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,her. Shes also careful about when and how she engages in her abuses. Shes very secretive, acharacteristic of almost all abusers (Dont wash our dirty laundry in public!) and will punish you for telling anyone else what shes done. The t imes and locations of her worst abuses arecarefully chosen so that no one who might intervene will hear or see her bad behavior, and she will seem like a completely different person in public. Shell slam you to other people, but willalways embed her devaluing nuggets of snide gossip in protestations of concern, love andunderstanding (I feel so sorry for poor Cynthia. She always seems to have such a hard time,

but I just dont know what I can do for her!) As a consequence the children of narcissistsuniversally report that no one believes them (I have to tell you that she always talks about YOU in the most caring way!). Unfortunately therapists, given the deniable actions of thenarcissist and eager to defend a fellow parent, will often jump to the narcissists defense as well, reinforcing your sense of isolation and helplessness (Im sure she didnt mean it likethat!) 2. She violates your boundaries. You feel like an extension of her. Your property is given away without your consent, sometimes in front of you. Your property may be repossessed and noreason given other than that it was never y ours. Your time is committed without consulting

you, and opinions purported to be yours are expressed for you. (She LOVES going to the fair!He would never want anything like that. She wouldnt like kumquats.) You are discussed in your presence as though you are not there. She keeps tabs on your bodily functions andhumiliates you by divulging the information she gleans, especially when it can be used todemonstrate her devotion and highlight her martyrdom to your needs (Mike had thatproblem with frequent urination too, only his was much worse. I was so worried about him!) You have never known what it is like to have privacy in the bathroom or in your bedroom, andshe goes through your things regularly. She asks nosy questions, and snoops into youremail/letters/diary/conversations. She will want to dig into your feelings, particularly painfulones and is always looking for negative information on you which can be used against you. Shedoes things against y our expressed wishes frequently. All of this is done without seemingembarrassment or thought. Any attempt at autonomy on your part is strongly resisted. Normal rites of passage (learningto shave, wearing makeup, dating) are grudgingly allowed only if you insist, and yourepunished for your insistence (Since youre old enough to date, I think y oure old enough topay for your own clothes!) If you demand age-appropriate clothing, grooming, control over your own life, or rights, you are "difficult" and she ridicules your independence.

In a bizarrely childish behavior, your mother may even select choice tidbits off your plate toeat or to give to a more favored child:

Food was frequently taken from me. The most vibrant memory washaving the watermelon heart eaten off my plate. Oh, I thought you weregoing to throw it away, was the common comeback to my protests.

-Judy The most abusive element in this story is the subtle torment visited on the child who dared to


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pro es e con sca on o e es par o er p ece o ru . e paren repea e y engage nthe same violating behavior, each time needling the child with the same, laughably transparent, excuse that she thought the child was going to throw away food that the child wasstill eating! The parent was thus able to compound the childs frustration at the loss of ananticipated treat with the message that the parent enjoyed not only the childs food, but herunhappiness. Unsurprisingly, Judy describes a lifelong battle with eating issues that iscommon to the children of the harpy. When eating is fraught with deprivation and cruelty, itshard to imagine having a healthy relationship with food. 3. She favoritizes. Narcissistic mothers commonly choose one (sometimes more) child to be thegolden child and one (sometimes more) to be the scapegoat. The narcissist identifies with thegolden child and provides privileges to him or her as long as the golden child does just as she wants. The golden child has to be cared for assiduously by everyone in the family. Thescapegoat has no needs and instead gets to do the caring. The golden child can do nothing wrong. The scapegoat is always at fault. This creates divisions between the children, one of whom has a large investment in the mother being wise and wonderful, and the other(s) whohate her. That division will be fostered by the narcissist with lies and with blatantly unfair andfavoritizing behavior. The golden child will defend the mother and indirectly perpetuate theabuse by finding reasons to blame the scapegoat for the mothers actions. The golden childmay also directly take on the narcissistic mothers tasks by physically abusing the scapegoat sothe narcissistic mother doesnt have to do that herself. 4. She undermines. Your accomplishments are acknowledged only to the ex tent that she cantake credit for them. Any success or accomplishment for which she cannot take credit isignored or diminished. Any time you are to be center stage and there is no opportunity for herto be the center of attention, she will try to prevent the occasion altogether, or she doesntcome, or she leaves early, or she acts like its no big deal, or she steals the spotlight or she slipsin little wounding comments about how much better someone else did or how what you did wasnt as much as you could have done or as you think it is. She undermines you by pickingfights with you or being especially unpleasant just before y ou have to make a major effort. Sheacts put out if she has to do anything to support your opportunities or will outright refuse to doeven small things in support of you. She will be nasty to you about things that are peripherally connected with your successes so that you find your joy in what youve done is tarnished, without her ever saying anything directly about it. No matter what your success, she has totake you down a peg about it. 5. She demeans, criticizes and denigrates. She lets you know in all sorts of little ways that shethinks less of you than she does of your siblings or of other people in general. If you complainabout mistreatment by someone else, she will take that persons side even if she doesnt know them at all. She doesnt care about those people or the justice of your complaints. She just wants to let you know that y oure never r ight. She will deliver generalized barbs that are almost impossible to rebut (always in a loving,caring tone): You were always difficult You can be very difficult to love You never seemedto be able to finish anything You were very hard to live with Youre always causingtrouble No one could put up with the things you do. She will deliver slams in a sidelong way - for example shell complain about how no one loves her, does anything for her, or caresabout her, or shell complain that everyone is so selfish, when youre the only person in the


