Psychopath and Narcissist Survivors Support Group

Aw, Purple, that sounds horrible! Like waterboarding! You poor thing!

I also was forced to have a boy haircut, and I went through a greasy hair stage too, although I don't remember why. I just remember getting teased about it. You'd think our mother's would have been embarrassed, sending us out into the world, looking like miserable little drowned rats. My mother always looked perfect herself, but she made me look as awkward as she could with weird clothes, dirty laundry, bad hair etc.

This might seem like a really weird suggestion Purple, but can you try smiling now, like an exercise? I've read that smiling and laughing actually activates endorphins, the hormones your body produces when you're happy. You can actually change your mood by smiling--even a fake smile. There is also something called Laughter Yoga, which is basically fake laughing, which also is said to stimulate all sorts of healthful things in the body. I know you might feel silly doing it, but I did a bit of this when I got into a real funk when I was in the hospital and the doctors told me they expected me to die soon. I felt miserable, but I forced myself to smile and laugh, and it really did make me feel better. I must've looked like a lunatic, but it worked, and it pulled me out of the funk enough to get myself well enough to go back home. Maybe start off by renting funny movies to watch at home and get used to how it feels. I'm sure you are lovely when you smile and laugh.

My NM did the same thing with my hair. Always a very short boys cut. In public people thought I was a boy for many years. It was under the guise that I was to irresponsible to take care of my own hair. I had this hair from babyhood to about nine or ten. I thought helping a child with their hair was a moms responsability. When I moved to my NF's house or should I say abandoned there my half sister always had her hair done be her mom. Every morning before school they would decide how it should be styled for the day. Long beautiful normal hair in pony tales and whatever fancied them. It made me very sad to realize that I had missed out on something special between mom and daughter. Now of coarse I realize I could never have that experirence because I didn't have a mom. I had a NM and that is a totally different thing. That is the equivelant of being raised by wolves and looking back and being sad over the fact that they never braided your hair.

Wolves braiding hair--lol.

Sheesh. You just made me realize--people thought I was a boy too--between the bad boy haircuts and the ill-fitting second-hand boys clothes. Bet my PM did that on purpose. What could be more traumatic for a little girl? I used to cry when people thought I was a boy. Like my mother didn't notice? Or didn't realize that that could be easily solved by letting me grow my hair or giving me a damn dress? She knew. I was too little understand, and I grew up thinking my mother was just somewhat odd and "out of it," like she didn't understand what was hip. But she herself was beautiful and stylish and very feminine. Of course she knew how to dress a little girl!

I remember, in kindergarten, a friend of mine gave me a huge collection of pretty barretts and hair ribbons. I was so excited I nearly screamed. A few days later, they disappeared. On Christmas, my mother told me that Santa has elves that take back presents from kids that don't deserve them!!!!!! I completely forgot all this! Major repressed memory reflux!!!!!!!

I finally get it. These freaks know exactly what they're doing. I used to think my PM was clueless. NOT!!!!

Reading these posts, so many things suddenly become clear. That b**** was doing everything she could to make me a social outcast and see to it that I was traumatized. She wasn't "out of it"--she was a sadist of the first degree.

I am flipping out.

shellshockella wrote: Major repressed memory reflux!!!!!!!

I finally get it. These freaks know exactly what they're doing. I am flipping out.

I just had a horrible flashback.....(slightly off-topic, sorry--I think I just got triggered!)

We moved across town before I started 6th grade. I show up at a new school, (shy, of course) and I didn't know where I was going or what to do. NOBODY knew who I was, because apparently my records hadn't been transfered. In each class, the teachers leered at me, saying, "and WHO are you??" Of course, to be singled out is very traumatizing to tweens....and this happened over and over all day long. I was sent to the office, got totally lost, and was crying by the time I found it. I had no files, no medical records, nothing. I felt humiliated and was teased and bullied from then on. I remember going home, asking NM WHY school didn't have my name on their class lists---she acted clueless.

