My Story with Covert Narc Mom

[Cassandra T]

Hi everyone! This is my second post, where I'm going to vent a little and tell what's going on with my mom. I'm 56, happily married, no children, one golden child brother. I knew something was wrong with her since around age 3, when at church before time to start, I heard her say "I'd be ashAMED!!!" Naturally I thought she was talking to me, but she was talking to a man sitting behind us! She said "READING, in CHURCH!" Even at that age, I knew there was nothing in the Bible that said you couldn't read in church. There was no commandment against it. The man said "I'm reading the BIBLE." She kept on, saying something like "Well I don't care, you still shouldn't read in church." He just glared at her and went back to reading. That's when a little red flag went up, and I realized something was wrong.

To all appearances, she was the sweetest, most humble person, and I was under the impression that we had the ideal family, although she yelled at us a lot. One time she was on a rant at the dinner table, and she answered the phone and switched to a syrupy sweet voice, and my young brother said sadly "why can't she talk to US like that?"

When I was around 13, my grandmother offered to take me clothes shopping. The day we were going, my mother was fit to be tied, in a rage, and my dad was saying "There's nothing wrong with her taking Cassandra shopping." She said "She thinks I don't buy enough clothes for her!" He tried to talk sense into her and said she sounded like a screaming banshee. By the time my grandmother arrived, I was very nervous about the whole thing. We went to a nice store in town and went to some racks in the back. I didn't know where the "good" clothes were, and accepted that these racks were what I had to choose from – maybe they were bargains and were all she could afford. She seemed a little tense and I didn't want to be any trouble at all. I picked out two dresses, and proudly showed them to my mom when I got home. She rolled her eyes – her whole head actually – and said "You are SO easily influenced. YOU'RE GOING TO WEAR THOSE!" I said "I know, I'm going to." She scolded me for being a smart aleck, but I wasn't.

Some time later, I came home and there were several new shirts laid on my bed. She came in and said she found them on sale, and after a pause she said "WELLL??? Aren't you going to say thank you?" I didn't understand why she acted like she wanted a medal just for buying me clothes, and seemed angry. If she didn't buy me any clothes, she would be guilty of child neglect and it would be obvious to everyone.

Around age 9, all my church-going friends were "getting saved." Soon after, at an altar call, I got saved too. It wasn't because my friends did, or to please anyone...it was a real conviction, between me and God. Still, I assumed my parents would be thrilled, because getting saved was the best and most important thing a person could do. When we got home, I thought there might even be a celebration, or at least my dad would be thrilled to find out. She went in there and probably told him, came back and said in a kind of low voice, as if she didn't want him to hear, "You don't have to get saved yet, you know. You're still young, below the age of accountability." I was shocked! She always told me I was too young to do stuff, but this was unbelievable. Even at that age, I knew what was behind it. It indicated that now I had a direct hotline to God, and wouldn't have to go through her. She felt a loss of control, and wanted to be the go-between, and if I was forgiven and God approved of me, it didn't matter as much if she disapproved of me. As "religious" as she seemed, maybe part of it was just an illusion and her heart wasn't where I thought it was.

Once when I was somewhere between 10 and 14, I was reading at the table and she was boiling something on the stove. Everything was quiet and out of the blue, she said "The Bible says that in the 'last days,' there will be a famine and mothers will boil their babies and eat them." The red flags in my head were going 'ping, ping, ping'! Of course, I knew she wouldn't hurt me and I was pretty sure she wasn't insane, so it didn't scare me. But it did disturb me. Why did she feel it necessary to tell me something like that, while she was boiling something in a big pot? I figured she was just thinking out loud about something she remembered hearing in a sermon. On the other hand, it felt like she was wanting me to feel like she had complete control over me and that I was lucky she let me live. I got up and left the room. By the way, the Bible doesn't say that was going to happen, although it does say that it happened. I wonder what the rest of the family would think if they knew she said that? She had an aunt who, long ago, threw her kids down a well and jumped in after them, killing all but one who escaped. The one who escaped ended up, as an adult, going missing with her car parked next to a river. My mom had another cousin who killed himself in the ocean. So death by water seems to be a common theme in that family.

One day my aunt came in my room and said "Your mother says you're embarrassed to be seen with her." I was stunned, and said no, I'm not embarrassed by her...?! She said "Well, your mother says you ARE." I was confused, and thought, AM I? I might walk ahead of her sometimes, but that's probably just to feel a little more independent. There's no reason to be embarrassed to be seen with her though. It's not as if her appearance was embarrassing – everyone thought she was gorgeous.

I couldn't stand all the criticism and yelling. One time at the dinner table I asked my dad if he could build me a little shack in the backyard that I could live in, and come in the house for meals and showers. Of course he didn't do it. When he asked why, I said "because the Bible says it's better to live in the corner of an attic than to live in a fine house with a contentious woman."

Of course, she was offended by that. I was branded as rebellious and hateful, although I didn't think I was. I tended to just say what was on my mind, and I had to defend myself a lot, which was called "arguing." My dad said if she had a nervous breakdown, I was going to a juvenile home. She was always accusing me of giving her dirty looks, but  I knew I wasn't – or was I? You tend to believe your mother, but on the other hand I thought that I was making an effort to look neutral when she was yelling at me. So one time I was in my room and she came in there to yell at me about something. I consciously and deliberately kept as neutral a face as possible – not stone-faced, but not smiling. As expected, she said "Don't you give me that dirty look." I told her I deliberately kept a neutral expression, to see if she would still accuse me. She said "You hate me, don't you?" I laughed, in relief that I was really innocent, and because it was a ridiculous accusation. She gave ME a dirty look and said "That's DEVILISH!!"

You may be thinking, she must have been a terrible kid and is leaving out something terrible she's done. Well, no kid is perfect, but especially as a teen, I mostly tried to be very good and my main fault was not being able to get along with her. It was only when I was mostly grown that I became rebellious.

Of course, I am leaving out a lot of details, like when she backed into a motorcyclist in a parking lot, and it was my fault, because I "made her nervous."

Fast-forward to three years ago. My dad was in the hospital unconscious and dying, and while spending hours in a small room with her, I spent most of the time reading. I told my brother that she sneered at me that morning, and he said "You imagine things." Later she was flipping a hospital blanket to fold it, right next to my head. She kept flipping it, and flipping it, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. I started thinking of all the hospital germs flying off of that thing, and got up and stood to the side. At that point, she lost it and started yelling about me "not wanting to sit next to her" (what the heck???) and not talking to her. I sat back down and she kept on and on. I held my arm up as if to block a blow, and I believe it actually blocked some of her negative energy as I tried to ignore her. My dad was dying, and I was at the limit of what I could handle without hearing all that. My husband was on the way after work, and I called him to see when he'd be there. She said "Why do you have to have Tom (said in a sneering way) whenever something like this happens?" A nurse came in and she was looking at us like, what the heck is going on in here? She said they were about to bathe my dad, so we could step out of the room. My husband arrived and we went to the waiting room. After a few minutes he said "I'll go see if they're through yet." I thought, no! Don't leave me with her! I offered to go with him and, clueless, he said no, that's okay, I'll go!

As soon as he got out of earshot, she said in an extremely hateful tone, "What's the matter with you, sitting over there with that look on your face?" I still said nothing, because no matter what I said, it would be construed negatively, and I didn't want to upset her, because her husband was dying. My husband came back and said they were through, so they went back in the room. I was at the elevator when my brother and aunts arrived. I was on the verge of tears, and told them that she had just jumped all over me in there. My brother said "That doesn't matter right now." My aunt agreed.

I understood why they said that, because her husband was dying and she was so stressed out that she could be forgiven for any stressful reaction, and we certainly wouldn't want to upset her or make a big deal out of anything. But to be told it "doesn't matter" what I had just experienced just made me feel worse. Later, everyone was talking about how the hospital personnel just loves her, and my brother said "Yes, she has that affect on people...And if she 'gets onto' us, we probably deserve it." That felt like another slap in the face.

At the funeral, my relatives, at least the ones who had been with us at the hospital, seemed to be shunning me for some reason. Maybe it was my imagination, but it felt that way. My in-laws, my husband's family, were very sweet and supportive but my own relatives were not.

Right afterward, videos about NPD kept showing up in my recommended feed at youtube. I had studied psychology, intending to be a psychologist but changed my mind, but never paid much attention to the personality disorders. I wasn't looking for these videos, but finally decided to watch one, and lo and behold! It was like an almost exact description of my mother.
Dealing with that discovery, and dealing with her, was ten times worse than dealing with my dad's death. She was acting like she hated me, and I couldn't figure out why. The only thing I could figure was, she felt like everything was out of control, but one thing she COULD control, was me. Also, she was used to my dad as an every day source of supply, and now she had no one to yell at on a regular basis – except for me.

[Seven]

Yup...to all of it. Every little single piece. From answering the telephone to unwarranted sneers.  I get it.

When I was in my single digits, her go-to line was literally "you are a reflection of me".  Not just to me, but all my siblings too.

