A sorry history

I found two great websites that explain the narcissistic personality disorder of my mother.

http://www.lightshouse.org/#axzz2GJONNFSg

http://daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/

Another person on PC told me about the one just above, thank you. I now realise that my mother to me has been narcissistic my whole life. It has always been about her feelings above everybody else’s. The websites also talk about narcissistic rage which I was a victim of. What I find very disturbing is that my mother got my two sisters to bully me constantly as a child. It was relentless and they carried out every order either explicitly or implicitly to basically make me invisible. Their goal was basically for me not to exist in the family, which was ‘crazy making’ as i did exist but yet given a message I was not allowed to exist. Every type of abuse was driven at me by my mother through my sisters. It just shows how gutless my mother was that she had to get my sisters to do her ‘dirty work’. What really gets me angry is that no one sees anything wrong with mum today. She is ‘wonderful’, ‘saintly’, ‘holy’ and ‘devout’. In their eyes my mother can do no wrong. She is always right. I’d like to say to them how is that in any conflict mum is always right? When I think about it over the years mum has always been seen as righteous. But as I look back the main reason she had so much rage against me was because of my sex. She didn’t want a boy and did everything to make me not exist as said earlier.

I just wanted to post this to see if anyone else understands me. I’m just dealing with a lot of stuff at the moment and I find it hard to accept what happened. Needless to say I am now at the point of no further contact with the family.

I understand what you have posted. I'd like to give you permission to let your mum's mistreatment go. Don't accept what happened; let it go.

H icecreamkid

I hear what you say and I don't accept what happened. But it is hard to just forgive her at this point due to a lot of hurt and anger I am still processing; and the fact that she is still narcissistic, shows no remorse and has never said sorry. So my only recourse is to stop contact. I need to do this for my own sanity.

Also I wonder why when I post on here, no one seems to be able to relate to my childhood story. Why is that? Am I really that unique my situation that there is no survivor out there that had a similar experience to me?? Help me guys, anyone else out there had an experience similar to me??

Hi Purple Heart,

Thanks for posting those two links.

You don't have to forgive your mother or your sisters right away or at all -- it's your choice. In fact, for me, I have a hard time with the word 'forgive'. It's a long story to explain how I came by this expression, but this is what I say to myself: "I cannot forgive them; only God can forgive them." A lot of people may take issue with that way of looking at forgiveness, but for me it's helped immensely. Maybe it's an issue of semantics, but over time I have been able to let go and not feel so emotionally involved and hurt, but it's not up to me to forgive them. There's something about that particular word -- it's too wrapped up in actually condoning what happened. I cannot separate forgiving from condoning, and so for me forgiving would be to 'let go' of allowing it bother me.

It's a long process to work through this. There are ups and downs to it, and it's not easy. Some people do well in counseling -- I've had a hard time finding any one (any counselor) who has an understanding of the extreme conditions I endured, and when a counselor cannot fathom what you've been through and does not have the depth of understanding (or education) to accept what you are saying, this is where counseling can end up being a destructive experience for the client because they (the counselors) minimize what you are saying and try to shut you down. If you live in a bigger city you are more likely to find a counselor who is competent.

It's highly unlikely that your mother will ever say "I'm sorry," and your sisters sound like they are too enmeshed to be able to see the situation for what it was and the roles they played, so it's unlikely that any of them are going to say "I'm sorry" any time soon. You're more likely to have one of your sisters say they are sorry later on in life than you are for your mother to say she's sorry. Remember your sisters were part of the crazy making milieu, and it affected them, too. They may eventually realize the role they were made to play, but it could be awhile. It all depends on how much insight they have and how damaged they may have become. They may have been too entrenched in the craziness to ever emerge from it.

So, yes, what you went through was 'crazy making.' Bad and crazy making parenting can put you into a tail spin for life, but there are ways to slow (and perhaps even stop) the spinning, and there are ways to turn the tables on your experiences and make them work for you by becoming a person of depth and understanding -- these are just examples that come to mind.

No further contact with your family is a totally understandable way to deal with the situation right now. You have to protect yourself and sometimes distance is the only way to do it. Don't expect your family to understand because, like I said, the craziness is too entrenched.

I think there are probably plenty of people who can relate to what you have written. Since it's a holiday a lot of people are probably busy with stuff. You can post about this again and might find more respondents.

I wasn't suggesting you forgive your mother. I think it is off-putting to try to force someone to forgive when the person is still suffering. What I was trying to do was encourage you to move past the past.

If you want my opinion, you did the right thing putting distance between you and your mother.

I've known just a very few people I thought truly deserved the label narcissist and by that I mean the kind who are not only totally self-involved but actively and constantly unkind to others. I'd say they were scary folks if they weren't so pathetic. However they are undoubtedly scary to children who cannot escape them.

However you have escaped. I say now let her stew in her own bitter juices.

You might try now working on whatever problems you see for yourself, without worrying overmuch about what you think are the source of those problems. Someone who has trouble interacting with people could read How to win friends and influence people (a wonderful book, even though it was written a long time ago) and use the pointers in that book without dwelling or torturing themselves about how they came to be uncomfortable around people. This is just an example.

Courage! Every day is an opportunity to make it a good day.

My mom is narcisstic also. But in my case, it was the girls she didn't want around because she saw us as competition. With my oldest sister, mom would always try to steal her boyfriends. She was very verbally abusive to her and still is. She also made my sister her little "slave."
In my case, she pretty much just ignored me. I was only allowed one shower a month. She wouldn't let me have decent clothes--but always bought my younger brother the best, most expensive clothes. I wasn't allowed to even own a brush! It was like she was trying to make me unattractive. One nite,(I was 14) my sis and her husband were visiting for a few days. We all went out to dinner and my sis helped me to look real nice. My mom kept carrying on about how disgusting I looked.