After working within a toxic work environment and coming to encounter a hiring manager who very much reminded me of my narcissist mother, I’d say that those constant reminders of her sent me into times of grief over a relationship that never was with her. I’d even say the relationship I never had with my mother may not have even been possible, whether due to my mother’s narcissism and possible autism, or both.
It’s painful to realize that even if my mother could have related to me in some way, her narcissistic tendencies made it impossible. Currently, I am no contact with my mother and have been for close to 8 years. I can’t even tell anyone what she looks like. I haven’t seen her physically in that long even though I’ve had very sporadic surprise phone contacts with her in that time because of mishaps when talking to my brother on the phone and he’d put her on the phone to greet me.
Needless to say, I believe that no contact was necessary for my self-preservation. My mother, although most likely autistic, was narcissistically abusive towards me for the bulk of my childhood and adulthood life. Although I wish things could have been different, there was no chance at that if the person causing the abuse doesn’t want to or have any intention of self-reflecting on their negative behaviors in an effort to change. My mother is pretty set in her ways, restrictive even, and her adage is always to stop bringing up and living in the past.
My mother has taken no accountability for her part in the breakdown (or lack of) of our relationship whatsoever, but I’m always the one who looks like the villain of the story because I’m the one who’s no longer on speaking terms. However, I do acknowledge the depth of what was lost, and it wasn’t just a mother-daughter relationship. We both lost the possibility of understanding and mutual recognition that never happened. Since she’ll never admit to her being a problem, I highly doubt we’ll ever have the opportunity to discuss how we are so similar in some ways but yet so very different in others.
The one thing that I’ve learned that I must face as an offspring of narcissistic parents is that I was groomed in very cultish ways. For many years, I mirrored what was expected of me by my parents, and I formed my identity based on what I was taught. Although I was the black sheep of the family, the one who questioned absolutely everything with “whys” and “how comes”, I wasn’t alone in this behavior. All of my siblings at one time would question things just as much as I did, but I was more of the rebel and the one to stand apart and often alone.
Frankly, it’s odd that my dad would teach my siblings and me to think for ourselves and question all things while ultimately taking this ability away from us when we were children. It felt soul-crushing at the most, and spirit-crushing at its worst. We were ultimately prisoners living out a family cult life, and the only way to escape was to get away from it by physically relocating ourselves in an effort to deprogram from the madness.
Currently, the really deep realization for me is that I’m still making sense of so much about my mother and now processing it all from multiple angles. I feel like I’m seeing my mother through a more complex, human lens—not just as the narcissistic parent who hurt me, but as someone who might have been struggling in ways she didn’t even understand, much like I have at times, when it comes to neurodivergence.
I don’t recall any time that my mother may have been selectively mute, but I do recall times when I sat with who I believed to be her ‘real’ authentic self. Those rare times were when she attempted to reach out to me, but I was mute and couldn’t speak to her even if I wanted to do so. So, our only way to connect in some form was for us both to sit in silence as she attempted to make conversation that I was too frozen to respond to at the time.
Now that I look back on those moments of sitting in absolute silence with my mother, the feeling I had was odd. I actually felt safe with her, even if the silence was awkward. I always took note that my mother didn’t judge me for my silence. She seemed to instinctively know it because I’d always been a quiet child. Yet, this silence was muteness that I had no control over, and somehow, I felt that she understood even if she may not have truly understood on the surface.
My mother didn’t ridicule me for being mute. In those moments, she seemed to understand my need for silence and solitude. In some way, I wonder if she knew that I was more like her than she wanted to admit to herself or to me. I look back and realize that in that silence there was an odd connection that she most likely related to – something I didn’t comprehend at the time.
In fact, when I’d travel from the state in which I lived to her home state, I’d be able to tolerate sitting with her for an hour if I could maintain that silence until I was comfortable enough to speak. Interestingly, she’d actually allow it, and never once would she speak on my muteness. In fact, she never had as if she knew that muteness is very much a part of me. We’d just sit awkwardly together, but it was okay, even if to an outsider it seemed strange.
Unlike with my dad, however, I would have that time of muteness with him when he tried to connect with me as well, but I always felt as if things were forced between us. The atmosphere felt charged with anxiety. I always felt as if he tried to push me to talk without understanding that I absolutely couldn’t make any words come out of my mouth even if I wanted to do so. I felt like he judged my silence as weird or like something was wrong with me. Sometimes I felt that he was even ashamed of me because of it even though I was powerless to speak on my own behalf.
Interestly, I never felt that overbearing judgment, shame, or fear of judgment with my mother. I felt like my silence was something she very well understood, but I just didn’t know when her false, narcissistic self, would ever use that against me. I would often have to brace myself around her, especially if anyone else was present. I’d know only by her tone, voice change, and what I saw appear in her eyes if I was going to be safe to be my authentic self. Yet, those rare times, I could be me with her more than I could be me with my dad, and I’ve always found this to be a paradox within itself considering she’s a narcissist!
I think sometimes that maybe I feel like I’m missing out on my mother, especially in her latter years of age. This is when I realize that life is so incredibly short. However, I know that missing her doesn’t erase the harm she caused, and seeing her possible struggles doesn’t mean I have to let down my boundaries. I still need to protect my well-being, and contrary to what I may feel in the moment, my mother is proven over and over again that she’s not an overall ‘safe’ person for me right now. In fact, as the years have progressed, she seems to me less safe than she ever has been and a lot more narcissistic. i
I think the realization of working in such a toxic atmosphere on the previous job I let go of brought me to an understanding about autism more and has given me new insights into both myself and my mother. I think that overtime, how I feel about a lot of things may shift, but the truth of what happened in the past is still what happened, and that doesn’t change. Yet, knowing what was going on with my mother then outside of narcissism will definitely shift my perspective about how she navigated life as a mother with two contradictory disorders at the same time.
Life is short, and that thought can bring up a lot of emotions—grief, longing, regret, even compassion. I realize that I’m evolving in how I see things, but that doesn’t mean I have to rush any decisions. I’m just going to let myself feel what I feel.
Stay tuned for more in the next post …
My Voice Unchained 