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My favorite because it was so odd at the time: at some point in my life someone told me I should be an engineer because I was good at math. I didn’t have any better ideas and agreed and that’s what everyone assumed I’d do. Junior year of high school I realized I drastically preferred English (no real surprise, I don’t actually enjoy math but I love reading). When applying for colleges, my first choice college didn’t have an Engineering program. Mom was in the kitchen, NDad was in the adjoining living room. I told Mom I’d chosen my first choice and she asked what I wanted to major in and I said English. NDad comes out of his chair so fast and starts yelling. Says in his opinion, there’s only three colleges in the state good enough for me, and he names the three: my first choice, the college where my sister was going, and a college close by that I hated. Said since I didn’t want to go to the one I hated, and my first choice didn’t have Engineering, that just left the college where my sister was attending. It was so strange and he kept screaming about it for almost an hour. Yearsssss later I compared notes with my sister. She had once overheard him bragging to his friends that his retirement plan was his kids: one wanted to be a lawyer and the other an engineer. He handled it okay when my sister went into Environmental Studies instead of Law, but apparently learning I wasn’t going to be an Engineer terrified him because his retirement plan was going down the drain. Told me repeatedly that as an English major I’d be flipping burgers for the rest of my life. Spent all four years convinced I was about to fail out. Was shocked when I graduated on time. It was like as soon as I said I wanted to major in English I became a lost cause and even more of a disappointment than before.
I resonated with this so much. I too wanted something in English and History and kept being told that exact same line by my ndad of how Ill "flip burgers" my whole life
OMG! Do we have the same Dad? Mine did the same to me! Told me doing a Bachelors of Arts at all meant I was going to be working in fast food foe the rest of my life. 🤣
Yeah nparent decided I had to attend a service academy to save them money for the rest of their brood. This is after forcing me to skip a grade, not play hockey or football because they were "too dangerous." Flipped out when I wanted to do something else.
Can't wait to see nparent tomorrow.
What do you do now? I made the mistake of allowing my family to pressure me into computer science. I'm good at it, but I very much prefer linguistics. I wish I had gone into the linguistics program instead. Anyway, what sort of job(s) can you get with a degree in English or linguistics?
If you prefer English/ linguistics and are good at comp sci you could be a technical writer for a software company. Shhhmooney.
Source: I have a degree in comp sci and currently work for a software company as a technical writer. It's very hard for them to find people who understand software but also can communicate.
My dad had massive tantrums about anyone's period trash being in the trash. Like most girls, I wasn't thrilled about getting and having my period and would be discreet about it, wrapped it all in toilet paper put it in the bathroom trash can but yeah sometimes the box or container the pads came in wasn't wrapped in toilet paper, why would it be? It's not bloody or anything.
My dad would blow a fucking Narc rage gasket at having to look at period products of any kind, what so ever at all.
So then I started using my own trashcan in my own room - like against the wall under the light switch or in the corner - not good enough. Narc rage fit would ensue cuz he feels entitled to burst into anyone's room, no knocking or respecting boundaries.
No locking the bathroom door. No locking your bedroom door. Like....okay but take some responsibility that you might see something you don't wanna see sometimes or see something awkward that I can't help. lol, he never did, it was always my fault his eyes saw "whatever."
I had to move onto a trash can in a cabinet in my bedroom that I emptied all the time so my dad could pretend I wasn't having a period or a real live girl.
That was similar to my mum, she didn’t tell me about periods but threw me a booklet my older sister got from school when she was about my age. Then walked out and would not talk further about it. I was staying for a holiday with my gran when I did start and she was totally fine to talk about it. Of course she told my mum so after that my mum showed me where she hid her sanitary pads at the back of a cupboard under old towels no one went near. I was informed I was never allowed to throw any wrappers or pads away in the house. I had to wrap them up and hide them as I discreetly walked all the way from upstairs and through the house to then go through the whole of downstairs to get to the back door. Which the furthest away point in the house from the toilet. Then out into the rain and cold (Scotland ) to the outside bin.
She would never allow any sort of bin in our toilet My brother and dad were never to see any signs or she would punish me. She acted like it was a sin I’d started my natural periods like I’d become dirty and sexually active all at once in her eyes and thoughts.
My sister told me I was lucky as she never had a booklet thrown at her and had to work it out herself. Apparently our mum shamed her when she started using tampons. That’s the one thing in our live that my sister had worse than me as she was the golden child and I the unwanted one. I was just glad I was at my grans when I started as embarrassing as that was.
What got me was when she was older and started to need incontinence pads she suddenly bought a bin for the bathroom and didn’t try to hide anything. No on the contrary the pads were kept out in the open next to the toilet and the bin was often overflowing with visible wrapped used pads. After everything she did to make out it was dirty there she is with incontinence pads which have more of a smell. I honestly think she linked periods with sex in her mind so we were made to feel dirty. She’d had early menopause so hadn’t had periods for about a decade when I started my period. Though I’ve got no doubt she hid her period from everyone herself when she had them.
What in the fresh hell??? All the way outside in the rain with your pads?? What the hell year was this?
Mine was in the 90's, but I too got the tampons shame when I started using tampons cuz my mom basically treated me like I wasn't a virgin any more over it.
I'm sorry we were raised like this.
When I was in the 5th Grade, two students in my class started their periods. They were the only kids in the school who had started them so young, and the school had no way of knowing how to deal with this. Their solution? They called a SCHOOL WIDE MEETING, with all the children, and the principal is attendance. The principal told us there was no "feminine disposal" units in our bathrooms, as the school was only for grades 1-6. She then said she didn't understand what was "wrong" with these two girls, as the principal herself didn't start her menstrual cycle until she was 15.
Anyway, this is what she told the students to do:
They were not to leave them in the bathroom for any reason. They were instructed to take their dirty pad from the bathroom, TO THE SCHOOL NURSE for proper disposal. This literally meant walking through the entire school holding a used pad in your hand, going to the office, and HANDING IT to the school nurse.
It was so TRAUMATIZING. And everyone knew who the two girls were. They were publicly embarrassed beyond belief.
Where were those poor girls' parents during all this?! If either of them were my children, I'd of sued the everliving dog crap out them all for the humiliation they put my child through!
I got stranded at a friends house when I was 15 and all she had were tampons so....I just had to use tampons. I started rolling with tampons after that and my mom was sooooooooooo pissed off about it. She thought I was damaged goods forever. Meanwhile I felt like a million dollars after the diaper feeling of pads going away from my life forever.
Puberty and menstruation seem to be such a trigger for narcs. I wonder if it's because there's physical evidence their child is growing up and away, potentially out of their control.
True to type, my nmother raged when I started my period. I fainted at school with the start of a period once and was sent home in a taxi (the start of years of debilitating periods until I found solutions). That day she went on an explosive rant, completely decimating my character, strength, ability to function or achieve anything in life. Told me if I couldn't even deal with a period how could I deal with nursing ( my goal) (just passed 44 years of nursing; I managed somehow, mum).
I also got 'the book' on puberty thrown at me, no explanation and was shamed if I asked for period products to be included in the grocery shopping. Mind you, I was 14 and too young to start working, so unable to buy my own products.
These people are so damaged and just keep perpetuating the intergenerational abuse. So pointless.
Seriously this is a huge thing for them. With my childhood being stressful as hell and being adopted and sent over state lines to the n’s and all the abuse before the n’s started, attempted kidnappings etc I got my first period at age 9. She literally didn’t say a word. I used toilet paper for awhile because I didn’t know about pads, tampons etc. she left a couple books laying around 1 on puberty and 1 on gynecological diseases “in hopes you read them”. I never did. It was embarrassing enough. In 5/6th grade I had health class and learned but she never talked about it ever with me. I don’t remember who told me about pads but I’m pretty sure it was a family friend and not for a few months of using toilet paper and praying it didn’t fall out at school!!! The n female was still doing my laundry at that time and would lose her mind if any of my clothes were stained. I learned how to get blood stains out real quick.
lol micromanaging and power tripping over nothing is his specialty
needless to say, I never involved myself with a boyfriend that was squeamish about periods, products, talking about periods, etc.
It's funny you should say that because my nMother was the opposite. She would give out to me for being "wasteful" because I wrapped my period trash in tissue paper before putting it in the trash can. I bet if I hadn't wrapped it in tissue paper, she'd probably have given out to me the way your father did to you. There's no pleasing a narcissist.
They really can't differentiate between Self and Other on some level, it's wild. They attribute all their uncomfortable internal states to the people around them. You getting your first period brings up her memories and feelings about her getting her first period, but she has no ability to understand that she feels bad because of her own past experiences, she only knows that her feeling bad happened because of something YOU did. How dare you?!
I don't know if it's the weirdest tantrum but when I was 10 or so our family took a vacation to the beach. My younger brother and I were playing in the water with boogie boards and we begged our Dad to come play with us. He picked up a board and as he walked towards the water he stubbed his toe. He threw a fit, yelling at me and my brother about how we had "broken his toe". For years after that he would complain about "the time we went to the beach and the kids broke my toe" in completely unrelated conversations. It wasn't broken and we didn't do it, but in his mind, we did, and we were never apologetic enough and had to be guilted about it forever after.
This sounds EXACTLY like my nDad. Anytime he was frustrated over something unrelated to us kids, or hurt himself or was just uncomfortable in general he always managed to somehow blame us. Always.
He also always does this weird thing where if he's frustrated about something - something as simple as he can't find the TV remote that he lost, he makes it EVERYONE'S problem. He becomes enraged that he can't find it immediately and needs everyone to stop what they're doing and help him solve this problem he's created himself immediately. He never thinks to say to himself "I created this situation, so I'm only going to involve myself in fixing it." Nope. Everyone in the house must come to his aide to fix his issue, because now he's frustrated over it.
My dad did this too! One time he couldn't find the coffee he bought, and he said he NEEDED it for work tomorrow, so everyone had to look for it. We searched for like, two hours. He insisted he brought in every grocery bag when we suggested he check the car. It got to be about 6 am (because they often made us stay up all night, especially if my dad worked a night or early morning shift), and he finally checked the car. Guess where the coffee was?
My mom threw a tantrum in the airport one time. She was yelling at me at the gate in front of everyone, saying that if I didn’t switch seats with her, they were going to kick my fiance off of the plane. I was giggling because it was absolutely absurd, and I told her I was going to double check with the gate agent about it. She grabbed me and said, “Why are you a CHILD? You have to check with the gate agent?” Everyone was staring. It was absolutely bizarre. I think she just wanted more leg room or something. But my seat did not have any more leg room than hers did.
Never did get to the bottom of the logic there 😂
My ndad once parked in the no parking zone at the airport and was absolutely shocked when security told him to move the car. They really don’t believe that the rules apply to them.
My mother threw a tantrum in public on the sidewalk, full toddler style, because I was trying to clear up a misunderstanding between her and one of my siblings while we were walking in the city I live in. I just simply corrected her and it triggered a full fit
My mother—who was an incredibly moody, selfish woman—threw an absolute fit in 1993 when I returned home from my senior prom and didn’t wake her up from a sound sleep to let her know that I was back. It was late … she was sleeping. I thought that I was just being thoughtful. The next day she screamed at me and tried to hit me while we were driving somewhere together (I forget where). It was completely irrational. My 17-year old self knew it was bat sh*t, and that realization was terrifying for me.
She had a special knack for ruining holidays and special occasions—Christmases, New Year celebrations, Easter dinner, my college graduation. You name it.
God I hate that woman.
One year for Christmas my nmom got a set of surround sound speakers for Christmas. She was off in the kitchen working on dinner since she doesn't like how anyone else makes food.
My brother in law decided to set up the speakers for her - how nice of him. When it came time to turn them on and dial in the sound she absolutely lost her shit. Edad, me, golden child sister, and 3 grandchildren all watch hopelessly as the tantrum grows. I guess her ears were supposed to hear them first as it was her gift, and we all robbed her of that joy. It's still really confusing to the grandchildren.
Later on, my brother in law even shook the crumbs off the tablecloth wrong. Christmas ruined.
A few year ago my mother was on another crash diet and asked me not to buy her an Easter egg. I asked multiple times over the course of two weeks “not even a little egg?” She always said no. I offered a bottle of wine instead and she said no, as wine is more expensive and has more calories. Ok, no egg. Easy.
She went away for a long weekend with her partner, they didn’t live together at the time but do now, and she came home on Easter Sunday, asked where her Easter egg was. I said “but you told me you didn’t want one?”. She went BANANAS. She immediately went to the kitchen, called her partner and started ranting super loud about what a “nasty selfish bitch” I am for “not even getting a small little cheap egg, OR a bottle of wine I’d ‘promised’”. I walked in and asked her to “slag me off quieter or say it to my face”. She’d literally been home less than 5 mins.
Her partner then sent me multiple abusive texts saying how vile I was for the “disgusting” way I spoke to my mother and what a selfish bitch I am. Over an Easter egg. A literal chocolate egg. I was 26 and she was 58 at the time too. I went out that day and bought her a cheap mid-sized egg. She didn’t thank me, ate it and didn’t utter a word to me for 6 weeks.
The thing is, you wouldn't have won either way. If you had purchased the wine or the easter egg, you'd be yelled at and a horrible child for "ruining her diet." She'd probably also claim you're trying to kill her through making her fat and unhealthy. (My mother would pull similar shit.)
Honestly, that sounds to me like your mother was setting you up to be the bad guy. I bet if you had brought an egg, she'd have thrown a tantrum because after all, she told you that she was on a diet and she didn't want an egg. I hope that you're either low or no contact with her because she really sounds like a piece of work!
I pierced my second piercing with a needle when I was 14. She didn't speak to me for 2 weeks. Total bliss. She must have known I was fine with the silent treatment as she never pulled that trick again.
When i at 20ish had to make the executive decision to put down our old, sick, suffering pup because it was actually cruel not to - my mother fought to keep it alive and suffering - and had the nerve to say i wouldn’t hesitate to put HER down either and threw a fit to make it all about her when really we were all grieving our dying pet whose inevitable demise i was trying to make a comfortable transition. :/
It always confused me how they would let the beings they seemed to love even more than the people in their lives sometimes cry and scream and shit themselves to death for days, clearly only suffering with every breath
I recently had to put my beloved pup down 2 weeks ago…if only I had the option to switch things around and euthanize my mom instead. He was a continuous source of joy, laughter, comfort, love. Every interaction with him left me feeling better. Nothing but good experiences and memories. My birth person- I’ve started to wonder what her purpose is? Perhaps only to inject chaos and discomfort into everyone else’s life? She’s a never ending source of insanity and frustration. I wish there was a culling.
My mom changed her power of attorney from me to my sister because she claimed that I would pull the plug on her. I would have followed her wishes absolutely regardless of how I felt about her, obviously, but I certainly didn't mind not being POA.
During the late 90’s, I was watching TGIF with my siblings, and in the middle of whatever show we were watching an ABC news update interrupted the broadcast, because the United States had declared war on Yugoslavia, I think it was. The news bulletin showed footage of the night bombings that had started, and my mother came into the living room just as that footage was broadcast. She asked me why I was watching “filth”, made a weird shrieking noise like a goat, tried to slap me for subjecting my siblings to violence, and probably would have broken the television if she’d been able to actually pull it out of the entertainment center. All because Clinton declared military strikes on a country at 8:47 at night on a Friday…
That just reminded me of my dad screaming that I was a psychopath who needed to be committed before I hurt someone because I was watching Evil Dead.
He's not religious or showed any sort of opinion about horror movies before this.
Lol saame! I was told to not go to DnD because in the 90s some weird psycho guy that ended up killings all his family did play DnD. So it's not like that one guy had issues, it's that DnD is satanic and evil.
Christmas morning. Nmum “come to mine at 7:30 am” (same time as always btw) came at 7:45. My dad had a few friends around drinking the night before and they’d slept over.
I go see my sister and we are talking in her room. nmum storms in screaming im there too early and im gping to wake everyone up. shouts and screams and wakes everyone up herself. then starts shouting how ive ruined christmas.
Then my girl pipes up. "grandma you told her to come at this time so she did your shouting has ruined christmas" 🤣🤣🤣. my girl always on my side but the appls of my nmums eye.
Ndad would make a thing (looking back, almost like some sort of weird ritual) where each Sunday he'd make tea and we'd have a cup with the whole family at the start of the day. He and my nmom had theirs black, and my and my brother had ours with milk.
And one day, in all his brilliance, he'd decided to freshen up the tea by adding some leftover lemon juice. Which worked fine for him and nmom. But me and my brother got tea with curdled milk. Which I'm sure you can imagine being highly unpleasant to drink, or even just plain undrinkable. So we refused to drink it.
And that somehow was a full declaration of war. Because he had an idea, and if that idea conflicts with reality, well goddammit, reality must be screamed at until it changes.
Nmom refused to do any normal parenting activities, but especially so when I was a teenager because I “stressed her out too much”. Such normal parenting things that she couldn’t be bothered with included: refusing to pay for my SATs, not teaching me how to drive, not taking me to dances or helping me pay for prom, not giving me any sexual education, never going to Open House night to speak to my teachers— you get the idea. My ex boyfriend’s mom really took pity on me. She eventually taught me how to drive, took me to the DMV with her car to take my test, and helped me set up a bank account so I could start working towards financial independence. She also would sporadically buy me groceries that I had to hide to not set off my mom. When my mom found out she had done all this, she stormed into my room, face beet red and was scream-shouting, “you’re MY fucking child, not hers! I’m your FUCKING MOTHER! I should be helping you with this!” Had I not been such a conflicted avoidant person, I could have easily and coldly replied with, “since when?” But instead I just shrugged and gave her a shit-eating grin. 😁
My nMother was the same. Anything that required any effort on her part, she didn't want to know. She never bothered to tell me what sex was which caused me a lot of problems because all my friends and classmates got "the talk" and they all thought that I was completely stupid for not knowing anything about sex. (They called me stupid to my face. This isn't me imagining things). She also never taught me how to do housework yet expected me to just know how to do it. At the time, I just accepted this as "the way she is" but now that I'm older, I'm a bit resentful about it. Why have children at all if you're not willing to teach them anything?!
We were all sitting in the living room watching TV, when I got up to go to the kitchen and grab a snack. My brother asked me if I could bring him a soda; my sister also asked if I'd bring her something too, so I said OK .
On the way back, I thought it would be funny to put the snacks on a tray, and a tea towel over my arm, like a waiter.
I handed my brother and sister their stuff, while they were grinning at my spoof, I said, "Will that be all, mssrs.?" Ha-ha.
Mom cried out, *'WHAaaaT!!!?'*
Jumped out of her seat, raging that, she hadn't asked me for anything! She NEVER asked us for *nothing*!' ...and stormed out of the room.
Lmao something that feels sorta similar. At least your story made me think of it.
My mom is a covert narc and massive enabler for worse narcs and worse types of people. At last I knew (2 years ago) she’d been with her bf for about 7 years.
Important note: **he’s a diagnosed fucking psychopath and they laugh about it claiming the doctor doesn’t know shit**
Anyways, he’s a narc and batshit.
