Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello, does anyone struggle to understand their mother's behaviour and wonder if she is autistic, or narcissistic? I have ptsd from my mother's screaming and yelling fits in childhood. The thing is, recently I went to a therapist who suggested she is narcissistic, covert type. However I have aspergers and I really wonder how a mother with Aspergers might appear if she had ptsd herself and no autisn diagnosis due to masking her whole life and being born in the 1940s. How could you tell the difference between the notoriously difficult to spot covert narcissist mother, and a mother with Aspergers and ptsd and possible depression? Mood swings, difficulties with empathy, meltdowns, yelling, blame shifting, really hurtful lnsensitive comments, raging if criticised or perceived to be being criticised, different masks or persons, etc etc how would one ever know? I'm looking for anyone with experience in their own lives with this please, I'm interested to hear about your narcissistic OR autistic mom. Thanks a lot.
Very few individuals would actually ever be diagnosed narcissistic.
Perhaps sociopathic, which is a more self-serving state of neuroticism (the clinical version of NeuroTypical). By definition, narcissism is an extreme hatred of the self, possibly how a particular personality type becomes (rather than suicidal or sadist).
There is so much indoctrinating from culture even for the Autist who might accidentally pick up a piece but not the whole. Combine any unresolved trauma with all the complexities we have to just get on with, and humans become a bit more fascinating or scary.
The problem with parents is they aren't always given the rules just swept into their Role and Responsibly without really understanding the terms of the agreement. I think there's also a generation of women who didn't have the values of the war generation, and then got a taste for the seduction of an era that promised to make them feel a sense of liberation (the 80s) but were too deep into responsibility they didn't feel allowed to escape.
All this said, I don't have a relationship with my mother (who's near 70) as she had a habit of ghosting me or using silence to emotionally manipulate me and - jokes on her, I suppose - I had never really noticed until I was much older. And then I found myself tolerating her cruelties until she demanded we should be 'friends' and I'd just had enough and she hasn't spoken to me since. Honestly, I wish I didn't feel relieved, but sadly I do. I can see her issues and trauma and things which only a therapist can help with, AND I have my own responsibilities, which I could've used help with 20 years ago.
I think at some point she was told she was bipolar. But she was also the child of an alcoholic. Was the instability autistic based? Or from severe trauma? I often wonder if she's ADHD. She seems quite good at manipulation which is where we part ways. And she seems to REALLY dislike my analytical, pragmatic desire to reason through everything.
Though I've been reading philosophy and psychoanalytical thought for years, I'm not a therapist. My half sister had added disabilities that were glaringly obvious to me, but apparently my mother thought she could just 'overcome' them. How she couldn't see the much greater difficulty with executive function than I'd struggled with was beyond me. I think a lot of this is a product of bad values from a society that teaches a level of hostile selfishness. As a pathology, maybe 'Narcissism' shouldn't really be thrown around the way it is today.
Just like this thread, I've seen quite a few posts perplexed on mothers from that generation, so I do think there's something more to it all. Same with the Karens out there who are made, not born and marginalised and defeated until they are a shell of themselves. BUT We've all broken down and hit crosscoads. We're all human and just trying to get along. And while some of us need a great deal of help tying shoes or with laundry, most of us are fortunate enough to consciously decide on Kindness or Cruelty.
At this point, I am no longer confused, trying to resolve a situation that isn't mine to control. And if I'm honest, the silence is much less stressful.