tromboneliness

Of course not! Forking over the cash would have meant relinquishing the leverage it carries (or carried) -- since cutting ties would presumably cost you the 800 large, you would, in her diabolical plan, continue to submit to her manipulation in hopes of eventually collecting.

Hey, if escaping meant you were no longer in the money, it's the best 800,000 you ever spent!

T

PS: "I've read that NPDs are incapable of apologizing so I'm not holding my breath." I'm not sure my father was technically NPD (although he certainly had a lot of the traits), but in 47 years, I never heard him say, "I'm sorry," admit he was wrong, or otherwise apologize for anything. Not once, ever.

cleaninLI

That's aweful Aeryn! It's deffinately something my Mom would have done too! Never say never though. Although its not nearly worth $800,000 my father just dropped off those things last month some 20 years later. You never know, it might just come around to you!

Trom, my Mom used money as leverage all the time!

cleaninLI

I agree with you trom about npd's incapable of apologizing. At least "sincerely" apologizing. My mother would pretend or act sorry if it meant she could gain something by doing it. Even then those times were very few and far between.

I appreciate those links whenever you get the chance. Thank you! It's nice having people who understand.

Oh, one more question. Did your mom ever let you pick out your own clothes to buy when out shopping? My Mom loved the color red and bright colors. I preferred darker more subdued tones. If Mom didnt like it, we werent buying it. What about activities? Did your Mom sign you up for stuff that she wanted you to do instead of letting you choose your own activities/interests? My Mom had me in ballet, tap dance, acrobatics, piano lessons, ice skating, swimming and tennis. I wasn't interested in most of those. I just went along with it because of her. I would have I enjoyed sports such as baseball, volleyball, soccer etc as I was a real Tom boy when I was young. When I mentioned those she said those were boys sports. The same with toys. She picked out all of my toys according to her tastes. Can anyone relate to this?

Aeryn

My mother didn't force me to wear certain clothes but she would take me shopping and when I tried on things she didn't approve of she would tell me they made me look fat, ugly or "loose" (she is old school). And when I took my school pictures I would have to wear a dress she picked out and do my hair the way she wanted...I remember in first or second grade all the other girls were wearing bangs and I wanted to wear bangs but she made me pull my bangs back from my face with little barrettes...I hated them and one of my friends talked me into taking the barrettes out before the picture. My Mom cried about how ugly I looked and how I had ruined her picture of me (the ones she later returned to me LOL)...I heard for months and even years later about that horrible picture with my bangs in my eyes!

Here's the link to the article...this is where everything clicked for me:

https://sites.google.com/site/harpyschild/

the book I thought was really good it has three stages of healing...I'm working them with a therapist but you don't have to:

http://www.amazon.com/Will-Ever-Good.../dp/1439129436

oh...and that whole thing about never sincerely apologizing..that's absolutely addressed somewhere in the book and spot on.

Aeryn

Oh...my Mom did the activities thing too - I was in TONS of activities none of which I liked...here I am 20 years later with very little idea who I am!! I can totally relate.

EveningRose

Although it sounds like you experienced it to a greater degree, yes, I feel this describes my mother. I long ago noticed that for trying so hard to do the right thing, I sure do have a lot of people I have problems with. Then I also noticed that every single relationship I've had trouble with has been with someone who has direct contact with my mother. And like yours, my mother tells these stories that put me in unjust, bad light. I only realized as an adult that my mother thinks I'm a liar, and has no doubt been telling people that for 40 or more years now. (I think that particular view of hers backs up to me telling when my dad was up to no good, and her choosing to view me forevermore as a liar rather than face that she married a creep and would have to do something about it.)

Yes, I also feel my parents constantly put me in lose/lose situations. My mother has just sent me a friend request on facebook. I haven't spoken to her in 5 years. Or 6 or 4, I don't really know or care. She walks right by me in church routinely and ignores me. When I saw her at the grocery store the other day, I said hello, and she walked right past me and ignored me, didn't answer. But if I point this out in response to her friend request, or point out that my nephew feels free to swear at me and call me names thanks to her and my AF's example, I'll be a Bad Daughter for Making Her Feel Bad. If I do nothing, I'm a Bad Daughter for ignoring her extending the hand of friendship.

Gotta agree with this. My dad used to give me a rather large sum of money every Christmas, plus do any work I needed around the house, usually buying all the supplies and parts, too. But the first Christmas without that huge check, I found out I didn't even miss it. Mortgage is paid, kids are fed. First time I had to pay a plumber $300 to do what my dad would have done for free, my only reaction was sheer bliss at having my shower fixed without anyone yelling at me or my kids!!!! Best $300 I ever spent was exactly how I felt.

I found this and the following responses very interesting. My own experience was that she did allow me the music activities I wanted--but she was forever late, very late, to pick me up. She never told me I couldn't do sports, but she was very, very negative about them, such that in a sense, it did limit my choices.

As to clothes, it was horrible. Although my father had a good job, and they had crystal and silver, and three sets of dishes (every day, Sunday, and holiday), we had chandeliers, a Mercedes, wood inlay artwork from Germany, etc., she was so cheap with clothing that I would say it came close to neglect. We were allowed to have what was ON SALE even when that meant wearing things hideously out of fashion to the point of embarrassing--but we were supposed to take her attitude that we were too darn good to have to have name brands like those snobs.

Now, to be clear, what she bought us went way beyond not being name brand. I'm talking yellow plaid wool pants when everyone else was wearing jeans. I'm talking making me go to school for an entire year with only two skirts (dress code was skirts at that school), one of which didn't even fit me.

There was an incident in which my older sister brought me a beautiful sweater from France, and the first time my mother washed it, she shrunk it so badly I could never wear it again. Only recently did it dawn on me that everyone calls my mother 'The Laundry Queen.' She KNOWS laundry. Yet somehow every time I had something nice, it got destroyed in the laundry.

Then there were haircuts. She used to make me get these awful hair cuts that just looked terrible on me. But it was what she decided I'd have. So, yes, I can relate.

Actually, even now, I live in the house my mother picked out. My XH moved to this town first (I was finishing my work obligations back west.) Never mind that he was a grown man, my parents insisted on going with him to every house he looked at. They got angry and 'hurt' when he went without telling them. When my mother loved a house, the bright red walls were no problem (you can paint them!), and when she hated a house, white walls were a huge problem (oh, you can't live with those hospital white walls!) When XH didn't like what she liked, she took it personally and got all hurt and played the martyr. He ended up buying the house she liked--an almost exact duplicate of her favorite of all the houses I lived in growing up. It's not what XH wanted, it's nothing I ever would have picked. So completely, utterly NOT ME. But he just couldn't stand the harassment and pressure from them, and bought it to keep the peace rather than because either of us loved it.

So, yes, I can entirely relate to you.

Is it NPD or alcoholism? Either way, it's the complete refusal to let a child--even as an adult--be their own person, the need to control them and force them to be what the parent has decided they'll be, a complete lack of respect for them or understanding that they are actually a separate human being.

EveningRose

On hearing about it for years--yes, here, too. One of the things that really stunned me on moving back home was to find that my mother is STILL telling people 35 years after the fact that I 'refused to learn my multiplication tables.' (It had nothing to do with refusing, it had to do with being 8 years old, and yanked through four schools in the space of 12 months.) But seriously....with all my academic accomplishments, THAT is what she remembers and TALKS ABOUT....decades later?

The site you linked is interesting. Some apply to my mother, some to my father, some to both. This jumped out at me:

My older sister, when we were still on better terms, said my mother once made a comment about it being her job to make sure my sister didn't get a big head. I don't remember the details, but it was the sort of thing a normal parent would cheer their kid on and celebrate the accomplishment, and my sister was immediately reminded she wasn't all that. (Part of the reason I don't hate my sister despite how she's behaved--I know where she's been and how she was raised and see her still trying to win their approval.)

tromboneliness

A lot of this is my Dad -- but it's complicated, because he had more positive traits than the NPD picture suggests.

I have very little contact with my extended family (saw and spoke to none of them over the holidays, for instance), partly because they have such a poor understanding of my parents (although some of them privately acknowledge they had an idea what was going on).

As for my Dad, he had the characteristic of always trying to prove that he was better than everyone else. As my Mom put it, "his attitude is, I don't have a superior attitude, I'm just superior!" But the tricky part is that in a lot of ways, he was pretty d*mn good -- brilliant scientist (yet one who was not terribly concerned with accolades and recognition), analytical, great at solving problems and fixing things, smart, well-read, pretty good writer, etc. When there was a disagreement over matters of fact, I have to admit that he was right most of the time.

But he had no feelings except anger (to express a feeling was a sign of weakness -- decidedly non-superior), always felt that he knew what everyone should be doing, because after all, he was smarter than they were... and he was always trying to put us kids in our place. Sure, we may have had achievements in school, etc., but to him, they were always stepping stones on the path to being a really smart person, like him.

