Once, as an adult in my late twenties I spent several months learning to play the harmonica. I taught myself with books and I practiced over and over again. I had a repertoire of about six or so folk songs that I enjoyed playing. I won't say that I was a terribly good harmonica player, but I certainly wasn't that bad of a beginner.
For some reason I wanted to show off my new-found musical skill when I visited my parents. I had planned to play for them, and had practiced accordingly. (I had always wanted to play an instrument, but it was not something that had been encouraged, and the public aspect of playing an instrument has always been crushing to my weak self-esteem - but harmonicas are an easy instrument.)
At what seemed like an appropriate time in the visit with my parents, I told them I wanted to play for them and everyone sat down in the living room while I started to play. About a third of the way through the piece, (it was short), my mother started talking, got up, left the room and continued to talk to those of us in the living room as she started to do something else.
I pushed through to the end of the song, but her dismissive-ness was as upsetting to me as an adult as it had been when I was a child. I put the harmonica away when I returned home and stopped playing.
This is not an unusual behavior for her. She interrupts everyone constantly and talks to me non-stop when I visit her. If I have something to add to a conversation I often have to attempt to say it five or six times before she will let me finish my statement. I used to just let what I wanted to say drop. I figured that if she didn't want to let me say it, then it wasn't worth saying anyway. But my tactic has changed over the years and now I wait, and I remember what it is I wanted to say and when I finally get the opportunity to talk, I preface it with, "As I was trying to tell you before...". It doesn't make any difference to her, but I think my psyche appreciates my persistence in not being run over by my mother.
She does the same thing to my son too. She acts like a grandma for 30 seconds and will even get down to his level, but when he starts to tell her something that is important to him she can't even look at him. She immediately turns her whole body away from him and starts to talk to someone else, while he's talking to her.
I have had no choice but to step in to rescue Daniel in these situations. I help him to stop what he's saying and then I redirect my mother and basically force her to listen to him.
This quote really illuminated her behavior for me:
It's impossible to overemphasize the importance of narcissists' lack of
empathy. It colors everything about them. I have observed very closely
some narcissists I've loved, and their inability to pay attention when
someone else is talking is so striking that it has often seemed to me
that they have neurological problems that affect their cognitive
functioning.
In other words, the inability to pay attention to another human being is so pathological in narcissistic persons that it appears to be a true biological defect.
I had no idea that this was a behavior trait of narcissists. I have been trying to get my mother to listen to me for my whole life, to no avail. And now I know that she will never listen to me. This news is not liberating to me in the least.
My psychologist years ago encouraged me to take the time to mourn for the child who was not nurtured by her mother. The child who desperately wanted the acceptance and love of her mother and who never received it. My psychologist was very clear with me. She told me that my mother was not going to change. It was only I who could change. But even with that knowledge I have always held out hope that someday my mother would accept me as a person.
Once, after some rage my mother had flown into calling me an ungrateful brat and accusing me of not loving her, I was unable to stop crying. I was in my twenties and in the midst of therapy, and I was beginning to understand that how she treated me was not right. I just couldn't deal with the dichotomy of what I was feeling and what she was telling me I was feeling. I cried and cried and cried. The fact that I was unable to stop disarmed her I think and she actually stopped berating me. In trying to get me to stop crying she started to talk to me instead of at me and she started to ask me some questions. I tried as best I could through the tears to explain to her why I couldn't stop crying - how she was making me feel crazy. We had as nice a conversation as we've ever had right then, and I really felt like she was listening to me.
At the end of the conversation she asked me what I wanted out of our relationship. I told her, with some trepidation, "All I've ever wanted from you is for you to tell me that you are proud of me."
My mother took a step towards the door of the room, away from me. After a long pause she turned and said, "I know".
She walked out of the room then, leaving me stunned and crushed once more. By walking out she confirmed that she indeed was not proud of me. Except that I had fully expected that she would tell me she was proud of me under such direct prompting. Isn't that what most people would do? I was prepared for her to not mean what she said. I was not prepared for her to listen to me and then walk away. But that's what she did.
She never did tell me she was proud of me, and I seriously doubt it will happen in the future. I don't know if I'm happy that I found all of this information about the inner workings of narcissists. I think it might hurt more to give up my delusions of hope.
Photo by bobcat rock.
