PD parents don't want to help you financially

[atticusfinch]

Ah, narcissists and money.  I'm so sorry you're dealing with this. I think my NPD parent swings to both extremes when it comes to money. When I look back on my growing up, I was denied some basic human necessities at a fairly young age and was expected to pay for things myself that should have been my parents' responsibilities. I was horrified to read in my journal that I was made to babysit and sort of adultified as early as four years old. I got my first job so young (9-10) that I literally had to testify in a child labor case against the owner of the company, and then was made to pay for all of my own clothes at a very young age. Only in the last couple years have I started to realize that was wrong! At age 14, I had to work to buy my own clothes, and when I had enough money for them, I'd have to take the bus to another city and pick them out myself with the little I'd earned.

While this did teach me independence and a degree of self-sufficiency, it was also weirdly traumatic. Kids should be made to feel safe and cared for, and I did not.

That said, even though I was on my own financially in a lot of ways, any time my mom did pay for something, she always, always used it as a form of control. It was always the "I paid for this for you and so you owe me by doing this thing for me." As hard as it was to make my way at such a young age, I couldn't get free of her quickly enough when it came to finances. (Though now I have a really complicated relationship with money and work.)

One thing that helps me when it comes to figuring out why my mom acts the way she does is that narcissistic people like to keep you dependent on them so they can have control, so they can use you to shore up their image or self-worth or whatever it is, or even so they have their whipping boy close by. When viewed through this lens, it makes sense that they would do things to undermine your independence. In my life, while my mom was ostensibly making me independent, she also undermined my independence with her verbal/emotional abuse (so I believed I couldn't make it on my own, or wasn't good enough, etc), torpedoed some of my relationships so I was socially isolated and had to depend on her, and other things that have generally made me believe that I would never survive without her. Does that make sense?

[InvisibleDaughter]

I watched my cousins get cars and have their college paid for. I on the other hand got excuses.

I learned early on that I was a burden that my NPD Mom didn't want to waste money on.