She manipulates your emotions...: Characteristics of Narcissistic Mothers Pt 10

 The black text is a shortened version of an original work by Chris, The Harpy’s Child. Original at https://sites.google.com/site/harpyschild/  Copyright 2007, all rights reserved

[There are two basic types of narcissistic mothers, the ignoring type and the engulfing type. These may—and often do—overlap but most NMs have a basic style and will be primarily one or the other. Some of the following points may not apply to your NM simply because they describe an engulfing characteristic when your NM is an ignoring type—or vice versa. But our mothers are not the only narcissists we will encounter in our lives. In fact, being raised by a narcissistic parent actually sets us up to be prey for more of the self-centred emotional vampires as we go out into the world, from girlfriends who are anything but friends to lovers who love themselves best to husbands who are the mirror image of dear old mom. So, whether something looks like it applies to your NM or not, read and consider it carefully—it may give you the awareness necessary to avoid the predator lurking around the next bend. As ever, my comments are shown in violet. -V]

It's about secret things. The Destructive Narcissistic Parent creates a child that only exists to be an extension of her self. It's about body language. It's about disapproving glances. It's about vocal tone. It's very intimate. And it's very powerful. It's part of who the child is. ~ Chris

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Part 10. She manipulates your emotions in order to feed on your pain.

This exceptionally sick and bizarre behavior is so common among narcissistic mothers that their children often call them “emotional vampires.” Some of this emotional feeding comes in the form of pure sadism. She does and says things just to be wounding or she engages in tormenting teasing or she needles you about things you're sensitive about, all the while a smile plays over her lips.

This is rather a difficult one for me—it was not until I read this that I associated some of my NM’s behaviours with her feeding on my pain. Only a very few examples come to mind, but I am not sure that her way of “feeding” on my pain is even remotely similar to how other NMs do/did it.

My parents separated several times during my childhood but, oddly, I cannot actually recall my father being gone. It is like those months of his absence are completely shuttered from my memory, as if they never existed. Their final separation, however, the one that led to their second and final divorce when I was 10, is more clear. I can only recall random events, however, and I cannot recall them in their proper order of occurrence. At some point after my father moved out of the house, he left the state. His version of events (explained to me after he returned) and my NM’s differed strikingly. It is important to remember that this occurred in the late 1950s, years before “no-fault divorce” came into being, and in a divorce, the party at fault was pretty much stripped of assets in favour of the complaining party.

And so it was with my father. NM filed for divorce on the grounds of “mental cruelty” and the divorce was duly granted: she got the house, the new car, all of the furniture, custody of both children and child support (because she had always worked, she could not get alimony). My father got a 10 year old car, his clothes, mechanic’s tools, and his hunting and fishing gear—and a monthly bill for support and car/house payments that nearly exceeded his income. He lived rent-free with a friend and worked “under the table” for him just so he had some cash.

My parents had been separated when I was 8 but that is completely closed to my memory. According to my stepmother, however, this is when she and my father met and started dating. When NM found out he had a girlfriend, she turned on the charm and begged him to come back home. He broke up with Patsy, telling her “I got to go back for the kids’ sake,” and returned home. I remember absolutely nothing of this, not even his absence.

When they separated the second time, my father looked up Patsy to see if she was still single. They started dating again. They got serious—marriage serious. But he was unable to marry again—virtually all of his earnings went into NM’s pocket. So he took off to Nevada, married Patsy and fled to Oregon (our home state).

What happened next depends on who you ask: to this day I do not know what is the truth. NM says that the whole time he was in Oregon, he sent her no money at all; Patsy says he sent child support but didn’t pay the other bills, like the mortgage and her car payments. Personally, I don’t know. What I do know, however, is how my NM acted over his removal to Oregon: she was pissed-really, REALLY pissed. I don’t know if she expected to crook her finger and have him back at her command when she got tired of the game of musical bedrooms she was playing or if she was angry at him having found someone else. Whatever it was, she became the archetypal “woman scorned.”

