Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers (21 page)

Make sure that your children’s activities involve giving to others or helping in some way. At first, they may just learn to be helpful to others, and eventually they can perform work in the community. Giving back teaches that other people are important.

Value Their Personhood, Not Only Their Accomplishments

Your love for your children needs to be based on who they are and not merely what they can do. As the daughter of a narcissistic mother, you were taught that what you did was more important than who you were, so you likely grew up feeling that your parents did not even know the real you.

Know who your children are. Know what they like and dislike and what they are interested in separate from you and your interests. Value their good-heartedness and kindness as well as their sense of humor and intelligence. Don’t define them by what they do (my son the soccer player, my daughter the ballet dancer). If you allow your children’s self-esteem to be centered on their accomplishments, you are setting up another generation of achievement-dependent narcissists who have to be “stars” to feel good about themselves. Give them credit where credit is due whenever they realize their goals or visions. Let them know that you are very proud of what they have done and that you will also love them just as much if they do not become CEOs or star basketball players.

When I was working on this book, an old friend called me to catch up. He told me that his son had just received a baseball scholarship for college, but talked more about his son’s “big heart” than about his scholarship! My friend is proud of his son’s accomplishment, but also really loves his son for who he is. What an artful balance.

Authenticity

Encourage your child to be real. Authentic expression of self and feelings is the route to becoming a centered person. We daughters learned to be fake in the narcissistic system. Don’t pass the image focus on to your kids. They can be appropriate and real as well as assertive and respectful of others and their boundaries. It is okay to be who you are even if some people prefer something else. Not everyone has to like you or your children.

Allowing authenticity means accepting your child’s feelings and encouraging her to express them even if you disagree or they upset you. It means that you don’t teach her to lie to look good, or to deny what she perceives as real. No more elephants in the living room that no one discusses but everyone knows are there; don’t have dysfunctional secrets in the family and ask your child to keep them to himself. You can teach him that he does not have to lie to himself or others to keep up an image. We all know from painful experience how crazy-making that is.

I recently observed a mother tell her crying child, “We don’t cry. People don’t like sad children.” The child quickly clammed up. It was obvious that this was a familiar message to her. The danger in doing this with children is that it teaches them to deny their feelings, sacrifice their true selves, and adopt an “image” that is acceptable to the parent. Guard against this in your communications with your children. If you pressure them to put on a facade, you leave them no choice but to believe that their true selves are unacceptable.

Parental Hierarchy

Your children are not supposed to be your friends. Keep boundaries between parents and children. All children are meant to be on the same level. Don’t share adult information with them and overload them with your adult problems. Refer to the healthy family hierarchy in chapter 4: It is not your children’s job to meet your needs. It is your job to meet theirs.

Maintain appropriate boundaries for each person’s separate space in the family and in the home. Respect each other’s property and personal bodily space. Teach children how to say no in assertive ways so that they are not walked over by others. This will help them develop a separate sense of self.

Parenting a child is a monumental task, the most rewarding and the most difficult you may undertake. No one can do it perfectly. That’s just fine. If you are aware of the above factors, however, you allow yourself a healthier awareness than your parents had when raising you. That in itself is a tremendous gift.

Relationships with Others

Narcissistic traits that you unwittingly acquired will also haunt you in your relationships with other adults. Recognize these traits so that you can get control of them. This will be difficult, but that does not mean you are not a good person. Nor does it mean that you are not good enough. It means that you are human, and you have issues related to a painful, difficult childhood. As an adult, however, you want to become totally accountable, to take an honest look in the mirror. You can move past the pain and sadness and experience, and allow yourself to grow emotionally, and integrate the many complex parts of yourself.

The Internal Mother as Your Guide

You can readily recognize your growth, or lack thereof, in love relationships because they trigger our innermost unmet needs. In love, we attempt to overcome past traumas, but usually we are looking to our love partners to give us the love lacked in childhood. These attempts are misguided, but we repeat them until we complete recovery. This is why so many daughters of narcissistic mothers go through many failed relationships.

Rely on your own internal mother. Learn to re-parent and freshly parent the wounded child by allowing yourself to feel the self-respect that your internal mother provides. Clean out the trauma so that positive new messages stay within you and so that you can rely on the internal mother. Then you can adjust your “relationship picker” so that you are attracted to different kinds of appropriate lovers who are not dependent or codependent. If you need to work further on the internal mother, refer back to chapter 12.

Finding the Love of Your Life

It is time now to throw away the old criteria for how you were choosing and behaving with love partners. If you are accustomed to listing image characteristics such as, “Is he good looking?” “Is he financially well off?” “Does he have an impressive job?” “Does he drive a classy car?” “Can he dance?” now is the time to start asking different questions. “Is he good-looking on the inside?” “Can he manage his own feelings and behavior like he manages his own company?” “Can he show and feel authentic feelings and display empathy?” “Can he genuinely love himself and me?” “Can he dance internally with his own soul and mine?” Now that you are well along the recovery trail, consider choosing a lifetime mate according to the following meaningful factors. If you are in a marriage or relationship, consider whether these factors are present enough.

(The reference to “he,” below, is for convenience only and does not imply that the information is intended only for heterosexual relationships.)

