Nine Signs of the Narcissistic Mother | Mother-Daughter Relationships

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel hello this is dr. grande today's question asks I can talk about the mother-daughter relationship in a situation where the mother is narcissistic so really I'll be talking about maternal narcissism this is actually a fairly common situation that counselors see and clinical work so I'm going to cover this by looking at the nine signs of the narcissistic mother so here again I'm specifically looking at the mother-daughter relationship but some of these of course would apply to other parent-child combinations mother-son father-son and father-daughter which brings me to kind of the first step in this answer and that's to look at narcissistic parents in general so I'm going to move from narcissistic parents to parenting styles and then take a look at the characteristics of the narcissistic mother and then look a little bit at the consequences of having a narcissistic mother so narcissism is a personality construct we see that includes characteristics like being self-centered a sense of entitlement requiring admiration and generally is divided up into two types we have a grandiose type or somebody is socially dominant extra very arrogant and resistant to criticism this is a fairly obvious manifestation of narcissism it's also called overt narcissism for that reason and then we have vulnerable narcissism and here we see characteristics like shame a hyper sensitivity to criticism being resentful it's a little bit more hidden and it's also called covert narcissism for that reason like all personality constructs it's thought that narcissism occurs because of genetics and because in the environment and we've seen a lot of research around dividing of the contribution of each of these two narcissism we see that the heritability of narcissism is somewhere between 47 and 64% which means that the environment ability is somewhere between 36 and 53 percent usually I just run under the assumption that the contribution is roughly 50/50 so one of the questions I hear a lot is can a narcissistic mother cause a narcissistic daughter this is one of the concerns that comes up because people of course a lot of times don't want to be narcissistic and they're afraid that being exposed to somebody who's narcissistic especially an important figure like a mother may lead to narcissism so we see a number of theories about how this could happen we know that narcissistic parenting is tied to narcissism but we're not really clear on what mechanism really leads to it there is one theory that too much gratification can lead the narcissism too little can lead to it under the too much Theory a child comes to expect that much gratification and they don't get it in real life they create it for themselves again narcissism under the two little theory they need the gratification and they're not getting it so they created for themselves again this leads to narcissism we think that again narcissistic parents can cause narcissism but the research findings are a little mixed on this area and this brings me to the area of parenting styles this is really interesting specifically around this question of the narcissistic mother because it really looks at the contribution of the mother and the father to narcissism separately so essentially one way to look at parental styles as there's four there's four styles authoritarian authoritative permissive and different South authoritarian a parent wants to maintain control they want to shape and evaluate their child to a standard obedience is expected and no explanation is necessary so the parent gives the command and they're not going to explain why they're demanding obedience with authoritarian parenting punishment brings about compliance that's how compliance is obtained with authoritative the authoritative parent uses reasoning and explanation to influence a child's behavior so their standards are clear parents like this are assertive but not overly assertive they're not intrusive and they assume the child has rights and they will consider the child's point of view a permissive parenting style involves a lot of affection the parents are lenient they really struggle to punish a child and they do not a child to be mature and then the last one is the indifferent parenting style here we see that the child is left to figure out problems by themselves they're encouraged to be independent of the parent the parent doesn't offer them any support and again the child is supposed to take responsibility really for everything in their own life right so all of these parenting styles essentially have pros and cons but generally the authoritative style is considered the healthiest so then looking at the unhealthy styles and comparing them to narcissism how narcissism may develop this is where I think it gets fairly interesting we see from research that with the authoritarian style when used by a mother it's positively correlated with the development of vulnerable narcissism in the child now when a mother uses a permissive style this is negatively related to vulnerable narcissism and so is the authoritative style that means specifically as the mother uses these styles vulnerable narcissism is lower in the child right so it does not contribute to the development of vulnerable narcissism now the indifferent style is unrelated so if the mother uses that style we don't really see any difference with vulnerable narcissism now in terms of grandiose narcissism we see that the mother's parental styles are not related to grandiose narcissism so it would seem that really nothing that a mother can do can lead to grandiose narcissism but there are some things a mother can do that could lead to vulnerable narcissism again in the child now if we look at the other side of this on the father's side we see that authoritarian and indifferent parenting styles again when used by a father are related to a child developing grandiose narcissism and in terms of the permissive style this is negatively related again when used by the father to grandiose narcissism now interestingly parenting styles when used by the father are not related to vulnerable narcissism so it would appear that fathers can't cause vulnerable narcissism but they may be able to contribute through their parenting styles to the development of grandiose narcissism so narcissistic parents may cause narcissism but that's only really one concern again I'll talk about the consequences of specifically a narcissistic mother after I talk about the characteristics of the narcissistic mother so looking at these characteristics I gathered these from the research literature and for my clinical experience again this is a very common issue brought up in clinical work so the first characteristic the first sign of a narcissistic mother is diverting the conversation to themselves so the daughter wants to talk to the mother about a problem the daughter is having and somehow the conversation becomes about a problem that the mother is having the mother's problem is always more important more serious worse and sometimes even caused by the daughter this is also fairly common so the daughter says I'm having trouble focusing getting things done life is hectic and the mother says I know the feeling it's exactly how I felt when I was raising you because you would never listen you always wanted to do things your own way you never understood how I felt so the daughter was looking for support or advice not criticism but criticism is what she found so there's the sense on the part of the daughter there's this thought like how this conversation even get here right so that's the first sign again diversion to a topic related to the narcissistic mother the second sign is competing with the daughter we see this expressed a lot different ways where the mother hits on the daughter's boyfriends they compete for the love of the daughters father writes of the narcissistic mother's husband there is a sense that the daughter will never be good enough for the mother or as accomplished as the mother right this sets up this competition the mother treats the daughter as if the daughter is inferior specifically an inferior version of the mother a version that never really lived up to the mother the third sign is the mother makes the daughter feel as if the daughter is a burden and really should have never been born in the first place and I think this is a particularly cruel and damaging characteristic of the narcissistic mother and unfortunately it's also a very common characteristic sign number four is a failure to protect the daughter from another harmful individual perhaps somebody else in the household who mistreated the daughter and sometimes this goes as far as the narcissistic mother actually protecting the person who is causing the harm this also seems to be extremely common with mothers who are narcissistic they really don't care if the daughters being mistreated or in a sense they enjoy it they believe it's just because now the daughter is being punished for being such a bad daughter so just like really all these signs it's very cruel it's a cruel and merciless characteristic of the narcissistic mother the fifth sign is emotional unavailability so the narcissistic mother doesn't want to or doesn't know how to talk about emotions something else I see which is kind of related is the wrong kind of emotional availability so not necessarily unavailability but again the wrong kind of availability like making too much of the daughter's emotions so the daughter says something like I'm angry and hurt by what this other person did and the mother says you may be dangerous or violent I always knew you had that in you I could never really trust you I can't know that you're gonna be safe so in one sense it does the same thing as being emotionally unavailable in that the daughter doesn't want to keep approaching the mother about emotions the daughter doesn't want to talk about our emotions because things get all twisted around in the mother's perspective essentially with this sign we see no validation invalidation or very little validation of feelings so sign number six is being controlling and manipulative so we see this through guilt trips we see a lot of drama when the daughter doesn't meet expectations like for example if the daughter gets in minor trouble at school the mother might say I'm hurt disappointed shocked or disgusted so really just blowing something relatively small way out of proportion and again making it about themselves we also see a look of disappointment sometimes instead of a clear statement so instead of verbal communication just a stare or a look of profound disappointment again meant to be manipulative not authentic now genuine the 7sy on narcissistic mother is this idea of a debt that cannot be repaid so what this means is the narcissistic mother sacrificed tremendously to have a daughter and in doing so really incurred this debt that can never be repaid by the daughter she wants the daughter to be impressed by the sacrifice and if the daughter is not impressed by the sacrifice the daughter is ungrateful and again a disappointment so we see a really clear theme kind of emerging through these different signs sign number eight is that the narcissistic mother gives approval or in a sense love as a reward for doing what she wants this means that there's no unconditional approval or love it's all based on the performance of the daughter and I think some would argue that really conditional love and that's what this is really creating is not really love at all if the daughter has to win or gain through her own performance approval or love is that really the same thing as love is that we're really talking about when we talk about love now the nice sign of a narcissistic mother really has to do with boundary violations so searching the daughter's room eavesdropping on conversations reading the daughters diary providing the daughter really no privacy and a lot of judgment which of course is partially based on the things that the mother discovers why violating the privacy another part of this would be complaining about the daughter to other people with the daughter present again a boundary violation so really by putting the daughter down in front of others this is crossing kind of an important parenting boundary right it's not conducive to a good relationship and it leads to a number of consequences so this kind of leads me from the signs of a narcissistic mother to the consequences of the narcissistic mother so this is really interesting because in essence the narcissistic mother can be destructive because quite understandably daughters believe their mothers in general children believe their parents we believe there are parents have the answers we believe that what they say is correct we believe that they know best we believe that they know what their doing even though sometimes there's really no evidence to support this there's no requirement for parents to be logical reasonable or rational to have children the theorists who invented rational emotive behavior therapy Albert Ellis used to say that he believed that psychopathology to some extent was caused because we believed our parents what do parents really know what evidence is there that a parent would know better than you at the same age right so for example a narcissistic mother who becomes a mother at age 30 and she knows a certain amount about life when that daughter becomes 30 what evidence is there that that daughter would not know as much as that mother but that's kind of what people think but their parents must know better another part of this is when a mother fails to provide something a child would not be aware of what that is we don't know what we don't know which really creates a chronic feeling of emptiness in that daughter and interestingly this is one of the symptoms of borderline personality disorder which overlaps somewhat with vulnerable narcissism that type of narcissism in theory that a mother could cause to some extent so back to that believing the narcissistic mother what the narcissistic mother wants a daughter to believe is that the daughter is worthless not good enough that the daughter is there to meet the needs of the mother that the daughter is a failure and will continue to be a failure as they grow up to the extent that the daughter fails it is the daughters fault and the extent that the daughter succeeds the mother takes credit or just denies that the daughter was successful at all so the daughter of the narcissistic mother is led to believe it's your fault that your mother is displaced with you that's in essence kind of the bottom line the daughters of narcissistic mothers struggle in certain areas right we see certain characteristics shame anger not trusting oneself like not trusting one's inner voice a feeling of uncertainty feeling incompetent feeling hypersensitive and difficulty setting healthy boundaries so if a daughter had an hour statistic mother has a narcissistic mother what can they do about it well I think the only advice here really is to seek counseling it's important for somebody to separate what's true and not true in that relationship to build confidence in the validity of their own feelings to acknowledge that the mother perhaps through no fault of her own failed you as the daughter and in essence failed you in the worst possible way by making you think it was your fault another question I get here is should the relationship be terminated should the daughter cease any contact with the narcissistic mother well this is an extremely difficult decision as with all things I think consulting a counselor really makes the most sense here but one of the things that occurs to me is that biologically anyway somebody only gets one mother and termination of a relationship is different than ceasing contact they may appear to be the same thing but I don't think they really are I'm not sure that a relationship like the mother-daughter relationship are really any parent-child relationship can ever be terminated in the truest sense just they're not having contact with the parent so what do I mean by that well there's this belief that one person can choose to end a relationship but there's really more than one step to this not having any contact is making a choice to do that in one sense but just because there's no contact that doesn't mean that the relationship is truly ended it only really ends when somebody can find peace with it so the relationship can technically end somebody cannot have contact with that person they cannot talk to that person at all that but the effect doesn't end the effect of a mother-daughter relationship can persist beyond the absence of contact beyond death even I've seen this so many times a daughter is struggling to find peace with the relationship even when the mother is no longer here the feelings are just as painful as when the mother was alive the mother-daughter relationship isn't really something that people so much escape or ignore as they do resolve and again I think calcium can help with that so I know whenever I talk about topics like the mother-daughter relationship and narcissism there'll be a variety of opinions people who agree with me and disagree with me and have other thoughts from examples in their own life please put those opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate a really interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this video on nine signs of a narcissistic mother to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 1,343,687

Keywords: Mother daughter relationships, narcissistic mother, narcissistic daughter, narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, dark triad, dark tetrad, dark core, dark personality, parenting style, authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, indifferent, causes of narcissism, arrogance, sense of entitlement, self-centered, requiring admiration, jealousy, shame, resentfulness, grandiose, vulnerable

Id: 0eG4oldh2x8

Length: 18min 11sec (1091 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 11 2019