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Late effects of a narcissistic mother

Late effects of narcissistic mother
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A narcissistic mother leaves deep traces in the soul and massive long-term consequences in the lives of her children. Children of narcissistic mothers often feel deeply insecure, feel wrong, have no confidence in themselves and their own abilities and perceptions. They have been brainwashed into believing that they are wrong the way they are and are therefore extremely conformist.

Children of a narcissistic mother often develop fears, deep existential fears. The feeling of not being loved, the feeling of being rejected as it is, means that a child develops fears of not receiving protection, food or care, which would ultimately mean death. These existential fears often lead to unconscious, fear-based decisions later in life.

As the child of a narcissistic mother who constantly undermines your own perception, at some point you no longer know who you actually are. You have completely lost yourself.

The most important facts in brief

  • Narcissistic mothers leave behind serious long-term consequences: Loss of identity, over-conformity, never being good enough, emotional dependency
  • Emotional after-effects: Suppression of deep-seated fears, feelings of guilt, powerlessness, grief, anger, rejection, shame
  • Trauma reactions: inner emptiness, numbness, no longer feeling yourself, escaping into your head or overflowing emotions
  • Mental and physical complaints: Depression, sleep disorder, psychosomatic complaints, chronic pain, increased cortisol
  • Survival strategies: people pleasing, numbing, perfectionism, self-sabotage, performance orientation, empath, not setting boundaries

Common late effects you may experience as the child of a narcissistic mother

The following list of late effects of a narcissistic mother is exemplary and by no means complete.

Do you find yourself in it?

You have completely lost your identity

You

  • don't know who you really are
  • don't know what you want
  • no longer know what is right and what is wrong
  • do not know your needs
  • do not work in the job you love
  • have no opinion of your own
  • have the feeling that you are watching your life from the outside
  • is not you at all, you are the product that your mother created
  • neglect your own wishes and needs
  • have lost your self-expression
  • have the feeling of being crazy
  • believe you are a narcissist

You are never good enough

  • No matter what you do, it's never good enough
  • you have no confidence in yourself
  • you are full of self-doubt
  • you have low self-esteem
  • you don't feel self-love
  • you have no self-confidence

You are over-adapted

You

  • are afraid of conflict and confrontation
  • cannot set limits
  • have learned not to talk back
  • want to please everyone, bend over backwards for fear of being hurt, criticized or ostracized or to be accepted
  • can't stand up for yourself

You no longer feel yourself

You

  • no longer feel your body
  • have lost contact with yourself, you have no feeling for yourself
  • no longer hear your inner voice or no longer trust it
  • have lost confidence in yourself and in your own perception and feelings
  • no longer feel yourself, feel numb
  • feel an inner emptiness inside you
  • have closed your heart
  • have difficulties allowing love
  • are very often in the mind and think and analyze everything
  • are emotionally frozen or have exuberant emotions

You are emotionally dependent on others and therefore easy to manipulate

  • you are dependent on love and recognition/attention/approval from your narcissistic mother or later from other people
  • you want to be loved/recognized at all costs and will do anything for it because you have had negative experiences when you pursue your own path
  • you are a puppet of your mother or other people
  • the needs of others are always more important than your own
  • you are driven by feelings of guilt (guilty conscience)
  • you have the feeling that you have to do what others tell you to do

You are estranged from your family of origin

  • you have no or only very superficial contact with your siblings
  • Your narcissistic mother has pitted you against your siblings (triangulation)
  • you don't feel part of the family
  • you have no or unhealthy contact with your narcissistic mother
  • you feel as if you have no roots

You try to make yourself invisible

  • you are shy, quiet
  • you are introverted
  • you speak in a soft voice that comes from the larynx
  • you cannot maintain eye contact when talking to others

Sometimes also: You have put on the cloak of strength

You give yourself to the outside world

  • according to
  • combative
  • rebellious
  • Successful
  • Extremely performance-oriented

so as not to have to feel the emotional wounds deep inside

You have psychological and physical complaints

  • Depressive mood and depression
  • Burnout
  • Dissociation
  • Addictions
  • Sleep disorders
  • Exhaustion
  • Circles of thought
  • psychosomatic complaints
  • chronic pains
  • Chronically tense muscles/connective tissue/fasciae
  • you are infight/escape/freeze/functional freeze or fawn mode
  • Your system is constantly in anxiety and stress mode
  • Your nervous system is deregulated
  • Your cortisol is elevated

You feel like a victim

  • often find yourself in victim roles
  • have given up power over your life

You are entangled with your narcissistic mother

You

  • live in your house
  • are financially entangled with her through private loans
  • work in your company or are a co-partner
  • receive regular financial support from her

You keep finding yourself in destructive or toxic relationships

You

  • repeatedly come up against narcissistic/toxic partners, superiors or colleagues, friends
  • are often exploited

You have attachment disorders

You

  • cannot allow any real closeness
  • Close yourself off from other people

Do you want to free yourself from the long-term effects of your narcissistic mother?

