Before I even begin I will make the the disclaimer:
My psychiatrist has NOT diagnosed my Mother from distance. That’s unethical. He has however agreed, on my request, to disclose his assessment of what is likely going on. This is entirely based on my testimony and events that have occurred in the two years I’ve been with him and he has been able to observe how they unfold. Alongside piles of materials of past communications between her and I.
So, from the beginning NPD was a fairly safe bet because Mother dearest can tick every box. I came to terms with that two years ago when I went NC. We were also in agreement that it’s covert.
For a long time I began to suspect malignancy. I didn’t say it because I wasn’t sure it mattered but late last year my psychiatrist opened the conversation off the back of a specific situation and said he is observing signs of perversions. Perversions are when you’re not doing something bad because you enjoy being bad, you’re doing something bad because you enjoy the negative impacts on others. This is where malignancy entered the profile. Perversions also lean towards characteristics of psychopathy which made me curious.
Recently a direct link was established between me having a cervical cancer scare which could have been entirely prevented if she had taken action. She didn’t, had no excuse not to, etc. it was caused by several high risk HPV strains, all of which I could have been vaccinated against, I remember begging for the vaccine, she just kind of swatted me away. This is an adult who for themselves engaged highly with healthcare so we’re not talking about ignorance either.
Naturally this link was a huge blow to me. In the sense “you’ve done this to me by not preventing it”. But this further reinforced some of the additional deviations.
After asking a little bit more about “what exactly have I been dealing with”, my psychiatrist sent me a medical article which describes this type of malignant narcissist.
Now I have the knowledge, to the extent possible, that the majority of her abuse had constantly intertwined shades of covert narcissism and some pretty obvious expressions of psychopathy.
It’s difficult to digest in many ways. I thought covert NPD was scary enough, I thought it happening to me was terrifying enough. There really was no need for a cherry on top. But to now find out – and I know, I asked – that there are strong, observable psychopathy traits is just … mind blowing.
It’s difficult to accept that I was around someone who is so psychologically dangerous to others for 20+ years. And maybe now I finally understand why so many of my clinical team have expressed a surprise of sorts that I turned out as okay as I did given everything.
I’ve spent the past weeks having to do my 4 month oncology rechecks and it’s hit me quite hard. I’ve been trying to reconcile in my head how far reaching the impact has been and how I can add another thing to the list of ways how she put my life directly in danger. Sometimes with time delayed detonations.
I needed to write it down once more before I try to lay it to rest in my mind over the weekend. I still appreciate this community so much as it’s been a core part of my journey these few years.
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You could be describing the one who brought me up. I have a lifelong illness which I wouldn’t have if they had taken me to the doctor for a certain symptom in childhood. And I have two others which are caused by their abuse. One of those is entirely controlled by medication, but the other is only partly controlled even with medication.
And yet, she took me to the doctor if it was something she wanted me to have. She persuaded doctors to give me four entirely unnecessary general anaesthetics and operations. Those doctors ought to have been banned from practising. She took me for four years for excruciatingly painful treatment on my hands, for a very common problem which children get at times. I don’t know what treatment (if any) was recommended back then for this problem, but I do know that I was the only child who went to school with bandaged hands. She enjoyed all of that, especially when I was in pain. She was sadistic.
Can I just say as a side note, I was in the first years at high-school when the HPV jabs came out so there was a bug thing about us all getting them… I’m in my 30s now and have had treatments for CIN3 (hpv+ with cervical precancerous cells at 3/3rds depth). I don’t understand it, since I had the jabs in school, but I still got it. I wouldn’t necessarily put the blame for this on your parent, I think it’s more just “one of those things” unfortunately. I had punch biopsies and lletz treatment and they said I should be clear now after removing cells at a depth of up to 8mm, but I have to have a smear test now ever year instead of every 3-5. All this, despite having the three rounds of hpv jabs as a teenager.
Can you say more about the psychopathy traits and what it means? You seem to know a little about it. Does it relate to empathy and suppression of empathy in your view? If you want to answer, otherwise enjoy your restful weekend 🙂
Yes. My mom is very similar. She can act completely normal so she KNOWS how to act. Some Ns don’t keep their stuff under wraps but my mom does.
I didnt know about the “perversions” thing but my mom is also perverted in the standard way too and will use that to make you feel disgusted. She also has the definition of them that you described. She enjoys hurting other people. If you ask her a question she doesn’t like, she’ll say something traumatic or answer it in the worst way so she can see your squirming and cringes. And then she laughs.
Like another commenter said, my mom is also very sadistic. I dont blame people for believing in possession because of what I’ve seen on my moms face when she starts going in on my father. She literally goes dark, squints her eyes like a predator about to tear out your throat, and gets this deepness to her voice. Its just diabolical and she knows it. I told her once when I was a kid she looks evil when she gets mad and she laughed, her default is just to find mirth and joy in others fear and pain.
Can you link the article?
unfortunately/fortunately I fully understand your situation because I’ve been there.
the covert malignant narc mother is the absolute most dangerous and damaging force that i’ve ever encountered. that’s why literally the only option if you have one of them in your life is to go 100% no contact and never ever ever look back.
Although I rarely extend this to anyone on here. If you ever need to talk feel free to message me because I understand this one. ooof i’m sorry. ❤️
Yes, this is very very difficult to take in. One thing that helped me was when I learned how the cluster B traits exist on a kind of spectrum. And when someone starts out with narcissistic traits that get reinforced, if they are susceptible to going farther down the spectrum into antisocial and psychopathy, they will. And their behaviors may one day be more mild, and on another day be very sadistic, depending on how the person feels things are going for them, how their fake image is coming across, how bored they are, etc.
