4 Ways Your Mother’s Narcissism Ruins Your Life

Maternal narcissism experienced throughout childhood has life-long effects

“We’ll love you just the way you are if you’re perfect” — Alanis Morissette, ‘Perfect’

Becoming a mother is an exciting, exhilarating event that many women long for. Culturally, motherhood is cherished, glorified, and revered, with Mother’s Day being one of the most popular and widely celebrated holidays in the US.

The stereotypical image of a mother is that of selflessness, care, compassion, and unconditional love. Mother is supposed to be our first guide in this world, our safe harbor, mentor, and role model. She is meant to provide security, protection, and empathy, and as young children, we rely on her to satisfy our physical and emotional needs.

However, for many children out there, mothers fall short of this stereotype, to say the least, with the children forced to carry the heavy toll of their mothers’ toxic influence into adulthood. Particularly for a daughter, her mother is the first role model and embodiment of womanhood she encounters, which is why oftentimes, a toxic mother’s impact on a daughter is a lot more acute than on a son.

I have had a challenging relationship with my mother for as long as I can remember. For most of my life, I always felt like I was falling short of some kind of unachievable standard that she imposed on me, and everything I did in life was aimed at a single purpose of making her happy. I didn’t learn about what maternal narcissism was until fairly recently when I finally faced the fact that my relationship with my mother was utterly toxic. I was deeply unsatisfied with my life and sought therapy. That was a year ago, and I have come a long way since then.

A great book I read on the topic is “Will I Ever Be Good Enough?” by Dr. Karyl McBride, who spent more than two decades working with daughters of narcissistic mothers, in addition to being a daughter of a narcissistic mother herself. This book is a culmination of her research, and in it, she outlines in detail the damage narcissistic mothers cause their daughters and the problems that these women develop in adulthood, as well as how to embark on a path to recovery.

As Dr. McBride writes:

“I had treated scores of women who shared many of the same symptoms I was finally recognizing within myself: oversensitivity, indecisiveness, self-consciousness, lack of self-trust, inability to succeed in relationships, lack of confidence regardless of our accomplishments, and a general sense of insecurity.

The root cause was maternal narcissism. The nurturing and empathetic love that we all desperately needed — but didn’t get — from our mothers. And our mothers probably hadn’t gotten it from their mothers, either, which means that a painful legacy of distorted love was passed from generation to generation.”

If it sounds anything like you, chances are you have been feeling off and unhappy for years, without realizing the true origins of this discontentment.

Here are 4 ways the trauma of maternal narcissism negatively impacts your life:

1. You Could Never Win With Your Mother, And Now You Are A People Pleaser

“Your mother constantly sent messages to you about who she needed you to be, instead of validating who you really were. Desperate to merit her love and approval, you conformed, and in the process, lost yourself.”

No matter the issue, even in matters where you started off being legitimately convinced you had the right to feel the way you did, your mother was able to somehow turn the conversation around in a way that you would find yourself vanquished, in the wrong, and shouldering all of the blame. At first, you may have been angry and emotionally charged, determined to get your point across, but at the end of it, you just felt like a deflated balloon. You felt defeated.

You still felt conflicted inside, because the sense of injustice, that somehow, you were not being treated right, was still there. However, your mother had presented you with seemingly infallible evidence that what you felt was wrong and ungrounded, and that hers was the only right way. And you were a child, so at the end of the day, you were forced to obey what your mother says. You felt helpless. You had been gaslighted — but you didn’t know that.

As you grow up, constantly dismissed and permanently voiceless, the message you internalize is that fighting is useless. Indeed, what’s the point if you’re going to lose anyway? Why stick up for yourself if no matter what you do, you still get beat down and submitted to another’s will? To save yourself the pain of loss every time, you learn to appease others. Confrontation gives you anxiety, and you avoid it at all costs. This leads to a lack of assertiveness, people-pleasing behavior, and an inability to stand up for yourself.

What to do about it

Appeasement is a hard habit to break, and it can cause great anxiety to attempt it. But it’s possible — it may just take some time and active effort. Teach yourself to set healthy boundaries with family members (especially your mother), friends, and even strangers. Practice saying “no” to things you don’t want to do. Recognize that you are not a little girl anymore; you are an adult now, and you are definitely able to defend yourself.

2. Your Mother Manipulated You Into Doing Things You Didn’t Want To, And Now You Keep Doing Them

“In a narcissistic family, everyone revolves around the mother like planets around the Sun. As the child grows and develops a mind of her own, mother will use criticism and demeaning behavior to regain control. She will project her own inadequacies onto the child. She focuses on the daughter’s failings, rather than on her own limited ability to parent effectively.”

As a child grows older and becomes more independent, it becomes increasingly harder for a parent to exert their control. So, to keep you docile and obedient, narcissistic mothers often heavily rely on manipulations with the main goal of cultivating in you the intense feelings of guilt, shame, and obligation, which would keep you in line.

Thus, a stark example of this is mother’s constant reminders of how much money/time/effort she invested in you, with the inevitable implication that now you owe her something for the rest of your life. You feel guilty for having been a burden for so long and obligated to pay back this massive debt that, in reality, can neither be quantified nor repaid. Mother can also shame you by constantly comparing you with other children and pointing out how, compared to them, your grades, behavior, looks, interests aren’t good enough.

In all of these situations, you feel inadequate and are willing to do anything to make things right. You end up engaging in activities that you don’t want to do to please your mother. By the time you grow up, you internalize this guilt, and now you feel guilty and ashamed of just about everything, and particularly about expressing who you really are and doing what you want. Consequently, you can find yourself pursuing a career you don’t actually like, engaging in studies you have no interest in, and continuing to cater to your mother’s wishes despite it being painful or inconvenient for you.

