I was perusing Dr. Karyl McBride's blog (she is the author of the book "Will I Ever Be Good Enough" about daughters of narcissistic mothers) today and ran across this article. This is an issue that has colored an awful lot of my relationship with my mother. It was really baffling having this dynamic as I was growing up and I had the sense a lot of times that she was jealous of me, but then I would think, "Who do you think you are? You think you are THAT great?!!" because it just didn't make sense. Now on hindsight and understanding the narcissistic angle, it makes sense. It's still strange to me and so, so sad. It hurts a LOT during your grownup years to have a mother that on one hand put an incredible amount of pressure on to be a performer and make a good impression, yet have that same mother tear you down when you do have successes. There are a lot of things that I can bring up in regards to this, but I mostly wanted to share the link for others to have access to here.
I will say this: I've come to understand over the past year that my mother was jealous of me, even as a tiny little girl. She wanted to be everything to my dad and when I was born and she saw how much he adored me, she was jealous. To her, I was taking something away that was hers. I think it is very possible that she felt pressure from my dad to get pregnant when she did, and I don't think she was emotionally ready (maybe she never would have been truly ready, I don't know). As I've mentioned before, I am the first child. I was born a little over a year after they were married. I've heard the story many times that my dad would come home from work to find her playing with her dolls and he said, "You need a baby." I don't think he meant it in a mean way; he probably thought it was cute and that a baby would fulfill whatever need was associated with her playing with dolls. I have had a really strong sense, more than once, that when I was born she saw me as competition for his affections. I think this affected not only the way she treated me, but how my dad responded to me. He probably felt like he needed to reign in how much affection he showed if she lashed out at him. I also have a memory of her smothering me with a pillow when I was very small. I don't know what induced the rage, but I have had the sense that when she snapped out of it and came to a realization of what she was doing she realized that if my dad knew he wouldn't want anything to do with her. So I believe that other than jealousy, there was also this thing where every time she looked at me she saw her guilt. She used to say weird things to me as I was growing up, like babies have no memory; you can do anything to them and it just hurts for a minute and then they forget. I can't help but wonder if that was a kind of reinforcement for me to not remember the incident.
There are quite a few things in this vein that will probably come out in future posts, so I won't ramble on and make a list of jealousies here. Here is the link to Dr. McBride's article:
Mothers Who are Jealous of Their Daughters
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