I wonder about this with my mother too. Aside from the other emotional abuse she did since I can remember in my earliest memories, she also would give me her Percocet or OxyContin for every little ache and pain I ever had starting when I was 10. Before I have my first ever DARE class, I had a full understanding that mommy has fun pills that Im going to learn more about when I’m older too, just like her! It took me decades to understand how to disprove that early lesson and realize that was never “help,” that was “hurt“ and she knew it. Her whole reason for cutting off her own mother was that she thought her mother was a “pill popper.” Yet she was the only one who kept bottle upon bottle of OxyContin, Vicodin, you name it all around the house and still does to this day (she was a nurse and I feel used her connections with friendly doctors to get more than she should have for “migraines.”). It wasn’t until I had a daughter of my own that I realized how truly awful it would be for me to give her opioid medication when she’s too little to understand the risks. She’s 13 and has never had it once, nor will she before 18 unless it’s EXTREMELY necessary. If this was just the one thing my mother had done that was really off kilter with her kids, I could have forgiven her (my sister grew up to be a crack addict from this, with a rap sheet a mile long). But it wasn’t, it was just one of a very long list of abusive things she said and did to us both. I’m the black sheep but the only one who got out and made my own family and life and successful career, my sister is 41 and still lives with my mother and hasn’t worked in many years. She’s the golden child because she did what my mom wanted from us both, which was to never leave her and always stick around making her our first priority until she died.
>Perversions are when you’re not doing something bad because you enjoy being bad, you’re doing something bad because you enjoy the negative impacts on others.
This fits my mom to a T. She was officially diagnosed with NPD when she did therapy before getting her license to be a therapist. She never finished due to that, thank goodness.
My mom also medically neglected me till it got really bad, then she would swoop in and act like the martyred mothers whose child is just so sickly for no reason and she did all she could.
It was a mix of, I want you to suffer and I want attention instead of you.
Wow, this describes my grandmother perfectly. I’ve never met anyone else who could present so sweetly when she wanted to and also be gleefully cruel, sometimes at the same time. She would say the cruelest things with a smile and a little girly voice. It was terrifying. One time she, my grandfather, and their highly disturbing neighbor/best friend found out I had a crush and teased me mercilessly until I cried. My brother and I were there to be babysat, I think be was playing in the other room. I never told my parents because my nmom was nmom
and my edad, their son, was just as much an enabler of them as he was of my mother. So much so that I grew up down the street from these sadistic jerks. Anyway, by 9 I knew that anything I said about my grandparents I would be told to ignore. I have so many more stories about them. It just seemed normal to be terrified of my grandmother, since I was terrified of my mother, but as I got older I realized how much worse my grandmother was.
Oh my God what is it with narcissistic parents and HPV vaccines?
When I was in high school my doctor asked me if I wanted an HPV vaccine and she outlined the benefits so I said sure, sounded like a good idea. So she administered the first dose during that visit and suggested that I follow up for the required second dose in a few weeks.
Then when my mom saw the medical transcripts she flipped out, got really angry, just berated me on and on forgetting this vaccine.
Now, just like with you this wasn’t an issue with vaccines in general. My mom is really pro vaccine.
Additionally, this was not an issue with money. I didn’t even know that the vaccine would cost anything. But regardless, it was quite affordable and gave a huge amount of protection that I really wanted to feel safe with.
I was scared to be without the vaccine because I didn’t want to get the cancers that the doctor said I could get if I didn’t get the vaccine.
I tried to tell my mom about the benefits of how I can prevent cancer and stuff like that, but she just kept on freaking out and accused me of wanting to be sexually promiscuous and it accused me of wanting the vaccine to enable sexual promiscuity.
I was a virgin at the time and that was far from the only case of my mom shaming me for imagine promiscuity.
The doctor also told me that me getting the vaccine could help avoid passing on sickness to any children I might have, so my mom accused me of wanting to “do it” 🤢🤮 with any future children I might have. The thought horrified me and stunned me into silence.
She kept berating me and I walked off, sullen, knowing I couldn’t get the vaccine and knowing that I was at risk for the cancers that it prevented.
I ended up getting the second shot years later, and thankfully I’ve never got HPV so I suppose I dodged a bullet.
OMFG the amount of times others who come to/almost come to harm because my dad failed to prevent it.
I literally have scars on my face because at 11 months old he sat watching me pulling my uncles dog’s fur and did nothing until the poor thing bit me.
Any chance you could please share that article (or the title so I can Google it)?
I will never forget when my mother refused to pay for my HPV vaccine (she is not against vaccinations per se) because it was too expensive and then gave my brother double the amount a few years later so he could fly to croatia with his friends. Being the golden child lol
This is v familiar to me, too. Over the course of therapy, one time, my therapist blurted out that what was going on was not solely NPD and has repeatedly pointed out sadistic behavior from both parents. One I clocked as sadistic antisocial early on, but the covert narc (female) presents sweet and caring at times and was the ‘safer’ of the two. But after reprocessing memories being held down and slapped in the face, intentionally sleep deprived, humiliated, neglected etc etc, the sadism shines through. She was nice enough with an audience, but she had an entire organ of mine removed to please and interact further with drs. She enjoys punishment and would hunt me down with a metal spatula or wooden spoon singing and pretending to be nice to get me out of my hiding place and wail on me some more. Of course, this was my fault, and she would scream at how horrible I was for making her hit me. But she enjoyed it. She regulated via inflicting pain on me and controlling me. Hurting me made her feel better. That’s f’ed and a little further out than narcissism in my therapists’ opinion, and I’d tend to agree. It’s pretty wild that I’m as ok as I am and have made it as far as I have after being ‘raised’ by these ppl who lack empathy to any degree and enjoy others’ pain.