Mental Health Issues Caused By Narcissistic Mother

As the child of a narcissistic mother, your subconscious mind has been impressed with concepts, beliefs, and ideas that although helped you survive as a child, may work against your spiritual, mental, and emotional unfolding today. Being raised by a narcissistic mother poses significant risks to one's perception of self, which can taint every area of one's life. Children of narcissistic mothers struggle to honor, love, and respect themselves. They can become stuck in loops of self-sabotaging thinking, feeling, and behaving, leading them to codependent one-way relationships.

Depression, anxiety, low self-worth, and a lack of self are just a few of the consequences of being raised by a narcissistic mother. The good news is, that as you awaken and identify toxic family issues, you can liberate yourself from the subconscious patterns, beliefs, and habitual thinking and behaving they have caused.

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough Podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Best-selling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough Podcast.

So today we're going to be talking about some of the ways a narcissistic mother's emotional neglect affects you into adulthood.

So today we're diving deep into what it means to have a narcissistic mother and some of the consequences of living with someone who is supposed to nurture you,

Who is supposed to pull you in,

Who is supposed to be your confidant,

Who is supposed to be the person who has your back.

This is the person who is supposed to protect you from the evils of the world.

And yet when you have a narcissistic mother,

The person that you need to fear the most is actually living with you.

This is the person that you love.

This is the person that emotionally and psychologically and even on a subconscious level,

Your entire being has been born to love and to need and to crave.

And so there are great consequences that happen when you have a parent,

Specifically a mother in this case.

This is someone who is hurting you.

When you have a narcissistic mother,

You have a mother who is unstable.

You have a mother who has anger issues.

You have a mother who is highly critical of you.

You have a mother who is very defensive.

You have a mother who cannot see herself.

You have a mother who is shrouded in entitlement and this entitlement shows up in many different ways.

It's really amazing when you look back on your life and you begin to understand what a narcissistic mother is and especially if you are someone who believes that you were raised by a narcissistic mother.

As you begin to educate yourself,

Things are going to click.

You're going to understand that mom felt entitled to emotionally exploit you,

That she felt like she was completely within her right to minimize you,

Devalue you,

Mock you,

Make fun of you,

Put you down in front of your family,

Friends,

And even your boyfriends or girlfriends.

Now,

This is a mother who is exploitative.

This is a mother who is lacking empathy for her child and chances are she lacks empathy for her own child.

She lacks empathy across the board.

The really confusing thing for the adult child of a narcissistic mother is that she may have many faces.

She might be the chief of police and people might love her.

She might be a pastor at a church and people that go to her congregation think she's awesome.

She might be the head of PTA and everybody at the school thinks you have the best mom in the whole world.

And so it can be quite mind bending when you are the daughter or the son of a narcissistic mother and the world is telling you that she's great and your experience of her is not so great.

And it can make you feel very lonely.

It can make you feel confused.

I think we also have to consider that we are taught that we should honor our mother and father,

Which is very confusing.

And that's a very black and white statement.

There are some parents who should have never been blessed with children.

There are some parents who never should have had children.

And there are some parents who are absolutely evil and malevolent to their children.

And that's a fact.

And so those of us who are trying to figure out why we feel the way we feel about ourselves and trying to make peace with our past,

We have to accept that part of what we're going to go through is this state of like,

Is it me or is it them?

Well,

The way I was treated,

Is that even worth complaining about?

Like I didn't have it as bad as some other children.

And so we doubt ourselves.

We doubt how we feel.

And narcissistic parents play off this.

If we came from a family that was very well to do,

We're told that we don't have a right to complain.

Look at the children in Africa.

Look at the children here.

Look at this one over there.

I think about Susie Q down the block.

So we're taught to devalue or minimize our own experiences,

Which is all part of narcissism because narcissists want to remain in control of your perception of them and your perception of reality.

And I've always talked about this.

And it's profound,

This idea that when you have a narcissist in your life,

You are going to feel as if your inner reality clashes with your external reality.

And then it's like,

Well,

Whose reality is real?

Real?

Is it my mother's reality that's real or is it my reality that's real?

She's telling me,

I don't have a right to feel this way,

But I feel this way.

And part of your growth and part of your evolution and developing a success mindset in spite of this narcissism,

In spite of these experiences,

Is you learning to honor how you feel first and work from there.

Honoring your experiences,

Honoring your perceptions,

Honoring your emotions,

Honoring what you believe happened.

