http://psychcentral.com/lib/2010/will-i-ever-be-good-enough-healing-the-daughters-of-narcissistic-mothers/:
The daughters of narcissistic mothers have been raised by primary role models who lack the fundamentals of mothering.
Conditioned to care for their mothers rather than the reverse, these women suppress their identities at their own peril.
[...]“A narcissistic mother sees her daughter, more than her son, as a reflection and extension of herself rather than as a separate person with her own identity.”
[...]
Maternal narcissism and its attendant envy derail any genuine mother-daughter bond and short-circuit a daughter’s ability to become an independent, confident woman.
Not only is much expected of these daughters, but their attempts to meet those exectations go unrewarded at best and are punished at worst.
McBride also connects maternal and societal narcissism. “In some middle- and upper-middle-class families, it was customary for a girl to receive a car for her sixteenth birthday. Now, in many circles, the coming-of-age gift is a breast implant.” When combined with society’s glorification of motherhood, such emphasis on appearance further fuels the pain caused by this disorder, turning daughters into objects.
I was particularly struck by her observation of bumper stickers that extol achievement alone. She asks, “Where are the bumper stickers that say ‘My kid has a big heart,’ ‘My kid is honest,’ ‘My kid is kind’?”
Growing up with a narcissistic mother makes women high-achievers or self-sabotagers, though McBride points out that all such daughters sabotage themselves.
The motivations of these two types are not mutually exclusive but stem from a common denominator: “Both have internalized the message that they are valued for what they do, rather than for who they are.” In this way, learned responses, such as dependent and codependent behaviors, can swap places or act in combination with each other.
This flexibility forms an important backbone to the book. McBride illustrates the many ways in which damage from maternal narcissism can manifest and can change to fit different circumstances.
She makes sense of behaviors that often seem crazy-making and contradictory, tracing them to a daughter’s underlying belief system that
love means “pleasing another with no return for herself.”
The parental hierarchy and boundaries one finds in a healthy family are missing in a family where everyone revolves around a narcissistic mother. Furthermore, that dynamic is kept secret because how something looks is treated as more important than how it feels. Daughters raised in an environment lacking unconditional love, empathy, and security seek to fill that void however they can.
[...]she emphasizes that the mother’s diminished parenting ability did not occur in a vacuum.
“[O]ur mothers weren’t born this way. They most likely faced insurmountable barriers to love and empathy when they were children.” Moving forward in recovery depends on accepting the mother’s limitations and grieving the love she could not give. This forms a crucial step, not least because the daughters of narcissistic mothers blame themselves for the love they did not receive.
These daughters must separate themselves from the mothers with whom they’d been entangled. They must learn to set the boundaries denied them in childhood. They must, in fact, learn to mother themselves, building their strength and self-confidence from the inside.
Often called “the sensitive one,” the daughters of narcissistic mothers are more prone to what McBride calls “the collapse,” reliving childhood wounds cued by external situations.
By using an “internal mother” who replaces negative messages with positive ones, daughters can learn to draw on their own best instincts to give themselves the validation they’d grown up craving.
They can then draw on this inner strength when dealing with their mothers, their partners, and their children. [...]daughters discover their own wants and needs[...]
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