My mother is a narcissist and I have narcissistic traits

[Kim in FL]

I thank God everyday for my husband..he is a wonderful man who was able to look past my mother and her crazy and still love me. He loves me in spite of my faults and issues and has been able to help me grow as a person.

I too would take care of my mother..not because she herself did such a great job taking care of me but because it's the right thing to do.

[Fallingwater79]

Originally Posted by Kim in FL

I thank God everyday for my husband..he is a wonderful man who was able to look past my mother and her crazy and still love me. He loves me in spite of my faults and issues and has been able to help me grow as a person.

I too would take care of my mother..not because she herself did such a great job taking care of me but because it's the right thing to do.

YEs my husband has been my "go to guy" for 33 years and still today, he tells me he could almost cry when he hears of some repressed incidents that happened to me....the saddest thing we all lost when growing up in a npd dominated family was the normalacy....we had to search it out in strangers and is the biggest reason we are so introspective of what happened to us: we turned inward to save ourselves which in turn, was our true salvation...."Me, Myself and I " syndrome you could call it....

And this thread has brought so much of the sameness we all endured out in the open.....being sick as a child was NEVER acknowledged by my mother so I also became a textbook doctor of sorts because I had to diagnosis myself so often and then seek help when needed...

Once, after some abuse by a bil (that's an entire other thread ) I would be sick to my stomach anytime I got anxious, which in this family was 24/7....and I'd wake up every morning and throw up, go to school, throw up at school and fianlly settle down....one time, I couldn't hold it on the bus and got sick so the bus driver had me get off at a house of a friend and go call my mother...she was soooooooooooooooooo pissed off, I got the silent treatment on the way home but not before being told in no uncertain words, I was always thinking of myself and how selfish I was

These vomiting incidences didn't stop , I was losing weight so a trip to the doctor and he gave me anti nausea meds....mother told me once they were gone I better stop the attention game I was playing.....I was 13 years old

Oh my God, I have not thought about this for so many years....

Needless to say, when I became a mother, I was relentless in making sure my kids saw doctors and to this day they tell me, "Mom we were reluctant to tell you we hurt ourselves becasue you'd run us off to the doctor instantly for a cut ...." lol......

[autumntd]

I too am the child (daughter) of a narcissist that has been in therapy for a few years. My therapist often tells me that I am not like my mother because she would NEVER accept that she needed help or care. I don't think that you are a narcissist at all. A narcissist would never care or even think about a girl's feelings that he slept with. As to the relationship part of life, you were never good enough, you have no foundation on which you can trust, your mother didn't love you so why would anyone else. I tested my husband for years because I was sure he couldn't love me. Fortunately he stuck it out and now I trust that he loves me and have been able to separate myself from the poison of my family, that includes my father and my siblings. It is a family dysfunction. I just resently saw the part my father played and the result of this dysfunction on my siblings. My brother is also a narcissist and my sister is bipolar and refuses to look at the past so she keeps up yer denial of the reality of the situation. I think that you are also bipolar, not narcissistic. Remember that if you care you are not a narcissist.

Originally Posted by AGuyFromCleveland18

I have been going to a therapist for a couple years. Initially she just thought I had depression but soon, as we delved into my family life it became apparent to her that my mother was narcissistic. She used to ignore me when I said things, publicly humiliate me in front of my friends, praise me only when I did things that reflected positively on her, and punish me when I did things that reflected on her poorly. She denied my individuality. What I'm really worried about is that I have some of these same narcissistic traits. I seek admiration from people, without even being conscious of it. I used to be so bad that I needed the people around me to love me and I would do anything to get that to happen, including inventing a false persona. I realize now that my therapist must have known that I had narcissistic traits, but I didn't realize it myself until very recently. I have made some progress I think, but I'm worried that this is going to be a life long trait, that I can never fully escape from.

I have no friends, and when I do make friends I tend to drive them away with my mood swings, and unpredictability. I sometimes devalue people if I think they are going to reject me, saying to myself something like, these people didn't earn my respect. I have emotional outbursts at times, and often view people as very threatening. My most recent flings with narcissism was dating a girl that I never really liked that much because I basically wanted to have sex with her. So I'm just wondering, does anyone out there think that I am capable of recovering from this? It seems I get into these modes where I cognitively distort everything, like having ideas of reference, and grandiose thinking, and I can't break out of them easily (my mother used to do this). I just a fear that this is some kind of genetic disorder that I'm never going to recover from fully, and that I'm always going to fall back into.