And from that space,

Giving yourself permission to feel everything and learning not to allow people on the outside to tell you what is appropriate for you to think and what is appropriate for you to not think.

In time,

If there is something that needs to be tweaked with the way that you're perceiving a situation,

As long as you're not a narcissist yourself,

You will be open to those ideas once you develop a sense of faith and trust in yourself.

And it does help to work with people who understand these dynamics,

Who can help validate you in the process and on the road to recovery.

So the first issue that we're going to talk about are trust issues.

So if you've had a narcissistic mother,

You're going to have trust issues and you're going to have trust issues because the person who was supposed to take care of you,

The person who is supposed to love you,

Did not show up for you.

And you're going to have trust issues also because how she appears on the outside is very different than how she appears on the inside.

You're going to see that a narcissist knows when they can act appropriately and when it's safe to act inappropriately.

So a narcissistic mother will be going to a rage when no one is around towards her children,

But wouldn't dare go into a rage around her husband or wouldn't dare go into a rage around a neighbor or a coworker because she wants to keep that persona up,

That false mask.

And so you're going to have trust issues because you're not going to be able to trust that the people who say they love you actually do because your mother was your first role model for love and relationships and she failed you and she taught you that love was unsafe.

You learn that people are unreliable and so why even bother giving your trust to someone if you know that people in general are unreliable,

Can't show up for you and make you feel worthless.

Another sign that you may have had a narcissistic mother or if you had a narcissistic mother,

You may identify with this idea of being a lone wolf.

This definitely personifies me through most of my life and it's still difficult for me to ask for help,

Although I am getting better.

When you have a mother with narcissistic traits or who actually has NPD or is a narcissist,

You get the sense that not only can you can't trust this person,

But it's not safe to need anyone.

It's not safe to ask for help.

If you ask for help as a child,

You got the impression that you were a burden to your narcissistic mother.

You were a bother.

And in my case,

For instance,

I got the sense that the best way to get my mother's love was to leave her alone,

Was to not need,

Was to stay in the darkness and just ache for her love and hope that some way,

Somehow I would be able to figure out how to be good enough to gain her love.

How this shows up later on in life is that you end up taking on way too much.

You end up not paying attention to when you're overwhelmed.

You end up working yourself to your own detriment without asking for help.

You don't feel worthy of help.

You think that asking for help is a sign of weakness and you struggle with anyone ever perceiving you as a burden because it triggers your shame that you felt as a child.

Another sign is or consequence is poor self care.

How do you know that you're worthy of self care except that the people that are supposed to love you infuse you with the idea that you are worthy of self care?

So I personally feel that when we have narcissistic mothers who neglect us in terms of our emotions,

In terms of how we think,

Like we're just being ignored,

Our mothers are indifferent to us,

Then the us that we think we are is not valuable.

So why would I take care of something or some aspect of myself,

I.

E.

Myself,

If I've never gotten the impression or the message that the self that I am is valuable?

People generally tend to take better care of things that they think are valuable.

But when we have no assigned value for the self as adults,

It's very difficult to take care of the self and to put the self first.

Narcissistic mothers do a wonderful job at infusing their children with this idea that they are not good enough.

And those of us who are on this journey and struggle with the,

I am not enoughness wound,

We have to learn how to love the self.

We don't have the data in our brain for how to love the self.

We have never felt completely loved for the self.

And so we don't know how to care for the self.

And it really is a retraining of the subconscious mind and even a retraining of the neurological pathways in our brain and reaffirming a new or recreating a new perception of self,

A new self identity.

We also have to develop a new positive self identity.

And along the path,

What we do is we end up assigning a value to the self that we are,

And then it becomes a little bit easier to love the self and care for the self that we have found that we now have assigned value to.

Another way that this shows up in terms of how we respond to being neglected by a narcissistic mother is that we fear losing control.

If you fear losing control,

It might be because your emotions felt so out of control as a child.

It might be because your mother was so out of control and you were constantly looking for a way to feel in control.

One of the things that we do as children is we tone ourselves down.

So if mom is really super upset,

If she is excitable,

If she's not calming down,

If she's raging and if she's criticizing us or she's treating us with indifference,

This causes us to feel very emotionally destabilized.

We don't feel safe.

If our mother isn't safe,

If mom isn't grounded,

Then I can't feel grounded as a child.

So what a child then does is the child then tries to control themselves.

So we end up pushing down our emotions.

We end up pretending we're okay.

We end up fawning.

