Very sorry for your loss. :cry:

Great that she was able to have hospice care instead of being cooped up in a facility. I trust you have a lot of great memories to last a lifetime. :yep:

Thanks.

Unfortunately she was not an easy person to deal with even in the best of times... the word "toxic" comes to mind... so the good memories are few and far between. She'd driven away all of us kids to some extent and most of her one-time close friends in the last dozen years or so. My sister and I did get a kind of reconciliation near the end, which I'm sure made things easier for her and will make it easier for us in the future.

Thanks guys :yep:

FK,I saw your post about your mom dying,real sorry to hear about that love <--- dont worry,we call everyone 'love' (even men funnily enough!) here in Yorkshire hehe,sincere best wishes in the meantime.

Great to see you again too Jim my old sea salt!

See you all very soon for a new campaign :up:

Sink em all,the filthy hunds!

Well that puts you in good company here! :D To my mind there are two kinds of people in the world - people who realize they're idiots and people who don't. Those who admit it are good company. Those who don't are merely annoying. :sunny:

'Tis always good to hear of reconciliation, especially in relationships that have been strained long term.

I know in my life I struggled for years with flaws and toxicity until I finally started to come to terms with the underlying pain and issues that were causing much of it in the first place.

It took a very long time mind you, (probably due to my own stubbornness), but I've finally come full circle and accepted the flaws as a beautiful reminder of that which instills unique and defining character.

It was a hard process, but now that I'm a ways down the road, I'm very happy to be here. Anyway, all the best to you and your sister. I hope with the passing of time the few select good memories will outshine the rest. :sunny:

One can only hope - if nothing else my upbringing has made me who I am, and since I am pretty much at peace with how I've turned out so far, it's hard to look back and say "that never should've happened!"

It does not mitigate the responsibility of those who made it happen or allowed it to happen, or make it possible in all cases to maintain an ongoing relationship with those people as long as they persist in the behavior, but... as I get older I think I begin to understand why my mother was the way she was, and it derives from a very unhappy and I would say abusive upbringing and one that was probably far more so than my own since I had at least one parent who despite his own issues served to counteract most of what she dished out.

In short, I was given enough of a sense of self and self-worth early on not to crumble completely under the same type of treatment from her that she had received as a child. I do not think she got that, rather just the opposite, which is terribly sad and her whole life was an attempt to compensate for it at the expense of others without ever really understanding why this behavior drove so many people away. A person doesn't get to be the way she was without a devastating and ongoing trauma to the core of their being starting at a very early age and that is enough of a reason to be compassionate instead of bitter, given the choice.

I feel like when it comes down to the battle of wills between myself and my mother over who would control me and my life and who I am at the most basic level - I finally won years ago. And the only thing worse than a sore loser IMO is an ungracious winner. :yep:

Exactly, even the dark clouds of traumatic experience contain silver linings in that we are given the opportunity to grow, learn and emphasize with others who struggle through similar circumstances. It all contributes to making us stronger (hopefully wiser) and serves as another rod in the crucible of who we become.

Agreed...

I don't know about you but I find this knowledge to be very liberating as it helps me apply a modicum of sanity to an otherwise insane situation.

Wonderful to have a counter balance.

Without trying to assign blame, I've always considered it a true shame when people who have been abused are unable (for whatever reason) to break the cycle by resolving not to apply the same behavior to their children.

As you said, we all have issues but it seems incredibly sad when we are unable to rise above the trauma so as to avoid having it dictate our entire lives. As crushing as they can be, painful experiences can also be wonderful opportunities for personal growth. Provided we get help and work at 're-framing' the experience to strip it of much of its toxic hold.


Incredibly sad though it is, it can still serve to create a greater good by teaching her children the pitfalls of unresolved or untreated trauma. If it makes your lives better by being aware (first hand) of the painful consequences then the suffering has not been in vain.

Again wonderful that you can choose compassion as the response of choice in this situation.

Congratulations on becoming your own person and being comfortable in your own skin. None of us can control much of what happens to us in life, but we can control how we react to it. This is where true victory lies. :yep:

Oh, absolutely.