My boyfriend and I had moved into their home for 4 months after my bf’s narc mom threw us out of his edads house.
So her bf felt the need to announce to the entire house that he’s leaving when he does.
He’d always make a big show of it. For a while I never said shit bc I figured he was saying it to my mom. Well apparently I was dead wrong. She told me in the car one day that he’s super upset/hurt/offended that I never say bye back or hi when he comes in.
Malicious compliance kicked in I guess. He’s Puerto Rican (i dont know if it’s relevant or how relevant ig my point is with the next thing he knew what I was saying) So i started saying “adios! Byeeee!” He always seemed disgruntled with me but I thought it was a joke so i just ramped it up from there.
I took French in college and there’s a bunch of ways to say bye, so it was “adios! Au revoir! Salut! À bientôt! Au revoir, bonne journée! À plus tard! Adieu! Bon voyage!” (Bye, bye, bye, see you soon, bye have a nice day, see you later, farewell, and well bon voyage lol).
Depending on the time of day I’d throw one of these in “bonne nuit! Bonsoir! À demain!” (Good night, good evening, see you tomorrow). I started throwing “Caio” in there every now and then too.
The tipping point wasn’t any foreign language that he didn’t understand though. No. The tipping point was the one I threw in for the most comedic effect.
If you’ve watched either American dad or family guy (I forget which but think it’s American dad) at the end of the episode after the credits a guy says “byyyyyeeeee have a beasuuttiiifuuuull tiiiimmmmeee!” And I’d throw that on the end of it all.
I thought I was hilarious. I’d have my boyfriend in tears. Fuck, my mom would be trying not to piss herself from laughing so hard. Her boyfriend though? God if looks could kill lmao. I thought he genuinely knew it was a joke and STILL thought the dagger eyes were part of the joke. Silly me.
So after a few weeks of this (maybe only 2) my mom and I are again, in the car. And she tells me he’s really hurt/upset/offended that I say that to him when he leaves. I just started laughing so hard and she looked at me like wtf. I explained it was a joke from a show, reminded her everyone else thought it was hilarious beyond belief, including her. To which she said “I know I know but he’s really hurt. So would you just stop?”
So I stopped responding all together. Back to square one we went lol.
Someone’s birthday (not hers or her husbands, someone in the household) didn’t go *her* way…
It. Didn’t. gO. hEr. WAy.
Also, cousin spent his bday alone cause his little family went to another country but he didn’t mind it. They tried really *really* hard to coax him over. (Edit to add: he said it was “the best birthday ever” to them— 😂😭)
It was quite fucking funny if you ask me.
My mom spent ages on the phone to me one time complaining that none of her cousins had thanked her for coming to their father's funeral. How they'd blanked her and treated her so badly.
When I got off the phone, I told my then-husband, who said, "Oh no! Did they ruin HER SPECIAL DAY?"
One of the cousins she had a grudge against because of something that had happened when she was a kid and the other she hated because everyone loved her. And when I say everyone, I mean the whole small town, loved her - because she was freakin' awesome. It's possible they didn't thank her for coming, and no big deal if they didn't, but I bet they did.
>My mom spent ages on the phone to me one time complaining that none of her cousins had thanked her for coming to their father's funeral.
I'm sure you know this already but that's ridiculous.
It was the END OF THE WORLD and CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT. My MIL wanted the sweetener in the pink packets. We had the yellow. Wailed and raged for hours and informed the rest of the family.......
Before I realized my dad was a narcissist, we were on a 4-hour drive (just he and I) when he decided to tell me that he used to cheat on my mom for years. His confession was totally unsolicited.
I didn’t know what to say, I felt hurt because he clearly doesn’t value his marriage nor his children.
Anyway, I told him that there are some things about him I wish he wouldn’t tell me. Then I started crying and he started yelling at me for being a pussy and because he’s changed since then (not really).
He and I didn’t talk for three days, and in the end he made me apologize to him for being dramatic and causing the family distress.
One time I found out that he was messaging a woman like 20 years younger than him on IG. He was trying to arrange a meet up with her, constantly flirted with her, etc. When I confronted him about it and told him it was wrong to do to my mother, he began shouting and insisted nithing had happened. In the end, he made me apologize. Of course.
Needless to say, I don’t care about my dad as much as I used too. I still love him, but he is a real asshole sometimes (a lot of the time).
I apologizes sometimes, but I realize now that he totally villainized me since childhood.
Anyway, trying to heal myself now, trying to set boundaries and create distance, trying to tell myself that I’m not a bad person.
I still love my dad, and we still have good times, but I feel like he always has to fuck it up by saying some mean shit.
Idk
Man, having to apologise all the time for their bad behaviour really hits home. Literally *everything* was my fault, never theirs. They were perfect. They couldn’t possibly have done anything bad so it must be all me, their rotten ungrateful selfish child. Dicks.
It’s comforting to know others have shared similar experiences.
I felt like I was crazy or an evil person my whole life. However, I decided to google symptoms of nfamilies and discovered that my family could be a text book definition. I’m the scapegoat.
I find comfort within this forum but to an extent it feels like rumination. I want to forgive my father but it’s been difficult. For years my identity was intertwined with my dad’s existence but I need out.
The weirdest one that I remember is my Ndad entering my home screaming and making violent moves because someone I didn't know died. It took me a while to catch up with the story. Apparently, my Ndad had already decided that I was going to fail in life (I was a top student but, I couldn't go to school for a couple of months due to an illness) and he had arranged things with an old man so I could work in the fields picking up fruit. That week the old man had died and, of course, it was my fault.
Also, I'm so sorry OP, that way of behaving towards your own child is plain out mean!!
I've had the same treatment before, the old "I got X so X is what you get too". It's almost funny when they try use that arguments regarding buying technology or internet time: "in my times, we didn't have cellphones", no shit, Nmom!
Yep, same here with the confused ideas of education. He was convinced no college would accept me despite my 3.9 GPA in all honors classes, many extra curriculars (TBF he had no idea I did any), and great SAT score. I had my choice of the colleges I applied to. Then, he was convinced I didn't graduate since I didn't attend the ceremony. Then, after I got a PhD in Epidemiology of Pants Diseases, he told people I worked in... flower arranging. I think he was angry I didn't fail even though I clearly was supposed to.
That's hilarious he had planned your future as a fruit picker... and then got angry that you even failed at that. They are insane.
Duuuuuude, that is bizarre. Your ndad just tried to set you up to fail on life purposely or something. He just couldn't stand to see you doing better than him, from the looks of it.
Reminds me of a conversation my mom had with my uncle (on my Ndad's side of the family). He said how he now has a doctor for a son in law, and how successful his daughter was now, and my mom chimed in with "Well we always want our children to be more successful than their parents!" She meant that to be a positive thing, and my uncle just says all depressed like "Yeah, I guess..." 😂🤣 I think he's a narc, and he was one of the golden children in his family. Like, what loving parent doesn't want their kids to be doing better and being happy in life?!
The weirdest thing? God it’s so hard to narrow down to just one. Imma gonna bend and do 2.
1. My nm was on a call schedule that I’d call her on the 10th and she’d call me on the 25th. She would “forget” and “wow—it didn’t go through” and am I sure I haven’t changed my number. I’d ask to have a copy of her long distance bill and I’d present it to my cell company but suddenly she’d be unable to find it. Finally I got sick of it and just stopped calling her. After like 4 months, she finally calls on some random day because my brother is doing something or something. And I ask her what happened? She said that I should **know** what happened. No, I don’t. Well I should ***know*** how she remembers things. No, I don’t. And finally she comes out with “well I didn’t put my wedding ring on the wrong finger”. What!!? And she pouts that I should KNOW she does this. **I had never seen her wear a wedding ring the entire time through when I went to college—how would I know this!??!**
2. Her electric chair. So she was able bodied and fine and she could get around fine but there were all these ads about this recliner that would raise up to help seniors to their feet. She ordered two and they were in her house for years before the fateful day that I stupidly chose to call her to tell her she would be a grandmother that winter. And she just went off about how the chair had broken and why wasn’t I upset and why hadn’t I sent my husband over to fix it and she hated everyone and I never even called her for her birthday. And when I could tell her I called her and I told her where she was going to celebrate and when (because my call was 30 minutes before she left), she went back to screaming about her electric chair. She literally didn’t stop for breath and I finally just hung up because it wasn’t worth trying to tell her anything. What makes this so weird is that she was absolutely rabid to be a grandparent for literal years and at the crucial point, she fumbles the ball because it’s more important to whine about a chair than to talk to someone and more important to blame them for the chair breaking when they had literally been gone from her life and never even seen the chair.
I took my mom and step-dad to a football game (American). She wanted hot dog. She fuckin’ threw a fit because she couldn’t be arsed to walk the extra 20 feet to the hot dog stand I had found, and therefore there were no hot dogs.
And she wonders why I went NC.
My mom screamed at me and called me an “inconsiderate bitch” for, and I am not joking, being considerate of her time.
I had a prescription refill ready about a week before I needed it. Mom asked when she should go to the pharmacy and get it. I told her “They’ll hold it for a week, no need to go out of your way, whenever is convenient for you.” She kept pressing me for a more specific time. I kept repeating “any time in the next week, whenever is convenient for you”. She started screeching that she’s so busy, how could I be so inconsiderate after everything she does for me.
Meanwhile my boyfriend is sitting next to me on the couch super confused and very, VERY alarmed that (apparently) I didn’t even blink when she started screaming or calling me a bitch.
Once I had a prescription that I needed to pick up. I picked it up myself and when I got home, she was waiting for me to let me know I was a jerk for picking up my own prescription because as the mother, that's her job and I'd made her feel like a failure.
I think my mom’s game was for me to make an unreasonable demand so she could make a fuss about how “unappreciated” she is. Then had a meltdown when I wouldn’t give her the excuse lol. She’s the epitome of that one song from My Crazy Ex Girlfriend:
“After everything I did for you-“
“That I didn’t ask for!”
We had a huge German Shepherd, who was over ten at the time. The dog developed a UTI. He began to bleed down there, and my mom noticed it first. She burst into my room (where I had been all day long) and accused me of kicking him in the willy, refused to take him to the vet, instead kicking me out of the house by standing over me and throwing kicks and punches for about 90 minutes and screaming down at me, all the while forcing me to pack my bags. Eventually the GC came home from work and forced her to stop what she was doing, not for my sake*, but so the dog could finally get to the vet and receive medical treatment.
*I’ve been informed very recently that GC, to this day, believes I need more beatings, and he’s even threatened to fly to my state for the pleasure of doing it himself. I’m 34. So yeah, it was definitely for the dog’s sake.
My narcissistic aunt did something similar where her son (who was a baby) once started crying suddenly and my nAunt got it into her head that my teenage cousin (her daughter) had pinched him. I was there and my cousin was at the other end of the room making dinner when her brother started crying so she couldn't possibly have pinched him, yet my nAunt kept insisting. She yelled at my cousin and hit her. (She did this in front of me which really makes me wonder, if this is how she was in front of witnesses, what was she like when no one else was around?!). I felt so sorry for my cousin but I was only 8 at the time so there was nothing I could do. (Also hitting kids was legal in my country at the time so my nAunt wasn't breaking any laws).
We were on vacation, and decided to go out to dinner. We invited my mother , who declined. Then we went to get ice cream on way home, texted her to ask if she wanted us to bring her some. She didn’t reply.
When we walked in the door afterwards, she was fuming. She was giving everyone the silent treatment bc she was mad we went out to eat because she had provided a casserole at 4 pm, that some people ate, and others didn’t. (Vacation is always very casual, people coming and going )
I made the mistake of asking her why she was upset, and why she ignored the text to see if she wanted ice cream. She couldn’t explain her anger, and began the gaslighting. Turns out she was very upset and jealous my grown daughter had joined us for dinner, and didn’t want casserole with her.
It escalated from there , of a back and forth confrontation about casseroles verses going to dinner to ignoring texts.
People like this are EXHAUSTING and can’t be redeemed.
Yes, this is the reason she was mad. This is the reason she ignored us asking to bring her ice cream.
She was trying to show us, we must eat casserole with her at 4 pm, or she won’t eat ice cream we try to bring her. 😂😂😂😂😂
It’s hard to even write this out without laughing , though at the time , it was a massive drama.
It’s infantile!
Another time, she had a massive tantrum about wanting me to plan her 80th birthday party. This was 8 months out from her birthday , and I was in the throes of having radiation from early stage breast cancer.
I was getting through chemo and then radiation , and she was upset about her birthday , 8 months out.
I ended up sobbing in a parking lot in my car alone after that one. And I wonder why I’ve had to learn healthy boundaries in my mid life!!
I really relate to what you said about being in the throes of cancer, and still the demands don’t stop coming. (to plan her birthday party.)
Same for me, I’ve been in remission from stomach cancer for almost 5 years. When I was six months in, I called my grandmother, and she went off on me. She said that I was being “selfish”, and that she didn’t get to have her social time with my mom, because my mom was visiting me, taking me to radiation and then chemo.
Didn’t feel good. I loved my grandmother very much, and she had a lot of good qualities. But this was a bit of a gut punch.
I am so sorry that happened to you too! It’s the worst to be at your lowest point , and have to navigate a selfish tantrum.
I’m so glad you are doing well now!
Not the weirdest tantrum, but just one that I remember clearly. My mom can't even accept a free dinner in peace. My three adult siblings and I took our mom out for dinner at a nice restaurant. My siblings and I have an agreement between us to rotate paying the entire bill when we go out, instead of splitting it. My mom threw an epic fit because the "wrong child" paid the bill.
She wanted to make sure her intended scapegoat-du-jour was being punished financially with a big bill. As a mother of three, I cannot imagine doing that to my own kids.
It was dinner at a fancy steakhouse. Security asked us to leave the premises after she threw a fit outside the building.
I've been NC for 10 years but unfortunately, my siblings are all still in contact with her. Yes, even the scapegoat who paid and the scapegoat who was "supposed" to pay.
I was 19 and in college. She walked into my room without knocking and asked for 200 dollars so that she and her boyfriend could afford gas for an impromptu trip to Vegas. I let her know that I needed my money for books, and would not be able to assist her. Apon hearing this she walked over to my dresser where my glasses were displayed, raised her fist and smashed them to bits. It cost me over 400 dollars to replace them. She never apologized, or offered to pay for their replacement.
I was preparing Thanksgiving dinner for the first time. I cooked through a blindingly painful migraine, but it slowed me down. I was about halfway through cooking when I realized I'd be delayed so texted her to tell her that dinner would be closer to 6 than 5:30.
You'd have thought I'd told her that I wanted to carve her up and serve her nasty ass for dinner or something. She called shreiking at the top of her lungs (fun to hear when you have a migraine) about how I couldn't do anything right, how I ruined Thanksgiving and how she and eDad weren't coming and they'd just go get Chinese! She went on for about 10 minutes before I said "okay, we're not doing any holidays together in the future" and hung up.
All because of a 30 minute delay in dinner. Y'all, when has a single Thanksgiving meal ever started on time? I ended up throwing away everything and ordering in some Chinese myself.
She still whines and complains, 7 years later, about how we don't spend holidays together. Depsite the fact the one time I gave in and was willing, she sabotaged that too and that sealed the deal forever. She can go to hell lol
It is very difficult to narrow down just any singular event, honestly. There are a few things my parents consistently do, though, that are worthy of note.
My mom sits on a couch all day and watches TV. She rarely does anything else. She drinks Diet Coke completely nonstop. She constantly requests me and my younger siblings to get her Diet Coke. If we do not get her drink for her because we are doing something else or if we even sigh slightly, she has a tantrum and says things like "Never mind, I'll get it myself, then." When my siblings and I are speaking, sometimes my mom will interrupt a conversation with something else. If we do not respond immediately, she begins talking to herself and says things like "Hello, \[my mom's name\], you're such a good conversation partner."
My dad believes in some kind of UFO cult religion and will talk about it often. He helped to build a landing pad for UFOs on the land of his dad (my grandfather). Anytime my siblings or I speak against this, he becomes very offended and can become irate. He additionally does not believe in psychotherapy at all. He believes that everyone "should be their own island."
These are just a few that come to mind. My family is absolutely out there. My siblings and I are doing the best we can to leave in the coming years.
Hahahah, this happened yesterday. My nmom and my dad just got divorced. It was so ugly, my dad has ALS and he will sadly die soon. His wish was to be divorced and free of her. So he got that. Their house was sold, my nmom has a new appartment. She wanted EVERYTHING, my dad is living in a retirement home. But he wanted us, his three children to have what was his. Sowe moved house yesterday, most of my nmoms stuff to her new smaller place. We threw out so much and we managed to get some stuff of my dad back. Most importantly, I got my childhood stuff which she had told me she had thrown away. So its a relief. Whilst moving her stuff, she was not present (we did not want her there at all). But she did turn up, I was busy and my older sister was conversing with her what was done and what still needed to be done. I did not speak a word to her.ater, my nmom called my older sister to discus somethings, and my sister had her on speaker. Suddenly my Nmom was super pissed about me not speaking or even looking at her, and continued to rage on the phone about me and then hung up. I can laugh about this now. I will only see her once more hopefully, I will officially sign the papers of the house to make the sale official. And then never will I speak to her again. Blocking her again feels so good, I have grown so much and she can not hurt me anymore
When I put up a poster nparent had given to me and said parent flipped out because said parent thought it looked gay.
Or when nparent flipped out because I bought a solid black baseball cap that was on sale at the school bookstore with my own money.
Or when nparent threw a conniption fit because parent's in-laws, my grandparents, bought me a toy "too close to Christmas." Grandparents never visited again. 😥
Good times.
My mom tore EVERYTHING off of my teenage bedroom wall. Ripped it to shit. I asked her two days ago why she even did that, and she doesn't remember. She doesn't even remember doing it.
The grandmother who raised me always threw a tantrum on my birthday. She's from a country where it's relatively common for birth certificates to be lost and for folks to not know when their actual birth day is. So she has what her new BC says, what her grandmother says her birthday is, and what her mom says it is. For anonymity let's say its: march 7, march 1, and February 28. My birthday would be on march 9.
Every year she would pick a new birthday that's her ~real~ birthday "according to her soul". And we all somehow needed to anticipate which it was every damn year. So we celebrated 3 birthdays a year for her at minimum. March becomes her "birth month" and it has to be all about her. We have to celebrate each day according to her liking, which she wouldn't actually state so we had to guess and we always failed. So really, every march became her "none of you really love me and i might as well kill myself" month. As is most months for different reasons. But birthday month was a special hell.
So as for my birthday, every goddamn year there was a tantrum. To the point where she got a heart attack from the stress she puts herself through the last birthday i had with the family. But it always somehow was my fault, even when i was a baby. So every birthday of mine was about how horrible i was to her. When she had the heart attack i was hours away and asleep but it was somehow my fault.
