Narcissistic Mother with Psychopathic Traits?

[H011yHawkJ311yBean]

I was reading with interest all on this thread.: http://forum.psychlinks.ca/narcissi...rental-narcissistic-personality-disorder.html

My mother has either got Narcissistic Personality Disorder or is a Psychopath or possibly NPD with some psychopathic tendencies... It is my understanding that all Psychopaths are Narcissistic but not all people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder are Psychopaths... lol

I don't know if there is anyone who can for sure tell me which she is but I have recently blocked her number. My dad enables her so I don't talk to him either. I am one of three siblings. Of the three of us, I would call me (eldest and only daughter, yippee) and my youngest brother the 'most normal' and my middle brother the 'special project.' Of the three I was the one who was responsible for the two boys, who was to set 'the example' and who could never please my mother. I remember loading the dishwasher at three years old because she had a back-ache from her 2nd pregnancy. lol

Anyway, my middle brother wasn't exactly the 'golden child' - she constantly and to this day coddles him. He never holds down a job for more than three months because he knows mommy and daddy will help him. They buy him groceries, they've bought him a car, they've paid for his car repairs and maintenance, they've paid for debts he's piled up, they've repaired his computer of viruses numerous times, they've paid for his schooling, etc.

I'm here to say that yes, sometimes a parent with NPD will pass on those characteristics to a child. It's unavoidable unless that child stays away long enough, I think, to figure out what is normal and what isn't. My middle brother hasn't had enough time. Even when he ran away to BC for a while, he needed financial help to get his car off the ferry, and groceries and rent and so forth. And naturally my parents provided.

I have plenty of examples of what a mother with NPD can do with 3 siblings, and what a father enables her to do by just sitting there letting her do things to us... If anyone wants to hear... 8P

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Re: Parental Narcissistic Personality Disorder

It is my understanding that all Psychopaths are Narcissistic but not all people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder are Psychopaths...

No. You may be thinking of the accurate statement that all psychopaths meet the criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder but not all people who meet the criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder are psychopaths.

While there are some similarities between psychopathy and narcissism, they are not the same thing, any more than Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar Disorder are not the same thing despite sharing some of the same symptoms.

 

[H011yHawkJ311yBean]

Re: Parental Narcissistic Personality Disorder

lol Oops... Yes, sorry, I mangled it a bit. That's what I get for knowing a little bit of everything (I know lots of useless information and it's probably not all accurate)... Well, my therapist is certain that she has NPD. But he's only going by what I told him, because of course what person with NPD is going to seek therapy?

See she IS prone to childish rages and tantrums... SOMETIMES.... Other times she is calm and cold.

I remember her throwing a drawer of cutlery down the stairs when we were kids. I remember her having shouting matches. I remember her smacking me around. Talking or reasoning with her was impossible, and my brothers left lots of holes in walls because she had this tendency to follow us around and get in our faces when we did something she got upset about (like have an opinion that was different from hers). When ONE of us three siblings did something she would make her rounds and come and antagonize all of us even if we hadn't done anything.

I remember her sitting next to me while I had retreated to my room: she was really close to my face and saying nasty things. I was trying to zone out and staring straight ahead, stiff as a board in a kind of upright fetal position. She started punching my legs. She kept at it and kept at it until it finally got to me and I started crying (no sound, just still staring blankly ahead waiting for the stupidity to stop). She seemed to be satisfied that I had started crying and left at that point. It almost seemed pleasing to her.

She and my brother had a big fight and he punched a hole his his bedroom door. Don't ask me how this was any different from any other day, but today apparently was the last straw. She called the police and wanted to press charges of willful destruction. The police officer was calm and was trying to convince my mother not to press charges. "Are you SURE you want to charge him?" I happened to have been kicked out of the house the same day. I made the stand that I had wanted to do something with the family earlier (I had invited them to the park for a BBQ and toss a ball but they had a BBQ in their own yard, but didn't want to go out to the park to toss a ball), because she had accused all of us kids of never wanting to do anything with the family (again). So at some point in my bedroom she of course came in to argue with me. She was VERY calm that time. She said I wouldn't last more than a week if I left home. I was gone almost a year and I didn't talk to her. Until one day she called and said she wanted to 'buy all the kids' a house. Well that led to a whole other bucket of worms, including some mess with Revenue Canada for not reporting all income (her fault) which somehow got one of my brothers involved (and he hasn't spoken to her in 6 years because of it)....

