Why Narcissistic Mothers Hurt The Ones They Love

Were you raised by a narcissistic mother? Did you grow up feeling dismissed, unseen and unable to connect with the one you loved, and needed to survive? If so, it is important to recognize the deep wounds that occur at the level of your inner child, the ones that control how you perceive yourself, your value and control how you feel, all outside of conscious awareness. One of the most difficult things about being the child of a narcissistic mother, is assuming responsibility for why your mother was unable to provide you with the kind of consistent, healthy, nurturing love a child needs. And so, in today's episode, you are going to learn why and how it is a narcissistic mother hurts the ones they love.

Transcript

Welcome to Breakdown to Breakthrough, The podcast that empowers you to transform your life by awakening to your true authentic self. I'm Lisa A. Romano, Your host. As an award-winning author and certified life coach, I've dedicated my life to helping others understand the incredible power of an organized mind. I believe that true empowerment begins with awakening to our false self. My mission is to support you on your journey toward mental and emotional regeneration through conscious and deliberate awakening. In this podcast, I'll share insights, Tools, And transformative stories that illuminate the path to healing and self-discovery. Today, We're talking about narcissistic mothers that don't necessarily think they're narcissistic. And the reason I wanted to discuss this today is because it is so easy to miss if you are a narcissistic mom, Number one. And it is also very difficult to miss if you love a mom who is highly narcissistic. And here's why. When we are people who are emotionally immature, We are emotionally dysregulated, And we are responsible for little people. At the core, There is a being inside of us that has never been taken care of oftentimes. Now, When I'm talking about the type of narcissism that is created from emotional neglect, We have an inner being that has never felt what it felt like to feel safe or connected to. In some cases, We have narcissistic, In this case, We're talking about narcissistic moms that grew up with mothers who were narcissistic and entitled, Mothers who lacked empathy for other people, Mothers who look through the lens of me, Me, Me, Me, Me, Me, Me first, Me first, Me first, My children first, My children first, And no one else matters. Tremendous lack of emotional intelligence. When you are emotionally intelligent, You're able to include the whole, And you're able to identify, And you are able to develop humility, And you are self-aware enough to recognize how your behavior affects other people. And you are responsible for that. You make amends, You're interested in repair, But we go from a me to a we. So if you weren't raised by a mom who thought about how her actions affected other people, This could have affected you in different pathways. The first pathway was mom didn't care about you either. It was all about mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Her needs, Her wants, Her pains. You were an inconvenience, And you were there to make her look good, And to make her feel good about herself. That mother is very unaware. So, And then you have another pathway where mom may have taught you that this is the way we treat people. This is the way we live in a society. We don't care about other people. We only care about ourselves. And you may have been treated with kid gloves. You may have never been held with a boundary. Your bad behavior, Or unwise behavior, Or behavior that hurt other people was swept under the rug. It was rationalized away. And so we can see that narcissism in just two simple pathways can come and be given rise inside a woman today, Or a mom today who has to nurture children. Today, I want to address mother wounds that were never healed. A mom who has an inner child that was never cared for, Or wasn't cared for enough, Or wasn't cared for to the extent that her inner child felt safe, Felt seen, Felt heard, And like she mattered. And why is this important? Because women that grow up unseen, Unheard, And like they don't matter, Can exhibit tremendous egocentrism because we are in pain, And because we didn't get what we needed when we were children. When you are someone who did not get what she needed as a child, You have this undercurrent of anxiety, But you don't acknowledge it, And you become hypervigilant. So you're looking outside of yourself, And what happens then, Because you're not attuned to yourself, You're not attuned to your anxiety, You end up being someone who reacts to your anxiety. And because you have been taught to devalue your inner reality, You focus entirely on your outer reality. You focus on what your husband says, And what your husband doesn't say. You focus on what your husband does, And what he doesn't do. And below the veil of consciousness, You think that your anxiety will be mitigated if your husband does X, Y, Or Z, Or doesn't do X, Y, And Z. So you're attached to an outcome. You're attached to something outside of you for a sense of inner safety, Which in and of itself is problematic, But you don't know it. You have a tremendously wounded and neglected inner child, And the lower self, Or the ego, Is now blind basically, Can sense this anxiety, But because you've been trained neurologically to look outside of you for the answer, You aren't looking within. So here's where the narcissism piece comes in. So you have someone who's raised like this, In tremendous pain. Let me just say this, Because sometimes I get emails about these types of topics. This is not your fault if this is you. I'm not bashing wounded moms. I was a wounded mom myself, And I was raised by a wounded mom. And I would say, My daughter's a wounded because of all of this generational codependency, All of this generational trauma, All of this generational emotional, A lack of emotional intelligence created through the generations of alcoholism in my family. I like to think of myself as someone who is at the minimum trying to break that pattern and try to help thousands of others, As many people as I can reach, Break the pattern so that their children also have tools to break the pattern. And now I'm helping to