NPD

NPD

 

My Mother has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

 

There are two forms of Narcissism

Healthy Narcissism -Which everyone has inside of us. We all have times when we are all narcissistic (and times when we hate ourselves) When we are dressed to the nines and feel fabulous.

Then there is Narcissistic Personality Disorder. which is permanent and destructive.

My Mothers sister (married to a millionare), her coworkers and her bosses are not subject to seeing the real Jackie because THEY are useful to her. They are her superiors. But that doesn’t stop her from talking bad about all of them behind their backs.

She picks friends, like Conservative Christian Jerry Falwell fan, Audrey because Audrey is JUST as superficial as her and there will never be any deep introspective conversations. Those of her friends, like Rita who have questioned her, get thrown away and bad mouthed. Those around her who she can't control, like my half sister (with her Psychology degree), my Fathers family, my friends parents, my school administrators and the Principal and teachers and my own therapist, who actually have confronted her with things over the years or have her figured out are immediately bad mouthed and tossed aside and forgotten.

As a side note: after my therapist diagnosed my Mom as NPD, most of the people in this
paragraph said they already figured that out or "yes, I can see that totally"

----*----

On one hand I was elated and overjoyed to finally have the answers. But on the other hand I was also extremely sad and overburdened with guilt that since I'd have to stop talking to my mother to save my sanity, I'd have to cut my sons contact with her as well. Not sad for her, but sad because yet another loss for him..

She called one day about dropping off his Christmas presents and I told her that she could come Christmas morning and watch him open presents as usual as I wanted to keep things as normal for him as possible and I could go into the other room for awhile so she could spend some time with him.

She said NO, that she wasn't gonna do that cause "he'd sense my hatred for her." I told her "No, I could be civil for an hour", she refused and it started a huge argument which ended in her once again, denying everything and saying she was a wonderful mother. She made such a huge honking deal out of these damn Christmas presents!!!
HUGE DEAL!
When all was said and done it was a single football! THAT WAS ALL! After that she stopped buying him Christmas and Birthday Presents altogether!

 

These are games that people with NPD play. If you suspect your mom is NPD, pay attention to what I describe here. Non NPD parents do not play these games.

So around this time my Mother was calling my son on Sundays and taking him out for one hour.. A few months after that she called crying giving me a half-assed apology which made it all about her and her feelings once again.

I hung up on her.
She just doesn't get it.
She didn't call at all for about 9 months after that.

Then she called my shrink out of the blue and asked him if I was still seeing him. He told her that it was against Dr/Client privilege to ask...

I cant remember if she just started calling my son on Sundays again out of the blue or what but for the past few years she was seeing him on some Sundays for one hour. Each Sunday would literally be agony for me, first of all I couldn't sleep in on Sundays as shed call at 8:30 am, second if it was up to me I'd stop him from seeing her PERIOD! I was also scared that she'd take off with him or something! I really wanted ZERO CONTACT. But I'm so torn. I mean I'm sure people wonder that if my mother is so bad and abusive etc, why did I allow her to see him at all?

I was just starting to heal and everything hadn't become crystal clear yet so I guess I figure that she couldn't fuck him up in 1 hour at Wendys and Kmart (she went no where else!) for 2 Sundays a month, if even that! She treated him like a 5 yr old not like the teenager he is! I also probably was still feeling guilty for fucking up the family and wanting Ricky to get help before resuming the relationship with my son. I beat myself up over EVERYTHING!

But then about 2006 she called on a Sunday and I hear him tell her completely unexpectedly, "Grandma this is the last time I see you, I'm bored with you" and that was that!

But even after that she STILL CALLED every Sunday for a 1 minute call! Literally 1 MINUTE! Again,
she did not respect others wishes or boundaries! She doesn't respect my wishes.

After that she got him to go out with her a few times then it stopped again. Then she called on a few Sundays and he didn't come downstairs to get the phone at all for 2 months and then after that she came to my house unannounced one Sunday morning and rang the doorbell (waking me up) he answered the door and I asked him what she came here for, he stated that she had told him that she'd call him on Saturday mornings now. She drove to my house to tell him she'd call on Saturdays.

