When I was in college student, I lived a few blocks away from some relatives. I had a standing invitation to eat at their house every Sunday night – no need to call ahead, just show up. As a starving college student, you would think I would take advantage of that, but I only went a handful of times.
Spending time with that family was painful.
You see, they had a sick game they liked to play in their family. If it had a name, it would be called “Let’s pick on April until she cries.”
April and I were very close. She had her issues, but I adored her. I have come to discover from reading the stories on this site that her mother (and possibly her father) were narcissistic. They had two “golden children,” who could do no wrong, one child who was sort of neutral, and then April was the scapegoat for the whole family.
Almost immediately after sitting down to a meal, they would start in on April. Everyone would talk about their day, but when she would try to talk, they would belittle everything she said. Nothing she ever did was good enough, and everything she said was stupid or unimportant. They would dig and push buttons until the tears fell.
I will never forget the look of satisfaction on that woman’s face when she had succeeded in destroying her daughter.
Again.
A mother is supposed to be a source of comfort and support to her children. Being a mother now myself, I can’t even comprehend how a mother can destroy her child day after day, after day.
April is married with her own kids now. And I still cringe when I hear her call her mother “Mama.” The woman never earned that title.
I always knew there was something wrong with me. Other kids didn’t understand why I acted the way I did around adults. I spent my entire childhood wondering what the hell was wrong with me, afraid to say or do anything, afraid to interact with other people.
30 years later …I know that the problem really wasn’t me. It was the monster who calls himself my father. The beast in me wants vengeance for him handicapping my emotional and psychological well being …vengeance for leaving me afraid to have my own children …vengeance for being afraid to get married for fear I’d end up marrying someone like my father. But this same beast has given me a voice. This same beast gives me the courage to stand up to those who try to use me as a doormat. This same beast drives me everyday to heal the deep wounds and to unlearn all the nasty crap that was beaten into my head as a child and teenager.
I used to worry that everyone was right when they’d say, “You’re just like your father.” I now realize that I’m NOTHING like my father. I just managed to pull myself out of a fucked up mess of a “family.” IT HAS BEEN HELL!!! Forty years of being told that I am nothing, being emotionally neglected and abused, told repeatedly that people don’t like me, told that I don’t deserve friends, that everything I have belongs to my father, that I am a pet to be kept at his discretion, rewarded for good behavior or punished for failures.
There was nothing that I had that he could not take away, everything I had and everything I was, according to him, originated with him and therefore was his to control and do with as he pleased. If I tried to express my feelings I was greeted with anger. “It’s not okay to cry. It’s not okay to show your feelings. It’s not okay to express your opinion. In fact, you are a child – be seen and NEVER heard.”
My father would hit or grab and shake my mother when she did things he didn’t like. He still does. He only ever spanked me twice. When I got to be a teenager he’d just shake his fist in my face. I never understood this. Ultimately I think it was because he was afraid if he hit me he’d end up exposing himself publicly. If I were to report him for child abuse, or if one of my teachers, seeing unexplained bruises on me, would have brought his “I’m the perfect husband and father” public mask crashing down.
I didn’t start to understand what my father had done to me until I graduated from college. The more distance I put between us, the more I understood that I wasn’t the problem. This was wrong. Abuse isn’t just about getting physically beaten, it can also be about getting the emotional and psychological stuffing beaten out of you everyday.
Thank the gods for my grandparents who looked out for me and sent me to college. My father made no bones about refusing to work. He said he “had a problem with authority,” and that no one had the right to tell him how to do his job. When I was 7, he was fired from the only job he’d had. So my father forced my mother to get the paying jobs, and then promptly got her fired from every one of them. He’d try to tell her bosses how to run their businesses or he’d tell lies or exaggerated truths about her boss around town. No one would stand for it, and my mother paid the price.
When I was 5 or so, my father got into a fight with his parents. I didn’t see them again for many decades. I only know who my relatives are because I see them on my family tree, there are only two or three I would even recognize if I was face to face with them. The ones I do know are narcissistic just like my father, so I don’t mourn the loss anymore. Most of them are just as toxic to my well being as my father is.
My father’s mother, his brother and his wife came to our house on the day of my high school graduation. My father’s mother said, “Here is a card for you. We’re going to your cousin’s graduation.” With that, she and my aunt and uncle turned their backs on me, got in their fancy car, and left me standing there. They were just there to rub it in my face that my cousin was more important than I was.