raise my grandchildren. And hopefully this pattern lessens, Lessens and lessens. It's very painful to admit this about yourself. I get it. So I'm not saying that wounded mothers are to blame. It's really a call to arms for self-awareness. It takes tremendous, Tremendous humility to say, Maybe I'm in pain, And maybe that pain makes me reactive. And maybe that pain is hijacking my ability to see things clearly. And maybe that pain is causing me to blame other people for this internal pain and shame I can't name. Maybe that's what's going on. Maybe that's what Lisa is gently trying, Gently trying to help me see within myself. That's exactly what I'm trying to do. Now I say that because like I said, I get emails, I get comments about this. I'm not blaming anyone. I'm just trying to help people awaken so that they can break this cycle, Not only for themselves, But for their children and for future generations. And just so they can live a happier life. So when you are somebody who is highly narcissistic due to pain from your childhood, Oftentimes from neglect, Severe neglect and gaslighting, Triangulation from a narcissistic family system, Then you could be very unaware and blind even to how that pain is showing up in your life and how you react to it. So take for example, Our client, Mary, Who came from tremendous trauma, Was born to a narcissistic dad and a codependent mom. And she is someone who absorbed patterns from both sides, Who was a love addict by the time she was 12 years old, Who has very low self-esteem because mom had low self-esteem. Dad tended to sexualize women, Objectify women. She heard that. So now she objectifies herself and assumes that all men are also objectifying her. And no matter what she does, She's never good enough in her own head. Now she's on social media. My heart breaks for children who were born into this digital age, For this reason, If they're exposed to social media, Because our children are being conditioned to think that this is, Or whatever they see on a screen is the ideal, Even though it's not real. And this lends itself to judging yourself harshly, Comparing yourself to others. If they have social media, They're looking at their follower count. And again, They're identifying with something outside of themselves in order to feel good enough. And in order to feel safe, This is a real problem. Now let's say Mary is now a young adolescent and she has found herself pregnant and the person to whom has impregnated her, It wants nothing to do with her. So she's in a really bad spot. So not only does she not have money, She doesn't have skills. She never went to school and she's really kind of like floated through life, Doing odd jobs. And now she's pregnant and she has all those responsibilities as a young mom. Mary is not going to be in a good place. And what Mary might do if she's not codependent and she's more narcissistic, And it is possible to be codependent with narcissistic traits, I just want to say that, But let's say Mary is more narcissistic. How Mary will present is as someone who excuses her bad behavior, Someone who puts the baby in situations in which the child is at risk, And she will negate the behaviors and she will not be able to take responsibility for the ways in which she has now put the baby at risk. Let's say Mary is someone who has friends and her friends are shady friends and Mary just wants to go out dancing. Mary will allow or think in her head that what's the big deal. I can leave my baby with Sue, Even though she knows that Sue has a problem with alcohol and Sue hangs out with shady characters. Someone like Mary will be very quick to excuse placing the baby in her friend's care and she will rationalize and she will justify, Minimize, And be in complete denial and not take accountability for leaving the baby in this person's care. That is narcissistic. She is not looking at what is best for the welfare of her baby. Now let's take Karen. Karen is 35 years old. She is going through a divorce. She has tremendous trauma. She has high narcissistic traits. I'm not saying again that just because you have trauma in every way, Shape, And form, You're going to be narcissistic. In this situation, We're referring to a mother who has tremendous trauma. She's never done any therapy. She's never done any inner child work. She's never done any inner integration work. Now she's going through divorce. Now she has two kids and she feels more powerful when she's able to dominate and control men. This is someone who is in pain. It's never been resolved, But she's learned that by manipulating other people, She gets to escape responsibility for her poor behavior. Now this is someone who will expose herself and her children to men that are shady, But at least they're paying her attention. Now her mom steps in and says, I don't like you leaving the babies with this character. The person B, Narcissist B, Is going to reject everything that the mom says because she's in her narcissism. At the end of the day, What I'm trying to say is that mothers who have pain, Who now exhibit high narcissistic traits, Are mothers that put their children into precarious situations and oftentimes excuse it. They excuse their behavior and it can very easily be seen on the outside as someone who is irresponsible. It's not her. It's not because she isn't responsible. It's always someone else's fault. Or she's aggravated and she's stressed and she blames the children for why she's dysregulated. She doesn't even realize she's dysregulated. At the core, There is a being inside of us that has never been taken care of. If you are a mom who recognizes yourself in this session, This is something to celebrate. It means that you have a level of self-awareness. It means that you are humble enough and courageous enough to say, Wow, Maybe I am reactive. Maybe there are wounds that I haven't yet processed and I want to celebrate you. If you have wounds that have been unhealed, Consider this a call to arms to heal those wounds, To look within and to make amends. If you love a mom who is highly narcissistic and you are beginning to realize that her wounds caused her to become narcissistic, There's always a chance that mom will never see that. But that doesn't excuse, Nor does it negate the fact that you've been wounded. You too need healing.