Archive for mother daughter relationship
Narcissism vs. Narcissistic re Mother Daughter Relationship Problems
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Narcissism vs. Narcissistic in Mother Daughter Relationship Problems
Someone on the EFB facebook page wrote (in a comment to someone else) that I say that my mother is a narcissist and that she was mentally ill. I have never actually said that. I have said that my mother has narcissistic tendencies. I don’t actually think that my mother is a narcissist OR that she is mentally ill. (I don’t give much weight to the way the ‘mentally ill’ diagnosis is used in our society. I recovered by realizing that my depressions were a result of ‘what happened to me’ and that they had become an ineffective coping method for me.) Having said that, my mother suffers from depressions and she has for years and for the most part she has behaved towards me in a way that communicated that she thinks that she is more important than I am. She is disrespectful when it comes to me and she reacts to me in narcissistic ways communicating that my needs are not as valid as hers.
Her actions towards me are very discounting but that doesn’t make her a narcissist. Those things don’t make my mother a narcissist simply because she isn’t the same way with everyone. If my mother is a narcissist, there is a lot of evidence that she is able to control it. At best I might say that when it comes to the way my mother regards ME, she leans toward narcissistic tendencies.
A true mental health disorder is not controllable. People who have a true disorder can’t turn it on and turn it off. They can’t convince other people that they are wonderful and then in the privacy of home treat their own children like dirt. It doesn’t work that way. True narcissists are not Read More→
‘What Goes Around Comes Around’ used as a Fear and Compliance Tactic
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when abusers state “even God says you are wrong”
It amazes me what people think I will publish on this website. Emerging from Broken is about healing from abuse and neglect. It is about overcoming and healing from the damage after having been discounted, devalued and defined by the statements and actions of carless and for the most part unloving people. It is about having to submit to the thoughts and value system of our elders, parents, grandparents, grandparents, teachers or any others who placed their importance above ours.
I got this comment this week from Nancy on one of articles I wrote about my mother and our dysfunctional mother daughter relationship. I am highlighting it today because it is such a good example of toxic mother behaviour and attitudes. Children should “know their place” and “what goes around comes around”. This comment is so typical of what we were/are told and how we were/are treated.
Nancy is the very angry mother of a daughter who drew a boundary. At first her comment communicates that the boundary her daughter is drawing is unfair. That she as a mother has done nothing but support her daughter and now she is being called selfish and accused of doing things with a wrong motive. She justifies her behaviour, all the while denying that she ever did anything wrong. But then her comments which I have highlighted in bold print reveal a different story. I read this comment several times and each time I saw with more clarity the depth of the manipulation and the disgusting (and false) belief system of the writer.
Nancy writes: (Note: I did not edit this comment)
To all of you young ladies who claim abuse, I am the 64 yr old mother of a 28 year old who claims she needs to stay away from me because i have so abused her. Now mind you, she’s not talking about hitting her or yelling at her, or telling her she is a worthless so and so that I don’t love her. No. She says I am selfish because I did all i could to help her pursue her interests and was right there in the front row clapping and encouraging her. Apparently according to her, I was doing all this in order to live through her and so I would look good in others peoples eyes that my daughter was such a success. What a bunch of BS!!!!! So let me get this straight, we parents are accused of being abusive no matter what we do!!! Is that right Get over yourslves. Your parents did the best they could and you just want to whine about your unhappiness and blame and it on the easiest target you can find. Your mother. What goes around comes around. Come back after your kids are grown and reject you for these rediculous “charges” because what goes around comes around. The Bible says “honor your mother and father that YOU will live long.” There’s nothing in there about honoring you children. In fact it says “spare the rod, spoil the child”. You are all spoiled and ungrateful and are cruel if you keep your children and parents estranged.
Nancy”
I put the most important part of her comments in BOLD print. This is where the ‘truth leaks” are about the belief system of this angry mother. Let’s take a closer look;
~”What goes around comes around” ~to warn the daughter that whatever ever she is doing to her mother now, will happen to her; that the daughters children are going to do this to her BECAUSE of what she is ‘doing’ to her mother.