Now I'M freaking out....did she do this on purpose? She never took me to this school beforehand, I had NO IDEA where to go---I can't believe she would throw me to the wolves like that. WTF??

OMG---wait until she's ready for the Nursing Home. I'll be like, "Bye! Hope it's nice there!"

Pretty---

I know some stuff in life just happens. Things do go wrong. But the more I look I look back the more I realize my PM had a hand in MOST of these things. Once I began to look for patterns it just became so obvious. The thing I am starting to understand is that raising a child (the loving, normal way) requires so many thousands of acts of kindness and caring, and action. It requires sacrifice, attention, work...it requires a mother to do thousands of things right. So, if a parent wants to hurt a child, it's the easiest thing in the world. To simply fail to do what needs to be done for someone who is helpless and dependant can create all manner of problems. But unlike punching a kid around, these omissions can be passed off as mistakes, accidents, etc.

edited for safety

When I was young I had a wetting my pants problem and dare I say....... sometimes there may have been some poo involved. It was up to the age of maybe........ummm 8 or 9. Really around 7 or so poo removed himself from the situation. I know your loving this story, right? Hang in there it eventually makes sense. We all know how this happens sometimes. Crazy parents, poor potty training, trauma and I definitely had all of those. I didn't know that other kids did this too. I thought I was some god forsaken freak out to ruin my mothers life. Although I didn't know apparently my mother knew though that I did it on purpose just to piss her off (that was a joke I was not doing it on purpose). I mean what kid doesn't love the attention this behavior brings. I mean the love you feel coming off your mother at 3:00 am as she is frantically ripping your wet bed apart and screaming about putting you in the yard like a dog is just flat out heart warming. So, one day around the age 5 or 6 I had a accident involving poo. My mother proceeded to drag me down to the laundry room in the basement and was I guess going to wash my underwear? Then I guess she decided that it would be better to humiliate me with lots of screaming and holding the dirty underwear. I don't really remember what she was saying but she certainly looked crazy. That's when it happened. Poop filled underwear to the face, with a real nice long rub in. That was proceeded by her leaving me to clean the underwear in the basement sink with poop on my face and crying. I scrubbed the underwear like that for like an hour and didn't move from the sink, I was too afraid to stop.

What maybe you ask is the mothers and sexuality part of this story? Well, except for the obvious underwear aspect. Many, many years later when I spoke to my mother as an adult after not having seen her for a very, very long time we were talking. We were talking about my stepdad and the molestation which of coarse I made up in my mind. She asked in her stupid crazy way "did I do anything that you thought was me doing something sexual to you?". I said ummmm....."you know what mom that underwear poop incident was pretty odd". Amazing she said "oh, I shouldn't have done that and I'm sorry" (she was not sorry she was embarassed and probably afraid cause my husband was sitting there.) Then she said " I don't really see how that is a sexual thing though". Then I said "I don't know mom, people pay other people good money to have someone do that to them or do it to someone and get off. That sounds kinda sexual to me". Then we all sat there in silence and my husband stared at my mother with murderous eyes.

Bunny2010 wrote:My NM did the same thing with my hair. Always a very short boys cut. In public people thought I was a boy for many years. It was under the guise that I was to irresponsible to take care of my own hair. I had this hair from babyhood to about nine or ten. I thought helping a child with their hair was a moms responsability. When I moved to my NF's house or should I say abandoned there my half sister always had her hair done be her mom. Every morning before school they would decide how it should be styled for the day. Long beautiful normal hair in pony tales and whatever fancied them. It made me very sad to realize that I had missed out on something special between mom and daughter. Now of coarse I realize I could never have that experirence because I didn't have a mom. I had a NM and that is a totally different thing. That is the equivelant of being raised by wolves and looking back and being sad over the fact that they never braided your hair.