[autumntd]

To this day, I am 46, when I am sick I get mad at my husband for not acknowledging that I am sick. When I was young my mother always said that I was faking and sent me to school. So now I feel like I have to prove that I am sick, and if my husband doesn't acknowledge it he also believes that I am faking. twisted!.

[stepka]

I know this is an old thread that got revived but I'm thankful that it did b/c I missed it the first time around and now I just sat here and read the entire thing. Wow, what stories you all have! Some are really horrific and my mom was pretty bad but at least she wasn't evil. Not nasty evil like some I've read on here but I do remember that she would say hurtful things as if she were teasing but it would be a bad moment and then the tears would spill over and she'd go into hypersweet mode and I was dumb enough to fall for it--she always seemed so innocent of any kind of forethought, but looking back I know that she just enjoyed the power of inducing tears and then I'd get the "But you're so over-sensitive sweetie!"

Originally Posted by marmom

1) The "negative filter." It's like everything that other people say or do goes through this negative filter in my head. I automatically assume they don't like me, are bothered by me, that I said or did the wrong thing, etc. It's this constant feeling of humiliation and inadequacy. The result is that I am quite isolated because I try to avoid feeling bad all the time. After I go out to lunch with an acquaintance, I will spend the next several days thinking about all the stupid things I said and how they must think I am a complete idiot. Intellectually I can tell myself that these are thought distortions, but can this kind of thinking improve?

2) Parenting. This is the biggest thing. At times it feels like I am parenting in complete darkness because I never had any role models. I go on instinct and love my children so much. I know I am not like my mother, but I still worry constantly that I am doing something terribly wrong. Almost every aspect of parenting feels like a vast unknown to me. There are also certain aspects of parenting that really threw me for a loop. One is the physical aspect. My kids (ages 2 and 4) love to climb, cuddle, and just be in close physical contact with me a lot. I realize this is normal. I was beaten since infancy and there was no physical affection from my mom. This has made me somewhat averse to physical contact. While I enjoy a good cuddle with my kids, some of the other aspects, like the rough and tumble play, them climbing all over me, etc, literally sends me into a panic. My heart will race and my instinct is to get away. It's like fight or flight. I am able to control this, or at the very least make something up ("Mommy needs to go get a drink of water"), but I feel horrible for even having these unnatural reactions to my own children. It has gotten better and more tolerable over time, but I constantly worry about my ability to be a good enough mom. It doesn't help that the first 1.5 years after my oldest was born, my mom was showering me daily with criticism. Even though I have no contact with her anymore, I still hear all the things I know she would say, and it impacts me in a big way .

Interesting that my experience with number 1 was almost identical to yours and it's only in the last few years that I've moved past that. Number 2 was the opposite--it seemed that I couldn't get enough of loving on the kids and having them jump all over me as little ones, and later as they got older I had to examine my own motives and realized that I was hugging them sometimes for my own benefit and not always for theirs and part of that is maybe b/c things were so cold in my home--there was no physical contact and I craved it. Not sexual of course but I'm a hugger and I like to be among people. I really had to force myself to back off because it wasn't about me of course--I wanted to be a good mom to them and fulfill their needs, not have them fulfill mine.

Taking what you've said here and the OP, I'd just like to say that what often happens when we have a NPD parent is that their personality traits can rub off. Kids come with a certain amount of social skills bred in and they learn the rest of what they need to know from other people and notably their parents. If you are raised by parents with NPD then that's who you're going to learn your social skills from and that's not a good thing. So, you will have learned some NPD behaviors but that doesn't make you a narcissist--it makes you someone who can unlearn what you've learned. It takes awhile and I'm still working on it at over 50 but I can tell you I've come a long way--kids could not stand me when I was growing up, but I've also come to realize that more people liked me than I realized--it's just that if I wasn't set on the pedestal I figured it meant something was wrong with me. I had to do a lot of self talk to help myself to meld among people and not feel the need to be the center of attention as my mother was always seeking to do. If the conversation was not about her, she was not interested. Period.

I never did realize consciously as a child that we had a problem in my family but at 16 I really began to act out--ran away from home even and not once but several times. Went thru a sexually promiscuous phase but stopped when I realized how much I was hurting myself and how it was such a poor substitute for the love I was seeking. It was only as an adult and watching what she did to other people that brought everything clear to me and helped me realize that I was not the bad person I had grown up believing myself to be. But this is so fundamental to our mental health b/c you grow up thinking that if mom can't love you, who can? But, I love you all for sharing your heartbreaking stories.

[SparklingSmile]

I wish my narcissitic ex would self reflect. give us an update if you are on here. Good luck.