Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers

Thanks to these two people for posting reviews. I have just realized my mother is a narcissist. And that is why I have borderline personality disorder. Someone with BPD is not even remotely like a person who is a narcissist. I am always kind. Narcissists are never kind, unless they can get something out of it. I look forward to reading this book.

I just received this book and I'm almost finished. A lot of it reads true to my own life. Although I don't think my mother was exceptionally cruel she was heavy with the hand and put a great deal of responsibility on me as a child. The criticism never ends. I am an overachiever but can't manage to take a compliment. My self esteem on the outside seems high but in all actuality it's in the toilet. My mother was very jealous of my relationship with my father and has never seemed to be able to be happy about any of my successes. My brother on the other hand was a prince to her and we were treated very differently and still are. I've beaten myself up until reading this book. Finally the validation I needed to deal with the pain of not being able to truly bond with my mother. My ex-boyfriend who is Borderline kept insisting that my mother was Borderline also but the more research I did I realized she was Narcissistic and this book confirmed it. It has helped me to heal, to forgive her, to stop blaming myself and to take a good look at my own behavior towards my children. I can see some of the cycle continuing and I'm working on being less critical and demanding of my own children. This book was an absolute God send and I highly recommend it. There has been an incredible weight lifted knowing that I am not unlovable but had a mother who was incapable of loving. I want to ensure that my children never have to feel that way. It's a lot of work but I catch myself now and I'm able to correct my own behavior.

Finally a book about narcissistic mothers that describes the subtle nature of emotional neglect and abuse and kills the myth that all mothers are benevolent! It's hard to heal the narcissitic wound when it is a result of emotional neglect and put downs and there is no physical bruise or easy explanation like "my mother is an alcoholic". I've been in therapy for approx. 18 years and still struggle with a lifetime of never being good enough and still being placed in competition with my mother by her (even though she is 80). I was glad to hear that it's okay to have little or no contact with a narcissitic mother, since I've struggled with the guilt about having a mother like her and feel that her distancing herself from me is my fault and I am responsible for the relationship and for fixing it. One section in the book that I did not agree with was the author's comments that the daughter should not show any anger or frustration toward the narcissitic mother. One important aspect of my healing was to stand up to my mother and demonstrate my separateness and that I too am accomplished. (I had never rebelled as a teenager, since it was essentially forbidden with the unspoken threat love would be withheld.) Even though this turned out to be a threat to her it was important for me to see that I have my own sense of power apart from her. I've also tried to reach out in ways trying to build bridges that would put as on equal footing. This was to no avail but these steps have been important in my trying to build the communication with her and determine I'd done everything in my power to try and make a relationship work. It's even harder to be the daughter of a narcissistic mother when the theological messages coming from her were that disobedient children are evil and she was picked out as special by God from the time she was 8. This book offers hope and resonated so much with my experience. Those childhood abandonment fears and post-traumatic stress reactions still happen to me but I know where they are coming from and I continue to fight through them with hope.