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| Narcissistic Mother's Silent Treatment |
April 2018: Join Gail Meyers and KC3Lady back on Hubpages and Narcissism: Echo Apologetics
Do Not Become a Narcissist's Flying Monkey Video © by Gail Meyers A narcissistic personality disordered mother has flying monkeys. This is a term taken from The Wizard of Oz , where the flying monkeys do the bidding of the Wicked Witch. The flying monkeys may be your neighbor, church members, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandmother, grandfather, nieces, nephews, etc. These people do the narcissist's dirty work and often pour their own abuse on the scapegoat. I spent years of my life trying to show various flying monkeys the truth. It virtually never worked, not once in the twenty or so years I kept trying to "clear the air" or to finally be understood. They do not understand because they do not want to understand. Many are willfully ignorant and blind to the situation. There is not some magical phrase and method you have not yet discovered that is suddenly going to cause these people to stand up for the truth. What I have realized is t...
Hi Gail, thank you for this wonderful blog that has helped me so much. My husband is the Scapegoat and his father is the NPD. His mother and siblings are completely in the clutches of my NPD father in law and we have gone through hell with the family. Finally, we are leaving them for good, even though my father in law is dying of cancer. Due to how dysfunctional my mother in law is, we want nothing to do with her in the future, since her mind has been completely destroyed. My husband's siblings are a flying monkey and a Borderline Personality Disoder, and we see that they have passed on the family dysfunction to their children. My husbands juvenile nieces and nephews have already been taught to scapegoat him! Gosh, I can't tell you how wonderful it has been to learn about narcissists, narcissistic supply and scapegoating. It shows us that we are right to cut all ties and leave, not just him but the entire family. We owe it to ourselves and our children. thank you for the work you're doing here Gail.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, thank you. While we all have to make our own decisions, I am glad you have found this blog helpful. I have seen very small children pick up on treating the scapegoat poorly in my toxic extended family. Then, it was also passed down to the grandchildren, nieces, nephews, etc., causing it to mushroom. So, at times I do think no contact is a healthy choice for the children and grandchildren. Thank you for taking the time to read and share your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteMy experience is one of years of forgiveness and ignorance but after years of certain behaviours (it is very subtle) I saw the patterns, especially the destroying my relationships, the arrows in my back, the scapegoating and the silent treatment. I have just started to see - although I don't understand emotionally how someone could be so cruel to their own daughter. My frustration/sadness is that I want to build my life again, even though her lies have destroyed my reputation and that of 'the nicest one out of all of you'. I live with forgiveness and love, but receive rejection and slander. This is the worst for me, the lies, the slander etc and my mum's non-accountability. How do I stop her! Where is the justice! I was also abandoned by my fiancé and daughters father, because of my mother's manipulation and lies. This has affected me for 11 years. To be vindicated and set free from these lies would be amazing for me. Still I have a sadness in my heart that I continue to forgive.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, what you have shared sounds so very familiar to me and undoubtedly familiar to many other adult children of narcissists. Reading and contemplating the topic of "forgive and forget" may be helpful. Thank you for sharing your experiences.
DeleteHi Gail,
ReplyDeleteThis was a great article! I love your term "flying monkey." It's perfect! I went "no contact" with my abusive, narcissistic parents years ago, and I am so glad I did. Well, really, I think my father is more of a sociopath, but my mother is a narcissist. My whole family decided I was bad and mean.
Basically I am like Dorothy now, have clicked my heels and made myself a real home, and a real life, one where none of them have any place.
Thank you, Meredith. Congratulations on your escape!
DeleteI'm sitting here thinking of the silent treatment. Once I remember my mother using it when I closed my bedroom door. I was twelve and was going to change my clothes. She saw me close the door and refused to speak to me for a few days. I did everything to try to please her then. Even making sure never to close the door. And, trying to please her by not leaving her side and being very caring. Trying to please her.
ReplyDeleteI see how the silent treatment was very effective
Joan S, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences.
DeleteThe silent treatment is one of my mothers favorite tactics, she uses it until she has had enough and then enters back into your life like nothing has happened. Every time she has done it to me i have learned to with hold pieces of myself from her, not realizing that that was what she was aiming to achieve. The last time was when i was planning my wedding, she was more concerned with the wedding revolving around her. I did not agree to anything that she wanted, things being - her doing the speeches, her not joining in on per-marriage preparation but still having access to me prior for photos and her being able to invite her friends that only knew her opinion of me. I received the silent treatment for this, and her gossiping false accusations about how all this started and she 'threatened' not to come. I suffered the stress of all this, the wedding came and went and I was so relieved that it was over. One day out of the blue my phone started ringing (I have a distinctive ring tone for her number on my phone) i looked at the phone ringing with vampire dragon calling flashing at me, stress and anxiety filled my whole body. My thoughts calmed me, 'do not answer that phone, she likes to punish with the silent treatment this time you need to take it and run' I did not answer, I stopped everything and I sat and cried, I got angry, frustrated, guilty - I cried and stressed to the point of fret, I found web pages like this. I am finished with that soul sucking, love crushing, relationship/friendship destroyer, using, abusing manipulator. Hopefully I will never see her again as long as I live.
ReplyDeleteI used to get the silent treatment often while growing up. I used to beg my mom to tell me what I did that made her stop speaking to me. Sometimes she would just give me this odd smile and not respond and sometimes she would just walk away from me. But the one thing that always happened was that she NEVER answered me. As I got older I started to notice that when my mother would give me the silent treatment she would tell people that I was the one who stopped speaking to her and she had no idea why and that she didn't do anything wrong. Then it was poor her because she has such a terrible daughter. Strangely I welcome the silent treatment now. I feel like a weight is lifted off of my chest when she doesn't speak to me. When she's not speaking to me she's not arguing with me or picking on me, she's not hurting me. I wish things were different, but now I have accepted that they will never be different and I don't cling to this false hope anymore. I think I'll have to go no contact. A part of me will always wish that my own mother will one day love me, but I have to face reality, that will never happen.
ReplyDeleteAs another holiday approaches, I feel myself with that sinking feeling of being rejected and misunderstood by my family all over again. My mother is at the center of it all. Over the years, she has always had her favorites...favorite child, favorite grandchildren, etc...usually the one that doesn't challenge her and boosts her image as an upstanding, compassionate volunteer, friend and church member. Several years ago, I learned that my mother was badmouthing me ( or conveniently not sharing the entire story) to my siblings...letting them think poorly of me, not ever including me when they all got together, and never, not EVER as a mom, encouraging healthy relationships between us. I think she likes to control all of it so that somehow, in her mind, she remains the image of what the community thinks of her and the child who questions or wants answers (ME) is a threat to her image. And my siblings of course are delighted to be in a favorable position with her. Its all so complicated and confusing. Frustrating and hurtful. The only contact she or my siblings have with me is when I reach out to them. It has been months since my mother has called me or texted me. And my sister and sister in law who confirmed the gossip and badmouthing of me by my mother have both gone silent.
ReplyDeleteI often wonder how they can simply forget me? I feel as if trying to reach out to them is groveling and pacifying and will never resolve anything.
That said, I don't know what to do some days. I feel alone and disconnected (even though I have great kids and grandchildren of my own) and that I should just be over this. But I know that the fake smile is coming to cover the sadness that is there...even though my mother is showered with public accolades about her countless efforts to reach out in the church and community and selected family at Christmastime, she will never reach out to me and my family.
Thank you so much for this article!
ReplyDeleteMy dad is the NPD (have had zero contact in 7 years!) but my mom has some sort of enabling/slight NPD too. My brother is the golden child and I tend to become the scapegoat. Years ago I knew further contact with my dad was bad news, but it hasn't been until the past couple of years that I've realized just how toxic my relationship is with my mom.
My mom is the queen of silent treatments--trying to talk on the phone to her is pointless as she'll stop talking when I say anything that is the least bit offending. I remember one really bad silent treatment--we were in Rome for the holidays about two years ago--and my mom gave me the silent treatment for almost an entire day after I had made a mistake with reading my map app (which only took us 2 blocks or so off our intended path). There I was in this amazing city and my mom was dead set on not talking to me for the better part of the day.
I had a zero contact Thanksgiving this year (and had a wonderful Thanksgiving, thanks to not seeing/talking to my mom) and am on the verge of a no contact Christmas. I say "on the verge" because I'm still not sure if it's the right thing to do.....it's taken me a long time to get to this point of feeling like I deserved to celebrate the holidays the way I want to. I have a big decision to make in the next 24 hours!
Wow. I finally found what I was looking for. I wish I had read this four years ago. Four years ago, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I noticed that my calls were going unanswered. I left messages, I begged, I tried everything I could think of to get my mom to talk to me again. Two years into it, I gave up and started telling people the truth, which INFURIATED the NM. How dare I make HER look bad. As my dad's time drew to an end, I figured the NM would reach out to me because god forbid I not be at the funeral and people talk about her. Her email to me was "We aren't mad at you, we felt you disrespected us and we cut out anyone that was not beneficial because of the cancer". My dad died the next day and I did not go to the funeral, nor did I answer the email. I now know that she was stonewalling me for not doing "something" that she wanted me to do (although I will probably never know what that was). At this point, I don't know how to heal, how to move on, how or if I should answer the email. I say I never want to talk to her again, to never forgive her for what she did, but then that makes me as bad as she is. I tried to have a family friend intervene and the flying monkeys attacked me for involving an outsider, and now I see that for what it was. I am still stuck though. Do I allow her back or do I tell her she chose to cut us out of her life, we choose not to allow her back?
ReplyDeleteYou tell her NOTHING.
ReplyDeleteSo far you have begged, groveled, pleaded and frantically attempted to open a dialogue through a variety of means, all to no avail. You were cruelly excluded from the funeral-you do realize, of course, all of this was done INTENTIONALLY, in a premeditated sadistic fashion.
No, you are NOT "as bad as she is" by refusing to further denigrate yourself in service to this disgusting bitch who is not, never has been and never will be a mother. She is simply post partum, period the end. The reality is you're far more an adult than she ever will be and consequently are responsible for making an adult decision. Would you allow a child to drive your vehicle? Why would you even consider letting this over-sized brat to determine whether or not YOU wish to tolerate any more of this despicable behavior?!
Self-protection/self-preservation is your most fundamental right and Boundaries are exactly this in action. Her presence in your life has been a chronic festering form of cancer and clearly has not been "beneficial" to your well-being. There's no need to have a dialog with a tumor before you excise it-completely-nor is it "disrespectful."
You have been given your freedom-use it!
TW
My father is a chronic-impulsive liar, a male chauvinist and a narcissist. He criticized others to make himself feel good. You bet he spends hours watching news channel so that he can blurt comments like, "that's why stupid people like you go to jail" or "I won't do what you did because you are stupid". Because of him, I feel uncomfortable at work and I am a person who takes my job seriously. Luckily I got a transfer and since then, build a home for myself and cut off all ties with him, with no intention of 'mending the bridge'. All my siblings hate him too and we decided to have all family gatherings in my elder brother's place, where my dad won't be invited and won't be informed of the gathering. It's cruel, but it keeps our mind at peace. Thanks for your blog, I have learnt so much.
ReplyDeleteJAY SEAGULL
Thank you for this article. I truly believe that my mother is giving me the silent treatment as punishment and means to control me. When I used to live with her in her house, she would threaten to kick me out or she would take things she has given me away, such as my car. Now that I am moved out and on my own the only way she can control or punish me whenever she feels I did something wrong or she disagrees with me for whatever reason or if I am unable to something she wants me to do is to give me the silent treatment as well as telling me that she is taking me off her will or she is not giving me the house after she dies. She would only call me to ask me to do her a favor. When we go out to lunch instead of using that time to catch up, she would instead be on her phone or talk about how her friends daughter/son is so good to their mom. Just because I will not be under her control (she loves to control people, my dad, my cousin, her friends, my ex) Her famous last words are "you will need me one day and i will say no" and "I don't want to be there when karma hits you" and "I am your mother!" My mother also insists on speaker inbehalf of my dad when in reality I speak to my dad often enough to know that he didn't say those words. I continue to try and communicate with my mother but she refuses to respond. I would hate for the time to come when I am just over it and not even try anymore. Sad.
ReplyDeleteCan you imagine? Three months to my dad and afterwards 14 months to us, the children, because she think we draw party for dad!
ReplyDelete