What to do about it

You have to realize that the feelings of guilt and shame do not exist outside of you — they are entirely social constructs that have been designed to make people conform to a certain socially acceptable behavior. So technically, nobody can make you feel guilty. It’s okay to live your life the way you want to and not play by anyone else’s rules but your own. You don’t owe anything to anyone — including your parents, no matter how much money or time they have invested in you. Everything they did — including giving birth to you — they did out of their own free will, and they are the ones that bear all responsibility for their choices, not you.

3. You Always Suppressed Your Desires, And Now You Don’t Know What You Want

“Each one of us is imbued with a deep yearning to live our own life, not our mother’s. Yet the narcissistic mother puts pressure on her child to act and react to the world as she would. A child raised in this way makes decisions according to what she believes will win her mother’s love and approval.”

Your entire life had to revolve around your mother — you had to follow her rules, serve her interests, and pursue the path she chose for you. This could be reflected in her selecting your extracurricular activities when you were young and your major in college and future career as you grew older. For a narcissist, looks are important, so your mother views everything you do not as a reflection of who you are, but through the lens of how it reflects on her.

Dr. McBride points out that as daughters of narcissistic mothers grow up and mature, they can be broadly grouped into two categories: the high-achievers and self-saboteurs.

High-achieving daughters are driven by the insatiable desire to prove to the world — and to their mothers — that they are worthy and deserving of love, approval, and acceptance. They aren’t able to love themselves for who they are, nor do they believe others can love them for it. Instead, their worth is measured by the scale of their accomplishments and the degree of their success. Importantly, success isn’t measured in terms of inner feelings of contentment and happiness, but rather in terms of external attributes, such as money and professional and academic achievements. However, no matter how much they actually accomplish, these women can never feel satisfied with themselves and seek more. They often suffer from a lack of self-care, emotional burnout, and impostor syndrome.

Self-sabotaging daughters follow the polar opposite path and rebel against their mothers by deliberately choosing a self-destructive path out of anger and spite. Some of the traits include giving up, various addictions and substance abuse, and general underachievement. Having been denied their feelings by their narcissistic mothers, these women turn to self-destructive lifestyles to numb the pain.

What to do about it

Generally, admitting to yourself how you really feel about your life, career, relationships — or lack thereof — is the first step to healing. Whether you are a high-achiever, a self-saboteur, or anything in between, you need to be brutally honest with yourself about the real reasons behind all of your successes and failures, and ask yourself why you are really doing the things you do — and for who. I happened to become the high-achieving type, and for me, separation from my narcissistic mother became a pivotal point, where I started re-assessing everything in my life from my job to my marriage, which led me to some really profound discoveries.

4. You Never Felt Loved, And Now You Are Chronically Unsuccessful In Romantic Relationships

“Until a woman has discovered and claimed her own sense of self, she will be frightened by a competent man who can actually meet her needs as she in turn meets his. A healthy man doesn’t want to be controlled or mothered, and he also wants to give in return.”

Romantic relationships is the area where the effects of maternal narcissism reveal themselves the most clearly. Healthy, long-lasting unions are possible only when both partners are well-adjusted, emotionally balanced, and capable of open, respectful communication. A functional relationship is always a two-way street, where both people’s needs are expressed and met.

However, daughters of narcissistic mothers who haven’t worked through and recovered from their narcissistic trauma may find themselves in a series of failed, unsuccessful relationships, some or all of which may have been toxic or even abusive. In a desperate need to fill the inner void created by their mothers’ lovelessness and to earn the love they never had, daughters of narcissistic mothers fall into the same old childhood scenarios of pursuing people that are wrong for them and aren’t able to fulfill their emotional needs. In their relationships, they often find themselves recreating the same pattern of behavior they had with their mothers.

Dr. McBride points out that women who experienced maternal narcissism tend to end up in either dependent or codependent relationships.

Dependent women seek a man to lean on and be dependent on. They pursue a partner that can solve their problems and take care of them, with external attributes of success such as wealth, prestige, and a good job being the most important criteria for mate selection. These women may find themselves in abusive relationships they are incapable of escaping because of their inability or unwillingness to take care of themselves.

Codependent women want to feel needed by their partner and often end up on the giving end in any relationship as opposed to the receiving end. They strive to take care of their partner at their own expense, and this care can be both financial and emotional in nature. In a way, they take on a motherly role in the relationship and want to provide nurturing, love, and direction, because feeling needed makes them feel good. These women may end up with men suffering from various addictions and mental health problems, and in generally one-sided relationships where their partner’s needs are always placed ahead of their own.

What to do about it

If that’s something you struggle with, it’s likely that if you were to look closely at your past relationships, you would observe clear patterns in terms of the type of partners you pursued, the way these relationships developed, and the reasons why they ended. Be honest with yourself and reflect on what you expect from a relationship and the role you see your partner taking in it. Are you looking for an equal partnership, or do you tend to place a disproportionate chunk of the responsibility on your partner or on yourself? Analyzing past relationships and the dynamic in them usually helps determine if there is a skew to either side.

Conclusion

4 ways maternal narcissism is impacting your life:

• You could never win with your mother, and now you are a people pleaser
• You mother manipulated you into doing things you didn’t want to, and now you keep doing them
• You always suppressed your desires, and now you don’t know what you want
• You never felt loved, and now you are chronically unsuccessful in romantic relationships

Recovering from narcissistic traumas can be a long way and not an easy one. Depending on how old you are and how long you have carried the weight of your mother’s toxic legacy, it can take some time to allow yourself to let go of the resentment and guilt towards your mother. Most of the time, therapy is necessary, and if you have the opportunity, I would strongly encourage you to attend, as it will provide you with the validation you need and allow you to get your life back on track.