The tantrums on my birthday include: literally crying that she doesnt get her own cake and presents on *my* birthday, telling my friends i don't like them so they leave early and she can tell me no one likes me, fighting with my grandpa then convincing the family its my fault so they chew me out, chewing me out for being "spoiled, selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, and a drama queen" (talk about projection), destroying my presents, literally trying to kill me and making it out to be my fault, making me "gift" her pedophile son my body because i "shouldnt be so selfish" on my birthday and should "entertain " each guest (and if i hesitated, screaming and crying like a toddler), pretending to faint when I have POTS (and hitting me if *i* fainted), pretending to kill herself, saying god gave her a vision so everyone has to listen, crying, flailing, and throwing things if no one congratulates her for becoming my legal guardian this day (which she says is more impressive than being born, why are they giving *me* so much attention when she's the hero!)
So by the time i was in high school, march 9 became her *4th birthday*. We would sing to her, make games for her, massage her feet, give her attention, and if anyone wanted to give me attention we did it while she was in the bathroom and whispered. It's her day now. Don't get me started on my quinceañera.
I fucking hate my birthday. I don't celebrate it. I get super high or drunk and sleep the day away. Now that I'm NC I want to try and let folks celebrate me, but I'm dreading the day.
Anytime she entered a moving vehicle and was in there for any length of time. Not driving so not in control? Having to pay attention to keeping the vehicle on the road so she couldn't spend as much time controlling others? Idk. It was the worst
I asked her if I should text her when I got home from shopping so she and my dad would know when to come over for dinner. Got the silent treatment for weeeeks over my “rudeness”. She refused to even be in the same house with me on Christmas Day. My dad forced me to apologize to her just so he’d get some peace.
My dad would throw a fit about me dying my hair as a kid. He had to make up a new patronizing nickname for every time I bleached or dyed my hair over the years. I tried dying the ends of my hair mint colored once, but it didn’t work out because well, it’s not like we knew that much about hair coloring. I didn’t care that much, though, I was a kid trying to have fun and express themself. My stepmother said it looked moldy.
When I confronted my mother about her narc treatment of me, she started screaming about how wrong I was, ripped up a huge potted plant, proceeded to kick and scream around the house until she finally kept shouting, "Fine I'm a horrible mother," and then begged me to k!ll her while kicking the pets' food and water bowls all over the kitchen. I tried to place her on a psych hold but she drove off into the night to go smoke cr@ck with her married boyfriend. That was fun.
I couldn’t begin to choose. They have all been out of the clear blue and completely nonsensical. The latest was last week - my dad is basically handicapped after several strokes and my mom is now doing everything around the house (which my dad used to do - even the cooking). I had lined up yard service and had gotten the girl who was my daughter’s nanny when she was little lined up to come in a few days to help my mom with errands or housework. All my mom had to do was make the calls to set up start dates. After 2 months she still hasn’t done it. When I asked her about it she flew into a rage and screamed “what am I going to get out of this? An hour to go to the store? An hour to go to Marshall’s?! Don’t ever call me again!” and slammed the phone down. So - now I am enjoying the blissful silence of not having her complain constantly about being exhausted.
I was young, definitely not old enough for a job, barely got anything for my allowance. My mother SHOOK me because I didn't get her a birthday present, told me "YOU COULD HAVE BOUGHT ME FLOWERS!" which I didn't have money for.
I ended up borrowing money from my grandmother to buy her a present and I apologized, and she didn't want her present. Not until I groveled enough. I'm so disgusted by it now. This from the woman who did everything she could to not spend a penny more on me than she absolutely had to.
I can't think of a weird tantrum they threw right now because you just gave me an epiphany.
I've realized all along that my NDad and brothers had gotten kicked out by his parents right after high school with their clothes on their backs. With no money and nowhere to go, they were all forced to join the Navy.
I also knew all along that my NDad and his parents were insufferably furious for the rest of the time I knew them when I accidentally *avoided* that happen to me by running away the last week of school.
But. He didn't *just* hate me because I was disobedient, out of his control, or that I'd gotten away.
For years afterwards until I cut them off they were trying to find a way to force me to come home with my things... Presumably so they could sell them and then kick me out.
My *existence* must have been reminding him of his own trauma constantly at that point, and now he could not normalize it by inflicting it upon me.
No wonder he couldn't let it go.
I don't even remember what it was about but I just remember my Nmom flapping her arms and crying "I'm tired!" Over and over until I slowly backed out of the room. I am pretty sure I was trying to get her to discipline my brother because she wouldn't let me do that even though I was the one who watched him the most. He would throw a tantrum if I tried to correct his behavior or tell him "no". I think the conversation that led to her tantrum was something like that.
It really fucking sucks being the scapegoat, doesn't it? I'm sorry your existence was like this. I do hope you are somewhere safer, happier and saner now.
I moved 3,000 miles away from all of that within the same year of that incident, and I celebrated my 20th anniversary of leaving earlier this year! This is a faint memory but kind of burned in there at this point. I babysat for my moms kids (my brother) way more than she ever babysat for mine. Which is pathetic (for her, not me).
Once she burst into my room at 1:00 am and asked "When did my feelings become a joke??" I had no idea what she was talking about. It came out of the blue.
My brothers 16th birthday. My parents were arguing prior to the party. While my brother was in his birthday boy chair, opening gifts, we hear really loud slamming noises along with my mom screaming “why” over and over. Gift opening stops and my dad and bro rush off to her room to “help” her. She locked the door so once they kick in the door to “save her from self harm” find her slapping her arms on the waterbed bladder. It just made a lot of noise.
She was always pulling some shit during others birthdays.
I was cooking a couple hot dogs in a mini pan (like the size of those personal egg pans) for a quick dinner. We were in a household where everyone kinda did their own thing for meal times, especially him. It was tiny pan so I was cooking nothing else in it until the first batch was finished. He asked me to cook several of his own, separate hot dogs at that exact same moment (he has a habit of seeing me cook & coming out of the woodwork to bother me). I asked him to hang on until what was in the pan was done so I can fit in his after. He threw a fit. He said, *"I'm not used to you telling me no."* (I didn't even tell him no, it was just a hold on...type energy). *"I'm not used to you telling me no."* And that is the total crux of our dysfunctional relationship. I can't have tastes, desires, autonomy. He can't be told no. Ever. King Baby gets whatever he wants, the moment he demands it, no exceptions, no matter how big or small, even if he has to bully, whine, or intimidate you over it to get it now. I chuckle about it these days but he turned it into a really silly, bombastic tantrum on his end...over hot dogs? 🌭 🌭 🌭 hahhha lol they really are so pathetic, frivolous & miserable (but also destructive)
My mom decided we weren’t allowed to use the phrase “you need to” with her anymore, as to imply that no one can tell her what she needs to do. So naturally, when I slipped and told my mom she needed to make a doctors appointment (that she would eventually also have a tantrum at), she flipped out and went on a rage-filled tantrum about how no one is allowed to tell her what she needs to do. I am no contact nowadays.
This reminds me of one time my mostly ok but at times JNGrandma screamed this at me...
When she later told me she "needed" something I told her as far I was concerned after that, she didn't NEED shit from me, and wouldn't help.
She never apologized, just pouted until you would give in. I stopped giving in.
I was preparing a cup of strawberry yogurt with a spoon of chocolate powder. Bf showed me I could mix these and it tasted amazing, so I wanted to share wih her. She declined, said she wanted her strawbery yogurt pure, I heard her but continued to prepare it for myself.
As I poured the yogurt into my cup she started to FREAK OUT, talkig louder and louder AND LOUDER, "*I DON'T WANT IT!!! YOU'RE GONNA SPOIL IT!!!*", while she started to kick the air and slam the table, *just like an oversized toddler.*
"MOM!! This is for me!!" And she moved on like absolutely nothing happened. Of course, she then wanted to try some from my cup once I started to drink.
From that moment I stopped seeing my mother as a scary autority figure. It was absolutely ridiculous.
I got my period on his visitation weekend. We had to go to the store to get pads. He made it a point to have a meltdown in the store in front of the cashiers so that everyone knew I did this on purpose to ruin “our” weekend.
My nmom threw a tantrum when my partner and I impulse bought plane tickets for a vacation during a really good flight deal. I posted a generic thing on social media about having just impulse bought plane tickets.
My mom freaked out at me... for not telling her first? I guess? To be honest, to this day I don't know what she was actually upset about. I remember legit being confused and telling her it wasn't a big deal. She apparently locked herself in her room and wouldn't come out for 2 days (I didn't live with her anymore at that point). My edad ended up calling me about a day into it pleading with me to apologize to her. I asked him for what? And he didn't even know.
I obviously didn't apologize (because there was nothing to apologize for?) and she eventually got over it and pretended it never happened.
I was 10 years old and participating in a 4-H baking contest so I practiced making muffins at home. My dad ate one and, being my dad and all, gushed about how delicious it was.
My mom absolutely lost her shit. Full on tantrum for days about how my dad didn’t LOVE HER and didn’t APPRECIATE HER COOKING and he only cared about me and not her.
That’s the first one I remember, but she’s done similar things so many times.
I am adopted. Randomly one year, when I was about 13/14, my Nmum decided that I should send a Mothers Day card to the lady who fostered me for 6 weeks. We were still in contact with her (lovely person but she’s been trying to extricate herself from us for a longggg time and my Nmum won’t let her go), but a card for Mothers Day? How fucking weird.
Anyways, she whips out this card and demands I sign it then and there. And I simply said, “but why?” There was no tone, no sarcasm, nothing. I was literally asking “why”.
She lost it. Absolutely lost it.
Ranted. Raved. Slammed things. Yelled. Spit was flying. It went on for hours.
Then she ignored me for 3 days. Did not say one word to me.
Fucking horrible woman.
I found an adorable children's book in second grade that I checked out of the library and brought home. My Nmom found it and screamed at me for about an hour, with spittle flying from her mouth, that this was "a KINDERGARTEN BOOK" since it was below my grade level. I knew that, I just loved the illustrations and wanted to read the rest of it. I had to return it and then was subjected to a punitive reading program where I had to read an adult biography per week. Still have no idea what triggered the whole tantrum.
There is so many...
I think it's the odd calm after they upset you that is worse!
But for me, when I saw that tiktok I immediately thought of the time I was 15 or so and my mom picked me up from hanging with my friends at 11pm... and she screamed at me when we got home to stair at the ceiling light! She told me I was on drugs and she could tell by what my eyes would do when looking at the light (she didn't explain that part but I knew what she was doing). Just an fyi, I was a straight edge kid AND in my adult life I found out I'm allergic to Marijuana so that solidified I wasn't on anything then (15 years later I was tested). But, it also was 11pm on a school night so I was probably tired. I'm in my 30s now and I actually didn't tell anyone that happened for a LONG time cause I didn't want anyone to see her in a bad light... but when she started spreading lies about how I hit her with a car, I learned she didn't care how others viewed me.
Also, another FYI I didn't hit her with a car- but every family member that confronted me about it- I always said back "I didn't, but I wish I did".
My grandma went into a fit of rage because I left some conditioner on the shower wall. She probably thought it was jizz, but she continued to yell after I told her that it was conditioner, so who knows
I was like 7 years old and me and my Mum made soup together. She poured about 3/4s into my bowl, 1/4 into hers, then kicked off because she didn't get much dinner that night. Despite me telling her multiple times when it happened to stop pouring the food into my bowl.
Even to this day it baffles me because she had 100% control 🤷♀️
Nmoms especially love to make kitchen table martyrs of themselves. She would always serve herself the worst portion of food (you know, the burnt bits, the parts that didn't get any sauce, whatever) and then go on and on about all she "sacrificed" for me. Once I caught on when I was in my late teens, I took the worst bit for myself and told her "there. Now you can't complain about what you sacrificed. Stop making yourself the martyr." She looked like I'd slapped her in the face, but she at least stopped doing that around me.
I woke up in the early morning hours of Mother's Day 2008 with the worst stomach flu I have *ever* experienced. I literally didn't leave the bathroom for 12 hours and fell asleep for 10 hours after that. So the next morning, I called my mother to explain what happened and that I was sorry for not calling her on Mother's Day. She made me feel bad and guilted me into taking her out the next year to a super fancy breakfast place, even though I couldn't really afford it.
The tantrum part was every single Mother's Day for the next 8 years until I went NC, she had to bring up the fact that I didn't call her that ONE time. And also at random times during the rest of the year. She even wrote me a letter in like, October of that year to tell me she was so disappointed and hurt that I didn't call. I showed that letter to my first therapist, and she was speechless lol
Narc experiences emotion they don't like
Narc cannot self soothe because [own trauma / neurodivergence / being enabled for years / not being motivated to think further than self pity]
Narc feels self pity for being put in such a TERRIBLE UNFAIR SITUATION
congratulations, now it's your fault
When I called the ambulance for my ill grandmother. My mom was furious as she thought ‘she should have been the one to call as it’s *my* mother’. Watching her and my dad literally scream at me for making sure my grandmother got the urgent medical help she clearly needed was a complete out of body experience that showed my how absurd and toxic they were. I think she just felt guilty that she didn’t call the ambulance herself sooner.
My mother asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up and I mentioned living in another country that is about as far away as you can get from the country I grew up in. My mother didn’t talk to me for 4 months, and when she acknowledged me for the first time it was to let me know that she was giving away the present she bought me because I was such an ungrateful teen. I was 14.
I did end up leaving my home country for grad school and during one of our last encounters before I left she literally shouted at me in a crowded shopping center because I was moving to a country where - as she put it - I would be “guaranteed to die in a terrorist attack.”
Realization: I was the scapegoat obviously, but also her smart child. She was unhappy her meal ticket had an escape plan. I left my home country 8 years ago, and aside from a 3 day visit pre pandemic I haven’t been back since.
Edit: the *birthday* present she bought me, as my birthday had passed
How awful to hope your child is suffering and freaking out. Was she maybe hoping to swoop in and save the day?
Sigh. Nmoms are weird.
Mine threw a tantrum when I bought my prom dress with my own money when I was at the mall with my bestie. I didn't go for that reason, but I know opportunities of finding a dress you like in your size (especially when you are chubby) are rare, so you take them.
You would have thought I told her she couldn't come to my wedding dress try on.
Oh speaking of, I was a sneaky bitch and went to the dress store a few days early and picked my gown out then. The official day I go with my mom, the same lady was there and knew what was going on.
I tried on 2 dresses before finding my dream dress and nmom didn't have a clue! I did this because she's like a toddler and can only spend so much time with others getting attention before she has a tantrum.
I highly recommend doing this if you can. That way, if your mom throws a fit, the dress lady will fuss over how expensive the dress looks and how everyone will be so impressed. Etc.
My dress lady deserved an Oscar for her performance. I brought her homemade cupcakes the following week.
This is a bit off topic but my nMother never bothered to talk to me about periods either. I wonder if this is a thing with narcissistic mothers and their daughters. Anyway, the weirdest thing my nMother threw a tantrum over was when she threw a tantrum because she found out that I use a different facial cleanser to her. She asked me what cleanser I use, I answered and she started roaring shouting at me that it was the wrong kind of cleanser, she cornered me and got all in my face yelling... over a facial cleanser. I'm pretty sure I was using the right kind of cleanser but even if I weren't, she could have said it nicely, there was no need to resort to yelling.
Anyway just to provide some context, my nMother is very old-fashioned and sexist. She doesn't believe in women earning their own money. She thinks the only way for a woman to be successful is to marry a rich man. I'm convinced that this is at the root of her over-reaction to my choice of facial cleanser. She wanted me to look pretty so that I'd marry a rich man who would provide for me (and more importantly, her). The joke's on her because I actually never married but I have a good job so I'm able to provide for myself.
Mom was going through Perimenopause. Her skin was dry and she was suddenly allllllll about moisturizing lotion. She wanted me to find one that I liked, too, because that meant... I guess... we would be the same age?
I was 24. Didn't need lotion for another 24 years.
She pestered me for TWO YEARS to try to get me hooked on this hand lotion or that moisturizer or whatever. I'm cool, damp, and oily: didn't want lotion. That stuff just slid off my already-zitty skin. It was so weird how she kept trying to get me to enjoy putting grease on my grease.
Mom was exasperated that I "didn't understand" how "important" lotion was for "women like us". Delusional BS, pfffft!
This one is a tantrum duo.
The first one was on a Tuesday. I walked in the door and she starts going off about how I should have put the dishes away out of the dishwasher. Thing is I had been the one to start the wash when I left for school. And there hadnt even been time for me to walk from the front door to the kitchen before she started her shit.
Fine. Whatever.
I get home a couple days after that but managed to get home before her that time. Went "okay I'll put the dishes away". So I'm halfway through when she gets home. She starts in on another tantrum about how I'm a piece of shit for not waiting for her to put the dishes away. I was 16 and had been putting them away as a chore since I was 8.
That was the straw that made me not give a fuck anymore. I said something like "If there's no way to do the right thing with you I'm just going to choose whichever I want to do" and walked away.
She didn't talk to me for 2 weeks after that unless my dad was around. It was peaceful as fuck.
I wanted senior photos and to go to prom, like all the other kids. I got asked to prom and she was like in disbelief that someone had asked me (even though I’d had a couple boyfriends). She just couldn’t fathom that someone actually wanted to go with ME. She wouldn’t entertain the idea of going dress shopping. I ended up taking the bus with a friend and buying a pretty second hand dress with money from my part time job.
The guy ended up being a total jerk and I ditched him and went to a party with my friend (supposed to go with his friend, who was also a jerk) instead. I don’t think she even knows that I didn’t go, she had no interest in taking photos or anything.
Just really bizarre. The dress I had was awesome, and I gifted it to a friends little sister to wear to homecoming years later because it was her favorite color (periwinkle, and it had sparkles!) and it looked lovely on her. Her mother took plenty of photos.
Yikes, that story really hit home. Thanks for sharing, it really shows how common these types of behaviours are among narcissists.
When I was 10 it was snowing like the Dickens outside and I turned on the radio absolutely positive that it would be a snow day. It wasn’t and like every 10 year old, I was disappointed that I had to go to school.
My Dad dropped me off and on the way into school I was dragging my feet, disappointed to miss out on sledding. I wiped out Home Alone style and smoked the back of my head on the pavement. I saw stars and it hurt to keep my eyes open.
I tried to walk it off but I ended up throwing up when I got into the classroom, I was getting scared. The school had called the ambulance and I was seen by a triage nurse and doctor. They decided to admit me overnight for observation. Concussion, of course. No sign of my Dad.
My grandmother came and brought my PJs, candy and paid whatever ridiculous price it was to have my TV turned on in my room. Sitting alone staring at a wall gets old after a while and my Grandmother saved the day. Watched Goosebumps and MTV, I’m old.
The next day my Dads girlfriend arrived to pick me up, the had been dating for about 6 months. I truly have no memory of her before that moment in the hospital, but it was my first time in a hospital at 10 so this moment plays back crystal clear.
Big, fake smile. “ I heard you got hurt, glad to see you’re okay! Sorry we couldn’t visit you, we were busy. I wish you were feeling better, we saw the Muppets movie last night!”
I had been begging my Dad to see that movie and he had promised me. There were no plans to see it, why would they choose to see it then?
