Leaving behind her Bakersfield, CA home, 18-year-old Anju Chandy took off for a college far away. The more miles she could put between her and her narcissistic mother, the better.
“I knew I didn’t want to be anywhere near my mother. I needed to forge a path of my own away from her influence and control,” says Chandy, who’s now a musician living in Indianapolis.
“I had spent almost all of high school fighting her. She wanted to control me. She wanted me to just stay home, sit still, look pretty, and do nothing. She had an irrational fear that I was wanting to go out and be promiscuous all over town, even though that isn’t who I am or what I wanted to do.”
Living with a narcissistic mother is challenging. Narcissists are highly self-absorbed and often see their kids as extensions of themselves. “Often children feel unheard, unknown, and used by their narcissistic parent,” says Kimberly Perlin, a licensed clinical social worker in Towson, MD.
A mother who is a narcissist may actually seem self-sacrificing — like someone who’s always doing things for her kids and never thinking of herself.
A narcissistic mother may be a class parent, PTO president, or soccer coach. But that involvement is self-serving. She does it because she wants attention and needs to be involved in every decision.
If you’re an adult, she may be too involved in your life. She might make what you do more about her than you, Perlin says. Maybe you’re planning a wedding but she refuses to come if you invite your father. Or when you talk, she always shifts the focus back to her. If you have children, she may work hard to become your parenting partner, even if it means pushing aside the other parent.
If your mother is a narcissist, she may be emotionally manipulative and coercive, says Mark Ettensohn, PsyD, author of Unmasking Narcissism: A Guide to Understanding the Narcissist in Your Life. “Narcissistic parents may give unrealistically positive feedback which can suddenly turn into overly harsh or punitive criticism,” he says.
Your mother may not see you for who you are inside, aside from being an extension of her. She could have trouble understanding and accepting your feelings and get anxious or angry when she feels rejected or criticized.
“Narcissistic traits run along a continuum,” Perlin says. Your mother may have a few, like self-absorption and entitlement. Or she may have full-blown narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
Signs of narcissistic personality disorder include:
- A strong sense of grandiosity (high levels of self-esteem, self-importance, self-confidence, and feeling like they’re superior to others)
- Arrogant attitude or behavior
- Taking advantage of others to get what they want
- Believing they’re unique or special
- Exaggerating achievements and talents
- Excessive need for admiration
- Feeling envy toward others or thinking others envy them
- Lack of empathy
- Fantasies of brilliance,