Seriously, I wonder if our narcissistic moms are all a bunch of robot clones because my NM also cut my hair very short with the excuse of me being too irresponsible. It's so eerie how much alike narcissists are.

When I was 13 my NM left me and my 4 year old brother at a sleep over for teenage boys. The boy's mother put me in a room by myself across the hall from the boys. Only 1 of the boys came in my room but because I was so nervous about being alone and the boy's mother didnt give me a good vibe I had snuk in the other room and got my brother to sleep with me before hand so he left me alone.

My wacked out N mom has a weird affinity for little kids. It's like she identifies with them because she thinks at their level. When I hit puberty, she totally lost whatever affection she once had for me. I suddenly became a chore and burden that she didn't want to deal with. She never once had a frank/open discussion with me about puberty. She never once discussed menstruation with me. She let me learn about that solely from the classes they taught at school. She never taught me about period hygiene. I started at 11 years old so I was kind of baffled and needed help from her that she didn't give.
Her only "sex talk" with me was when I was 12. She basically called me a little whore and said that when I got pregnant she'd take my baby and throw me out in the street. If the fng B ever tries to break NC and contact me again..I'm going to remind her about all those wonderful little mother/daughter moments we had before I tell her to go to hell.

If I ever have a daughter, I want to be the one to show her the ropes of womanhood. I want to make her 1st period a rite of passage and make it a positive thing that she shouldn't feel ashamed about. I want to support self-esteem that will help her make good choices about sex and boys. All the opposite things from what I got from NM.

I'm playing catch-up...

1PrettyMirror wrote:OMG---wait until she's ready for the Nursing Home. I'll be like, "Bye! Hope it's nice there!"

I hope you can find the tiniest, dirtiest, meanest geriatric warehouse on the planet for her so she can sit and ponder in her later years what it's like to be neglected, abused, and unloved when you're dependent and helpless. I'm probably transferring my hatred for my own rat bastards to all narc parents...

Hey, I never said I wasn't a bit mental myself!

As said earlier, NM's weird sexuality doesn't just apply to their daughters. My NM was adamant that adulterers should go to hell, meaning NF. I was absolutely not allowed to have a girlfriend in high school. Meanwhile, NM would always demand I hug and kiss her, she had trouble keeping her hands and feet to herself while demeaning me for having boundaries, and she walked around me naked for the longest time, also encouraged me to walk around naked by her, supposedly because we were once of one flesh. If she wasn't walking around naked, she'd be in panties and a loose fitting shirt with no bra.

Some years later, I think she might have been grooming me the way a sexual predator grooms a child. I'm just lucky she lacked a bit of subtlety about it.

wendyhouse wrote:...I WAS going to mention it was to do with virginity - and lack thereof. Like you say, the detail may not be postable here. Whichever way our NMs swung it, pads or tampons, ultimately it was about their ownership of our virginity, not about them giving us all the choices and making our own decision.

OMG, I couldn't have said it better, wendyhouse! My NM was really sickly obsessed with my virginity and it was like something that SHE owned! She had "feelings" that I was a slut and wanted to take me to the doctor's to check my hymen to make sure I wasn't lying about not having sex with anyone without her knowledge. I imagined the sheer embarrassment of being hauled off to the (male) family doctor check my hymen! But now that I'm grown up, I see how absolutely f*cked up this is and I wish she would have to see the look on the doctor's face -- about how nuts the whole thing was.

My NM also had this obsession with talking about rape. She made it sound like everyone was a rapist. She told me I don't know how many times how people get raped, and how she "knew" (she believed she was psychic) that I was going to get raped.

And then she always told me I was a "slut".

NC has allowed me the mental space to see how messed up everything was -- it takes time for me to fully grasp all the implications of everything -- especially things like this.

xana wrote:If I ever have a daughter, I want to be the one to show her the ropes of womanhood. I want to make her 1st period a rite of passage and make it a positive thing that she shouldn't feel ashamed about. I want to support self-esteem that will help her make good choices about sex and boys. All the opposite things from what I got from NM.

