Hi everyone, I’m new to the forum and I have been reading many good posts about dealing with and being responsible for a narcissistic mother. Mine is an abusive, psychotic, habitually lying monster, always has been. As a child, she told me “I wish you had never been born,” “you ruined my life by being born,” and “You’re dead to me.” I had a member of my so-called family insist she wanted to take care of my mother, that is until that individual ended up in prison (sentenced for 54 years…GOOD!) for sexually assaulting and molesting her own daughter. As you can see, my family are all a bunch of dysfunctional guttersnipes.
I joined the military to escape my family. I served for over 20 years, married, had a wonderful son, a great career and lived on the other side of the country from my horrible mother. After retiring from the military, I earned my Master’s degree (the only person in my family to do so), went back to work for the government and started a new, happy life. That all ended in 2017 when I had to give up my career and life to relocate and take care of a mother who is a narcissistic, petulant 5 year old trapped in the body of a 78 year old monster. She’s so rotten, her grandchildren (including my son) want absolutely nothing to do with her. Since 2017, my physical, emotional, spiritual and mental health has been a downward spiral and I now have both a psychotherapist and a psychiatrist to help me. Sometimes it feels like that doesn’t work. The only good thing about my situation is I have my own house so I have separation from my mother. I would probably go completely off a cliff if I didn’t. She lives two doors down from me and I call her twice a day (45 second phone calls) to see if she’s breathing. I have become isolated, I have no friends here, I have lived with depression for 6 years now and am terrified that my life is wasting away being here, living an unwanted life, caring for a woman I don’t want to have anything to do with. She abused my sister and me equally as children and put us both on bad trajectories for becoming adults. Thankfully, I chose a different path from my sister: she got into drugs, alcohol, abusive relationships with men and developed bipolar disorder, PTSD and never matured beyond the age of 14. She was so badly abused by my mother (my mother had specific/succinct punishment styles for each of us), she ran away from home at 14 and her growth/evolution stopped.
My sister died last year at the young age of 59 and I blame my mother for destroying her as a child. She never recovered. That was my mother’s mission: to destroy my sister and me. It was folly for her. She enjoyed being cruel to us. My narcissist mother never celebrated any of my achievements, berates me now for my accomplishments, and yet praises the individual in prison every time she completes a prison class or course. She’s also befriended two other prisoners, incarcerated for murdering an elderly man, and insists they are not bad people and don’t deserve the sentence they were given. And yet, I am treated terribly by my mother, as if I am a horrible human being. She talks about me behind my back and tells awful lies about me to receive sympathy, praise from other people and to get people on her side.
There are probably people out there who think I am a terrible person because of her. I used to be empathetic but I have burned through my empathy and depleted my empathy reserves. I despise my mother, the thought of having to be around her, see her or listen to her habitual lies just fuels my depression and all I think about is how I can’t wait for her to die so I can be released from this unwanted obligation and find my happiness, peace and joy again. Does anyone have any tips that helped you to deal with a psychopath, narcissistic mother whose sole purpose has been to bring nothing but abuse, misery, cruelty, violence and suffering to her children? Thank you for taking the time to read my post. It’s really helpful and much appreciated.
Think about that. Why did you feel your own mental health and life wasn’t worth having? Why do you not matter?
Really you became the little girl who wanted mom’s love. And that need to be loved by a parent is very deep. Your feelings didn’t matter. You tried to make her happy with you. And you’re still trying. Even with being abused daily.
YOU MATTER. She does not.
Your mother has no power or authority over you. She doesn’t love you. Never did. Never will. It’s her loss. She’s a bitter, evil hag. Your life matters more than begging her for love. She stole your whole childhood and your self esteem. Do not let her steal years of your adult life anymore.
Just be honest with her. “Mom, you obviously don’t like me being here. Hell, you never liked me for being born! So I will call APS, pack my stuff, and I will be out of your life so you can finally be happy.” Could also give her a heads up: “Mom, I’ve found a new place to live and am moving next month. So you have a month to find someone to take over.” She’ll rage; let her. You’re outta there.
NeedHelpWithMom
Please don't trivialize what your family of rapists and child abusers are by calling them guttersnipes. A guttersnipe is a scruffy and badly behaved child who spends most of their time on the street. Would you really compare a badly behaved child to the physical, emotional and sexual child abusers in your family tree?
"That all ended in 2017 when I had to give up my career and life to relocate and take care of a mother who is a narcissistic, petulant 5 year old trapped in the body of a 78 year old monster."
Why you would choose to give up your entire life for your abuser? News flash you don't have to wait for your abuser to die before you decide to cut her and your other family members out of your life for good.
Here's my tip: Cut off all contact with your mother. You owe her nothing. You have no obligation to see or take care of or help your abuser. It is sick that you live 2 doors down from your abuser and that you call her twice a day to see if she is still breathing. Move away from her ASAP and get your life back.
You have a therapist and psychiatrist. The therapist should be helping you to take the necessary steps to extricate yourself from this situation. Why aren't they?
Having said this, change doesn’t usually happen overnight. I certainly hope that the OP will find a way to change her situation.
If needed, she should look into finding a new therapist. One that specifically specializes in these things.
NHWM
That's all the advice you really need. Your professional counselors should be able to lead you through this situation, and you CAN do it. Good luck as you make another positive change in your life.
While I was packing my father arrived. He hated her, but because he had become a serious clinical depressive (my mother said "Depression is just another word for laziness and stupidity") he seemed incapable of leaving or protecting himself. He begged me to come back and "apologize" because otherwise she'd take it out on HIM. I loved my Pop, but he continually threw ME to the lions to protect himself. I did go back. It was torture.
