3 Types of a Daughter / Narcissistic Mother Relationship

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel hello this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can talk about the themes that we might see in a relationship between a narcissistic mother and her daughter now when looking at the construct of narcissism it's clear that narcissism causes damage in a number of different relationship types including parent-child relationships we know that people who have narcissistic parents describe experiences that can be categorized into themes and that's

what I'm really looking at here specifically the situation where a daughter has a mother who is narcissistic what are the themes that would be reported by daughters in that situation to answer this question I used a research study that interviewed 13 women who had narcissistic mothers I'll put the reference to this article in the description for this video these participants came from Finland the age range was 32 is 69 and the average age was 52 the participants were in a support group for the children of narcissistic parents so the researchers analyzed the narratives provided by

those participants it was hundreds of pages and identified themes through this process three themes emerged three ways the one could describe a childhood with a narcissistic mother these themes are incompetent childhood isolated childhood and denied childhood as I go through these themes I'll include quotes directly from the participants these quotes were included in that article so let's look at each of these three themes starting with incompetent childhood this theme can be broken down into three elements nullification demonstration of power and shame so starting with nullification here we see the daughter is never appreciated she was

never shown gratitude she never heard the words thank you she never received support or encouragement and she found herself giving up on important goals she once had including the goal of pursuing an education the mother could not make a mistake but the only thing the daughter could do is make mistakes activities that the daughter chose to do or values that she attempted to form were designated as silly worthless and non-productive if she chose an activity that met the mother's needs that may be satisfactory but usually noting that the daughter did would be good enough the

daughter's hopes and wishes would not be tolerated and she starts to think of herself as an extension of the mother so some quotes here from the Nullification component of the incompetent childhood I have tried to deserve my existence by being useful right a very sobering quote there somehow my mother sensed my weakness and insecurity I have seen this many times in my clinical experience where this is how someone feels that situation and she would always create arguments that she could win I find this was interesting because this really shows how the narcissist creates the situation

on the battlefield right they choose the environment they fight when they want to fight under the circumstances that they have designated it gives them a market advantage when it comes to winning these arguments the next component is the demonstration of power the mother determines what is permitted whether the daughter follows the mother's instructions or not the daughter was always wrong the continued expression of dissatisfaction is all the daughter gets to see now notice there is really no way here for the daughter to win compliance or rebellion lead to the same conclusion so this is just

a situation where the daughter is trapped right there aren't many variables that she has control over there may be no variables that she can control the daughter may be humiliated by the mother in front of others the mother cannot regulate her behavior her use of power rises to the level of cruelty the mother did not seem to be able to establish good boundaries and her behavior was erratic this speaks to the no safe place to turn idea that we see with these situations again the daughter is really trapped the mother is not stable not reliable

and the daughter never knows what to expect so some quotes here related to this demonstration of power when I put on clothes I had to take them off because my mother said they were of an ugly color and I should wear something she had chosen usually blue clothes I hated blue for a long time this idea of a individual hating what their mother preferred is something I've seen many times in my clinical experience this is really a common theme I think there's this idea that when preferences are forced upon somebody they're going to push back

against that which seems like a natural reaction the next quote she showed in every way how disappointed she was in me and how I ruined her life so a narcissist blames their children and really everybody for how their life turned out shame is the last component of the incompetent childhood experience this is considered to be a product of the demonstration of power and the nullification so shame is like the result the daughters were ashamed because they couldn't do anything right and they felt like they had no value they formed an identity based on inferiority weakness

worthlessness ineffectiveness and imperfection I'll quote here from this category I felt ashamed of just existing I tried to be non-existent and obedient right so the daughter really kind of frames her life as a life of service and a life of suffering a sad commentary about the effects of the narcissistic parent now moving to the isolated childhood so this is the second of the three major themes this theme has three components dependence blaming and the last component is envy and creating a shiny facade starting with dependence the mother made sure that the daughter was dependent on

her she would limit the daughter's contact with other people including friends the mother viewed other people as competition and she did not want competition the purpose of the daughter was to satisfy the mother's needs all the energy and attention in the household was pulled toward the mother like a black hole where I just brought everything in everything positive would be drawn in by the mother her presence was inescapable and undeniable no one could forget she was there even if they may have wanted to forget that she was there right the attention-seeking behavior is really hard

to kind of put out in one's mind the mother would try to pit the daughter against the father even he was considered a competitor the daughter wasn't allowed to pursue romantic interests and the daughter wasn't allowed to tell anybody about the level of control the mother had secrecy is an important part of this dynamic some quotes here from dependence she never had anything positive to say about other people we were not allowed to tell outsiders about how things were at our home right so really fairly straightforward the next element is fairly straightforward as well this

is blaming here we see the mother can blame the daughter for anything with no reason or logic behind it so again this one's fairly direct the quotes here my mother was a master of finding someone to blame afterwards and I still do not know when she was telling the truth right so this is interesting I've seen this many times too where the individual who had the narcissistic parent grows up and they never are able to establish trust for that parent right they just don't know when the parent is being truthful they don't know if they're