My father is a saint in the eyes of many people. He gives lavish gifts and bails people out of financial trouble, when he can ill afford to do it himself. He invites strangers to holiday family meals and springs it on us at the last possible moment. Meanwhile, utility bills go unpaid, disconnect and repo notices arrive. In the past, if he couldn’t scrape the money together to do these “humanitarian” things that people “love” him for, then he’d send my mother to beg from her family. Later, he would demand the money from me. The last time he did this to me, I threw him out of my home, returned the last of the “gift” money he had given me for Christmas, and told him never to come back.
My father has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He blames his abuses of my mother and me on PTSD, for which he is considered disabled by the VA, but the truth is, my father is simply a manipulative, truth stretching, self-centered, self-serving, “The world revolves around me, I will live my life anyway I see fit, I don’t care if it’s legal, I’m never wrong, everyone is entitled to my correct opinion, the sun and the universe revolve around me” NARC!!
A huge weight has been lifted from my life. I still find myself wanting to cower when someone gets in my face or publicly criticizes me. Sometimes I have to take anxiety meds, but I can get angry now. I can scream and yell. I can say no and not cave later. I can cry. I can laugh. I’m learning slowly how to love. The anger reminds me that I am a person. I’m not someone’s possession. I’m not a doormat, and I deserve better.
Both of my parents are narcissistic. I was their golden child, which was terrible for me. My whole life, I suffered with guilt because I love my sisters and could see how my parents were neglecting them. I punished myself for having more than they did. I gave all of my money away to my mother and sisters. My life was crap. I worked like an animal my whole life, and have absolutely nothing to show for it, no money, no family, no life, nothing.
Since my breakdown, I realized that my sisters had something very important that I don’t have: they can deal with our mother. They don’t fear her. They just lived their lives with a normal sense of what was right or wrong. Since I found The Band and others sites, I can see why. I recognize that I have suffered the most damage of all of us. While my sisters live their lives, I am in a kind of limbo. They have their children and their experiences while I just struggle for acceptance and survival. I could never relax and have peace. I feel like I have gone nowhere, like my life was a black box. I was not there.
With a crazy, engulfing, malignant mother I could not breathe. I could not rest. Nothing was ever enough, she always needed more. She was never satisfied unless my life was miserable from all of her complaints, from drawing all my energy, making me feel bad about everything, and destroying my self esteem. She poisoned me with her “misery.” My mother had tried to give me her roll taking care of my sisters. I was just a child! All the manipulation and loss of myself eventually made me sick.
It hurt me a lot that she could never ask me how I was doing. One day, I confronted her. I told her she was never there for us, and she gave us no more love and care than if we had been houseplants. She wouldn’t look me in the eye when she answered. Her excuse was that she was always working. While yes, she did work a lot, she was also out having fun, partying like hell! She had plenty of friends, was engaged in politics, and was out all the time, but she wants me to believe her life was a mess because of us. Motherhood was a burden for her.
For the first time in my life, I had the courage to confront her with questions. I didn’t ask her everything I wanted because I was still afraid of her, but that was still a big step. She changed the subject right away, telling me she needed money. I could not believe it! That’s the way it always is with her, she wants my money. Seeing how I have no money, I’m useless.
For four days, I was so upset I couldn’t sleep. It felt like she had grabbed my insides and ripped them out. It took me several days to recover, and I was sure I never be able to face her again. I am ashamed of how weak I am in front of her.
My baby sister supports me and understands me. She really loves me. My other sister became aggressive and horrible, just like our mother. And like our mother, she tries to make my life hell. We have one hell of a dysfunctional family.
Thanks to The Band, I now know why my life is the way it is. Now, that I know what it means to be a golden child, I can finally permit myself to look after me instead of everyone else. I can see now how much care I need, how lonely I’ve been. And best of all, I know now that I deserve it!
I’d always believed that my mother loved me and all her interference in my life was to make me better, stronger. Blindly, I trusted that she meant for me to be happy. But I also knew that … something was wrong. I never could do right by her and I just knew that something was wrong with me. She was inside my head, under my skin, causing me to drown. I lost my strength and discovered that I feared her.
These revelations took over a year – it was a whole process for me.
My life had fallen apart and I went to a specialized therapy clinic for help. There, I learned I was codependent. My therapist actually told me “you have a bad mother, you need to protect yourself from her.”
I was shocked.
I talked to my mother as I came out of the clinic and decided to break contact with her. Afterward, I felt so guilty and sunk into a very deep depression. I think I put all my energy into avoiding contact with her. I was stuck in bed, only leaving to go to therapy.
