6 Ways to Spot a Narcissistic Mother
In our community, I notice that a lot of us are overly emotional but we lack the depth to properly express our feelings. People are increasingly seeming more angry and confused. There are so many walking around with undiagnosed mental illnesses and the majority of our issues began taking root during our childhoods. Our childhoods are our formative years, so this is a ripe time for behavioral and personality disorders to form, usually as a result of COPING WITH SOME TYPE OF ABUSE. No doubt, the narcissistic mother was scarred during her youth and now she has to “survive” in an unforgiving world.
In the animal kingdom, there are certain species of mothers that actually devour their offspring. They do it for their own survival, for nourishment BUT Humans aren’t cannibals, so we devour our young for some of the same reasons self-serving, but in less primitive ways.
This personality disorder is could be categorized as narcissism. People that are narcissistic need a “source” to fuel them. What better victims than their own young, impressionable children?! Keep in mind, narcissism is only one of ten types of personality disorders and people who are abused in their formative years (0-6) tend to adapt by developing personality disorders. I think it’s pretty safe to say that most of us were raised by imperfect parents in an imperfect world, so we all have developed some coping mechanisms. The key is recognizing that you or a loved one may have a real disorder and that you need professional help.
6 Ways to Spot a Narcissistic Mother
- They don’t want to see their daughters be better than them. One of the easiest types to spot is the mother who’s very hard on her daughters, but her son lacks discipline. I won’t go as far to say is she doesn’t like her daughters, but she wants to make sure that they always revere her. She puts her son on a pedestal, so he may be more prone to developing an Oedipus Complex. Her kids are always in the finest clothes because they are little representations of her superiority. The kids are often objectified just to meet their mothers inflated self-image
- They secretly despise when their daughter makes accomplishments beyond what they did out of a fear that their child will leave them. This type of mother doesn’t understand that a good parent rears their child to succeed on their own. Remember, all of the people in this type of mother’s life serve a self-fulling purpose for her
- These women have an unhealthy attachment to their children. They try to maneuver their kids into codependency, simply so that they can caretakers into their old age.
- They don’t do well in relationships with partners with dominant personalities. They are known to be verbally abusive and sometimes physically violent, so partners that are “people pleasers” are a better fit. This breed of woman does not know how to raise a girl to be a wife because she herself was never groomed to be a wife. Now she may find a husband, again he will be an underachieving beta male that she can dominate. Consequently, they usually raise their sons with the same type of mediocrity that they look for in their men.
- They take pride their daughters becoming strong single moms. A spouse in their child’s lifme may be viewed as a major threat, and frequently responded to with rejection, criticism or competition. In the eyes of some narcissistic parents, no romantic partner is ever good enough for their offspring, and no one can ever challenge them for dominance over their child. If you’ve noticed that your parent never likes anyone you bring around, without a good reason, they may have some narcissistic traits.
- They are inherently jealous of their children’s relationships with their fathers and do everything in their power to kill that parent/child relationship when their romantic relationship with their child’s father ends. If you are co-parenting with a narcissist, God Bless you. Set firm boundaries, get a strict court order and if you can’t get full custody, do everything in your power to spend as much time with your kids as possible. They need one stable parent.
Ultimately, living alongside a narcissist is hard work. Co-parenting with a narcissistic is tough. This type of mother seeks sympathy from any audience by positioning herself as the self-sacrificial patron saint of motherhood. While it’s expected that a mom would do anything for her family, this one has an innate need to be admired and acknowledged. She’s quick to attack and when you fight back, she’s even quicker to play the victim.
It’s harder to recognize this type of mother if you yourself are in fact the narcissist in your family.
Most people raised by these types of mothers will have a hard time recognizing and admitting that they were victimized by their own mother.
The people who can easily point out a narcissistic mother are the people with the misfortune of coparenting with this woman or people that have had romantic relationships with this type of person. If this is you, I’m sure you remember the helplessness you felt when you began to recognize the narcissist in your life. Life is too short to suffer emotional abuse, so if you can escape, I commend you!
Maybe you’re a narcissist, maybe you were raised by one, maybe your partner is a narcissist. The key here is to recognize the cycle and get treatment or to completely take yourself OUT of the equation. Below are a few links on that can help you dig a little deeper, learn more facts about NPD and find help if you need it.
A personal account from a CHILD of a narcissist
10 Signs of a Narcissistic Parent
Be sure to like, follow and subscribe because next time, we will be talking about emotional intelligence and why some people just don’t have it!