You're Not Crazy - It's Your Mother by Danu Morrigan Read Free Book Online

that I was folding the real me away, and what went to see her was a cardboard cut-out that looked like me, but it was not, in any real sense, me. The real me was totally surplus to requirements.
    Once, in an experiment, I sat and listened to my mother without giving any response cues at all. I just sat and stared at her. She began talking about a holiday she and my father had just been on, even though they had both had already spent a good hour or so telling me about it. But no matter, she spoke again about it. And no word of exaggeration as I timed it on the oven clock, but she spoke solidly for forty full minutes, with zero encouragement from me, about a holiday she had literally just told me all about.
She’s a master of projection.
    'Projection' in this context means the psychological tendency to see one's undesirable traits in another. And narcissists cannot, of course, bear to own their undesirable traits, so they have to get rid of them, so to speak, as soon as possible. So they hand them to the nearest recipient who'll take them. And their children are of course very handy for this, as they unquestioningly believe their parents.
    So they’ll accuse you of being what they dimly realise they are being, but they cannot cope with the pain of that, so they’ll project it on to you.
    Calling you over-sensitive when it’s actually they who are over-sensitive is one such example. Calling you selfish. Telling you that you can’t tell truth from reality. And so it goes.
    The scary thing is that, of course, we believe it when we hear it. As children, we’re programmed to believe our parents, and so we grow up thinking we are selfish and greedy and all the bad things she accuses us of. It’s more of the head-wreckingness. And of course, when she says we can’t tell truth from reality, the evidence is there as we remember things differently to her. Truly, what chance have we, as little children, got against this?
She probably mismanaged your appearance.
    When you’re a child, your appearance, hair, cleanliness, and clothing will all be impacted by the whims and needs of your narcissistic mother.
    If she’s an Ignoring Mother then your appearance will most likely be neglected. This was so in my case. I was, frankly, dirty, although I am mortally embarrassed to write this. My long thick hair was mostly unbrushed and tangled. In fact the only times I remember my mother touching me in my childhood was on the rare occasions she brushed my hair to get the tangles out, and it was a time of great fury and frustration and rage at me for the state of my hair, and great pain for me as she tugged mercilessly. But this was at an age, maybe 8 or 9, when I truly should not, could not, have been responsible for its upkeep, especially since I was never taught self-care. I also remember wearing the same vest for months upon months until it was literally grey. I had tide marks around my neck and ears. I remember aged 12 wearing slippers to school because I had no shoes. We weren’t rich, but we had money for shoes. Noone had noticed my shoes were unwearable, and I, for some reason, did not say.
    Other Narcissistic Mothers proactively make their daughters ugly, fearing the competition. Shelly recalls how her mother insisted on her having a boy’s haircut, and how she hated it and pleaded and begged to be allowed to grow it, but was forbidden. Others are bought the most hideous clothes, designed to do the opposite of flatter.  This form of the abuse can often kick in, not surprisingly, at the time of the daughter’s puberty, but it can also be life-long.
    Still others, however, dress their daughters perfectly. Too perfectly perhaps. They dress them like little dolls. Not surprisingly it’s often Engulfing Mothers who do this. These daughters are put into overly pretty dresses, their hair tortured into complex styles, and they are never allowed to wear shorts and climb trees.
    Others are dressed very well, and even appropriately, but