Sometimes we freeze.

We can't run away.

We can't fight our parents,

But we can fawn and we can freeze.

And so what happens to us as adults is we end up feeling like we need to be in control of everything.

Now,

This could manifest as an eating disorder.

This could manifest as anxiety and relationships.

This could manifest as being really stringent when it comes to time.

This could manifest as feeling like someone is disrespecting us by not honoring our time,

But we can really be rigid about that.

And so if you've had a narcissistic mother,

I encourage you to look back and to see if you have any of these issues.

Can you relate it to feeling so out of control as a child and is your need for control today as an adult?

Do you think that has anything to do or can it have anything to do with being raised by someone who you felt was out of control?

So is your attempt to control your emotions,

Control other people's emotions,

Control what people do when they show up?

So see if you can tie this back to feeling out of control as a child,

Because the way that we respond to external stimuli shapes our personality and temperament ends up becoming a personality over time.

And our environment definitely shapes our personality,

Our identity of self or a lack of identity of self and certainly affects how we feel and what we associate pain and pleasure with today.

So if as a child,

I associated pain with feeling out of control,

Then as a child,

I develop coping strategies that help me feel in control.

So suppressing my emotions,

Although that might have made mommy happy,

I might still be doing that at the subconscious level and not realizing it,

That that is actually comforting me at some level,

Although it's maladaptive.

So part of growing towards a more success mindset and staying on the personal development path in spite of having these situations with a narcissistic mother,

I will be able to break through those patterns of belief that have kept me stuck for so long.

Another effect of being raised by a narcissistic mother is that you might find yourself attracted to those with high narcissistic traits.

And there are people that believe that this is our attempt to finish unfinished business from childhood,

That there was this energy being,

Although it was narcissistic,

Ego centered,

Minimizing,

Devaluing,

Critical,

And all that fancy stuff.

There was someone that we love that we were supposed to bond to that we never achieved that milestone with.

And so in our adult life,

We might be caught in a cycle of repetition.

We might be caught in a cycle of repetition compulsion.

We might be caught in a cycle of trying to get this unmet need in childhood met in adulthood,

Although it would be subconscious because consciously we're not going to be attracted to someone who treated us the way our parent did if our parent was a narcissist.

But on a subconscious level,

We would because we have these unmet wounds.

We're giving off a specific energy.

And as we know in the quantum field,

Like attracts like.

And so although I might be more codependent,

For instance,

I might fear abandonment.

Believe it or not,

I'm going to be attracted to someone who triggers that fear of abandonment because it's what I know until I get enough awareness around the situation and I'm able to break through the patterns of beliefs and even the neurological pathways that are keeping me stuck at the subconscious level.

So you might find yourself feeling attracted to narcissists at a subconscious level and you might find yourself rationalizing why you're attracted to this person.

And even though other people are telling you,

This guy's not good for you or this woman's not good for you,

She's very critical of you.

She finds flaws in you all the time.

You might hear yourself rationalizing this person's behavior very much the way you may have done when you were a child.

You're rationalizing why maybe mommy pushed you away and why mommy was angry and why mommy rejected you.

Another sign is that you're stuck seeking approval.

You're somebody who,

Again,

Although it's subconscious on a subconscious level,

You don't feel good enough and you are seeking the approval from the external world.

You never got the healthy mirroring that you needed as a child.

And on a subconscious level,

You're still seeking a sense of validation from the external world.

Your mind is still stuck in that loop.

I'm not good enough and I need other people to tell me that I am good enough.

Now,

That's a faulty premise,

But when we're stuck in a subconscious loop,

We don't know that.

And that's why I'm always reinforcing this idea that to heal from codependency,

To heal from the effects of being raised by a narcissistic mother,

This is as much a subconscious and neurological journey as it is an emotional journey,

A psychological journey,

Or a spiritual journey.

We have been affected at the subconscious level.

Our brains have been wired to seek approval.

We don't know we're doing anything wrong.

If you're a codependent,

You come into a relationship looking to want to attach.

Rationale goes out the window.

If this person clicks all the boxes for you energetically and you feel attracted to this person,

They could be pushing you away and pushing you away.

All that's going to do is make you want this person more,

Even if this person is a narcissist.

So you might be stuck seeking approval because you never got the re-approval that you needed and deserve to develop a healthy sense of self when you were a child because you were being raised by a narcissistic mother.

The next sign is more prevalent amongst females who have had narcissistic mothers.

We fear having children.

