NPD Moms – The Flamboyant Extrovert with Dr Liz

Transcript

Hi Dr. Liz here. And this is part of this series about narcissistic mothers from the book: Will I Ever Be Good Enough, Healing The Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers by Carol McBride. An excellent book that I recommend. I am a specialist in working with adult children of narcissistic parents. So this is what’s motivating this series, is helping you if you’re a grown-up, an adult child of a narcissistic parent. So let’s talk about the different types. I did a series on engulfing and ignoring, and those are two major splits, right? Like typically moms fit into one of those two categories and then Carol McBride identifies six different types. So they’ll fit into those two broad categories, but these are a little more specific. And the one I’m talking about today is the flamboyant extrovert. Now this is like the showtime mom, right? The one who’s completely focused on the outside world to the detriment of anyone in her home, like the children in her home, pretty much getting ignored or they’re seen as a reflection of her.

Okay. So this is the mom who is aging and obsessed with how she looks okay. These days, this is a mom getting plastic surgery because she can’t handle aging. Um, this is the mom who is even like inappropriate to her age. Okay. So dressing in whatever is the style, even though that’s really made for someone who’s like 20 years old or something. Okay. They’re very flamboyant, often. Sometimes they legitimately had careers in show business and, um, perhaps had some significant accomplishments or singers or dancers or all of this, but they also live in that time. So they will construct their lives to be the one that’s the center of attention. Like even when let’s say that that’s no longer their careers, no longer relevant, they’re still making an entrance somewhere. You know, making sure they make an entrance somewhere. So all the attention is put on them.

And the child is generally ignored, or seen as like an accessory to them. So they’ll even sometimes dress their children as accessories of when their children are smaller and allow that, as that child begins to grow up and naturally want to develop her own sense of style and own sense of personhood. This mom often will try to control that as well or say like, you have to look a certain way because you reflect on me. So that’s detrimental to children in general, saying you reflect on me. People, children have their own separate sense of self. And the more as a parent, you can acknowledge that and encourage that and not get into my child or flex on me, the better you’re going to do as a parent to FYI. But this mom doesn’t do that. The child reflects on her. And it is often, um, a narcissistic type of statement that they make.

Meaning that one of the examples she gives in the book is that a mom would always say, “Oh, I’m so glad your friends got to meet me,” versus like, “I got to meet your friends.” So that’s sort of a, a typical phrase, a mom like this will make, I’m so glad that so-and-so saw me or I’m so glad this happened to me without real consideration of other people. And certainly, um, not their own people, their own beloved children in their homes who should be beloved and don’t feel beloved in their homes. So this is also the mom, I think these days obsessed with social media, right? Like everything is about the posts that she’s making, whether that’s Instagram or Facebook, or, um, it’ll always be showy.

Like perhaps they went paddleboarding and they only went paddleboarding for five or 10 minutes or something because they’re older. And I don’t know, there’s not a whole lot of like, 70-year-olds who want to paddleboard, I live in Florida, even here. It’s a, it’s a pretty rigorous sport. Let’s say to stand on a paddleboard for hours out in the hot sun, all of that anyway. So they’ll take the shot, they’ll take the picture to be able to post it and look like they’re doing something when they didn’t actually do it. Or maybe they just posed for that or something like that. Now people post stuff that they do all the time. Okay. And I’m not knocking that. I’m saying this is a mom who is constructing a whole story around that. That’s not true. So they’re often, the children will say, my mom lies all the time about what she’s doing or who she is or all of this. It’s confusing to the child. And it’s also creates a sense of, um, can I trust my mother or she wants me just to be part of that story and it’s not even honest, so I don’t want to be a part of that story. It creates conflict there and the child. So be aware of that. Okay.

I hope that helps you figure out, um, what kind of mother you have if you have a narcissistic mother. Okay. This is a whole series. So you can look for the different types. You can always get free stuff over at my website. If you want to find out more about me. It’s Dr. Liz hypnosis.com, drlizhypnosis.com. And I do quite a bit of talk therapy as well. I also run the anxiety center Hollywood, so have a wonderful day.

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Peace and Health,
Dr. Liz