NPD Moms The Engulfing Type with Dr Liz

Transcript

Hi everyone Dr. Liz here and during the series on narcissistic mothers. Okay. This comes from Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers by Carol McBride. And I’m going to put the book right there. Hopefully it’s already shown while I’ve been talking, if I did it properly. So this is a wonderful book that I recommend all the time to clients. I think it’s also good for sons of narcissistic mothers, not just daughters, but it is oriented towards daughters and doing the work there. The first type I’m going to cover is the engulfing mom. Now, this is the mom who tries to control like every aspect of her child’s life. Okay. What they wear, what they look like, how they do their hair, what activities they do. Um, what kind of friends they have, they will often sabotage friendships if they don’t like the other child as the daughter is growing up, okay, this is a classic like dance mom.

Who’s like, you know, controlling every aspect of the child’s dance, training, dance career, all of that. This is also as they grow up into adulthood, the mom who tries to prevent them from dating or the boyfriend or the fiance is never good enough. Like they’re highly critical. Now. There’s probably nothing wrong with the actual person that they’re trying to date. It is more about that your attention is being taken away from the narcissistic mother and they want all your attention. They want you to be available at every step. Now, occasionally you’ll run into one who thinks that, um, who their daughter married is wonderful. Now, remember, narcissistic parents often will split people. Okay? Meaning if there are multiple children in the family, they’ll pick a favorite child. They’ll pick a child that they think is awful. Okay. They will split you as well either you’re totally good or you’re totally bad.

There’s very little in between for them. So sometimes what they’ll do is you’ll become the bad daughter. Who’s always doing everything bad and your husband or wife will become the good wife or the good husband. Okay? And there’s somehow an angel. So that’s very confusing for daughters of narcissistic mothers. Like how is it they like and love my spouse more than me? Okay. Very confusing. So just be aware of that. That has nothing to do with you. It is their own process. Okay. So back to the engulfing mom, let’s see if there’s anything here I missed, um, oh, often if you haven’t done some therapy work about this relationship, then you’ll make decisions according to what you believe to win your mother’s approval and love. Be aware of this. Sometimes this happens where the daughters will say, well, I can’t do that because my mom wouldn’t approve of that. Or I can’t do this because of my mother. Or if I do this, my mother will finally love me. Or if I do this, my mother will finally think I’m wonderful.

Okay. It is a trap. Let me warn you. Okay. It’s a trap. It’s funny. Uh, education was highly valued in my family. Both of my parents had multiple graduate degrees and I am the only child who got a graduate degree. Two of my siblings, one of my siblings didn’t go to college at all. Another one only went for one year. And then my other sister, it took her like 10 years to finish a bachelor’s. And here I was chugging along getting a bachelor’s, getting a master’s, getting a PhD in clinical psychology. And when I finally got my PhD, I thought, oh, I will finally get some space in like the Christmas newsletter that goes out, my mother would send one out every year.

Now I hated this newsletter. Okay. Because it was always, I felt like fake because she’s a narcissistic parent, right. She’s going to do fake stuff. She’s going to make everything look wonderful. Well, the newsletter came out that year and there was a whole paragraph about how wonderful my brother was because he saw her all the time. And there was another paragraph of how wonderful my, uh, two sisters where they each got their own paragraph. And I got one line that year, one line Elizabeth graduated with her PhD. That’s it. Okay. So this is just the classic trap that I’m trying to warn you about. Like you often do these things. Now, I love being a psychologist. Want to say this first? Okay. I am so grateful for my PhD. I always have been, I’ve wanted to be a psychologist since about eighth grade. And then when I finally achieved that, it felt really good for me.

Okay. But I also felt like, oh, finally I will be approved of by my mother. And that was not the case at all. So I just want to warn you about that. It is really more for them about who’s paying attention to them and who’s, um, giving them all kinds of compliments and who’s around the most and who can they control? She controlled my sister’s life. Incredible level of control of my sister’s life for a very long time. So it’s more about that for the engulfing mother and for narcissistic mothers than it is about what you’re actually doing. Okay. So, um, I do work with adult children of narcissistic parents. It is one of my specialties. If you want to see more about me, you can do that over at my website. We’re going to cover another type in the next video. Okay. All right. Talk to you soon. Peace

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Peace and Health,
Dr. Liz