~ “Come back after your kids are grown and reject you for these ridiculous “charges” because what goes around comes around”. ~ This is used as a threat to inspire FEAR. But fear of what? If I treated my children with the same disregard and disrespect that my mother treated me with, then I guess I could expect this same rejection from my kids. But it is not because I stood up to my mother that I need to have fear in Read More→
How to Recognize when Your Best Interests are NOT Considered
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Sometimes I get comments from people that are so filled with judgement that I don’t even consider publishing them. I am sharing the following comment with you today because it is a fantastic example of the judgement that is out there in the world about what we reveal when it comes to our dysfunctional family stuff. I didn’t publish this comment on the post it came in on~ I didn’t see the point in giving this woman a voice and her comment is so ridiculous ~ especially since it is from this total stranger who doesn’t know me, my story or my family.
This comment speaks volumes about her judgements; she really thinks that she knows my family history and sides with my father. She offers proof that I misunderstood my father’s intentions and decides that it is up to me to mend this broken fence. She absolves my father of all responsibility for the abandonment that I suffered at his hands.
And because this kind of lecture is SO common, and since we have been hearing this kind of stuff since childhood, it is easy to get sucked into this kind of judgement and “feel bad” for MY actions; or at least it might have made me feel bad 5 years ago. Today I was shocked. I thought “how the heck does this woman KNOW anything about my parents or what happened in my family or to my mother? Why does she think she knows anything about my father, his decisions, his actions or his intentions?
I didn’t publish this comment on the post where she left it because this kind of stuff heaps more damage on the already damaged reader. I am publishing it today to highlight a typical example of what survivors of abuse and dysfunctional family stuff hear all the time from Read More→
I Avoided the Pain of Abuse by Altering the Truth
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I convinced myself of many things in order to cope with child abuse, emotional abuse and being defined as less important than others in my life.
I was unable to cope with the truth so I changed the truth to suit me. I learned how to view “unhealthy attention” as though it was healthy and validating in order to cope with my dysfunctional world the way that it was and by doing so I was able to pretend that my world was actually functional. I found a way to believe that I was special.
But in order to feel loved and to believe that I had at least some degree of self worth, I had to change my understanding of the word “special”. I had to warp my definition of that word in order to fit it to the actual circumstances. The things I accepted as “proof” and validation that I was “special” became pretty sick and unhealthy.
I remember when I was about 13 or 14 years old, my mother started Read More→
Dysfunctional Family Christmas and Giving the Wrong Gift
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- the wrong gift
The Ghost of Dysfunctional Christmas Past ~ Part 2
How come I could NEVER find the right gift for my Mother? I never seemed to be able to make her happy. My Christmas gifts as well as any other gifts I found for her never had the desired effect one wants when giving a gift to someone.
There was always this disappointment she showed when she opened a gift from me. Her face would fall. She would look uncomfortable. She wouldn’t say much about whatever I had chosen for her. I agonized over what I would get her, and then I worried about it until the day I gave it to her. I dreaded her reaction. I guess I was hoping that her face would light up. I was hoping for approval.
I got so that I HATED thinking about what she might like for a gift and what I should get her. There was so much anxiety around gift giving that I couldn’t actually concentrate on the celebration itself. There was so much “obligation” around all these events that I didn’t understand back then.
My mother never made it easy for me by pointing out or mentioning a specific gift she wanted. It was as if my “guessing what the right gift would be to get for her” was part of what would make her happy. It was a though if she “told” me what she wanted, that would ruin it. In order for the gift to be “special”, I had to Read More→
Toxic Mother Daughter Relationship and Oprah Winfrey’s Mother
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Seeing through New Eyes
This article is based on a page from the unauthorized biography “Oprah a biography by Kitty Kelley”
When I grabbed this book of the shelf at Costco, I didn’t realize that it was an unauthorized biography about Oprah Winfrey. I thought that it was the real story. I thought that Oprah had agreed to the publication. I quickly realized that I had picked up something that might be full of lies and conclusions that had no right to be drawn; but since I bought it, I decided to read it anyway.
