Getting Along With My Narcissist Mother

TishaBuv · Jan 02, 2018, 10:27 AM

She is writing a funny cookbook, and asked me to include one of my recipes. I told her I would. This put her on an up beat, and we hung up having had a conversation that was fairly upbeat.

I think it’s great she’s doing something productive to keep herself occupied.

It is hard for me to explain the multi levels of dysfunction going on here and how she is being extraordinarily narcissistic here. On the surface, it seems so innocuous, right?

She asked me how she could print it to give copies to her whole family of her book. I tried to talk her through, step by step, to attach the Word document as a file to an email. But, she called the document “the microwave” and couldn’t do the simplest attachment and find where she stored her doc in Word. So she instantly gave up and decided to print her books at Kinkos. Then she’ll ship the books to everybody and hunt them until they have given her sufficient kudos.

seesaw · Jan 02, 2018, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TishaBuv

She is writing a funny cookbook, and asked me to include one of my recipes. I told her I would. This put her on an up beat, and we hung up having had a conversation that was fairly upbeat.

I think it’s great she’s doing something productive to keep herself occupied.

It is hard for me to explain the multi levels of dysfunction going on here and how she is being extraordinarily narcissistic here. On the surface, it seems so innocuous, right?

She asked me how she could print it to give copies to her whole family of her book. I tried to talk her through, step by step, to attach the Word document as a file to an email. But, she called the document “the microwave” and couldn’t do the simplest attachment and find where she stored her doc in Word. So she instantly gave up and decided to print her books at Kinkos. Then she’ll ship the books to everybody and hunt them until they have given her sufficient kudos.

Abuse sometimes doesn't look like abuse to outsiders, because they don't see the full dynamic of what is going on and the history and context of what is going on.

TishaBuv · Jan 02, 2018, 03:06 PM

True! As long as I encourage and humor her she’s happy. She even asked me to write all the nice and funny things that we do ceremonially or fun had during family times. I told her it would be hard to do as they all ended with me crying. She didn’t skip a beat, said “I didn’t mean NOW, I meant when you were growing up. “

TishaBuv · Jan 02, 2018, 03:08 PM

She is trying to force us to write a book commemorating HER.

rechu · Jan 03, 2018, 06:15 AM

No way!!! That sounds so much like my mother. She prepares travel reports of any trip she takes in full detail. I mean if she goes away for a week it's like a 30-page book. Then she goes and gets them printed out with color pictures and bound and sends them to a bunch of people, maybe 20-30. She then waits for the accolades to come in on Facebook. She could save money and email them, but I am sure she thinks that if she did that, people wouldn't feel as guilted into reading them. She also makes calendars of her vacation pictures and again sends them out to friends and family. We're still waiting for our 2018 calendar.

I have come to take it with some humor. My husband and I open a nice bottle of wine and I read it translating it into my husband's language (his English isn't very good) and then we laugh and laugh. I mean why does she think people would care so much about every minute detail of a mundane trip. Once my dog tore one apart!! What a shame, we didn't get to finish it.

seesaw · Jan 03, 2018, 08:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rechu

No way!!! That sounds so much like my mother. She prepares travel reports of any trip she takes in full detail. I mean if she goes away for a week it's like a 30-page book. Then she goes and gets them printed out with color pictures and bound and sends them to a bunch of people, maybe 20-30. She then waits for the accolades to come in on Facebook. She could save money and email them, but I am sure she thinks that if she did that, people wouldn't feel as guilted into reading them. She also makes calendars of her vacation pictures and again sends them out to friends and family. We're still waiting for our 2018 calendar.

I have come to take it with some humor. My husband and I open a nice bottle of wine and I read it translating it into my husband's language (his English isn't very good) and then we laugh and laugh. I mean why does she think people would care so much about every minute detail of a mundane trip. Once my dog tore one apart!! What a shame, we didn't get to finish it.

Why anyone thinks their "slideshow" of their vacation is of interest to anyone else, I do not know. I mean, I think it's nice to see a few pictures, but that's all I care to look at from someone else's vacation.

TishaBuv · Jan 03, 2018, 09:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rechu

No way!!! That sounds so much like my mother. She prepares travel reports of any trip she takes in full detail. I mean if she goes away for a week it's like a 30-page book. Then she goes and gets them printed out with color pictures and bound and sends them to a bunch of people, maybe 20-30. She then waits for the accolades to come in on Facebook. She could save money and email them, but I am sure she thinks that if she did that, people wouldn't feel as guilted into reading them. She also makes calendars of her vacation pictures and again sends them out to friends and family. We're still waiting for our 2018 calendar.