I couldn’t understand my mother’s attitude toward me. How could she be so crazy insensitive to what I was going through? I was obsessed with the question “why?” After seven months of therapy, I discovered that it was helpless to believe there was a way to save our relationship. I remember my therapist saying “no, I don’t think so. Any relationship with her, you’ll only get hurt.”
I cried so much. It was such a big loss. I finally understood how much she’d taken from me. How she enslaved me, took away everything I got, people that I loved. My mother had bullied me all of my life. The pain was indescribable; I was destroyed. Crying every day, having nightmares all night.
None of this made sense. I felt that she’d only rest once I’d killed myself. How could she be so awful to me? I did everything for her; gave her more than I had to give. Was it really just jealousy? Why? Why had she been so cruel to me? My therapist explained that she’s a narcissistic mother; she has narcissistic personality disorder. I was her extension. It was quite confusing so I turned to the internet for answers. I didn’t know what having a narcissistic mother meant.
There I found it. I understood the way I’d felt my whole life. I understood her attitude toward me.
I learned the tactics of psychological manipulation: invalidation, gaslighting, parentification, triangulation, narcissistic rage. Convincing me to do the opposite of what my gut said. Denying my needs.
I was deadly shocked for I don’t know, months? I haven’t really recovered. My symptoms increased, I developed panic disorder, my self-esteem melted, felt so insecure talking to people or making changes in my life.
For five months, I stopped dealing with it – it was just too much. I’m still unable to deal with anything or anyone. I feel lost, I’m afraid that I’m too damaged to be able to be happy. I’m paralyzed. I have no idea who I am.
I’m 40 and I lost my childhood, my innocence, my adult life. I am sick, depressed, lonely, and terrified.
I discovered The Band Back Together Project, for which I am very grateful. Thanks to reading your stories, I now know that I did the right thing in stopping contact to my mother. That was really killing me.
I can understand all the pain I’m feeling. How badly I’m grieving this loss. To top it off, I discovered that my father also has narcissistic personality disorder.
I’ve been badly abused all of my life. No wonder I’m unable to do what I want and need, how absolutely everybody in my life has abused me, why I can’t stand up for myself.
Knowing that I am not alone and understanding my symptoms gives me hope. I understand that I need treatment and support. I’ll return to therapy which I hope can help me to learn to feel angry, to defend myself, to stop feeling guilty all the time. To allow me to have things, a family, someone that treats me well. I hope I’ll never have abusers in my life again.
I wish I could see what life is like. Until now, I’ve never had a life of my own to lead; I was just a stupid toy, trying to please everyone for love and attention. I want to learn to respect myself and set clear emotional boundaries with other people.
The hardest part is to see how damaged I am. That’s really scary.
Thank you, Band Back Together for giving me the opportunity to speak out. I don’t need to be ashamed; I was abused, I am a victim. Thank you for showing me that.
Can you, The Band, share your stories about being an adult child of narcissistic parents?
I really want to believe this emotional trauma will end and I will, at long last, be free.
Thanks to Band Back Together posts, I’ve found many links about other adult children of narcissistic parents (ACONs). I’m learning a lot about who I am and what I need to do heal from the emotional abuse I lived through.
I now understand that through emotional abuse as a child, a person develops many challenges in his or her adult relationships. ACONs are unable to judge people (especially when it comes to protecting oneself), lack understanding what is bad and wrong, instead believing everyone is good. This is what emotional abuse does – it makes us magnets for abusers in our adult relationships.
Lacking the ability to act assertively and set healthy emotional boundaries is big deal of for ACONs. Since I’ve been to the clinic, I read about narcissistic personality disorder. I now understand that I need to put myself first, to respect myself, and set emotional boundaries. This is new for me: I couldn’t tell when it was too much until was too late. I still struggle but I believe that a part of me is learning to respect myself.
I made a huge step: a friend of mine was celebrating her birthday and was pushing me to go to a disco to party with her. It was far too much for me. I have panic disorder,depression, and struggle interacting in social situations.
I explained to her how I felt, but she continued insisting – she told me she wouldn’t come to my birthday party if I didn’t go to hers. I was about to go. I’d picked out an outfit when it hit me: I knew I’d feel distressed and exhausted. I decided to call her and tell her I wasn’t coming. This was incredibly difficult for me but I did it.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel guilty or fear punishment – I felt I needed to respect myself. If she is my friend, she needs to respect my feelings. She doesn’t need to understand them, but she needs to respect them. I’m so proud of myself.