What you can feel, you can begin to process. What you can process, you can begin to heal. 

Emotional late effects of a narcissistic mother

You have been told over and over again that you

  • are sensitive
  • exaggerate
  • take yourself too seriously
  • imagine it
  • are a difficult child

You were shamed or simply ignored and punished with silence (silent treatment), experienced emotional abuse and much more. As a child, this triggered deep emotions in you such as

  • Feelings of guilt (guilty conscience)
  • Shame
  • existential fears
  • Fear of not being good enough, fear of punishment, fear of being abandoned, fear of being excluded, fear of being rejected, fear of conflict, fear of doing something wrong, fear of being hurt, fear of being criticized
  • deep down you are afraid of your mother and of other people who exhibit your mother's behavior
  • Deep uncertainty
  • Anger
  • Mourning
  • Fainting
  • Feeling abysmally alone
  • you have the feeling that something is deeply wrong with you
  • you feel inadequate
  • you feel worthless, inferior, unlovable
  • you feel no joy
  • you feel you don't belong
  • you feel small

Since you didn't have anyone to support you emotionally as a child, you started to suppress these strong feelings because they simply overwhelmed you.

In order not to have to feel these deep emotions, you developed survival strategies as a child - these are certain behavioral patterns - in order to be able to deal with the situation and survive. You stored these patterns in your subconscious as a child. These patterns are still active in you and will affect your whole life if you don't work through them.

These unconscious behaviors have a protective function. They protect you from emotional pain, cover it up.

The first step to healing is to become aware of it. Because only when you are aware of something can you change it.

Narcissistic mother

What behaviors can be the late effects of a narcissistic mother?

  • Helper syndrome (to gain recognition / love)
  • Good girl/good boy syndrome/peoplepleasing (to avoid conflicts)
  • Perfectionism
  • you keep yourself busy with food, work, sex, shopping, alcohol, smoking, Facebook, TV, sleeping, partying
  • you withdraw
  • you have a great desire for safety
  • you sabotage yourself or are very performance-oriented
  • you try to control everything
  • you are often aggressive
  • you are submissive
  • you are often triggered
  • you relate everything to yourself (reaction, words, moods)
  • you are an empath, you have a very good perception of moods or what is unspoken, you constantly scan your surroundings for their mood or possible threats and react accordingly

The hunger for love

Deep inside you is a big hole, a great neediness, a hunger for love. Love that you didn't feel from your narcissistic mother. You therefore try to 'earn' this love and recognition at work or from friends in order to fill this huge hole.

You can't fill this hole from the outside.

That does not work.

This huge hole is made up of suppressed emotions from your childhood.

In my experience, suppressed emotions get stuck in the body and are stored there. However, these repressed emotions want to be felt. What you can feel, you can process, you can heal.

You have experienced developmental trauma

If you grew up with a narcissistic mother, you will have experienced countless large and small emotional injuries over the years, this is called developmental trauma.

Yes, you have experienced trauma.

In my experience, healing from the late effects of a narcissistic mother requires a complex and in-depth approach from the field of trauma therapy methods or trauma-sensitive coaching.

Talk therapy didn't helpme personally because it doesn't get to the root of the problem.

The trauma is in the body, not in the head.

You speak with your head, your mind, you feel with your body and you process with your body.

And in my experience, it is precisely where the trauma is located, in the body, that therapy and coaching for the long-term effects of a narcissistic mother must begin.

Who did you have to be for your mother?

What did your mother say to you?

What did that do to you?

How to free yourself from the long-term effects of your narcissistic mother

Based on my own experience and the experience from many sessions with children of narcissistic mothers, I have specialized in coaching and therapy for children of a narcissistic mother in my practice.

We start where you are right now.

In my Emotional Release sessions, you slowly begin to release and feel the suppressed emotions again, step by step, in a safe environment. In this way, your body gradually regains the capacity to hold and allow the emotions. Very often we are afraid to feel the emotions. The fear of the emotion is often perceived as much worse than the emotion itself. An important part of my own healing and my sessions is working with the inner child.

In my FAQ you will find many answers to questions about my work.

I have a deep understanding of how it leaves you behind.

But I also know from my own experience that healing and transformation is possible if you are willing to feel, really feel, the pain that is stuck inside you.

The transformation of a narcissistic trauma and its long-term consequences is a process and takes time.

Stefanie Heinlein

I am an expert on narcissism, healing practitioner & mentor. My mission: emotional release & working with the subconscious mind. I supported people to free themselves from the shackles of their emotional hurts and traumas, and related repressed emotions and patterns, regardless of the cause. My particular area of heart and specialization is supporting women in releasing their narcissistic trauma so that they can once again live a self-determined life with self-love, self-worth and self-confidence.

Stefanie Heinlein