Confusion about NPD

Started by Dante, October 19, 2021, 11:44:56 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Dante

I've been doing a lot of reading, trying to build on what I've learned since I joined this site.  After decades trying to heal, I can't believe how much healing I've been able to do in the 2 months since I joined.  Thank you all for being here and being brave enough to tell your stories.  I also can't believe how much I have left to go.  But I've got a solid foundation now from which to start.

In my reading on NPD, I came across something that resonated in Pete Walker's book.  I'd read it before and filed it, but rereading it, it just really jumped out at me.  It talked about the 'smother mother' NPD.  That was my mother.  I couldn't.  Do.  Anything.  Which would imply she kept me safe.  Yet, I also experienced emotional neglect - I was never emotionally cared for.  Even contempt.  These two things seem mutually exclusive to me.  How I could I be neglected and yet have had a 'smother mother' that wouldn't give me any space?  Was it just about enmeshing me to her to keep her close enough to be available for her needs to be met?  That's the only thing I can come up with that resolves the mutual exclusion.

Appreciate any thoughts or experiences others have had in this area.

Kizzie

I think you're absolutely right Dante. SMothering isn't about love, it's about control, power, image (being the Good Mother) and enmeshment - child as object versus love human being.  It's just another a form of neglect when you think about it, looking like your M loves you isn't the same thing as being loved.

My M was the same and I was really confused for such a long time. She meant for that to be the case, not only with  me but others. I just felt like I was starving in what appeared to be a sea of plenty.  But my childhood was bereft of any authentic, genuine love, care or concern.  Took me decades to finally figure that out.

Lots to figure out when it comes to parents with NPD.  :stars:

Dante

Thanks, Kizzie.  That helps to validate what I was thinking.  It's the only angle that I could figure out.  It didn't even dawn on me until just this morning that that cognitive dissonance was there.  it's good to let it go.

Kizzie

It is good to get out from under that enmeshment and to see what it's really about I agree.

I realized somewhere along the way after that epiphany it's one more reason I don't let many people close to me. Fear of being hurt/rejected/abandoned is way up there  for keeping my distance, but it's also a case of not wanting to ever be smothered/enmeshed again. I just felt like I couldn't ever breath. 

Anyway, it's a work in progress for me figuring out the difference between healthy friendship and unhealthy neediness in people. 

jamesG.1

I think many parents are driven more by convention than by actual love or instinct, so what you get is an unreliable and insincere interaction. It becomes very apparent when there is some shift in the homelife that renders one audience to their "parenting" suddenly becoming irrelevant and the whole emphasis changing. This is true in many relationships, things change and what is supposed to be a constant gets dropped, or exaggerated. My mother's bizarre interpretation of religion meant that she was always addressing this other person whom she was determined to appear selfless to, and as a result, she sacrificed virtually everything to help the vile cuckoo that is my brother. Before that she smothered me. On her death bed she was convinced she was being individually tested by the almighty, such was her vanity.

If someone is more worried about what other people, society or God thinks of them, how can they be objectively a good parent? That's not a dig at faith, but reflects my frustration at the way so many people neglect reality to appease things outside of themselves, often with catastrophic results.

dollyvee

Hi Dante,

I just saw this post and wanted to echo what Kizzie said. My family was a mix of npd personalities but smothering was the most difficult to untangle. For me it involved years of back and forth about feeling loved and recognizing that I wasn't actually seen at all or allowed to have a voice. I was the recipient of projections of others' experiences and views on the world. I needed to be kept close to make them feel better about their place in the world, their past and what was going to happen in the future.

Glad you're able to get some distance from it.

dolly

Kizzie

I've always had issues with religion but didn't really understand why until I figured out narcissism, especially that which hides behind a cloak of doing good, being good when actually there is a lot of abuse going on.  My M wasn't religious but she did want to be seen as a 'good' M and used us to get that (whether we liked or wanted that), so I understand the N behav in the name of image.  It was most definitely not nurturing or loving, it was pandering to what they need and we're just a way of getting some of that filled.





Papa Coco

My SMother knew I was being abused at Catholic school, but it was more important to her that she be seen as a "good, obedient Catholic" than a good mother, so she told me to just put up with it. She repeatedly refused to let me go to public school with my friends. HER version of being a good mother was keeping me clean, fed, and obedient so the neighbors and Catholics would see she was a good mother. My wellbeing meant NOTHING to her. She used to lie and say "no matter what's happening to you at Catholic school, it will be worse at public school."

After I grew up and reported to her again about the sexual abuse, and disclosed my multiple suicide attempts at age 20 (Same year two of the boys I went to C school with DID commit suicide), she changed her tune, felt remorse, and quit going to church. But then, when my beautiful little sister, who also felt horrifically smothered, ended her own life in 2008, SMother went back onto her selfish hay ride and said that God was punishing HER (by taking her daughter) for not going to church over my abuse.