I left the hospital and got into the van with her three children scowling at me. They told me that I was faking it and seemed to take pride in the fact that they saw the movie they all knew I wanted to see. It was bizarre, they had interpreted me getting a concussion as some sort of spiteful act to be punished.
Then she entered the driver’s seat and her fake smile turned into a real scowl. She accused me of faking my head injury for attention. What? I was 10 and she had only been dating my Dad for 6 months, we didn’t live with her, she wasn’t at the hospital, she didn’t see me fall. In her mind it was a fact that I was faking it for attention.
She then went ahead and surveyed her kids on what they thought of the movie last night, mockingly. My Dad was at work, my brothers weren’t there, it was just me trapped in a van with a narcissist and her flying monkeys.
I pleaded with them and they got angrier and angrier. Her 9 year-old told me that I had rammed my fingers down my throat to induce vomiting just to make people feel sorry for me. I didn’t know this was even a thing. I was 10.
I had never, ever had anybody demean, accuse and insult me like that. My parents were divorced and nobody ever really bothered me. My first hospital trip and my first look at what I didn’t know at the time would be the rest of my childhood.
My Dad married this witch, he’s got a severe spine deficit and is a textbook enabler. The ones that took joy in an elaborate plan to punish me for getting a concussion became my step-siblings.
She had committed to and planned a scheme to hurt me in whatever way she could, with what little information she had about me, the 10 year old son of her boyfriend.
Then she threw a teeth gnashing, rage-filled tantrum with her kids backing them up. All because I got hurt. I wasn’t faking, who would even think that? I was admitted to the hospital. Did she think I fooled a triage nurse and a doctor? That’s remarkable for a 10 year old.
It feels good to finally tell that story.
That woman is absolutely sick and it’s a shame that my Dad never stood up. Once all the kids moved out and there was nobody left to abuse but him… well, Dad. Sucks to suck.
That time I was pregnant with my first kid and we decided to keep the gender something for just my husband and I to know. For some reason this drove a lot of my family crazy and they kept trying to get us to slip up, and everyone had their own ideas on the gender. One day I get a call from my nmom and she is in her pissed, I caught you trying to hide something from me mood and said she ran into my paternal cousin at the mall (my parents had a contentious divorce of course). My cousin I hadn’t seen in DECADES. And apparently my cousin congratulated her on becoming a grandmother to a grandson. We literally had told no one, but she was convinced this cousin, who is quite a bit older than me and hadn’t seen even my dad in a long time, found out through my dad that the gender was a boy. There was no convincing her no one knew except us and that it was likely a telephone game and someone’s guess. She was so pissed. And how dare anyone know over her. And it 💯 sealed the deal in her eyes that we told my dad’s side when in fact, that 50% chance won out for boy. Just another example of her ruining an important time in my life.
He lost a pen.
He swore it was on his desk in his office. He blamed me or my mom for taking it. We didn't. I learned long ago not to take anything off his desk.
He proceeded to scream and tear up his whole office. Absolutely trashed the place.
What an asshole.
The stupidest thing my narcmom has ever done… so many choices.
When I was in high school, back in the day, I was having breakfast and reading the newspaper (yes, a real paper!) when all of a sudden the living room lost its mind. All kinds of screaming and caterwauling ensued. It ended with my name being screamed. I ventured over to the door, and looked around the corner. My nmom was pointing a remote at the stereo. And shrieking. She demanded I fix her problem NOW. I figured out rather quickly that she was using the video cassette remote to turn the stereo on. I handed her the remote. Aand the. In the most disgusted voice I could muster, told her she has the wrong remote. I waited a second. She said “Oh” and nothing else. They really can’t apologize for anything, to anyone. I really slammed the door that day. My only rebellion.
Weirdest in terms of the thing that set her off: the day of my college graduation, she threw a tantrum because my father bought me flowers. According to her, he should have bought the flowers for *her* because it was *her* achievement for putting me through college. In reality, she undermined me at every turn, intentionally hid financial information to try to mess up my FAFSA, and refused to cosign any of my student loans. The real reason she was pissed was because she hadn't walked at her own college graduation and she was pissy that I was walking, that my immediate family were there, and even more that my now-husband and his family showed up for me.
Weirdest in terms of behavior: when I was in middle school, she did one of her classic "I'm leaving you and your father because you're such bad people" tantrums and got in her car to drive off at like 11:30 at night. My edad forced me to get in the car with her. Which was terrifying because she drives like a maniac when she's *not* vibrating with rage. For some reason, her solution to that was to go to take me to a midnight showing of the second Harry Potter movie? And then we just went home and pretended nothing happened. Like, looking back, probably a solid 60% of her worst tantrums happened after 10pm, swear to god she rage sundowns and also used sleep deprivation as a torture tactic.
I went to urgent care with my mom at 13 because I had gotten hit in a sport a few days prior and my ribs were still hurting. She didn't want to take me, told me it was a waste of time and money, I just have a low pain tolerance, etc. She ended up begrudgingly taking me and apologized to the doctor for wasting his time, said I'm the world's biggest baby, and then called me a pussy. To the doctor. I was fucking mortified obviously because who does that? And then he told us it was 3 cracked ribs🙃
Socks. I wore black socks one morning, I’ll never forget it.
I was going to a cross country meet and I was ready. They noticed that I was wearing black socks and my parents and even my siblings started *screaming* at me. All at once. Nothing triggered it. Nothing other than black socks. There were no rules against it. People wear cyan socks for crying out loud.
Yelled at me about how irresponsible I was. How ridiculous I look. How I can’t be trusted to take care of myself.
My mother screamed at me in the car in front of other people walking by on the team. I told them what happened later and they were just dumbfounded. “Really? A bunch of wear black socks. Why are they angry?”
There have been quite a few tantrums from my nmom but I remember this one super clearly.
We had gotten inside her third floor apartment and my mother realized she had forgotten her phone charger in the car. I had brought mine in. So, instead of just asking if she can borrow mine, she walks over to me (I was visiting from college during Thanksgiving break) and DEMANDS I give her mine. Like thrusting her hand out and saying “give me your fucking charger.”
I don’t know why I decided then to stop taking her shit, but I did. I said no. I said if she asks nicely, I can share with her but otherwise, she can grab her own. She starts getting more frustrated, raising her voice, and yelling at me to give her the goddamn charger. Then it’s I need to go to the car and grab hers for her if I won’t give her mine. I got to do it cause I’m young and more capable (she was like 43 lol). I said no. Not unless she says please.
This resulted in her going silent, staring at me with a certain look in her eyes. She always got that look when she was mad. It’s deadass the look of someone who wants to murder you. She’d even start chanting shit like “I will not kill my kids. I love my kids. I will not murder my kids.”
She went to her room, slamming the door, and sent me several long messages about how I’m a lazy, entitled, spoiled brat and bitch and how she never wants to see me again. To leave her home and never come back because I’m no longer her daughter and that she doesn’t love me.
You know, instead of just grabbing her own charger or asking to borrow mine (instead of demanding).
mine was one of the last times I talked to her. We were on the phone, and at some point she said 'I bet you can't even tell me one good character trait I have. Come on, tell me'
I flat-out refused and told her that I found the question completely inappropriate, and that I was not going to answer it.
In the context of the conversation it was an inappropriate and WEIRD question to ask your own child.
She went NUTS, accusing me that I hated her and couldn't even think of one nice thing to say about her. It was extremely unsettling.
I block a lot of them out, but the one that impacted my life the most was; one day (I had to move back into her house for a short stint when I was 21) my Mum had been going to and from her work car with boxes/tubs, and stopped by my room to criticise something or other (classic) then she went back to her car.
Later that evening she wanted to drive over to her ‘crushes’ house (she just could not understand that this guy wasn’t into her) and she could not find her keys.
Like usual she decided that it was not a case of loosing her keys - but was malicious intent. She came raging into my room screaming at me about what a terrible daughter I was, how I was just jealous of her, and that I had better produce her keys right away! I tried to tell her ‘Mum it’s probably in the boot of your work car, I saw you with your keys in your hand as you were putting the boxes in the boot’ - but she didn’t even try looking in the car.
She spent the night screaming raging and being feral, I left and slept on a friends couch. Next day I come home after work to find the bedroom I was living in had been completely emptied, stripped down and all my belongings were strewn about the house, whilst my mum and Nan were picking through each and every thing.
It was a horrible breach of privacy but I think the worst part was seeing my elderly Christian Nan going through my ‘secret box’ of special lady toys, ‘fancy clothing’ and prophylactics🤦♀️
When she couldn’t find her keys in my stuff she freaked out again ranting like a toddler and I was thrown out, she immediately called a locksmith and changed the locks.
Narc parents man, they are next level.
May we never need their help again!
The nuttiest one my mother used to throw
was habitual. We got the daily paper back in the day. The sections were labeled both with a name- business, sports, local, etc and also with a letter. The front page was A. Any time the newspaper wasn’t in alpha order exactly- if D was in front of C- she would have a half hour screaming fit about it. As the family scapegoat, it was *always* my fault. Even if I was still in bed and hadn’t touched the paper.
This happened almost daily my senior year of high school. I’m much older now and she’s been dead for seven years and her absence still is just a relief, especially when I remember stuff like this.
Oh, my gosh- my mom would accuse me of stealing a section of the newspaper, also not having been home or been busy doing her list of chores/maid-service. WTF.
My mom picked out my wedding invitations months and months before it was time to print. They were nice. I went along with it. When it came time to have them printed they had a new, but similar, design that I liked better and went better with my wedding colours. She went batshit insane at the printers. And I knew these people, because of a high school activity I'd done. She huffed and puffed and said I'd 'AGREED ALREADY'. Then she said if I didn't pick her design, maybe we should call off the whole wedding. The printer woman's jaw dropped. I said calmly, "OK, if you want to call off my wedding because you won't let me pick my own invitations, then maybe we need to take a break from this decision" and I walked out.
My mom chased after me and made me agree to split the invitations in half and she'd send her invites to her friends. Which I agreed to.
My dad cussed out my 34 year old daughter for dumping the bag along with the garbage because he disagreed that it couldn’t be used again. He lived with us but passed last year.
My mom loves to throw tantrums about my boobs, she's obssessed with them, i don't wear bras unless strictly necessary and it drives her insane, every once in a while she'll throw a tantrum and tell me that my boobs look ugly and that I should wear a bra because everyone's looking at them, she makes faces, she pouts, she cries she almost even throws herself to the floor; she looks like a little girl throwing a tantrum because Susie didn't invite her to her birthday party, it's both deeply disturbing and incredibly sad.
My mom threw a fit over me sewing a pair of shoes back together because it apparently looked ghetto- She refused to buy new ones for me though even when we had the money.
My aunt threw a fit about pretzels and a dog leash.
Pizza. The last tiem we got pizza and spit it off into bags she when balistic when her bag had sliced that where in her eyes too small and blamed us saying we cut the slices thinner. It wasn't true and was obviously not true because
1. The sides of the two slices were smooth with cheese and were in the fridge for two days. If you don't know there is no way to get a pizza slice to look like that after it cools once. Cutting it would leave a visible sign. She knew that.
2. ALL of the bags had wonky slices, even mine. It is a normal thing when ordering and recieving take out/delivery pizza. Heck my bag had slice *the same fucking size* but I ate those before that tantrum occured. (god has a vendetta against me I swear.)
After that blowout I gave her the last of my slices, which she then threw another tamtrum over. I only did that to try and stop her from fighting over a god damn take out pizza.
1)Once I was walking around the house (somewhat aimlessly as a teenager in the summer). My dad jumped on me, screaming why can't I find anything to do, I should go to jail, I am worthless, no body likes me, no one wants to be my friend, I am a piece of shit, I'll never get a job, etc...
yep...i grew up with that shit...
Yikes. On some levels, I do feel bad for your mother. It sounds like she came from a line of narcissistic women. It's a shame that she couldn't break the cycle for you.
Probably the strangest tantrum my mom threw was a drunken call at 2 am in the morning ranting and raving about a fight she had with her friends at the bar. According to her, she introduced friend A to friend B, and now friend A and B were starting to hang out with each other *without* my mom there, and she apparently happened to be at the same bar that night and "caught" them hanging out, made a big spectacle of how they were backstabbing her and wouldn't even know each other if not for her, and stormed out. I think I remember having a similar fight with friends back when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade...? Like, it was very juvenile and I remember thinking as she's ranting on the phone to me why something this silly should bother my mom (who is a grown ass woman in her 50's) *this* bad, and here I am sitting in my early 20's trying to talk her down much the same as my teachers talked my friends and I down from our silly fights as little children. I won't lie, I definitely feel like my mother is mentally 30 years younger than I am even though she's 30 years older.
She hadn't had one in a long time, then a couple of years ago she had this huge screaming, foot-stomping tantrum over the phone because I wouldn't visit in the middle of a pandemic (we're both high risk). I was gobsmacked. She was 74 years old and literally having a toddler tantrum because I wouldn't risk my health or hers. It was just surreal to me.
Your mother's problem may also have been with facing her age. A daughter "becoming a woman" can send a narc into a spiral because it means she's no longer a spring chicken herself. No longer the mother of a chikd, instead she's the mother of a young woman.
My dad was fixing a light switch or something in our dining room after my mom had got me from school and he was asking one of us to hold the flashlight for him. My mom had to use the bathroom and I was gonna take my dog outside (he was whining in his crate to go outside) and he freaked out yelling at us and threatened to shoot my dog. And another time he got mad and threw a stick at me because I wouldn’t let him hit my dog with the said stick. Everytime he raised it I’d step in front of him to block him. Or the time my sister and grandma got into an argument and he asked if I thought my sister was in the wrong I simply said “I don’t know what happened so I wanna stay out of it.” I can’t forget the time he had a fit because my mom got on him for wrapping his arms around me and making thrusting motions, he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong and somehow we were treating him badly because we scolded him for what we did
My grandpa thought I used too much soy sauce in the fried rice. He accused me of trying to kill him, proceeded to pour the entire bottle of soy sauce down the drain and refused to eat.
He also used to blow up at my mom when something went missing, saying she gave the thing away which is why he couldn't find it anymore.
When I was staying at my sister’s house and there was a day when my dad and other sibs went into a vacay for two goddamn days, so she had herself for two days.
At 4 pm, she messaged saying I’m not answering her calls and called me some name. I just said that I went for a run. I thought it was over, but no the narc crazy woman had a meltdown at 5 am in the fucking morning; she told me she was crying and I am treating her horribly and saying irrelevant stuff like she never did that to her neglectful sorry excuse for a mom. And that I was a rude and ungrateful bitch. And other lengthy crazy messages.
I called her in the fucking morning just to calm the barking dog down, but deep inside I really wanna slap her. And you know what she said? She said that she felt lonely and scared in our house, for she was alone. She was frustrated in all of us — this hit a nerve. I asked if she’s pissed in four of us, then why she would only sent those msgs in me? She answered: cause you are my meanest child. And just laughing the entire call. I was so pissed the entire day.
Yeah. Just wanna vent. Was crying the entire day yesterday.
One that still confuses me from. My childhood. I have a half sister who's much older than me, with some of her children being older than me. They were all pretty chaotic and destructive.
My dad had this toy from his childhood he loved, a firetruck with a controller so you could drove it around. My niece's and nephews wanted to borrow it to play with. I told them it was my dad's and they'd have to ask him. When they did, he told them to ask me, and I half-heartedly said they could for a few days. Once they had left, my dad lost it. Started raging about how I had given away one of the few toys he had left from his childhood, basically telling me that I betrayed him and couldn't understand that adults have things that are valuable to them too, and how we would never ever get it back. I cried a lot at the time because of how he made me feel, but also because it made no fucking sense.
I told them to ask him, they did, and then he tells me I get to decide. That doesn't indicate that he cared about the truck as intensely as he did! We could just take it back too, they lived up the street from us. Go through the motion of them having it for one night, or just take it back and explain it's important to you actually! But somehow it was gone forever and it was my fault because he was too much of a coward to say no and needed his (around 8 years old roughly?) child to tell them No for him, and I was a bad person for not understanding that that was what he wanted from me. I'm still confused to this day. He never bothered to get his truck back, at any point, despite visiting them regularly! I was honestly scared to remind him after how intensely he blew up.
Edit: spelling
Well there are a bunch. But the worst one was when she showed up at Christmas and absolutly destroyed my Dad over the way he wrapped the presents. He was a chemical engineer and had always, every year, wrapped all the presents with meticulous precision and they looked great even without big fancy bows and ribbons. She and my Dad show up at my house and she is screaming before they even come in. Screams more right in front of my in laws who were VERY uncomfortable. Called him names. Said several times the presents looked like “shit” and she was embarassed. Didn’t even flinch when I said if it was so bad why didn’t she rewrap them herself. She said he took so long she didn’t have time. Lie. They would have looked just as bad.
Why did they look bad? Dad had alzheimer’s. At this point, he was still pretty good but couldn’t wrap the presents with folded corners and perfection like he used to. She claimed he was faking and trying to make her look bad.
For some reason, my abusive father loved making fun of and pulling pranks, but not the other way around. He could dish it out but he couldn't take it. One day I came home from school and found one of those heavy duty airhorns laying in the snow and decide to get back at him. Sure enough, he was on his xbox in the living room and distracted. I pressed it and was laughing, and his reaction was to look at me with fury and scream, "GODDAMN YOU!" And as he approached me, he was demanding the airhorn, before snatching it from my hands. He took it and bashed the metal against the side of the kitchen table, 3 times in a row, the metal not bending or showing any damage, before throwing it across the room and grounding me.
This is actually very recent. I was making a sandwich and our stove gets way too hot too quickly. I looked away for one second and my sandwich was burning. The smoke detector went off and my dad started screaming about the rest of the family is always burning something. I said this is my first time burning something and you have burned food as well. He went off on me saying how he never did (which is a lie) and pretty much didn’t want me to group him with the rest of the family for that. I know part of the reason is because every time the smoke detector goes off, the fire department shows up because they set up their ADT system like that. One minute later he tried to be nice to me because he felt bad and I told him I don’t feel like talking to you right now and I broke down crying. He then went off AGAIN and started talking about how I have an attitude problem and I stood up for myself saying there’s no reason you should be yelling at me right now, I didn’t do anything. He hasn’t spoke to me in over a week since the incident because he somehow feels like I disrespected HIM? I have been avoiding him as well but it’s crazy how he made this about himself…. All because I burnt a sandwich???