There are, as I say, ways in which he didn't fit the model. For instance, when I went back to school and got a degree in accounting at 43, all of a sudden my Dad thought I was a financial whiz, and after a lifetime of ignoring any ideas I might have about that, he started asking what I thought he should do with his money (which isn't what accountants do, for the most part -- we might offer tax advice and so on, but accounting is mostly about recording what happens to assets, not deciding where they should go). And he did acknowledge some of my career accomplishments. He also had a major crush on my wife -- I used to say, if we got divorced, he and my Mom would have kept her and disowned me!

So it's mixed. Yesterday was his birthday, and I spent a lot of time remembering the effects he had on me. Some good, some bad, some funny, some awful. For all his faults, he was tremendously loyal -- I had the "best 800-grand I ever spent" dilemma at one point myself. A couple of years before he died, he went to Florida to visit a cousin, and I began to get the impression that she was trying to fix him up with one or another of her friends. At that point, I thought, d*mn, I hope he doesn't hook up with someone and get married, because that would mean when he kicks off, I don't get my combat pay for putting up with his cr*p all these years... but then, my next thought was, to heck with it -- if he hooks up with someone, that means he's out of my hair, so who needs the combat pay?

T

EveningRose

I've now thoroughly read the original google.harpyschild link. I also found this blog: The Narcissist's Child: March 2012 which has an entire section of articles based on the google.harpsychild list, breaking it down and giving the author's and others' examples of the things he discusses.

If I have time today, I think I'll start another thread regarding labeling parents, diagnosing them, and how it helps us. But for now I'll say that like you, I see some things in my parent (mother in this case, although it's my dad who was the alcoholic) much more positive than what's in the article or blog. AND YET....I was shocked at how much some of it read as if the author had been watching my mother the 18 years I lived at hom.

Destroying relationships. That one really jumped out at me. He specifically mentions that the narcissistic mother will, on hearing a child has been mistreated, invariably side with the one who mistreated her own child--even when she doesn't even know the other person! Wow, yes, my mother has done that! It was one of the last straws for me, to have her stand there and accuse me to my face of mistreating someone she doesn't even know, when she wasn't even there.

(For the record, I say please and thank you to my dog, I most certainly did not mistreat the person in question. The whole incident still leaves my head spinning if I think about it.)

I, too, stayed away from the extended family gathering. In the last year, I've noticed more and more of them giving me the cold shoulder. Polite smiles, no attempt to chat with me. Given my mother's past behavior (like for the past 40 years), I can only assume they've been hearing for several years now what a terrible, cruel daughter I am and how I'm hurting her, and they're now believing it. My attitude is becoming one of, "All it takes for evil to win is for good men to stay silent." I'm beginning to hold them equally accountable in what has gone on all these years, as none of them wanted to rock the boat and take a stand.

Combat pay--yes, years ago, I realized that's exactly how I viewed my prospective inheritance. And while my parents are not millionaires as far as I know, my share would still have been quite substantial. And at the point I walked away, I was making, among other things, a very conscious decision that putting up with his garbage was not worth the 50K, 80K, 100K, 125K, whatever it would have been by the time he died. That ought to be a powerful message to him, that I'd rather give up a hundred thousand dollars* than spend time with him.

And it's a powerful message to me to find that I'm worth the 100K to give myself peace of mind and not be treated like the family punching bag.

*I'm completely guessing at numbers here. Just saying, it would have been substantial enough to make a real difference in my life, and it still wasn't worth it.

Aeryn

My therapist has said he is 99% sure my mother is NPD and she herself told me a long time ago her therapist diagnosed her with a "personality disorder", she never told me what it was but quit seeing said therapist after that...ironically that therapist was hired to find out what was wrong with me, her child (long nasty story). For me every single point in that article applied without exception - some of them right down to the quotes...in an eerie sort of way.


I do think it's a separate animal from alcoholism (my A father wasn't abusive at all...so he definitely didn't have it) but I have heard of dual diagnosis.....and maybe there is such thing as borderline NPD? EveningRose maybe the book would help, even if she only has some of the qualities - the therapy ideas in there I think are great. I don't know regarding the actual diagnosis....I just know that this diagnosis has helped me start recovering because for a long time I thought I was crazy for thinking some thing was wrong with her (I thought it was me and that I was a "bad" person but that was what her disease did conditioned me as so) - she didn't drink and to the outside world portrayed herself as "perfect" - she also sort of had some codependent qualities but not exactly since she wasn't really "helpful" so I was struggling until I worked this through with the therapist.



