Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers (13 page)

Jan, a mother of three girls, brought her oldest two to therapy because they were displaying signs of anger that she didn’t understand. I asked Jan to leave the room so I could sit with the girls and chat. As soon as Jan left my office, the girls both made a disgusting gesture toward her. I knew then we were in for some kind of mother-daughter train wreck. I had expected that the girls were probably not getting the cell phones, cars, clothes or freedom they wanted, but the issue was very different. They both told me that Jan expected them to help her get over her depression, and they were totally exasperated and feeling helpless. They reported that each day when they came home from school, they sat with their mother and listened to her sadness, crying, and desperation and they were sick of it. Jan had grown up with a psychosomatic narcissistic mother, so she knew better, but she was falling into a similar pattern with her children in expecting them to take care of her emotionally. Luckily, the situation was easily turned around and Jan went back into psychotherapy. However, one can see that, even with education and awareness, adult daughters of narcissistic mothers can unwittingly fall into the legacy of narcissistic behaviors.

Take Care of Yourself but Stay Connected to Others

Although healthy self-care is central to the recovery of daughters of narcissistic mothers, self-care does not mean becoming self-absorbed. Taking care of yourself does not mean tuning out others’ feelings. I have seen daughters make the mistake of misinterpreting self-care to mean they should focus on themselves in unhealthy ways, even after they saw how harmful their mother’s belief was that everything was “all about Mom.”

Marni had three children at home, but decided that instead of giving those children the time and attention they needed, her recovery mission was to take care of herself with luxurious clothing, fancy trips, and expensive jewelry. When her kids were brought to therapy for acting out and getting in trouble with the law, she was on the beach somewhere getting a nice suntan. The kids were angry and also surprised because this was not typical behavior. Again, Marni knew better and had done some of her own recovery work but had not understood this part very well. Family therapy was very effective, because as soon as she heard how her children were feeling, she set about to truly understand what she needed to do for herself and them.

Healthy self-care means finding fulfillment so that you have energy, love, and empathy for others. Finding the middle ground means realizing that it is not an either-or situation—you are neither full of self nor drained of self.

Part 3 will teach you how to do this. Having established an understanding of how maternal narcissism creates certain negative dynamics in the mother-daughter relationship that affect daughters’ lives as adults, we are now ready to step onto the path to recovery.

Specific Recovery Steps for Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers

Now that you have an understanding of how the behavior of your mother affected you, you can begin to heal by taking the following steps to recover from the pain:

• Accept your mother’s limitations and grieve that you did not have the mother you wanted
  
• Separate psychologically from your mother, and reframe the negative messages that you absorbed from her into positive ones
  
• Develop and accept your own identity, feelings, and desires
  
• Deal with your mother in a different, healthy manner
  
• Work to recognize your own narcissistic traits and refuse to pass them on to your children.
  

The next chapters will guide you through the steps of recovering from a narcissistic mother. In part 1, you began to understand and identify the problems that a child learns to deal with when she has a narcissistic mother. Part 2 helped you see how these problems follow you into adulthood. Now, in part 3, you will see how to accept your past, allow yourself to feel grief about it, reprogram negative messages that you’ve internalized, reframe your beliefs and views, and change your life.

HOW IT FEELS, NOT HOW IT LOOKS

A
s a child growing up, you were likely very good at denying, numbing, or compensating for your own feelings rather than allowing yourself to feel them. You probably do this now as an adult too. Your recovery begins in this chapter. Here I will guide you to reclaim your emotions and enhance your sense of self.

Now that you have a solid understanding of the psychological dynamics you were subject to as a daughter of a narcissistic mother and how they have adversely affected your life, it is time for you to come to terms with the past, release your unrealistic expectations of your mother, and take charge of your life to heal. Now it’s your time to make your life more peaceful and comfortable.

You will follow the blueprint for healing in this chapter that I used for my own recovery and continue to use for my clients. It works if you follow the steps sequentially. You will feel worlds better than you ever have. However, it is important to note that you cannot completely “cure” the scars of a childhood trauma. You work with them, process them, and learn how to deal with them differently so that you feel better.

I liken our lives to a tree. Each of us, like a tree, has roots (our upbringing); long, sturdy trunks (our development); and branches that flower and grow in our adult lives. Your trunk or development phase bears the scars, which don’t really go away; they are part of who we are. But recovery work helps us to treat any gashes, to fill them in, supply balm and seal them gently, and takes away the old and recurring pain, changing the original trauma, allowing you to grow around it and up and away from it. Please keep this in mind, so that you do not become discouraged and misled. Really, it is a relief to know that you don’t have to totally remove those scars. The things that happened to us are important to acknowledge; they play into who we are today. Yet they do not define who we are today, and by working in recovery, you refuse to allow your past to tell you who you are. You accept and face your past as part of you, and you move on.

Our Growth and Development

I believe that you begin to heal when you accept the fact that your mother was narcissistic and that she hurt you. Then you grieve for the life and love you do not have. I will teach you how to allow yourself the gift of acceptance and how to use the precious time for grieving. Read on for assistance in how to do this.

Three-Step Recovery Model

The Three Steps of Recovery

Recovery entails three steps. The first step is to understand the problem, to diagnose it, and to get the background information that defines it. This is true for any emotional or psychological issue you may deal with in your life. This is what a therapist works on with you in the beginning of a therapeutic relationship. You’ve just completed Step One—you’ve read about the problem and how it plays out in symptoms and life patterns. This is the cognitive or intellectual understanding that you will need to go on to the next steps.

In Step Two, you process the feelings related to the identified problem. That is what this chapter is about. As a daughter of a narcissistic mother you had feelings that were not often validated or acknowledged. The earlier sections of the book helped you to identify them, and now it is time to work with those feelings.

I am going to tell you something very important that I have learned in 28 years of being a therapist: Most people like to skip Step Two—this step. Daughters tend to like Step One and love Step Three of recovery. But, most understandably, we want to skip the most important step that makes the biggest difference, because it is painful to wade through the marshes of past trauma. It is difficult to push through the denial and let yourself feel the pain. Who wants to feel pain, right?

• Lauren, 31, said to me in therapy, “Why does reliving all of this make me so angry? I really got the short end of the stick. Why did this happen to me? When I described the ideal mom to you, it made my heart sink. Reading my diary to you, it hurt so bad and made me so mad. Why don’t I get an apology? I don’t want to go through the recovery process. I just want to get over it!”
  
• Elyse, 54, states, “As an adult, I am just learning to be in touch with my feelings. I certainly didn’t learn this from Mom. I can still picture her and how controlled she was with feelings. She would put on her sunglasses and get this stone-cold face. If I got emotional, she would say, ‘Stop it or I’ll slap you!’”
  

Nonetheless, the second step is where you get to learn how to deal with those difficult things called feelings. It’s not fun, but it’s worth it. When Lauren, Elyse, other clients, and I allowed this grief process, we began to see how we could finally let go.

Processing feelings is very different from just talking about them. To process means to talk about the trauma, and simultaneously feel the pain in a cacophonous, blasting, rock concert. You can tell something in a story form without feeling it, but that is not processing. This is the only way to release trauma from your body. For example, I can tell you about going to my grandmother’s funeral and fill you in on details about her death, the service, the people, the family, the minister, the flowers, and the travel, etc., but this is
talking
about the funeral and her death. It is describing the events. If I were processing it, I would be telling you the same story but feeling the loss and the grief at the same time. In this very different scenario, you would see my tears and feel my pain, and so would I, as I described the situation and how it affected me. This chapter will help you, too, engage in this kind of grieving.

When people skip Step Two of recovery, Step Three does not work. I believe that this is why many therapeutic programs are unsuccessful, because folks skip the middle, the difficult part. We have to clean out trauma before we can learn to look at our situation in a healthy and different way.

Step Three, briefly, is about “reframing,” a therapeutic word that means looking at the problem through another set of lenses, or in a new way. This is the fun part of recovery, when you begin to see things differently and become free of the symptoms and the effects of the trauma of having had a narcissistic mother. You make decisions for yourself that are very different from when you were feeling like a victim of wrongdoing. You begin to get in touch with your real feelings, values, and belief system. You find the authentic you and allow it to function in your own way. This is freedom, and I wish this for each reader who is with me here.

A Closer Look at Recovery

We move now to specifics for healing the unmothered child. The five basic areas to be covered in part 3 of this book are listed here for easy reference:

• Accepting your mother’s limitations, and allowing yourself to grieve
  
• Separating psychologically from Mother, and reframing the negative messages
  
• Working on your authentic sense of self
  
• Dealing with Mother and your relationship with her in a healthy way
  
• Treating your own narcissistic traits and refusing to pass on the legacy to your own children.
  

Let’s begin with acceptance.

Acceptance of Mother’s Limitations

To realize that your own mother may not be capable of real love and empathy is shocking. If you ever allowed yourself to think this before, you might have been unwilling to accept it. Mothers are supposed to be the most reliable source of love, comfort, and empathy, and if your mother did not provide that for you, you most likely denied your feelings about it. Daughters often blame themselves for their mother’s inability to love them. Remember my client who said, “If my own mother can’t love me, who can?” Accepting their mother’s limitations is difficult for all daughters.

• Martina, 25, says, “My mind has given up on having a loving relationship with Mom. I have 25 years of evidence, but in my
  heart
  it hasn’t sunk in for real. It’s a twofold thing. When she is nice to me, shopping for suits for work, or chairs for the house or paint chips, I get lulled back into it. I get my hopes up that maybe this time will be different.”
  
• Many daughters never give up the hope. Sandy, 32, claims, “I always wanted a normal mom. One who doesn’t dress like a hooker, who doesn’t flirt with your boyfriends, who has normal holidays, who loves me and my boyfriend and showers us both in love, goes on family trips and has fun; one who doesn’t compete with me and isn’t threatened by me and is proud of my achievements and what I have done. Do I have to give up on all of this?”
  

Before you can grieve, you have to accept the reality of what you have gone through. Think of it like this: A teacher trying to teach a three-year-old to read at college level might feel disappointment, anger, even shame at his failure to accomplish this goal, until he realizes, of course, that the student is not really capable of the task. Most narcissists lack the capacity to give significant, authentic love and empathy, and you have no choice but to deal with this reality. Accepting that your own mother has this limited capacity is the first step. Let go of the expectation that it will ever be different.

Most daughters I know have gone through long periods in their lives not understanding this, always wishing and hoping that the next encounter with their mother will be different. This sets up not only unrealistic expectations for the daughter, but encourages her to keep going back to try again, for which the reward is additional sadness, disappointment, pain, anger, and exasperation. After all, we are talking about your mother—the person who was the center of your world and whom you loved and needed more than anyone else. I want to acknowledge again how difficult this is to do, but you must do it so you can move on toward your own recovery.

Remember also that narcissism is a spectrum disorder and our mothers may have varying degrees of narcissism. Mothers with fewer narcissistic traits are more likely to have some hope of recovery if they are motivated to do so. But the further along the spectrum your mother is, the more likely it is that she will not change or seek treatment and therefore you must accept this fact.

Many of my clients wonder, “How do I do that?” Remember that you cannot change others. You can change only yourself. How you view things and how you deal with your perceptions is within your control. Changing your mother is not. You may wish that you could drag your mother to therapy with you, and many women do that. Sometimes this is worth pursuing, sometimes not.

In all events, however, the success of the recovery work rests entirely with you, the daughter. Let go of the belief that your mother can or will be different, and will ever be able to give you the love you deserve. Letting go will free you and allow you to find yourself. Decide to accept and realize that Mom’s inability, her incapacity, her illness, her limitations have hurt you. This beginning step takes you out of denial and forces you to deal with reality. It is a move toward health. Decide now. This act will give you back the control you need to pursue the important grief process that follows.

How Do I Know I Have Totally Accepted Mother’s Limitations?

To determine where you are in this process of accepting your mother’s limitations, you can ask yourself the following questions:

• Do I continue to wish and hope that my mother will be different each time I talk to her?
  
• Do I continue to have expectations of my mother?
  
• Have I accepted my mother for who she is?
  
• Am I expecting someone else to meet my childlike needs because I have given up on my mother?
  
• Do I continue to try to get my childlike needs met in relationships instead of relying on myself?
  
• Am I looking for a man to replace my mother?
  
• Do I feel a sense of entitlement about my needs?
  
• Am I now relying on myself to meet most of my needs, and when someone else is there for me, do I see it as an added blessing rather than my due?