You're Not Crazy - It's Your Mother (9 page)

Along with the anger you might have very vivid dreams or fantasies of inflicting violence on her. You might shock yourself at how detailed and violent those fantasies are.

Again, these fantasies are normal – many DONMs get them. And despite what your narcissistic mother taught you, all feelings are appropriate. To me, these fantasies are the long-buried anger coming out. And they’re empowering – you have felt so scared of her for so long, and now your subconscious is discovering its strength.

Needless to say, inflicting real violence on her would be totally wrong, both legally and morally.

But fantasies do no harm, and they seem to be a process to go through, and will ease after a while. EFT can help to move them on too.

You might feel some more guilt then, at your feelings of violence. But the same applies to that guilt as to the original guilt: allow it, don’t deny it. But don’t believe it.

Another emotion might well be fear for the future - what now, for your relationship with her? How will you relate to her now? There’s more information about that below.

If you're Christian you might butt up against the issue about honouring your mother and father. Is thinking this about your mother dishonouring her? (A very good website for Christians with toxic parents is
http://www.luke173ministries.org/
)

And then another twist in the roller-coaster … hope might raise its head.

Maybe you're wrong about all of this!

Maybe if you try just a tiny bit harder, you can sort it out with her, earn her love, get a proper relationship with her. This is, of course, back to The Big Lie. But that lie is entrenched. Of course it is going to surface again.

This is very tempting. Very tempting indeed. It’s human nature to want to think that we can fix things. To accept that this situation is unfixable is to accept that you are powerless over it, that there is nothing that you can do. I repeat: when you’re dealing with NPD, there
is
nothing you can do to fix things. And although accepting that is hard, with that acceptance comes peace.

Or, you might consider this: perhaps you can explain to her about NPD and then she’ll understand what has been wrong all these years, and you can start creating a good and healthy relationship with each other. There is information below on how to relate to your mother now that you have this information, but for now can I just suggest that you
not
do this until you have read the rest of this book. Just park the hope for now. (I know, I know: the car park is getting full at this stage!)

Despair is another ingredient in this roller-coaster. How can you possibly heal from all the fallout of this? How can you ever reclaim all the things that should have been your birthright, such as self-esteem and confidence? We’ll talk more about this too.

But yet, there’s a kind of hope as well. Maybe you
can
heal! Now that you know so much was not true … it’s all to play for now, isn’t it? There’s more information about that later on in this book too.

The other thing to remember is that what I call the N-realisation is overwhelming. It’s huge. It’s massive. Don’t underestimate the enormity of this. You have, after a lifetime of lies, realised the truth. You will find that you re-evaluate everything. Memories will pop up by themselves, like little bubbles, and you’ll look at them with your new awareness, and you’ll be able to say, with an overwhelming rush of recognition, ‘So
that’s
what was going on there! It all makes sense now. NPD is why she was so excited when I miscarried my baby/was sulky when I won that award/was mean to my new partner!!’

This is a wonderful experience, as you see the events of your life as they really were, without the N-filters she put on you.

But, as wonderful as this is, it’s exhausting. And it can seem endless. Sometimes the memories that come up, pressing for attention to be re-evaluated, can seem overwhelming.

The good news is that it is finite. It might seem endless, but it is not. Just go with it for now. The rush of memories will ease off in time.

But processing it all, and coming to terms with it all, is still massive work. Don’t underestimate it.  Give yourself the space and time to deal with it. I remember I took about three months doing little more than processing this. It was a life-changing shock. Yes, change for the better. But still a shock.

And so, to deal with all of this, I suggest the following:

Take deep breaths. Literally. Every time you feel yourself getting overwhelmed or stressed by this, consciously take at least ten deep breaths. When we're stressed we breathe from our chest, and physically doing the opposite of that, i.e. breathing from our diaphragm, calms us.

Try EFT. There’s more about EFT later in this book.

Know that this will pass. It's a process, not a situation. You're not doomed to live in this chaos and confusion forever.

Accept the confusion. Don't try to fight it. You are processing huge stuff here. You're changing your very paradigm, or world-view, of how life is, and who
you
are. That's massive work all by itself - of course it's going to cause upheaval. So don't try to fight that.

If at all possible don't do any other big life-change stuff while this process is going on, say for three months or so. So if you can avoid moving house, changing jobs, etc, then do so. You don't need more stress right now.

Accept all the feelings. Don't berate yourself for having them. They are what they are, just accept them. (This is also good practice in changing the rules she gave you. She told you what to feel and what not to feel. Here, you are giving yourself permission to feel whatever you feel.) Try to observe the feelings if possible - that stops them being so overwhelming. Observe them and accept them without swimming in them. This technique can take practice, but it's very much worth doing.

If you have a partner, ask him/her to support you during this time. They don't have to understand what's going, just to accept and support you. The same goes for adult children. If you have younger children then it's not appropriate to burden them with this, just try to put on a brave face for them as much as possible.

Be kind to yourself. Give yourself little treats such as a nice walk, a hot bath, a couple of hours to read a novel and so on. Being nice to yourself might seem very challenging and just
wrong
, so don't do it if it causes more stress. But if at all possible, nurture yourself at this time.

Acknowledge, applaud and maybe even celebrate your courage. You're facing up to something most people can never bring themselves to do, i.e. the fact that your mother was abusive. Be proud of that. 

One big issue you’ll have to deal with, while on this roller-coaster, is, what now for your relationship with her? That’s what we talk about next.

Now that you know all this you might be tempted to tell her that you think she’s narcissistic. There are two possible reasons why you might want to do this.

The first is a very real and understandable need/desire to throw it in her face. ‘Ha!’ you want to say, ‘It wasn't me at all, the way you said it was. It was
you
all along!’

Another reason might be that part of you hopes that when you explain about NPD, slowly and in words of one syllable, she'll
finally
get it! She'll understand what's been wrong with your relationship and will change and all will end happily.

Well ... no.

The thing about narcissists, as we have been discussing, is that they believe they're perfect, they
need
to believe they're perfect, and they will never even consider that they are in any way less than perfect.

So she will categorically not be able to hear you say that she has a personality disorder. Interestingly, some narcissistic mothers have recognised it in others around them, other family members, maybe. But they’ll never recognise it in themselves.

In fact, she will feel extremely attacked, threatened and under siege if you dare suggest she’s less than perfect. This makes sense - if their whole being depends on them being perfect, then you genuinely are attacking that by suggesting otherwise.

Let me explain it this way. Your whole being, your whole existence, depends on you getting sufficient air, right? So if someone tried to deprive you of that, then you'd (rightly) feel threatened, attacked, and under siege, wouldn't you?

And more, you'd do whatever it took to remove that threat and regain your needed air. That would become your ultimate goal, and nothing else -
nothing else
- would matter until you had regained your supply of air.

You wouldn't care what you had to do, what violence you had to inflict, in order to get air into you. Your very survival would be at stake and nothing else would matter.

That is an exact analogy for what a narcissist experiences when you dare to suggest she's less than perfect. I know it's hard for us to get our heads around, but for her, her supposed perfection is as essential to her survival as air is to you and me.

So, the answer is, don't tell her about your NPD discovery.

Well, do if you want! It's not my place to tell you what to do and this book is about empowering you, and me telling you what to do would be disempowering you.But do know that it will not do any good to tell her, and that you will be subjecting yourself to gaslighting, invalidation, and Narcissistic Rage if you do.

So, what do you do next, now that you know the truth? There are two parallel avenues here. The first is your own healing from the lies and the dysfunction and the abuse. We explore that in the second on healing, below.

The second is, how are you going to deal with your mother now?

You have three options:

1. Carry on as you always have, but with your new awareness protecting you.
   
2. Begin to enact a situation that’s called Low Contact, or LC.
   
3. Cut her off entirely, which is called No Contact, or NC.
   

More on those in a minute. But first: There’s another option, kinda, which is one that a number of DONMs take, and that is to suggest to their narcissistic mother that she and they go to counselling together. Your mother might even agree to that. But her motivation will be to get
you
fixed, so that you get back to being her biddable daughter. If you do that, make sure that
you
pick the therapist (there’s information on picking the right therapist below). I do not expect that the counselling will work to get you and your mother to a workable relationship, but it still can be worth it for letting you know that you have done all possible to repair the relationship.

As you read through these options bear in mind that there is no right or wrong except what is right or wrong for
you
. I do not advocate any particular option, nor am I trying to guide you to any specific decision. I lay out the options and it is for you to decide what is right for you.

So, the first option in dealing with your mother is to carry on seeing her as often as you already have, but keeping your new awareness in mind. Now that you know what’s going on, you can try not to take her narcissistic games personally. Because in truth, they’re
not
personal. For a narcissist, as we know, nothing is about you; everything is about her. So her games and rages and upset are all about her. Make that trait work for you instead of against you as it has your whole life, and here are a few suggestions on how to do that:

One trick is to pretend that you are a scientist or anthropologist studying a strange culture. So when she does her narcissistic stuff, just observe it as dispassionately as you can. Maybe even try to be somewhat amused by it, at the predictability of it all. You can play mental Narcissism Bingo:

Or pretend you are all in a play, and her part is the narcissistic mother (and, oh boy, but she plays it so well. A natural …), and you are the daughter who is patient with that, but well able to rise above it without being affected by it, and perhaps even be amused by it. You might even throw her little bones: ‘Oh this cake you baked is
so
good, Mum’, and watch her quiver with narcissistic glow.