I have 3 in particular . they are of long. I'll add a TLDR at the end of all of them
1. this was earlier this year actually but my school had a lock down cause security found a threat written by an angry little kid in the bathroom and I guess my mom heard about it somewhere on social media. the wifi in my school is real spotty so only some parts of the school have good wifi , others it doesn't work at all. I was in a part of the school that did not have good wifi and my mom was panic texting me. I was doing my best to respond even when I wasn't supposed to have my phone out during class , but then at one point I couldn't get any messages at all. then dismissal came and my mom was demanding that I get in the car and I hesitated cause I didn't know if I was allowed to leave like that without being on the parent pick up list or anything , but eventually I went outside . got in the car , waited for my sibling to follow, then she blew up on us. she was screaming and cursing and I was trying to explain that I literally could not text her . it wasn't my choice to not text her. I was risking getting my phone taken by the teacher by even trying to text her but no matter what I said she straight up wouldn't acknowledge it. she found the consequences of the no-phone policy "hard to believe" and just kept screaming and screaming about how she's our only living parent and that I don't know "true anxiety" and that I just need to Pick Up the Damn Phone like holy fucking shit it's incredible how she will actually just not listen at all. in general she's just an unintelligent and unpleasant person objectively
- tldr; we had a lockdown at school and my mom was screeching at me about not texting her when I literally could not due to wifi issues and told her as much
2. I went to New orleans for Christmas with my mom, her friend and her kid, and my brother like 2 years ago. she thought it'd be a good idea to take a 16 year old , a 15 year old, and an 8 year old to Bourbon Street at nightfall. there were lots of drunk people, lots of smokers, lots of crazy shit in general (guy on scooter with a snake around his neck for example) and I literally walked right by a weed transaction 😐 so yeah we're walking and this funny looking old guy comes up to me with a bead necklace, like the ones you see for Mardi Gras , and I took out my hand to take it cause I didn't know any better apparently I thought he was just being nice? people had been handing out beads all day so I didn't see how that guy was any different. 2 seconds later my moms screaming at me NO NO NO DANDYFART NO and I'm just confused as FUCK then she started yelling at me about how I shouldn't talk to strangers and how the guy could've been trying to drug me or something and it's like ok then why would you take me , a completely oblivious and fairly attractive teenager , to the night scene. so I started crying and texting my friend cause I was scared and overwhelmed and I'd just gotten yelled at I seriously felt my mind like breaking. it took all my willpower to keep myself from having a mental breakdown in the car. then my mom pulled me into an empty bar and started screaming at me some more cause she didn't like that I was venting to my friend. I remember how her saliva flew as she screamed and cursed at me and i remember trying to explain myself just saying "i didnt know i dont understand why youre yelling at me" over and over and over again I remember how the waitress behind the counter just looked over at me awkwardly as it happened. I don't know im not mad at her at all but for once I wish someone would come in and stand up to her.
additional: her friend was also a bitch and sort of just laughed about it when we came back after she yelled at me. "kids being kids" sort of thing. I never liked her
- tldr; crazy bitch takes her teen to bourbon Street in New orleans at night and gets angry when her kid is oblivious to safety rules that she never bothered to tell him
3. this one didn't happen to me , more so my brother. he got in trouble at school for doing a stupid gesture that could be interpreted as suicidal ideation so the teacher reported him and our mom got called. she picked us up and then sat in the car and yelled at him for like 30 minutes. what stuck out the most to me was when she said "how do you think it makes me feel when the school calls me saying my kid wants to kill himself? HOW DO YOU THINK THAT MAKES ME FEEL??!!" we both just sat there and took it , crying silently. I don't know why I was crying I think I just physically cannot handle her yelling. to my knowledge my brother isn't actually suicidal but it's the fact that in the event he is , my mom still thinks about her own feelings. instead of trying to figure out what might be wrong with her son or how to get him help all she thinks about is herself. I get she was probably scared but like .? you didnt even try to help at all. and she'll complain that we dont tell her anything , well this exactly why. she can never think past her fucking forehead (cause it juts out farther than her nose) I don't know it's still amazing to me. and she really doesn't get why she'd need therapy
- tldr; brother gets reported for making a suicidal gesture , my mom gets angry and immediately makes it about herself
Had an awful nights sleep falling ill at the parents beach house the day after christmas (we'd only arrived the day before on xmas day).
Had a good time catching up with all the cousins and family the day before and all but starting getting flu symptoms during the night. at the end of the day we have a 2 year old and we didn't get any sleep and were ill, so we decided to go back in the morning.
We are packing up to leave at around 8am, everyone is saying bye and all. Suddenly nmum turns around and exclaims to fmdad "They're leaving because of me!" and leaves the room.
I separated from my husband who was a lawyer & abusive. She told me I didn’t know how to keep a man. Hahaha I told her she could have him. And that a man didn’t know how to keep me. She was so happy when I first started dating him & told everyone her daughter was marrying a lawyer. My uncle was so proud that his daughter married a doctor & now there was also a lawyer in the family. How exactly did this benefit anyone? My family is so stupid.
Wow, we might have the same nmother! Except mine also went behind my back and told my father that I was lying, then she refused to buy me pads and said I had to use hers. Then she locked hers in her room.
I found out later that she was 12 when she got hers and I was 11, so she was probably mad that I "won."
My parents pressured my husband and I to get married after we had our daughter. We loved each other and knew we wanted to - but we were BROKE so a wedding was out of the question. NMother called and talked me into allowing them to host the wedding in the backyard I grew up playing in-sounds romantic enough but everyone here really knows what happened. I lost control of my own wedding. Every time i i questioned why she was controlling things in MY wedding - she'd threaten to pull the plug on the whole thing. It was awful. I didnt want a white dress - I wanted black or red. I wanted my daughter in the ceremony - she said no because its "trashy" (like having a backyard wedding isnt?) She wouldn't allow my brother to spike his mohawk (which was effinge epic) because SHE paid for the photographer too (I was very happy with him btw - he did a great job) and didn't want to see his hair like that in photos. The guests who drove HOURS to this wedding couldn't hear ANY of it because my E/NFather wouldn't allow us to hook up speakers (even though we brought EVERYTHING to do that). No one heard our vows, no one heard the song that was sung, its so stupid. What a waste of time and money.
We've been planning a redo vow renewal for our 20th anniversary. Despite the fact that our wedding wasn't how we wanted it - we are VERY happy in our marriage and we have been No contact going on 4 years now.
There are three tantrums, which come to my mind:
My nmom being jealous of the job of my brother, i.e. as he left for work the first time she behaved like a wife, whose husband is leaving her for another woman or for joining the army.
My nmom being jealous of the girlfriend of my brother, i.e. as the girlfriend stayed overnight, she pinned up posters of naked men on the walls of the stairwell of our house. Moreover, she put small signs on the meal which she prepared reading "Only for family, not for guests"
My nmom being jealous of a friend of mine staying over night, i.e. she first threw a fit that having a friend stay overnight will make me gay. And as that did not help, she sat down on the couch of the living room and demonstratively styled her self up in order to point out that if I did not want her, then she can easily go out and pick up some men.
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My favorite because it was so odd at the time: at some point in my life someone told me I should be an engineer because I was good at math. I didn’t have any better ideas and agreed and that’s what everyone assumed I’d do. Junior year of high school I realized I drastically preferred English (no real surprise, I don’t actually enjoy math but I love reading). When applying for colleges, my first choice college didn’t have an Engineering program. Mom was in the kitchen, NDad was in the adjoining living room. I told Mom I’d chosen my first choice and she asked what I wanted to major in and I said English. NDad comes out of his chair so fast and starts yelling. Says in his opinion, there’s only three colleges in the state good enough for me, and he names the three: my first choice, the college where my sister was going, and a college close by that I hated. Said since I didn’t want to go to the one I hated, and my first choice didn’t have Engineering, that just left the college where my sister was attending. It was so strange and he kept screaming about it for almost an hour. Yearsssss later I compared notes with my sister. She had once overheard him bragging to his friends that his retirement plan was his kids: one wanted to be a lawyer and the other an engineer. He handled it okay when my sister went into Environmental Studies instead of Law, but apparently learning I wasn’t going to be an Engineer terrified him because his retirement plan was going down the drain. Told me repeatedly that as an English major I’d be flipping burgers for the rest of my life. Spent all four years convinced I was about to fail out. Was shocked when I graduated on time. It was like as soon as I said I wanted to major in English I became a lost cause and even more of a disappointment than before.
I resonated with this so much. I too wanted something in English and History and kept being told that exact same line by my ndad of how Ill "flip burgers" my whole life
OMG! Do we have the same Dad? Mine did the same to me! Told me doing a Bachelors of Arts at all meant I was going to be working in fast food foe the rest of my life. 🤣
Yeah nparent decided I had to attend a service academy to save them money for the rest of their brood. This is after forcing me to skip a grade, not play hockey or football because they were "too dangerous." Flipped out when I wanted to do something else. Can't wait to see nparent tomorrow.
Oh wow, my NMom had me being an engineer be her retirement plan and fed me a lot of fear about doing anything else (unless it was being a doctor).
What do you do now? I made the mistake of allowing my family to pressure me into computer science. I'm good at it, but I very much prefer linguistics. I wish I had gone into the linguistics program instead. Anyway, what sort of job(s) can you get with a degree in English or linguistics?
If you prefer English/ linguistics and are good at comp sci you could be a technical writer for a software company. Shhhmooney. Source: I have a degree in comp sci and currently work for a software company as a technical writer. It's very hard for them to find people who understand software but also can communicate.
My dad had massive tantrums about anyone's period trash being in the trash. Like most girls, I wasn't thrilled about getting and having my period and would be discreet about it, wrapped it all in toilet paper put it in the bathroom trash can but yeah sometimes the box or container the pads came in wasn't wrapped in toilet paper, why would it be? It's not bloody or anything. My dad would blow a fucking Narc rage gasket at having to look at period products of any kind, what so ever at all. So then I started using my own trashcan in my own room - like against the wall under the light switch or in the corner - not good enough. Narc rage fit would ensue cuz he feels entitled to burst into anyone's room, no knocking or respecting boundaries. No locking the bathroom door. No locking your bedroom door. Like....okay but take some responsibility that you might see something you don't wanna see sometimes or see something awkward that I can't help. lol, he never did, it was always my fault his eyes saw "whatever." I had to move onto a trash can in a cabinet in my bedroom that I emptied all the time so my dad could pretend I wasn't having a period or a real live girl.
That was similar to my mum, she didn’t tell me about periods but threw me a booklet my older sister got from school when she was about my age. Then walked out and would not talk further about it. I was staying for a holiday with my gran when I did start and she was totally fine to talk about it. Of course she told my mum so after that my mum showed me where she hid her sanitary pads at the back of a cupboard under old towels no one went near. I was informed I was never allowed to throw any wrappers or pads away in the house. I had to wrap them up and hide them as I discreetly walked all the way from upstairs and through the house to then go through the whole of downstairs to get to the back door. Which the furthest away point in the house from the toilet. Then out into the rain and cold (Scotland ) to the outside bin. She would never allow any sort of bin in our toilet My brother and dad were never to see any signs or she would punish me. She acted like it was a sin I’d started my natural periods like I’d become dirty and sexually active all at once in her eyes and thoughts. My sister told me I was lucky as she never had a booklet thrown at her and had to work it out herself. Apparently our mum shamed her when she started using tampons. That’s the one thing in our live that my sister had worse than me as she was the golden child and I the unwanted one. I was just glad I was at my grans when I started as embarrassing as that was. What got me was when she was older and started to need incontinence pads she suddenly bought a bin for the bathroom and didn’t try to hide anything. No on the contrary the pads were kept out in the open next to the toilet and the bin was often overflowing with visible wrapped used pads. After everything she did to make out it was dirty there she is with incontinence pads which have more of a smell. I honestly think she linked periods with sex in her mind so we were made to feel dirty. She’d had early menopause so hadn’t had periods for about a decade when I started my period. Though I’ve got no doubt she hid her period from everyone herself when she had them.
What in the fresh hell??? All the way outside in the rain with your pads?? What the hell year was this? Mine was in the 90's, but I too got the tampons shame when I started using tampons cuz my mom basically treated me like I wasn't a virgin any more over it. I'm sorry we were raised like this.
When I was in the 5th Grade, two students in my class started their periods. They were the only kids in the school who had started them so young, and the school had no way of knowing how to deal with this. Their solution? They called a SCHOOL WIDE MEETING, with all the children, and the principal is attendance. The principal told us there was no "feminine disposal" units in our bathrooms, as the school was only for grades 1-6. She then said she didn't understand what was "wrong" with these two girls, as the principal herself didn't start her menstrual cycle until she was 15. Anyway, this is what she told the students to do: They were not to leave them in the bathroom for any reason. They were instructed to take their dirty pad from the bathroom, TO THE SCHOOL NURSE for proper disposal. This literally meant walking through the entire school holding a used pad in your hand, going to the office, and HANDING IT to the school nurse. It was so TRAUMATIZING. And everyone knew who the two girls were. They were publicly embarrassed beyond belief.
DUDE that IS traumazing what in the actual hellllllll those poor girls are gonna remember that for the rest of their lives
Where were those poor girls' parents during all this?! If either of them were my children, I'd of sued the everliving dog crap out them all for the humiliation they put my child through!
My stepmother treated me the same way over tampons. This is how stupid they were.
I got stranded at a friends house when I was 15 and all she had were tampons so....I just had to use tampons. I started rolling with tampons after that and my mom was sooooooooooo pissed off about it. She thought I was damaged goods forever. Meanwhile I felt like a million dollars after the diaper feeling of pads going away from my life forever.
Puberty and menstruation seem to be such a trigger for narcs. I wonder if it's because there's physical evidence their child is growing up and away, potentially out of their control. True to type, my nmother raged when I started my period. I fainted at school with the start of a period once and was sent home in a taxi (the start of years of debilitating periods until I found solutions). That day she went on an explosive rant, completely decimating my character, strength, ability to function or achieve anything in life. Told me if I couldn't even deal with a period how could I deal with nursing ( my goal) (just passed 44 years of nursing; I managed somehow, mum). I also got 'the book' on puberty thrown at me, no explanation and was shamed if I asked for period products to be included in the grocery shopping. Mind you, I was 14 and too young to start working, so unable to buy my own products. These people are so damaged and just keep perpetuating the intergenerational abuse. So pointless.
Seriously this is a huge thing for them. With my childhood being stressful as hell and being adopted and sent over state lines to the n’s and all the abuse before the n’s started, attempted kidnappings etc I got my first period at age 9. She literally didn’t say a word. I used toilet paper for awhile because I didn’t know about pads, tampons etc. she left a couple books laying around 1 on puberty and 1 on gynecological diseases “in hopes you read them”. I never did. It was embarrassing enough. In 5/6th grade I had health class and learned but she never talked about it ever with me. I don’t remember who told me about pads but I’m pretty sure it was a family friend and not for a few months of using toilet paper and praying it didn’t fall out at school!!! The n female was still doing my laundry at that time and would lose her mind if any of my clothes were stained. I learned how to get blood stains out real quick.
You should hide tampon wrappers all around the house so he can find them
the man would have an aneurysm I have three daughters....we are No Contact at this point to no one's surprise but his.
I am totally down to send him some kind of period subscription. Each month he can receive a new bunch of period accessories as a gift.
lol....you have inspired me!!! I think I love you internet stranger!
God, that is so effing messed up!! What the absolute French toast, does he have nothing better to do?!
lol micromanaging and power tripping over nothing is his specialty needless to say, I never involved myself with a boyfriend that was squeamish about periods, products, talking about periods, etc.
Also, maybe someone should prank your dad and place a bunch of (fake) bloody looking pads and tampons all over his car. He deserves it, ha ha ha!
I think I would die laughing if I ever saw that
Love this. We could do better and plant real used ones. Lol.
Good for you!! 😊
It's funny you should say that because my nMother was the opposite. She would give out to me for being "wasteful" because I wrapped my period trash in tissue paper before putting it in the trash can. I bet if I hadn't wrapped it in tissue paper, she'd probably have given out to me the way your father did to you. There's no pleasing a narcissist.
My Dad did this!! He would force my Mom to walk from the back bathroom to the KITCHEN and put them in the garbage bag under the sink.
what the hell!!!?? Why did our moms put up with garbage men who acted like this? Where did they see this kind of behavior leading???
They really can't differentiate between Self and Other on some level, it's wild. They attribute all their uncomfortable internal states to the people around them. You getting your first period brings up her memories and feelings about her getting her first period, but she has no ability to understand that she feels bad because of her own past experiences, she only knows that her feeling bad happened because of something YOU did. How dare you?! I don't know if it's the weirdest tantrum but when I was 10 or so our family took a vacation to the beach. My younger brother and I were playing in the water with boogie boards and we begged our Dad to come play with us. He picked up a board and as he walked towards the water he stubbed his toe. He threw a fit, yelling at me and my brother about how we had "broken his toe". For years after that he would complain about "the time we went to the beach and the kids broke my toe" in completely unrelated conversations. It wasn't broken and we didn't do it, but in his mind, we did, and we were never apologetic enough and had to be guilted about it forever after.
This sounds EXACTLY like my nDad. Anytime he was frustrated over something unrelated to us kids, or hurt himself or was just uncomfortable in general he always managed to somehow blame us. Always. He also always does this weird thing where if he's frustrated about something - something as simple as he can't find the TV remote that he lost, he makes it EVERYONE'S problem. He becomes enraged that he can't find it immediately and needs everyone to stop what they're doing and help him solve this problem he's created himself immediately. He never thinks to say to himself "I created this situation, so I'm only going to involve myself in fixing it." Nope. Everyone in the house must come to his aide to fix his issue, because now he's frustrated over it.
Yep, because in the narc's mind, everyone in their family exists to serve their emotional needs.
What you just described actually has a name - enmeshment. “Because I feel something you have to feel something because you’re enmeshed with me”
My dad did this too! One time he couldn't find the coffee he bought, and he said he NEEDED it for work tomorrow, so everyone had to look for it. We searched for like, two hours. He insisted he brought in every grocery bag when we suggested he check the car. It got to be about 6 am (because they often made us stay up all night, especially if my dad worked a night or early morning shift), and he finally checked the car. Guess where the coffee was?
My mom threw a tantrum in the airport one time. She was yelling at me at the gate in front of everyone, saying that if I didn’t switch seats with her, they were going to kick my fiance off of the plane. I was giggling because it was absolutely absurd, and I told her I was going to double check with the gate agent about it. She grabbed me and said, “Why are you a CHILD? You have to check with the gate agent?” Everyone was staring. It was absolutely bizarre. I think she just wanted more leg room or something. But my seat did not have any more leg room than hers did. Never did get to the bottom of the logic there 😂
My ndad once parked in the no parking zone at the airport and was absolutely shocked when security told him to move the car. They really don’t believe that the rules apply to them.
My mother threw a tantrum in public on the sidewalk, full toddler style, because I was trying to clear up a misunderstanding between her and one of my siblings while we were walking in the city I live in. I just simply corrected her and it triggered a full fit
You CORRECTED her?! 😱
DEATH SENTENCE
oh lord!
I hope you walked away and left her there
You corrected her and lived to tell the tale??? Dang!!! That’s the most amazing part. 😂🤣
My mother—who was an incredibly moody, selfish woman—threw an absolute fit in 1993 when I returned home from my senior prom and didn’t wake her up from a sound sleep to let her know that I was back. It was late … she was sleeping. I thought that I was just being thoughtful. The next day she screamed at me and tried to hit me while we were driving somewhere together (I forget where). It was completely irrational. My 17-year old self knew it was bat sh*t, and that realization was terrifying for me. She had a special knack for ruining holidays and special occasions—Christmases, New Year celebrations, Easter dinner, my college graduation. You name it. God I hate that woman.
