Mothers who sexually abuse their daughters
However appalling the topic, when it comes to hearing from women sexually abused by fathers, uncles, brothers, grandfathers, society is at least aware of the issue. As a society we have become so used to the potential of men to abuse that men working with children or interested to do so are sometimes instantly under suspicion. Yet up to 40% of those who sexually abuse children are women and around 10% of reported child sexual abuse of girls is perpetrated by the child’s mother.
We hear from women about their abusive mothers; the emotional incest, the mental-emotional abuse, the physical violence and society can get to grips with that, the daughter herself may walk away able to view herself as a ‘survivor’ from that. And we know that sexual abuse is perpetrated by the same parents who have already been capable of other abuses of their children and the lack of boundaries that underpins that. But we hear far less of those women sexually abused by their mothers. Those who were usually won’t speak of ‘that part of things’, if they are not too dissociated from ‘those experiences’ to even be able to face what happened. There is simply something too bizarre about it, unmentionable, alien for both the person who went through it and the society they never told about it.
How could the person who gave birth to you be so disturbed as to see you as a toy, their object, possession, some kind of extension of themselves on which to play out their sexual disturbance, their jealousy of other females, their lust for power over another female, their indulgence in a secrecy and taboo they are certain nobody would ever believe and no daughter would dare to tell?
However much they may have learned to masterfully feign the role, these are not people who are actually capable of healthy love between themselves and their child. Sometimes it will be a mother who is mentally ill, has personality disorders or is psychopathic, substance abusing or otherwise addicted or any combination thereof. Sometimes it will be a mother who has different fixations and perversions about her daughters than she does her sons or even abuses one of her children whilst not abusing the others at all or in the same way. Sometimes the mother who has sexually abused her own children will then continue the abuse on some level with her grandchildren to the extent she can get away with it.
With her own child a mother usually has a high level of private access. If the child is a baby, under 3 years old or has communication or developmental disabilities, the abusing mother may blame the child’s distress or disturbance on being misbehaved, spoilt, or on their disabilities. Children with functional communication are more likely to come to the attention of care services after the abuse has come out through speech, play or artwork.
Mothers who restrain, intoxicate or violently sexually abuse their pre-verbal daughters (or allow or facilitate others to do this for her by proxy) may not bother with the grooming stage at all. When the same abuser then has grandchildren they may have less exclusive or private access to the child so may be more likely to groom the child before overtly sexually abusing them. She may repeatedly expose them to comments, actions or material that desensitizes them to blurred boundaries, dares them to higher levels of tolerance of abusive behaviour, challenges their ability to remain silent in a pact with the abuser. If the child doesn’t disclose, the abuser may take this to another level and if they do disclose may cover their tracks, blame the child, threaten the child or move on to an easier victim.
The mothers who sexually abuse their daughters do so directly and indirectly. At its most subtle level these are the mothers indulging in the oversexualisation of their child, exposing them to porn and graphic language and suggestions. It can be a mother who sexually abuses their daughter in complete secrecy. It can be a mother who endangers their daughter, allowing others to abuse her, even facilitating this or actively suggesting their opportunity to do so. The mothers who do this may do so
* for the power over another human being,
* out of harbored resentment against an unwanted child for being born,
* for financial gain to pay for compulsive gambling, alcohol or other substance addictions,
* to observe replays of their own abuse as a child,
* out of jealousy of other females projected onto the child they wish to see harmed,
* out of hatred for the child’s father (damaging ‘his’ child),
* to win attention/approval from a male pedophile they are with,
* to push their own levels of detachment from empathy or compassion they feel weakens them (to prove/reinforce their toughness),
* as part of identifying with female psychopaths who have also abused children,
* as part of the mother’s unmanaged personality disorders
* because she can and can get away with it
… the motivations are diverse.
Daughters sexually abused by their mothers are among the least likely victims to report the abuse. It’s time to acknowledge that women also sexually abuse children, that mothers do, that this may be their sons or their daughters, that this may happen when the child is a baby, a toddler, or at any time throughout childhood. And just like male perpetrators, they will go to great lengths to hide what they have done. A man cannot so easily hide behind the word ‘love’. But a mother who abuses can use it as a powerful deflection, a hiding place, a means of silencing the child she abused as if to say “if I proclaim ‘I love you‘ often enough, loudly enough, public enough, even co-opting siblings into the chant, then I can feel safer that nobody would ever believe I had been capable of that“.
Can such mothers feign the role of being a loving mother? Come on, … can psychopaths and narcissists con people? Can those with Borderline Personality Disorder play roles that have no relationship to the person underneath? Of course. It’s time we looked past the powerful blinder of the term ‘mother’ we associate with Mother’s Day cards, hearts, roses, aprons, cookies, dolls and dancing lessons. Mothers who sexually abuse their daughters are human beings, disturbed and disturbing, and their title of ‘mother’ is no more than a mask.
