I know more than I´d like to how difficult it can be to distant oneself a bit from one´s mother behaviour, especially if she is emotionally off balance, since children of narcissists as I am are so used to it all along their childhood that all seems “normal” or irrevocable. This is a serious situation as bitterness and discontent are accumulating in them, which origin they are easily unaware of and as such they start searching for the motives of discords at wrong places and if they don´t, so all the more difficult it will become the day they´ll have to fight their battle.
Fisheye, it was the very day that my father died that a literally started feeling dreadful in presence of my mother, but only when I and my husband had to go back to my mother´s home and leave with her for some few weeks, did I begin to see how she really is like. And I became aware of the horror of my own psychologic state at the same time. She´d always tell me or imply I did not love her as soon as I wouldn´t obey or play along with her and, like your mother, she´s unable to held a conversation without all these superficial inputs, which, -at least that´s what I discovered in my own mother-, are obvious signs of her impairing ability to "love her daughter so much” as she uses to claim. It´s very easy to convince us all the effort of our parents is for our best if for any reason they are not able to take accurate care of their children. They only have to tell us they are suffering because of our lack of compassion, interest, etc. The hardest and most revealing thing for me was when she started treating me as if I were my father. They were involved in a more than insane relationship and when he died, she expected to do the same with me. This was when for the first time I experimented her as a full stranger instead of repressing bothering feelings of guilt. It hurt as it was hard rendering myself in the face of the evidence. I always thought she just had a strong character, but being the target of her hatred glances all of a sudden was hard to assimilate. She got me mixed up with my father, wanting me playing his role and at the same time she pretended I was all in her life, what a contradiction saying it in a smooth way!
From what you are writing, Fisheye, it seems you get a good relationship with your mother, except the unfortunate situation you are attributing to a personality issue, but just making an assumption here, were your father rather passive with your mother? I ask because mine was´nt and maybe if he had behaved in a more silent way, my life and parents subjective interpretation surely would have been quite different and seeing my mother wouldn´t have been so easy or the need for seeing her like she really is wouldn´t have been so imperative. In case this could be of any help to you, I´ll tell you the first thing I did was starting giving clearly my opinion, and, another very important detail in my situation, I give it e v e n when I knew there were no probability she would understand what I was talking about (that´s why I hardly ever gave my opinion!). Then, I stayed vigilant enough to not fall in the trap of her verbal and silent ploys, which are many, in her intent of manipulating the situation at her ventage. Of course, I moved as soon as I could. Oh, and I also revised the childhood of my mother to get a better picture of her nature since she had a complicate trajectory. Owning a Jewish family name but with no apparent Jewish descent, she witnessed the raping of her sister and how her brother was taken away by the Gestapo, after which she went escaping from North Germany (Prussia) until Switzerland when she was 14 years old during the 2nd WW. Holding in mind her childhood traumas made connecting the dot easier. Such psychopathic scenes are for sure be too much at such an early age.
Maybe your situation is not alarming as mine was, but just in case, reading books was really helpful to me. There´s also “The Narcissistic Family” you can read on the Cas site. As I just said, hopefully your circumstance has nothing to do with mine but in reading your mail, I reminded how I started avoiding my mother when I was young, thinking it was just her strong personality and having no idea of how the way she brought me up would so seriously delay my maturity.
Fisheye, it was the very day that my father died that a literally started feeling dreadful in presence of my mother, but only when I and my husband had to go back to my mother´s home and leave with her for some few weeks, did I begin to see how she really is like. And I became aware of the horror of my own psychologic state at the same time. She´d always tell me or imply I did not love her as soon as I wouldn´t obey or play along with her and, like your mother, she´s unable to held a conversation without all these superficial inputs, which, -at least that´s what I discovered in my own mother-, are obvious signs of her impairing ability to "love her daughter so much” as she uses to claim. It´s very easy to convince us all the effort of our parents is for our best if for any reason they are not able to take accurate care of their children. They only have to tell us they are suffering because of our lack of compassion, interest, etc. The hardest and most revealing thing for me was when she started treating me as if I were my father. They were involved in a more than insane relationship and when he died, she expected to do the same with me. This was when for the first time I experimented her as a full stranger instead of repressing bothering feelings of guilt. It hurt as it was hard rendering myself in the face of the evidence. I always thought she just had a strong character, but being the target of her hatred glances all of a sudden was hard to assimilate. She got me mixed up with my father, wanting me playing his role and at the same time she pretended I was all in her life, what a contradiction saying it in a smooth way!
From what you are writing, Fisheye, it seems you get a good relationship with your mother, except the unfortunate situation you are attributing to a personality issue, but just making an assumption here, were your father rather passive with your mother? I ask because mine was´nt and maybe if he had behaved in a more silent way, my life and parents subjective interpretation surely would have been quite different and seeing my mother wouldn´t have been so easy or the need for seeing her like she really is wouldn´t have been so imperative. In case this could be of any help to you, I´ll tell you the first thing I did was starting giving clearly my opinion, and, another very important detail in my situation, I give it e v e n when I knew there were no probability she would understand what I was talking about (that´s why I hardly ever gave my opinion!). Then, I stayed vigilant enough to not fall in the trap of her verbal and silent ploys, which are many, in her intent of manipulating the situation at her ventage. Of course, I moved as soon as I could. Oh, and I also revised the childhood of my mother to get a better picture of her nature since she had a complicate trajectory. Owning a Jewish family name but with no apparent Jewish descent, she witnessed the raping of her sister and how her brother was taken away by the Gestapo, after which she went escaping from North Germany (Prussia) until Switzerland when she was 14 years old during the 2nd WW. Holding in mind her childhood traumas made connecting the dot easier. Such psychopathic scenes are for sure be too much at such an early age.
Maybe your situation is not alarming as mine was, but just in case, reading books was really helpful to me. There´s also “The Narcissistic Family” you can read on the Cas site. As I just said, hopefully your circumstance has nothing to do with mine but in reading your mail, I reminded how I started avoiding my mother when I was young, thinking it was just her strong personality and having no idea of how the way she brought me up would so seriously delay my maturity.