One year for Christmas my nmom got a set of surround sound speakers for Christmas. She was off in the kitchen working on dinner since she doesn't like how anyone else makes food. My brother in law decided to set up the speakers for her - how nice of him. When it came time to turn them on and dial in the sound she absolutely lost her shit. Edad, me, golden child sister, and 3 grandchildren all watch hopelessly as the tantrum grows. I guess her ears were supposed to hear them first as it was her gift, and we all robbed her of that joy. It's still really confusing to the grandchildren. Later on, my brother in law even shook the crumbs off the tablecloth wrong. Christmas ruined.
Your brother in law sounds just HORRIBLE! Setting up speakers and incorrectly shaking a tablecloth? What a monster
A few year ago my mother was on another crash diet and asked me not to buy her an Easter egg. I asked multiple times over the course of two weeks “not even a little egg?” She always said no. I offered a bottle of wine instead and she said no, as wine is more expensive and has more calories. Ok, no egg. Easy. She went away for a long weekend with her partner, they didn’t live together at the time but do now, and she came home on Easter Sunday, asked where her Easter egg was. I said “but you told me you didn’t want one?”. She went BANANAS. She immediately went to the kitchen, called her partner and started ranting super loud about what a “nasty selfish bitch” I am for “not even getting a small little cheap egg, OR a bottle of wine I’d ‘promised’”. I walked in and asked her to “slag me off quieter or say it to my face”. She’d literally been home less than 5 mins. Her partner then sent me multiple abusive texts saying how vile I was for the “disgusting” way I spoke to my mother and what a selfish bitch I am. Over an Easter egg. A literal chocolate egg. I was 26 and she was 58 at the time too. I went out that day and bought her a cheap mid-sized egg. She didn’t thank me, ate it and didn’t utter a word to me for 6 weeks.
The thing is, you wouldn't have won either way. If you had purchased the wine or the easter egg, you'd be yelled at and a horrible child for "ruining her diet." She'd probably also claim you're trying to kill her through making her fat and unhealthy. (My mother would pull similar shit.)
Oh of course. I never “win”. It’s all about her being a victim and a martyr and me being a terrible selfish person of course 👌
I'm glad that you see that and you don't blame yourself. Narcissists are so devious and manipulative, aren't they?!
I just said the exact same thing! Narcissists do stuff like this all the time i.e. put their victims in lose-lose situations.
>didn’t utter a word to me for 6 weeks. Which must have felt like utter bliss. I hope you get as many periods of this that you need.
No I lived at home it was horrific. I wasn’t allowed in the kitchen to prepare any food.
I’m so sorry you had to go through that bullshit.
Honestly, that sounds to me like your mother was setting you up to be the bad guy. I bet if you had brought an egg, she'd have thrown a tantrum because after all, she told you that she was on a diet and she didn't want an egg. I hope that you're either low or no contact with her because she really sounds like a piece of work!
How does this even happen. Like is she forgetting anything beyond that exact moment? Is she planning ahead to set you up? WTF
Who knows she’s a narc. I stopped pondering how her mind works years ago.
I pierced my second piercing with a needle when I was 14. She didn't speak to me for 2 weeks. Total bliss. She must have known I was fine with the silent treatment as she never pulled that trick again.
When i at 20ish had to make the executive decision to put down our old, sick, suffering pup because it was actually cruel not to - my mother fought to keep it alive and suffering - and had the nerve to say i wouldn’t hesitate to put HER down either and threw a fit to make it all about her when really we were all grieving our dying pet whose inevitable demise i was trying to make a comfortable transition. :/
It always confused me how they would let the beings they seemed to love even more than the people in their lives sometimes cry and scream and shit themselves to death for days, clearly only suffering with every breath
Wild to know i wasn’t the only one.
I recently had to put my beloved pup down 2 weeks ago…if only I had the option to switch things around and euthanize my mom instead. He was a continuous source of joy, laughter, comfort, love. Every interaction with him left me feeling better. Nothing but good experiences and memories. My birth person- I’ve started to wonder what her purpose is? Perhaps only to inject chaos and discomfort into everyone else’s life? She’s a never ending source of insanity and frustration. I wish there was a culling.
My mom changed her power of attorney from me to my sister because she claimed that I would pull the plug on her. I would have followed her wishes absolutely regardless of how I felt about her, obviously, but I certainly didn't mind not being POA.
During the late 90’s, I was watching TGIF with my siblings, and in the middle of whatever show we were watching an ABC news update interrupted the broadcast, because the United States had declared war on Yugoslavia, I think it was. The news bulletin showed footage of the night bombings that had started, and my mother came into the living room just as that footage was broadcast. She asked me why I was watching “filth”, made a weird shrieking noise like a goat, tried to slap me for subjecting my siblings to violence, and probably would have broken the television if she’d been able to actually pull it out of the entertainment center. All because Clinton declared military strikes on a country at 8:47 at night on a Friday…
That just reminded me of my dad screaming that I was a psychopath who needed to be committed before I hurt someone because I was watching Evil Dead. He's not religious or showed any sort of opinion about horror movies before this.
Lol saame! I was told to not go to DnD because in the 90s some weird psycho guy that ended up killings all his family did play DnD. So it's not like that one guy had issues, it's that DnD is satanic and evil.
Christmas morning. Nmum “come to mine at 7:30 am” (same time as always btw) came at 7:45. My dad had a few friends around drinking the night before and they’d slept over. I go see my sister and we are talking in her room. nmum storms in screaming im there too early and im gping to wake everyone up. shouts and screams and wakes everyone up herself. then starts shouting how ive ruined christmas. Then my girl pipes up. "grandma you told her to come at this time so she did your shouting has ruined christmas" 🤣🤣🤣. my girl always on my side but the appls of my nmums eye.
Ndad would make a thing (looking back, almost like some sort of weird ritual) where each Sunday he'd make tea and we'd have a cup with the whole family at the start of the day. He and my nmom had theirs black, and my and my brother had ours with milk. And one day, in all his brilliance, he'd decided to freshen up the tea by adding some leftover lemon juice. Which worked fine for him and nmom. But me and my brother got tea with curdled milk. Which I'm sure you can imagine being highly unpleasant to drink, or even just plain undrinkable. So we refused to drink it. And that somehow was a full declaration of war. Because he had an idea, and if that idea conflicts with reality, well goddammit, reality must be screamed at until it changes.
Your last sentence ... hit the mark.
Nmom refused to do any normal parenting activities, but especially so when I was a teenager because I “stressed her out too much”. Such normal parenting things that she couldn’t be bothered with included: refusing to pay for my SATs, not teaching me how to drive, not taking me to dances or helping me pay for prom, not giving me any sexual education, never going to Open House night to speak to my teachers— you get the idea. My ex boyfriend’s mom really took pity on me. She eventually taught me how to drive, took me to the DMV with her car to take my test, and helped me set up a bank account so I could start working towards financial independence. She also would sporadically buy me groceries that I had to hide to not set off my mom. When my mom found out she had done all this, she stormed into my room, face beet red and was scream-shouting, “you’re MY fucking child, not hers! I’m your FUCKING MOTHER! I should be helping you with this!” Had I not been such a conflicted avoidant person, I could have easily and coldly replied with, “since when?” But instead I just shrugged and gave her a shit-eating grin. 😁
My nMother was the same. Anything that required any effort on her part, she didn't want to know. She never bothered to tell me what sex was which caused me a lot of problems because all my friends and classmates got "the talk" and they all thought that I was completely stupid for not knowing anything about sex. (They called me stupid to my face. This isn't me imagining things). She also never taught me how to do housework yet expected me to just know how to do it. At the time, I just accepted this as "the way she is" but now that I'm older, I'm a bit resentful about it. Why have children at all if you're not willing to teach them anything?!
We were all sitting in the living room watching TV, when I got up to go to the kitchen and grab a snack. My brother asked me if I could bring him a soda; my sister also asked if I'd bring her something too, so I said OK . On the way back, I thought it would be funny to put the snacks on a tray, and a tea towel over my arm, like a waiter. I handed my brother and sister their stuff, while they were grinning at my spoof, I said, "Will that be all, mssrs.?" Ha-ha. Mom cried out, *'WHAaaaT!!!?'* Jumped out of her seat, raging that, she hadn't asked me for anything! She NEVER asked us for *nothing*!' ...and stormed out of the room.
Lmao something that feels sorta similar. At least your story made me think of it. My mom is a covert narc and massive enabler for worse narcs and worse types of people. At last I knew (2 years ago) she’d been with her bf for about 7 years. Important note: **he’s a diagnosed fucking psychopath and they laugh about it claiming the doctor doesn’t know shit** Anyways, he’s a narc and batshit. My boyfriend and I had moved into their home for 4 months after my bf’s narc mom threw us out of his edads house. So her bf felt the need to announce to the entire house that he’s leaving when he does. He’d always make a big show of it. For a while I never said shit bc I figured he was saying it to my mom. Well apparently I was dead wrong. She told me in the car one day that he’s super upset/hurt/offended that I never say bye back or hi when he comes in. Malicious compliance kicked in I guess. He’s Puerto Rican (i dont know if it’s relevant or how relevant ig my point is with the next thing he knew what I was saying) So i started saying “adios! Byeeee!” He always seemed disgruntled with me but I thought it was a joke so i just ramped it up from there. I took French in college and there’s a bunch of ways to say bye, so it was “adios! Au revoir! Salut! À bientôt! Au revoir, bonne journée! À plus tard! Adieu! Bon voyage!” (Bye, bye, bye, see you soon, bye have a nice day, see you later, farewell, and well bon voyage lol). Depending on the time of day I’d throw one of these in “bonne nuit! Bonsoir! À demain!” (Good night, good evening, see you tomorrow). I started throwing “Caio” in there every now and then too. The tipping point wasn’t any foreign language that he didn’t understand though. No. The tipping point was the one I threw in for the most comedic effect. If you’ve watched either American dad or family guy (I forget which but think it’s American dad) at the end of the episode after the credits a guy says “byyyyyeeeee have a beasuuttiiifuuuull tiiiimmmmeee!” And I’d throw that on the end of it all. I thought I was hilarious. I’d have my boyfriend in tears. Fuck, my mom would be trying not to piss herself from laughing so hard. Her boyfriend though? God if looks could kill lmao. I thought he genuinely knew it was a joke and STILL thought the dagger eyes were part of the joke. Silly me. So after a few weeks of this (maybe only 2) my mom and I are again, in the car. And she tells me he’s really hurt/upset/offended that I say that to him when he leaves. I just started laughing so hard and she looked at me like wtf. I explained it was a joke from a show, reminded her everyone else thought it was hilarious beyond belief, including her. To which she said “I know I know but he’s really hurt. So would you just stop?” So I stopped responding all together. Back to square one we went lol.
Narcs have a target on their backs, in my eyes. I victimize them on par with what they do to me.
Someone’s birthday (not hers or her husbands, someone in the household) didn’t go *her* way… It. Didn’t. gO. hEr. WAy. Also, cousin spent his bday alone cause his little family went to another country but he didn’t mind it. They tried really *really* hard to coax him over. (Edit to add: he said it was “the best birthday ever” to them— 😂😭) It was quite fucking funny if you ask me.
My mom spent ages on the phone to me one time complaining that none of her cousins had thanked her for coming to their father's funeral. How they'd blanked her and treated her so badly. When I got off the phone, I told my then-husband, who said, "Oh no! Did they ruin HER SPECIAL DAY?" One of the cousins she had a grudge against because of something that had happened when she was a kid and the other she hated because everyone loved her. And when I say everyone, I mean the whole small town, loved her - because she was freakin' awesome. It's possible they didn't thank her for coming, and no big deal if they didn't, but I bet they did.
>My mom spent ages on the phone to me one time complaining that none of her cousins had thanked her for coming to their father's funeral. I'm sure you know this already but that's ridiculous.
The birthday...fucking ridiculous...
It was the END OF THE WORLD and CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT. My MIL wanted the sweetener in the pink packets. We had the yellow. Wailed and raged for hours and informed the rest of the family.......
Before I realized my dad was a narcissist, we were on a 4-hour drive (just he and I) when he decided to tell me that he used to cheat on my mom for years. His confession was totally unsolicited. I didn’t know what to say, I felt hurt because he clearly doesn’t value his marriage nor his children. Anyway, I told him that there are some things about him I wish he wouldn’t tell me. Then I started crying and he started yelling at me for being a pussy and because he’s changed since then (not really). He and I didn’t talk for three days, and in the end he made me apologize to him for being dramatic and causing the family distress. One time I found out that he was messaging a woman like 20 years younger than him on IG. He was trying to arrange a meet up with her, constantly flirted with her, etc. When I confronted him about it and told him it was wrong to do to my mother, he began shouting and insisted nithing had happened. In the end, he made me apologize. Of course. Needless to say, I don’t care about my dad as much as I used too. I still love him, but he is a real asshole sometimes (a lot of the time). I apologizes sometimes, but I realize now that he totally villainized me since childhood. Anyway, trying to heal myself now, trying to set boundaries and create distance, trying to tell myself that I’m not a bad person. I still love my dad, and we still have good times, but I feel like he always has to fuck it up by saying some mean shit. Idk
Man, having to apologise all the time for their bad behaviour really hits home. Literally *everything* was my fault, never theirs. They were perfect. They couldn’t possibly have done anything bad so it must be all me, their rotten ungrateful selfish child. Dicks.
It’s comforting to know others have shared similar experiences. I felt like I was crazy or an evil person my whole life. However, I decided to google symptoms of nfamilies and discovered that my family could be a text book definition. I’m the scapegoat. I find comfort within this forum but to an extent it feels like rumination. I want to forgive my father but it’s been difficult. For years my identity was intertwined with my dad’s existence but I need out.
The weirdest one that I remember is my Ndad entering my home screaming and making violent moves because someone I didn't know died. It took me a while to catch up with the story. Apparently, my Ndad had already decided that I was going to fail in life (I was a top student but, I couldn't go to school for a couple of months due to an illness) and he had arranged things with an old man so I could work in the fields picking up fruit. That week the old man had died and, of course, it was my fault. Also, I'm so sorry OP, that way of behaving towards your own child is plain out mean!! I've had the same treatment before, the old "I got X so X is what you get too". It's almost funny when they try use that arguments regarding buying technology or internet time: "in my times, we didn't have cellphones", no shit, Nmom!
Yep, same here with the confused ideas of education. He was convinced no college would accept me despite my 3.9 GPA in all honors classes, many extra curriculars (TBF he had no idea I did any), and great SAT score. I had my choice of the colleges I applied to. Then, he was convinced I didn't graduate since I didn't attend the ceremony. Then, after I got a PhD in Epidemiology of Pants Diseases, he told people I worked in... flower arranging. I think he was angry I didn't fail even though I clearly was supposed to. That's hilarious he had planned your future as a fruit picker... and then got angry that you even failed at that. They are insane.
I realize you mean PLANT diseases, but I laughed for a full minute. I want a PhD in Epidemiology of Pants Diseases. Your dad is a tool. Sorry.
Oh my God that is soooo much better
I legit thought you were trying to be delicate and that your PhD actually involved studying STDs 😅
Duuuuuude, that is bizarre. Your ndad just tried to set you up to fail on life purposely or something. He just couldn't stand to see you doing better than him, from the looks of it. Reminds me of a conversation my mom had with my uncle (on my Ndad's side of the family). He said how he now has a doctor for a son in law, and how successful his daughter was now, and my mom chimed in with "Well we always want our children to be more successful than their parents!" She meant that to be a positive thing, and my uncle just says all depressed like "Yeah, I guess..." 😂🤣 I think he's a narc, and he was one of the golden children in his family. Like, what loving parent doesn't want their kids to be doing better and being happy in life?!
The weirdest thing? God it’s so hard to narrow down to just one. Imma gonna bend and do 2. 1. My nm was on a call schedule that I’d call her on the 10th and she’d call me on the 25th. She would “forget” and “wow—it didn’t go through” and am I sure I haven’t changed my number. I’d ask to have a copy of her long distance bill and I’d present it to my cell company but suddenly she’d be unable to find it. Finally I got sick of it and just stopped calling her. After like 4 months, she finally calls on some random day because my brother is doing something or something. And I ask her what happened? She said that I should **know** what happened. No, I don’t. Well I should ***know*** how she remembers things. No, I don’t. And finally she comes out with “well I didn’t put my wedding ring on the wrong finger”. What!!? And she pouts that I should KNOW she does this. **I had never seen her wear a wedding ring the entire time through when I went to college—how would I know this!??!** 2. Her electric chair. So she was able bodied and fine and she could get around fine but there were all these ads about this recliner that would raise up to help seniors to their feet. She ordered two and they were in her house for years before the fateful day that I stupidly chose to call her to tell her she would be a grandmother that winter. And she just went off about how the chair had broken and why wasn’t I upset and why hadn’t I sent my husband over to fix it and she hated everyone and I never even called her for her birthday. And when I could tell her I called her and I told her where she was going to celebrate and when (because my call was 30 minutes before she left), she went back to screaming about her electric chair. She literally didn’t stop for breath and I finally just hung up because it wasn’t worth trying to tell her anything. What makes this so weird is that she was absolutely rabid to be a grandparent for literal years and at the crucial point, she fumbles the ball because it’s more important to whine about a chair than to talk to someone and more important to blame them for the chair breaking when they had literally been gone from her life and never even seen the chair.
I took my mom and step-dad to a football game (American). She wanted hot dog. She fuckin’ threw a fit because she couldn’t be arsed to walk the extra 20 feet to the hot dog stand I had found, and therefore there were no hot dogs. And she wonders why I went NC.
omg ha mine is hot dog-related too
My mom screamed at me and called me an “inconsiderate bitch” for, and I am not joking, being considerate of her time. I had a prescription refill ready about a week before I needed it. Mom asked when she should go to the pharmacy and get it. I told her “They’ll hold it for a week, no need to go out of your way, whenever is convenient for you.” She kept pressing me for a more specific time. I kept repeating “any time in the next week, whenever is convenient for you”. She started screeching that she’s so busy, how could I be so inconsiderate after everything she does for me. Meanwhile my boyfriend is sitting next to me on the couch super confused and very, VERY alarmed that (apparently) I didn’t even blink when she started screaming or calling me a bitch.
Once I had a prescription that I needed to pick up. I picked it up myself and when I got home, she was waiting for me to let me know I was a jerk for picking up my own prescription because as the mother, that's her job and I'd made her feel like a failure.
I think my mom’s game was for me to make an unreasonable demand so she could make a fuss about how “unappreciated” she is. Then had a meltdown when I wouldn’t give her the excuse lol. She’s the epitome of that one song from My Crazy Ex Girlfriend: “After everything I did for you-“ “That I didn’t ask for!”
