“If I called my mother and told her I was feeling fat, she’d go, ‘Oh my God, talk about feeling fat!’ ” confides 44-year-old Chantal, a Toronto artist and single mother of a teenage son. Chantal says it’s pointless trying to have a heart-to-heart with her self-absorbed mother. “She can’t hear you. With a narcissistic parent, everything is about them. If I said I’m on a diet, she’d say ‘I’m on a diet,’ then go on and on about how fat she is. She’ll tell you how she’s eliminated sugar almost, but not hear anything I was saying.”
When psychotherapist Dr. Karyl McBride counsels the daughters of narcissistic mothers, she starts by giving them a questionnaire. Questions No. 1 and No. 2: “When you discuss your life issues with your mother, does she divert the conversation to talk about herself?” “When you discuss your feelings with your mother, does she try to top the feelings with her own?”
Maternal narcissism is a far more widespread, devastating disorder than most people realize, says McBride, who confesses that she, too, felt “unmothered” growing up and looked but could never find a book that dealt with mothers who are not maternal, or a daughter’s feelings of frustration, even hatred.
“It’s very rare for a woman to come into therapy and say, ‘Hello, I’m the daughter of a narcissist.’ Usually, they come in with depression or low self-esteem or [are] exhausted from trying to achieve, achieve, achieve,” says McBride. “Good girls aren’t supposed to hate their mothers so they don’t talk about their feelings.” Still, after 17 years of specializing in treating daughters of narcissists, McBride easily spots the symptoms: “over-sensitivity, self-consciousness, indecisiveness, inability to succeed in relationships.”
In her new self-help book, Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers: Will I Ever Be Good Enough?, McBride stresses that “recovery is not about changing mom. It’s about your own internal work.” Chantal’s Toronto therapist warned her not to confront or accuse her mother of being a narcissist. “I was told she wouldn’t get it. No, I’ve never tried to talk to her about it.” McBride agrees: “If mother is a full-blown narcissist, it’s not going to do any good to confront her.”
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