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A Narcissist's Favorite Things?

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SilverLining:

--- Quote from: KayZee on December 21, 2011, 10:20:36 AM ---My NM's "collections" don't actually offer any hint at her personality or experience.  They are not mementos that remind her of experiences, trips, people she's met along the way.  I get the sense that most are things she began collecting because they seemed upscale/classy or because my N-aunt (who NM fears/loathes/admires) collects them.  
--- End quote ---

Now there's another parallel to my father's use of knowledge.  His reading has little connection with any core personality.  He doesn't read to improve his knowledge of personal interests/hobbies, or learn more about particular places, people, events.  He mostly picks up books randomly from the recent additions at the local library.  It seems an ongoing process to convince himself he is smarter than everybody else.  Then he uses his collection of factoids as weapons to beat up on other people.  Whatever he is reading today is the most important topic in the world.  

In my FOO, the dysfunctional collection of actual physical objects is on my mothers side.   My mother collects various things, and again there is no connection to any core "self".   She collects in order to collect.  

This is an interesting and helpful thread.  It seems N likes and dislikes are mostly weird expressions of the false narcissistic personality process , rather than any coherent "core self."

sKePTiKal:

--- Quote ---NM buying herself loads of dolls, without any inkling that she might be trying to fill some childhood void.
--- End quote ---

Hi Kay... what I think the above could be is that dolls are safer for her to have a relationship with (fastastical, delusional, as it is) than with real people. My mom doesn't fit y'alls profiles above... except the hoarding. But it was damn clear to me, that that she substituted her relationship with "things" for relationships with people. Those thing-relationships are her end-all/be-all... even now. Her raison d'etre is sorting, organizing, moving around her piles of junk - or trying to (pretending to try to) sell it or give it away. I used to be the recipient of "mystery boxes" of stuff that mom thought I would want... and don't you know that years later - many years later - she'd ask me something about where I kept it... if I'd restored it...

... because the "game" here was that by giving me her "stuff"... she believed she was giving of herself, to me. An extension of the old projection: "you're just like me", too. So, I've spent a few years now, repeating the message that I don't want her "stuff", thank you. I don't have room for it... because I'm "full of myself"... I can't be me and her too. I sure don't want to be, either!!

Because of her agoraphobia... we never went to movies until we were old enough to go by ourselves, except a few drive-in movies, before my Dad left. TV series and TV movies were all the "film culture" we got. And even that was made traumatic for me... because when I'd cry at sad parts, she and my bro would make fun of me... or if I got scared watching the Twilight Zone, my imagination wondering if such things were possible (and in N-Land, many are...) then I was supposed to grow up and act my age... because to my mom - no one could "feel" anything real, except herself.

And that's all this "thing-ism" is I think; it's a OCD distraction from feeling and interacting with other people on that emotional wavelength.

KayZee:

--- Quote ---TV series and TV movies were all the "film culture" we got. And even that was made traumatic for me... because when I'd cry at sad parts, she and my bro would make fun of me... or if I got scared watching the Twilight Zone, my imagination wondering if such things were possible (and in N-Land, many are...) then I was supposed to grow up and act my age... because to my mom - no one could "feel" anything real, except herself.

--- End quote ---

P.R., this makes me so sad.  Makes me want to reach across time and space, change the TV channel, tell little you that it's okay to be scared, that someone's looking out for you.  I hate that N-thing: mocking people when they're scared.  I was a really fearful kid, and instead of comforting me, NM was constantly telling me I was "being silly," it was "stupid to be scared," I was "ridiculous," and whatnot. 


--- Quote ---the "game" here was that by giving me her "stuff"... she believed she was giving of herself, to me.
--- End quote ---
  This really resonates for me too.  Anytime, anyone tries to hold my NM accountable for her actions, she goes back to this: "How can you tell me I don't love you?  Look at everything I've given you?"  As an adult, presents give me anxiety because I associate them with NM's blackmail and bribes.  Gifts seemed like an insurance policy for NM: "Would an abusive person give you all this?"


--- Quote ---dolls are safer for her to have a relationship with (fastastical, delusional, as it is) than with real people.
--- End quote ---
God, how right you are.  Oddly, NM also sort of views other people as dolls. My aunt always says NM used to treat my sister and me like porcelain dolls.  We were just little forms for her to dress up in ridiculous outfits, play with our hair, etc.  NM wouldn't let anyone else talk to us, telling them we were "too fragile" or "too sensitive."  If she'd had it her way, we'd just sit still in a corner with our eyes glossed over, saying nothing, until she was ready to play with us again, put words in our mouths, prop us 'round a fake tea party etc.


--- Quote ---It seems N likes and dislikes are mostly weird expressions of the false narcissistic personality process , rather than any coherent "core self."
--- End quote ---
Thank you for all your insights, SilverLining.  Sometimes Ns seem so stuck in their ways--so frighteningly powerful in the rigid environments and routines they've created--it helps to take a few steps back and see it for what it is.  A lot of smoke and mirrors--a big distraction, so no one will sense the nothingness that exists underneath.

JustKathy:

--- Quote ---Hi Kay... what I think the above could be is that dolls are safer for her to have a relationship with (fastastical, delusional, as it is) than with real people.
--- End quote ---

Wow! My NM is also into the dolls, BIG TIME. Madame Alexander and American Girl. Her room is filled with them. She even sews special little outfits for them. Maybe the dolls represent the perfect child. They do as they're told, don't talk back, wear the clothing she makes them wear - all the things that I refused to do. I mean, this woman is in her early 70s, and has a room full of dolls. Not Barbie dolls and small collectibles, but large dolls that resemble real children.

sKePTiKal:
Kind of like her own private audience, huh, Kathy? Surrounded by pretend people, with pretend feelings... so she can feel as if she's with her own kind.

[Sorry! I didn't mean that to sound as cold & cruel as it does. It was just the image of a roomful of dolls and their "curator" mom... mirroring and marking each other's "stuffing" and lack of sentience. OK, maybe it's a horrifying image, too. Calling Stephen King....]


Kay: about the mocking for expressing normal feelings as a kid. There is a sad element to it, especially when one is the kid in question! But it was a very important memory for me; an important "clue"... that contained the message that there wasn't anything wrong with me - for feeling things; and there were no good-bad feelings, as in allowed or disallowed. When I started "collecting" a list of those kinds of memories, it was like a landslide of realizations hit me. Both the old feelings of the collective "kid" mes and my perspective in the present, looking back - with my experience and acquired knowledge and the interpretative help of my T. I learned to comfort and protect my scared self from back then... cheer on my angry self (when she wasn't just being bitchy)... and shake my helpless, pathetic self out of her paralytic, dazed state. Be my own mother, in other words - my way of mothering; also known as reparenting, too.

You know, I think what it comes down to is the fact that I have an emotional "allergy" to my mom and people like her (the PDs, Ns, psychos of the world). I've made her mad with my boundaries; leaving home at 18 and progressively getting further away - and more NC over time. It doesn't take much contact at all - with her or bro - before my allergy starts kicking up again... and they start acting like nothing has changed in the past 40 years.

The last couple "mystery boxes" she sent me, I trashed without even opening them. I never told her - but magically, I also stopped getting them.

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