SOME OBJECTIVE FACTS:
* pedophiles exist
* incest exists
* around 20% of pedophiles (1 in 5) are female (some of whom will be mothers and somebody will be their children)
* most pedophilia occurs in families
* though some are (Myra Hindley is an example) most pedophiles are not sadistic
* most pedophiles appear to be ‘every day people – you wouldn’t know if you met one in the street
* pedophiles give the emotional responsibility to their victim
* most pedophiles see themselves as ‘children’
* a pedophile can be or appear thoughtful, gentle, quiet, even shy yet still be pathologically narcissisticTHE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF MOTHERS
Mother’s are not human,
they are mothers,
they somehow… change.They are not fallible like the rest of us.
They snap their fingers and are transformed
By virtue of hormones and soiled nappies
Into selfless human beings,
Forgoing their own needs,
Overcoming their own lacking, their own losses,
The missing cogs,
Into some meta-being protecting their child at any cost.In a formulaic society ‘Normality’ is God
And someone wrote a book on it somewhere for sure.
‘Normality’ could not be simply what one has.
There’s no soap opera like that.
If it doesn’t fit the formula, it doesn’t exist.
It’s amazingly invisible.
You can flaunt it under the nose of the world
And as long as you wave the flags,
Nobody will dare to say stop.It is unthinkable, surreal,
To admit that ‘normality’ is a game
That can be played by a fragmented actress,
A camel, its back broken by too many straws,
A barbed wire prison warder.My life, therefore, like all those like it, did not exist
In your circumscribed view of ‘normality’.Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.netI acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.
Kayla, you ‘can’t lose nothing from nothing’, meaning that any mother who saw you as a sexual partner or a tool in being dared/egged on by her boyfriend, it not a mother so you only lost the illusion. It is possible that she allowed you to be abused by your step father at age 12, and possibly abused you in early childhood before you can remember or fantasised about doing so. In the book The Last Taboo, mothers who sexually abused their daughters stopped when the child could speak and when they then abused them later in their teens (or in your case at 23) they later remembered or learned this had its foundations in their early childhood. The pattern tended to be that the mothers abused their daughters then stopped but endangered them to men, then later they again abused their daughter. I think from your story your mother has poor boundaries and is both hedonistic and narcissistic. It appears from your story that she had developed a ‘friend’ role with you and from there felt she would ‘mess about with her friend’. The relationship as you described it seemed more like a ‘date’ than the standard mother-daughter connection. In other words the boundaries seemed already precarious if not blurred. But if you grew up that way you’d have known no different. Living one’s life without a functioning mother can be hard but also a blessing. It can make you learn to be your own parent, open you up to ‘aunts’ you meet in the community and mean you choose not to accept her example as ‘normal’ and so be less likely to repeat the same. All the best to you.
I’m 46 i recall many things growing up. Early age of around 5 peeing the bed. My mom wanting to take baths with me until i was 15. My mom would lay me on the coffee table and clean my Vagina with Lysol saying its because i had a infection. Never went to doctor and never had one . I caught my mom watching porn and she feel asleep masturbating. I was the baby of the family all siblings were gone and married ,I was not planned and come from older parents. Mom is gone now i asked her on her death bed if those things she to me really happened, she looked at me and said yes. She said she was sorry. She died a few days later.I had closure at that moment, but still struggle with relationships with woman, i have no trust.. Im angry because it didn’t happen to my sisters. I think its because there 4 siblings and she never was able to. I have lot of anger because my siblings don’t believe me. Why do you think i left at the age of 18 and moved across with some man i barely knew and had my my 3 year old with me. No one asked why is she doing this.. Now i love my sisters but im hurt,jealous, angry, resentful because it didn’t happen.. My mom always told me my sisters were jealous of and they didn’t like me. Almost up to the days she was on hospice.. I think she did it because of thinking if i was not close to my sisters, i wouldn’t tell. Now its caused so much hate between me and my siblings. I do believe my mother was molested as a child and i think it was by her mom. Over the Christmas break i had looked at my sisters fb and seen she had gotten a brooch that was my mothers from my oldest sister. I was very hurt. I wasn’t Important enough i guess. This caused a major fight. It wasn’t that i wanted one. It was the anger that they got to enjoy our mom in ways i never got to.. I have told my oldest sister but i don’t think she believed me and im sure she told my other sister.. I don’t know my sisters. Never had the chance. My mom always played us against each other. She would always say will your sisters can’t stand you.. Or you know what your sisters did but don’t tell.. I blew up over the last few days, my one sister says i use my health for attention.Believe me i would love to not be sick but it was the care we all deal with because its genetic.Im so happy that they have not gone through the stuff i have.. I always been close to my father, even though we had our fights, i was a daddys girl. They got to enjoy both parents and still enjoy my dad. He is 90 now. Im just lost right now.