There is much more to this story. After my father died my mother, who could be VERY charming, got two nice guys, a gay couple, to take care of her. At one point she told them she was going to have her bathroom redone -- could she move in with them for a few weeks? They reluctantly said yes. She moved in with them and immediately sold her house. They had been brought up to be kind to the elderly and so let her stay. The older of the two, a formerly healthy guy of 48, died two years later in bed; he had begun to have stress-related heart trouble and cried daily because of her cruelty. On the night he died she called me immediately. I could hear Joe, his partner, crying "Howard! Wake up, wake up!" Her only words to me were "Howard's dead. I am NOT going to a home." Not a word of sorrow or sympathy for Joe.
My father had left a WWII pistol. Poor Joe gave it to the police; he was afraid he'd shoot himself. I got the priest at her church to visit her with a few friendly members. They tried to talk to her about the religious compassion of going to assisted living and freeing Joe. She said immediately "Joe doesn't need a life. He has me. He can't kick an old crippled lady out." Joe's family had immigrated from Mexico and had the strong Latino tradition of caring for the elderly. All of them tried to help, but my mother nearly drove all of them mad. I would have tried to help but she hated me and told everyone I was an "unnatural demon" and would not have let me in the door.
My therapist and primary doc both advised me to just cut it off. She had made ME a helpless depressive like my father. So for the last two years of her life I talked daily to Joe, but not to her; I estranged myself from her, and it saved my life. After she died I gave Joe my entire inheritance and after a bad period of misusing drugs, he got therapy, lived with his loving family, met a new man and started a life. She had killed my father and Howard and nearly killed Joe and me. If she hadn't died (at 89) I'm sure Joe would have committed suicide.
My story isn't nearly as awful as yours, but the lesson to me was that you can't and must not stay with a cruel narcissist. When she died I felt free, although I still have many wounds that I deal with in therapy. Anti-depressants don't help much. I don't have any real advice (in spite of the length of this story) except "Leave. Move away and stop calling. Save yourself. Kindness does not require that you kill yourself for this terrible person."
I'm so sorry that you thought you "had' to take care of your mother. You didn't. You don't.
Figure out with the help of your therapist how to leave and get back to living.
There is a book called Boundaries, by Townsend and Cloud. Get it. Read it.
Read this:
https://www.agingcare.com/discussions/if-you-are-going-to-become-a-caregiver-480769.htm?orderby=recent
That being said - I also know from experience how very hard it is for the children of narcissists to break away from their narcissistic parent's control. I have watched my DH and SIL scramble for YEARS to please their father, trying desperately to make him happy, to provide care for an argumentative, angry, lazy, miserable old man who wants everyone to be as miserable as he is, and who believe that everyone - most especially his children were put on earth to do his bidding and meet his needs alone.
From the perspective of an outsider who has watched this happen for years and tried desperately to protect someone I love from a narcissist - I don't know what to say except that you have to do everything in your power to shore up your own self-esteem- completely independent of what she thinks and says. Because a narcissistic parent spends the formative years grooming their children - and make no mistake - they do groom. They take the years when they should be protecting their children from predators and become the predator themselves. They indoctrinate and condition their children to do their will, without question. And they make sure that their children do not believe that THEY themselves are deserving of anything. That anything the parent does for them is much more than they could ever deserve.
You do not owe your mother anything. If you feel you must somehow provide care for her, the more distance you can put between yourself and her, the better off you will be. Narcissistic abuse is a very real thing. It can do very real damage. Lasting damage.
And I hate to say this - but narcissism gets worse as their sphere of influence shrinks. And if you add in dementia or even just age related cognitive decline - layered on narcissism - it typically just gets uglier. Manipulation, trying to control what they may still have the ability to control, anger, rage, memory loss.
And the worst part. The LIES. The lies. As someone gets into those "protected class" age ranges - and their lies get worse - it can put you at risk. You have to look out for yourself.
You desperately need to distance yourself. If that means a nursing home or assisted living at some point, then so be it. You cannot be the one to hands on caregive.
I also discovered something: every so often someone (except for Howard and Joe) would have some insight about what she was trying to do to them and would LEAVE. This happened to a home nurse who saw her once a week. She could be extremely charming and seductive, and that's what she did to him. She also started trying to FORCE him to convert to her church. He had a family who were devout members of a different church and they began to try to save him...not because my mother's religion was bad, but because it would separate him from them, and also because for my mother, it would have become a cult (of her) and not just a church. He wised up (after converting), converted back, and refused to see her again. Narcissists don't manage to overwhelm everyone -- perhaps the ones they succeed with have been brought up (as Howard and Joe were) to be extremely caring with the elderly, or (like me and my father) had been deliberately moulded to do what she wanted.
I think it's a good education for people who are young to identify narcissists and refuse to fall for their control games. Most of us are kind and see the troubles of the elderly and want to help. That is just what a narcissist is looking for.
Betskand
What specifically do you feel you need to do for your mother? From your profile, all you mentioned is that she has some anxiety - so, it doesn't seem as though it's necessary for you to live near her - is that correct? Anything necessary can be done remotely - such as ordering groceries - or getting her assistance to check in on her other than you. You actually owe her NOTHING. You are under NO OBLIGATION to you - EVER. Seriously.
If you did nothing for her and walked away now, that would be great. She sounds horrible. That ideally needs to be your goal. You need to take this time for YOU. Whatever you need to do to repair your life of the past few years...and if that means moving and trying to regain whatever aspects of your life that you gave up, then that is what you need to focus on for yourself. You're betraying your own self if you continue on the path that you're on. You need to change your mindset and seriously stay away from her. You have no obligation to take care of her on any level.
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