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room. As always, this combines criticism with deniability. She will slip little comments into conversation that she really enjoyed something she did withsomeone else - something she did with you too, but didnt like as much. Shell let you know that her relationship with some other person you both know is wonderful in a way y ourrelationship with her isnt - the carefully unspoken message being that you dont matter muchto her.

She minimizes, discounts or ignores your opinions and experiences. Your insights are met withcondescension, denials and accusations (I think you read too much!) and she will brush off your information even on subjects on which you are an acknowledged expert. Whatever y ousay is met with smirks and amused sounding or exaggerated exclamations (Uh hunh! Youdont say! Really!). Shell then make it clear that she didnt listen to a word you said. 6. She makes you look crazy. If you try to confront her about something shes done, shell tell you that you have a very vivid imagination (this is a phrase commonly used by abusers of allsorts to invalidate your experience of their abuse) that you dont know what youre talking

about, or that she has no idea what youre talking about. She will claim not to remember even very memorable events, flatly denying they ever happened, nor will she ev er acknowledge any possibility that she might have forgotten. This is an extremely aggressive and exceptionally infuriating tactic called gaslighting, common to abusers of all kinds. Your perceptions of reality are continually undermined so that you end up without any confidence in your intuition, your memory or your powers of reasoning. This makes you a much better v ictim for theabuser. Narcissists gaslight routinely. The narcissist will either insinuate or will tell you outright that youre unstable, otherwise you wouldnt believe such ridiculous things or be so uncooperative.

Youre oversensitive. Youre imagining things. Youre hysterical. Youre completely unreasonable. Youre over-reacting, like you always do. Shell talk to you when youve calmeddown and arent so irrational. She may even characterize you as being neurotic or psy chotic. Once shes constructed these fantasies of your emotional pathologies, shell tell others aboutthem, as always, presenting her smears as expressions of concern and declaring her ownhelpless victimhood. She didnt do anything. She has no idea why youre so irrationally angry with her. Youve hurt her terribly. She thinks you may need psychotherapy . She loves you very much and would do anything to make you happy, but she just doesnt know what to do. You keep pushing her away when all she wants to do is help you.

She has simultaneously absolved herself of any responsibility for your obvious antipathy towards her, implied that its something fundamentally wrong with you that makes y ou angry

with her, and undermined your credibility with her listeners. She plays the role of the dotingmother so perfectly that no one will believe you. 7. Shes envious. Any time you get something nice shes angry and envious and her envy will be apparent when she admires whatever it is. Shell try to get it from you, spoil it for you, orget the same or better for herself. Shes always working on ways to get what other people


