Mothers Who Can't Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters

by Forward, Susan

  SHARON: “Mom got this idea when I was around eight years old that I should be a model. I was a pretty ordinary-looking kid and I knew it, but she had this idea that her daughter should be enough for any modeling agency. I was just along for the ride—I’d never wanted to do anything like that. Through a friend, she got me an appointment with an agency, and one of the associates spent a little time with me and then said, ‘Thanks for coming in. We’ll let you know.’

  “A couple of weeks went by and we didn’t hear anything. Of course, that didn’t sit well with Mom. She called and called, and they finally told her, ‘Sorry, we don’t need anyone right now.’ She went ballistic—and all of a sudden, it was my fault that I wasn’t pretty enough! She started saying things like, ‘Maybe it’s that moon face of yours. Maybe it’s those squinty little eyes.’ I can still hear her saying that, and it’s been so many years… . I remember how I practiced in front of the mirror to keep my eyes open wide when I smiled.”

  Sharon, like every daughter of a severely narcissistic mother, couldn’t possibly meet her mother’s expectations, something her mother never let her forget.

  SHARON: “I know that her mother was horrible to her and that was the excuse for years of humiliating me. She obviously was so disappointed in me in almost all ways. She used every opportunity to pick on me when I got older. I just couldn’t make her happy. I got an award in math one year, and all she could tell people was that she’d done all my homework and I never would’ve made it without her help. She would say ‘Good job’ to me once in a while, but I could tell she didn’t believe it. She thought she was better than I’d ever be. I could see that, and I couldn’t figure out how to make her proud of me.”

  As she repeatedly makes herself feel powerful with criticism that makes you feel bad, damaged, and small, the severely narcissistic mother is teaching you to aim low and keep your head down. You become afraid to try, and expect to be shot down if you do.

  Sharon was very bright, and she’d worked hard to get an MBA, but her mother, who was a bookkeeper, did everything she could to discourage her, saying, “I don’t think you’re cut out to be a businesswoman.” Sharon held her self-doubts at bay all the way through her degree program, but she couldn’t bring herself to take the next step and go for a job in the field that interested her the most: banking.

  SHARON: “It was a big deal for me to go for an advanced degree, and I was proud of myself for doing it. But I was so panicky about screwing up interviews at large firms that I only applied to a couple of small places. I got two rejections, and that was it. I really don’t need that kind of stress and scrutiny. I couldn’t handle anxiety, so I wound up getting a job at a bookstore for a while. I’d rather be doing what I’m doing now than deal with that kind of rejection. I proved to myself what I could do by getting the degree.”

  Sharon’s mother had done such a thorough job of destroying her confidence that Sharon’s natural interview nerves quickly spiraled into panic, and she persuaded herself that it was a sign she wasn’t meant to advance. Her mother’s constant theme—you’re not good enough—replayed and escalated in her head until the only way to escape it was to shut down. So that’s what she did.

  Not for the first time, Sharon surrendered to the overriding sense of worthlessness that her mother had instilled in her, and let it shape her life.

  When the “Bad Mother”

  Was Once a Good One

  The less secure a severely narcissistic mother feels, the more extreme her drama, anger, and attempts to feel superior are likely to be. But there are times—often when she’s gotten what she wants, when she’s feeling confident, or when she doesn’t sense an imminent challenge from you—that her behavior calms. She doesn’t need the Three D’s, and she doesn’t need to criticize.

  During those stretches, she seems like a much different person—kinder, more supportive. Some daughters rarely see their narcissistic mother’s good side. But some are haunted by the contrast between their “good mother” and their “bad mother” because they may have had long stretches of positive mothering, most likely when they were young. It’s a common pattern: A narcissistic mother with relatively few stresses in her life and loads of adulation from her young daughter envelops the girl in her world, embracing the role of teacher and idol. But as her daughter gets older, the mother begins to see her as a rival, setting off a pattern of criticism, competition, and jealousy that continues through adulthood. When triggered by her daughter’s emerging womanhood, the mother’s insecurities about being overtaken only occasionally recede, and the habitual behaviors we’ve seen from the narcissists in this chapter become commonplace.

  Daughters are tormented by memories of the “good mother” because once she’s no longer a regular presence, it’s hard to turn their mother’s intermittent affection into something lasting, or recapture the closeness that once flowed so freely between them. But they twist their lives into pretzels trying.

  Jan: Once Her Daughter, Now Her Rival

  Jan, a thirty-three-year-old actress, supports herself with commercials and sporadic acting jobs, along with a small inheritance from her father. She is a very pretty young woman with ash blond hair, but I couldn’t help noticing the dark circles under her large green eyes. She fidgeted with her bracelet as she sat across from me. After getting some background information, I asked Jan how I could help her.

  JAN: “I’m a mess. I just got my first big break, a second lead on a series, but since I found out I’ve been so anxious, I’ve been eating to calm down, and I’ve gained seven pounds. My fingernails are gone. I can’t sleep. The director said to me, ‘What the hell is going on?’ He told me I’ve got to knock off some weight. My friend Anna says I’m sabotaging myself. I have to get it together.”