And everything "bad" I did was me being hateful, spiteful, and resentful. I wasn't a bad kid.  Never did anything to get grounded over.  She made/makes everything about her.

I feel every word you wrote.

[Green-Fire Phoenix]

Cassandra, I hear every word you said. Her hatefulness really didn't take, at least, that's how it sounds. It was clearly horrendous to live through (and  know, it can really be that bad, and I'm sorry you went through all of that), but you knew something was up even when you were little.

That seems a funny thing though, doesn't it? - Did you ever have this experience, where you recognised her behaviour as unhealthy when you were tiny but kind of forgot as you got older? That's what happened to me, and I only re-learned what I'd once recognised in her, when I started reading about narcissism as a personality disorder.

[Psuedonym]

This is really well written, CassandraT. And like others have said, I can relate. Except for me being an only child and parents not being religious, this is a great description of my M. The jealousy over gifts/attention from other people? Check. The provoking you into an argument over nothing and then the 'oh you've always hated me' check. Being nasty to everyone in the house and then sweet to everybody else? Check. Needing to vent their garbage all over someone and when your dad is gone using you for that purpose? Check, check, check! That is the conclusion I came to as well, that she's a covert NPD, probably mixed with some borderline. You may want to check out the videos of Les Carter, if you haven't already. They're excellent!

[Thru the Rain]

So I had to go back up to the top to read your description of your family - because if you listed a few more brothers and sisters I might have thought we had the same Mother!!

Every single thing you wrote was similar to my own childhood, and continued awful behavior into adulthood. We're close to the same age - I'm 54. The story you wrote about the blanket made me want to smack my own Mother, who is also weirdly physically intrusive, with the same sort of plausible deniability.

I too understood there was something "off" about my M when I was pretty young. Definitely by the time I was 9 or 10.

And once I was old enough to determine where to spend my life, I moved far away and mostly stay away. I talk to my M occasionally, but haven't seen her in person in almost 2 years. Being in the same room with her gives me hives.

You may be thinking, she must have been a terrible kid and is leaving out something terrible she's done.

I didn't think that and I sincerely doubt there will be a single person on this site who will think you were a terrible kid.

[Maxtrem]

I'm really sorry you had to go through all this. When your mom said, "Don't you give me that dirty look." I had a flashback where my mom said the same thing to me when I was 6. She used to slap me around to make me change that dirty look. I also have other flashbacks where when I was a kid I was very religious. Of course, my mother took the opportunity to quote the 4th commandment to me in excess, otherwise I would go to hell and end up an atheist.   

A lot of times the DPs in my family want to draw attention to themselves when there's a death, maybe that's what your mom did by acting that way with you in your dad's last moments. It's hard to be the center of attention when a death occurs, but the DPs in my family are able to do that and people outside the family don't really notice.

As @Pseudonym said, I think there is also a borderline mixed up with your mother.

@Green-Fire Phoenix, just like you I realized that something was wrong with my mother at a very young age (according to my flashbacks), it even left me with a great contempt for her and her brothers when I was 8 years old. Of course, afterwards I minimized her bad behaviors and since last Christmas, the contempt that dates back to my childhood has reappeared and I can't get rid of it.

[Cassandra T]

I really, really appreciate those of you who read this and replied. I knew it was long and some people wouldn't want to read all that. It was helpful to find out that others who have mothers who behave the same way, also believe their mothers have NPD. I hope others can get some of the same type of validation from this. Thanks to one comment, I am going to take another look at BPD to see if any of it applies.

[anallusiontothesky]

BPD is what I honestly suspect of my own mother, but I am in no way qualified to say for sure. It was suggested to me as a lens through which to try and make sense of some of my mom's behavior by someone more familiar with these things. Whatever inferences you draw here, I hope you draw some comfort and a sense of validation/understanding.

The clothes shopping example hit home for me! My mom fixated on my appearance as a teenager. She would buy me things I clearly expressed distaste for (tight shirts smattered with glitter, infantile slogans even as a I became too old for them, etc). When I would express interest in buying something I liked she'd quickly complain "I just bought you clothes!" She did relent often enough, but not without excessive guilting and complaining and demanding to know why I hated her.

[PeanutButter]

Hi thank you for sharing. Im glad youve joined us here on this forum.

It reminds me alot of my relationship with ubpdM.

When you wrote

"You may be thinking, she must have been a terrible kid and is leaving out something terrible she's done."

I said "Girl, oh no Im not! I KNOW it wasnt you!"

Also imho you didnt "become rebellious as an adult" you simply self differentiated the way every adult is supposed to but narc parents hate it more than anything they want keep their position of power.