One of the first steps in how to deal with a narcissistic mother includes developing effective responses to her inappropriate boundaries. Enmeshment, an extreme form of proximity and intensity in the narcissistic mother’s way of interacting with her children is one style of behavior often seen in narcissistic family systems.
Narcissistic mother enmeshment is unlike anything else. It is restrictive, confining, and is not real, unconditional love. As Tom Cruise said in Jerry Maguire, “You complete me.” Of course, he was saying it to a woman he fell in love with, not to his children, and hopefully not because of his selfish needs. When narcissistic parents utter this line or have that mentality, it’s often enmeshment, not the unconditional love of a parent.
Enmeshment is an extreme form of proximity and intensity in family interactions. The word means to catch, be involved in, or act as if in a net or snare. This is what narcissistic parents do to their families. They entangle them and wrap them up in their web of self-absorption.
When you’re a baby, you begin to form boundaries with your family members, dictated by your parents, but that is how you learn them. When you are old enough to communicate your boundaries to others, you do so. However, in people who grew up in a family with a narcissistic parent or a narcissistic mother, boundary problems develop, and all those involved become emotionally less functional. Children become victims of her enmeshment and lack of proper boundaries.
She is the one who created you, so why shouldn’t she have complete control over what you do and how you live?
From her limited point of view, she believes since she took care of you when you weren’t old enough to care for yourself, you owe it to her to never keep a secret from her or have your own space.
How to Deal with a Narcissistic Mother that Objectifies You
You are an extension of her, a product, an object, a mirror. You are a part of her, and she treats you as such.
This is the mentality of an enmeshed narcissistic mother.
Narcissistic mothers know how to overtly and covertly control their families, using tactics that may be unbeknownst to others. She may make you feel guilty if you are not attending to her every need. When you are always on pins and needles around her, it may cause you to grow up to be hypersensitive, especially when it comes to rejection.
Enmeshment is not Emotional Intimacy
To the outside world, this enmeshment may come across as intimacy, or your narcissistic mother cherishes you. But in reality, you were never allowed to develop your own identity separate from her. She always tried to make you take on her identity, whether she knew it or not. She may have also tried to live vicariously through you once you were old enough for her to be jealous or want to be more like you, becoming overly involved in your social life, school, sports, etc.
Proceed With Caution
If you are not careful, this enmeshment from your narcissistic mother can persist for an entire lifetime. Your boundaries may be poorly developed as an adult with inadequate self-protection against others and their manipulations. When you struggle with how to deal with a narcissistic mother, it is hard to tell where your feelings start and where hers end. Her feelings take over you, and these feelings can be generalized into other relationships you may form in your lifetime.
This emotional blueprint of boundary violation may be something you unintentionally allow in or carry to your other meaningful relationships with a partner, friend, boss, or children.
When you finally realize what is going on, you may (or possibly already have) try to move far away from her, distancing yourself physically to try to heal the emotional wounds that are so deep you may not know where they end. You could move across the country or the world, but it still may not seem far enough. Regardless of distance, the emotional enmeshment may still persist because you never got to find out who you were outside of your narcissistic mother.
How to Deal with a Narcissistic Mother and Her Boundary-less Way of Looking at the World
When you were young, you were taught to look through the eyes and hear through the ears of your narcissistic mother.
You were forced to make conscious or subconscious choices based on whether or not you believed she would approve of your decisions. In time, you lose yourself within the narcissistic family system of enmeshment and fuse yourself with your mother. That sense of wholeness that others get from just being themselves is not something you were allowed to know. Your wholeness came from being psychologically bonded to her.
The abusive patterns, psychologically and perhaps even physically, do not stop until you make the conscious decision to end them yourself. For as long as you allow it, your narcissistic mother will continue to go about this boundary-less relationship and keep you from experiencing your true self and true identity.
Narcissistic mothers know precisely how to keep their children close by their sides, making sure their dependence on her is strong so they are unable to break the ties between the two of them. She rewards her kids for being like her and meeting her needs. As soon as they do something she disapproves of, such as making their own decisions or being unique, they are condemned and made to feel inadequate. She makes them earn their way back, which many desperately try to do.
In your case, and for all those who have to deal with a narcissistic mother, you have the option of severing the enmeshed ties that have kept you overly vulnerable to your mother for so long.
Set boundaries and set them high. Let these boundaries be known. Enforce consequences when boundaries are violated. This is about you, your healing, and your recovery from having a narcissistic mother. Choose what is best for you, your happiness, and your overall contentment. Be the change you need because your narcissistic mother won’t be.