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.or daughters-in-law. Theyll attempt to forbid their daughters to wear makeup, to groomthemselves in an age-appropriate way or to date. They will criticize the appearance of theirdaughters and daughters-in-law. This envy extends to relationships. Narcissistic mothersinfamously attempt to damage their childrens marriages and interfere in the upbringing of their grandchildren. 8. Shes a liar in too many way s to count. Any time she talks about something that has

emotional significance for her, its a fair bet that shes lying. Lying is one way that she createsconflict in the relationships and lives of those around her - shell lie to them about what otherpeople have said, what theyve done, or how they feel. Shell lie about her relationship withthem, about your behavior or about your situation in order to inflate herself and to undermine your credibility . The narcissist is very careful about how she lies. To outsiders shell lie thoughtfully anddeliberately, always in a way that can be covered up if shes confronted with her lie. She spins what you said rather than makes something up wholesale. She puts dishonest interpretationson things you actually did. If shes recently done something particularly egregious she may

engage in preventative lying: she lies in advance to discount what you might say before youeven say it. Then when you talk about what she did youll be cut off with I already know allabout ityour mother told me... (self-justifications and lies). Because she is so careful abouther deniability, it may be very hard to catch her in her lies and the more gullible of her friendsmay never realize how dishonest she is. To you, shell lie blatantly. She will claim to be unable to remember bad things she has done,even if she did one of them recently and even if it was something very memorable. Of course, if you try to jog her memory by recounting the circumstances You have a very vividimagination or That was so long ago. Why do you have to dredge up your old grudges? Yourconversations with her are full of casual brush-offs and diversionary lies and she doesntrespect you enough to bother making it sound good. For example shell start with a self-serving lie: If I dont take you as a dependent on my taxes Ill lose three thousand dollars! You refute her lie with an obvious truth: No, three thousand dollars is the amount of thedependent exemption. Youll only lose about eight hundred dollars. Her response: Isnt that what I said? You are now in a game with only one rule: You cant win. On the rare occasions she is forced to acknowledge some bad behavior, she will couch theadmission deniably. She guesses that maybe she might have done something wrong. The wrongdoing is always heavily spun and trimmed to make it sound better. The words I guess, maybe, and might have are in and of themselves lies because she knows exactly what she

did - no guessing, no might haves, no maybes. An Nmother will say whatever feeds her purpose of the moment, without regard for the truth,so when her purpose shifts, the Nmother must contradict her past statements. Thiscontradiction may occur within the context of a single conversation, or even a single sentence,as the following story illustrates. In this story , Caroline describes the aftermath of an agonizingemotional drama in which her mother wept over herself and pitied herself because she had justfound out that her unemployed son had found a job, but in another state from that in which the


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mot er ve . t was e w t t n y ve e su c e t reats an en a y p rase accusat onsthat Caroline was so selfish and that she did not love or care about her mother. Before,during and after this appalling drama, Diane repeatedly justified her behavior by saying thatshe just needed to feel sorry for herself. After being forced to participate in two hours of this drama, Caroline was reduced to helplesssobbing. She told her mother that she was so distressed, that she wanted to have no contactfor a while.

Two weeks after I got home, Diane violated my request by sending me aletter. One pair of sentences stood out: I have no idea why youre soupset with me, and besides, I just needed to feel sorry for myself. Besides,

I didnt think it was that bad.

-Caroline The first sentence contains two inherently contradictory statements: That Diane had no idea why Caroline was upset, followed by yet another repetition of her justification for the abusivedrama! On closer examination, Dianes intentions in writing this note become clear. Carolines requestfor no contact was almost certainly a terrible shock to Diane: Although this drama was longerthan its predecessors, and had escalated to include suicide threats, in form it was pretty muchthe same as those she had previously indulged in without consequence, in which she had clungto Caroline, sobbed on Carolines shoulder, bemoaned the hardships of her life, and accusedCaroline of being uncaring, unloving and selfish. But this time there were consequences, and Diane clearly felt impelled to do something todiffuse her shame and to attempt to fix the problem that she created. So she fell back on aclassic defense: gaslighting. Diane had no idea why Caroline was so upset, even though bothshe and Caroline were present when she upset Caroline just two weeks earlier! She thereby implied that nothing had happened, or at least, nothing about which Caroline could legitimately have been upset. She thereby insinuated that Carolines distress was a consequence of Carolines own irrationality and oversensitivity. In the second half of the sentence, the subtlety of the lying that permeates Dianes interactions with Caroline is apparent. Diane justifies her abusive drama by claiming that she had a need

that required her to cry , pity herself, and accuse Caroline of a multitude of character flaws.That is dishonest in two way s. No reasonable person would define a self-pitying sobfest as aneed, and in any case, the drama was not a consequence of Dianes need to pity herself, butof her desire to make Caroline suffer. Diane never mentions or alludes to that desire in any way, even though the manipulative accusations Diane hurled at Caroline make it clear thatCarolines suffering was Dianes dominant motivation for the drama. The kind of fluid, highly ex pedient, version of reality that results in self-contradiction is typicalof disordered people. When stressed or threatened with consequences, they almost always

start with denial, responding to accusations with declarations of bewilderment, saying that


