Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers (18 page)

Hopefully, by doing the exercises offered in this chapter, you are further along in answering the important questions we started with:

• What do I value most?
  
• What makes me happy?
  
• What gives me the deepest sense of fulfillment?
  
• What are my passions and talents?
  

You have learned to strengthen your internal mother in order to build your self-confidence and to become more self-reliant. You now know how to deal with “the collapse” and get beyond these setbacks.

I hope you are feeling more positive about yourself and can relate to Amy, who says:

• “My experience and my character are my gifts. I am a quirky chick now, but a very positive person. My life is my choice and I accept responsibility for my actions.”
  

My client Bonnie said,

• “I used to not be able to love myself; there was a dichotomy between what I knew and what I felt. I can feel that love for myself now and I am a free woman, finally!”
  

You, too, gained the skills you need to build new internal strength. Now we move into the process of managing your relationship with your actual mother in a healthy, new manner.

DEALING WITH MOTHER DURING RECOVERY

Y
ou have earned the right to be proud of yourself for a number of reasons, not least of which is all the self-healing work that you have accomplished. Now let’s figure out what to do about your mother if she is still around, still a part of your life in some way. You’ve changed, and she hasn’t. At this stage in your recovery, you must explore ways for you to manage your relationship with her and remain healthy yourself.

Even though you are feeling stronger and have a more solid sense of self, you probably approach decisions about how to cope with Mother with trepidation. You might be asking yourself the following: “What can I say to her?” “Can she be fixed?” “How do I deal with her?” “Should I stay connected with her even though it is extremely difficult and painful for me?” Many daughters have tried various ways to avoid the train wrecks they go through with their narcissistic mothers. Frequently, though, they hit barriers, problems, and frustrations.

• Virginia keeps trying, although she is ambivalent. Her current strategy is to call it like she sees it. By doing this, she hopes things will improve. “I am always fighting with her. I am a lot more confrontational with her than I ever was before. I don’t care what she says. I am more critical of her now. I call her a liar. I still have that hope that maybe I can fix it. If I give her enough evidence, maybe I could break through her barrier. Maybe I could help her. I’m so uncertain as to how it will turn out now.”
  
• Nakia doesn’t want to change the way she deals with her mother. “I have been dealing with this situation for most of my life, and she has never gotten better. I have not gone for the ‘big confrontation,’ as she is 83 and I don’t want to ruin her remaining years. Our limited relationship for the past 15 years has been all about her—that seems to be the only way.”
  
• Belva has little energy left for hope. “She is always baiting me and she loves to rile me up. It makes her happy and powerful to see me diminished. It leaves me exhausted and empty, and I don’t believe there is a solution.”
  
• Teri recalls, “Sometimes I get so afraid of having to talk to her on the telephone, I have to psych myself up for it. A glass of wine also helps! I never know what she is going to say. I mean this woman criticizes trees! Always negative.”
  

In this chapter, I offer suggestions on how to manage these difficult situations. It can be frustrating to figure out the healthy path to take with a narcissistic mother. It is a significant struggle, one that appears to leave many daughters feeling hopeless, helpless, and in pain. So, what can you do?

The Untreatables

If your mother has a full-blown narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), the chances of effective treatment for her, or change, are slight. While I would never say it’s impossible, it would require intensive, long-term, committed treatment, and most important, her desire to be treated. It is quite rare for a person with true NPD to seek therapy for herself and to genuinely want to change and grow personally. In my experience, NPD clients who do seek therapy are searching for answers in how to deal with someone else. If they do express a desire to work on themselves, they drop out of therapy rather quickly, usually telling me that they need to find a therapist with a different approach. Typically, in their eyes, there is something wrong with me, the therapist.

My favorite story is from a few years back when my therapy fee was $100 per session. In the midst of my explaining what constitutes good mother-daughter communication, this rather aggressive mother began searching frantically in her purse. She then dragged out a $100 bill along with her cigarette lighter and proceeded to light the bill on fire, saying, “This is what I think of your therapy advice!” I had to laugh. Thankfully, the daughter and I put out the fire and ended that infamous mother-daughter session quickly.

The more traits your mother has that fit the disorder, the less likely she is a candidate for successful treatment. This means that you can’t fix her and should not be attempting it. Since she is not going to change, you may then ask whether or not you should continue to have contact with her, particularly if her behavior causes you significant emotional distress.

Toxic Mothers

We have to acknowledge that a narcissistic mother may be too toxic to be around. In many situations, daughters have to make the choice to disconnect completely from their mothers because the toxicity damages their emotional well-being. While others around you may not understand it, this is a decision that you get to make for your own mental health. Cherise reports, “I have learned to have compassion for my mother, knowing about her own hurtful childhood, but today, I choose not to associate with her.”

Mandy says, “About six months ago, I made the final attempt to reach my mother emotionally and could not. I feel sorrowful because I do believe in the natural order of relationships, and it would have been nice to have a mother-daughter relationship, but it is not to be and I have accepted that.”

“I didn’t talk to my mother the last ten years of her life,” says Antoinette, 60. “I just couldn’t do it anymore. I had spent many years trying to make her love me and trying to make everything okay. It was sad. When she died, I found out from the sheriff. We went to clean things up at her house and found a note on the bulletin board that said that she had forgiven us for being so horrible to her. They sent me her ashes, and I put them in the car. I couldn’t even take them into the house. I sold that car and forgot to take the ashes out. It was a little weird calling those people to tell them to destroy the ashes I had left in the old car. People are always shocked that I couldn’t make it good with her, but they really don’t understand what she was like!”

This sad, extreme example is more common than you might think. I have known daughters who felt tremendous relief when their narcissistic mothers passed away. They feel delivered out from under a huge burden, but guilty about admitting it.