One of the most popular subjects here on Emerging from Broken is the subject of dysfunctional and toxic relationships between mothers and daughters. I think that as humans we are born craving love, community and acceptance from our mothers and when it appears that our mothers hate us, disapprove of us, judge us or generally never seem to love and accept us… it is a mystery that we are attracted to solving. I want my mother to LOVE me. I want a relationship with my mother. But I got tired of how the entire burden of that desire was left up to me with zero accountability on the part of my mother.
I came across a part in Kitty Kelley’s book about Oprah Winfrey that bugged me a great deal. I realize that this is an unauthorized biography, but the example that I found about dysfunctional and toxic mother daughter relationship was so good, that I just could not resist writing about it for Emerging from Broken. It shows the way that society Read More→
I Vowed I Would Never be like my Selfish Unloving Mother
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stormy mother daughter relationship
I used to live waiting to be good enough. I thought ~ “as soon as YOU say that I am important, then I will be important. When you say that I am lovable, then I will be lovable. When YOU say that I am worthy then I will BE worthy”. Deep down I believed that someone else would determine my value. I had to learn to stop operating under those beliefs. I had to stop seeing myself through the unloving eyes of others.
When I was 14 years old, I vowed that I would never be like my selfish, unloving, self centered mother. That was a serious vow and that memory is one of the clearest memories that I have. I don’t remember what happened the day that I made that vow but I remember it was one of the only promises that I ever made to myself. I knew somehow that our mother daughter relationship was dysfunctional and that my mother was on the toxic side, I just didn’t know what I could do about it, or how long lasting and deep the effects of her way of relating to me would be.
When I went through my process of recovery from dysfunctional relationships, I took a closer look at the vow I made to never be like my toxic mother. I asked myself what that meant to me and what specifically I had been referring to back then. I saw my mother as someone who didn’t care about others and cared about herself too much. She didn’t care about me. She discounted my feelings and she discounted my needs. She was disloyal and Read More→
My Parents did the Best they Could According to Who
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My Mother made me do a lot of housework and dishes when I was a teenager. I cooked supper almost every night from the age of 13 years old. I didn’t get allowance. I didn’t acknowledgement unless it was because I was grumbling against being the one that had to do it all.
But that is not what I am talking about in my blog when I talk about dysfunctional family relationships and mother daughter relationship difficulties.
I am not blogging about how life was unfair because my mother took advantage of me, didn’t let me stay for after school events because she needed me to cook and didn’t give me an allowance. That was a very minor part of my difficulties. Although those were the resentments that I could recall easily, those were not the real roots of the problem.
The real roots of the problem were much bigger than that. The real roots of the parent child dysfunction were about Read More→
Definitions of Dysfunctional Mother Daughter Relationship
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My mother didn’t want a child. My mother wanted a dolly that would “give back”. She wanted some “thing” to fuss over and to cuddle with for a short time, and then it was as if she expected me to fulfill her needs because she filled mine for a while. To fill her needs ~ as though I could fill the empty space where she was lacking self value and love. My mother placed a great deal of expectations on me right from the start, and I didn’t live up to even one of them.
It was as though I owed her something because I was born. Right from the start, this is the definition of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship and the false definition of love. Right out of the womb, my mother acted as though she believed that I was going to make her life better and that I owed her for mine. This was proven over and over again as I went through life and she continually expressed her Read More→
My Mother Finally wanted to BE My Mother
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When my second child was born, my mother said that she wanted to “be there for me”. She said that she wanted to really do something FOR ME and she offered to make the seven hour drive over the mountains to our home to help me in the final days before labor, and help me to take care of my 21 month old son.
I was thrilled. Finally my mother wanted to BE MY MOTHER! I felt closer to her in those phone calls planning her visit then I had ever felt before that time.
I started to have some complication with my hips. My legs were giving out from under me and I needed more bed rest. I was confident that my mother would agree to come a bit earlier then we had planned and I called her up with the news and my request. She hesitated. Her familiar voice, the one that I had come to hate as it was laced with disappointment, responded Read More→