Hi Tina, welcome to the Motherless Club, for those daughters abused by pedophile mothers in fact had no mothers… they had women incapable of fulfilling the criteria for mother because that involves boundaries, it involves responsibility, it involves seeing your child as a human being with human rights, not as a doll, a tool for gratification or power, or an object.
Yes, often those sexually abused will have siblings who were never sexually abused. Why? a) because the abuser parent is already either mentally ill, addicted, or personality disordered/narcissistic enough to sexually abused their child AND because b) different children bring out different reactions in their parents and you drew the short straw. Your abuser parent was bound to either get herself professional help or abuse someone. She abused you. Once she had her doll/tool/object she didn’t necessarily need all her children to be that. Children may play with no dolls, with one doll, with every doll. Your mother used you as a doll/tool/object but probably was the kind of person who may never had continued this with others. Why you? Bonding. Some children bond well with a parent. Some don’t. If you were Dad’s girl (so was I, and like you I was the child of a pedophile mother) then an insecure narcissist may well have found that a threat and abusing you may have made that narcissist feel ‘special’ (narcissists live to be ‘special’, at the expense of those they use and abuse). Divide and conquer is usual from narcissists. Its part of the monopolisation of their narcissistic object – the doll/tool/object they abuse. I’m glad for you that she confessed. I’m sure you know most will never do so. I don’t expect mine ever will so I’m certainly not waiting or going to need an a disclosure, apology or anything from my abuser. It is a fact that your sisters have had the best of this abuser parent. That’s their reality, leave them to it. Yours is equally valid and it may be they will never understand or relate to what you went through or who your abuser parent was to you. So understand you are in fact not alone. There are too many motherless children of abuser parents, but if nothing else we do have some understanding of what each other have had in the guise of ‘mother’. All the best to you. Warmly, Donna
when you know the flash back keeps happening ….then you know its the truth
Ok lets go deaper … my mother touched me in a part of my body I don’t wish her to touch ….. where can I go for advice pls x
there is probably a phone counseling service in your area which would be a place to start. Essentially, unless abuse has impacted on your ability to function there’s little point needing help. Those with PTSD or DID, those suffering from depression or panic attacks might function better once addressing abuse. As for whether a person can have flashbacks of things that haven’t happened, there are intrusive thoughts in OCD which can be disturbing, commonly taboo and this reinforces these thoughts continually coming back.
I think my boyfriends daughter and maybe his youngest son is or was sexually abused by their mother. The daughter is 9 and she has told me that her mom showed her how to was her privet area by using the jet from the shower head or laying on her back under the faucet. She still is peeing the bed and pooing herself. Masterbates but calls it itching. She recently visited her mother and came home with shaved legs and shaved vag. To which she says her mom showed her how. She is 9. Her son came home who is 8, is now always touching himself has to be asked if he has to go to the bathroom or will pee on himself. he has always had a thing with touching himself but it morefrequent since their visit. the other child is all about his personal space and will get violent is it or seems as if it’s invaded. the daughter has also told me that she goes to the bathroom with her mom and learned how youbecome a women and have a period cause her mom showed her that blood comes out of you pee area. and that her mom says it ok not to wear underwear. their mother was sexually abused as a child and I hate to say these signs are what they are.their father gets upset when I bring it up. am I being paranoid?
not paranoid at all. You are 100% right that these children appear to have been obsessively and intrusively sexualised and two have become groomed, find it arousing and are at potential risk of then passing on the same behaviours to their children and the other traumatised. The bedwetting and pooing are regressive and if the girl has enough communication to convey the shaving episode it is not because she failed to advance beyond identifying as a toddler. The boy’s holding on to the point of peeing himself could be about inability to tune in to his body, inability to dare showing what he needs, or part of having been brought up like a doll/object so does not identify with or fully accept his own sense of agency, leaving it to others to ‘keep him functioning’ or he’d pee himself (ie regress). My view is that this is a case of mandatory reporting, which can be done anonymously… simply copy what you’ve sent me and send it to the welfare officer at the children’s school. They will be under legal obligation to report to protective services or you can report directly to protective services anonymously. Your boyfriend is in denial, possibly co-dependent with this behaviour, probably afraid that if he rocks the boat he’ll lose contact with the kids or be accused of the same. It’s also possible the mother endangered the children to others, including him. Female pedophiles commonly do this.
Thank you so much for this post.
I didn’t know who else to talk to and felt so alone.
Reading these stories of strength and survival overwhelmed me.
I get so sad sometimes I just don’t want to talk or deal with anyone. I feel suddenly unsafe.
I had my own experience with my mother when I was 5 (it’s the only time I remember). I think she was still drunk from the night before and made me go between her legs. I remember her pathetically pleading with me and then angrily shouting for me to come back to the room because kept going back and forth. At that age I knew that there was something off about what she was telling me to do.
I even remember eventually giving in and wanting to grab her toothbrush so she could taste the nauseating place she was forcing on me. Already at that moment I had become so angry and confused.
At age 9 I told her about it. I remember trying to describe something I didn’t understand, let alone know was sexual. It had made me feel so disgust and wrong as a person. It still does.
It took her a while to remember because she had been drunk when it had happened. But when she realized I couldn’t be lying we both cried and she apologized. The next day she gave me a card and bought me nice things out of guilt and never brought it up again.
She’s beaten me too (there is one specific time I can recall with detail) and the same procedure of apologizing and pushing it out of her mind followed.
And I play along and pretend everyone’s sake.
You see I love my mother. She brought us up as single mother and has provided a warm, appropriately loving home for us.
She’s not the same person she used to be and has grown a lot. I know that she hasn’t behaved this way with my siblings. She’s suffered so much in her life and I don’t want people to look down on her.
Still, I shiver when she hugs me sometimes. It used to be easier to block out but now I’m in my 20s and it’s getting harder. I was always scared and thinking about it on some level. But now the thoughts are more pressing. I’m scared of letting the truth slip out. I’m scared of becoming a mother and having a daughter. I’m of never being able to live with this.
I want to protect my mother but I hate lying to people like my partner (1 of 4 people I’ve ever told about some of this, including my mother and you guys).
I hate telling them that I don’t know who made me do it and that I don’t want to find out and that am not brave enough to even try for the sake of other possible victims.
That I’m a coward who only thinks of herself.
Hi Ari, what you describe happened to my cousin when he was 7. The pedophile was my mother. I wish I didn’t believe it, but because I also experienced related abuse and because she confided in me in my 20s about what she’d done with her boyfriend’s children and things she said about my brother, I just couldn’t deny the ugly truth of it. The cousin had spent his life as a junkie and ultimately killed himself/overdosed in his 30s. This is when his story came out. My mother is from intergenerational incest. I had some wonderful early carers before age 5 so didn’t bond with her and had reactive attachment disorder in relation to her but was capable of a wonderful healthy marriage by my 30s. My mother was an alcoholic, dissociated, personality disordered, psychopathic and a pedophile. Though I do not love her, I have compassion for all that made her these things, including her own choices to challenge the ‘normality’ of these things she found ‘normal’, to take charge, get help, or the fact she didn’t. What I would say is that we all have at least one experience that so disgusts and disempowers us that it is like a demon following us through life… but facing others have also experienced such things and that 70% of those abused do not go on to abuse others, should help us orient to honestly living with the whole of our past, present and into our futures. Understand you do not owe her your co-dependency … in fact you owe it to yourself to free yourself from that. The facts are that she made choices… choices to get that drunk, choices to sexually abuse with the ‘excuse’ of drunkenness, choices to keep it in the closet, choices to physically abuse you, choices to leave you carrying the trauma. And… if you love the only mother you have had, then that too is ok… but love her for what she actually was and perhaps is, a broken person who never sought help to face what happened, take full responsibility for it, and healthily reach closure. It is ok to have a parent too selfish to do this… however many martyr flags they’ve learned to wave to control the silence of others… but also know that the child of a narcissist does not necessarily become one. I wish you peace and closure. In camaraderie, Donna *)
What is it labelled when an inappropriate thing occurred once? I was 9 or 10 years, my parents had just separated and I was staying with my mother. We were in the shower together and she started masturbating with the shower head, and looking at me and laughing happily while she did it. I asked her why she was doing that/what she was doing (I can’t remember the exact words I used to ask) and she said it feels nice. She have me the shower head and told me to try it. I did and said to her that I couldnt feel anything. She took the hose back and held it under me (spraying onto my vag) and moved it around. I still didn’t feel anything nice. She stopped and got out the shower to get dry. I tried it by myself again and still didn’t feel anything and got out the shower to be dried as well. Around this time (don’t know if it was the same day but it was close in time, because of was when we were living in a temporary house for just a month or so. But we were sitting up in bed (we shared a bed), she told me she missed doing the things that she used to with Dad. She was looking at me very strange too. I asked her off she wanted me to do them instead and she said no. But the way she was looking at me wasn’t right. Maybe it’s a benign occurance, but I remember her eyes.
So what is a once off inappropriate event called? I have always known this memory, but never thought about it a lot. I remembered it yesterday, because mum asked me to go threw some bags of stuff she had packed away, from my childhood. She pulled out an old oxygen mask that she had kept all these years. Its from when we were living in that same place, sitting together in the bed at night and I felt I couldn’t breathe. I remember it, the feeling of like I couldn’t get air in my lungs because my chest had frozen still. Like my breathes were too shallow. She took me to hospital and I was put on oxygen. I think I had a panic or anxiety attack. She kept the mask all these years, and I really remembered these memories. Like, questioning what occured and how could something like happen. I could never imagine masturbating in front of my sons or teaching them to do it.
So what is something like this labelled if it only happens once and there was no direct physical contact or rape?
Hi Belinda,
“Sexual assault is any involuntary sexual act in which a person is coerced or physically forced to engage against their will, or any non-consensual sexual touching of a person.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault
An under age child of 10 coerced/instructed by an adult in a sexual act is not deemed capable of having INFORMED consent. Without INFORMED consent the sexual act is sexual assault. This is the case whether the sexual act was perpetrated against the minor or whether the perpetrator coerced the minor into the act. So, in a nutshell, you were sexually assaulted. Trust your instincts that you felt there was already a lack of boundaries, that you felt the atmosphere was highly sexually charged, that she was already building emotional incest and sexualising you by utilising you as her emotional confidante about her sexual frustration. Trust that you felt trapped and in a panic enough to have dyspnea and that your mother appears to have had a very odd attachment to this event, as evidenced by her nostalgic retaining of the oxygen mask. I would go so far as to say that it was the fact you openly told her it did not arouse you and followed this with obvious signs of panic which may have stopped her from striving further to do this in other episodes. It is possible that when she was a child she had been sexualised by an adult and she’d had a very different experience of it to you. Those who are aroused by sexual abuse they experienced as children are likely to do so to their own children. Keep in mind, though, that 70% of those sexually abused as children do NOT repeat this abuse on their own children. Good luck to you with your future. Keep safe from these type of damaged people.
Thank you so much for this entry. It’s very comforting to read plain talk on mothers like mine. Some are stealthy and others are overt but pedophile mothers DO EXIST. And NO we don’t have to just live with it or try to understand their point of view and feel more for their damaged psyches than our own.
if we don’t speak openly about the issue mothers who are abusers will continue to be protected by the myth that ‘no mother could do that’
My mother facilitated my rapes starting at age 3, i cannot express the hAtred and rage i deal with daily. I cannot tell you how i think of her.
Jennifer, by definition someone who does such things is nobody’s mother and is mentally/emotionally ill. Some who do such things may be addicted, personality disordered, attachment disordered, or are playing out abuse they experienced or witnessed as children. I think the first thing is to accept you were motherless because you will never reconcile such things with the facade that such an abuser was yours or anyone’s mother. The second thing is to celebrate your survival and the parenting you are capable of giving yourself now. The third thing is to know you have a sistership of other survivors who like you were also motherless. One can have justifiable hate and rage, but once facing that one has this at a mentally ill person it becomes futile and that energy is far better invested in how motherless children learn to care for and parent themselves.
Warmly, Polly
I HATE my mother
a) a human who does what she did is nobody’s mother… she is not YOUR mother… she does not in any way fit the definition of a mother
b) yes, she gave birth. Anyone can give birth, cows, monkeys, humans, psychopaths. Only the motherING makes them a mother. Otherwise they are only creatures who gave birth.
c) you hate a person… but she does not even fit the definition of a person… to be a person one must have a soul, and the capacity to empathise. This is what MAKES us human. A psychopath is only biologically human. To be fully human one must be biologically and mentally/emotionally human. She doesn’t qualify.
d) you can hate what she is – a non mother – a psychopath – a narcissist – etc… but with this you commit to despising all such people…. the other choice is to recognise they are disabled… they are missing things… conscience, empathy, a soul… essentially more like zombies than humans… and yes, some of us were born to such broken people. But make no mistake, they were never human and they were never anyone’s mother.
e) you can hate what happened… to you as a complete human… to you as a healthy child who was born to someone incapable of ever being your mother… you can hate that… but better to spend your energy making up for that by how you live and care for yourself
we can hate our mother… if we had a mother capable of more than acting the role who with such capability chose to not be our mother. I’m certain my mother lacked that capacity. It took me a long time but now I mourn this as HER LOSS.
Warmly,
Polly
Hi,
I really hope that I’m not bothering you with this, but…is it sexual abuse if a mother helps her young adult daughter with a tampon, if the daughter asks for help? That’s the most I can remember. I mostly brought this up as it’s been bothering me a while. I’ve had a lot of doubts about my mother’s actions as of late ever since a “memory” I had (and I’m not even certain if it’s her who did it now) cropped up. My mom and my aunt claimed that their mother helped with that, but I just don’t know. I mostly remember being unable to get the tampon in there and calling in my mom to help me — that was three years ago. I think I had to lie on the bed at one point because it was difficult to get in. Is it abusive if I technically needed help?
I know I’m probably commenting on an old post and all, but…I was wondering what your take on it was.
the example you’ve given is one of those grey areas. If you were in need of help and you actively initiated the request for that help and felt so at ease with your mother helping in this way then you likely did not experience this as sexual… vulnerable… yes… awkward… yes… trusting… certainly… But none of these feelings make the situation necessarily abuse.
the only time this would be sexual abuse would be if the mother encouraged this sort of ‘assistance’ as a means of covert sexual abuse or actively encouraged bad boundaries such as the mother taking responsibility for all such needs. When it comes to boundaries some families have strong healthy boundaries, some have weaker more flexible boundaries and some unhealthily, narcissistic, cross boundaries as ‘normal’ – which can be ‘grooming’, and this can slide into violation of the child’s boundaries – which is abuse.
Don’t go digging for memories. If you were sexually abused no matter how deep the denial, no matter how extreme the co-dependency, it will surface in one way or another sooner or later.
Thanks for the reply. In terms of what you just brought up, for the memory that I mentioned, I don’t think she really encouraged this sort of assistance (and I’m mostly using “I don’t think” because my memory’s kind of fuzzy at the moment, which is pretty frustrating) as a means of covert sexual abuse. Or if she actively encouraged bad boundaries (I guess it depends on what kind of further data comes up). In terms of boundaries in my family, fortunately my mom didn’t do anything creepy like try and break into the bathroom or something (or other horror stories that I’ve heard about sexually abusive moms). Most I can say about my mother’s actions is that I’m still in the process of reexamining them which is pretty devastating.
Thing about my mom is that…well, she’s a complicated woman. She hasn’t gotten any narcissistic traits like you mentioned (the worst she has is OCD, which mildly irritates my aunt). And with some of the behaviors I’m reexamining, she was actually rather irritated at times about them — I think she might have been trying to encourage my independence and such. Not to mention she’s always been really encouraging of me so I guess it’s strange that these questionable behaviors and her good traits can coexist. And I guess I feel guilty about feeling the way I do.
(I…guess I needed to get that off my chest)
And thank you. I’ve been trying not to pressure myself in terms of digging too deep for memories (as it usually comes up with bad results) but it is difficult sometimes. That being said, best I can do is work on the stuff I do know and…well, hope for the best.
what you describe would fit with DPD – Dependent Personality Disorder – in that your mother felt you were overly dependent. This link may help understand this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuLv-FkC34s and this would lead a child to seek bad boundaries from the carer… ie seeing oneself as helpless, incapable, quitting too quickly and easily wherever the child with DPD could see that they could hand the responsibility to the carer… so perhaps it is your own boundaries that has perplexed you, a desire to be ‘looked after’… as an autism consultant I’ve known autistic kids with DPD who will give up independence skills to monopolise and control the carer, including things like continence… and when the DPD is addressed they are actually capable of all the things they imagine/invest in being incapable of…. DPD and confused feelings about it, is a mental health issue that should be discussed with a mental health counselor.
I’ll definitely check out that link. Thanks. It’s a possibility — I (possible too much information alert, I apologize) don’t have any issues with the whole continence thing (I’m actually pretty good about it) but I am kind of dependent re: other things. I don’t even know if it’s my mother; I think it’s partially a matter of me trying to stay present in things, which is definitely a key part of independence.
And that’s a good idea. I’m thinking that next time I meet with my therapist, I can bring up the possibility. I am on the autistic spectrum, I know that much.
I think I got something back. Basically, some physical help in the memory. I don’t know if that’s all of the memory, but it’s there nonetheless.
its really about whether or not you have associated trauma or disassociative disorders now. if a memory can’t be proven its futile to search unless you have significant mental health issues you need to resolve to which they are key. Even then, many people will never get proof nor admission and the only way one can otherwise be certain is that there are so many verifiable abuses by the same person that its clear they were both capable, had opportunity, and motivations/orientations to have done the abuse in a given recovered memory.
Makes sense. I guess I’m just worried about possible trauma and such. That and I don’t know how normal it is, helping a kid with a tampon (for a mother, that is). And it doesn’t help that she’s kind of engaged in other not-sure-if-appropriate behavior. So it’s definitely a lot to work through.
Traumatised people don’t worry about possible trauma. They simply have it, live it, know it, suffer from it and hopefully seek and get professional help for it. As for not-sure-if-appropriate behaviour, many families are dysfunctional, many parents, and in turn many of their children. Personality disorders are usual in dysfunctional families, particularly things like narcissistic and borderline personality disorders which comes with various Munchausen dramas. If you suspect any of these things in your family or yourself, see your counselor or get yourself one.
Dear Donna,
I am glad I found your blog. My mother is a narcissist for all I know, albeit a covert one. For 80% of the time I spend with her she can be very loving and caring towards me and the other family members(cooking for others, hugging, complimenting, saying “I love you”, caring and worrying about you when you are sick). But the harmony is very fragile since one wrong comment, tone of voice etc. can make her explode into narcissistic rage lasting several days at a time.It made it impossible for me to enact any boundaries for myself. The grooming started shortly before my Mom divorced my Dad. I had just begun entering puberty and she would encourage me to take of my bikini top at the pool even though I was very unconfortable with it. Some month later she had a new partner many years older than her and she let me dance in skimpy clothes infront of them. The thing that horrified me the most happened once when she was bathing, I was lounging in the bathroom talking with her . It was a conversation about sex scenes in movies and I said that I find all the moaning annoying and emberassing. My mom then told me about what an orgasm was and that women also can masturbate to achieve orgasms on their own. She was lying in the bathtub in a very suggestive way and showed me her clit to teach me how to masturbate(I was 12 years old). I had surpressed this memory for many many years and feel sick to my stomach now writing about it. I told her I dont want to see it. She called me a prude but stopped. We never talked about this incident again, because I was to afraid to mention it at all. I also never told my brother, even though I was always extremely close to him. Later my mother would regularily taunt me with comments about masturbation, clits, breasts, which made me feel repulsive towards women and also my own body. I developed body image issues and eating disorders at a young age and struggle until this day. My mother still(I am 25 and married) walks in onto me showering or peeing, when I am visiting them in their home. She also did it to my brother but stopped when he was 16 because he threatened her to call the police on her. When we are alone she also will harass me by using overt sexual language, which I asked her not to do. When I ask her to respect my boundaries she always explodes and terrorizes me. I was also a victim of bullying and sexual harrassment during my whole school time, because I always had no boundaries to speak of and didnt know how to socially interact with people of my age at all.
This left me even more isolated and dependent on my mother. When I graduated highschool I moved in with an abusive man ten years my senior who also emotionally and sexually abused me. I seperated him four years ago and now I am married to a very kind and gentle man, who is horrified by the abuse that goes on in my parents home behind closed doors and the idyllic facade. It is worth mentioning that my mom was a survivor of childhood abuse herself, albeit of the non sexual kind(that`s what she says). Interestingly so she has very little empathy for survivors of sexual and/or domestic abuse. I myself just recently recognized all the patterns of abuse going on in our family and it makes me so sad and angry. I am NC with my mother at the moment, but with mothers day coming around I dont know what to do.
Welcome.
Mother’s Day is for MOTHERS… people who can mother…. not those who can feign mothering… not those who have a role they can play, taking it on and off as suits them… not for women with narcissistic personality disorder who happened to have given birth to those they then use and torment as their narcissistic objects… narcissistic personality disorder comes with a level of psychopathy… psychopathic children grow up to be psychopathic adults… I have seen this happen in 3 generations on my mother’s side… you are not responsible for a psychopath.
these links may be useful
http://www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/narcissistic-mother-dictionary/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codependency
http://narcissists-suck.blogspot.com.au/2007/05/mothers-day-and-your-narcissist-mom.html
http://house-of-mirrors.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/a-malignant-narcissist-mothers-day_11.html
you CAN move forward without the facade of a mother because you actually, functionally, don’t have one and never did
you CAN be proud, capable, equal, healthy as a member of the ‘motherless club’
you CAN move forward in your life without guilt, without co-dependency, without allowing a narcissist to work you
I have been NC with mine since 2001 and several times before that
I strive to never listen to the co-dependency trained into me
I strive never to cave in to the demands and pressure of her guard dog or flying monkey
I know I am my own family, I am a child of the community, a citizen of the world and have build family with my husband and our friends.
Stay strong
Warmly, Polly
@ Polly, thank you for answering. My problem with my mother is, that she still has some leverage over me, since there are some important legal documents which belong to me in my parents house. I am afraid that if I act non compliant on mothers day she will destroy the documents as means to retaliate. It is so devastating. If I dont wish her happy mothersday it is like declaring war to her. if I contact her it feels like an invitation or me apologizing to her. I never want to apologize to her ever again.
All the years I thought the reason I am such a messed up person is because of my parents divorce and my father being neglecting towards us afterwards. Then I found out about maternal narcissism. It was hard coming to terms with it because I have been my mothers golden child for a long time. My brother was scapegoated- but not in the extreme ways other victims of narcissist s describe. Now my brother has a very succesfull carreer, while I am still in college and our roles inside the narcissistic family dynamic have switched. The good news is, I told my brother about most things our mother did to me and he believes me, because he has been her victim in his teens as well. Still he thinks I should stop armchair diagnosing her and blaming her for every trauma in my life. I guess my brother is the healthy one from the two of us. He moved to his girlfriend when he was 17 cause he couldnt stand it anymore and has ever moved on since. He was NC with our mother for 1,5 years and has low to infrequent contact to her now. When she calls him he mostly doesnt pick up the phone because he feels annoyed by her talking for hours. He visits her on the major holidays and thats basically it. He has build up a life of his own from a very young age. He always had friends in school and retained the contact to our father(which I broke off during my teens to please my mother). I think the golden child has it much harder to come to terms with the childhood abuse because the awakening happens so much later. When it finally happens you find yourself codependent and tangled among a web of lies and guilt. Guilt because my mother is not the violent textbook narcissist other survivors write about, but also a caring and responsible mother in many situations. When I was suffering from nightly panic attacks some months ago, she told me that no matter the time, I can always call her and she will stand by my side. Will an evil narcissist say something like this? When I had flare ups from Graves Disease she took me in, cared for me and drove me to medical specialists. On the other side she gaslighted me, my husband, my brother, his wife, caused triangulation between me and my stepfather and distrust between my husband and me, me, my brother and his wife. Yet she always claims to be the saviour of the family which would completely fall apart without her in the center of the web. She will say that I am the person she loves the most, her best friend, her favourite human, but yet she will claim that I used her as an emotional trashbin when I was a small child bullied in school who had noone except her to turn to. in fact I feel used by her for parentifying me after my parents divorce when she would tell me everything about my fathers shortcomings, his porn collection, how he was sexual unavailable…No wonder I stopped feeling affection and respect for my father…My father was by no means perfect. Even after my mother he was an enabler for narcissistic women-but he was never cruel or narcissistic himself.
Now I am at an age where women consider having children themselves. I am afraid on acting out abuse on my children as my mother did with us. My mother was a battered child and she also told us many times that she was afraid to be like her parents, but thank god she isnt because she realized her parents were abusive.
This scares me alot. My mother realized the abuse she suffered was wrong, but she still abused us, albeit not by battering, but by psychological and (covert) sexual abuse. What if I will be the same and unable to realize that I am abusing my children?
a) yes a narcissist will take lack of a birthday or Mother’s Day greeting as ‘shaming’, ‘confronting’, ‘wounding their ego’, ‘defying their facade’ and they will declare war (but if it is healthiest to cut all contact it can be worth the cost).
b) generally all legal documents can be regained through application for a copy, so don’t fear if they get burned, all is likely not lost.
c) if these are your papers and she is witholding them from you you can ask a police officer for help to retrieve them
d) you can buy a range of cards in advance, lovely cards, non specific, pre-write them, set yourself a reminder to post each on a given date and consider it no more personal than a yearly medical.
e) I’m so sorry you were a golden child. I was a scapegoat and it is hard for me to meet my brothers on the same page as each were goldens.
f) a scapegoat raised to a golden saying you shouldn’t understand and define something nebulous and incidious should be taken as part of his new entanglement. You have every healthy human right to define what you have suffered from. You have not written with any resentment or malice, merely coming to terms with things, and no member of the same dysfunctional family has a right to straightjacket any other member in their healing journey.
g) a non violent narcissist is just as damaging as a violent one.
h) my mother offered me one of her ovaries when I had one of mine removed. She is always there when people are dying (we call her the angel of death). She is also a psychopath and serial abuser. These people commonly also may have an idealised version of themselves and love any potential flag wave, any potential new smoke screen. Remember they are minorities in a world of people who model real compassion, not just performed compassion. They just are what they are.
i) if your father is relatively healthy, other than an enabler, its time to build those bridges
j) your mother has her own journey and if you haven’t sent her information about narcissism, emotional abuse, sexualisation and covert incest, gaslighting…then its time she got educated about her own stuff… you can do this one article at a time, sent remotely with no sender, allow her to simply access it with no-one to attack about it. Once she has this education, she has no excuses, the jig is up.
k) 70% of those born to abusers do not become abusers