Karyl McBride

In Kristal’s case, the friend had good boundaries, but what she asked, although not inappropriate, triggered in Kristal feelings of being a burden on her mother, and she had a strong reaction that lasted for several days.

The message I got from Mom is that she will love me if I do what she thinks I should do. So I try to be me, but I don’t know who I am

This means that the daughter will feel the collapse when something reminds her of early childhood wounds. At this moment, a daughter is most tempted to reach out for external validation and ask someone else to make it better for her, and she may act needy

You may find that you want to explore some new things but have no one to do it with. If this is the case, it is important to make yourself do them alone. Going to movies, dancing, hiking, walking—whatever it is—do it alone. The time you spend with yourself is very important in improving your self-understanding and self-reliance. Time alone may seem like a luxury, but I assure you that this time spent on your own interests is very important to your recovery.

Narcissists commonly cut people off and out of their lives due to their shallow emotional style of seeing others as either good or bad. Everything is black or white to them.

Rather than engage in an argument, simply state your boundary over and over until your mother takes your point.

Remember, you can’t heal what you cannot feel, so narcissistic mothers usually tend to stay away from their inner emotional life.

As I am sure you are finding out, dealing with your mother is much easier after working on your own recovery. The reasons for this change are many: You are less reactive to her projections; you can set clear boundaries; because of your grief work, she is less able to trigger your pain; and because you have accepted that she has limitations, you no longer have great expectations of her.

Forgiveness is positive and healing when we can see that the person’s intentions were not to hurt us. But we do ourselves no good when we try to deny the pain we felt. And we can actually set ourselves up for further harm when we don’t deal with the reality that we were hurt and that the person is likely to hurt us again—whether inadvertently or on purpose.

I counsel you to pardon only someone who is accountable for her behavior, when she has owned up to it, has become conscious of it, and is truly sorry for having done it. While this may sound harsh, not many narcissistic mothers do this, so I do not advocate pardons for most of them.