I have come to take it with some humor. My husband and I open a nice bottle of wine and I read it translating it into my husband's language (his English isn't very good) and then we laugh and laugh. I mean why does she think people would care so much about every minute detail of a mundane trip. Once my dog tore one apart!! What a shame, we didn't get to finish it.

That’s hilarious!

Your mother is probably not doing it out of bad intentions, just vanity and maybe she’s so proud to be traveling, she’s showing off.

Funny stuff, I love it!

rechu · Jan 03, 2018, 09:34 AM

TrishaBuv - She has a lot of characteristics of a narcissist, so I am sure that is why she does it. She thinks what she does is very special and everyone should care.

Seesaw - yeah, I don't get why anyone would care to read 30 pages about someone's vacation or see a ton of pictures. When we travel I will put some up on Facebook, mainly for my own reference and also because some people have expressed interest in several places we've gone to like Colombia. However, I wouldn't try to harrass people into looking at them.

It sort of reminds me of when I was a teenager and a few times I went on vacation with a friend's family whose mom was a bit out there. Every evening she'd (out loud) hash over every detail of what we had done that day, including the ingredients in a salad. My mom's "travel writing" is on that level. She once had a paragraph about the bagel she had at the airport!! I guess you have to be detailed if you are writing four pages about every day.

And of course, my sister, her favorite, is always the heroine of the story if they go to visit her!

TishaBuv · Jan 03, 2018, 11:39 AM

When I was 18, I went with my mom and dad to Europe. Mom planned the whole trip using Frommer’s Europe on $25 a Day book. It was a rather trying and gritty trip, seeing as we went as cheaply as possible. It wasn’t as fun a time as she later depicted it.

She also wrote a lengthy book about the trip and said it was a novel. But, it was just a journal of everything we did and ate and how much it cost. All she, the heroine, did was complain and find fault with everything. But she veiled her insults as humor.

Then she made the whole family read it. When she didn’t get raving reviews, she threw an absolute fit.

Yet, this new cookbook she’s writing is more mean spirited and self inflating. She’s writing it to rub in our faces that she’s great and we’re (her daughters) not. It goes deep...way deep.

TishaBuv · Jan 03, 2018, 11:42 AM

My mother controlled and wreaked havoc for my entire life. Now, her powers have faded. I just see her as a crazy old lady. I feel sorry for her. She’s a dragon spitting out her last flames.

Jan 03, 2018, 12:41 PM

I guess I am missing a great deal of backstory here as I don't equate making a cookbook for everyone as being narcissistic. It sounds more to me a case of being generous and wanting to be helpful, unless this is just one in a series of attention-seeking behaviours.

seesaw · Jan 03, 2018, 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by justafriend306

I guess I am missing a great deal of backstory here as I don't equate making a cookbook for everyone as being narcissistic. It sounds more to me a case of being generous and wanting to be helpful, unless this is just one in a series of attention-seeking behaviours.

It might seem like that on the outside, but what is happening, and not meaning to speak for Tisha but I have also experienced this, is that the mother (or father, in my case) is retelling the history of these family traditions and making them seem pleasant and kind, and making herself out to seem like some great mother, when in reality, the mother was horribly abusive and not at all kind to the daughters. But the mother insists on promoting a lie to the world that she was a good mother when she was horribly abusive. So her "cookbook" is another attempt to rewrite history and make herself out to be mother of the year instead of satan himself.

TishaBuv · Jan 03, 2018, 07:32 PM

She’s doing it to demand praise. She’s doing it to try to out-do her sister, who already wrote the same cookbook for their mother before she died and made a big fuss over HER at her 90th birthday. She’s doing it to try to make me pay homage to her and her imaginery traditions and great cooking that she never did. She’s doing it to shove in my sister’s faces that they never were a gracious hostess like her and they were huge disappointments to her. She’s doing it to rub in her children’s faces how things are not like they were in the old days and the whole family’s turned to shyt in her opinion.

See the many levels of dysfunction all in a cookbook?

She also just wants to commemorate herself and make herself the heroine of something. She has delusions she is writing something readers will love.

And, if she published it, readers probably would love it. And none of them would know how she was really being mean and selfish when she wrote of such family love. Looking back on generations of dysfunction that is glorified in retrospect.

TishaBuv · Jan 09, 2018, 09:16 AM

Latest update on the cookbook:

I told my mother she should write down the recipes that she taught to me for my contribution.

