There are daughters of narcissistic mothers who have barely survived psychologically. At the extreme, there are daughters who starve to death from anorexia as the only way they found to salvage a small crumb of their existence. We know these daughters, despite the fact that their secrets of maternal deprivation and abuse are well camouflaged behind bright faces, brilliant grades, and solid professional portfolios. Trapped from the earliest childhood, they are victims of a mother unable to love them.
The narcissistic mother is psychologically fused with her daughter. Her coldness and lack of empathy affect her son from the beginning. These mothers experience their daughters not as unique individuals, but as extensions of themselves.
Narcissistic mothers sabotage their daughters’ efforts to become independent productive individuals. The narcissistic mother is envious of her daughter on all levels. This becomes particularly acute as her son enters adolescence. Young men begin to notice and indicate that they are sexually attracted to this young woman. This puts the narcissistic mother back up. She feels an envy that gnaws at her guts for competing with her daughter. The mother undermines her daughter, telling her a series of lies that shake her daughter’s confidence in her feminine identity.
The hypnotic control that a narcissistic mother has over her daughter can be so strong and pathological that the child does not know what she is thinking or feeling. The narcissistic mother takes all the credit for her daughter’s accomplishments while constantly criticizing and demanding her son for using initiative or having creative ideas. The daughter who dares to think for herself or moves toward psychological individuation is heavily criticized, labeled as a rebel, and stripped of any meaningful role in the family.
The narcissistic mother frequently causes powerful and damaging psychological rifts between her children. Narcissistic mothers pit one sibling against the other and use conspiracy secrets (often lies) to further poison and destroy relationships between their children.
She will choose a boy as the special one. This is often a child who is particularly physically attractive, highly intelligent, or shows artistic or musical talent. This child is adored by the mother. The chosen child cannot do anything wrong, even if he or she is cruel, petty and deceitful towards others. The chosen child is perfect embodiment of the mother.The narcissistic mother chooses another child as the loser. This daughter becomes the target and repository for the narcissistic mother’s expression of her unconscious feelings of self-loathing and worthlessness. This child is a living disposition for the toxic poison of the narcissistic mother.
Narcissistic mothers are never satisfied. If the daughter gets B’s in her class, she could have been A. “Just apply yourself, dear. What’s wrong with you?” Narcissistic mothers are obsessed with image. If the target daughter is slightly overweight, the mother makes sarcastic comments about her son’s body. You look a bit thick in the middle; your upper arms are on the chubby side. Your Sandra is nice and slim friend. If you watched what you ate, you could be just as attractive as her.” Narcissistic mothers are relentlessly cruel and critical. They would find flaws in the perfect daughter. This will always be true, as the narcissistic mother suffers from a severe personality disorder. These individuals they are completely self-absorbed, cold, manipulative, deceitful, exploitative, and lack the slightest bit of human empathy.
Most daughters of narcissistic mothers survive this vicious abuse. They learn to block out their strong emotions and dance to their mothers’ tune to save themselves. Some daughters become very rebellious, misbehave with drugs, alcohol, or sex, and leave the family prematurely.
Daughters of narcissistic mothers can heal through the work of psychotherapy. One of the first problems is acknowledging and grieving that they never had a real mother, someone who loved and cared for them as a separate and valuable human being. The daughters learn that they are not your mothers. As horribly as they were treated, some daughters spend their lives forming dysfunctional relationships with men who resemble their narcissistic mothers. They repeat the psychological patterns of childhood instead of overcoming the pain to transform it.
On the other side of the cauldron of transformation, daughters of narcissistic mothers are born for the second time. They are in touch with the beauty of their bodies, the exquisite beauty of their minds and psyches, and the vast depths of their souls. Now, they feel authentic, fully alive.