With a child’s typical self-serving sense, I very much preferred my father to my mother. He did not hit me, terrorize me, or even yell at me. If he felt it necessary to chastise me, it was usually in the form of explanation of what I did wrong, why it was wrong, followed by extracting a promise from me not to do it again. I am not saying he never spanked me, but if he did, the experience is buried in one of those inaccessible black holes in my memory. I just know I was never afraid of my father and I loved him very much.

Once my father had gone to Oregon, NM never passed up an opportunity to demonize him. Birthdays, Christmas, special occasions came and went and nary a word from him. And she could not disguise her delight in rubbing it in. “So, another birthday and not a word from your PRECIOUS father, eh miss?” she would ask, her voice dripping venom, her face an undisguised mask of glee. Eventually the lack of contact and NM’s incessant campaign against him began to chip away at my brother’s resolve but the more Petey turned against him, the more staunchly I stood in our father’s corner. This, of course, enraged NM and she would not pass up an opportunity to rub in both his absence and his silence—and she wouldn’t stop until she had me on the verge of tears, in which case I would then get browbeaten for “blubbering.”

The summer I was 12 I was at my grandparent’s house (her parents) and I remember telling my grandmother how much I missed my father…and she suggested I call him! We were in Oregon, after all, and the call wouldn’t be that expensive… I remember puddling up in tears because I didn’t know where he was, until she suggested I talk to my other grandmother—certainly HIS mother would know where he was. Within the week my father and Patsy drove down from Portland to my grandmother’s house to see me and, joy of joys, with a new baby sister for me! I was over the moon!

But the telling thing about their visit and subsequent move back to Southern California was when I asked my father why he had not written to me while he had been gone. He and Patsy exchanged a telling look and the truth came out—not one birthday, not one Christmas, not one holiday had been over looked by them! They had send letters and cards with money in them so I could buy a present for myself—and NM had intercepted every one, kept the money they sent, and destroyed the cards and letters. I was so relieved to know he had not abandoned me that I wasn’t even angry with NM…just relieved that my trust and faith in him had not been misplaced.

Looking back on this now, I can see the grimace-like smile on her face every time she lied to me about my father’s apparent lack of contact. She was playing both ends against the middle, hoping that my not receiving his cards and letters would make me feel abandoned by him and subsequently hate him—and that my lack of response to his letters and cards would hurt him, perhaps make him think that my brother and I didn’t love him.

Interestingly, when she took my children and kept them away from me, she did EXACTLY the same thing! I wrote, sent cards (some with money in them), remembered them for every occasion and non-occasion in between, and sent them care of my grandmother’s house, knowing she would get them to my NM for the kids. Her enmity towards me was so great that she withheld those cards and letters (I later received a large kraft envelope from my grandmother containing them) from the children, telling them I had abandoned them and my lack of correspondence was the proof. Interestingly, it did not work on me but it DID work on my daughter, who refused to amend her belief that I had abandoned her even after I gave her that big envelope of cards and letters my grandmother fished out of the trash and saved.

I think she got a lot of joy out of my pain, even when she wasn’t there to see it.

She may have taken you to scary movies or told you horrifying stories, then mocked you for being a baby when you cried, She will slip a wounding comment into conversation and smile delightedly into your hurt face. You can hear the laughter in her voice as she pressures you or says distressing things to you. Later she'll gloat over how much she upset you, gaily telling other people that you're so much fun to tease, and recruiting others to share in her amusement. . She enjoys her cruelties and makes no effort to disguise that. She wants you to know that your pain entertains her. She may bring up subjects that are painful for you and probe you about them, all the while watching you carefully. This is emotional vampirism in its purest form. She's feeding emotionally off your pain.

A peculiar form of this emotional vampirism combines attention-seeking behavior with a demand that the audience suffer. Since narcissistic mothers often play the martyr this may take the form of wrenching, self-pitying dramas which she carefully produces, and in which she is the star performer. She sobs and wails that no one loves her and everyone is so selfish, and she doesn't want to live, she wants to die! She wants to die! She will not seem to care how much the manipulation of their emotions and the self-pity repels other people. One weird behavior that is very common to narcissists: her dramas may also center around the tragedies of other people, often relating how much she suffered by association and trying to distress her listeners, as she cries over the horrible murder of someone she wouldn't recognize if they had passed her on the street.

My NM used very different tactics to accomplish the same ends. She was an angry, spiteful person so the melodramatics of “nobody loves or appreciates me” didn’t work for her. Instead, she was the put-upon one, the brave noble soul soldiering on under impossible conditions. Life was an uphill battle with her obtuse, difficult daughter and all the work and sacrifice she had to put in for the unappreciative brat. She was my victim, to hear her tell it, a paradigm that not-so-coincidentally justified her brutal physical attacks on me in the name of “discipline.”

She did not even have the wherewithal to muster up false empathy for someone else, so other people’s tragedies were shunted aside in favour of her own bitch-of-the-moment. When I had a miscarriage at five months and nearly died of a subsequent infection, her one telephone call to me was not to empathize with my loss or to comfort me—no, it seems my husband had been calling her, hoping she would fly across country to help him with the kids while I was in the hospital (I spent 3 weeks there) and as I recuperated. And was she calling me to tell me she was on her way and I should relax and get well? No. The call was to tell me the miscarriage was a good thing as I didn’t need any more brats clinging to my skirts and for me to stop malingering and get home to my husband and kids so he would stop calling and bugging her.

I could almost see the indignant yet somehow malevolent smile playing over her lips as I struggled on my end of the phone not to burst into tears...

Next: Part 11. She's selfish and willful.

She’s a liar: Characteristics of Narcissistic Mothers Pt 8

 The black text is a shortened version of an original work by Chris, The Harpy’s Child. Original at https://sites.google.com/site/harpyschild/  Copyright 2007, all rights reserved

[There are two basic types of narcissistic mothers, the ignoring type and the engulfing type. These may—and often do—overlap but most NMs have a basic style and will be primarily one or the other. Some of the following points may not apply to your NM simply because they describe an engulfing characteristic when your NM is an ignoring type—or vice versa. But our mothers are not the only narcissists we will encounter in our lives. In fact, being raised by a narcissistic parent actually sets us up to be prey for more of the self-centred emotional vampires as we go out into the world, from girlfriends who are anything but friends to lovers who love themselves best to husbands who are the mirror image of dear old mom. So, whether something looks like it applies to your NM or not, read and consider it carefully—it may give you the awareness necessary to avoid the predator lurking around the next bend. As ever, my comments are shown in violet. -V]

It's about secret things. The Destructive Narcissistic Parent creates a child that only exists to be an extension of her self. It's about body language. It's about disapproving glances. It's about vocal tone. It's very intimate. And it's very powerful. It's part of who the child is. ~ Chris

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Part 8. She's a liar in too many ways to count.

She's a liar in too many ways to count. Any time she talks about something that has emotional significance for her, it's a fair bet that she's lying. Lying is one way that she creates conflict in the relationships and lives of those around her - she'll lie to them about what other people have said, what they've done, or how they feel. She'll lie about her relationship with them, about your behavior or about your situation in order to inflate herself and to undermine your credibility.

That last sentence describes my NM perfectly. When Ns do this, often their victims are unaware they are doing it, or at least unaware of the long term consequences of allowing it to go unchallenged. It is a mistake to believe that others can see through her exaggerations, hyperbole and outright fabrications—even people you think know her well can still be blind to such things, perhaps because if they believed her capable of such a thing, they would have to acknowledge not only their own jeopardy (if she lies so egregiously about her own child, what must she say about me?), but their foolishness in making and keeping such a friendship. Some people simply cannot accept that they can be wrong or are unwilling to bear the humiliation of admitting to it.

In my case, my NM began poisoning my well when I was a very small child. She gave me to Child Services when I was 2 (keeping my newborn brother), telling them to find me an adoptive home. She started painting me unmanageable at a very young age. As I got older, the tales got worse. Most of them contained a grain of truth upon which she built an elaborate fabrication, assigning me motive and even thought processes, as if she could read my mind. If I was late coming home from school, it wasn’t because I stopped a moment to chat with a classmate, it was because I was doing something bad, like meeting a boy somewhere and doing rude things, and thinking I was smarter than she was in expecting her to believe I was chatting with Melody outside her house. The truth was, I was late getting home and told her I was talking to Melody—the rest was pure fabrication (and, according to my father, projection).