She has been charged twice for with-holding pay when she owned an old folks home for a while. She has been hit by Revenue Canada more than once because she has several properties and doesn't report the rent.

Her view of reality is quite often not actual reality. She somehow twists it to suit herself. I can't tell if she is actually doing these things because she doesn't know any better and has NPD, or if she IS totally aware of what she is doing and just makes it appear like she can't remember things the way they really happened. The other issue is she has studied psychology in university, and also has worked at the correctional centre for several years with nursing/psychology. She has also done things at work like bring home expired medications, and also got in trouble at least one time for going against doctor recommendations and giving a prescription to someone that she shouldn't have.

She appears to be confused and angry when she confuses and angers other people, gets almost livid if you don't share her perceptions and opinions. IMPOSSIBLE to reason with, almost like trying to reason with a drunk. She feels the pain of rejection but appears not to UNDERSTAND why she was rejected. She does not talk to anyone on her side of the family, and lately has been working busily to alienate anyone on my dad's side of the family. She seems to want my dad all to herself.

It's like she is NPD, for sure, but I was trying to sort out if she just had psychopath tendencies (the numerous times she has gotten in trouble with Revenue Canada, Rentalsman, Labour Board, etc -- she had/has all this property but would try to wrangle as much money out of it, because really she felt entitled to it. This entitlement cost her a relationship with one of her sons, who used to be the "golden child" in the family. She currently lives two provinces away from me, and one province away from him.

She is living with my dad in British Columbia, presumably because there IS no one else anywhere else (used to have friends she alienated in our town in Regina, Saskatchewan, then her relatives on her side of the family in Alberta, then dad's side of the family, also in Alberta).... Now she lives near her girlfriend that she went to nursing school with, and all of her girlfriend's friends. I figure it is only a matter of time before that relationship also goes sour. At one point, her special project Chris (middle child) who has always been pandered to (38 years old now), given groceries, given leniency (presumably because he's not capable of understanding how to deal with life but more because he was never let alone long enough to deal with life on his own), given a car, had debts paid off for him, been coddled, etc was living with them, again. Things got volatile living under the same roof, again, predictably, but now mommy and daddy moved out and left him the bottom suite with someone living above him, and moved into their own house. Presumably doing things that way was easier than if he moved out and actually kept a job more than three months. So Chris is crippled by coddling and is pretty much identical to my mother.

She has pretended to have cancer to try to get people she was renting from to treat her more nicely. She even wanted me to lie to my brother about a spot she had on her chest (it was like the basal cell carcinoma that my husband had, only she was prescribed a lotion to dab on it for treatment as she was still planning on a vacation to sunny Florida. Must be deadly cancer if she is still going to Florida with a topical cream! lol)... Because my brother hasn't spoken to her in 6 years. And I already told her that I am not the go-between in this relationship.

My mom also lost the relationship because my youngest brother Robin is married to a strong woman named Grace. Unlike the rest of us, Grace had a stellar memory and was able to keep straight all the information my mother would try to drag into arguments. Poor Grace had to put up with a lot for a while, but now she doesn't feel ill or lose sleep when her mother-in-law comes to visit, because she is no longer welcome: my mom was blocked from their phone for constantly phoning and has no clue where they moved to or what their address is.

What is MY role in all of this? I am the only daughter and the eldest. And since I think my mom got treated with strictness and criticism, that's why I got treated that way. My mom has an alcoholic sister, who has been married more times than I can count. Another sister is into Scientology and doesn't talk to us because of our beliefs in psychology. And a brother of hers has a wife like my mother, so of course they don't talk either. Because my mother was expected to set the example, and was given strict rules, so was I. I had to have my mileage tracked when I was a teenager, because (I am not sure how this happened) was the only one who had my driver's license out of my friends. I had a curfew. I was the one who was expected to get good grades. I was the one who was expected to look after my brothers. If something went wrong with them while they were in my care, it was hell to pay for me. I believe my mom's mother might have been the NPD in her family. At least my gramma was seemingly always depressed, and would be upset if grampa 'stole' control of the conversation. And apparently my mom was molested by her own grampa who was an alcoholic. She only just told me this in the last 10 years, so I am not 100% sure how true it is. She has been known to greatly exaggerate things, or to shape her own reality. But just because I would hate not to believe someone who actually was molested plus the fact that my cousins were exposed to inappropriate sexual acts, let's say I believe her.