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they have no idea, what the problem is, or that they cant imagine why their behavior has been deemed intolerable. Any further defensive lie, including distractions, rationalizations, justifications and blaming will then automatically contradict the prior assertion of bewilderment. You cant explain why y our behavior wasnt y our fault, was someone elsesfault, or was actually acceptable, without implicitly admitting that you know what you did! 9. She has to be the center of attention all the time. This need is a defining trait of narcissists

and particularly of narcissistic mothers for whom their children exist to be sources of attentionand adoration. Narcissistic mothers love to be waited on and often pepper their children withlittle requests. While youre up or its equivalent is one of their favorite phrases. Youcouldnt just be assigned a chore at the beginning of the week or of the day, instead, you had todo it on demand, preferably at a time that was inconvenient for you, or you had to help herdo it, fetching and carry ing for her while she made up to herself for the menial work she had todo as your mother by glorying in your attentions. A narcissistic mother may create odd occasions at which she can be the center of attention,such as memorials for someone close to her who died long ago, or major celebrations of small

personal milestones. She may love to entertain so she can be the life of her own party . She willtry to steal the spotlight or will try to spoil any occasion where someone else is the center of attention, particularly the child she has cast as the scapegoat. She often invites herself along where she isnt welcome. If she visits you or you visit her, you are required to spend all yourtime with her. Entertaining herself is unthinkable. She has always pouted, manipulated orraged if you tried to do anything without her, didnt want to entertain her, refused to wait onher, stymied her plans for a drama or otherwise deprived her of attention. Older narcissistic mothers often use the natural limitations of aging to manipulate dramas,often by neglecting their health or by doing things they know will make them ill. This gives

them the opportunity to cash in on the investment they made when they trained you to waiton them as a child. Then they call you (or better still, get the neighbor or the nursing homeadministrator to call you) demanding your immediate attendance. You are to rush to her side,pat her hand, weep over her pain and listen sy mpathetically to her unending complaints abouthow hard and awful it is. (Never get old!) Its almost never the case that you can actually doanything useful, and the causes of her disability may have been completely avoidable, but youve been put in an extremely difficult position. If you dont provide the audience andattention shes manipulating to get, you look extremely bad to everyone else and may even

have legal culpability. (Narcissistic behaviors commonly accompany Alzheimers disease, so

this behavior may also occur in perfectly normal mothers as they age.) 10. She manipulates your emotions in order to feed on your pain. This exceptionally sick and bizarre behavior is so common among narcissistic mothers that their children often call thememotional vampires. Some of this emotional feeding comes in the form of pure sadism. Shedoes and says things just to be wounding or she engages in tormenting teasing or she needles you about things youre sensitive about, all the while a smile plays over her lips. She may havetaken you to scary movies or told you horrifying stories, then mocked you for being a baby when you cried. She will slip a wounding comment into conversation and smile delightedly into your hurt face. You can hear the laughter in her v oice as she pressures you or say s distressing


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. , youre so much fun to tease, and recruiting others to share in her amusement. . She enjoys hercruelties and makes no effort to disguise that. She wants you to know that your pain entertainsher. She may also bring up subjects that are painful for you and probe you about them, all the while watching you carefully. This is emotional vampirism in its purest form. Shes feedingemotionally off your pain. A peculiar form of this emotional vampirism combines attention-seeking behavior with a

demand that the audience suffer. Since narcissistic mothers often play the martyr this may take the form of wrenching, self-pitying dramas which she carefully produces, and in which sheis the star performer. She sobs and wails that no one loves her and everyone is so selfish, andshe doesnt want to live, she wants to die! She wants to die! She will not seem to care how much the manipulation of their emotions and the self-pity repels other people. One weird behavior that is very common to narcissists: her dramas may also center around the tragediesof other people, often relating how much she suffered by association as she cries over thehorrible murder of someone she wouldnt recognize if they had passed her on the street. 11. Shes selfish and willful. She always makes sure she has the best of everything. She insistson having her own way all the time and she will ruthlessly, manipulatively pursue it, even if what she wants isnt worth all the effort shes putting into it and even if that effort goes far beyond normal behavior. She will make a huge effort to get something you denied her, even if it was entirely your right to do so and even if her demand was selfish and unreasonable. If youtell her she cannot bring her friends to your party she will show up with them anyway, and she will have told them that they were invited so that you either have to give in, or be the bad guy to these poor dupes on your doorstep. If you tell her she cant come over to your house tonightshell call your spouse and try get him or her to agree that she can, and to not say anything to you about it because its a surprise. She has to show you that you cant tell her no.