By the time I was in my teens I was the family scandal (replacing her in that role), the black sheep, the hopeless one. And, of course, teens being who they are, I had the name so I played the game, ending up pregnant and unmarried at 17. By then, my extended family would—and did—believe anything she said about me, no matter how outrageous or untrue. I was ruined in my family’s eyes and my own mother did the ruination.

The narcissist is very careful about how she lies. To outsiders she'll lie thoughtfully and deliberately, always in a way that can be covered up if she's confronted with her lie. She spins what you said rather than makes something up wholesale. She puts dishonest interpretations on things you actually did. If she's recently done something particularly egregious she may engage in preventative lying: she lies in advance to discount what you might say before you even say it. Then when you talk about what she did you'll be cut off with "I already know all about it—your mother told me... (self-justifications and lies)." Because she is so careful about her deniability, it may be very hard to catch her in her lies and the more gullible of her friends may never realize how dishonest she is.

This is an insidious form of undermining. My NM, if ever caught by an outsider (including my father or the extended family) lying about me, shrugged it off with such expressions as “Well, it’s just like her to do it…” or “You can’t blame me for thinking she did it this time as well…” or “I wouldn’t put it past her…” or “It was the kind of thing she would do—remember when she…” She would deftly turn attention away from her own transgression and falsehood and get people focussed on me and mine, real or imagined.

She also engaged in “pre-emptive lying,” often to save her own skin. If she hit me too hard and left marks that other people might question her about, she would be quick to make sure others knew something terrible I had done to justify her. Strangely—or maybe not so strange, considering what she is like in adulthood—my own daughter figured out this tactic as well. When she was 15 or 16 I sent her to her room over cutting school and she jumped out of a second story window into a thorn bush below, getting bruised and cut and scraped in the process. She then went to a friend’s house and used her bruises and marks to beg to be allowed to stay with them. I don’t know exactly what she told the girl’s mother, but I do know that it boiled down to “my mother beat me up for no good reason and now I am afraid of her.” It only took a few weeks for the other mother to figure out what was going on (now her daughter was cutting school as well), but Annie very effectively pre-empted me when it came to discussing her transgressions with her friend’s mother…the woman wouldn’t believe a word I had to say until Annie had co-opted her own daughter.

This kind of behaviour on the part of a parent can leave a child feeling hopeless and powerless. Nothing she does will be recognized, only what her lying mother says she does. Kids do not have the kind of perspective balanced adults have and because their brains are still immature (and soaked in an unstable hormonal soup), they tend not to think their responses through. Instead, they react and rebel and often the result of that is “If I’m going to have the name, I might as well play the game.” If I am going to be shunned or punished or suspected of all these terrible things—if I am going to pay the price for them whether I do them or not—I might as well get the enjoyment of doing them right along with the penalty.” Some kids, like my nephew (GCBro’s felon son) never outgrow the attitude and spend their entire lives in one kind of trouble after another.

To you, she'll lie blatantly. She will claim to be unable to remember bad things she has done, even if she did one of them recently and even if it was something very memorable. Of course, if you try to jog her memory by recounting the circumstances "You have a very vivid imagination" or "That was so long ago. Why do you have to dredge up your old grudges?" Your conversations with her are full of casual brush-offs and diversionary lies and she doesn't respect you enough to bother making it sound good. For example she'll start with a self-serving lie: "If I don't take you as a dependent on my taxes I'll lose three thousand dollars!" You refute her lie with an obvious truth: "No, three thousand dollars is the amount of the dependent exemption. You'll only lose about eight hundred dollars." Her response: "Isn't that what I said?" You are now in a game with only one rule: You can't win.

I could go on and on and on with the many ways NM lied to me, both by outright fabrications and deliberately misleading me, and by more subtle means, like omitting salient information that would change one’s view of her in a tale she told.

