[DeletedAccount53]

Part One.


My (late) mother always got angry when something good happened to me because like a typical narcissist, she couldn’t understand that I could be good - but also that she could be good at the same time. Mother never saw that. All she saw was me having what she couldn't, and I loved my hoodies and fashionable trainers and the kind of tech that during her years was never attainable. This was exactly where jealousy started putting down deep roots. Roots of resentment, culminating in downright nastiness. Long before our birth mother collapsed and died from cardiac arrest, my twin Julie and I began learning how to handle her highly unpleasant manner.

Narcs think of life in terms of pie. If I took a big piece of pie, then it was less for her. Obviously, life is not like a pie because everyone has to live it, but try to tell that to a narc!

Narcs have always carried huge jealousy problems because of this line of thinking. Narcissism is a personality disorder. So to them, life is like a pie and no one should get any of the pie if they are hungry. If someone is awarded money, or gifts or love or happiness, this could very much set a narc off. Their way of thinking way, why were those good things wasted on anyone but them?

Narcs don't respect boundaries. The reason for this is because to respect the boundaries of others is to channel one’s shame, which the narcissist avoids like the plague. Mother saw me chewing my hoodie strings and inside she cringed. She got irate when catching me because in her mind, chewing strings was perceived as dirty, and the hoodie she paid dearly for cost money she barely was able to afford, she said while ignoring the fact she was a very wealthy woman. She lashed out at Sis and me because underneath she felt bad for herself.

Mother was also annoyed because she thought she raised us to her own high standards. In her mind we were beneath those standards expected of us.

Boundaries are really tough for a narcissist. If you tell them "Do not cross this line", I guarantee 30 minutes later they'll be a half a mile over the line.

What kind of boundaries are reasonable?

How about, (A: "Speak and treat me with fundamental respect" and/or B) "Do not yell at me or put me down."

Obviously the specific boundaries depended on how my mother was hurting me the most.

Most importantly, beyond coping, I had a life to live. I realised my mother's narcissist issues were not my fault. This is why our care and healing and ultimately self-care, should become the number one priority. A long term commitment to meditation and studying the effects of being raised by a narcissist got Sis and I on that path. After some searching around on You Tube, we found Lisa A. Romano to be highly recommendable on dealing with manipulators and narcissists.

Mother searched for information behind my back, without asking me. She was also very good at baiting. I expected her to make more or less obvious jabs at my weak spots, stabbing at my Achilles Heel. I learnt not to be surprised, and I did not react, lest I provoked her wrath. In order to learn how to do that, I went looking again and discovered Richard Grannon. He has considerable valuable material that's accessible for free - again, it's on You Tube. Just key in 'Richard Grannon Narcissism'.

If Mother didn’t agree with anything I said, she would most likely give me, or Julie, the silent treatment. And this could go for days. When she hid her feelings, or when I confronted her, she wouldn’t talk. Mother said I was dirty for chewing my hoodie strings and threaten to take things away from me. Worse, withhold love until I got to do what she demanded. I lived through a painful time, one in which I thought I could not survive. I hid things. Especially my well loved hoodie. I learnt to become artful such as hiding it inside the button-on lining of my overcoat. Mother never found the hoodie, during which she went ballistic, demanding where I hid it. I gave the silent treatment until her rage blew away. Most days it was cat and mouse. But I decided it would be me who became the cat. Because like Julie I was learning, teaching myself with the aid of YouTube how to deal with my narc of a mother.

In everyday life, narcissists hide how they act, what they think, and ultimately their own shame and incapability. When they want to do something that involves someone else, they don’t ask, they just go ahead and do whatever comes to their head, as if they are entitled to do so. It's a narcissist's trait, so common.

If I confronted Mother about her behaviour, of trying to undermine my personal life, she would place representatives such as grandparents or ancient aunts to speak to me, so I just listened and gave impression of agreeing. There was no way to resist, neither reason. My aunts and grandparents were all tarred by the same brush, I told Julie who I protected. Narcissists’ confidence lies in their belief that they can deceive others, such as my identical twin and I. Our mother thought she was clever getting family members to support her, because this was the way she thought was correct. Which was quite evil really, by deliberately causing emotional distress to the other, usually saying something personal about them to rub it in further.

This way, narcs "stun" the other person, so their victim doesn't ask questions about what the narcissists actually hide for the fear of recriminations, of being punished all over again and worse, narcs will use their allies, sympathetic family members to back them up. Thankfully though this may sound heartless, but Julie and I didn't feel bad when our aunts died. They were the blueprint of our narcissistic mother.

Another ploy of our narcissistic mother was her making the other person, or one of us talk about something, irrelevant of the subject. This way, being the narcissist, she didn't have to speak, so she could keep hiding her own acts. Moreover, this way, narcs can judge and keep distracting the other person from finding out about their methods.

Narcissists act like a secret agent. They act like a secret agent and always do things in the background so no one sees them, so they don't feel shame. They keep hiding anything they do wrong over their lifetime. Mostly, they hide how they act intentionally, using clever words or giving an excuse to leave home when my sister and I least expected.

Narcissists also have control issues, and treat everyone like objects. Their power to control stems from ill possessiveness, towards the things they own, such as the house, and everything inside it.
Controlling behaviour is rooted in the principle that people control whatever they can have power over. And when they can't control themselves in some way, exaggerate on controlling other things which they can have power over, such as material possessions. Mother acted exactly like that, to a T.

Imagine your mother saying in an accusative way, "You have far more than I had when I was a child. Child, note, not 'teenager'. Because by saying "child", she is deliberately relegating you to be no more reasonable than a child, not a young lady who is far more perceptive than her friends, but who is struggling so hard because she's mostly all on her own, and feels isolated and vulnerable: Are you, if you are reading this, a victim of a narcissistic parent?

Controlling parents overuse the concept of material possession in order to cover up for the fact that they can't otherwise communicate with people. They are extremely selfish, and can't recognize their children as individuals. They generally follow a rule like:

"This is my house and my things and I will do whatever I damned well want with them!"

Narc parents like our mother are passive-aggressive, lack empathy and can sometimes act psychopathic. The latter, 'psychopathic', often happens in the week's run-up to their period. Hence the horrible staring way our mother had when being confronted when Julie or I retorted, eg.

"That's not right. These clothes are my property which I love and take care of - you're not going to throw them away!"

Narcissistic parents don’t make any useful rules in the house that take children’s benefit into account. The rule is "Everything is allowed", which means everything aside of the things they, the mother or the father, doesn’t want. However, narcs don't announce what those things are until one does them. So, they will just wait for you to do something and, if they don’t like it, they swiftly return with a "NO!"

This way, narcissists feel they have power and reinforce their exaggerated idea that everything belongs to them, and always get in the position where they can "punish hard" since they can claim that somebody "did something wrong in their property", although they never stated the rules so like us, you would never be able to know. Some controlling parents even go as far as simply not discussing anything at all with you, as if you are just an object. This was how we were treated.