a busy day...but had to comment that I was just struck by how many of the same symptoms my mother had as yours.  My God! My mother collects dolls and toys now too.  I was shocked to find when I returned home after a little 21 year hiatus that she had this huge toy collection.  She says it is for her spoiled but cute poodle...but I wondered because I remember her buying alot of stuffed toys for my son when he was an infant.
Could the root of this narcissism just be IMMATURITY?????
My mother was less hysterical than yours (I thank God for his small favors) but she did try and control all my friendships even up thru my marriage at 32.  She wasn't so extreme as yours (poor Raggedy!), but did "monitor" my friendships--although, I admit, I did seem to pick the "right" friends.  
It was boyfriends that my mother had screaming fits over since her pretentiousness and my rebellions drew me to boys just slightly over the line towards roughness...haha!
You have had alot put on your plate with a mother like that.  How have you been working on this?
I noted you left.  I did, too.  I have never lived in my hometown since I left home at 19.  
Believe it or not, the parents were so hard on me and so horrid that when I was in a girl's Catholic college (my stepfather chose it as it was a local school but I had to pay for it...does that tell you how overbearing they were?) the Nuns knew something was wrong at home.  They suggested my parents get an appt. with a local Shrink who saw both them and me.  Know what her suggestion to me was?  She said my mother was waaaay more immature than I was and to get the hell away from them as soon as I could!  I swear, that validated the fact (when I was a teen) that there WAS something wrong seriously with THEM and not me.  You begin to wonder if it's only you sometimes.  I thank that therapist until today!

[Nancy Drew]

  I was reading up on Raggedy Ann's loss of her mother, which did not end that connection...and I was reminded of something that I experience with my mother...and wonder if others feel this too:  I feel that she not only spoils (for instance) a holiday for me..She spoils my time BEFORE the approaching holiday.without even a phone call to me.  It's as though I "sense" the call coming...and begin to feel the stress even BEFORE.  I will wake up, start to clean my house, or in other ways prepare for a holiday, shp or start food prep., etc..and during those preparations, I am already being overburdened by her antagonism, or hints or remarks, which she hasn't even made yet.  (But of course, they do come within hours, or so)  She is already punishing me before she mades the phone call or comes over.  I am being stressed out in anticipation of putting up with her for the day.   I'm sure others feel this also..But sometimes I feel like this is a way that N parents reach out with their tentacles..I know that sounds awful..and I don't want to give anyone that kind of power over me....but I can't deny it.

[KateW]

Nancy,

I can really identify with the holidays being ruined before you even talk to your mom. It's like an impending sense of doom. You feel that nothing you do is ever going to satisfy her. With my mom, the length of time is visited is never long enough, etc. I'm so tense when I'm around her I often have a splitting headache by the time she leaves. Maybe it would help to not see her on the holiday? That's what I did this year. It's hard, but you might find you REALLY enjoy your holiday without her. It's what's best for you, not her. I have to tell you, my husband and I had the best
Thanksgiving ever, with just the two of us! It was great.  

[tayana]

I know what you mean about the holidays being spoiled before they ever arrive.  About three weeks before, I start to get sick knowing a major drama is about to unfold.  And I find myself walking around on eggshells around my mother, waiting for her to explode or else nit-pick about everything.

I read Ragedy Ann's post, and see a lot of my mom in that.  My mother was terribly over-protective when I was younger.  I wasn't allowed to go to friends houses or have friends over.  She went into a panic once when I went to the neighbors house (their house joined ours) without permission.  Most of the time, she refused to let me have any sort of independence or identity.  I had to wear clothes she approved of, not necessarily things I liked, etc.  And like Ragedy Ann said, I'm surprised at how little I rebelled.  I didn't really rebel until I went to college and wasn't around my mother as much.  I found little ways to rebel, things that my mother didn't consider rebellion, like listening to opera and classical music, instead of pop or country.  Those were the only things I really had control over.

[rosencrantz]

Hi Raggedy Ann

but I have yet to know of anyone else who was raised in a way at all similar to mine

You'll find my (similar) story elsewhere on this board.  My mother gave me everything and I was the good sweet little girl just like you.  Things only changed when I finally moved beyond the place and space where she was in full control of where I lived, what job I had and so on.  And that was the point at which she took root - full of spite and hate and vengefulness.  Nothing moved from that day forward.  20 years on and every phone conversation was still full of recrimination.  

Yes, I think that anxiety and lack of self-esteem are at the root of her problems.  But unlike you I was conned.  My mother never admitted to fear and anxiety.  If anything was wrong, it was in me, not her.  Her 'symptoms' only become visible in her need for  control.  She chooses to control by causing chaos and confusion.  She only knows what she wants because it's diametrically opposed to what anyone else might want!  It's devastating to be on the other end of that. Yes, they cause such pain that you wish they had never existed.

I bless the psychiatrist who got me out of that at the age of 19.  Life seems to have been hellish a great deal of the time but it would have been worse with no escape.

If your mother is dead, you may not reach the fortuitous point of full recognition of who your mother really was.

I had no idea at all up until a few months ago - but having close daily contact with my mother over a period of weeks, without my father around, recognising all sorts of strange things in her behaviour and then discovering NPD...it saved my soul because I finally understand her, I understand me and my past, and I understand how dangerous she is to my well-being.

I can only see you from the context of my own experience - and the word that pops into my mind is 'denial'. It's a tough challenge once you start to understand NPD but it's worth reading up on.

Anything by Nina Brown, or 'Controlling People', or 'Why is it always about you' for an accessible way in.  I recently read 'When you and your mother can't be friends' - I gained much more from it than I thought possible.

The 'story' in my family was that I rebelled because my mother was over-protective.  Nobody understood that the alternative for me was suicide or mental hospital.  But recently (I'm 50 now) the story seems to have changed - I have become the one who had the wisdom and strength to escape the abuse.  

Raggedy Annie is a special name for me, too.  The name represents the exhausted straw doll that is the fruit of my mother's labours.  Her inability to see 'me', her requirements for always something different which puts me in a 'no win' situation, exhausts me and leaves me sucked dry.  So I run my life trying to be 'perfect', to 'hurry up', to 'try hard' but never succeed.  How can I be anyone else but Raggedy Annie, bashed and battered, flopped over the bannister, straw hanging out.

And now I will never have the chance to make any sort of peace with her, except in my own mind. I am now seeing that I might have been able to

If it's any consolation you would never have had the opportunity to make peace with her - it requires health and strength and will on both sides.  But you do have your freedom.  You can't be hurt afresh.  As your wounds heal, she won't be there to tear them open again!!  

I have learnt that my mother will never be able to recognise that she might be in the tiniest possible way responsible for anything that happens to her, let alone to me.  It's part of her mindset, her psyche to push everything that's bad onto the other person.  You and I don't exist for mothers like this.  It's almost impossible to conceive of 'not existing' and perhaps it's easier to have a romantic view of what might have been.

But in your saddest moments, it might help you to remember that you couldn't have done any more than you did - truly you couldn't.  Nothing you could have done would have made the tiniest bit of difference - UNLESS you were willing and able to give up yourself, sacrifice your 'self', your life, your health, your will, so she could control who you are and how you live.  The choice is 'honour yourself' or 'honour your mother'.  And you have to honour yourself in order to honour the life that was given you by her.

I believe that I honoured my family (and the world at large) by 'getting out from under' and living as fulfilled a life as possible, learning and understanding what makes for a healthy life and passing on that wisdom to others (most especially the next generation).

Well, I've talked myself out and it's past midnight again.  Good luck, Raggedy Ann.
R

[Anonymous]

Thanks Anastasia, Nancy Drew, KateW, Tayana, Rosencranz, for your replies to my post.

How interesting that Anastasia's mom is into dolls as well.   I wonder if it's just an odd coincidence?

It was boyfriends that my mother had screaming fits over since her pretentiousness and my rebellions drew me to boys just slightly over the line towards roughness...haha!
You have had alot put on your plate with a mother like that. How have you been working on this?

Yes, when I met my husband and got engaged, I saw a large percentage of the more over the top, openly hostile behaviors that I ever saw from my  mom.    My husband couldn't do anything right, and she was constantly telling me everything that was wrong with him.  It got to the point where I didn't want to be alone with her, because she took that as an opportunity to start dumping on me about him.  She didn't dare do it in front of him or others most of the time, so I used him as a buffer a lot!  It all came to a head one 4th of July weekend when we were visiting her.  My husband had been having infrequent bouts of extreme abdominal pain (which later was finally diagnosed as gall bladder problems) and he had one that weekend.  We spent the whole night/early morning before the 4th itself at the hospital.  The pain finally subsided and they didn't find anything so we stumbled back to the house at about 4 AM.  Later that day, during dinner, my mom asked how we liked the potato salad.  Hubby said very kindly but honestly that he still felt pretty punk from the pain episode and tests he'd had and that he couldn't really taste anything.  My mom went into a rage, berating him because she had slaved for days to prepare this meal and he didn't appreciate it.  I was shocked because I had never seen her so openly self centered or hostile.   But it was the last straw for me in regards to her attitude about him.  I basically told her that her behavior about him was unacceptable and that I would not listen to any more criticisms of him from her, and that if she did not change about this she would not see me any more.  This is just one of the things that makes me think she was not a true N, because she did accept this boundary setting (even if I didn't know that's what I was doing at the time), and she was afraid enough of losing all contact with me to comply.  In fact, she did a complete turnaround, telling me how much she loved my hubby frequently after that.  Of course, I viewed those statements with extreme suspicion, but at least the criticisms in that area stopped.

Anastaisa asked how I am working on all of this.  Basically by going for therapy.  I tried therapy a couple of times before, but I don't think I was far enough along in my realizations and emotional development to really work on it, and I also didn't have therapists who were all that effective, and/or were being pushed by insurance to simply get me over the current crisis which pushed me into therapy w/o taking the time to work on these underlying issues.  This time I've been in therapy for about 2 years with someone who is much, much more effective, although even so it is still very slow going.  I think I basically have a lot of emotional growing up to catch up on, which is ironic since as a child I was always told how mature I was for my age, and I tended to prefer to spend my time with adults.

I feel that she not only spoils (for instance) a holiday for me..She spoils my time BEFORE the approaching holiday.without even a phone call to me.

I can certainly empathize with that feeling.  I think it has been talked about elsewhere on this board that we often are conditioned to have guilty feelings, to the point that we are doing the dirty work of our guilt producing parents for them - berating ourselves!!!  Now, this brings up one of those emotional growing up things that has been didfficult for me to grasp in therapy.  In fact, seeing these thoughts expressed here made it more objective and I think has helped.  Let me see if I can share it with you.  My therapist has been trying to get me to see that my emotions and feelings are my own.  I own them.  No one else "makes" me feel that way.  Yes, their words or actions may have a causative effect, in so much as they interact in an unhealthy way with my own emotional issues and past hurts.  But the emotions are mine, and I alone have responsibility for them.  Applying to this situation, your mother is not the one spoiling your holiday before she does anything.  You are doing that to yourself.  Those feelings are your feelings.  Yes, they are being triggered by memories of past experiences, and by conditioning for feelings of guilt and shame, and so there are reasons that you are doing that to yourself.  I'm not saying you are unjustified to have reacted that way.  But in recognizing that you are the one creating the emotions, the next thing to realize is that since the emotions are coming from within you, that means that *you* have the power to change them.  You don't need your mother or anyone else to do that.  It isn't easy, and it might take literally years, but it can be done.  Strong conditioning takes equally strong counter-conditioning.  Years of emotional abuse are not erased in a day or by reading a paragraph on a message board.  But the start is in realizing that you are not a helpless victim who has to just live with the emotions, what is done "to" you while you remain passive.  You do own the emotions and therefore you can change them.  Of course, it helps if the damage isn't continuing to occur!  In my case, as was pointed out, I do no longer have active damage happening.  Any that happens to me now as regards my mother is done to me, *by* me via memories and unerased guilt.  But I'm working on it!

Rosencranz said:

Nothing moved from that day forward. 20 years on and every phone conversation was still full of recrimination

See, here is another example of how my mother was so much less open with her guilt producing.  This sounds as though there was open criticism in your phone conversations, unless you didn't mean that.  What my mother would do is at the end of every conversation, say in a pathetic, whiney tone "I miiiiiissssss you!".  This is pretty mild in comparision to what most of you write about.  But I was so guilt-ridden (but in denial about the guilt) that this just stuck a dagger into me.  For one thing, I knew darn well that I was supposed to whine the same thing back to her.  But the truth was that I did NOT miss her, and for reasons that I didn't talk about yet, I could not (and still cannot) stand to lie about my feelings.   So I felt in a bind between what I was "supposed" to do to be a good daughter and my own growing ethical beliefs (which sure as heck did not come from her!)  As always, I was in the bind between her needs and being true to myself.  Furthermore, I always took this whine as an indirect recrimination about what a bad daughter I was for leaving her and making her so lonely and unhappy without her precious little girl who she loved sooooo much.  I even tried to talk to her about it once.  Explained to her that her saying that made me feel guilty for growing up and having my own life.  When talking about it logically, my mother could agree that I had done nothing wrong, and she vowed to not say that so often.  But the logical side of her did not rule, and in fact was seen less and less frequently as the years went by.  After that conversation, most of our phone calls ended as follows:  "I mi...oh I'm not supposed to say that" said in a pouty childish tone.  Sigh.

Rosencranz also said:

I can only see you from the context of my own experience - and the word that pops into my mind is 'denial'.

Can you tell me more about why you think I am in denial?  I definitely believe I was the victim of a type of emotional abuse from my mother.  It's just that I don't believe her actions were motivated by true narcissism.  She had no grandiose ideas about herself, and the out and out hostility and belittling that so many here describe were not what she did.   Yes, she could get hostile at times, but I think that was mostly motivated by her fears, and when all of her other coping mechanisms had failed.  Most of the time she was not hostile or mean.  She was just afraid, and her fears so filled her mind that she had to attend to those first, before me or anything else.  That's why I initially asked if there are atypical Ns.  If not, then she wasn't an N, but the result was damaging to me just the same.

If it's any consolation you would never have had the opportunity to make peace with her - it requires health and strength and will on both sides. But you do have your freedom. You can't be hurt afresh. As your wounds heal, she won't be there to tear them open again!!

I have learnt that my mother will never be able to recognise that she might be in the tiniest possible way responsible for anything that happens to her, let alone to me. It's part of her mindset, her psyche to push everything that's bad onto the other person.

Well, I may be in denial about that!  Ha!  You are right that my mother didn't think she was responsible for anything that happened to her.  She was the victim, and all she ever did was whine and complain about her life without ever taking any steps to change it or improve it.    And yes, true peace would have required mental health on her part and she didn't have it.  I was in denial about that for a long time, even as recently as a few months before he death, when I attempted to write her a letter to address just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of my issues with her.  I was met with stoney silence and had therefore not talked to her for 8 months prior to her death.  I think I do realize now that she wasn't ever going to change, and in fact talking to some of the people close to her after she died, she had gotten more deluded and paranoid than I had reailzed.  However, when I said "make peace" I mean that I might have gotten to a point where I could have accepted her for who she was, without expecting her to change, and made some sort of meaningful contribution to her life (instead of running from her) that showed respect for her as my mother, but on my terms, within my own boundaries.  That's because, as I said, she mostly wasn't mean or hostile.  It's just that because my own issues with her were denied and/or unaddressed, I couldn't stand being around her because she so often triggered those issues without my understanding what was happening.  Some of this was her manipulations, but looking back now I realize that some wasn't intentional on her part.  It was just her.  Because I didn't want to admit that my mother was mentally ill, every thing she did or said that was evidence of it made me upset.  And everytime she tried to suggest I shouldn't do something (such as drive to work) because it is too dangerous, it triggered my feelings of my needs not being important, but I didn't realize that at the time.  I just got overly defensive and upset, instead of just laughing it off since she no longer did control if and when and where I got to go.  She no longer had the control over me, but I was so traumatized by the early control that even the hint of it, of her even trying to suggest all the things I shouldn't do was too much for me to tolerate.  IOW, if I can become more emotionally healthy, then I think I would have been able to tolerate more from her and gentley moved uncomfortable topic areas of conversation to more comfortable ones for me.  She was easily distracted, and in many respects a kind, gentle person.  So sad for both of us that I couldn't enjoy those aspects of her personality.  And now it is too late.  I've had to accept that, and not blame myself.  I am working to not be a victim, to improve myself, and understand myself.   Our troubles were a function of where I was at the time.  As my therapist has said many times, at the time I could not react any differently.  I desparately needed emotional separation from her, and the only way I knew then how to do it was through anger and physical separation.  The psyche does what it has to to protect itself in the absence of any other help.

Enough for tonight.  Thanks again for the responses.  