I’m starting to understand what being emotionally abused by a very manipulative malignant narcissistic mother has done to me. I’ve had to learn that it’s okay to say no when one feels like it. I can do that without feeling guilty. This is self-respect, not failing with someone else’s expectations. I’m not hurting anyone by saying I’m sorry, I can’t – I don’t want to do that.
I know it’s a long road I’m facing to learn to say, “No! Don’t touch me!” To put a really angry face when I feel disrespected, and to develop positive aggression to protect myself from abuse. For that, I need to be able to understand my emotional boundaries.
Still can’t. But I’m learning every day.
I now feel comfortable about cutting ties with my ex-boyfriend. I can see that he’s a crazy narcissistic abuser and that the best thing to do was to cut him off. I’d been feeling very insecure about dealing with him as he keeps sending me kind messages. I ignored them, but I was very insecure that cutting him off. Now I know that’s the right thing to do.
I’m loving this new found freedom. I can easily cut out all the abusers in my life. It’s been tough, though. I now see how many narcissistic people I’ve had around me my whole life. How I’ve been abused by friends and that all my ex-boyfriends – without exception – are narcissists. How I let them abuse me without realizing it. I’d get hurt and try to tell them, but they would never hear, I couldn’t see why they’d hurt me. I’d used to think it was because they didn’t realize it. I struggled, trying to make sense of their abuse. So naïve.
My dear father fell ill the end of February 2013. He’d been in and out of the hospital for three months with various ailments and a discovery of an aggressive cancer. We lost my dear father on May 29th 2013.
My father cared for my 80-year old mother. He waited on her hand and foot; he’d been doing this my whole life. It was now my turn to care for my mother.
I thought I was doing what was right; I thought I was being a good daughter. I visited with her every day. Let her cry on my shoulder, took care of her needs, medication, doctor appointments, fed her, cleaned her home, took care of her pets. My brother occasionally would show up, with some type of take-out food, but scoot out quickly.
After a few weeks, I started to get the wrath of my mother. I couldn’t do anything right
…I was too slow. I forgot to do something. Then, it turned into criticism of my body and how I raise my children; she was sorry she ever adopted me. I left her home crying every day; going home to my own family filled with anxiety and stress. I felt every bit 12-years old, all over again.
I am just recently learning about Narcissism.
I was 2- 1/2 when I was adopted. My brother is 8 years older than me and my parent’s biological son. I could never remember much of my childhood before the age of 11 or 12, but do remember a few haunting memories that I tried to pass off as a nightmare. One of the reoccurring memories happened when I was 6 – my then 14-year old was brother tickling me. It progressed to him pulling up my nightie and trying to penetrate me with his penis.
I can’t remember much past that.
He was always inappropriate, showing me his penis and laughing, making a sick game of it. I can’t remember the length of time this went on. Sometimes he would be nice, then he would be plain cruel to me.
I stopped talking in 2nd grade. I was so terribly shy, so shy that I would cry if someone looked at me the wrong way. I started remembering everything when I was a preteen but I was too ashamed to tell anyone as my brother continued his cruelty. He didn’t call me by my name. He called me Moose – as in a “fat moose.” My mother allowed this. She allowed him to be cruel to me and never said anything. In fact, it was my fault he was being mean.
He left for college when I was 12. Then came the wrath of my mother. She would make me weigh myself in front of her. She was very thin, an ex-model; she was an alcoholic and a very mean drunk. My father would water down her vodka in hopes she would be less volatile. She would scream at me for various reasons, none of them made sense. I just felt unloved. In fact, she made me go to a therapist at 13 because she said I had a “detachment disorder” and “could not love anyone.” Something about “not being held when I was back in my home country.”
My father tried the best he could to assure me I was pretty, smart and lovable. I always felt that from him, but he never stood up to my mother and quietly observed the maniacal behavior. I could write so much more of what happened through my childhood. (ed note: please share with us)
I am now 44 years old, married 18 years with 2 teenagers. I know I have the ability to love. I know I was mistreated because I could never treat my own kids that way. I am now in therapy to reconcile my feelings of guilt and quell my anxieties that still exist. I have never felt good enough or have been able to express myself for fear I might upset someone.
I am learning that my brother was the “golden child” and I was the scapegoat. It is all starting to make sense to me now. My therapist also believes my parents or at least my mother had knowledge of my brother’s sexual abuse towards me. Ughhh, I can’t even imagine this could be true. I have no contact with either my mother or brother as of Thanksgiving. My children tell me I seem less stressed. My husband also has noticed a huge change. I believe I am healing. I believe my father’s passing brought me to a place where I could see all the indignities I had suffered at the hands of someone I called Mom.