For example, NM once told me that her father (a German/Russian immigrant) was “too old fashioned and unreasonably strict.” Well, knowing my grandfather and knowing he was a bit on the old fashioned side (he forbade me to wear two-piece swim suits at the local pool, for example and deplored my use of make up), for many years I believed her teenaged rebellion against him was justifiable. She also told me that she was the unfavoured child, that her parents preferred her brothers and gave them all kinds of privileges and freedoms she did not have. Given that she treated me and my brother that way, it was totally believable.

But it wasn’t true. Over a period of years I picked up tidbits from various family members that indicated my NM was spoiled, especially by her father, and that she was indulged and cosseted. When I was in my late 30s I had occasion to discuss my NM’s youth with her older brother, my uncle Gary, who was angry enough with her for using him in her campaign to steal my kids that he finally broke the “no airing dirty linen” part of his upbringing and told me story after story of NM’s childhood and youth and early adulthood.

Considering the very conservative mores of the time—1940s—my NM’s behaviour was nothing short of scandalous! Yes, her father was strict with her but not because he was a control-freak ignorant immigrant—he did it in response to her antics, things that caused her to be a subject of ugly gossip and rumour—like sneaking out at night at the age of 16 and being seen drinking and smoking and riding around on motorcycles with young men too old to be dating her. She eloped with my father and before my grandfather could get it annulled, she was pregnant with me (an event for which she would never forgive me) and all of her wild ways had to be curtailed.

But, according to my uncle, not for long. Within a short time of my birth she was up to her old tricks again and she created such a scandal this time that we had to leave town. Women crossed the street in town to avoid having to walk past her, if a man looked at her his wife bashed him with her pocketbook. She became the “town tramp,” and to save both her own and her family’s face, she had to get out of town.

But none of this information was offered by NM. No, to hear her tell it, Grandpa was unreasonably strict with her and allowed my uncles to run loose and it just wasn’t fair! And when confronted with these lies of omission, what was her reaction? “Where did you hear this nonsense? From your Uncle Gary? We have never gotten along, he has always been jealous of me, and it doesn’t surprise me that he would make up such lies about me…”

She was no less blatant about telling lies about me, and to call her on them, especially when I was a child, was to invite dire retribution. First, she would deny the lie flatly, throwing in a little gaslighting for good measure: “It didn’t happen that way and you know it!” especially if we were in the presence of others. And once she had me alone and there were no witnesses, my head was handed to me on a platter: “Don’t you ever correct me again, miss, do you understand? Ever! If you do, I will beat you within an inch of your life, do you hear?”

This kind of thing fosters co-dependency. Knowing the truth in your own head but unable to act upon it or express it—indeed to risk punishment for anything other than full support of the dissembler—we learn to enable at our NM’s knees.

On the rare occasions she is forced to acknowledge some bad behavior, she will couch the admission deniably. She "guesses" that "maybe" she "might have" done something wrong. The wrongdoing is always heavily spun and trimmed to make it sound better. The words "I guess," "maybe," and "might have" are in and of themselves lies because she knows exactly what she did - no guessing, no might haves, no maybes.

This is called “dissembling” and it is something many DoNMs seem to pick up as fleas. Ns can’t be wrong because it impinges their sense of self-worth. Many DoNMs can’t be wrong as well, but for a different reason: to be wrong invites punishment. Even as grown up women, inside us the fearful child still quivers, and even though we consciously know nobody is going to tongue-lash or beat us up for our error, that trembling inner child does not. It is a difficult habit to break, if you’ve picked it up, but in the spirit of honesty, if you find yourself doing it, you need to learn to stop, for your own peace of mind.

Ns do this as a fence-sitting exercise, as a way to have their cake and eat it too. Through this type of dissembling, they attempt to placate the accuser while retaining, for themselves, their “innocence.” The worst part of the lying that Ns do is not their lying to us, it is their lying to themselves. When they believe their own lies, any chance of rational interaction is dead.

This, by the way, is the main reason it is so difficult to interact rationally with an N: you live in reality, they live in a fantasy created out of lies, and the two worlds are mutually incompatible.

9. She has to be the center of attention all the time.