Armee

This is heartbreaking papaC. I can't imagine being a mother and not doing everything in my power to stop my children from being abused. And then to in essence blame you for God punishing her with your sisters death. Sick. All of it. You are truly amazing, PapaC. I'm sending you lots of love and care as you navigate these difficult couple of months. I like that you have noticed and know to take it easy on yourself and expectations until the fog lifts.

Papa Coco

Armee, thank you for the kind words.

Over the years, learning about narcissism has taught me a lot about conditional love and even more about religion. Narcissists and churches employ the same set of rules and tricks to achieve the same outcome of blind obedience. Thankfully, what I learned in the 1990s about how abusive husbands keep their wives from leaving them, woke me up to how churches keep their members believing in the same delusion. It's not really love. It's more like Stockholm Syndrome. Religious people and abused families confuse emotions such as fear, terror, and shame with love. They only honor their abusers because they're afraid not to. I believe that honor is sometimes fear in disguise.

Poor old Mom never learned the lesson I learned, and died still believing she was being punished by an all-loving god for not going to church and honoring "him" enough, no matter how abusive and dishonest that church actually was.  She was both a victim and a perpetrator of that narcissistic perversion of love and honor.

Kizzie

I'm so sorry PC, that's tragic and so much of what I abhor about religion and faith. For me religion shuts down critical thinking and leaves our fate in the hands of supernatural beings. I don't believe in ghosts and I don't believe in god(s), it just doesn't make any sense, particularly in this day and age. When someone claims to be the representative of a diety on earth it's just a recipe for disaster.  We can be 'good' without god(s). 

Apologies Dante for this thread going sideways and ending up on religion.  It is a worthwhile point to touch on IMO because of the element of narcissism so many of us encounter in our parents, especially those who are covert and cloak it with being good, good M, good believer, etc.  That said, maybe we can bring this back to N abuse and the belief of N's that they are entitled, that their children should 'worship' them in a sense because they are 'good' when we know in our gut they are not.

It's so hard to go against 'good' and they know that.  I still cannot stand in a card aisle with all the ode to mothers cards without feeling uncomfortable, sad, angry.  It's just a Hallmark version of how society would like families/parents to be, but as we know it's not the reality for so many. Smother mothers cloak the reality of their abuse/neglect, but it's a lie.  It's just so hard to wrap our heads and hearts around it as you've said.

Papa Coco

#11
This thread, entitled Confusion about NPD, is a great thread. I loved my mother. I also couldn't trust her for playing mind games with me, and for making my little sister and I so unnecessarily suicidal, and for putting her selfish, religious, self-image ahead of her childrens' wellbeing. It was the foundation for a lifetime of confusion around what love even is. I'm 61 years old and I still say I'm not sure if I love other people out of a natural ability to love or my learned sense of moral obligation.

Kizzie: Hokey smokes! You are right about the card aisle!!! Some years were a REAL struggle to find something that wouldn't insult her, but also wouldn't lie about my feelings. I had to find the ones that had almost no message in them, just "Happy Mother's Day" because I couldn't feel the truth in any more words than that.

Dante

Kizzie, no worries.  If I've learned anything over the years, it's that healing is not a straight line path.  It's the twists and turns that have yielded the best insights for me.  It happens when a discussion about narcissism morphs into religion, because it helps me connect dots that I couldn't otherwise connect. 

Like many of you, religion plays a big role in my life.  In my case, it was not my FOO that was religious - they were atheists.  My problems with religion stemmed from me trying to find love in a church that I wasn't getting at home, and maybe even some rebellion.  But I met and stayed after the wrong person on account of religion.  I'm still untangling what I believe.  I do believe in God.  Even as a kid, I always believed in God.  Sometimes I loved him/her/it/them and sometimes I hated him/her/it/them.  But I never didn't believe.  But now, I no longer believe that I need to, can or will find love in a church or from a 'father'.

Hallmark card reference.   +1.   I'm going to start a card line that says "I hate you for all the things you did to ruin my life and make me question my sanity.  Happy Mother's Day."  :)

Kizzie

OK good Dante, just wanted to make sure you felt you could go back to the original issue.  You're so right about threads taking twists and turns and that's often very insightful. 

On the card aisle thing, I'm making progress as at least I don't cry/trigger any more.  I'm like you PC, I look for the tamest or simplest card possible (I'm LC vs NC with my NM), and that's always a bit of a hunt because of the whole Hallmark thing.  We've talked in the past here about what a line of cards would look like for us that were quite honest - they put quite a different spin on Mother's Day that's for sure.