  Clearly there was some self-sabotage going on, and to get a fix on it, I asked Jan if she could give voice to the anxiety she was feeling by focusing on the fears and thoughts that were keeping her on edge. What did they sound like?

  She thought for a moment.

  JAN: “It’s like: ‘Who do you think you are? You’re not that pretty, you can’t get into any of your clothes and you’re a screwup. You’re going to blow this job.’ ”

  That kind of critical inner commentary doesn’t spring full blown as the voice of truth in a woman’s head, and when I asked Jan if someone close to her regularly doled out criticism, it didn’t take long for her to come up with an answer.

  JAN: “Well… . My mom’s not the most supportive person in the world. I invited her to watch one of our rehearsals—I thought she’d get a kick out of that. When it was over, I asked her how she thought it went, and she said it looked like a good show. But then she looks at me and goes, ‘Look, honey, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you’re no Meryl Streep.’ It’s the weirdest thing, because she says stuff like that a lot now, but she was so great when I was a kid. In fact, she’s the one who encouraged me to become an actress. When I was young, like seven or eight, she used to take me to see plays, and not just little-kid stuff, and that’s when I fell in love with acting. Those were my special days. I was so happy that my mom wanted to share what she loved with me—she’d done a little acting when she was young, and I wanted to be just like her. I idolized her. But then she changed. When I got a little older … it’s like I lost her.”

  Many clients have told me of having wonderful times with their mothers when they were little, days full of hugs and laughter. And they’ve puzzled over how dramatically that ended when they reached adolescence. It’s a crushing turnabout: You had a mother for a while, but suddenly you don’t—and you wonder what the heck you did to lose her. Actually, it’s simple: You stopped being an awkward, flat-chested girl and became a threat to her as a woman.

  As we talked, Jan found that she could trace the change in her relationship with her mother back to high school.

  JAN: “Mom started trying to be friends with my friends and my first boyfriends, and not in a mom kind of way. I noticed how she
would put on lipstick before they came over, and hang out in the kitchen with us. She would act as if they were her friends and try to buddy up with them. And she would make snide little jokes about me, as if they were her pals and she felt sorry for them for having to be with me. When I got older, I really thought about not having my dates pick me up at home because my mother was so overtly seductive with them. She would wear revealing blouses and stand way too close to them, reeking of perfume. Once, when we were in the kitchen fixing coffee for one of my dates, she whispered, ‘I could tell he would really rather be going out with me.’ ”

  Suddenly the roles and boundaries between mother and daughter were blurred and bewildering. The competitive mother had gotten into the arena and put on the boxing gloves. Jan told me that the rivalry only got more pointed as she got older.

  JAN: “I remember once when I was about seventeen—I know now that I was pretty and smart, but I was also very insecure. A boy I was crazy about had just broken up with me, and I was devastated. We were on one of those awful family vacations at some dude ranch—and I couldn’t ride worth a damn. My parents and sister wanted to go out on a trail, and I went along, too. I didn’t want to look like a killjoy. I was miserable and bouncing all over the place. When we got back, I sat on the porch of our bungalow feeling really rotten. My mother came over and sat by me on the steps. She got an almost kindly look on her face and I thought, ‘She knows how much I’m hurting—maybe she’s actually going to say something comforting to me.’ But after a minute she sighed and said, ‘You know, dear, let’s face it. You’ll never be the athlete I am. You’ll never be the rider I am, and you’ll never be the woman I am.’ ”

  Where could a remark like that come from? Jan’s mother, Pam, as I learned, was dissatisfied with her marriage, and her early ambition to be an actress had ended in frustration. So she seized the opportunity to zero in on Jan’s vulnerability. That way she could momentarily feel superior and assuage her own insecurities.

  For Jan, as for all daughters who find they’ve activated their mother’s competitive side when they need to be soothed and loved, the experience was shattering.

  JAN: “I was so hurt and bewildered. I kept asking myself, ‘What did I say? What did I do? What’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t she love me anymore?’ And those words of hers. I can still hear them… . I just wanted to curl up in a little ball and disappear.”

  Jan kept pursuing her acting, first in school plays, then in community theater and small professional jobs in television, sure her mother would be elated and that she’d win her back. But the response was almost always the same: criticisms and slights instead of encouragement. The woman who had once been her biggest fan now said things like, “I’d love to help you with your lines, honey, but I get so impatient with your stumbling. I always thought you had my good memory, but I guess not… .” The message was loud and clear: Anything you can do, I can do better.

  JAN: “The implication was that I could never measure up, and it really hurt, because I thought this was something we could share. I was so confused. She created this huge desire in me to be an actress, and then when I actually went for it, it was like she didn’t like it because I was challenging her or something. It’s pretty much been like that ever since.”

  WHAT’S BENEATH HER NEED TO COMPETE: EMPTINESS

  Reasonably healthy, fulfilled women don’t have the need to compete for their adolescent daughters’ boyfriends or squash their fledgling attempts to try out their passions and take risky first steps toward becoming the kinds of women they want to be. They see their girls in the most vulnerable and self-conscious time of their lives, remember their own stumbles, and try to ease the way.