• When you are with him, is he kind and compassionate? Does he act with integrity?
  
• Is he committed to, and does he have the capacity for, a lifetime of learning and growing with you?
  
• Is he capable of genuine empathy? Is he interested in working through pain and problems?
  
• Does he have his own personal style, life, interests, hobbies, and passions—separate from yours?
  
• Are most of your values and worldviews (philosophies of life) similar?
  
• Do you share common interests so that you can be playful and spend leisure time together that you both enjoy?
  
• Does he have a sense of humor? Does he use it without hostility but with a good heart?
  
• Does he want to be your best friend and soul mate, and is he capable of being that? (Does he act like your best friend?)
  
• Does he talk about his feelings and yours, and is he in touch with his own emotional world?)
  
• Can he handle ambivalence and shades of gray and not be too rigid about failures and weaknesses in you, himself, and others?
  
• Does he add to your soul life as well as your material life, thereby making your world a wonderful place to be when you are in it together?
  
• Does he bring out the best in you?
  

Your Recovery Tasks in Love Relationships

Now that you are choosing a different kind of love relationship or working to enhance your current one, what do you have to be aware of in your own recovery? You can find the mate that matches the authentic love list, but unless you keep on the path to recovery, your relationship will be unhappy and unsatisfying. Here are your important tasks for relationship work:

• Remember to reciprocate. The relationship has to be a give-and-take, and you need to be able to give and receive with grace and love.
  
• Your love for him is for the person that he is, not what he can do for you or what you can do for him.
  
• If or when your unfinished business with Mother gets triggered, go back to the healing steps and work on them, fully owning that this is your work to do. If he is interested in working on it with you, he is a “prince” for sure, but it is primarily your job.
  
• Let him know in the very beginning that your trust was impaired in early childhood and that trust is a lifelong recovery issue for you. Continue to work on trust issues without projecting them onto him.
  
• Fight your own dependency needs so that you do not behave in dependent or codependent ways with him.
  
• Interdependency is a must for a healthy relationship.
  
• Keep boundaries around your personal space and encourage him to do the same as well. Allow each other privacy when needed. Whenever this is difficult, discuss it promptly.
  
• Be authentic and yourself at all times.
  
• Take care of yourself physically, emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually. Expect him to do this as well, but know that you cannot control or demand it.
  
• Above all, be accountable for your own feelings and behavior.
  
• If he is ever misguided and tells you that you are acting “just like your mother,” gently tell him never to say that again.
  

You and Your Friends

Choosing and keeping cherished friends can be a challenge for daughters of narcissistic mothers, but many of the keys in healthy relationships discussed above can apply to friends, too, especially reciprocity, dependency, codependency, and boundaries.

Reciprocity is essential to a healthy friendship. There has to be a give-and-take just like in love relationships. This give-and-take does not have to always be at the same moment, but in general there should be a balance. If one friend is always the giver and one friend is always the taker, the relationship is either dependent or codependent. If you happen to be going through a time when you know you cannot be reciprocal due to some life crisis or big project in which you are involved, let your friends know this. Don’t be unfair to yourself and to them and give anyway if you are being drained by your own crisis—inform them and reassure them that you will be back to reciprocating when your crisis is over. The high-achieving daughters have the most difficulty with this, because they are used to being very busy and sometimes do not know how to handle this. They give up friendships because they feel too guilty at not being able to give all the time. This is not necessary with good friends.

Setting boundaries when hurtful things are said to you is important as well. To maintain an authentic friendship, you have to be able to respond to an offensive statement or action with, “That was hurtful to me.” Or, “I would be more comfortable if you did not talk about this or do this right now.” If your friend is alarmed or amazed, then you need to explain yourself and talk it through. Setting clear boundaries and discussing those boundaries are part of being authentic with the people we care about.

Many daughters of narcissistic mothers report that they have difficulty with female friendships. The reason most cited is that women friends are more emotionally draining and have too many unrealistic expectations of the friendship. I believe that this reaction to female friends is a carryover from the narcissistic mother who was entitled, needy, and demanding so much of the time. If a female friend begins to act like this, you may recoil and run for cover before exploring what is really going on. You may not be communicating well enough for the friend to understand your own needs and boundaries, or you may be choosing friends who are similar to your mother. In the latter case, you may need to start exploring new friendships with women who are emotionally strong and whose interests are similar to yours. Find women friends who can add to your life, rather than drain you. Search for female friendships that offer a match to your strength and celebrate your authenticity and passions in life. Too often daughters complain that other women are competitive and jealous, which may be a flashback to their childhood. Make sure that those friendships are not simply triggering an internal collapse before you write them off. But if the women are competitive and jealous—narcissistic—avoid them if possible. Find authentic female friends who celebrate you and allow you to celebrate them. Such women are a celestial gift and very much worth expending the effort to find. Spending time around healthy people is a must.

The Mirror

Chances are you have been assessing yourself as you have read through this book and you may have found some narcissistic traits on which you need to work. Facing them honestly is very important for your recovery to be complete. You don’t have to feel bad about them or “not good enough”—you just need to be accountable. Below is a version of the nine narcissistic traits listed in the
DSM
(
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
)—the same traits you reviewed in regard to your mother. Let’s look at the checklist: