the mirror kept me compliant for years and years, well into middle-age.
Now I know that there is no such twisted and grotesque ‘me’. That the real me is a normally flawed but mostly decent and kind and genuine woman. An ordinary, averagely-nice human being in fact. And coming to realise this is another gift of what I call the N-realisation.
It was, of course, not just me who experienced this toxic emotional blackmail. Many other DONMs do so too.
As Kate says: ‘ It’s utterly cruel. Basically what we're talking about is brainwashing a small child into believing they are fundamentally completely unlikeable, leaving them terrified that someone is going to uncover this fact and therefore living their life pretending in order to cover up some problem they don't even have! As children we were forced to join their cult of fakeness and facade without any clue what is going on.’
As a direct result of this brainwashing, we end up feeling huge all-encompassing shame about who we are. And we carry that shame with us every second of every minute of every day. A constant companion, that we don’t even know is there because we’re so used to it. But it colours our experience of all elements of life.
In my absolute opinion, this, along with lying to us about our perspective and making us think we’re crazy, is the worst element of the abuse they perpetrate against us.
Lisa says: ‘It is an awful tool that they use against us. My NM told me that it was easy for me to have friends since I only show them my good side, but the family knows the “whole” me. I have felt split in two for years...the “real” me (the awful, selfish, mean, ungrateful, angry, self-centred one) and the “other” me, the one where I am pretending not to be those other things! Isn't that terrible? The other thing my narcissistic mother would say, to further drive her points and her power over me home ...“I know you better than you know yourself”.’
And Miriam experienced the same: ‘It's a really sick trick and mind-game to undermine a child's sense of self. The message is “Even if you think you're ok- we know the TRUTH about you”.’
We expect our own perfection.
Our Narcissistic Mother told us a Big Lie. She told it subliminally if not in actual words. And The Big Lie was this: If we tried hard enough we could win her approval and her love . If we were good enough, or wise enough, or beautiful enough, or that-magical-unspecified-ingredient enough . In other words, if we achieved perfection, she would love us.
It was a carrot she dangled before us, always.
As part of that lie, any of our normal foibles and failings were treated mercilessly, and were a source of great shame, and even perhaps a way of totally dismissing and invalidating who we were as a person. No wonder it's so hard to accept being wrong, never mind experience the joy of it.
The thing is, she told us this Big Lie from birth. So of course we believed it. Why wouldn't we?
The interesting thing, though, is that we then enter the conspiracy ourselves. We tell The Big Lie to ourselves.
Why?
Because to let it go leaves us powerless, and we cannot bear to think of that possibility.
If we keep believing The Big Lie then it seems as if the solution is in our hands. And that makes us feel better. The relationship with our mother can be fixed. All we have to do is, try harder, behave better, find the magic key, no matter how long it takes to find, or how much energy we devote to the search or what else we're not doing that we could be doing.
The reality, however, is that the solution was never in our hands. There was nothing we could have done to win her love or approval. Withholding those things gave her her power because it kept us clingy and focused on her. So she kept moving the goalposts to make sure we never were perfect enough, or good enough. It was a quintessential no-win game. But we didn’t know that.
And so we continue to believe that we have to strive
Now I know that there is no such twisted and grotesque ‘me’. That the real me is a normally flawed but mostly decent and kind and genuine woman. An ordinary, averagely-nice human being in fact. And coming to realise this is another gift of what I call the N-realisation.
It was, of course, not just me who experienced this toxic emotional blackmail. Many other DONMs do so too.
As Kate says: ‘ It’s utterly cruel. Basically what we're talking about is brainwashing a small child into believing they are fundamentally completely unlikeable, leaving them terrified that someone is going to uncover this fact and therefore living their life pretending in order to cover up some problem they don't even have! As children we were forced to join their cult of fakeness and facade without any clue what is going on.’
As a direct result of this brainwashing, we end up feeling huge all-encompassing shame about who we are. And we carry that shame with us every second of every minute of every day. A constant companion, that we don’t even know is there because we’re so used to it. But it colours our experience of all elements of life.
In my absolute opinion, this, along with lying to us about our perspective and making us think we’re crazy, is the worst element of the abuse they perpetrate against us.
Lisa says: ‘It is an awful tool that they use against us. My NM told me that it was easy for me to have friends since I only show them my good side, but the family knows the “whole” me. I have felt split in two for years...the “real” me (the awful, selfish, mean, ungrateful, angry, self-centred one) and the “other” me, the one where I am pretending not to be those other things! Isn't that terrible? The other thing my narcissistic mother would say, to further drive her points and her power over me home ...“I know you better than you know yourself”.’
And Miriam experienced the same: ‘It's a really sick trick and mind-game to undermine a child's sense of self. The message is “Even if you think you're ok- we know the TRUTH about you”.’
We expect our own perfection.
Our Narcissistic Mother told us a Big Lie. She told it subliminally if not in actual words. And The Big Lie was this: If we tried hard enough we could win her approval and her love . If we were good enough, or wise enough, or beautiful enough, or that-magical-unspecified-ingredient enough . In other words, if we achieved perfection, she would love us.
It was a carrot she dangled before us, always.
As part of that lie, any of our normal foibles and failings were treated mercilessly, and were a source of great shame, and even perhaps a way of totally dismissing and invalidating who we were as a person. No wonder it's so hard to accept being wrong, never mind experience the joy of it.
The thing is, she told us this Big Lie from birth. So of course we believed it. Why wouldn't we?
The interesting thing, though, is that we then enter the conspiracy ourselves. We tell The Big Lie to ourselves.
Why?
Because to let it go leaves us powerless, and we cannot bear to think of that possibility.
If we keep believing The Big Lie then it seems as if the solution is in our hands. And that makes us feel better. The relationship with our mother can be fixed. All we have to do is, try harder, behave better, find the magic key, no matter how long it takes to find, or how much energy we devote to the search or what else we're not doing that we could be doing.
The reality, however, is that the solution was never in our hands. There was nothing we could have done to win her love or approval. Withholding those things gave her her power because it kept us clingy and focused on her. So she kept moving the goalposts to make sure we never were perfect enough, or good enough. It was a quintessential no-win game. But we didn’t know that.
And so we continue to believe that we have to strive
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