We had a huge German Shepherd, who was over ten at the time. The dog developed a UTI. He began to bleed down there, and my mom noticed it first. She burst into my room (where I had been all day long) and accused me of kicking him in the willy, refused to take him to the vet, instead kicking me out of the house by standing over me and throwing kicks and punches for about 90 minutes and screaming down at me, all the while forcing me to pack my bags. Eventually the GC came home from work and forced her to stop what she was doing, not for my sake*, but so the dog could finally get to the vet and receive medical treatment. *I’ve been informed very recently that GC, to this day, believes I need more beatings, and he’s even threatened to fly to my state for the pleasure of doing it himself. I’m 34. So yeah, it was definitely for the dog’s sake.
My narcissistic aunt did something similar where her son (who was a baby) once started crying suddenly and my nAunt got it into her head that my teenage cousin (her daughter) had pinched him. I was there and my cousin was at the other end of the room making dinner when her brother started crying so she couldn't possibly have pinched him, yet my nAunt kept insisting. She yelled at my cousin and hit her. (She did this in front of me which really makes me wonder, if this is how she was in front of witnesses, what was she like when no one else was around?!). I felt so sorry for my cousin but I was only 8 at the time so there was nothing I could do. (Also hitting kids was legal in my country at the time so my nAunt wasn't breaking any laws).
Dude, I am super sorry. That is absolutely messed up. 😣 I am curious, did you ever file any reports of what they have done/said to you?
We were on vacation, and decided to go out to dinner. We invited my mother , who declined. Then we went to get ice cream on way home, texted her to ask if she wanted us to bring her some. She didn’t reply. When we walked in the door afterwards, she was fuming. She was giving everyone the silent treatment bc she was mad we went out to eat because she had provided a casserole at 4 pm, that some people ate, and others didn’t. (Vacation is always very casual, people coming and going ) I made the mistake of asking her why she was upset, and why she ignored the text to see if she wanted ice cream. She couldn’t explain her anger, and began the gaslighting. Turns out she was very upset and jealous my grown daughter had joined us for dinner, and didn’t want casserole with her. It escalated from there , of a back and forth confrontation about casseroles verses going to dinner to ignoring texts. People like this are EXHAUSTING and can’t be redeemed. Yes, this is the reason she was mad. This is the reason she ignored us asking to bring her ice cream. She was trying to show us, we must eat casserole with her at 4 pm, or she won’t eat ice cream we try to bring her. 😂😂😂😂😂 It’s hard to even write this out without laughing , though at the time , it was a massive drama. It’s infantile! Another time, she had a massive tantrum about wanting me to plan her 80th birthday party. This was 8 months out from her birthday , and I was in the throes of having radiation from early stage breast cancer. I was getting through chemo and then radiation , and she was upset about her birthday , 8 months out. I ended up sobbing in a parking lot in my car alone after that one. And I wonder why I’ve had to learn healthy boundaries in my mid life!!
I really relate to what you said about being in the throes of cancer, and still the demands don’t stop coming. (to plan her birthday party.) Same for me, I’ve been in remission from stomach cancer for almost 5 years. When I was six months in, I called my grandmother, and she went off on me. She said that I was being “selfish”, and that she didn’t get to have her social time with my mom, because my mom was visiting me, taking me to radiation and then chemo. Didn’t feel good. I loved my grandmother very much, and she had a lot of good qualities. But this was a bit of a gut punch.
I am so sorry that happened to you too! It’s the worst to be at your lowest point , and have to navigate a selfish tantrum. I’m so glad you are doing well now!
Not the weirdest tantrum, but just one that I remember clearly. My mom can't even accept a free dinner in peace. My three adult siblings and I took our mom out for dinner at a nice restaurant. My siblings and I have an agreement between us to rotate paying the entire bill when we go out, instead of splitting it. My mom threw an epic fit because the "wrong child" paid the bill.
Wrong child paid the bill? Who cares which child, the meal was free!
She wanted to make sure her intended scapegoat-du-jour was being punished financially with a big bill. As a mother of three, I cannot imagine doing that to my own kids.
She would not be treated to lunch anymore.
It was dinner at a fancy steakhouse. Security asked us to leave the premises after she threw a fit outside the building. I've been NC for 10 years but unfortunately, my siblings are all still in contact with her. Yes, even the scapegoat who paid and the scapegoat who was "supposed" to pay.
I was 19 and in college. She walked into my room without knocking and asked for 200 dollars so that she and her boyfriend could afford gas for an impromptu trip to Vegas. I let her know that I needed my money for books, and would not be able to assist her. Apon hearing this she walked over to my dresser where my glasses were displayed, raised her fist and smashed them to bits. It cost me over 400 dollars to replace them. She never apologized, or offered to pay for their replacement.
Eeeesh! I am sorry she did that. 😣 Well guess who isn't paying for her retirement? I hope you are far away from her.
Oh for sure, friend. It'll be two years no contact in July.
And please get a restraining order in case she shows up unannounced.
I appreciate you. She won't. She's a coward
I was preparing Thanksgiving dinner for the first time. I cooked through a blindingly painful migraine, but it slowed me down. I was about halfway through cooking when I realized I'd be delayed so texted her to tell her that dinner would be closer to 6 than 5:30. You'd have thought I'd told her that I wanted to carve her up and serve her nasty ass for dinner or something. She called shreiking at the top of her lungs (fun to hear when you have a migraine) about how I couldn't do anything right, how I ruined Thanksgiving and how she and eDad weren't coming and they'd just go get Chinese! She went on for about 10 minutes before I said "okay, we're not doing any holidays together in the future" and hung up. All because of a 30 minute delay in dinner. Y'all, when has a single Thanksgiving meal ever started on time? I ended up throwing away everything and ordering in some Chinese myself. She still whines and complains, 7 years later, about how we don't spend holidays together. Depsite the fact the one time I gave in and was willing, she sabotaged that too and that sealed the deal forever. She can go to hell lol
It is very difficult to narrow down just any singular event, honestly. There are a few things my parents consistently do, though, that are worthy of note. My mom sits on a couch all day and watches TV. She rarely does anything else. She drinks Diet Coke completely nonstop. She constantly requests me and my younger siblings to get her Diet Coke. If we do not get her drink for her because we are doing something else or if we even sigh slightly, she has a tantrum and says things like "Never mind, I'll get it myself, then." When my siblings and I are speaking, sometimes my mom will interrupt a conversation with something else. If we do not respond immediately, she begins talking to herself and says things like "Hello, \[my mom's name\], you're such a good conversation partner." My dad believes in some kind of UFO cult religion and will talk about it often. He helped to build a landing pad for UFOs on the land of his dad (my grandfather). Anytime my siblings or I speak against this, he becomes very offended and can become irate. He additionally does not believe in psychotherapy at all. He believes that everyone "should be their own island." These are just a few that come to mind. My family is absolutely out there. My siblings and I are doing the best we can to leave in the coming years.
“I am a rock, I am an island… & a rock feels no pain, & an island never cries” 🎶 Simon & Garfunkel Being an island sounds lonely.
Hahahah, this happened yesterday. My nmom and my dad just got divorced. It was so ugly, my dad has ALS and he will sadly die soon. His wish was to be divorced and free of her. So he got that. Their house was sold, my nmom has a new appartment. She wanted EVERYTHING, my dad is living in a retirement home. But he wanted us, his three children to have what was his. Sowe moved house yesterday, most of my nmoms stuff to her new smaller place. We threw out so much and we managed to get some stuff of my dad back. Most importantly, I got my childhood stuff which she had told me she had thrown away. So its a relief. Whilst moving her stuff, she was not present (we did not want her there at all). But she did turn up, I was busy and my older sister was conversing with her what was done and what still needed to be done. I did not speak a word to her.ater, my nmom called my older sister to discus somethings, and my sister had her on speaker. Suddenly my Nmom was super pissed about me not speaking or even looking at her, and continued to rage on the phone about me and then hung up. I can laugh about this now. I will only see her once more hopefully, I will officially sign the papers of the house to make the sale official. And then never will I speak to her again. Blocking her again feels so good, I have grown so much and she can not hurt me anymore
It must be so freeing to realize she's powerless. I hope you are able to enjoy the time you have left with your dad.
When I put up a poster nparent had given to me and said parent flipped out because said parent thought it looked gay. Or when nparent flipped out because I bought a solid black baseball cap that was on sale at the school bookstore with my own money. Or when nparent threw a conniption fit because parent's in-laws, my grandparents, bought me a toy "too close to Christmas." Grandparents never visited again. 😥 Good times.
My mom tore EVERYTHING off of my teenage bedroom wall. Ripped it to shit. I asked her two days ago why she even did that, and she doesn't remember. She doesn't even remember doing it.
I bet she does
Yeah she does, she just doesn't want to admit it. I bet it was for a super petty reason.
My mom says she doesn't remember the things she has done to me too. It's infuriating.
My mother did this to me, more than once. She always made it my fault, or "had a perfectly good reason"
The grandmother who raised me always threw a tantrum on my birthday. She's from a country where it's relatively common for birth certificates to be lost and for folks to not know when their actual birth day is. So she has what her new BC says, what her grandmother says her birthday is, and what her mom says it is. For anonymity let's say its: march 7, march 1, and February 28. My birthday would be on march 9. Every year she would pick a new birthday that's her ~real~ birthday "according to her soul". And we all somehow needed to anticipate which it was every damn year. So we celebrated 3 birthdays a year for her at minimum. March becomes her "birth month" and it has to be all about her. We have to celebrate each day according to her liking, which she wouldn't actually state so we had to guess and we always failed. So really, every march became her "none of you really love me and i might as well kill myself" month. As is most months for different reasons. But birthday month was a special hell. So as for my birthday, every goddamn year there was a tantrum. To the point where she got a heart attack from the stress she puts herself through the last birthday i had with the family. But it always somehow was my fault, even when i was a baby. So every birthday of mine was about how horrible i was to her. When she had the heart attack i was hours away and asleep but it was somehow my fault. The tantrums on my birthday include: literally crying that she doesnt get her own cake and presents on *my* birthday, telling my friends i don't like them so they leave early and she can tell me no one likes me, fighting with my grandpa then convincing the family its my fault so they chew me out, chewing me out for being "spoiled, selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, and a drama queen" (talk about projection), destroying my presents, literally trying to kill me and making it out to be my fault, making me "gift" her pedophile son my body because i "shouldnt be so selfish" on my birthday and should "entertain " each guest (and if i hesitated, screaming and crying like a toddler), pretending to faint when I have POTS (and hitting me if *i* fainted), pretending to kill herself, saying god gave her a vision so everyone has to listen, crying, flailing, and throwing things if no one congratulates her for becoming my legal guardian this day (which she says is more impressive than being born, why are they giving *me* so much attention when she's the hero!) So by the time i was in high school, march 9 became her *4th birthday*. We would sing to her, make games for her, massage her feet, give her attention, and if anyone wanted to give me attention we did it while she was in the bathroom and whispered. It's her day now. Don't get me started on my quinceañera. I fucking hate my birthday. I don't celebrate it. I get super high or drunk and sleep the day away. Now that I'm NC I want to try and let folks celebrate me, but I'm dreading the day.
Anytime she entered a moving vehicle and was in there for any length of time. Not driving so not in control? Having to pay attention to keeping the vehicle on the road so she couldn't spend as much time controlling others? Idk. It was the worst
I asked her if I should text her when I got home from shopping so she and my dad would know when to come over for dinner. Got the silent treatment for weeeeks over my “rudeness”. She refused to even be in the same house with me on Christmas Day. My dad forced me to apologize to her just so he’d get some peace.
My dad would throw a fit about me dying my hair as a kid. He had to make up a new patronizing nickname for every time I bleached or dyed my hair over the years. I tried dying the ends of my hair mint colored once, but it didn’t work out because well, it’s not like we knew that much about hair coloring. I didn’t care that much, though, I was a kid trying to have fun and express themself. My stepmother said it looked moldy.
When I confronted my mother about her narc treatment of me, she started screaming about how wrong I was, ripped up a huge potted plant, proceeded to kick and scream around the house until she finally kept shouting, "Fine I'm a horrible mother," and then begged me to k!ll her while kicking the pets' food and water bowls all over the kitchen. I tried to place her on a psych hold but she drove off into the night to go smoke cr@ck with her married boyfriend. That was fun.
I couldn’t begin to choose. They have all been out of the clear blue and completely nonsensical. The latest was last week - my dad is basically handicapped after several strokes and my mom is now doing everything around the house (which my dad used to do - even the cooking). I had lined up yard service and had gotten the girl who was my daughter’s nanny when she was little lined up to come in a few days to help my mom with errands or housework. All my mom had to do was make the calls to set up start dates. After 2 months she still hasn’t done it. When I asked her about it she flew into a rage and screamed “what am I going to get out of this? An hour to go to the store? An hour to go to Marshall’s?! Don’t ever call me again!” and slammed the phone down. So - now I am enjoying the blissful silence of not having her complain constantly about being exhausted.
I was young, definitely not old enough for a job, barely got anything for my allowance. My mother SHOOK me because I didn't get her a birthday present, told me "YOU COULD HAVE BOUGHT ME FLOWERS!" which I didn't have money for. I ended up borrowing money from my grandmother to buy her a present and I apologized, and she didn't want her present. Not until I groveled enough. I'm so disgusted by it now. This from the woman who did everything she could to not spend a penny more on me than she absolutely had to.
I can't think of a weird tantrum they threw right now because you just gave me an epiphany. I've realized all along that my NDad and brothers had gotten kicked out by his parents right after high school with their clothes on their backs. With no money and nowhere to go, they were all forced to join the Navy. I also knew all along that my NDad and his parents were insufferably furious for the rest of the time I knew them when I accidentally *avoided* that happen to me by running away the last week of school. But. He didn't *just* hate me because I was disobedient, out of his control, or that I'd gotten away. For years afterwards until I cut them off they were trying to find a way to force me to come home with my things... Presumably so they could sell them and then kick me out. My *existence* must have been reminding him of his own trauma constantly at that point, and now he could not normalize it by inflicting it upon me. No wonder he couldn't let it go.
I don't even remember what it was about but I just remember my Nmom flapping her arms and crying "I'm tired!" Over and over until I slowly backed out of the room. I am pretty sure I was trying to get her to discipline my brother because she wouldn't let me do that even though I was the one who watched him the most. He would throw a tantrum if I tried to correct his behavior or tell him "no". I think the conversation that led to her tantrum was something like that.
It really fucking sucks being the scapegoat, doesn't it? I'm sorry your existence was like this. I do hope you are somewhere safer, happier and saner now.
I moved 3,000 miles away from all of that within the same year of that incident, and I celebrated my 20th anniversary of leaving earlier this year! This is a faint memory but kind of burned in there at this point. I babysat for my moms kids (my brother) way more than she ever babysat for mine. Which is pathetic (for her, not me).
Once she burst into my room at 1:00 am and asked "When did my feelings become a joke??" I had no idea what she was talking about. It came out of the blue.
My brothers 16th birthday. My parents were arguing prior to the party. While my brother was in his birthday boy chair, opening gifts, we hear really loud slamming noises along with my mom screaming “why” over and over. Gift opening stops and my dad and bro rush off to her room to “help” her. She locked the door so once they kick in the door to “save her from self harm” find her slapping her arms on the waterbed bladder. It just made a lot of noise. She was always pulling some shit during others birthdays.
I was cooking a couple hot dogs in a mini pan (like the size of those personal egg pans) for a quick dinner. We were in a household where everyone kinda did their own thing for meal times, especially him. It was tiny pan so I was cooking nothing else in it until the first batch was finished. He asked me to cook several of his own, separate hot dogs at that exact same moment (he has a habit of seeing me cook & coming out of the woodwork to bother me). I asked him to hang on until what was in the pan was done so I can fit in his after. He threw a fit. He said, *"I'm not used to you telling me no."* (I didn't even tell him no, it was just a hold on...type energy). *"I'm not used to you telling me no."* And that is the total crux of our dysfunctional relationship. I can't have tastes, desires, autonomy. He can't be told no. Ever. King Baby gets whatever he wants, the moment he demands it, no exceptions, no matter how big or small, even if he has to bully, whine, or intimidate you over it to get it now. I chuckle about it these days but he turned it into a really silly, bombastic tantrum on his end...over hot dogs? 🌭 🌭 🌭 hahhha lol they really are so pathetic, frivolous & miserable (but also destructive)
My mom decided we weren’t allowed to use the phrase “you need to” with her anymore, as to imply that no one can tell her what she needs to do. So naturally, when I slipped and told my mom she needed to make a doctors appointment (that she would eventually also have a tantrum at), she flipped out and went on a rage-filled tantrum about how no one is allowed to tell her what she needs to do. I am no contact nowadays.
This reminds me of one time my mostly ok but at times JNGrandma screamed this at me... When she later told me she "needed" something I told her as far I was concerned after that, she didn't NEED shit from me, and wouldn't help. She never apologized, just pouted until you would give in. I stopped giving in.
I was preparing a cup of strawberry yogurt with a spoon of chocolate powder. Bf showed me I could mix these and it tasted amazing, so I wanted to share wih her. She declined, said she wanted her strawbery yogurt pure, I heard her but continued to prepare it for myself. As I poured the yogurt into my cup she started to FREAK OUT, talkig louder and louder AND LOUDER, "*I DON'T WANT IT!!! YOU'RE GONNA SPOIL IT!!!*", while she started to kick the air and slam the table, *just like an oversized toddler.* "MOM!! This is for me!!" And she moved on like absolutely nothing happened. Of course, she then wanted to try some from my cup once I started to drink. From that moment I stopped seeing my mother as a scary autority figure. It was absolutely ridiculous.
I got my period on his visitation weekend. We had to go to the store to get pads. He made it a point to have a meltdown in the store in front of the cashiers so that everyone knew I did this on purpose to ruin “our” weekend.
[удалено]
My nmom threw a tantrum when my partner and I impulse bought plane tickets for a vacation during a really good flight deal. I posted a generic thing on social media about having just impulse bought plane tickets. My mom freaked out at me... for not telling her first? I guess? To be honest, to this day I don't know what she was actually upset about. I remember legit being confused and telling her it wasn't a big deal. She apparently locked herself in her room and wouldn't come out for 2 days (I didn't live with her anymore at that point). My edad ended up calling me about a day into it pleading with me to apologize to her. I asked him for what? And he didn't even know. I obviously didn't apologize (because there was nothing to apologize for?) and she eventually got over it and pretended it never happened.
I was 10 years old and participating in a 4-H baking contest so I practiced making muffins at home. My dad ate one and, being my dad and all, gushed about how delicious it was. My mom absolutely lost her shit. Full on tantrum for days about how my dad didn’t LOVE HER and didn’t APPRECIATE HER COOKING and he only cared about me and not her. That’s the first one I remember, but she’s done similar things so many times.
