Narcissistic Mother

I have a very difficult and traumatic relationship with my mother. While she is not perhaps a complete narcissist, this is the best explanation I have for her behaviour. She was a single parent to me, and herself had a difficult childhood and was neglected and ignored and is very insecure.

My own learnt response has been to fold myself away when I see her- and “collapse” or give in to her needs and to not tell her anything important about my life, as this will be used as ammunition. I have horrific people pleasing habits and lack of self trust and many other things developed as coping mechanisms.

I limit contact to a one hour phone call per week, plus 3 day visits in Christmas, Easter and the Summer holidays. She is always desperate to see me more and sees the time limits (put there for protection) as a slight on her.

I notice when I am in contact with her I am not honest about my feelings and try to make her feel better about the bad times we have together, and see it as my role to “build her up” and “explain” why it was difficult. I am also “overly loving” to her and feel like I have to tell her I love her, and make her okay. This is all developed from a protective mechanism developed in the past, where I had to do this to be safe as a child. I’m now in my mid forties.

I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on how to go about challenging my thoughts about “pleasing” her and allowing myself to let her feel uncomfortable and not try to “fix” things. Any suggestions for thought work /different responses that may be helpful for me to explore would be great.

Answer:

There is a whole lot of self-awareness here, and some keen insights. Often times when we are people pleasing, the nervous system response swings between being in the activated sympathetic state (fight/flight) and the ventral vagal state (safe). It’s known as fawning. Fawning keeps you looking like you feel safe on the outside, but under the surface you’re freaking out. It’s different from the other f’s (fight/flight/freeze) because it’s something we learn. And that means that we can also unlearn it…slowly. What if you decided to start thinking about your people pleasing tendencies differently? Instead of horrific (even if that feels true for you), what if they were/are purposeful, interesting, or understandable, etc.? What comes up for you when you begin to think about this learned behavior in a way that isn’t shameful for you? Bring this back to AAC with any realizations, questions, or resistance for more coaching and title your submission “Mother pt. 2”. In the meantime, if you have access to the People Pleasing webinar in the Cycle Toolkit tab, I HIGHLY recommend watching it!