31/10/2025
Growing up with a narcissistic mother changes the entire course of childhood and who you become as an adult.
Love depends on obedience, performance, and validation, you learn early that your worth is conditional.
Children of narcissistic mothers often grow up feeling invisible, anxious, and guilty for simply having needs. They learn to be okay living with bare minimum. Unknowingly getting into relationships where partners slowing help them socially isolate , while giving them hope thats its better this way .
In childhood:
You learn to perform perfectly to earn love, hide your emotions to keep peace, and live in constant hyper-alertness never knowing when you’ll be praised or punished.
For girls: being the “perfect daughter” means mirroring her beauty, achievements, and emotions breeding perfectionism, shame, and self-doubt.
For boys: it’s being her extension or rival forced to be “strong,” emotionally cut off, or forever proving worth.
In adulthood:
A shaky sense of self.
Attachment wounds craving closeness but fearing rejection.
People-pleasing till burnout or hyper-independence born of distrust.
A quiet grief for the mother you needed but never had.
One moment you’re the “golden child”, the next you’re scapegoated. This inconsistency keeps you anxious and hyper-alert. 
You learn to hide your feelings, silence your voice, because your mother’s agenda must remain intact. 
The partners you often attract (or choose):
Emotionally unavailable types: who mirror your mother’s inconsistency you feel you have to earn their affection.
Dominant or controlling partners: who make decisions for you, echoing your mother’s authority.
Broken or dependent partners: you feel responsible for “healing” them, replaying your childhood caregiving role.
Or sometimes, you avoid intimacy altogether independence becomes armour.
(narcissistic mother, childhood trauma, adult children of narcissists, healing from narcissistic parent, attachment style, emotional abuse recovery)