  Narcissistic mothers like Jan’s can’t connect with that sense of compassion, not only because of their insecurities but also because at their core they have a terrible sense of deprivation, an insatiable hunger that makes them believe there will never be enough for them, and that anyone else’s gain—even their own young daughters’—will keep them from adequately filling the hole inside. In some ways, they’re like the “hungry ghosts” described in Asian culture: creatures with enormous stomachs that ache to be filled, but minuscule mouths and narrow throats that leave them feeling perpetually empty. That’s a good picture of the insatiable hunger of these mothers, who greedily grab all they can, from anyone they sense is cutting into their supply of men, money, respect, affection. Whenever they sense you as a competitor, you become a constant spur to their longing.

  Where does this distorted sense of “not enough” come from? The likeliest answer is competition and a sense of scarcity in the mother’s own background. She may have had a competitive mother herself, and grown up with the disorienting sense that she couldn’t get or be what she wanted without somehow depriving her mother, or fighting her off. Or she may have come from a family in which there was intense sibling rivalry, a setting in which she had to compete with her brothers and sisters, cousins, or extended family members for love and goodies.

  This emptiness and fear of deprivation are often well hidden under a seemingly confident exterior as she explains her sometimes desperate grabs for what she wants with the narcissist’s typical rationale that “I deserve it because I’m superior.” It’s a claim that can’t stand scrutiny—and it would be more accurately stated as “I deserve it because I need to feel superior”—but this mother isn’t likely to spend much time scrutinizing her own motives or questioning her assumptions.

  YOU ABSORB HER AMBIVALENCE ABOUT YOUR SUCCESS

  A daughter like Jan reaches adulthood having been steeped in the ambivalence and envy that her mother offers her in place of encouragement and support. She was lucky enough to receive praise when she was young, but she becomes mistrustful of it when she’s older, because she’s seen how often it’s followed by put-downs. And she internalizes her mother’s puzzling “go for it—but don’t get your hopes up; you’re not good enough” attitude.

  JAN: “I’ll never forget getting my first commercial. I was so excited I was telling everyone about it. I made the mistake of inviting my mom to dinner to tell her the good news, and as soon as I did she says, ‘That sounds wonderful, dear, but don’t expect too much to come of this—you’re just not that photogenic.’ I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about Mom, though—she’s got her good side, too. As soon as she tells me how bad I look on camera and lets that sink in, she does a complete one-eighty and says, ‘But come on, we’ll fix you up.’ She pulls out her car keys and goes, ‘I saw a sweater at Nordstrom that will bring out the green in your eyes. That’ll get their attention.’ And she buys me these amazing clothes. I don’t know what it is with her.”

  Despite her cuts and snipes, the narcissistic mother sometimes does seem to want you to get what you’re after. Her gifts may come with barbs (“Let’s fix you up”), but she occasionally offers them, perhaps because she wants to return to the teacher/idol role she enjoyed when you were little. And at least momentarily, she enjoys the reflected glory of your success. After all, she’s your mother, and she can take some credit—even most!—for your accomplishments. Your success is also often a screen onto which she can project her fantasies about being young, desirable, capable, and talented.

  “It sounds like you’re getting a lot of conflicting messages from your mother,” I told her. “It’s like: ‘I’ll help you go for it so I can live vicariously through what you’re doing, but please fail or let me overshadow you so I can feel better about myself.’ ”

  JAN: “Oh my God, that’s exactly like my mom. I can see she’s yearning to be doing what I’m doing, and she wants to help me make it. She thinks it’s glamorous and exciting. But at the same time, she doesn’t want me to do well or ever have a special moment of my own. I think it makes her feel like a loser. It’s bizarre. She puts me down, but she envies me.”

  For Jan, the intermittent generosity from her mother helped drive the self-defeating hesitation she brought to her work. If she did well at an audition
, she’d please the mother who bought her expensive clothes—the one who seemed so much like the good mother who’d encouraged her when she was young. But any real success would trigger her mother’s jealousy, and all its repercussions. An adult daughter who longs for renewed closeness with her narcissistic mother frequently considers such alternatives and stalls at the threshold, clueless as to why she’s procrastinating on a high-profile project or putting on weight on the eve of an important appearance. The process isn’t rational, and for the most part, it’s not conscious. What you experience is the push-pull sense of wanting to succeed but being held back by some mysterious force, which is often a deep sense of guilt. Your mother has taught you that you can’t, and shouldn’t, go for what you want. You’ve learned her most important lesson: Don’t outshine your mother.

  SHE FANS THE ENVY IN YOUR FAMILY, AND IN YOU

  Another all too common effect of growing up surrounded by so much jealousy is feeling jealous yourself. Often daughters absorb their mothers’ bottomless hunger for what other people have, and take up the envy baton that’s been quietly passed to them:

  JAN: “I was boy crazy from the time I was about fourteen. I turned to boys to get out of the house—I kind of found myself through my relationships. But if there was a time when I didn’t have a boyfriend and some of my girlfriends did, I would feel angry and depressed. It was like how dare they have what I need so much. It can still happen if I don’t have a guy and one of my friends does.”

  Jan told me that her mother actively fans those sparks of jealousy even now by comparing her with other people.