One near-universal characteristic of narcissists: because they are so selfish and self-centered,they are very bad gift givers. Theyll give you hand-me-downs or market things forthemselves as gifts for you (I thought Id give you my old bicycle and buy myself a new one!I know how much you love Italian food, so Im going to take you to my favorite restaurant for your birthday!) New gifts are often obviously cheap and are usually things that dont suit youor that you cant use or are a quid pro quo: if you buy her the gift she wants, she will buy you

an item of your choice. Shell make it clear that it pains her to give you anything. She may buy you a gift and get the identical item for herself, or take y ou shopping for a gift and get herself something nice at the same time to make herself feel better. 12. Shes self-absorbed. Her feelings, needs and wants are very important; yours areinsignificant to the point that her least whim takes precedence over your most basic needs.Her problems deserve your immediate and full attention; yours are brushed aside. Her wishesalways take precedence; if she does something for y ou, she reminds you constantly of hermunificence in doing so and will often try to extract some sort of payment. She will complainconstantly, even though your situation may be much worse than hers. If y ou point that out,she will effortlessly, thoughtlessly brush it aside as of no importance (Its easy for you/Itsdifferent for you).


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A year later, like the sap I was, I again went to LaVonne's home for Christmas. One night as she started to put up the Christmas stockings, sherealized that mine wasn't there. She said wonderingly "Where's your Christmas stocking?" I said furiously: "You gave it to me last year and told me to take it if I wanted it." She walked over to where I was sittingand bent over me with her hands on the back of the couch so I was trapped

under her. She said: "Sometimes I do small things." and then she turned and walked away. As always, we were alone. She never did things like that if anyone else was around.

After that I quit being a sap. I stayed home and saved the money and time I had wasted going to LaVonne's home for Christmas, so that she could give herself a holiday treat of abuse.

Many years later I told my husband this story and he said: "Was that anapology?"

-Mary

When LaVonne told Mary "Sometimes I do small things," she was not apologizing; an apology expresses regret and takes responsibility; LaVonne did neither. Like the bully she was,LaVonne was expressing defiance. In the face of evidence that she had engaged in the hurtful behavior of which her daughter accused her, she essentially said: "So I did something mean to you. So what?"

That statement was unusual for a narcissistic mother; it was an acknowledgement that she had

purposefully hurt her daughter. The message LaVonne sent when she forced her daughter totake away her Christmas stocking was clear: Y ou don't have a place in this home, you don'thave a place at my holiday table. After many years of receiving that message in various forms,Mary finally got it. As she says:

After the first year that I didn't go to her home for Christmas, LaVonnequit asking me. Eventually I realized the obvious truth: the reason that

LaVonne didn't ask me to come to her home for holidays was that shedidn't want me there. That's why, when I was in college, LaVonne had mespend 3 hours on public transit each way going home for holidays, even

though I lived a 30 minute drive from her house. That's why, oneThanksgiving, she left me standing on the street in the sleet and the dark

for over an hour before she bestirred herself to drive the five minutes to thebus stop and pick me up. That's why she handed me my Christmasstocking and told me to take it away.

It 's not amazing that I stopped coming home for holidays. It's amazingthat it took me so many years to realize that I wasn't wanted.

-Mary


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In her book "Mean Mothers, Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt" (HarperCollins Publishers,2009) Peg Streep describes the ultimate rejecting mother, who comfortably forgot herdaughter the minute that the daughter ceased contact:

One morning in February of 2001, my phone rang. I picked up to hear mybrother's voice. "Mom is dying" he said, "I thought you might want tocome see her." At that point, I hadn't seen or spoken to my mother for over

ten years; in fact, I didn't know she'd even been ill.

"Has she asked for me?" I asked. There was silence, and then he cleared histhroat. "No," he said, "she hasn't." "Has she ever mentioned me in the last months or years?" I asked. There was another pause and then the word "No."