AW HELL NAW!
NO!

She is NOT gonna call my house at 8:30 am on a Saturday to wake me up for a 1 minute phone call after he had already told her he was bored with her and stopped answering her calls...
Enough was enough!
I was going thru perimenopause and I couldn't sleep that good at night and I had to wake up at 5:30 am to get him on the bus, and if I could sleep in on weekends, it was so good for me... I had had to put up with enough from her.

Enough!

She was now playing narc games.

What she was trying to do, was make ME react, talk to her and give her Narc Supply and I was not gonna do that. So I bucked up and dealt with it.

 

Luckily AT&T fixed it for me. 

I had a cellphone and a landline. I never answered my Landline It was only for spam and telemarketers, My mom didn't know my cell #, only my landline #. 1 yr later I didn't notice that my landline had stopped ringing, I never answered the landline. One day I needed to use it and it was dead. Apparently I had missed the letter from AT&T that told me they were shutting off all residential landlines that weren't FIOS and mine was terminated for months now and the number was recycled to someone else.

 

My Mom couldn't call anymore and I WAS FREE!

SO SO HAPPY!

----*----

 

However, she then started mailing me letters, cards etc

I tossed them all in the trash.

 

Narcs will send you cheery Birthday gifts and cards.

 

"Hi sweetheart! Here's a card for your special day!"

 

HUH? I have a complicated relationship with my birthday. Since I was born to a narc, it was the worst day of my life. She should have aborted me. Cause with her as a mom, it's been HELL being me. So cheer and cupcakes and confetti are just bizarre!

 

If you have a narc for a mom, MOVE, change your address, hide all your info (Reputation.com) and leave no forwarding address. That's the only way to stop these games.

 

-----*-----

My mother has been "dating" her married boss Bob for 30+ years.
EVERYONE KNOWS IT! EVERYONE!
This is the same woman who used to (maybe still does) go to church 3 times a week and wouldn't let us say and do certain things cause they were against God.

 

My Mom dated 

The Married City Councilman she was a secretary for

My Married Father

The Married Psychologist we all went to after the divorce

Her Married Divorce Atty

Her Married Boss at Skippy Widgets

The Married Mailman

And she tried to seduce my BFF Jenns, married father.

Let me say that it's really NOT the adultery that gets to me as much as hypocrisy, and the fact that she put Bob before me in every instance and thought her children should accept it. Several times she has stood me up, hung up on me and chose him over me. You just don't do that to your own kids!

Once she tried to kick me out of the house to have him over. I told her NO! She said, "But I thought you'd understand of all people?!" HUH! WHAT?

I was once at her office and my mother was in the back and I was standing at her desk and Bob grabbed my ass. I pushed his hand off me and pushed him backwards and left. Was he thinking he could get me? Did he think I was like my Mom? UGH, hes VILE!

1 yr after I had had my son, I was very fat. Since Ricky wasn't helping me with our son I had been eating my feelings and was miserable. I had stopped by my moms office and Bob asked, "Are you pregnant again? Your looking like you are pregnant!" I was furious! I told him "fuck you asshole!", and my mother, stopped me saying "Dru don't say that I could get fired!"

WOW! Mom, JUST WOW!
Way to support your only child when she's having problems!
You suck his cock and dye his eyebrows and massage his feet and you think he's gonna fire you?

 

Where did all this inappropriate behavior and morals come from? 

She always said she had a great 1950s childhood (like Peggy Sue Gets Married)

----*----

Okay so now that you know that my Mother was diagnosed as having Narcissistic Personality
Disorder by a competent Doctor of Psychology, it will explain EVERYTHING and everything I
have told you will fall in line with that diagnosis. My mother never did any hard work in parenting because we were just dolls to her and she was playing house, even when it got bad. I think she both loved the positive narc supply from having a Girly Girl daughter like my sister and she also got Narc Supply from being pitied from having a daughter like me. BUT she caused both me and my sisters problems!!!

She never taught us anything cause she thought, as extensions of her, we knew everything already, since SHE thinks she knows everything! She let both of us languish and get ill rather than admit that she was a bad Mother and submit to others more knowledgeable about our problems and do the hard work. I think she wanted us to be physically and mentally ill so we'd never be better than or outshine her.
She blamed Me for her bad parenting skills.
etc etc etc
___________________

---About Narcissistic Personality Disorder---
Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder are two different things. Plain old Narcissism is
just being conceited and egotistical, it is the trait thats named after the Greek youth Narcissus
who saw his reflection in a pond and fell in love. NPD spawned from Narcissism, but went
further. NPD is something that is not curable. People who suffer from NPD do NOT love
themselves or anyone! They also do not believe they have a problem, they blame everyone else.
NPDers are very superficial people, rarely can you hold a deep meaningful conversation with
them.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder Symptoms
* grandiosity / exaggeration
* fantastic thinking / romantic
* believes they are special / unique
* requires admiration
* entitled / demanding
* exploitive / manipulative
* lacks empathy
* envious / jealous
* arrogant / haughty
Children who are raised by NPD sufferers basically are very damaged people. All the tools and
teachings normal parents instill in their children are absent in an NPD home. NPD mothers view
their children as extensions of themselves, not real live human beings with autonomy and
individuality. They are more like DOLLS to the Mother, dressed up in pretty outfits, played with
and put down when bored. The children are never allowed to have their own opinions or a
voice.
-----------------------------------------

So, where did my wing of this family become dysfunctional?

It started with Grandma.

My Grandmother was a tiny greying blonde haired whisp of an Olive Oyl woman. She never said anything deep, was a smoker, dressed in old peoples clothes. Mainly drop waisted print dresses. She owned no pants or jeans or sneakers..When I look back she was as if we shopped at the Pathmark in the No Frills section for Grandmas. She was just and only a Grandma. No discernible personality,  no anything. Just a Grandma. I cannot recall a single story she told, a single joke she said, never a view or opinion on anything. After Grandpa died and before and after my mom went to college, Grandma I can faithfully say, never owned a battery operated boyfriend... She was just a Grandma. She was Ukrainian/Polish. Had a picture of Pope John Paul and an envelope of holy wafers in the china cabinet and Paska Bread from Kjys Bakery on the table at Easter time.

So how did this non descript taciturn bland woman, with zero interests or personality, destroy her family?

I have no doubt that maybe very very early in my Grandmas childhood, she was a child with dreams. But, as it was the Great Depression, and my Grandma who was the oldest of 20 in a Scranton Polish/Ukraine CATHOLIC Family,  was pulled out of school in the 4th grade to stay home with her mom to help raise all the babies that started coming. However, THEY all got to go to school, except for Grandma. Grandma raised all 19 of her siblings in the coal town of Scranton, Pa, most definitely with little food and little money.

So, my Grandma suffered devastation, losing her schooling and future, and never got to enjoy her life, learn, grow, or have a life. Plus with just a 4th grade education she was very very self conscious about her intelligence. Plus she had a slight stutter.

So my exciting and adventurous Grandpa came along and took her away from all that and they got married. In 1938-1940s women were ONLY wives and moms. So in spite of Grandma having just been liberated from raising her 19 younger siblings and being free, Grandma got pregnant with my mom, and I believe Grandma took all her life's frustrations out on my mom. Even in my mom's adulthood, I saw the needling and nitpicking.

What happens when a parent is hyper critical towards a very very young child, that child starts developing a Fantasy Self that they can escape into. And if the "abuse" continues, sometimes the authentic self gets killed off and gets permanently replaced by the Fantasy self, and this is how Narcissistic Personality Disorder happens, and this usually occurs at or around age 6. Which is why most Narcs behave like 6 yr olds.

Everything a narc does, is play acting. If they have children, they parent as if they are playing house. If they get married, its like playing Barbie and Ken (before the movie) Over histrionic, over emotive, over the top. But all fake.

Kids are mere dolls to them. Dolls have no feelings, brains, guts... Dolls mouths don't speak. Dolls can be put down and forgotten for weeks. Dolls don't grow up and go to real school or college. Dolls never talk back...Dolls don't have issues nor do they ask for help.

Same thing for the rest of a narcs life, they are like ROBOTS with interchangeable dialogue cartridges, like Home, School, Office, Vacation, and Dating, Cartridges, each full of the most basic, generic every day conversational speech. If your personality is fake, your world is fake.  This is why all narcs have the same speech patterns and language.

Narcs engage in something called SPLITTING. Which is black and white thinking. It's either one extreme or the other. No nuances exist in splitting...This, combined with the fake personality and fake world and Narcs love of religion (they use it to bolster their fucked up opinions) and you have a parent who has no idea how to parent actual children and not dolls. And if you don't know how to parent real kids, then you certainly don't know how to parent daughters who are individualistic, freespirited strongwilled tomboys.

If a narc has a daughter, she's just a pretty girl doll, and she needs to stay a pretty girl doll. She's supposed to wear dresses and have nice long blonde hair and she's supposed to sit in the tiny chair in the playroom in front of the tiny table and serve up fake tea and fake cookies. When the narc graduates to Barbies and Kens, those Barbies need to have the fake career, cardboard and plastic 3 story condo with pool, Barbie Corvette and fake life. There's no real food in a dolls life, so you never really have to clean. A Doll doesn't have opinions and a doll has one job, to sit in a chair or stroller or lay down in a doll bed...... And look pretty.

And thus was me and my sisters lives in the very late 60s.... Being dressed up in cute clothes, carted around and shown off at my uncles restaurant.

If you are a very young child, a narcissistic parent is fantastic. You get dressed up, and doted on. But as soon as you start showing any small sign of NOT being a doll, having autonomy, being different etc, the narc parent will start turning on you. If you are a NarcMomRobot, like my Mother, who only wanted feminine girly girl daughters, there are no SIM Expansion Cartridges to deal with the fact that one of your daughters is a strongwilled tomboy, so the NarcMomRobots hard drive defaults to nothing and you get ignored.

My older sister played along with our mom and became the Golden Child. But I was a mudpie loving, strongwilled tomboy with opinions. I became the Scapegoat.  In the fake SIM world of the Narcissistic Parent, there are simply no expansion cartridges to deal with girls who love mudpies. So the TomBoy is a glitch! And must be punished and dealt with. The NarcMomRobots built in malware software continuously tries to kill off and destroy the descending child.

In a normal, non NarcMomRobot headed family, the Tomboy with ideas, uniqueness and talent would be elevated, nurtured and prized. 

This concept that I have tried to describe here is Key to most things wrong with narcissists parenting children. And why I'm so fucked up.

----*----

My mother has 2 faces, a public one, and a private one.

The public one is always nice nice nice.

If you know her, haven't you noticed she never gets angry. never cusses, never is passionate about any issues, or politics...That's because my Mother isn't her authentic self. Shes a NarcMomRobot. My ex-Psychologist sister Janet pointed it out after our Fathers funeral, "She is a totally superficial person! She has no real personality, She is who she THINKS she needs to be, in order to get along in society, instead of being who she is."

Cause she doesn't know who she is ...
Her mothers hypercriticalness stifled her natural growth as a human.  I know this to be true cause truly NICE thoughtful people who buy countless cards for others (like my mom does) do not turn around and talk bad about everyone that they supposedly like so much during the day at work that they buy those cards etc. for.

Its called being two-faced.

I started noticing it when I was 7 or 8. It started with the "Only white trash people eat their eggs with ketchup!" statement from her, then it was, "People who live in Aston and Boothwyn don't eat fresh vegetables" and then "Only bad mothers feed their kids Hamburger Helper" (when my mother rarely cooked her own kids dinner after the divorce, we had to fend for ourselves)

It then progressed to her bosses, co-workers and their families. She never talked bad about Bob, but she did talk bad about everyone else, their wives and their kids. She bashed his wife so he'd sleep with HER. That's her game. She heavily bashed Bobs wife, Bobs kids, Dick, Dicks wife and kids, Sam & his wife etc She was always heavily bashing Dick and his kids for their "aches and pains" and headaches, needing Tylenol etc. Insinuating that they were weak and faking it and didn't really need pain killers.

