Benediktas Gylys
Complaint 342894 Details

Narcissistic and toxic mothers are often injured in their childhood by their own stunted emotional development. In order to fully develop into a healthy adult, we need a very nurturing and emotionally validating environment. Toxic and narcissistic mothers often grow up without that nurturing. They have jumped through hoops and tailored themselves to others around them. They have been invited to be a part of mind games, lies and manipulation. They may have been told repeatedly that they weren’t wanted.


Narcissistic and toxic mothers can be very damaging to those around them. They have been often violated and hurt by others themselves. They see the world around them as being cruel, and so they take a defensive stance against others. They bore easily and struggle to keep their own emotions in check. For this reason, they seem to enjoy being in a constant state of drama in the relationships around them.

They are often experiencing great sadness, shame, guilt and depression in their inner core due to a lack of healing the things that had happened to them. They need others to save them from themselves. They need others to provide a constant state of interaction with them in order to distract them from the pain they are feeling inside. They have to project their pain onto others to share it because they cannot find healthy and meaningful ways in which to deal with it themselves.

Narcissistic and toxic mothers often try to be good mothers to their children in their own way. But they often miss the mark and fall deficient due to their inability to empathize and attune to their own child. They are overwrought and overwhelmed to the point that they are unable to drop everything and cater to the child. They don’t seek to engage and educate their child. They become too overprotective towards their child causing them a great inability to experience much of any growth in their own lives. They become possessive of their children
and spouse to the point that they treat them much like objects instead of people.

Toxic and narcissistic mothers often cause toxic and narcissistic children. Their negative interactions and their mistreatment of others encourages personality disorders in people who have to live with them and take their misdirected abuse. They can’t abuse the people who abused them, often because the person behind their abuse is narcissistic and toxic as well. They may still be dealing with a narcissistic or toxic parent and siblings themselves, leaving them little energy to tackle their own responsibilities due to the emotional drain that their family is causing them.

You can tell by the physical ailments that you are feeling that you have a toxic mother on your side. You may feel anxious or depressed. You may have panic attacks or post-traumatic stress disorder. You may feel an uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach when you are around her. The hair might stand up on the back of your neck. You get emotionally drained and feel defensive when you are around her.

You may experience insomnia or may want to sleep all of the time. You may struggle with feeling blame, shame and doubt about your own parenting abilities and life skills. You may feel alienated and rejected by your parent(s), and crave a normal sense of being. You want them to be something that they will never be for you, and you wish that they would just be ‘normal’ for a change.

We will discuss many of the different signs that are present when you are dealing with a narcissistic mother and a toxic mother to help you better determine if the person in your life is narcissistic or toxic. You might be able to identify with some, while others on the list will not sound familiar to you at all. Not all narcissistic mothers or toxic mothers are created equal. Their behavior really is tailored to their victims and often has an element of the abuse that they were subjected to as children included because it is familiar to them.

1. Narcissistic mothers use guilt trips to control the behaviors and actions of others. They will whine about not being invited to things, but act rudely or inconsiderately towards others when they are invited. They will chastise their adult children for not calling or returning calls daily or weekly, or they will force themselves into the homes of their adult children uninvited and unannounced.

2. Narcissistic mothers are terrible gift givers. Narcissists purchase what they wanted to give to the another person as a gift. If the receiver asks for something specific, the narcissist will completely ignore the request and come up with reasons why they cannot oblige (“You won’t
use that anyway”, “That gift is impractical”). They will re-gift things from their home or only give another person thrift items as gifts, claiming that they should be accepted by the receiver for being of ‘sentimental value’, even though the gift receiver does not want the items.

3. Toxic mothers favor some child(ren) while scapegoating another child. She allows her favored children to treat the scapegoated child poorly so that she continues to look like the perfect parent to the spouse and to those outside the family. When her children lash out crazily, she is then justified in the eyes of others to treat them poorly or punish them harshly. She talks herself up so that others don’t realize that she is the root cause of the chaotic behavior and disorientation that she caused in the other person. She never takes accountability for her role in causing a rebellious child despite being the one who mistreated the rebellious child for years prior to their breakdown.

4. Narcissistic mothers often take their children to counseling or state agencies and ask the other person to ‘fix’ their scapegoat child. The child might exhibit traits of conduct disorders, ADHD, schizoid personality, avoidant personality, psychopathy and anti-social disorders. The child might turn to drugs and alcohol as a means to cope with their overprotective, abusive parent. They might steal or get into trouble with the law as a means to cope and a way to provide for themselves the things which their parent isn’t providing for them. They often try to run away, but are usually returned to the home. Authorities often cannot differentiate between the lies that are told from a narcissist or toxic mother, so they rarely take the side of the child or have the child be removed appropriately from their narcissistic parent.

5. She causes personality disorders in her children as a result of her harsh and inconsistent parenting. Many personality disorders are caused by cold and aloof parenting versus nurturing parenting. OCPD, schizoid, avoidant, borderline, narcissistic, and anti-social personality disorders are all linked to bad mothers. These mothers are emotionally invalidating (use guilt trips to coerce their children into behaving, always telling the child to ‘suck it up’ instead of providing emotional support and teaching coping skills, rarely show hugs or affection to their children).

6. Toxic mothers try to buy love instead of providing genuine guidance, support and empathy to her children. Most narcissistic mothers don’t know how to be empathetic or sympathetic. They are only concerned about how they feel inside, and only see the world as it revolves around them. They are unable to put themselves in the shoes of others or to view reality from another person’s point of view.
7. A narcissistic mother will try to thwart her daughter’s relationship with other men if she is envious of her. She will go so far as encouraging the daughter’s boyfriend to break up with the daughter, sleeping with the daughter’s boyfriend, or trying to win his affection in some way. She will encourage the daughter to break up with a man if she feels her daughter is undeserving of the man’s affections or is jealous of the relationship. She will call her own daughter a s**t if she is envious of her daughter’s ability to obtain quality suitors. She will seek to compete with her daughter by dating or marrying men who are the same age that her daughter dates.