I've said it before but if you google "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" you'll have the best possible overview of what we dealt with all those years. I was tipped off by the psychotherapist who ran a dream study group I used to go to... something about a lot of the stuff that came up with me and another person there clued him in that we might both be dealing with an NPD individual. He recommended some reading material and it was nothing less than a revelation. It validated all the stuff we'd gone through and been constantly told (by her) was nothing but stuff we were imagining or making up deliberately to disparage her. And it made me understand exactly what has to be done to a person to make them that way and how devastating an experience that is.

The truly tragic thing about NPD is that it involves an enormous amount of denial - denial that anything one does or says is inappropriate or unethical or insensitive, denial of the actual things one has done and said, and - the worst part - denial of the original trauma itself and the possibility that those who perpetrated it might have been in the wrong to do so. People like my mother rarely get help because they are unable to admit they need it... it's everyone else that has a problem, not them. They persist in that belief to the point where everyone else gives up and walks away in self-defense.

I'd be interested to look into this. Personality disorders come in a lot of different varieties but from what I've seen they do share certain fundamental commonalities.

Really glad you got help to understand the underlying issues. There's few things worse than struggling in the dark.

Sounds like a real road block to recovery. From what I've seen it's nigh impossible to recover until someone first realizes they need help. It's as if we have to hit bottom and/or come to an end of self-reliance before we're able to start the climb back toward a healthy life.

Denial is one of our greatest enemies. It holds us captive and largely powerless to deal with that which we refuse to believe is real. Acceptance, painful as it may be, is the first step toward rebuilding a better reality.

This was the most interesting thing I found for laypeople online when I was looking for information in the past:

http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/dsm-iv.html

This is also interesting

http://narcissisticpersonalitydisorder.org/

and it's the first time I've seen the term "Malignant Narcissism" in reference to "a type of personality that is overly concerned with it's own point of view, and reality." Interesting, that was one of mom's chief issues - she really did live in her own little world, one that revolved primarily around her, at least when it came to the people close to her. Everything we did, in her mind, was done either to please her or spite her. The idea that she might not have figured into our motivations at all never seemed to occur to her. It was just inconceivable that we actually wanted or needed or felt anything that didn't coincide with what she required us to want, need, and feel.

Thanks for the links.

I must say, this strikes me as really foreign as I've always strived to put myself in other people's shoes and understand what they're going through. To be honest, I find my own point of view rather boring, (as I know it too well), besides, becoming preoccupied with it robs me of the opportunity to learn something beyond my own limited view.

For me life is all about growing, helping others and becoming more than we are now. To do that I need to approach life as a learning experience while trying to maintain an open mind and remaining aware that all knowledge is progressive.

Having said that, my heart feels for those who are unable to reach out for something beyond themselves. I hope your Mom was happy. Thanks again for sharing her experiences and helping to enlighten others. :sunny:

You have to think of it in these terms: people tend to treat other people the way they believe they deserve to be treated. And when I say "believe," I don't mean in ways that are always obvious, and in the case of a narcissist it usually isn't obvious... quite the opposite. I mean what they really believe deep down, sometimes on a purely unconscious level.

It's kind of the flipside of the Golden Rule. It's easy to say "treat other people like you want to be treated," but if you've been conditioned from infancy to believe you don't matter, your feelings don't count, and that you are only useful (and in fact only really "exist") when you are filling the role that someone else assigned to you, feeling what they allow you to feel, wanting what they allow you want - believing all those things, how would you expect to be treated, really?

If you've been taught that you are not "allowed" to have hurt feelings because it's not in the script you were given, you're not going to allow other people the same consideration either. The whole concept of another person having sincere and autonomous feelings, thoughts, desires, and motivations that do not coincide with what his/her plans are for that person is completely alien to a confirmed narcissist, at least in my experience. As far as they're concerned, there's nothing there for them to empathize with... altho they can put on a pretty good show of it, if doing so suits their purposes.

I agree completely with what you said about treating others the way you think you should be treated. As far as 'conditioning' goes, this seems to be akin to a stereotypical case of a badly damaged psyche complete with shredded self esteem.

This amounts to a tremendous mountain for anyone to climb as so many core beliefs have to be challenged, re-evaluated and overcome. That being said, helping restore that which was so badly damaged seems both incredibly noble and immensely worthwhile.

Here's where I have a question though, how do you think this aspect of NPD relates to other cases where individuals exercise excessive power and/or domination over others? Is there a connection? And if so would you characterize it as a form of abuse? :hmmm:

My layperson's opinion would be that there are a variety of possible motivations for that kind of behavior, a narcissistic disorder being only one of them.

In my experience being on the receiving end of what a malignant narcissist dishes out does qualify as emotional and psychological abuse, if only because attempting (or succeeding at) using another human for one's own purposes with no regard for or acknowledgment of the fact that they exist as an autonomous individual with a *right* to self-determination and their own thoughts and feelings IS abusive. It is abuse to treat another human being as an object that exists only to meet the needs of someone else. Particularly when it is done to a child or other dependent individual who cannot simply walk away from the situation.

If you were to hit someone upside the head, even if you didn't understand why that was unacceptable, and they said "Ow you're hurting me, stop that" and yet you continued to do it, over and over again, just because it was what you decided or felt compelled to do for some reason that only made sense to you, would that qualify as abuse? Surely it would.

That is what you get from the so-called malignant narcissist, only with regard to your emotional and psychological well-being (and in some cases, your physical well-being as well).

FK, as someone with probably some slight narcissistic traits of the compensatory type (or maybe not so slight - I do like to listen to Chris Isaak and Nick Cave :oops:), I'm curious about what you think about the reason for your mother's NPD? Do you have an opinion about why she was like that?

And in her bringing you up, was there one major thing you wished she could have tried to do differently, if she had been a bit more aware of her personality and problems?

(I think my questions might be somewhat personal, so no problems, if you don't want to comment on them. - Curiosity killed the cat, but I wish I do have one or two of my nine lives still left :).)

Well I wrote a huge reply to this but when I hit Submit I had been logged out and the whole thing got lost. :stare:

Which may be a good thing anyway as we have really gone way offtopic for an SH3 thread, lol.

So - I'll be happy to try and answer your questions again later, if you would be so kind as to PM them to me. :DL

Lol, I think this is a bit off topic. Maybe the gods of internet tried to tell us that when your message got lost. On the other hand, what I've read about Prien and some of the other sub commanders I wouldn't count NPD out of the picture... :hmmm:.

Well one thing I said in my lost response was that many people may behave in a "narcissistic" fashion in certain situations or during particular phases of their lives. And let's face it, we all have moments where we'd like to believe that the world really does revolve around us and our own needs. :DL

But that's quite a different thing from pathological narcissism, or "malignant narcissist" behavior as one web site called it. That's a longterm and pervasive disorder that one does not just outgrow or give up like a bad habit, and it usually effects everything in a person's life and any relationship that is more than casual.

And IMO if you were *that* kind of narcissist, you wouldn't even be thinking about your own behavior and how it related to this discussion. You wouldn't even consider the possibility that it might apply to you at all, because it would never occur to you to think that you have a problem that might need looking at.

I will say that children who are subjected to narcissistic behavior from parents or primary caregivers early on are probably at a higher risk of exhibiting that kind of behavior themselves later in life (which holds true in many kinds of dysfunctional family situations). It is something I am very much aware of, and very much on the lookout for in my own life. But I was fortunate to have one parent who did value me for my own sake, and not just as someone who only existed to validate their own meticulously constructed substitute for true identity and self-esteem. It meant there was always a "me" deep down in there somewhere that knew I was something more than that... even if I had to keep it out of sight much of the time in order to keep it safe.

I'll PM you on this, FK - the ads by Google that I see on the upper part of the page are already beginning to show stuff like "Child behavior chart" and "Personality" right beside "MMORG games" and "Online playing":)