 

Its not snark, its hate

She always bashed people who needed anxiety drugs as faking it. But more often it was the wives and the way they raise their kids getting bashed. Blamed my moms Bosses wife Becky for her own kids being dumb. Chided Becky for cooking an all white meal. Saying, "Stupid Becky made baked chicken, mashed
potatoes and Cauliflower for dinner! Shes so vanilla! shes not exciting at all" My mother hates other women, she hates soccer mom types, people with happy marriages. She thinks she's better then everyone else. She thinks she's the best cook, the most interesting, the most creative, everything she does is so adorable.

When you are a kid and raised around that type of snobbish negativity where regular mothers and other females are bashed and slammed by your own mom, and you are given false ignorant info about the world...you mimic it and it creates a false view of other women and mothers. For years I actually believed everything she said about Women and Moms and other people. I was 28 when I was spoutin off at the mouth online on a womens board about how bad moms make Hamburger Helper and put their kids in day care...on and on and on.... And let me tell YOU I got my ass schooled.

That was another pivotal moment for me when my mothers brainwashing started slipping away...

By the way, I LOVE Hamburger Helper now...
 

 My fave flavor.
 

-----------------------------------
Narcissists are psychologically stuck at age 6.

"Now We Are Six"
[Apologies to A. A. Milne.]
If you had a narcissist for a parent, you lived in a world governed by whim enforced without
mercy.
Narcissists have normal, even superior, intellectual development while remaining emotionally and morally immature. Dealing with them can give you the sense of trying to have a reasonable discussion with a very clever six-year-old -- this is an age when normal children are grandiose and exhibitionistic, when they are very resistant to taking the blame for their own misbehavior, when they understand what the rules are (e.g., that lying, cheating, and stealing are prohibited) but are still trying to wriggle out of accepting those rules for themselves. This is the year, by the way, when children were traditionally thought to reach the age of reason and when first communions (and first confessions) were made.

Having a narcissist for a mother is a lot like living under the supervision of a six-year-old. Narcissists are always pretending, and with a narcissistic mother it's a lot like, "Let's play house. I'll pretend to be the mother and you pretend to be the baby," though, as the baby, you'll be expected to act like a doll (keep smiling, no matter what) and you'll be treated like a doll -- as an inanimate object, as a toy to be manipulated, dressed and undressed, walked around and have words put in your mouth; something that can be broken but not hurt, something that will be dropped and forgotten when when something more interesting comes along. With narcissists, there's also usually a fair element of "playing doctor," as well -- can also come out as "hypochondriacal" worries about the child's health and/or being most interested and attentive when the child is ill (thus teaching the child that the way to get Mother's kind attention is to get
sick). Having a sick child can also be a way for the narcissistic mother to get the sympathetic attention of authority figures, such as doctors and teachers.
(http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/six.html)
----------------------------------

The children of NPDers are basically DOLLS. When children are babies and toddlers they serve the purpose of being those dolls very efficiently. You can feed them bottles, change their diapers, play with them like dolls (kinda) dress them up in cute outfits, read to them, put em in the play strollers and wheel em around the neighborhood to get smiles and praise from elderly neighbors at how cute their baby is....

 

Babies and toddlers really don't talk back or have any opinions or autonomy yet.

 

This is why NPD Parents make good parents in the first few years of a child's life, Its a narcissists dream those first few years.

BUT

As soon as the child starts showing individual lines of thought, opinion, or rocks the boat, the narcissistic parent can no longer relate and doesn't wanna play with the "doll" anymore! From 1st grade on, narcissistic parents just coexist with their kids, unless they are the narcissists favorite child, then they get to constantly be fawned over.

Since they behave like 6 yr olds even though they are capable of renting an apartment, and getting a job and being successful -- adult mature concepts of etiquette, normal behavior and social norms fail them.

Since they behave like 6 yr olds REAL work in Parenting is ignored and never done while the superficial work (such as pretending) is enthusiastically done.

Example: The hard work of teaching Dana and making her responsible and teaching her to take good care of her own diabetes and being disciplined was too hard, but my mother relished the times she could pretend to be the dutiful Mom when my sister had to be in the hospital. Those were times she SHINED!