My mom once told me "Because we are family and we have to live with each other, we forgive and forget and move on the next day." Which is probably why she always forgot how terrible she was and cried her crocodile tears and apologized about things she did but then would go right ahead and do almost the exact same thing later on as if she didn't care. But I know that's ridiculous now. Just because you are family doesn't give someone the right to walk all over you and you take it all the time - that's what her statement translates into for me... "Repress your feelings of anger and fear and comply comply comply. Don't worry about how you are feeling, just do something because it pleases someone else."

Part of the reason I was almost doomed in a doomed relationship with a drug addict/alcoholic was because I felt sorry for him and confused it with love. My dad stays with my mom, so I tried to stay with this man. I thought if I could just show him how much I love him, he would change. Didn't happen so I left. My dad is still with my mom, though. Not sure why he lets himself be ruled by her, but I get the impression from his side of the family that it's because his dad was NPD. He got the worst of everything for some reason, from his own dad. And my dad's mom put up with it for some reason. So I am not sure if my dad stays with her because he actually thinks he should put up with her behaviours because he couldn't do any better and no one else would love him, or if at some point in their relationship she threatened to take everything away from him. He either really really loves her or is really really afraid of her.

Does anyone want to do a study of my family? lol I wish someone could tranquilize and tag and follow them around for a few years. On one side there is alcoholism and NPD and depression and pedophilia, and on the other there is some alcoholism, NPD, bipolar disorder, general anxiety, etc.... I was in therapy for several years about this, so now I'm more clinically fascinated in a detached way, with a bit of regret on the side, obviously, that my mom is the way she is and there's not much I can do about it. I was reluctant at first to ditch my parents, if for nothing else but a relationship with my dad, but even my dad's own mother thinks he's not much more than a shell of a man now with my mom pulling his strings. But really what it comes down to is that my mother owns my father, and he is lost. If he finds himself maybe he will come back to me, but I can't drag him out of that abyss he's fallen into, especially when he doesn't even seem to be aware that he's fallen so far down.

NPD or Psychopath?

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Re: Parental Narcissistic Personality Disorder

It's not possible to give any useful answer to your question, jellybean. We don't permit online diagnoses here for several reasons. And see http://forum.psychlinks.ca/health-i...-the-ethics-of-diagnosis-from-a-distance.html

I'm going to split these posts to a separate thread so you can continue the discussion about your mother without taking the original thread too far off track.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Thread split from http://forum.psychlinks.ca/narcissi...rental-narcissistic-personality-disorder.html

 

[H011yHawkJ311yBean]

Oh, okay... Sorry I didn't realize about the 'Ethics of Diagnoses' thing.

I guess it doesn't matter what exactly she has, what matters is I've taken steps to protect myself from her. I guess I was just trying to get rid of some little bits of nagging guilt. I've mostly worked out that she isn't going to change, but once in a while I get this hope that she will, or at least my dad will. lol So I was just trying to figure out if she was born that way (psychopath) or she developed into it (NPD) in order to survive her own upbringing. Either way, I've had all the spectrum of a relationship with her and nothing works (at least not for me). Was raised by her, kept limited time with her, she even moved away, and STILL is a jagged slice through my well-being and self esteem, because she is STILL trying to be the long arm of control, and it's just not healthy anymore. So I've blocked the phone so they can't phone (because believe me it would go directly to answering machine and because she leaves such long-winded messages we'd be constantly hitting 'delete' and she'd be calling all the time worse than telemarketers) and told her, via email, that I've decided to restrict myself to emails for now. We'll see how that goes. If that doesn't work, I will have to block the emails, too. But at least she knows that's why I haven't called in 2 months time.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I guess it doesn't matter what exactly she has, what matters is I've taken steps to protect myself from her.

Exactly. Whatever the diagnosis, her effect on you is hurtful and toxic.