She was insisting I send her my Jambalaya recipe as the thing I am best known for making.

Annoyance level to me: 10! No, not annoyance...narcissism and abuse!

First, I had to defend my sister, who our mother has “disowned”. This is the whole reason for the cookbook, to hurt my sister.

Then—

I actually told her off, but so nicely, she hung up happy that I gave her a contribution and thus, more purpose. She was beaming. Win/Win

rechu · Jan 22, 2018, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TishaBuv

She’s doing it to try to make me pay homage to her and her imaginery traditions and great cooking that she never did.

My husband and I always joke about how we must pay homage to the matriarch of the clan (as we sometimes refer to my mother).

So, what do you think arrived in the mail on Friday? Another travelogue, 10 pages about a short visit to my sister at Christmas, full inane details and terrible photography, with a note saying, "hope you enjoy reading this!" I mean, really, who would enjoy reading that? No one, I am pretty sure, but I guess she has hope. No calendar this year, though.

unaluna · Jan 22, 2018, 11:51 AM

I should put a bug in my aunts ear to do this.

TishaBuv · Jan 22, 2018, 03:02 PM

She demanded yet again I write something and send it to her and I haven’t. How dare she glorify herself? I’m laying here so depressed I can’t get out of bed. I’m not going out of my way to stroke the ego of the monster who groomed me to make this bed and have to lie in it. I hate my mother and I don’t love my husband. I have MI now and I got triggered into it because of them. F them.

TishaBuv · Jan 22, 2018, 03:10 PM

Cookbook my ***! I feel like writing her recipe for how she messed me up. How to make your child Borderline.

unaluna · Jan 22, 2018, 04:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TishaBuv

She demanded yet again I write something and send it to her and I haven’t. How dare she glorify herself? I’m laying here so depressed I can’t get out of bed. I’m not going out of my way to stroke the ego of the monster who groomed me to make this bed and have to lie in it. I hate my mother and I don’t love my husband. I have MI now and I got triggered into it because of them. F them.

This was me this past week. My aunt (my deceased mother's sister) phoned me. Her husband passed a couple of weeks ago, how do you not answer the phone? I didnt go to the funeral, but i sent flowers. She said they were nice, then went on and on about how she saves her money, sounding exactly like my mother, which i took as a criticism for the flowers i sent.

Then she starts talking about how her son and grandson are doing low carb and losing weight, and she told me how much SHE weighs now!

These are exactly the reasons i stopped talking to my mother.

I cant afford any more setbacks. I cannot afford to spend one more day of my life depressed.

TishaBuv · Jan 23, 2018, 06:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by unaluna

This was me this past week. My aunt (my deceased mother's sister) phoned me. Her husband passed a couple of weeks ago, how do you not answer the phone? I didnt go to the funeral, but i sent flowers. She said they were nice, then went on and on about how she saves her money, sounding exactly like my mother, which i took as a criticism for the flowers i sent.

Then she starts talking about how her son and grandson are doing low carb and losing weight, and she told me how much SHE weighs now!

These are exactly the reasons i stopped talking to my mother.

I cant afford any more setbacks. I cannot afford to spend one more day of my life depressed.

It sounds like she wasn’t all that grief stricken about her own husband’s passing.

TishaBuv · Jan 23, 2018, 06:24 AM

What really hurts, which my one sister and I have figured out she did to both of us, is that our mother acted to each of us like as long as we do what she wants for her or lets her dictate and control our lives, she acts like she is on your side and your biggest ally, best friend. But then she turns her back and meanly drops you like a hot potato. To her own children!

Do you wonder why I have trust issues?

rechu · Jan 23, 2018, 06:28 AM

^^ Well at least it sounds good that you have an ally in your sister. I wish I had that. The rest of my family enables her, especially my sister, her favorite. She's always the first to heap praise on her narcissistic mailings.

TishaBuv · Jan 23, 2018, 06:29 AM

When I first came on here, i was complaining about my husband and mother being the only two people who really trigger me. A few years later...still the same thing.

In that time I have had no issues with any other people I couldn’t handle. I have had business deals that went off successfully. Customers love me. One client was such an a hole, and I handled it with professionalism and grace, and it was a success!

It’s only those two. And my mother is just a little old helpless dragon spitting out her last flames. I try not to get into anything with her anymore.

My h sets me off so bad. I slept for the past 48 hours in severe depression over the same stuff with him. The bane of my existence!..........................