Dealing with a Toxic Narcissistic Mother: Strategies for Self-Care and Boundaries

Engage in activities that bring you joy, practice mindfulness or meditation, ensure adequate rest, and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Self-care helps replenish your energy and resilience in coping with the challenges posed by a narcissistic mother. Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) are closely linked and can occur together as a dual diagnosis. NPD increases the risk of alcohol abuse as a means to escape difficult emotions.

While diagnosis and treatment can be challenging, studies have shown that the successful treatment of a mental illness can lead to alcohol recovery in two out of every three cases. For this reason, mental health professionals will routinely screen for substance abuse when diagnosing a personality disorder or screen for behavioral concerns when a person has a substance abuse disorder. By establishing and upholding healthy boundaries with your narcissistic mother, you prioritize your mental health and create a more sustainable relationship dynamic.

Seeking Support and Therapy

1. She may fail to provide her daughters with the proper education concerning sex and their growing bodies.
2. We derive our initial sense of our self-worth from how she cares for us, nurtures us, protects and shields us from harm.
3. Friends, mentors, or other trusted individuals can provide a sense of community and reinforce your self-worth.
4. For NPD, it may involve individual or group counseling using cognitive behavioral therapy, schema-focused therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy.
5. You can also find narcissist abuse support groups, both online or in-person, through organizations like Help Within Reach.
6. Surround yourself with individuals who uplift and validate you, offering emotional support and encouragement.

Identifying narcissistic behaviors in your mother involves recognizing traits like constant need for admiration, lack of empathy, sense of entitlement, and manipulation to get what she wants. When you grow up in a home with one or more alcoholic parents, the impact of the dysfunction reverberates throughout your life. Mind Psychiatrist provides educational articles on psychology, personality, and narcissism. Explore our content for valuable insights and mental health information. In more severe cases, reducing or limiting contact with your toxic narcissistic mother may be the best option for your emotional well-being.

We derive our initial sense of our self-worth from how she cares for us, nurtures us, protects and shields us from harm. By educating yourself, you can also educate them about what AUD and NPD are about. You can take them with you to your next appointment to talk with your healthcare provider. Reach out to loved ones you trust who can walk with you through the recovery journal. Treating each condition independently can sometimes lead people to “choose one over the other,” especially if care is not coordinated. Similarly, using alcohol doesn’t mean a person with NPD has AUD, even if there have been incidents of extreme intoxication.

When there are good sobriety gifts things so awful that they can’t be talked about, you feel there is something awful about you and that you’ll be judged and cast away. When you feel unworthy, you cant love yourself and you cant let others love you either. It’s natural to close off your heart as a form of self-protection. You hold back emotionally and will only reveal so much of your true self. This limits the amount of intimacy you can have with your partner and can leave you feeling disconnected. A 2020 study suggests that you can develop mental and physical health conditions as a result of childhood adversity.

Therapy can empower you to set boundaries, build self-esteem, and prioritize your emotional well-being. Dealing with a toxic narcissistic mother can be emotionally draining. Remember, setting boundaries and prioritizing self-care are crucial. Seeking support, whether through therapy or support groups, can significantly benefit your well-being.

All personality and substance abuse disorders are diagnosed based on a strict set of criteria described in the DSM-5. While there is room for interpretation, a person with NPD and/or AUD must meet a minimum standard before a diagnosis can be delivered with confidence. Making a dual diagnosis of NPD and AUD can be challenging and something that only a qualified mental health professional can make. Alcohol use disorder is a type of substance abuse disorder where a person cannot control or stop their alcohol use.

Establishing clear boundaries is essential in protecting your emotional health. It’s vital to define what behavior is acceptable to you and communicate these boundaries assertively. For example, you can limit interactions or conversations that trigger negative emotions and establish consequences if your boundaries are not respected. Remember, setting boundaries is a form of self-respect, not selfishness. Do you ever feel like you’re walking on eggshells around your own mother, never knowing what might set her off? drinker nose Living with a narcissistic mother can be emotionally draining, leaving you feeling constantly criticized and undervalued.

Accepting verbal abuse and manipulation in relationships

External messages that you’re bad, crazy, and unlovable become internalized. You’re incredibly hard on yourself and struggle to forgive or love yourself. During childhood, you came to believe that you’re fundamentally flawed, and the cause of the family dysfunction.

Coping Strategies

Building a support network outside of your immediate family circle is essential. Surround yourself with individuals who uplift and validate you, offering emotional support and encouragement. Friends, mentors, or other trusted individuals can provide a sense of community and reinforce your self-worth. By recognizing these behaviors, you can begin to address and navigate your relationship with your narcissistic mother effectively.

Because as a child life felt out of control and unpredictable, as an adult you try to control everyone and everything that feels out of control (which is a lot). You struggle to express yourself, subconsciously remembering how unsafe it was to speak up in your family. What toxic parentsallhave in common is their inability to provide their children with a safe, nurturing, and loving environment. If they are narcissistically abusive, they are without empathy and sometimes even conscience.

Additional articles about codependency and Adult Children of Alcoholics that you may find helpful:

She shames her children for not accomplishing enough academically, socially, professionally and personally. She shames them for their choice of career, partner, friends, lifestyle, their manner of dress, their personality, their preferences – all of these and more come under the scrutiny of the narcissistic mother. She shames her children for acting with any sense of agency because it threatens her sense of control and power.

This type of ruthless behavior has a damaging impact on our early development as well as the way we navigate the world as adults. An abusive, narcissistic mother sets up her daughters and sons for inevitable danger due to the nature of her disorder. Most of the adult children of alcoholics who I know underestimate the effects of being raised in an alcoholic family. More likelyits shame and simply twelve steps of alcoholics anonymous not knowingthat adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs), as a group, tend to struggle with a particular set of issues. Seek external support through therapy options like support groups, individual therapy, and family therapy to cope with the challenges posed by a narcissistic mother.

What It’s Like to Have a Narcissistic Partner: Traits, Red Flags, and Coping Strategies

Be firm in upholding your boundaries, even if your mother pushes back or tries to guilt-trip you. Healing your childhood wounds won’t take place overnight, but it’s a worthwhile process. “It’s likely that you’ll try to beat your mother by joining her — ensuring that you’re the smartest person in the room so that she’ll never be able to make you feel worthless ever again,” says Maurya. “If your [mother] is emotionally abusive and the only way you can achieve love and acceptance is to live up to [her] standards, then you might sublimate your own needs to make her happy,” says Lis.

Her children walk on eggshells every day, fearful of encountering their mothers rage and punishment. You could start by engaging with a mental healthcare provider or treatment center that specializes in dual diagnoses. Treatment centers can also ensure that you can access the right support systems at the right time in your treatment. Again, if care is not coordinated by a qualified mental health professional, the overlapping treatments can lead to drug interactions, unintended side effects, and the possible abandonment of treatment. It is not uncommon for two mental health conditions to co-exist (referred to as a comorbidity). The occurrence of two such conditions is called a dual diagnosis.