Hi everyone, I'm new here. I just started learning about Narcissistic Personality Disorder and have been reading about it voraciosuly for the last couple of days. I have known for some years there was something very odd and eccentric about my mom, and my weird, dysfunctional FOO, but in reading about NPD I totally recognized her. I'm still not sure if she was a real N, though, so I'm hoping for some feedback here. I am hoping that some more experienced people here can lend some thoughts and experience and teach me about this a little more as it relates to my experiences. And mostly I'd like to
finally vent to people who understand. !!! So many years feeling so weird, like I'm the crazy one . . .
My mom and dad got divorced when I was a toddler. My mom has always accused my dad of the character traits of a NPD-- or even a psychopath-- although she didn't use those terms-- which I find interesting. I don't experience him that way-- I don't think. Was he just on special behavior with me or is my mom projecting? My mom always told me that he was only treating me nicely so that he would win custody (long-term messy legal battle- blech.) My dad can be kind of selfish and shallow, but I wouldn't have pinned him as N. Now I'm not sure though. Anyway, he's no where near as N-like as my mom, so maybe mom was projecting. I don't know, though. After believing most of what she said for years, I am just beginning to sort out what was real and what was delusional.
The problem is, it's hard to remember everything because I am used to numbing my brain. Often as a child, my experience of events was invalidated and I was told that wasn't how it was, even though I knew what I knew, so I learned to just not think about it, just numb the brain. For instance, mom would get frustrated with me and beat me for a minute and then yell at me and then a couple of minutes later if she reached toward me with an angry face and I flinched, she would say, "why do you guys always flinch? You act like I beat you or something." Weird. To this day I honestly don't think she remembers any of it, I think she just lives in her own little reality. She has no friends at all. At. All. No social circle of any kind. she lives with her books in her own intelectual reality.
What growing up with her was like-- everything was very very tightly controlled. Practically couldn't breathe without asking permission first. Food was tightly controlled. "Treat" foods were usually only for her except when she was feeling magnanimous. These magnanimous moments were the most confusing because in these moments she would try to be the perfect mother. It was like she was trying to create these special picturesque tableaus every once in a while, to convince all of us what a great life we had and what a great mom she was, and then make those moments her norm in her mind. But the norm was her incredible selfishness and self-centeredness. She would take forever making breakfast but spank us if we tried to get our own food before that. She would call us to dinner and then if we couldn't hear her calling us we would have to go without dinner for the rest of the evening (and then wait all morning to get breakfast!) She would make promises and then disappoint us, like when she bought tickets to see a really major singing star, just her and me, and I felt so special and was so excited to go and then that day, she had a stressful day I guess, and decided she wasn't up to going-- at the last minute! Another time the whole family packed up to go camping and at the last minute, as we were loading the cars, she decided all of the stuff wouldn't fit in the cars so we all had to go back inside. So crushing. She did tht kind of thing again later with other vacations, canceling them at the last minute. And there was always the constant criticism and shaming. Constant. I could never do anything right. I used to sob myself to sleep every night for a couple of years. I just felt so intensely unloved. I still feel like she doesn't care much about me, although we get along okay since I moved out and set up firm boundaries. I am still trying to convince myself that I am not lazy and selfish and stupid as these were drilled into my head every day.
She is a major homebody and anything that requires her going anywhere and interacting with anyone (besides, say, grocery shopping) is majorly stressful to her. Wait a minute, grocery shopping is stressful for her too-- she doesn't like doing anything else that day-- not even receiveing calls. She would decide for me who my friends would be, and those were the only girls I could hang out with. And then if she disapproved of them for any reason, she would make me break off contact. : ( I still miss some of my friends. She is constantly talking badly about other people or putting them down-- like constantly-- except for a few "idols"-- authors or actors or doctors or politicians whom she does not know personally but whose opinions she takes as gold. From the time I was 9 I was forced to be her mini-homemaker-stand-in-- I was homeschooled at that point and gradually, more and more, my whole life became babysitting my much younger siblings (I basically raised them for a couple of years) and doing all of my assigned chores (which were pretty much everything.) By the time I was 12 this was my whole life. I would make dinner-- what she wanted me to make, her recipes, and then she would yell at me horribly and berate me for not creating the correct ambience with the table setting and the antipasta or I got the spicing of the sauce wrong or whatever. Then she had golden boy start taking over the cooking chores and of course his meals were amazing and perfect.
But she pretty much did nothing except sit on the couch and read and order everyone around. By the time I was 14 I had had it and started acting out in a big way and I was sent back to school-- happily. School was my escape. But I was doing really badly in school becasue I wa so depressed. I finally ran away at the age of 16, but we reconciled at the age of 18. What can I say, I missed my mom. I still find myself hoping that one of those golden tableaus will turn into the real her and that she will for once really listen to me and care about me.
Here's something funny- she is fairly attentive with babies-- well, her babies, anyway, she barely noticed when I had one-- but as soon as they start to show any kind of personality outside of what she mirrors onto them, uh-oh. She becomes strict and fairly cold, at that point. Spankings start in toddlerhood. But she uses smiles and blown kisses as signs of affection to manipulate you or bestow favor on her golden children. It took me years to realize that there was no REAL affection our family-- no hugs or unconditional loive (she told me she doesn't believe in unconditional love) or spontaneous fun (or hardly any fun at all. Everything was calculated and controlled and all decided by her and all revolved around her.
My stepdad is incredibly submissive and totally wrapped around her finger 100 percent, its crazy. He has like, no life, except to go to work, and do her bidding.
Okay well, I could go one and on, but I won't-- sorry this was so rambly. It's just spillling out after being so pent up for so long. Does that sound like a narcissist to you? I am still newly processing this-- it's possible she may have had some other personality disorder with N tendencies, I guess, so that's why I'd like feedback. She isn't ALWAYS non-empathic-- one time when I was 18 and I had a bad break up she listened to me cry about it for an hour and then let me come grocery shopping with her-- that was incredibly weird and out of character for her and it felt really good. I felt so special-- but it's not her norm.
Living with my mom was mostly very lonely and empty and traumatizing, but I think I turned out as normal as I did, because when I had visitation with my dad I latched on to a couple of other women in my life-- aunts, teachers, etc-- who became my surro-moms and role models. She hated that she couldn't control that aspect of my life, but it was my life line. I think that's how I turned out fairly normal. I have to keep reassuring myself that I'm not like she is, though . . . I'm not. And my husband is very normal and healthy, too, thank goodness. Living with him is so healing.
TIA.