15. She terrorized. All abusers use fear to control their victims, and your narcissistic motherused it ruthlessly to train you. Narcissists teach you to beware their wrath even when they arent present. The only alternative is constant placation. If you give her everything she wantsall the time, you might be spared. If you dont, the punishments will come. Even adult childrenof narcissists still feel that carefully inculcated fear. Your narcissistic mother can turn it on witha silence or a look that tells the child in you shes thinking about how shes going to get even. Not all narcissists abuse physically, but most do, often in subtle, deniable way s. It allows themto vent their rage at y our failure to be the solution to their internal havoc and simultaneously to teach you to fear them. You may not have been beaten, but you were almost certainly left toendure physical pain when a normal mother would have made an effort to relieve your misery.This deniable form of battery allows her to store up her rage and dole out the punishment at alater time when shes worked out an airtight rationale for her abuse, so she never risksexposure. You were left hungry because you eat too much. (Someone asked her if she was

pregnant. She isnt). You always went to school with stomach flu because you dont have afever. Youre just trying to get out of school. (She resents having to take care of you. You havea lot of nerv e getting sick and adding to her burdens.) She refuses to look at y our bloody heelsand instead the shoes that wore those blisters on your heels are put back on your feet and youre sent to the store in them because Y ou wanted those shoes. Now you can wear them.(You said the ones she wanted to get you were ugly. She liked them because they were justlike what she wore 30 years ago). The dentist was told not to give you Novocaine when hedrilled your tooth because he has to learn to take better care of his teeth. (She has to pay fora filling and shes furious at having to spend money on you.) Unlike psychopaths, narcissists dounderstand right, wrong, and consequences, so they are not ordinarily criminal. She beat you, but not to the point where you went to the hospital. She left you standing out in the cold until you were miserable, but not until you had hypothermia. She put you in the basement in thedark with no clothes on, but she only left you there for two hours.

Narcissistic mothers also abuse by loosing others on you or by failing to protect you when anormal mother would have. Sometimes the narcissists golden child will be encouraged toabuse the scapegoat. Narcissists also abuse by exposing you to violence. If one of your siblingsgot beaten, she made sure you saw. She effortlessly put the fear of Mom into you, without


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.narcissist tells the daughter that she eats too much, needs to exercise more, or has to wearextra-large size clothes, the daughter believes it, even if it isnt true. However, she willsometimes project even though it makes no sense at all. This happens when she feels shamedand needs to put it on her scapegoat child and the projection therefore comes across as beingan attack out of the blue. For example: She makes an outrageous request, and you casually refuse to let her have her way. Shes enraged by your refusal and snarls at you that youll talk about it when youve calmed down and are no longer hysterical.

You arent hysterical at all; she is, but your refusal has made her feel the shame that shouldhave stopped her from making shameless demands in the first place. Thats intolerable. Shecan transfer that shame to you and rationalize away your response: you only refused her because youre so unreasonable. Having done that she can reassert her shamelessness andindulge her childish willfulness by turning an unequivocal refusal into a subject for furtherdiscussion. Youll talk about it again later - probably when shes worn you down withhistrionics, pouting and the silent treatment so youre more inclined to do what she wants. 20. She is never wrong about anything. No matter what shes done, she wont ever genuinely apologize for anything. Instead, any time she feels she is being made to apologize she will sulk and pout, issue an insulting apology or negate the apology she has just made with justifications,qualifications or self pity: Im sorry you felt that I humiliated you Im sorry if I made youfeel bad If I did that it was wrong Im sorry, but I theres nothing I can do about it Imsorry I made you feel clumsy, stupid and disgusting Im sorry but it was just a joke. Youreso over-sensitive Im sorry that my own child feels she has to upset me and make me feel

bad. The last insulting apology is also an example of projection.

In the following excerpt from a letter written by a narcissistic mother to her daughter, and

signed by the mother and her passive, enabling husband, apologies are used to demean andinvalidate the daughter, and to minimize the mother's despicable behavior:

We are sorry if you feel we have failed you and fallen short. We aresorry if we could not live up to whatever expectations you have

placed on us. We are sorry if you suffered from our dynamics

-contributed by "upsi"

This quote contains no actual apologies, despite the multiple iterations of the words "we aresorry." The Nmother is not sorry at all, and she makes that clear to her daughter by followingeach "we are sorry" with the conditional "if." Instead of apologizing for the abusive behaviororiginally under discussion, the mother thus questions the legitimacy of the daughter'scomplaints. The vague language she uses to describe the failings for which she mustpurportedly apologize also underlines the mother's refusal to acknowledge wrongdoing. Perhaps the mother caused her daughter to have "suffered from our dynamics," an admission which is so imprecise that it means nothing.