If your mother is indeed unchangeable and you find yourself being constantly abused by her, it is important to know that disconnecting from her can be healthy. When you decide to make this choice, however, make sure that you have completed your own recovery work. If you simply detach and remove yourself from your mother without doing your own work, you will not diminish your pain and your true self cannot emerge to the peacefulness that you desire. As Dr. Murray Bowen reminds us in
Family Therapy in Clinical Practice,
“Less-differentiated people are moved about like pawns by emotional tensions. Better-differentiated people are less vulnerable to tension.”
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Thankfully, not all mothers with narcissistic traits are lost causes. Daughters do choose to stay in a relationship with more workable mothers, and to create a different kind of connection. I call this “the civil connection.”

The Civil Connection

In the civil connection, daughters of narcissistic mothers change the dynamic of their interactions with Mother by having less contact. When they are in touch, they keep the situation light, civil, and polite, but make no attempt to be emotionally close. This is a good option for daughters who do not want to give up their mother totally, but have accepted that she is incapable of true mothering.

The daughter is in touch with her mother without having expectations and consequently suffers few disappointments. This arrangement works best after you have completed your recovery work, which ensures that you have accepted your mother’s limitations and separated from her properly. Without having adequately separated, you are at risk for being sucked back into the narcissistic family dynamics. As stated in chapter 11, your goal in separating is to be able to be “a part of and apart from” your mother and family of origin. This means you have developed sound boundaries around yourself. For some daughters who are in the midst of recovery, but not feeling strong enough to be around Mother yet, I recommend a temporary separation.

The Temporary Separation

Although your mother will not typically be happy about this, it can be very helpful for you to take a hiatus from her for a time while you are going through your recovery work. This gives you time to heal and work through the feelings and not be constantly triggered by her behavior. It’s perfectly fine to tell Mother that you are grappling with some of your own issues and you need some personal space for a while. You can tell her you will contact her if there is an emergency that she needs to know about and ask that she do the same. She does not have to like this. She may throw a fit. But that’s okay—you say it, and then you do it. If she does not leave you alone, you will have to learn to set boundaries with her, which we will discuss below. You are in charge of your life, not your mom. She may up the ante, so to speak, and try some manipulation as the women in the stories below describe, but it is your job to stand your ground. Your recovery is at stake.

• Michaela, 46, says, “I’ve distanced myself from my mother from time to time, but she finds ways of manipulating me into helping her with things she needs done. This irritates me to no end. If I don’t call her back, she calls and calls, like a stalker!”
  
• And Myra, 38, reports the following with sadness: “About two years ago I became aware of narcissism and realized, after a lifetime of insults, that she is the one with the problem. Since that time, I have been courteous but limited our time together and have definitely set up some separations and long-awaited boundaries. She has been even worse since then; she seems to realize she can’t control me anymore. This whole thing makes me sick to my stomach.”
  

You need to know how to set boundaries with your mother, how to make them stick, and how to follow through.

Setting Boundaries with Mother

Setting boundaries means clearly stating what you will do and what you won’t do. It is letting people know where you stand and drawing a line they are not allowed to cross. It means setting limits. Many people in general are fearful of setting boundaries because they worry about others’ feelings. “If I set a boundary, I will hurt Mother’s feelings.” Daughters also fear setting a boundary because it will make their mothers angry. “If I told her I was not coming to dinner because I needed to rest and take care of myself, she would be furious!”

A very common reason that daughters don’t set good boundaries with their mothers is that they fear abandonment. “If I tell her to back off, she will never speak to me again, and I don’t want to lose my mother totally. I’ve seen her cut off other people and then that’s it. She could do this with me too.”

Narcissists commonly cut people off and out of their lives due to their shallow emotional style of seeing others as either good or bad. Everything is black or white to them. If you have seen your mother do this, your fear of abandonment is very real. But you must assess it in realistic terms. If she has already abandoned you emotionally, she truly does not have the power to do much more that could wreak equal or similar devastation.

Janelle, 36, cites why she can’t set boundaries with her mother. “She will get mad, never forgive me, turn the whole family against me, and then cut me out of the will. I need some inheritance money, and my children deserve that too.” This is a decision only you can make, but generally, consider that your own mental health and sanity hold a higher value than money that may or may not be passed on through your mother’s will. Learning how to set boundaries for yourself is a way to manage your life, your time, and your health. It is a necessity of healthy living.

So, let’s say you have now set a boundary with Mother and told her you will not be seeing her for a while due to your need to focus on some of your own therapeutic issues. You did this by saying to her, “Mom, I am working on some personal issues and I need to tell you that I will not be available for our Sunday dinners for a while. I need some space and will not be calling you. When I am finished, I will let you know. I do not want you to call me during this period, unless it is a bona fide emergency. I am not angry and this is not about you. It is about what I need right now.”

Your mother may quite reasonably ask if everything is okay, and you can respond that you are fine and reassure her again that you are not upset with her. If she is indeed narcissistic, she will assume it is about her, so I know you are thinking right now, Oh, no, that won’t work! But it will work if you follow through. She may indeed try to manipulate and call and even drop by. Your job is to keep setting the boundary by not responding once you have told her this. She rings the doorbell and you don’t answer. She calls you and you don’t answer. She stalks you and you tell her again in firm tones that you are serious about this. How she decides to deal with this is her problem and not yours. You are not responsible for her feelings. The key to making boundaries stick is for you to stick to them! You can be very kind about this and gently remind her that you will be back in touch when you are able to do so.

As you begin to get comfortable setting boundaries, you will find it helpful to set boundaries with your mother over many issues and situations. Let’s do some practice ones so that you can refer back to them when you are having trouble.