Are you interested in knowing whether your mother or father is a narcissist? Then you are in the right place. I will present the narcissistic mother traits and signs checklist to help you understand the tactics they use all the time, every day, in various shapes and forms, which are always the same at their core.
Knowing them will be crucial in your life, as you need to understand that their behaviour has a pattern. That pattern needs to remain in your mind so that you can protect yourself from those attacks. Otherwise, you will be caught every time and won’t notice that it is all part of a constant cycle within the narcissist’s mind.
Protect yourself and your sanity. Learn the narcissistic mother traits checklist and free yourself from their control over your life once and for all.
Before you start, this post is part of a series of posts about narcissistic parents:
- How to know if you were raised by Narcissistic Parents? (Evaluation of your family situation): analyse your life up until this point with concrete examples for you to introspect on your family issues.
- Signs, Traits, and Behavior of Narcissistic Parents (Evaluation of the signs of Narcissism): specific information about narcissistic signs and the behavior they use on their children, with a list at the end.
- How Narcissistic Parents Affect their Child (Evaluation of Self): common issues that come after growing up with narcissistic parents, examples of common traits and behavior children adopt because of the constant narcissistic abuse from their narcissistic parent.
- How to Live with a Narcissist and Cope with Life? (Evaluation of what to do): 17 steps on how you can cope with life after you discover your parent is a narcissist. It is a deep post about all the different tips that can help you live your life having a narcissistic mother or father.
- What are the Narcissistic Mother Traits and Signs? (Evaluation and understanding of their tactics): (current post) here I give a quick checklist for anyone to easily figure out if they have a narcissistic mother and learn the signs of narcissism to identify them in their everyday life.
- Effect of narcissistic abuse in your relationships. (Understanding the wounds left by Narcissistic Parents on their children): understand how being raised by a narcissist influences the way you behave with others.
The narcissistic mother checklist
This checklist is specific to narcissistic mother traits and signs. It has been adapted to evaluate a narcissistic mother’s behaviour towards her child. However, most of these traits also apply to any narcissist.
Keep this list with you. Don’t let narcissists take control of your life. Protect yourself.
- Micro-manage everything
- Over-control everything
- Have no boundaries and, therefore, do not understand the meaning of privacy
- Impose constant restrictions of every kind
- Need all the attention for themselves
- Are jealous of everybody, because they demand all the attention
- Treat their children as extensions of themselves
- Don’t listen and interrupt everyone easily
- Play mind games of all kinds, all the time
- Use all kinds of manipulation tactics on everybody
- Don’t know how to listen, so they don’t have conversations; they have monologues because, in their minds, they are always right
- See any disagreement as an attack and fight back very aggressively, intensely and personally. Every argument becomes a fight for their life
- Are happy and proud when you are compliant and accept their opinions. In reality, there is nothing good about that, but they love situations in which their opinion is the only one that matters. Please don’t fall for this lie
- Give you no real freedom to pursue what you like. Only what they think is good is considered good. Again, they will try to convince you that you are better off choosing something they approve of
- Always blame you for everything bad that happens in their lives, including insignificant things, such as claiming that the dishwasher broke because you used it once
- Make you doubt your reality by acting as though they have no memory of things they did or said, making you feel as though you are the one who is losing your mind. This is known as gaslighting
- Blame you for their own problems. The easiest excuses are: “Do you know how hard it is to raise a child?” or “I have done so much for you, and now you do this,” followed by similar accusations
- Make it seem as though meeting a child’s basic needs is something extraordinary
- Make you feel unable to make your own decisions without consulting them first, before manipulating you into doing exactly what they want
- Drag everyone down whenever they are in a bad mood
- Always seem to have drama around them. Every day, there is some kind of argument. Even a trip to the shopping centre can end with them criticising the cashier on the way home, for example
- Always play the victim in every situation. Dare to say that they are wrong, and you may be met with a fierce reaction, followed by the classic crying of the “victim”
- Frequently blame you for not showing them enough love. But do they show you theirs?
- Criticise everybody, while never allowing anyone to criticise them
- Use guilt, blame and shame tactics in every form as part of everyday life
These behaviours become even clearer when examined alongside the broader signs that you were raised by a narcissist.
At the same time, always remember that they have low self-esteem. They need constant attention, constant love and constant appreciation. They need to feel that they are always right and correct, and you will always be their “baby”, meaning an extension or projection of themselves.
Their behaviour is aggressive because they do not want to feel threatened, so they attack first.
Keep that in mind when you think your narcissistic mother is being “mean” on purpose. Narcissists may not see their behaviour as mean. They often do not recognise how they make other people feel, possibly because they did not develop emotionally during childhood. Yet researchers and scholars are still debating how much narcissists really know about the pain they inflict.
Always keep in mind that the basis of this behaviour is simple: a lack of proper love in childhood, a lack of attention and a lack of appreciation. They may now overdo everything in an attempt to compensate for those losses.
Find someone to talk about your feelings
Having a narcissistic mother or father is no easy task. This is why you need someone with whom you can discuss your issues, emotions and situation. Finding a trusted person to speak to personally would be the best option.
But if you don’t have such a possibility, then use Reddit, because it’s the best free place to share your thoughts with people that also share your pain. Talking with people who face the same problems is a good way to understand that you are not alone in this struggle. There are tons of people that suffer from this, and they are all on Reddit opening their hearts and sharing their stories. And everyone is very supportive and helpful.
There are hundreds of groups (subreddits) dedicated especially to the topics of narcissistic parents abuse – “raised by narcissists“, “offmychest“, “narcissisticabuse“, just to name a few.
Last but not least
The more you bend and allow their opinions to override your own, the more damage you may experience.
That damage often appears as people-pleasing, self-doubt, weak boundaries and difficulty trusting your own decisions. Read more about how narcissistic parents affect their children into adulthood.
However, fighting back may only lead to a losing battle on your side.
Therefore, the only realistic outcome may be to turn around and go your separate ways.
Keep your distance from them. Choose how much time you spend with them. Avoid staying in the same house if possible, as it may only cause further harm to you.
“First things first: get a very good therapist, one who accepts the idea that your mother is a narcissist and will help you through the results. Secondly, reassess your boundaries with your mother. Normal parenting does not require the majority of the child’s energy to be devoted to soothing or attending to the parent; you are allowed to have your own life and needs, something a narcissistic mother will not understand.”
Boundaries with a controlling parent usually need to be introduced carefully and reinforced repeatedly. These practical tips for dealing with a narcissistic parent explain how to approach that process.
Also, take a good look at Doctor Ramani’s YouTube Channel, she is an incredible clinical psychologist that has a hundreds of videos to help you cope with this.
I wish you all the best and plenty of inner strength.
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This article is for informational and self-reflection purposes. It cannot determine whether a parent has narcissistic personality disorder and should not be used to diagnose yourself or another person. If you are struggling with emotional abuse, trauma or difficult family relationships, consider seeking support from a qualified mental health professional that has experience with narcissistic abuse.