The mother multiplies the insult implied by a conditional apology when she says that she is

sorry if her daughter feels that her parents have failed her. In this statement, the writer


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drops any pretense of apology and moves on to assault. It is always condescending to say that you are sorry about the way someone feels, because it means that you find them pitiful andemotionally inadequate. No regret for the speaker's behavior enters into such a statement.Indeed, the mother's fury at being put in a position requiring apology leaks through when shesays that she is sorry if she failed to live up to "whatever expectations you have placed on us."The snide, self-pitying and dismissive tone of this quote makes it clear that the problem is theirrational and self-centered demands of the child, not any behavior of the mother. In reality,

the mother (falsely) told her daughter's acquaintances that the daughter's husband was a batterer. Another time, the mother wrote to the daughter's in-laws expressing her concernthat the daughter and the husband were severely impaired by (imaginary) drug use. But inthis letter, the mother reduces this contemptible conduct to a contemptuous whatever .

These condescending insults masquerading as apologies are very familiar to the children of narcissistic mothers, who seethed impotently at hearing "I 'm sorry if you felt..." in response toany reproach.

21. Sometimes she seems to have no awareness that other people even have feelings, andother times she is brilliantly sensitive to other peoples emotions. Every child of a narcissistrecognizes this contradiction because narcissistic mothers do possess the ability to exerciseempathy, and in abundance. Sometimes this ability also leads them to identify emotionally with people who are suffering and to express caring for them. When caring about anotherssuffering interferes with something the narcissist wants, though, the caring vanishes. When anarcissistic mother wants validation, when she feels like eliciting some emotional pain, whensomething she wants hurts someone else, the empathy is turned off as though it never existed.

From the perspective of ability, narcissists are extremely empathetic; indeed they have a giftof telling what other people are feeling and thinking. Their skill at discerning and guiding theemotions of other people is the basis of many characteristically narcissistic interactions.Narcissists are very socially adept, which is why no one ever believes their children when they complain of their mothers. They know just how to make everyone think that theyre delightful.Narcissistic mothers are exceptional manipulators, and manipulators must be extremely aware, on a moment-by-moment basis, of the emotions of their targets. If you dont know what people are feeling, you cant push their buttons. Their exceptional sensitivity to thefeelings of others is also the wellspring of their pleasure in inflicting emotional pain throughdramas and no-win scenarios. Narcissistic mothers enjoy eliciting emotional pain, and they doit very well because they know just what their target children are feeling. That exquisitesensitivity is the reason they dont need to batter. They can inflict agony without lifting afinger, so why risk exposure and waste effort with beatings when they can elicit the sameemotions with words alone?

What narcissistic mothers lack is concern for the consequences of their actions, a behavior thatseems rooted in profound selfishness, rather than in the absence of empathy. Mothers withNPD are certainly capable of feeling for others: they re always feeling for the people with whom their scapegoat has conflicts. They feel for their fellow narcissists. They feel for people who have validated and praised them. They even feel for their child when it doesnt cost themanything to do so. They just dont feel for their child when theyre abusing him. They dont feelanything that interferes with their absorption in their own wants and needs. Because they scour their environment for validation of their own abusiveness, they defend their fellow


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responsibility for the pain they cause to others. In the following story, Marys mother,LaVonne, isnt repressing shame at her bad behavior; she cant repress an emotion she doesntfeel. Just as it never occurred to Sarahs mother to care about the well-being of a child sent toschool with a handprint on her face, it never occurred to Marys mother to care about the well- being of the child she was abusing herself, or to feel shame for the injuries she inflicted:

My sophomore year in college, I learned to make these delicate littlebirds out of multicolored ribbons and I decided that I would make mymother a mobile of ribbon birds for Christmas. Each bird took about 45 minutes to make, and I was making a dozen of them, so I really couldnt hide my bird-making from my mother. I just said that I needed the birds

for a project. One day when I had about eight birds made, my mother suddenly said inan excited, happy voice: I have an idea! How about if I take those birdsand use them to decorate presents for my friends?! I said calmly No, Immaking them for a project. In response she flew into a rage, accusing me

of being unappreciative and selfish and of only caring about myself. After abusing me for ten minutes or so, she stomped off angrily to another part of the house, and I went back to my bird-making, imagining her reaction in a week when she opened her Christmas present.

