Sometimes days have a special significance dont they. I remember clearly the day I got my A level results, the days when my children were born, days of celebration, and where I was when I heard significant news, like my grandparents deaths. Positively recently I remember so much about the day of my wedding with Christelle (it wasn’t that long ago)
But there is one other day in my life that had a significant impact upon my life… it was the day I realised what narcissism is, and the extent to which my mother is one.
There is a slight blurring to this story, however, is that in 2006 I was reading a paper whilst I was doing my Youth work and Theology degree at ICC, Glasgow which described the difference between listening with a young person with empathy, and taking a story that a young person shares and using it to launch into your own, this was described as being narcissistic. That was the first time I had heard this word. I did also underline the word on the paper and write in the margin ‘Remind me of anyone’ . A seed had been sown.
The other blurring in the clarity is that it was only a few years later in 2008 when fairly serious incidents that revealed this behaviour. The fall out from this was that ‘nothing changed’ or responsibility was taken. But at that time I didnt equate or delve into what narcissist behaviour was, was just in a swirl of denials.
Anyway, back to the story, rather than the pre amble.
I was in a cafe just outside Durham with one of my best friends, it was just after Christmas, the day after Boxing Day, 4 years ago. I was recounting how the few days of Christmas had gone, as there was a lot of tension around the family home at the time. For some reason the subject came up that I hadn’t spent time with my parents or spoken to them over the Christmas time, and I said something about how weird they were.
My friend asked me whether I thought, no actually she said, ‘Your Mother is a narcissist isn’t she?’
I may have done my usual and passed this off, or said ‘yeah I know’ or something like that. I didnt know, or didnt realise the extent to which this truth had affected my entire life, or would be part of what my life recovery would take.
I knew that she was difficult. I knew that she sucked the life out of every room. I knew that she was emotionally unstable. I knew that also she had the capacity to upset everyone. I knew that she didnt listen.
But a Narcissist? What’s that ?
What I hadn’t done until that point was begin the process of doing the work.
Firstly of recognising the problem. Secondly of releasing myself from the responsibility of the problem and changing myself. Thirdly of naming it. Fourthly and this is the ongoing bit – of realising the extent to which I have ongoing recovery to do because of the deep personality issues that dominated my childhood.
None of this could be done until I had the space to see it.
And I could only see it when someone who had experience of it could identify it.
My friend recommended to me the ‘pink book’.
This book:
Link here if you would like to buy a copy
A week later the book arrived as I received a copy.
In it Nina describes the characteristics of healthy parents (none of which I could recognise) and then 4 types of Self Absorbed Parents, 3 of which I could identify in mother, but definitely strongly one of them.
Though the book didnt stop there.
Nina described the way in which I had reacted and responded to my parents, and my own self destructive, self limiting responses to them – to either pacify, soothe or avoid – also flight, or fight/anger responses. She went on to describe how to protect the self, in the midst of the narcissistic interaction, and afterwards. There’s also coping strategies for each type of parent.
This was my first ‘self help’ book I had read.
It was like scales and weights falling, as I could see clearly for the first time the extent of what I had tried to cope with, alone, and also how I had reduced myself in the process, of 40 years, yet at the same done what I thought I should do for my own survival.
I thought that the stuff I suffered with my mother were impossible to describe, too weird, too crazy to recognise, yet this book described my experiences. It describes what emotional control, abuse, belligerence and victim playing looks like. And I had experienced it all.
I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t the only one.
That was so important.
And if this might be you, know that you aren’t alone either.
I confess to not doing all of the exercises in Nina’s book, the scoring charts in the beginning were enough for me to be able to do some accurate identification.
But It wasn’t that I now had someone to blame. It wasn’t that I now took this information and stereotypically ‘blamed my childhood’ , and I hope that from what ive ever written on this blog I haven’t done that, I certainly haven’t tried to. What the information did for me was to help me see who I was, how I coped and survived, and what I now needed to do, and how I had been affected by it.
The important thing was that it was that I could let go of things I had felt responsible for.
And four years later, can feel more compassionate about my child James, teenage James and mid twenties and thirties James – who was trying to do life with a void, a void that had had things taken.
And now I knew. I had avoided wanting to know, feeling the pain to be too great, even though a number of people had been trying to tell me, I hadn’t listened, not fully.
Part of my healing journey, was the day I realised that my mother was a narcissist. There were other significant moments, but this was definitely one of them.
Thank you for reading, if there’s something in this that you resonate with, do seek out professional help and therapy if you can, acknowledging this is a first step, making a move of self love to begin a healing journey is courageous and beautiful. I have other resources in the menu above including other books, and there’s a lot on you tube on responding to narcissism. Know that its time. Today is a good first day to start to recover and heal from this.
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