You know, I've been thinking a lot about this. I don't even know how to begin doing this for my daughter when she enters puberty. My NM made it so messed up for me that I don't even have a point of reference about how normal people have this discussion about it with their kids.

PurpleDaisy wrote:I've never been a big smiler. In fact, a lot of people ask me what's wrong and why I don't smile much. I'm too self-conscious because of all the times when I did smile and Nmom would tell me my smile looked fake. So I just learned NOT to be happy.

This was one of the dozens of reasons why I went NC this time and I don't ever intend on speaking to NM ever again.

She told my 1 y.o. daughter (who has a slight underbite but it really doesn't look bad on her -- my father had the same thing) that she was pretty when she didn't smile.

Who the f tells a 1 y.o. child this?!?!

I tell you guys, this woman being in our lives is really bad for the kids. Even if I didn't have reasons for myself to have NC with NM, I wouldn't allow them to be around such a toxic person to destroy their self esteem like she did to me.

sylah wrote:

xana wrote:If I ever have a daughter, I want to be the one to show her the ropes of womanhood. I want to make her 1st period a rite of passage and make it a positive thing that she shouldn't feel ashamed about. I want to support self-esteem that will help her make good choices about sex and boys. All the opposite things from what I got from NM.

You know, I've been thinking a lot about this. I don't even know how to begin doing this for my daughter when she enters puberty. My NM made it so messed up for me that I don't even have a point of reference about how normal people have this discussion about it with their kids.

Sylah it sounds like we had the same mother. I think If I'm ever in doubt I'll just do the opposite of what she did and it'll be ok.
As far as the puberty thing-I'm thinking just be open about it. Matter of factly explain it as a fact of nature. Don't attach any shame to it. Take some of the stress out of it for her by explaining hygeine. I'd make it a rite of passage for my daughter. Maybe have a little party for her-women only. If she doesn't want that-then maybe have a little mother daughter outing, maybe take her to her favorite place for dinner. Maybe treat her to some new clothes or something.
When I got my first period, my mother treated me like I did something wrong. She didn't say a word to me about it. No advice. No congratulations. Nothing. She just had that pist mist about her that let me know not to push the issue with her. Oh. Her only instruction was not to use tampons
I think there is alot to be said for treating kids the way we wish we were treated.

xana wrote:As far as the puberty thing-I'm thinking just be open about it. Matter of factly explain it as a fact of nature. Don't attach any shame to it. Take some of the stress out of it for her by explaining hygeine. I'd make it a rite of passage for my daughter. If she doesn't want that-then maybe have a little mother daughter outing, maybe take her to her favorite place for dinner. I think there is alot to be said for treating kids the way we wish we were treated.

This is great advice. I explained to my daughter that her body would be "practicing" each month, until the time was right for her to choose to have a baby (when 35 and married! LOL!) I gave her a pretty pink box filled with the things she'd need, along with a book written by the American Girl company. Be open to her questions; let her know that it's important for her to be respectful of her own body and to treat it with care.

I NEVER was given ANY kind of "talk". I usually view my own mother as a "negative role model" of parenting, then try to be the opposite. Too bad NM didn't set a good example, but at least I managed to form myself into a pretty decent parent by setting my own higher standard!!

spacedoubt wrote:OK, I have some time now.

My parents are nasty. Star Kitten mentioned her first period. When I got my first period, and I was in a lot of pain, my mom immediately said, "Now that you're a woman, I expect you to do more around here."

That sounds familiar.

xana wrote:My wacked out N mom has a weird affinity for little kids. It's like she identifies with them because she thinks at their level. When I hit puberty, she totally lost whatever affection she once had for me. I suddenly became a chore and burden that she didn't want to deal with. She never once had a frank/open discussion with me about puberty. She never once discussed menstruation with me. She let me learn about that solely from the classes they taught at school. She never taught me about period hygiene. I started at 11 years old so I was kind of baffled and needed help from her that she didn't give.
Her only "sex talk" with me was when I was 12. She basically called me a little whore and said that when I got pregnant she'd take my baby and throw me out in the street. If the fng B ever tries to break NC and contact me again..I'm going to remind her about all those wonderful little mother/daughter moments we had before I tell her to go to hell.

