As the daughter of a narcissistic mother you face countless assaults to your identity, integrity, and individuality. One of the most pernicious forms of assault plays out on the battlefield of your body.
Before we peer into the black hole that is your mother and her relationship to your body, let’s review a few narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) basics. People with NPD violate boundaries, avoid self-reflection and accountability, and don’t care if they hurt those around them. They think hierarchically, objectify others, value superficial markers of status, and compulsively project their own shame onto those close to them to manage their unstable self-esteem.
Your Narcissistic Mother Hates Your Body
Your narcissistic mother really does hate your body, and here’s why: The simple answer is that she hates her own body and yours by extension. In her myopic view, as her daughter you simultaneously represent her and pose a threat to her, and your body is a kaleidoscope of her distorted projections. You exist as an extension of herself and an object in relation to her, not as a subject with your own valid and complex identity, traits, feelings, needs, preferences, and boundaries. Whether you function as a source of pride, embarrassment, and/or competition, your body is not your own but rather hers to control, judge, display, reject, or otherwise exploit, neglect, and abuse.
Remember also that your narcissistic mother will tell you, others, and herself that she wants the best for you. This is because she can’t bear to be seen or to see herself as anything less than a devoted and loving mother, and she expects you to mirror that back for her regardless of how true it feels to you. If she attempts to control your eating habits, hairstyle, or clothing choices, she will always tell you explicitly or implicitly that it is for your own good, even if it involves violations such as the following:
- Sizing you up visually or verbally
- Comparing your appearance to that of herself, siblings, or others
- Calling you names
- Fat-shaming you
- Shaming you about your skin or hair color
- Overfeeding or underfeeding you
- Dictating your diet
- Cutting or styling your hair unattractively or age-inappropriately
- Discussing your looks or weight with others
- Commenting on your eating habits
- Blaming you for your health problems
- Pushing you to get plastic surgery
- Pushing you to straighten or dye your hair
- Giving you clothes too big, too small, or otherwise inappropriate
- Neglecting to buy you clothes
- Neglecting your personal hygiene needs
- Shaming you for your personal hygiene
- Objectifying you as a sexual object for boys/men
- Shaming your sexuality
- Shaming your femininity
- Criticizing your personal style
- Fear-mongering about your attractiveness to boys/men
The Role of Misogyny and Societal Narcissism
The projected self-hatred of narcissistic mothers onto their daughters is a human tragedy often perpetuated across generations. It is easy to pathologize the narcissistic mother and lay the blame at her feet, but her shame and rage are rooted in larger social problems. Institutionalized gender inequity, misogyny, and distorted identity politics that objectify girls and women as symbols of male privilege and pleasure while stripping them of self-esteem, personal agency, and educational and economic opportunity drive generational narcissism.
The Path to Healing
To heal ourselves and our daughters (and sons), we must reimagine our core values as members of the human tribe. This includes teaching our daughters and our sons to respect and honor their own authenticity, respond empathetically to themselves and those around them, and think critically about prevailing norms.
We can’t change our narcissistic mothers, but we can work on building self-love and respect in our own lives and relationships and guiding our children to carry that strength forward for themselves and those they touch.
Listen to Julie being interviewed on The Addicted Mind Podcast and Narcissist Apocalypse Podcast.
Julie L. Hall is the author of The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free from Hachette Books.
Need support? Julie is a narcissistic abuse recovery coach for clients around the world.
Related Articles by Julie L. Hall
- 6 Core Insights from a Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Coach
- The Narcissistic Family: Cast of Characters and Glossary of Terms
- Understanding the Narcissist’s Disrespect, Envy, and Contempt
- Healing a Sense of Foreshortened Future in Adult Children of Narcissists
- The Narcissist’s Caretakers: Caught Hook, Line, and Sinker
- What the Narcissist Fears Most
- Narcissist Parents Are Hurt Machines to Their Children
- Identifying the Covert Narcissist in Your Life: A Checklist
- Understanding Narcissistic Rage and Why It’s Not Your Fault
- The Dos and Don’ts of CoParenting with a Narcissist Ex
- How to Protect Your Children from Your Narcissist Spouse
- Why Narcissists Will Never Love You and It’s Dangerous to Love Them
- Horrid and Shocking Things Narcissists Say and Do
- The Overt Versus Covert Narcissist: Both Suck
- Seven Things Narcissists Will Never Do
- The Hidden Trauma of Neglect in the Narcissistic Family
- Enabling the Narcissist: How and Why It Happens
- How Narcissists Torture Others and Believe They’re Right to Do It
- Maddening and Bizarre Things Narcissists Do Explained
- Behind the Narcissist Mask: The Bully, Coward, Liar and Fraud
- Why You Should Not Feel Sorry for the Narcissist
- Adult Children of Narcissists Face Trauma-Induced Health Risks
- Raised by a Narcissist? 11 Healing Things to Do for Yourself Right Now
- What Raging Narcissists Break: A Real-Life Damage List
- The Dilemma of the Golden Child in the Narcissistic Family
- Narcissism 101: A Glossary of Terms for Understanding the Madness
- The Narcissism Disease Cluster in Families and How to End the Cycle
- A Daughter’s Story of One Hell of a Narcissistic Mother
- The Narcissist Parent’s Psychological Warfare: Parentifying, Idealizing, and Scapegoating
- Raised by Narcissists? Why You Can’t Afford the Wrong Therapist
- 4 Insidious Ways That Narcissistic Abuse Isolates the Victim
- It’s You and Me Baby: Narcissistic Head Games
- How and Why Narcissists Are Highly Skilled Abusers
- The Strength of the Scapegoat in the Narcissistic Family
- Life in the Fun House: Narcissistic Mirroring and Projection
Image courtesy of Lauren Bignell, Creative Commons.
