Narcissistic Mothers and Shame
Its not very fashionable.
Its something we don't feel comfortable talking about - and we often don't recognise it.
Most of us don't even want to admit to experiencing it.
It can make us feel powerless, isolated and alone.
The affects associated with shame can flood our bodies with powerful chemicals.
We want to run and hide.
In Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame, social worker and psychotherapist Patricia DeYoung argues that shame often lies at the heart of mental illness. It’s mostly unavailable to conscious thought and to words. We often don't know or understand our shame experiences.
Shame just "is" and we are in it - alone and helpless.
Being ashamed can itself be shameful.
SHAME IS ONE OF OUR FIRST SOCIAL EMOTIONS.
It can be a tool for moulding social behaviour and bringing us back to social norms - but it also has the effect of isolating and stigmatising.
WHY IS SHAME SUCH AN IMPORTANT ISSUE FOR DAUGHTERS OF NARCISSISTS?
Because narcissists are full of shame, they inevitably project it outwards. If they have a bad day at work, they take it out on their spouse. If they miss out on a promotion, lose their keys, get beaten in a tennis match, or make a mistake, they feel shamed. They will then try to get rid of these painful feelings by pushing them outwards. If they are slighted, receive negative feedback, are criticised, limited or stopped from getting what they want, they will feel shame. And then, unfortunately for those around them, (including their children) all hell breaks loose.
When faced with shame, narcissistic mothers will bluster, criticise, bully and blast anyone nearby, desperately trying to shelter their fragile ego from the devastating experience of reliving their own traumatic shame.
The narcissist’s children will be especially vulnerable to these dangerous fallouts. Children just don’t have skills to manage the strong feelings of being shamed by an attachment figure.
Shame sends its victim into a spiral of negative affects, flooding the body with powerful chemicals and leaving the sufferer feeling alone and worthless.
Chronic Shame in Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers
A mother who is narcissistic will put her own shame into her children through projection, eye contact and facial expressions (e.g. disgust), leaving a lifelong legacy of chronic shame. She will often make her daughter feel bad for having needs or just for existing.
Narcissistic mothers also use shame as a parenting strategy without making themselves available for soothing and repair. The strong emotions elicited by shame are too difficult for a young child to manage on their own and can lead to the child using dissociation or other problematic ways of coping. Children are extremely sensitive to shaming and will internalise these feelings, carrying them inside themselves well into adulthood.
For very young children, the feelings aroused when they are shamed by a narcissistic parent are often too powerful to process.
These intrusive and overwhelming bad feelings will then be split off from conscious thought and remain underneath, because that is the only way to survive. The unintegrated feelings carry on inside us, flavouring our relationship with ourselves and our expectations of relationship with others.
In her article, Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers, Darlene Lancer writes about the toxic shame narcissistic parents cause their children:
“She rarely, if ever, feels accepted for just being herself. She must choose between sacrificing herself and losing her mother’s love–a pattern of self-denial and accommodation is replayed as codependency in adult relationships.
“Her real self is rejected, first by her mother, and then by herself. The consequence is internalized, toxic shame, based on the belief that her real self is unlovable.”
Most of the time, you won’t be aware of your feelings of shame. They are like wallpaper — invisible, but always there. The shame you experienced and now carry with you is a habit ingrained through emotionally abusive parenting. Many survivors of narcissistic parenting continue to shame themselves unconsciously when they fail to live up to the impossible standards set by their parents.
Growing up with a history of being shamed by a narcissistic parent can leave a legacy - a crippling sense of worthlessness which can come to underlie most of our feelings about ourselves.
As we are often unaware of its presence, it unwittingly controls how we respond and interact - how we manage relationships and how we deal with the ordinary ups and downs of interacting and being part of the social world.
We need to learn how to handle everyday hurts, disappointments and perhaps humiliations in order to have relationships that last. This can't happen if we have been so shamed in childhood that being shamed as an adult brings us back into contact with the powerful unintegrated feelings that we never learnt to process.
When I first started thinking about shame, I was surprised at the number of books written about it - why hadn't I heard more?
Its not something that is talked about very much, even amongst mental health professionals.
As DeYoung puts it
"For three decades I have been asking clients what brings them to psychotherapy, and not one of them has said, "I need help with my chronic shame....It can be deeply shaming, just to admit to feeling shame."
It takes a lot of work just to get to the point of naming our experience.....and finding out where it came from can take even longer.
As Deyoung points out, chronic shame is generated from relational trauma in our early lives.
Chronic, lifelong shame isn't something that can be cured. Its not something that we can even control.
But awareness can help. Forming an attuned, non-shaming and non-judgemental relationship with a therapist can go a long way towards helping us live our lives with joy and freedom, alongside our less-than perfect histories.
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