I've discovered that my grandmother has narcissistic personality disorder.

[Pagey]

Just want to emphasize what Lysis & cheerio have said. Now that you're aware of all this and are distancing yourself from her, I hope you realize you don't have to turn out like her. Example - my dad is verbally and physically violent, gets angry extremely easily etc. (but I mean...seriously angry, it's scary, thankfully I haven't had family tragedies like yours happen to me but he has messed up my whole family), and I was actually starting to become a bit like him. Not physically violent, ever, but I would always snap at people, be super condescending and judgemental, I would always get more mad than appropriate at any given situation - but I realized all this about a year ago and it's made such a difference, because that wasn't who I was, I was just recreating/imitating his behavior cuz that's what I saw all the time. Turns out I'm actually a perfectly nice person, haha. Therapy definitely helped as well. So I really hope you don't think she's in some way done irreversible damage to you.

 

[Effuzion]

i dont see how paying you're ticket fare is so bad...

maybe thats just me

What Logic said. To normal people that one isolated incident doesn't seem that bad but if you have had the displeasure of being the child of one of these types of people you would understand exactly where I'm coming from. Here's something I've read on the Internet about it:

http://parrishmiller.com/narcissists.html

The sad thing is that I can relate to every last one of those points. Some of my favorites:

NSFW:

She violates your boundaries. You feel like an extension of her. Your property is given away without your consent, sometimes in front of you. Your food is eaten off your plate or given to others off your plate. Your property may be repossessed and no reason given other than that it was never yours. Your time is committed without consulting you, and opinions purported to be yours are expressed for you. (She LOVES going to the fair! He would never want anything like that. She wouldn't like kumquats.) You are discussed in your presence as though you are not there. She keeps tabs on your bodily functions and humiliates you by divulging the information she gleans, especially when it can be used to demonstrate her devotion and highlight her martyrdom to your needs ("Mike had that problem with frequent urination too, only his was much worse. I was so worried about him!") You have never known what it is like to have privacy in the bathroom or in your bedroom, and she goes through your things regularly. She asks nosy questions, snoops into your email/letters/diary/conversations. She will want to dig into your feelings, particularly painful ones and is always looking for negative information on you which can be used against you. She does things against your expressed wishes frequently. All of this is done without seeming embarrassment or thought.

She manipulates your emotions in order to feed on your pain. This exceptionally sick and bizarre behavior is so common among narcissistic mothers that their children often call them "emotional vampires." Some of this emotional feeding comes in the form of pure sadism. She does and says things just to be wounding or she engages in tormenting teasing or she needles you about things you're sensitive about, all the while a smile plays over her lips. She may have taken you to scary movies or told you horrifying stories, then mocked you for being a baby when you cried, She will slip a wounding comment into conversation and smile delightedly into your hurt face. You can hear the laughter in her voice as she pressures you or says distressing things to you. Later she'll gloat over how much she upset you, gaily telling other people that you're so much fun to tease, and recruiting others to share in her amusement. . She enjoys her cruelties and makes no effort to disguise that. She wants you to know that your pain entertains her. She may bring up subjects that are painful for you and probe you about them, all the while watching you carefully. This is emotional vampirism in its purest form. She's feeding emotionally off your pain.

A peculiar form of this emotional vampirism combines attention-seeking behavior with a demand that the audience suffer. Since narcissistic mothers often play the martyr this may take the form of wrenching, self-pitying dramas which she carefully produces, and in which she is the star performer. She sobs and wails that no one loves her and everyone is so selfish, and she doesn't want to live, she wants to die! She wants to die! She will not seem to care how much the manipulation of their emotions and the self-pity repels other people. One weird behavior that is very common to narcissists: her dramas may also center around the tragedies of other people, often relating how much she suffered by association and trying to distress her listeners, as she cries over the horrible murder of someone she wouldn't recognize if they had passed her on the street.

She favoritizes. Narcissistic mothers commonly choose one (sometimes more) child to be the golden child and one (sometimes more) to be the scapegoat. The narcissist identifies with the golden child and provides privileges to him or her as long as the golden child does just as she wants. The golden child has to be cared for assiduously by everyone in the family. The scapegoat has no needs and instead gets to do the caring. The golden child can do nothing wrong. The scapegoat is always at fault. This creates divisions between the children, one of whom has a large investment in the mother being wise and wonderful, and the other(s) who hate her. That division will be fostered by the narcissist with lies and with blatantly unfair and favoritizing behavior. The golden child will defend the mother and indirectly perpetuate the abuse by finding reasons to blame the scapegoat for the mother's actions. The golden child may also directly take on the narcissistic mother's tasks by physically abusing the scapegoat so the narcissistic mother doesn't have to do that herself.

I remember when I was 13 and I kicked my little brother's ass pretty bad, but I had no reason as to why I did it. I actually cried afterwards because I felt so bad and didn't know why I would hurt my brother. But looking back it's because he was standing up to my mom and I was playing the role of the "golden child" by saving her.

She demeans, criticizes and denigrates. She lets you know in all sorts of little ways that she thinks less of you than she does of your siblings or of other people in general. If you complain about mistreatment by someone else, she will take that person's side even if she doesn't know them at all. She doesn't care about those people or the justice of your complaints. She just wants to let you know that you're never right.

This one x100000

She makes you look crazy. If you try to confront her about something she's done, she'll tell you that you have "a very vivid imagination" (this is a phrase commonly used by abusers of all sorts to invalidate your experience of their abuse) that you don't know what you're talking about, or that she has no idea what you're talking about. She will claim not to remember even very memorable events, flatly denying they ever happened, nor will she ever acknowledge any possibility that she might have forgotten. This is an extremely aggressive and exceptionally infuriating tactic called "gaslighting," common to abusers of all kinds. Your perceptions of reality are continually undermined so that you end up without any confidence in your intuition, your memory or your powers of reasoning. This makes you a much better victim for the abuser.

