General Chat

Have brought up the narcissistic mothers thread because I was wondering if anybody would like a support thread for those who are or were the victims of narcissism from anybody.

I have been there and come out battlescarred and probably a bit bitter but have found an explanation for the misery in the article cited on the narcissistic mothers thread.

Please,if you need or would like to give some support,consider adding to this thread.

Hi Sharron.
Thanks to reading your thread I now know why I have suffered depression for many years. Why I am so scarred of my own shadow. Scarred to try anything in case I fail. Feel no love between me and my mum, not a warm love anyway. More of a duty full love. Wonder if I know what love is at all sometimes. But I know I love my husband and kids, and the dog.

Knowing the cause really has helped me to start to
feel better about myself. Thanks xxxx

Bit of a shock isn't it?

Once I had read that article I felt I could start to forgive myself.

I have a lot of thinking to do but not the energy to do it, does that make sense?

I think love should be unconditional between parent and child but mine wasn't and now I wonder if I have done similar things in some ways to my own son. He is not happy with the way his life is going and I feel some guilt over the times I was depressed so not as good a Mum as I could have been. He mentioned a couple of things the other day that got me thinking about it and feeling bad.
There's no second chance to make things right.
Lizx

I am a survivor and I hope I have broken the chain that goes back I don't know how far in my family.

I think a support thread is a good idea.

S

It is no surprise that you made mistakes at mothering.You were,after all,self-taught and had never seen the job done properly.Would you hire an electrician on this basis?

I think it is important to acknowledge your mistakes,you know why you made them.Wasn't part of our abuse being made to believe that their mistakes were our fault?

My mum thinks she was a good mum. If I don't think I was equally as good, then does that make her a better mum? No, it doesn't, but I feel like it does. Mental that is, but that's how I feel. Mum is not frightened to let people know how good she is. On the other hand I am still thinking I am not good at anything. At 75 she has a perfect looking ( to others) garden and spotless house. While mine is how I am comfortable, clean but not in the corners if you know what I mean. Easy to spot the dust and mess. I have given up trying to keep up the appearance of coping. I now know that a clean house and perfect garden do not mean that. My kids I worry did I make their lives unhappy. Of course I could have done better. But no second chance.
I could have given them more love, but I wasn't sure what it was myself back then, still not sure I feel it sometimes. Love to me was a new something. Now I buy myself things to make me feel loved.Does not work, just get into money trouble! Sorry for ranting,
just putting some thoughts down.

I don't think I have ever felt loved either,by anybody.The only emotion I learned to deal with as a child was being disliked, that is what you come to expect.
Food was the stuff that gave me a little fleeting pleasure as I recall,and the result brought much dislike.
I didn't have children.Couldn't face that.Of course,my mother had the most amazingly awful delivery which she made sure I was told all about so that I could see how wonderful she was to have endured it.

I think I was the unwanted result of a slightly difficult pregnancy that she played on to the limit,just as she did the menopause,and which brought her all the attention.she craved and thought she deserved

my mum married when she was 27 and my dad was 38,she had abad road accident when she was young and told if she married never to have children,which 5yrs later i was born,now mum wanted aboy everything was blue and when i was born the docter said you have lovely 9.6 baby girl,which her reply was i dont want her docter said shall i put her back,she said i dont care what you do with her i dont want her,anyway they took me home and she had brealdown my mum because of me,so my dad took me to my aunt my mums sister who only had one child aboy older than me and said to my dad i,ll look after her but no mum came and took me back,but was then ill again one day when my dad came home from work she had cut all my curls off as she could,nt get brush thru,so from then on my dad took me to work with him as he was night watchman i was 2yrs old then i think,but after my dad died when i was 14 i said to my mum you dont love me never have,and she said i do love you but i wanted ason,i must admit i made her life awful blamed her for my dads death,but as i got older i understood how hard it must have been for her,and now shes been gone 33yrs,and i,ll say it now which i should have said to mum im sorry if i could make it right i would but i will one day when we meet again
Dutchxx

dutch....that'a just what my mum did ... had all my curls cut off and kept my hair so shorn that they wouldnt grow again.....i was so pretty and yet she shore mt curls and dressed me in rags and they weren't short of money..... it was a jealousy thing, but you dont realise that when you are little

Can't see why you need to make it right Dutch.You didn't make it wrong.
Yes she wanted a boy,and you wanted a loving mother.
Sounds like you were just trying to look after yourself in the best way you could.

Oh Dutch, how sad for you - please don't think you owe your mother an apology as you don't.
I too wanted a girl desperately after losing my first child a daughter, and when my son was born I felt upset for the first few minutes, as I knew it was unlikely I would go on and have more children. However, once I got out of hospital and bought lots of blue clothes and stuff at the C & A sale, I was fine, I loved him completely altho I couldn't believe I was going to be allowed to keep him, I thought something would happen to him. I think that was because of my daughter dying at 3 days old altho she was very small and premature, eight years before.

I know my mother loved us all but she wasn't good at showing it, always too busy with housework (sorry I swore lol) and cooking, that was her way of showing her love. But she was overprotective especially with me, the eldest, and only daughter, and everything I did had to be to please her and not worry her, I wasn't allowed to be me! When she died, my brothers said I had worried her to death because I had been suffering with depression and not coping with modernising my house and looking after my son, altho he was always well looked after. I never got any help at all with my son, or anything, from my brothers or their wives. Just one nephew the same age as my boy and a stepniece the same age as my daughter would have been which was hard to bear and even tho had it been the other way round I would have bent over backwards to help out, they did nothing, not even have my son for a few hours to help. My mother was a born worrier and I was like her to begin with, but have learned not to worry the same way, altho it lurks in the background.
I too used to buy things to prove something to myself and am now in debt with credit cards etc. I never got any credit or praise for buying my own house, before I had my son, and then buying a better one to do up when he was small, and no help with doing it either, even tho one of my brothers has his own doubleglazing business.
I know all this is what causes me to hoard things and can't get the help I need to stop doing it or clear the stuff I have.
But I do worry that my son's problems have been caused by me being depressed and taking medication for a few years when he was young.

I just hope I can sort things out to leave him a nice house, not a place full of belongings and junk - to him, not to me - and that he can overcome the legacy of depression and procrastination etc that I seem to have passed on to him.

Lizxx

Liz,do you really want to get rid of the stuff you hoard?

I wil tell you why I ask.We have a friend who helped us and,indeed,is still helping us, to clear my parents hoardings. He looked after his mum until she died and now pokes about doing cleaning jobs and little bits of upholstery and stuff to keep going but he has cleared several houses round here .

I wouldn't mind betting we could arrange something to get him up there to help you if you really needed it.You would certainly feel much better for the space,believe me I know.

I might tell you that I pay him in shepherds pies and loaves and anything else I might be cooking.It's our arrangement,I'm his surrogate mum on the cooking front.