Raggedy Ann

Raggedy Ann

[rosencrantz]

Hi Raggedy Ann

If you end up trying to fit a label on someone it just confuses things -  and ultimately labels don't matter a jot. But there is a website that defines several different types of narcissism - can't find the link at the moment.  But there's more than one kind of N - and it's often mixed up with other disorders.  They're just a sad, frightened mess inside but it's impossible to reach them.  They fear losing us so they'll 'behave' for a while.

I was dumbstruck the day someone in medical authority pointed out to me that my mother was trying to hurt me with all her manipulations and tantrums. (But mothers don't do that!).  It took me til I was 50 to realise - cos I was a good little girl, too - and good little girls do not betray their mothers by knowing the truth!

I share my experience with you because I hear me in every word you write about your experience - the 'me' that existed before the realisation that my mother had the problem she has.  

It's not a mental illness, it's a 'personality' 'disorder' - a choice, if you like.  A sad choice that drives us into pain and illness ourselves.  Showing your anger and cutting yourself off is healthy in these circumstances.

My mother's recriminations were of the 'look what you did to me' ("look what you made me do") kind.  Blaming more than hostile. Manipulative.  Guilt-inducing. (I didn't go home one weekend - the weekend I moved into a flat of my own when I was 19 - that's what started it all!).  Sometimes she can follow the logic of an argument ('of course I'd never do that') but she's incapable of truly knowing herself and what she does in practice.

I look back and I have to acknowledge how spiteful she has always been.  I never knew that word before. I used to use the word 'unfair' a lot as a child - it was the only word I had to cover the range of spiteful and mean things she did to retain control.  Life 'is' unfair, she used to sayand wasn't I lucky to have such a nice mother to look after me and met my every need - well, the ones she decided I had. I wasn't allowed to have any others - so I learnt not to!).  

My husband made the point that she did everything she could to wreck my life.  It's an awe-inspiring statement.  He 'sees' her better than I do - he always saw her tho always kept his counsel.  He told me recently from the day he met her he recognised her as the most self-absorbed person he'd ever met.  

I guess by 'denial' I was acknowledging that you find lots of excuses for her, you suggest reasons for her behaviour, you understand her with compassion.  And every time we do that, we deny the truth - our own truth.  

I just want you to understand that compassion and guilt can lead you astray and that whatever you truly feel is OK. You don't need to stand up for her interests any more, it's time to be on your own side.  

Good luck with the therapy.
R

[catlover]

Rosencrantz,

Something you wrote brought up a key issue I am struggling with right now, and I'm wondering if you can shed some more light on it.  You wrote:

"you find lots of excuses for her, you suggest reasons for her behaviour, you understand her with compassion. And every time we do that, we deny the truth - our own truth."

During my last therapy session (when I first was told my mother has NPD), I felt like the therapist was trying to make me hate and get angry at my mother.  Yet, I'm having trouble with that - I feel like I WANT to be a compassionate person (unlike my Nmother) and that understanding her condition (which I'm not sure is a choice on her part) does not have to mean denying my truth.  But maybe I'm missing something...

[Raggedy Ann]

I'll try to answer Rosencranz and Gwenyvere in the same reply.

It is an interesting distinction that Gwenyvere brings up - what is the difference between exusing a person's behavior and finding reasons for it?  Sometimes it can be hard to know which you are really doing.  Gwen, if your realizations about your N mother are quite new, which it sounds like they are, you may still be in some denial about it, and that may be why it feels like your therapist is pushing you to be angry at her.  I do think that there almost has to be a period of anger before a person can truly accept what has been done to her (or him), especially if it went unrealized for a lot of time.  Rosencranz may be right in still recognizing a certain level of denial in me, even yet.  I still have a lot of anger, and my defenses are still easily aroused, and I think some of that is a sign of lack of full acceptance.  

However, Gwen, if you truly believe that all your therapist wants is for you to be angry at your N mom, then I'd run and look for another therapist.  Anger without end eats at the soul and is a poor substitute for true acceptance and emotional separation.  Anger is all that I had for a lot of years because I didn't know any better, didn't realize what was really happening to me, and my psyche had to protect itself somehow.  I think it is better than nothing, better than continuing to endure the emotional abuses.  But my therapist has suggested a vision where I can be eomtionally separate in a more peaceful way that is truly free from guilt.  I see glimpses of this vision at times and remain hopeful that I can get there.

I agree that the exact labels may not matter in the end, although I am always intellectually curious about such things, and Rosencranz if you ever figure out where you saw the description of different N types I'd love to look at it.  It has just occured to me that one of the values in looking at the reasons for my mom to have acted as she did (vs just excusing her beavhior) is that it helps me to realize that *SHE* was the one with the problems.  That it wasn't about *my* problems or *my* flaws.  For, in the end isn't one of the common problems that we face a deep down fear that something is wrong with *us*?  That we don't deserve any better?  Or the tremendous guilt if we do try to leave or protect ourselves?  That we are somehow being bad?  We need to understand and truly believe that we had perfectly normal reactions to completely abnormal situations.  For me, part of accepting the abnormality of it all is to understand the depth of my mother's menal illness.  To some degree, when you grow up in it, and that is all you know, it *is* normal, and I was brainwashed into pretending it was normal.  Saying that it is not is betraying her, or at least that's what she wanted me to believe.   Undoing that early conditioning is NOT easy!

Gwen, you hang onto your compassion with all of your might.  Compassion is something you probably didn't get a lot of, and for you to be able to have it for others, including your N mom, just shows the beauty of your character.  But compassion does not mean having to make excuses, and compassion does not mean that you need to continue to buy into the cycle of abuse and guilt.   You can be compassionate and still protect yourself, whatever you need to do in order to do that.  Even at the extreme, you can feel compassion for someone, even if you choose to have no contact with them because the contact is too toxic for you.  Rosencranz is wise to warn us of the crack in our emotional armor that compassion can lead to, unless we are wary.  I just fear that if we forgo compassion for our Ns or other abusers, that we may never learn or lose it if we had it, true compassion for others, or for ourselves.  The only way that I was able to make the break from my mother was to turn off all empathy for her.  It was what I needed to do at the time, but I feel that it has exacted a high price for me.  It's hard to put into words, and I have not fully worked this out yet, but something has been lost.

I'm not sure I know the distinction beteween a personality disorder and mental illness.  But I do know that my mother was afraid of *every*thing.  And she was truly afraid.  The fear was not feigned.  It was not a maniplaiton.  The fear did lead her to manipulate situations, people, to try and ease her fears.  But she had some serious problems, and they were getting worse.  I totally agree she was unreachable.  She had constructed so many layers of deceit, manipulation, and fantasy that no one could get through it.  For some reason it is easier to see that now that she is gone.  Maybe that's because I can no longer nurse any fantasies of somehow gettng through to her.  

All I can hope, is that if there is some afterlife free of illnesses of all types, that my mother is now experiencing the beautiful person she was meant to be, before genetics and environment got in the way.  I wish I had some strong belief about that, but I don't.  

Raggedy Ann

[CC]

Dear Gwyn and Raggedy,

Just wanted to chime in and add my two cents about compassion.  I have been more than sympathetic to my mother's N antics and have been able to maintain compassion for her even through this last year of intense awakening to her "illness" and my own healing.  

My Nmother's mother was a shizophrenic and the condition did not become serious until my mother was about 6 years old.  Then she became progressively worse until she was completely catatonic when my mother was 9. She eventually died when my mom was 11 from "pnuemonia complications".  My mother, in one moment of sharing a painful childhood moment over a year ago told me a story about what she felt like when my grandmother stopped taking care (mothering) of her.  My grandmother would sit stone-faced in their living room for hours with no expression. In those days, no one discussed mental illness.  My poor mother had no idea what was going on. Her father wouldn't explain anything (he probably didn't even understand it).  He just would say "she's sick".   My mom was so angry, hurt and frustrated that her mother had stopped acknowledging her that one day she took a fireplace poker and hit her in the shins to try and get her attention - to no avail!

I cried when she told me this story.  What a horrible thing for this child, who was my mother, to suffer.  My mother, to boot, was an only child - no siblings to help her cope with this. My grandfather was no help.  In those days, they were recovering from the depression (my mother is 76) and he was a very bitter, hard to get along with man - a strict authoritarian and even more so as he had to assume the role of my mother's only caretaker.

My mom has told me that this didn't affect her, that she is stronger because of it, etc. etc.  But I know better - in fact, I strongly believe that the specifics of this are the direct reason that she is the narcissist and alchoholic that she is today.  This is perhaps the reason why I have chosen to work harder than others at trying to maintain a level of a relationship with my mother rather than disowning her completely.

What her sharing of this story has done for me is to allow myself to pity her.  I have a true understanding of the tiny child within her that has caused the beast of protection to emerge (narcissism).

The hardest part of having empathy about this child, who is my mother, is to separate it from the adult that she is now, and the actions that she takes as an adult.

I agree with Raggedy, to hold on to compassion.  However, you must learn to acknowledge that this child, who is now an adult - is responsible for their actions NOW.  There are consequences to their actions.  They have a choice in how they treat us.  They do not get a "ticket" to abuse just because they had a terrible childhood.    I pity my mother, because she does not have the psychological depth to connect that why she is the way she is is because of her childhood.

Some are simply not capable of balancing empathy for their Nparent with separation from being hurt.  This is not a weakness, it just simply is.  We are all different people that know what we can manage and what we cannot.   Much of it has to do with the "degree" of narcissism you have experienced as well.  Many people here have had it  to a "worse" degree than I, and they are the ones that simply out of common sense much detach completely.

It sounds to me Raggedy like your Mom might be a little more like mine.  Her abuse was more covert than overt.  This does not lessen the pain, nor lessen the effect on you.. In fact, it makes it more difficult to recognize and protect yourself against.  And this is probably why Rosencrantz saw some "denial",  - it is easier for us to deny because the abuse is not as obvious.

I went on much longer than I intended here.  Just wanted to let you know that compassion is not a bad thing.  If you can heal and still have compassion for the source of your pain - this is wonderful.  Be grateful that the legacy of your mother's condition has not been passed on - true narcissists are incapable of this empathy or compassion.

[catlover]

Thanks CC and Raggedy,

I don't think my therapist only wants me to be angry with my mom - maybe she just thinks I don't seem angry enough (and my therapist herself seems pretty angry with my mom!).  But maybe she doesn't realize yet that I HAVE gone through periods of being extremely angry at her.  And she did have a total crap childhood too:  Her father was a severe alcoholic who constantly raised a ruckus and beat her mother.  Her mother was always sick and in the hospital.  And, she recently started recalling that her 1/2 brother (much older than her) molested her from the age of six.  So, she has reasons for the way she is.  

I have been reading a lot about compassion lately in books about Buddhism.  And I'm learning that it includes compassion towards oneself.  So I'm trying to increase compassion towards both myself and others, because the two are connected.  I have always had a tendency to expect way too much of myself and others - most especially myself.  My mother expected me to get a PhD and win a Nobel Prize despite having very little support of any kind, and I've ended up expecting way too much of myself too.  I'm learning not only to put up boundaries, but to give myself a break about how slowly the learning is going....  And learning what is reasonable to expect from myself and others.  Very tricky!

Guess I kind of got off the subject there - thanks again for the input.

[Anonymous]

Something I neglected to share with you about my healing process that could be helpful.

In the midst of this compassion I feel for my mother, I went through a period about 6 months ago where I was able to express deep, repressed, anger and even hatred for my mother.  It took several sessions of therapy and a lot of journal work - allowing myself to tap into the deep seeded rage within me and actually scream blood-curdling screams (I would lock myself in the bathroom while no one was home and do this journal work) and tap into the child within me (I was always worried the neighbors would hear me, ha!)

It took an excellent therapist who knew exactly how to lead me to that child to be able to do this.  But it also took courage to allow myself to go to that place that for us, as children of narcissists or other abusers... has been considered SHAMEFUL.

This is probably what your therapist is after, and I agree, it is absolutely CRUCIAL to a complete healing (which we are never completely finished with, it seems).

There are books on this subject, I would encourage you to read - and sometimes it will be instrumental to triggering the button you need pushed to begin the process, at which point you can ask your therapist to help you continue it.  I don't remember the authors name of one, but the first one that comes to mind is "HEALING THE CHILD WITHIN".  If I remember correctly this is not geared specifically for children of N's, but all children who have been abused in some way or another.

Hope this helps.  Good Luck to you.

[CC]

That was me above, I thought I was logged on - and I also thought I should clarify that the rage and anger I expressed was done in the privacy of my shrink's office or my own home, it was not directed at my mother.  She had no idea I went through this.  CC

[catlover]

Thanks CC,
That's intense stuff.  My therapist is having me read and do exercises from "Homecoming" by John Bradshaw.  I think that might be the "healing the child within" book that you referred to.  I'm terrified yet "looking forward to it" at the same time.  Good to know I'm not the only one on this difficult journey towards better mental health.