As LaVonne opened the box containing the ribbon bird mobile Christmasmorning, I watched her face carefully, expecting to see her lookembarrassed or abashed, but there wasnt a flicker of emotion that showed that she even remembered the scene she had put on just a weekbefore. Every expression on her face and every word from her mouthmade it obvious that, in her world, nothing had happened. It wasnt that she was playacting; the sight of the birds just didnt trigger anymemories.

It wasnt until some years after I completely cut contact with her that I had the emotional distance to realize: I couldnt ever remember seeingher wrap a gift for a friend, nor do I ever recall a wrapped gift for one of her friends under the Christmas tree, waiting to be given. She didnt get gifts from friends and she didnt give gifts. So what was she going to do

with those eight ribbon birds? -Mary The scene LaVonne staged is a straightforward example of a no-win scenario; LaVonnethought up the scenario, she launched her attack with an outrageous demand, when herdemand was denied, she used the denial as a justification to berate and demean her daughter -and then she forgot about it . The simplest explanation for this apparent memory lapse is thatthe act of ambushing and emotionally abusing her child was too inconsequential to recall. LaVonnes casual forgetfulness illustrates the critical division between a person who behaves


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. e e s roys your re a ons ps. arc ss s c mo ers are e orna oes: w erever ey touch down families are torn apart and wounds are inflicted. Unless the father has control overthe narcissist and holds the family together, adult siblings in families with narcissistic motherscharacteristically have painful relationships. Typically all communication between siblings issuperficial and driven by duty, or they may never talk to each other at all. In part, these women foster dissension between their children because they enjoy the control it gives them.If those children dont communicate except through the mother, she can decide what everyonehears. Narcissists also love the excitement and drama they create by interfering in theirchildrens lives. Watching peoples lives explode is better than soap operas, especially when you dont have any empathy for their misery. The narcissist nurtures anger, contempt and envy - the most corrosive emotions - to drive herchildren apart. While her children are still living at home, any child who stands up to thenarcissist guarantees punishment for the rest. In her zest for revenge, the narcissist

purposefully turns the siblings anger on the dissenter by including every one in her retaliation.(I can see that nobody here loves me! Well Ill just take these Christmas presents back to thestore. None of you would want anything I got you anyway!) The other children, long trained by the narcissist to give in, are furious with the troublemaking child, instead of with thenarcissist who actually deserves their anger. The narcissist also uses favoritism and gossip to poison her childrens relationships. Thescapegoat sees the mother as a creature of caprice and cruelty. As is typical of the privileged,the other children dont see her unfairness and they excuse her abuses. Indeed, they are oftenrecruited by the narcissist to adopt her contemptuous and entitled attitude towards thescapegoat and with her tacit or explicit permission, will inflict further abuse. The scapegoatpredictably responds with fury and equal contempt. After her children move on with adultlives, the narcissist makes sure to keep each apprised of the doings of the others, passing onthe most discreditable and juicy gossip (as always, disguised as concern) about the otherchildren, again, in a way that engenders contempt rather than compassion. Having been raised by a narcissist, her children are predisposed to be envious, and she takesfull advantage of the opportunity that presents. She may never praise you to your face, butshe will likely crow about your v ictories to the very sibling who is not doing well. Shell tell youabout the generosity she displayed towards that child, leaving you wondering why you got leftout and irrationally angry at the favored child rather than at the narcissist who told you aboutit. The end result is a family in which almost all communication is triangular. The narcissist, thespider in the middle of the family web, sensitively monitors all the children for information shecan use to retain her unchallenged control over the family. She then passes that on to theothers, creating the resentments that prevent them from communicating directly and freely with each other. The result is that the only communication between the children is through thenarcissist, exactly the way she wants it. 26. As a last resort she goes pathetic. When shes confronted with unavoidable consequencesfor her own bad behavior, including your anger, she will melt into a soggy puddle of weepy helplessness. I ts all her fault. She cant do anything right. She feels so bad. What she doesnt


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do: own the responsibility for her bad conduct and make it right. Instead, as always, its allabout her, and her helpless self-pity ing weepiness dumps the responsibility for herconsequences AND for her unhappiness about it on you. As so often with narcissists, it is also amanipulative behavior. If you fail to excuse her bad behavior and make her feel better, YOUare the bad person for being cold, heartless and unfeeling when your poor mother feels soawful.

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