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Great Writing - Home > Non-Fiction > The Adult-child of a narcissist
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Non-Fiction
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| The Adult-child of a narcissist | |
| By lillabetx | ||||||||||||||||
| 14 November 2006 | ||||||||||||||||
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This is a short account of coming to terms with the mental illness of my mother. Narcissitic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a cluster B personality disorder that often goes unrecognised and due to its complex nature, the sufferer is unable to recognise or understand the damaging and abusive effects of their behaviour on others. If you have a poor relationship with a parent or partner, read on - the jigsaw may complete itself... The little girl inside of me is alive but she is not well. It is like a light has been switched on. Not a bedside lamp with a warmish glow – but a floodlight on a football pitch. Dazzled by the beam, I stand starkly in the realization that the woman who gave birth to me is ill. Mentally ill. For all these years I have struggled to work out the puzzle – and yet all along I have been blind to the clues that have been put before me. I want you to know of this cruel disorder of the mind that cripples relationships between mothers and their children. My mother has a personality disorder and now I know she cannot help her behaviour but I am in shock. I was born and raised by a narcissist. I was always aware that something was wrong but I never knew how serious it was. On the outside, she appears normal. We appeared to be a normal, healthy family with our fair share of ups and downs. It is a cruel condition that the majority of mental health experts deem incurable. I don’t want to believe it but I am beginning to realize they are probably right. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is set at a very young age – let me explain… When a child is born, its ego has no boundaries. It looks to the outside world and all those in it as a mirror, with no idea that they are separate entities from itself. When a baby is hungry it gets fed. It’s cries of discomfort are heard and acted upon when a nappy needs changing. The mother gazes at baby in her arms and smiles – and the baby smiles back. This little human being is unaware of separate smiles rather it believes that they are responsible and in control of the world around it. I smile – you smile. I look sad – you look sad and so on. As the baby begins to crawl and then walk – it is encouraged and supported to persevere – and when it falls, the adult helps it to regain its balance or cuddles it when it hurts. Around the age of 18 months (the approach to the ‘terrible twos’) and the ego begins to separate. The child has to wait a while before they are attended to, for example to be fed or to reach a toy. It becomes aware that they are not in control and they are a separate being, hence the tantrums that ensue. But sometimes, very sadly, this does not happen. Then the narcissistic personality disorder begins to develop. Like a silent disease, it grows in strength, unnoticed – not even by the victim. I am the adult child of a narcissist and I am coming to terms with this fact very slowly. My mother, the narcissist has no feelings of empathy – for anyone at all. She is devoid of it. This is particularly heartbreaking for a daughter to deal with. She is unable or unwilling to identify with, acknowledge, or accept the feelings, needs, preferences, priorities, and choices of others. She has learned to say the right things and occasionally she does but she cannot feel them like you or I. She is a compulsive liar, much like young child, who exaggerates her achievements, skills, experiences and talents and believes them to be true. Her life is and my life with her was never stable due to her obsessive fantasies of fame, wealth, power, success and the search for a perfect love. She has even lied about a job I had, saying it was far better in status than it was. Suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder means that my mother firmly believes she is unique and special and as such can and should only associate with other such people. The only people we ever had to dinner in our house were the doctor, the accountant, the vicar, the bank manager and other such ‘high status’ individuals. She was the perfect host in many ways but saw it as the opportunity to prove what we had and to be the centre of attention. It was and still is exhausting to be with her as she requires excessive admiration, adulation and affirmation. Her condition leaves a wake of embarrassment for me as she demands special treatment. She feels an overwhelmingly entitled to be given favourable priority treatment and cannot see that her expectations are unreasonable. It has led to showdowns at the travel agents and tantrums in the supermarket. She suffers extreme jealousy of the achievements of others and believes she deserves what they have or better. Ironically, in a bitter twist, she also believes that others are envious of her own life. She is jealous of her own children and seeks to put us down or in our place if we achieve anything worthwhile – yet to the outside she boasts about us. I cringe at her arrogance and haughty behaviour despite understanding that it is part of her condition. She has absolutely no real friends – and few acquaintances. Of course she is lonely but cannot understand why. When you upset a narcissist by challenging any of this behaviour the wrath is incredible. I cannot count the times as a child I was called evil, selfish and wicked. She upset me so much with her lack of understanding or failure to see my point of view and I struggled so much to be a better person so that I could win her love. Threats of abandonment were put upon me from a very early age if I did not comply. She talked with the language of a six year old child – ‘I am not your friend, I hate you’ Often threats of sending me to the ‘children’s home’ would be made – if I did not comply. But we are not talking about complying with normal requests like tidying away my toys (and even then this threat is not appropriate). I mean non-compliance with her requests for errands like going to get her cigarettes or making her a drink. Abandonment is tantamount to the death of a parent to a very young child. As adults we still fear it from those we love. A narcissist does not love you unconditionally. They love you absolutely according to the conditions they set. ‘Comply and I will love you – fail to honour my needs and I will leave you and stop loving you forever.’ It is harsh, cruel and true. It is said that the only unconditional love that exists is between that of a parent and child. Having a narcissist as a mother means a lifetime of never experiencing that precious gift. And then I finally learned the hardest fact of all. A narcissist cannot love. I have a mother that loves me in her own way but not as a daughter needs to be loved. Contrary to popular belief a narcissist does not love herself. Somewhere deep down there is self loathing and pitiful self-esteem and that is the mirror image she has projected onto her own children. I have been climbing a mountain that has no summit. I have been searching for a needle in a haystack – except there is no needle. My mother exists biologically. She walks, she talks and she functions enough to get by in the outside world. But she is empty and numb. I have never and can never communicate with her at the depth I need to. So I am forever the little girl lost. Alive inside but not well. The advice from psychiatrists is to severe the relationship as that is the only certainty that I can live a healthy life myself. But I cannot severe it so I am arming myself with knowledge and slowly healing the lifetime of hurt and confusion that her Narcissistic Personality Disorder has delivered unto me.
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