Well, it’s that time of year when narcissistic mothers escalate their games. They love to destroy holidays and birthdays. They want to drag down anyone who is happy or relaxed using drama to bring attention back on themselves. Time with relatives also gives them a good chance to triangulate fights between people or smear you with fake love.
For many years, I dreaded Thanksgiving as the worst day of the year. I knew that when I saw my family, my mother–who was incapable of love at home–would pretend to be a loving mother. If I showed my surprise, (or eventually disgust,) at her false face, relatives couldn’t understand why I was so distant. My mother had been trashing me to them frequently anyway, so my confusion at her behavior, and my dislike for her fake hugs only served to “prove” in their minds that I was a problem child as she had told them. The relatives knew absolutely nothing about me other than my mother smeared me with lies on the phone every few days. She made herself my biggest bully and my worst enemy as if she couldn’t help herself.
When I got older, she started leaving very early in the morning without me. So during my teen years, I often spent holidays home alone while she went and told relatives who knows what. Given the hatred I have received from her fooled family over the years, I can only guess. Obviously, if she hadn’t left without me, I might have been able to stand up for myself, or my relatives might have seen what I was really like, (and how very little it matched my mother’s smear campaign.)
These things are all common tactics for the narcissist mother, (and narcissists in general.) Behind your back, they begin to tell everyone how ungrateful, rude, troubled, hateful or crazy you are…even if you aren’t any of those things. Then they abuse you and confuse you or upset you just in time for their audience to see your reaction. Even though your reaction is coming from a different place, these people have been trained to see you in certain way, and they are inclined to match your mother’s stories with the confusion they see in you and believe your mother’s lies. I fully believe my mother has set me up in situations so she can upset me, then stand back and tell everyone I’m crazy even though they didn’t see what she did to upset me. It’s classic! When you add in the times when I was completely cut off from relatives because she either didn’t tell me about family events or left before I woke up, I was secluded from any people who might have been able to listen and help me. That’s a narcissist’s goal–to disparage you and keep people from seeing the truth. Thanksgiving is one of the worst days of the year for the child of a narcissist. This year I will be narc-free and much happier!