If I ever have a daughter, I want to be the one to show her the ropes of womanhood. I want to make her 1st period a rite of passage and make it a positive thing that she shouldn't feel ashamed about. I want to support self-esteem that will help her make good choices about sex and boys. All the opposite things from what I got from NM.

A bit of distance with those matters I think is preferable. Sure information and making the whole transition thing as smooth as possible is nice and a celebratory right of passage would be good as well. As long as its all done with an adherance to the boundaries of the individual. Some kids just don't want too much parental attention on their transition, so in that case don't get too involved.

I couldn't be an adult fast enough - anything to get out of the imprisionment of a childhood with my mother. When the subject of periods came up my mother took me into her bedroom, took her panties off, spread her legs and her labia and showed me exactly how to insert a tampon.
Talk about another scarring moment.

OMG - you can't understand them. My 80 yo NM thinks she is a sex goddess and thought, may still think, I was a slut, that my sister and I were lesbians, accused me of staring at her breasts all the time and even showed them to me (I was about 13) and when my youngest brother got his birds and bees talk from her at 12 she told him to squeeze her breasts to see that they were still firm. Who knows what she thought that would teach him. She also wore short shorts around the house when we were growing up and I rememebr a sense of her flesh being "in my face" - a pervading sense of her horrible sexuality. What are normal parents like? I mean for a child to experience? Does anyone here know?

Yeah adelrob, the thing that I get from them is YUK. There is a distinctive repulsiveness about them.

adelerob wrote:OMG - you can't understand them. My 80 yo NM thinks she is a sex goddess and thought, may still think, I was a slut, that my sister and I were lesbians, accused me of staring at her breasts all the time and even showed them to me (I was about 13) and when my youngest brother got his birds and bees talk from her at 12 she told him to squeeze her breasts to see that they were still firm. Who knows what she thought that would teach him. She also wore short shorts around the house when we were growing up and I rememebr a sense of her flesh being "in my face" - a pervading sense of her horrible sexuality. What are normal parents like? I mean for a child to experience? Does anyone here know?

That's disgusting, I'm so sorry you and your siblings had to put up with that! That's almost like your NM was running her own personal perv show out of her house. Disgusting is almost too tame to describe that!

They might refuse to tell their daughters about sex and be over-prudish. They might respond really negatively when the daughter gets her first period - showing disgust maybe, or otherwise making it a bad thing.

This perfectly describes my mother. She made me feel as if I were a horrible person when I got my period. She made me feel ashamed and as if I had done the worst thing in the world.

BTW, my mother was also raised Baptist.
And talking to my female cousins, none of their mothers, my nmom's sisters, talked to them about sex or periods, either. But none of their mothers made them feel ashamed, either.

When I had sex for the first time, at 20!!!!, my mother made me feel so ashamed, as if I were going straight to Hell. She made me call both my brothers and humiliate myself by telling them that...GASP!!!!!...I had sex outside of marriage. Wow...and I even ended up married to the guy, too. We're celebrating our 20th anniversary next month.
Anyway, I feel so cheated by that bitch. She stole so much away from me.

My PM spent a lot of time naked in our house when I was growing up. I thought it was normal until I went to other kids houses and saw that no one was running around flashing everyone their vag. After that I begged her to put some clothes on, and she called me a "prude". What's really weird is that after years of that insanity, she did a 180, and now dresses like a church lady, making constant nasty remarks about other women being slutty for wearing perfectly normal clothes, like a sleeveless shirt. Maybe it's just because she doesn't have the body she once felt so cocky about flaunting. But both of her attitudes are way off center.