We on a subconscious level and sometimes a conscious level,

We are afraid to have children because our mother was a narcissist and we don't want to put our children through what our mother put us through.

Now what we have to realize is that that is tremendous empathy for a child we haven't even had yet.

So the chances of you being,

If you're having that thought,

The chances of you being a narcissistic mother are slim because you are already developing empathy for a child you haven't even had.

But this is a secret fear that many women who have had narcissistic mothers hide.

They don't talk about them.

Most often they don't talk about them because lots of times we don't even know that's why we don't want children.

And this isn't a black and white issue.

Not every woman who decides that she doesn't want to have children is making that decision because she has a narcissistic mother.

We're living in a time and an age where women feel like they have far more choices and far more control over their body,

Or at least they should have more control over their bodies.

We've got some work to do in that area for sure,

Especially in other countries.

But we're living in a time where women are feeling more in control over their destinies and they're questioning whether or not they want to have children.

But not all women have those questions because of choice.

They're just exploring their choices as a modern woman.

Some of us,

Many of us who have had narcissistic mothers are questioning whether or not we should have children because we had a narcissistic mother.

The last time we're going to talk about is this idea that we lack self-confidence.

And again,

It makes sense.

So my sense of self originates from what my mother and my father think about me.

And I'm of the belief that the being that created me,

My mother,

The actual physical vehicle,

The divine creation that created my divine creation is the person that is my first experience for love.

So if this person rejects me,

Then how am I going to feel like the being that I am is worthy of love?

If I don't feel like I can trust the being who gave birth to me,

That I am worthy to be loved,

Then how do I believe that the being that I am is worthy of love?

How do I develop trust that I have something to offer the world and that other people should respect me?

I don't have those feelings.

I don't have those senses.

I don't feel one with this idea that I am capable,

That I am competent.

I can't develop self-confidence if the being who gave birth to me destroyed my confidence in the self by eliminating the ability for me to love the self.

First,

A mother would have to love the being that I am and be able to more than just tolerate my screaming and my incessant needs as an infant.

A mother would have to somehow be able to convince me,

The little being that I am,

That in spite of all my demands and in spite of all my needs,

I'm enough to be loved and I deserve to be nurtured.

And when that goes awry,

The being that the child is cannot develop a healthy sense of self.

They cannot develop a sense that they are worthy.

And without feeling worthy,

It's almost impossible to develop self-confidence.

So if you are struggling with all of these issues or any of these issues and you were raised by a narcissistic mother,

What I'd like you to take away from the session is that it's not your fault,

That everything that you feel is absolutely normal.

It's what happens when children feel rejected by the being that was supposed to love them and protect them and nurture them.

So you're not crazy and you're not off.

And even if the people in your outer world don't get it,

You have to know that this is a real thing,

That narcissistic mothers and narcissistic fathers exist and the consequences of being raised by someone who you're supposed to love and trust and can't love and trust are vast and they're real.

It is my hope that this session has encouraged you to develop a little bit more clarity,

A little bit more objectivity.

And I hope that it has allowed you to see that you are worthy and you are enough.

And just because the person who was supposed to love you didn't do a good job doing that does not mean you're ruined forever.

It does not mean that you're broken.

It just means that we have to get you to turn the ship around and start paying attention to the self and loving yourself the way your mother was supposed to love you.

And if we can do that,

We can create great success in your life in spite of the past.

Namaste.

Until next time.

I hope this has been helpful.

Bye everybody.

Reviews

Thank you so very much! This resonates so deeply. One of the blessings that comes with age is wisdom and awareness ~ I can see the light and have a pathway forward. Thank you so much !! ❤🧡💛💚💙💜

Thanks! So much insights even though the narcissist parent was my father. The last point about not wanting kids becasue I would be a bad mother strikes true and is an eye opener. Will sit with this in meditation. As I can see my fathers narcissistic traits in have been trying to control my whole life starting to come through me as I soften and open up in my relationship and my wish for kids diminishes. didn’t even think of this being a way of love and empathy toward a person that is not even there yet. Makes me feel less jsgmentel about myself and actually more caring and positiv. Thanks for that 🙏

This was so helpful, Lisa. Thank you. Your knowledge, care and wisdom on healing these wounds is priceless. I can recognise myself in 98% of what you shared in this episode and that's overwhelmingly comforting. Namaste 🙏

Thank you Lisa. This has been helpful in my healing journey 💖🙏

Explains a lot… thank you