BTW - one of the things I've learned in recovery is that children of NPD parents are taught "they are not worthy of existing"...at first I didn't get that and thought it didn't apply but I realized it meant for me I didn't feel I was worth of existing as MYSELF....that's the first stage of it all clicking for me.

cleaninLI

I just wanted to jump in for second and let you all know that I've read your responses. I am so amazed at how similar your descriptions of your own mother's are to mine. It's like we are talking about the same woman!

Omg! This is the first time that I can relate to someone about my childhood and experiences with my mother. Now I'm crying! Sorry!

I hadn't realized how much of my childhood I buried! I must have been in complete denial. I never thought to dredge-up uncomfortable emotions from my past. I wanted to pretend my childhood was perfect even though it was far from perfect. I don't know why I feel bad....guilty...like a fraud...idk...not authentic for thinking and talking about my childhood/mom??

cleaninLI

Ok...I'm back now. I'm so sorry Aeryn I forget to thank you for those links. I read them last night. You are so right about the eeriness of those quotes. My mom said all of them! She portrait herself "perfectly" to the world. No one on the outside would ever think she was abusive. Her house was beautifully decorated, clean and organized. There were certain rooms...Living room, dining room her bedroom, that the dog and I were not allowed in.

I remember she started having a family game night every week. She always won the game. If she didn't, she would start some kind of "interference".....Suddenly, I wasn't sitting properly on the chair or I put my fingers in my mouth etc....something would be wrong and of course after many times of her prodding and provoking me even though I had stopped what i was doing and being only a child and not understanding what was happening I would adamantly deny it then she'd get my father involved and say I was talking back...I would be sent to bed early....game over! I lost again.

Another thing that was mentioned in the book was being always available to "help" her. She would never give us set chores but she would always say "while you are up......" Many times we weren't even "up". Honestly, though, I don't think that asking for help is abusive but putting me in "no-win" situations was. She would tell me to wash dishes, then while I was doing that she would ask me to take out the garbage then ask for another favor. When it wasn't all done at the time she thought it should have been I was accused of being lazy or irresponsible or just plane disobedient. If or when I would speak up for myself thats when Dad was called into the room.

She rarely spanked me but always left punishments for my father to do. He always listened to her side of the story and would spank me on the bare bottom with a belt or a rubber spatula. Those beatings always left me feeling very angry and degraded.

My mother never told me about female changes when I was growing up. I had no idea what was happening to me when I started my monthly. It happened in school, so I went to the nurse. She filled me in on what was happening. When I went home and told my mother asking for help. She gave me a disgusting, embarrassing look and pointed to the bathroom cabinet. I remember feeling so dirty and awkward...like I was bad.

tromboneliness

My Dad's phrase was, "As long as you're just goofing around...."



T

PS -- "one of the things I've learned in recovery is that children of NPD parents are taught "they are not worthy of existing"...at first I didn't get that and thought it didn't apply but I realized it meant for me I didn't feel I was worth of existing as MYSELF." This is me, exactly. I don't count. What I do doesn't count. What I want doesn't count. What I need doesn't count. This, like the self-abandonment, was something I never really understood until my ACA sponsor observed it. Therapists never figured it out -- it has to be someone who's been through the same thing, and that's my sponsor.

Aeryn

Actually it's my therapist that got me to where I am and he's the one that said that (it's from a book written by another therapist)...Alanon didn't get me any of that stuff (most of the time I don't relate there at all and I actually get triggered by a lot of the people there so often I would leave feeling worse than I did when I got there)....so I guess it varies by situation.

tromboneliness

Understood. I should have said, "Your mileage may vary," because it does! Sometimes, I get triggered by people in meetings (typically AA people who show up at my ACA meeting a dump all their family-of-origin or abuse stuff all at once). I might add, though, that that's one reason why Al-Anon usually suggests going to 6 different meetings -- one group may work for you when another one doesn't.....

T

Aeryn

Yep went to Alanon a year...it just didn't/doesn't work for me...when I was in a marriage with an A it was a good escape though and it helped me make the decision to leave and go to therapy so I can't say it did nothing (doing those two things is quite a lot actually!). Therapy helped me leaps and bounds above Alanon...I can honestly say it was the only path for me. But hey Alanon works for a ton of people so good for those it works for...just not my scene.