trying to manipulate the relationship never really stabilizes and becomes secure so this takes me to the third component of the isolated childhood envy and creating a shiny facade the mother despises other people as a way to bolster her own sense of value everything in the home has to be perfect if the daughter received a compliment about her behavior the mother immediately took the credit appearing to be caring and sensitive the harsh reality of the misery the daughter experienced really juxtaposes sharply against the ideal fantasy that the mother projects to other people the daughter was not

allowed to be happy unless that happiness was related to the mother right unless that happiness helped make the mother look better or made the mother happy quotes here I cannot tell my mom about the good events in my life so the daughter has nowhere to go with her own good news next quote my parents were respected and trusted in their work therefore no one could imagine what kind of nightmare my life was as their only daughter right so this goes back to that familiar theme of the daughter being trapped the daughter has no options this

really adds to it by indicating that the daughter has no way to even be recognized so it's beyond being trapped she can't even communicate with other people and explain how her situation cannot be changed right so no one's gonna empathize with the daughter even when somebody's trapped they take comfort and others being able to see them being able to recognize that situation as unfortunate as it is the daughter is denied this this brings me to the last theme denied childhood we see here three components violence threatening and rejecting starting with violence well this one's fairly

straightforward the mother would often use violence as a way to punish the daughter absolutely no provocation was required a quote here my mother really hits us with a stick and hand without any reason next we have threatening the daughter lived in constant fear of making the mother angry the daughter learned to be careful about everything that she said or did quotes here everyone was afraid of my mother now this person could be talking about her family like everybody in the family was afraid of the mother but this could also extend to outsiders other people could

see the situation and think I don't want to get involved in that that seems frightening to me the next quote by constantly assuring her how perfect she is I tried to keep her in a good mood so the daughter not only suffers at the hands of the mother she has to work too she has to work to keep the mother in a mood that will lead to more bad consequences right so constant terror constant fear in the situation for the daughter the next component is rejection the daughter has never had basic safety the mother forgot

her ignored her and left her alone the mother offered no protection and sometimes allow others to mistreat the daughter so here we see even more pain right so the daughter has to worry about the mother and now she has to worry about the mother's lack of protection so other people come out and try to harm the daughter right mothers typically protect their daughters we don't see this with the narcissistic mother the quotes here all my toys were taken away because I was told that I was too old to play with toys at the age of

9 right so the mothers really just cruel lacks empathy she doesn't care it's all about her next quote I was afraid all the time right we know that constantly being in fear especially as a child leads to a lot of suffering later on as well as suffering in that moment so those are the three themes we see with the narcissistic mother what types of outcomes would we see with each of these three themes well all three lead to shame right it's a component of the first theme but really is part of all three of the

themes now in general incompetent childhood leads to feelings of inferiority and worthlessness isolated childhood this turns the daughter against other people and focuses her toward her mother we also see hyper-vigilance as a consequence here denied childhood leads to a sense of insecurity and feelings of fear in general people who are raised by narcissists including daughters raised by narcissistic mothers are more likely to have insecure attachment which places them at a greater risk of developing psychopathology so that's how we kind of look at the pathway to mental disorder in this situation insecure attachment contributes to it

it's not 100 percent of the cost but we think it is in some cases at least a major contributor now these participants really struggle to tell other people about their mother's narcissism they didn't know if anybody would take them seriously or they didn't know if anybody would know how to help them we see the feeling of isolation caused by the mother persists as the daughter grows older so when I think of the mother-daughter dynamic and this could apply to a variety of dynamics but specifically with this dynamic we see this image this analogy of two

trees right the mother is a tree the daughter is a smaller tree as the daughter this tree goes up we would hope the tree would grow straight and would be resistant like so when the wind blows the tree wouldn't bend too much and what we see here with these two trees is that the mother is pulling that smaller tree the daughter either into her as that tree grows or away from her but either way that tree does not end up straight it ends up curved to one side or the other and sometimes with the approach

dynamic where the mother is pulling that tree in the trees become intertwined and we think about a tree we know it's not just easy to untangle that if the two trees are intertwined that's a very difficult dynamic to alter if the daughter tree so to speak is curved away well that curvature is still difficult to correct now that tree is isolated it's not necessarily better for the daughter one way or the other too close to the mother or too far away both of them result in that curvature which is unhealthy right so this is how

I think about a lot of parent-child dynamics sometimes people say to children of narcissists why don't you just straighten up right to use the tree analogy when she is straighten up well because the individual grew in that direction right so there is a distortion which is present there that is not easy to correct in real life of course it's not the curvature of a tree but a cognitive distortion and that's something that counseling can help to address so this analysis of these themes about the narcissistic mother really underscore the importance of promoting education about the

destructiveness of narcissism it causes harm at every level but the narcissistic parent wreaks havoc that has the potential lead to a lifetime of suffering fortunately counselling can help many who are in this situation but prevention is really the key to containing the narcissism epidemic now we know whenever I talk about topics like narcissism there will be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate an interesting dial as always I hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching