I have definitely defined the symptoms of this. I Googled this subject and read an article written by Chris. As I was reading I said OMG OMG OMG OMG I could have written this article myself. I am therefore going to see a psycologist starting next week to equip myself with tools to handle my mother as she gets progressivley worse. I also think dementia is setting in. She has heard horn music from the house next door that has been empty for the past 5 years. I am hoping this will also help me fix myself and am training myself to not let her push my buttons. Also, someone gave me a challenge ( just what I needed another challenge LOL) to find something positive each day about my mother and dwell on that instead of her personality and past hurts which is done with and can never be relived. Wish me luck with this new endeavor. I will keep you posted on what I learn. I am off to have lunch with the little girl I mentor. I wish everyone a pleasant day and a nice weekend. Neon
Mom did see a new Psychiatrist today. I wasn't impressed with how things went. She demanded to see him alone. I had hoped to confront the truth of some issues. She's so afraid of that. But she wants to lie about me behind my back. He just asked me a few questions, and said he'd see her again. Gee, thanks.
What good is that?
ADVERTISEMENT
This diagnosis often gets lumped in together with other mental conditions, and the lines blurred. For those of you who have experienced the negative effects of being raised by a parent possessing an NPD condition, you have often had no voice, help, or healing. From experience, I have found, we are often on the defensive, and lived our lives in survival mode. We somehow survive, but many do not thrive. My heart goes out to you if you know what I mean.
My mother has only recently been diagnosed, and will be seeing a Psychiatrist in 3 days. I will accompany her to this visit. I just spoke to her new Psychiatrist's nurse, who said they will ask for my input. For a 51 year old to go against her mother's injunction that "children should be seen and not heard," is a daunting task. I have been heard, lately, by Mom's Physicians, and all roads have led to this appointment. It is almost terrifying. I feel like I'm facing a devil, and am intimidated, just as mommy dearest programmed me to be. I could sure use your prayers for strength and clarity of thought, as I express my hopes and goals. To expose the past and present struggles with mom is a monumental task.
They've just given me a fax number to send along some paperwork prior to the Physician meeting with mom. Scary stuff. Scary, because things have always seemed to go in mom's favor, which seems to be part of the problem. Most have not understood that. I'm praying this time is different. Thanks for your prayers and support.
Neon if you read the post from the beginning, you will find a lot of similiarities and an article about NPD. I am going to actually post another article about it.
Please be carefull what resources you read or who you see. Many sites discount NPD as something not as dreadfull as it is, some sites actually account it pretty good. Be carefull of therapists that discount it as well, you don't need those, you need a therapist that actually recognizes this disease and how dreadfull it is to the children who have to suffer from it. It is a devastating disease that runs it's course from being trained to be frightened as a child to adhere to their demands up until the scars they leave on you as an adult.
I look forward to seeing you on the post I mentioned above.
Neon, best wishes, and gvergrl, too. Perhaps we should be focusing on our wonderful husbands and offspring, instead? I love my Support Groups and the Social Workers and Psychologists and Psychiatrists, who are trying to help. And I'm going to be there at the Psychiatric clinic when mom gets there, so I can benefit from their wisdom, too. They have shared a few tools already. I'm looking forward to gathering and gleaning and gaining more, not so much to deal with mom, but to preserve myself from her. That her insurance covers it is another gift from God's provision.
Thanks for starting this bright new thread, and for your posts. It's so encouraging to know you're both there, and like-minded. Thanks for your positive thinking. Take care! :)
Someone came to my childhood home and wrote down my mother, my brother, and my father. And yet my entire life I thought it must be me, because they are all the same, and the odds just don't work that way. The very last thing I read was that narcicistic people do not like to live alone. And yet all three of them do because they aren't pleasurable to be with. Another oddity is that my sibling married someone just like him. And when they divorced, she remarried someone just like her.
I married a gem, and our child is so sweet and empathetic. I feel like I escaped. I guess that is why it is so hard to enter the lion's den again. The only difference between me as a child, and me now, is that I no longer have any hope for any change.
I will try to do as you are doing, and look for a positive.
Maybe seeing them from a clinical perspective will put a damper on the blows.