13 Comments
Very close to my life. Going through the 22 points are true to my like..Not offended to say that I hate her.
She did ALL that! I grew up feeling like I was ‘the competition’ Took me years to get over that!
One question I would really like to have answered is why narcissistic mothers, especially malignant ones, all do and say the very same kind of things, they are almost like clones. Whenever I read about someone else’s experience with their NM, I want to say: that’s exactly what my mom did! or said! Sometimes the verbal abuse is almost word for word the same. Every person on earth is unique, except for narcissists??? Why do NMs all come from the same cookie cutter? Can anyone explain it?
You forgot destroying any attractive clothing you had.
My mother continually tells me, the daughter she has looked at for 50 years, that my eyes are blue. My eyes are not blue. They are a greenish hazel. Not a speck of blue in them. But she wanted a blue-eyed daughter, so my eyes are blue.
Oh my goodness… I understand this type of freakish alternative reality or whatever it is.
Great insights here! Despite being relatively well off, my mother dressed me in ugly second hand clothing as a child in the 1970s. I was never allowed to wear jeans or denim either.
This describes both my parents.
My mom did not buy a bra for me. I went through 6th grade with B cup boobs and sixth grade boys grabbing at me and perverted old men leering at me. She finally bought me some bras in 7th grade after an incident with me, a white Tshirt, a sudden downpour, and two forty something men at a shopping mall.
My mother was severely split. On one hand she’d buy me clothes and dress me to impress – but it was so she could feed off the attention it brought. If people admired me, she got a hit. But then after that had worn off, she’d go into hatred & attack. If anyone came into the picture, jealousy would reign & she’d go to work destroying it or sabotaging the relationship. No one is ever good enough. Then would come the blame that there must be something wrong with me. Cycle back around to “fixing” & “rescuing” and dressing me up. The woman is sick sick sick.
I only recently realized my mother was a NM. I’m almost 63 and I just in the last few months figured this out by reading articles and books about psychology. I have very little self-esteem because she was nasty and degrading to me all my life. I knew before I was 4 years old that she didn’t love me and yet, I still tried to do everything I could possibly do to get her to love me.
My mom’s side of the family were all heavy set. Yet I was expected to be trim, which I was until puberty hit. I got chubby and was fat-shamed by my plus-size mom. I was pressured to lose weight, which I would do and then mom would buy me skimpy clothes to wear.
I hated that; mom would not let let me have my own sense of style and my preference is far different than hers. So I’d gain weight because I was an emotional eater and of course would be fat-shamed again. It was a vicious cycle.
When I was kicked out at 18, I struggled with my weight until my early 20’s when I decided I didn’t want to be anything like my mom and adopted different coping skills and a better diet. That was many years ago and I haven’t been overweight since then.
But mom was still critical of my diet and how I dressed. Nothing satisfies a narcissist. I finally went No Contact recently after a series of tragic events when I could no longer overlook her insensitive behavior. It took me years to make that cut because I thought she would come around and accept me. Not going to happen.
I am 65. I just ate 2 oz of cheddar cheese and almost threw up I felt so guilty. That’s what an NPD mom can do to you. Funny thing — she died 8 yrs ago. Stroked out at 87. Next to her half-drunk bottle of water on the counter was a piece of paper where she had counted all her calories and fat grams that day. I remember her writing down all the numbers, every day of her life. She kept a poster in the bathroom where my sister and I had to record our weight. She looked for doctors for us who believed any girl/woman over 100 lbs was dangerously overweight, and she found them. I never walked into her house that she didn’t greet me with, “Why do you wear clothes that make you look so big?” It isn’t the clothes, Mom, it’s me. I’m big. The experience of being her caregiver for the last 3 yrs of her life was so traumatic I lost 60 lbs. When she walked into the bathroom where I was standing naked (no knock at the door, of course, because what was mine was hers — you understand) she half-screamed in horror and said, “What have you done to yourself? You look like a skeleton!” That’s when I understood for the first time that it wasn’t me, it was her. It didn’t matter if I was morbidly obese or a “skeleton” or that Goldilocks weight of “just right” it would not have been good enough. Ta-ta, Ma. Bring on the cheese.