Narcissists gaslight routinely. The narcissist will either insinuate or will tell you outright that you're unstable, otherwise you wouldn't believe such ridiculous things or be so uncooperative. You're oversensitive. You're imagining things. You're hysterical. You're completely unreasonable. You're over-reacting, like you always do. She'll talk to you when you've calmed down and aren't so irrational. She may even characterize you as being neurotic or psychotic.

Once she's constructed these fantasies of your emotional pathologies, she'll tell others about them, as always, presenting her smears as expressions of concern and declaring her own helpless victimhood. She didn't do anything. She has no idea why you're so irrationally angry with her. You've hurt her terribly. She thinks you may need psychotherapy. She loves you very much and would do anything to make you happy, but she just doesn't know what to do. You keep pushing her away when all she wants to do is help you.

She has simultaneously absolved herself of any responsibility for your obvious antipathy towards her, implied that it's something fundamentally wrong with you that makes you angry with her, and undermined your credibility with her listeners. She plays the role of the doting mother so perfectly that no one will believe you.

She's envious. Any time you get something nice she's angry and envious and her envy will be apparent when she admires whatever it is. She'll try to get it from you, spoil it for you, or get the same or better for herself. She's always working on ways to get what other people have. The envy of narcissistic mothers often includes competing sexually with their daughters or daughters-in-law. They'll attempt to forbid their daughters to wear makeup, to groom themselves in an age-appropriate way or to date. They will criticize the appearance of their daughters and daughters-in-law. This envy extends to relationships. Narcissistic mothers infamously attempt to damage their children's marriages and interfere in the upbringing of their grandchildren.

She does this to my sister

She's infantile and petty. Narcissistic mothers are often simply childish. If you refuse to let her manipulate you into doing something, she will cry that you don't love her because if you loved her you would do as she wanted. If you hurt her feelings she will aggressively whine to you that you'll be sorry when she's dead that you didn't treat her better. These babyish complaints and responses may sound laughable, but the narcissist is dead serious about them. When you were a child, if you ask her to stop some bad behavior, she would justify it by pointing out something that you did that she feels is comparable, as though the childish behavior of a child is justification for the childish behavior of an adult. "Getting even" is a large part of her dealings with you. Anytime you fail to give her the deference, attention or service she feels she deserves, or you thwart her wishes, she has to show you.

As a last resort she goes pathetic. When she's confronted with unavoidable consequences for her own bad behavior, including your anger, she will melt into a soggy puddle of weepy helplessness. It's all her fault. She can't do anything right. She feels so bad. What she doesn't do: own the responsibility for her bad conduct and make it right. Instead, as always, it's all about her, and her helpless self-pitying weepiness dumps the responsibility for her consequences AND for her unhappiness about it on you. As so often with narcissists, it is also a manipulative behavior. If you fail to excuse her bad behavior and make her feel better, YOU are the bad person for being cold, heartless and unfeeling when your poor mother feels so awful.

 

[pofacedhoe]

What Logic said. To normal people that one isolated incident doesn't seem that bad but if you have had the displeasure of being the child of one of these types of people you would understand exactly where I'm coming from. Here's something I've read on the Internet about it:

http://parrishmiller.com/narcissists.html

The sad thing is that I can relate to every last one of those points. Some of my favorites:

NSFW:

I remember when I was 13 and I kicked my little brother's ass pretty bad, but I had no reason as to why I did it. I actually cried afterwards because I felt so bad and didn't know why I would hurt my brother. But looking back it's because he was standing up to my mom and I was playing the role of the "golden child" by saving her.



This one x100000





She does this to my sister

the thing is that she might buy you plane tickets but cant you just "miss the flight accidentally". what concerned me was your statement that every woman in your life was like this. some people in your family yes, but dont you think thats a bit of an overgeneralisation. i have friends who have full blown sociaopathic grandparents and the stories of sexual abuse by step parents/rotting maggots in the carpets and people eating paint off the walls because there was no food strike me as a bit more severe. i'm not saying narcissists are good as i worked with one guy and i can only say he was a horrid individual who relished criticising people with bullshit to make them feel small. i really did hate him at one point.

where i'm coming from is if they are so bad why have anything to do with them at all? wierdly tho both of my friends parents are still in contact with their sociopath mothers. i guess its just human nature to want parental validation

 

[Lysis]

wierdly tho both of my friends parents are still in contact with their sociopath mothers. i guess its just human nature to want parental validation

For me it was always a matter of guilt. They make you feel guilty for not seeing them. My sister actually put up with it a bit more than I did, and she will still talk to my mom occasionally.

People with these disorders who refuse to get help have the most bizarre and frustrating personalities. All you ever do is walk around frustrated and angry, and you don't even realize how badly they affect your personality until you get away from them. My mom would scream at us every single fucking day she came home from work, tell us we were ruining her life, we were bitches, etc to the point where my sister and I were just angry and crying every day. It was insane.

When you get away, they try to suck you back in, but if you don't live under their roof anymore, you slowly start to see how your personality and mood are affected every time you come into contact with them. Slowly, you start to realize how much happier you are without them around, and then you can either cut off contact altogether, or limit it to just holidays.

It gets me angry just thinking about my teen years. lol

 

[Pagey]

^Ugh I can totally relate to that. It's funny cuz I'd sworn to myself that once I moved out from home I'd never speak to my father again but now that I'm away I keep making excuses - I don't want him to feel bad, he's been under a lot of pressure at work so that's why he treated me that way, etc...which is bullshit cuz he was horrible and doesn't deserve any of my compassion.
I guess when it's a parent you feel like you owe them something because they're supposed to have been so important in your life.