Again, if a 6 yr olds dolly breaks its arm off, she will cry and run and get an adult to fix it, and lay
the tears on thick to get attention, but wont fix the dollys arm herself. They also don't teach their kids anything...Why should they? They apparently know EVERYTHING themselves and can do everything and since they view their children as EXTENSIONS of themselves and they themselves know how to do things they believe their kids know it all too.

For example: we'd go to the Mall and my mother would tell me to meet back at the Pizza place at 2:00pm. I was always late by a half hour. My mother was always pissed off and yelled at me. but did she ever give me a watch, or sit me down and teach me how to tell time?

NO
Yet this happened repeatedly time and time again and it was ME who'd get in trouble.

I was 7.

----*----

Since they behave like 6 yr olds they need to have people do things for them and playing helpless is a source of narcissistic supply. 

 

I have heard that my Aunt is pissed at me cause "I don't give my mother any money"...

 

Lets clear up some misconceptions about my mother, me, money and the like.

1) Years ago in the early 1980's, Cosmopolitan magazine ran an article about "What kind of Personality or Woman are you?" My mother tore out the one page that listed "Fragile" It was the kind of article that MOST women would NOT want to be thought of as FRAGILE, but my mother WANTED TO. Spoke volumes as to who my mother WANTS to be. Simply put SHE WANTS TO BE A FRAGILE, HELPLESS MARTYR VICTIM!

2) My mother got a VCR, I refused to hook it up for her because I wanted her to at least try to hook it up, on her own to make her feel good about herself cause its very easy and I knew she could do it. She refused to try and somehow it got hooked up and probably got Bob to come over to hook it up.

3) My Mother asked for nothing in the divorce.

4) Shortly after my parents got divorced my father told my mother to go look for a house and he'd buy it for her. We drove all over the place looking at lil houses and condos only to have her decline the offer, cause she "couldn't find anything she liked"...

WTF! You chose SOMETHING! You get it in your name and you don't have to pay rent, just a mortgage and you take it off on your taxes and you have equity. And then you don't have to bitch about rent or money and you can be a big girl.

5) Lets just be blunt and honest, my mom stays at Skippy Widgets cause shes fucking Bob and Skippy Widgets is always tied to Bob, no matter if he works there, or not.
Plain and simple!
She would rather fuck Bob than go get a better job paying more money.

6) Over the years I have repeatedly bought my Mother things (and given her some money) only to have her give them away or use the money to buy Bob things. Once I gave her a handheld CB radio to keep in her car in case of an emergency and taught her how to use it, only to later buy her a cellphone and request the CB back to then be told she gave it to her friend Martha for Goodwill.

I also gave her brown paper lunch bags with crossword puzzles on them to have fun at HER work with, because I knew how much she enjoyed doing crosswords with her co-workers. One day I was stopped in the hallway of her apartment by her NEW neighbor Beverley (5 years after I had moved out) thanking me for the lunch bags I gave her daughter!!! Why would I buy someone I didnt know anything? My mother made me look LOONY! So no I stopped giving her things & money.

7) Right after my fathers death, my Mother out of the blue said to me, "Gimme $4000.00!" I was taken aback and asked her what for? "For car insurance your father always paid it" I declined her "request" I didn't even have that in my bank account at the time. First of all I found out my moms yearly car insurance was only $800.00
AND
They'd been divorced at that time for 14 years. Why was my father still paying her insurance?

8) I had repeatedly encouraged my mother to leave her job and get something better and to stand up for herself, and shed half assed try then things would go back to normal. Interesting how I always tried to encourage HER to be a strong capable woman, but she never did it for ME!

9) About 2 years later, spurred on by some of the things she was doing at the time and classes she was taking, I decided to offer my mother $25,000.00 to start her own business. She declined! Sure I probably could have just given her the money for herself BUT I couldn't see doing that when over and over again she'd give things I gave her away etc.

I believe that she LOVES playing the Martyr, plain and simple. She loves whining about money
and everything cause it gets her attention.
And that is the key to Narcissism, ATTENTION and creating Drama. 

Talking a lot and doing nothing!