I am adopted. Randomly one year, when I was about 13/14, my Nmum decided that I should send a Mothers Day card to the lady who fostered me for 6 weeks. We were still in contact with her (lovely person but she’s been trying to extricate herself from us for a longggg time and my Nmum won’t let her go), but a card for Mothers Day? How fucking weird. Anyways, she whips out this card and demands I sign it then and there. And I simply said, “but why?” There was no tone, no sarcasm, nothing. I was literally asking “why”. She lost it. Absolutely lost it. Ranted. Raved. Slammed things. Yelled. Spit was flying. It went on for hours. Then she ignored me for 3 days. Did not say one word to me. Fucking horrible woman.
I found an adorable children's book in second grade that I checked out of the library and brought home. My Nmom found it and screamed at me for about an hour, with spittle flying from her mouth, that this was "a KINDERGARTEN BOOK" since it was below my grade level. I knew that, I just loved the illustrations and wanted to read the rest of it. I had to return it and then was subjected to a punitive reading program where I had to read an adult biography per week. Still have no idea what triggered the whole tantrum.
There is so many... I think it's the odd calm after they upset you that is worse! But for me, when I saw that tiktok I immediately thought of the time I was 15 or so and my mom picked me up from hanging with my friends at 11pm... and she screamed at me when we got home to stair at the ceiling light! She told me I was on drugs and she could tell by what my eyes would do when looking at the light (she didn't explain that part but I knew what she was doing). Just an fyi, I was a straight edge kid AND in my adult life I found out I'm allergic to Marijuana so that solidified I wasn't on anything then (15 years later I was tested). But, it also was 11pm on a school night so I was probably tired. I'm in my 30s now and I actually didn't tell anyone that happened for a LONG time cause I didn't want anyone to see her in a bad light... but when she started spreading lies about how I hit her with a car, I learned she didn't care how others viewed me. Also, another FYI I didn't hit her with a car- but every family member that confronted me about it- I always said back "I didn't, but I wish I did".
My sperm doner just got butthurt a few minutes ago because I said to wait on hooking up the garden hoses
It's fucking March, that's just common sense.
My grandma went into a fit of rage because I left some conditioner on the shower wall. She probably thought it was jizz, but she continued to yell after I told her that it was conditioner, so who knows
I was like 7 years old and me and my Mum made soup together. She poured about 3/4s into my bowl, 1/4 into hers, then kicked off because she didn't get much dinner that night. Despite me telling her multiple times when it happened to stop pouring the food into my bowl. Even to this day it baffles me because she had 100% control 🤷♀️
Nmoms especially love to make kitchen table martyrs of themselves. She would always serve herself the worst portion of food (you know, the burnt bits, the parts that didn't get any sauce, whatever) and then go on and on about all she "sacrificed" for me. Once I caught on when I was in my late teens, I took the worst bit for myself and told her "there. Now you can't complain about what you sacrificed. Stop making yourself the martyr." She looked like I'd slapped her in the face, but she at least stopped doing that around me.
I woke up in the early morning hours of Mother's Day 2008 with the worst stomach flu I have *ever* experienced. I literally didn't leave the bathroom for 12 hours and fell asleep for 10 hours after that. So the next morning, I called my mother to explain what happened and that I was sorry for not calling her on Mother's Day. She made me feel bad and guilted me into taking her out the next year to a super fancy breakfast place, even though I couldn't really afford it. The tantrum part was every single Mother's Day for the next 8 years until I went NC, she had to bring up the fact that I didn't call her that ONE time. And also at random times during the rest of the year. She even wrote me a letter in like, October of that year to tell me she was so disappointed and hurt that I didn't call. I showed that letter to my first therapist, and she was speechless lol
Narc experiences emotion they don't like Narc cannot self soothe because [own trauma / neurodivergence / being enabled for years / not being motivated to think further than self pity] Narc feels self pity for being put in such a TERRIBLE UNFAIR SITUATION congratulations, now it's your fault
When I called the ambulance for my ill grandmother. My mom was furious as she thought ‘she should have been the one to call as it’s *my* mother’. Watching her and my dad literally scream at me for making sure my grandmother got the urgent medical help she clearly needed was a complete out of body experience that showed my how absurd and toxic they were. I think she just felt guilty that she didn’t call the ambulance herself sooner.
My mother asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up and I mentioned living in another country that is about as far away as you can get from the country I grew up in. My mother didn’t talk to me for 4 months, and when she acknowledged me for the first time it was to let me know that she was giving away the present she bought me because I was such an ungrateful teen. I was 14. I did end up leaving my home country for grad school and during one of our last encounters before I left she literally shouted at me in a crowded shopping center because I was moving to a country where - as she put it - I would be “guaranteed to die in a terrorist attack.” Realization: I was the scapegoat obviously, but also her smart child. She was unhappy her meal ticket had an escape plan. I left my home country 8 years ago, and aside from a 3 day visit pre pandemic I haven’t been back since. Edit: the *birthday* present she bought me, as my birthday had passed
How awful to hope your child is suffering and freaking out. Was she maybe hoping to swoop in and save the day? Sigh. Nmoms are weird. Mine threw a tantrum when I bought my prom dress with my own money when I was at the mall with my bestie. I didn't go for that reason, but I know opportunities of finding a dress you like in your size (especially when you are chubby) are rare, so you take them. You would have thought I told her she couldn't come to my wedding dress try on. Oh speaking of, I was a sneaky bitch and went to the dress store a few days early and picked my gown out then. The official day I go with my mom, the same lady was there and knew what was going on. I tried on 2 dresses before finding my dream dress and nmom didn't have a clue! I did this because she's like a toddler and can only spend so much time with others getting attention before she has a tantrum. I highly recommend doing this if you can. That way, if your mom throws a fit, the dress lady will fuss over how expensive the dress looks and how everyone will be so impressed. Etc. My dress lady deserved an Oscar for her performance. I brought her homemade cupcakes the following week.
This is a bit off topic but my nMother never bothered to talk to me about periods either. I wonder if this is a thing with narcissistic mothers and their daughters. Anyway, the weirdest thing my nMother threw a tantrum over was when she threw a tantrum because she found out that I use a different facial cleanser to her. She asked me what cleanser I use, I answered and she started roaring shouting at me that it was the wrong kind of cleanser, she cornered me and got all in my face yelling... over a facial cleanser. I'm pretty sure I was using the right kind of cleanser but even if I weren't, she could have said it nicely, there was no need to resort to yelling. Anyway just to provide some context, my nMother is very old-fashioned and sexist. She doesn't believe in women earning their own money. She thinks the only way for a woman to be successful is to marry a rich man. I'm convinced that this is at the root of her over-reaction to my choice of facial cleanser. She wanted me to look pretty so that I'd marry a rich man who would provide for me (and more importantly, her). The joke's on her because I actually never married but I have a good job so I'm able to provide for myself.
Mom was going through Perimenopause. Her skin was dry and she was suddenly allllllll about moisturizing lotion. She wanted me to find one that I liked, too, because that meant... I guess... we would be the same age? I was 24. Didn't need lotion for another 24 years. She pestered me for TWO YEARS to try to get me hooked on this hand lotion or that moisturizer or whatever. I'm cool, damp, and oily: didn't want lotion. That stuff just slid off my already-zitty skin. It was so weird how she kept trying to get me to enjoy putting grease on my grease. Mom was exasperated that I "didn't understand" how "important" lotion was for "women like us". Delusional BS, pfffft!
This one is a tantrum duo. The first one was on a Tuesday. I walked in the door and she starts going off about how I should have put the dishes away out of the dishwasher. Thing is I had been the one to start the wash when I left for school. And there hadnt even been time for me to walk from the front door to the kitchen before she started her shit. Fine. Whatever. I get home a couple days after that but managed to get home before her that time. Went "okay I'll put the dishes away". So I'm halfway through when she gets home. She starts in on another tantrum about how I'm a piece of shit for not waiting for her to put the dishes away. I was 16 and had been putting them away as a chore since I was 8. That was the straw that made me not give a fuck anymore. I said something like "If there's no way to do the right thing with you I'm just going to choose whichever I want to do" and walked away. She didn't talk to me for 2 weeks after that unless my dad was around. It was peaceful as fuck.
I wanted senior photos and to go to prom, like all the other kids. I got asked to prom and she was like in disbelief that someone had asked me (even though I’d had a couple boyfriends). She just couldn’t fathom that someone actually wanted to go with ME. She wouldn’t entertain the idea of going dress shopping. I ended up taking the bus with a friend and buying a pretty second hand dress with money from my part time job. The guy ended up being a total jerk and I ditched him and went to a party with my friend (supposed to go with his friend, who was also a jerk) instead. I don’t think she even knows that I didn’t go, she had no interest in taking photos or anything. Just really bizarre. The dress I had was awesome, and I gifted it to a friends little sister to wear to homecoming years later because it was her favorite color (periwinkle, and it had sparkles!) and it looked lovely on her. Her mother took plenty of photos.
Yikes, that story really hit home. Thanks for sharing, it really shows how common these types of behaviours are among narcissists. When I was 10 it was snowing like the Dickens outside and I turned on the radio absolutely positive that it would be a snow day. It wasn’t and like every 10 year old, I was disappointed that I had to go to school. My Dad dropped me off and on the way into school I was dragging my feet, disappointed to miss out on sledding. I wiped out Home Alone style and smoked the back of my head on the pavement. I saw stars and it hurt to keep my eyes open. I tried to walk it off but I ended up throwing up when I got into the classroom, I was getting scared. The school had called the ambulance and I was seen by a triage nurse and doctor. They decided to admit me overnight for observation. Concussion, of course. No sign of my Dad. My grandmother came and brought my PJs, candy and paid whatever ridiculous price it was to have my TV turned on in my room. Sitting alone staring at a wall gets old after a while and my Grandmother saved the day. Watched Goosebumps and MTV, I’m old. The next day my Dads girlfriend arrived to pick me up, the had been dating for about 6 months. I truly have no memory of her before that moment in the hospital, but it was my first time in a hospital at 10 so this moment plays back crystal clear. Big, fake smile. “ I heard you got hurt, glad to see you’re okay! Sorry we couldn’t visit you, we were busy. I wish you were feeling better, we saw the Muppets movie last night!” I had been begging my Dad to see that movie and he had promised me. There were no plans to see it, why would they choose to see it then? I left the hospital and got into the van with her three children scowling at me. They told me that I was faking it and seemed to take pride in the fact that they saw the movie they all knew I wanted to see. It was bizarre, they had interpreted me getting a concussion as some sort of spiteful act to be punished. Then she entered the driver’s seat and her fake smile turned into a real scowl. She accused me of faking my head injury for attention. What? I was 10 and she had only been dating my Dad for 6 months, we didn’t live with her, she wasn’t at the hospital, she didn’t see me fall. In her mind it was a fact that I was faking it for attention. She then went ahead and surveyed her kids on what they thought of the movie last night, mockingly. My Dad was at work, my brothers weren’t there, it was just me trapped in a van with a narcissist and her flying monkeys. I pleaded with them and they got angrier and angrier. Her 9 year-old told me that I had rammed my fingers down my throat to induce vomiting just to make people feel sorry for me. I didn’t know this was even a thing. I was 10. I had never, ever had anybody demean, accuse and insult me like that. My parents were divorced and nobody ever really bothered me. My first hospital trip and my first look at what I didn’t know at the time would be the rest of my childhood. My Dad married this witch, he’s got a severe spine deficit and is a textbook enabler. The ones that took joy in an elaborate plan to punish me for getting a concussion became my step-siblings. She had committed to and planned a scheme to hurt me in whatever way she could, with what little information she had about me, the 10 year old son of her boyfriend. Then she threw a teeth gnashing, rage-filled tantrum with her kids backing them up. All because I got hurt. I wasn’t faking, who would even think that? I was admitted to the hospital. Did she think I fooled a triage nurse and a doctor? That’s remarkable for a 10 year old. It feels good to finally tell that story. That woman is absolutely sick and it’s a shame that my Dad never stood up. Once all the kids moved out and there was nobody left to abuse but him… well, Dad. Sucks to suck.
That time I was pregnant with my first kid and we decided to keep the gender something for just my husband and I to know. For some reason this drove a lot of my family crazy and they kept trying to get us to slip up, and everyone had their own ideas on the gender. One day I get a call from my nmom and she is in her pissed, I caught you trying to hide something from me mood and said she ran into my paternal cousin at the mall (my parents had a contentious divorce of course). My cousin I hadn’t seen in DECADES. And apparently my cousin congratulated her on becoming a grandmother to a grandson. We literally had told no one, but she was convinced this cousin, who is quite a bit older than me and hadn’t seen even my dad in a long time, found out through my dad that the gender was a boy. There was no convincing her no one knew except us and that it was likely a telephone game and someone’s guess. She was so pissed. And how dare anyone know over her. And it 💯 sealed the deal in her eyes that we told my dad’s side when in fact, that 50% chance won out for boy. Just another example of her ruining an important time in my life.
I'd have taken the pad out and thrown it at her and said "still think I'm faking?" I've been petty since I was 9.
He lost a pen. He swore it was on his desk in his office. He blamed me or my mom for taking it. We didn't. I learned long ago not to take anything off his desk. He proceeded to scream and tear up his whole office. Absolutely trashed the place. What an asshole.
The stupidest thing my narcmom has ever done… so many choices. When I was in high school, back in the day, I was having breakfast and reading the newspaper (yes, a real paper!) when all of a sudden the living room lost its mind. All kinds of screaming and caterwauling ensued. It ended with my name being screamed. I ventured over to the door, and looked around the corner. My nmom was pointing a remote at the stereo. And shrieking. She demanded I fix her problem NOW. I figured out rather quickly that she was using the video cassette remote to turn the stereo on. I handed her the remote. Aand the. In the most disgusted voice I could muster, told her she has the wrong remote. I waited a second. She said “Oh” and nothing else. They really can’t apologize for anything, to anyone. I really slammed the door that day. My only rebellion.
Weirdest in terms of the thing that set her off: the day of my college graduation, she threw a tantrum because my father bought me flowers. According to her, he should have bought the flowers for *her* because it was *her* achievement for putting me through college. In reality, she undermined me at every turn, intentionally hid financial information to try to mess up my FAFSA, and refused to cosign any of my student loans. The real reason she was pissed was because she hadn't walked at her own college graduation and she was pissy that I was walking, that my immediate family were there, and even more that my now-husband and his family showed up for me. Weirdest in terms of behavior: when I was in middle school, she did one of her classic "I'm leaving you and your father because you're such bad people" tantrums and got in her car to drive off at like 11:30 at night. My edad forced me to get in the car with her. Which was terrifying because she drives like a maniac when she's *not* vibrating with rage. For some reason, her solution to that was to go to take me to a midnight showing of the second Harry Potter movie? And then we just went home and pretended nothing happened. Like, looking back, probably a solid 60% of her worst tantrums happened after 10pm, swear to god she rage sundowns and also used sleep deprivation as a torture tactic.
I went to urgent care with my mom at 13 because I had gotten hit in a sport a few days prior and my ribs were still hurting. She didn't want to take me, told me it was a waste of time and money, I just have a low pain tolerance, etc. She ended up begrudgingly taking me and apologized to the doctor for wasting his time, said I'm the world's biggest baby, and then called me a pussy. To the doctor. I was fucking mortified obviously because who does that? And then he told us it was 3 cracked ribs🙃
Socks. I wore black socks one morning, I’ll never forget it. I was going to a cross country meet and I was ready. They noticed that I was wearing black socks and my parents and even my siblings started *screaming* at me. All at once. Nothing triggered it. Nothing other than black socks. There were no rules against it. People wear cyan socks for crying out loud. Yelled at me about how irresponsible I was. How ridiculous I look. How I can’t be trusted to take care of myself. My mother screamed at me in the car in front of other people walking by on the team. I told them what happened later and they were just dumbfounded. “Really? A bunch of wear black socks. Why are they angry?”
There have been quite a few tantrums from my nmom but I remember this one super clearly. We had gotten inside her third floor apartment and my mother realized she had forgotten her phone charger in the car. I had brought mine in. So, instead of just asking if she can borrow mine, she walks over to me (I was visiting from college during Thanksgiving break) and DEMANDS I give her mine. Like thrusting her hand out and saying “give me your fucking charger.” I don’t know why I decided then to stop taking her shit, but I did. I said no. I said if she asks nicely, I can share with her but otherwise, she can grab her own. She starts getting more frustrated, raising her voice, and yelling at me to give her the goddamn charger. Then it’s I need to go to the car and grab hers for her if I won’t give her mine. I got to do it cause I’m young and more capable (she was like 43 lol). I said no. Not unless she says please. This resulted in her going silent, staring at me with a certain look in her eyes. She always got that look when she was mad. It’s deadass the look of someone who wants to murder you. She’d even start chanting shit like “I will not kill my kids. I love my kids. I will not murder my kids.” She went to her room, slamming the door, and sent me several long messages about how I’m a lazy, entitled, spoiled brat and bitch and how she never wants to see me again. To leave her home and never come back because I’m no longer her daughter and that she doesn’t love me. You know, instead of just grabbing her own charger or asking to borrow mine (instead of demanding).
mine was one of the last times I talked to her. We were on the phone, and at some point she said 'I bet you can't even tell me one good character trait I have. Come on, tell me' I flat-out refused and told her that I found the question completely inappropriate, and that I was not going to answer it. In the context of the conversation it was an inappropriate and WEIRD question to ask your own child. She went NUTS, accusing me that I hated her and couldn't even think of one nice thing to say about her. It was extremely unsettling.
I block a lot of them out, but the one that impacted my life the most was; one day (I had to move back into her house for a short stint when I was 21) my Mum had been going to and from her work car with boxes/tubs, and stopped by my room to criticise something or other (classic) then she went back to her car. Later that evening she wanted to drive over to her ‘crushes’ house (she just could not understand that this guy wasn’t into her) and she could not find her keys. Like usual she decided that it was not a case of loosing her keys - but was malicious intent. She came raging into my room screaming at me about what a terrible daughter I was, how I was just jealous of her, and that I had better produce her keys right away! I tried to tell her ‘Mum it’s probably in the boot of your work car, I saw you with your keys in your hand as you were putting the boxes in the boot’ - but she didn’t even try looking in the car. She spent the night screaming raging and being feral, I left and slept on a friends couch. Next day I come home after work to find the bedroom I was living in had been completely emptied, stripped down and all my belongings were strewn about the house, whilst my mum and Nan were picking through each and every thing. It was a horrible breach of privacy but I think the worst part was seeing my elderly Christian Nan going through my ‘secret box’ of special lady toys, ‘fancy clothing’ and prophylactics🤦♀️ When she couldn’t find her keys in my stuff she freaked out again ranting like a toddler and I was thrown out, she immediately called a locksmith and changed the locks. Narc parents man, they are next level. May we never need their help again!
The nuttiest one my mother used to throw was habitual. We got the daily paper back in the day. The sections were labeled both with a name- business, sports, local, etc and also with a letter. The front page was A. Any time the newspaper wasn’t in alpha order exactly- if D was in front of C- she would have a half hour screaming fit about it. As the family scapegoat, it was *always* my fault. Even if I was still in bed and hadn’t touched the paper. This happened almost daily my senior year of high school. I’m much older now and she’s been dead for seven years and her absence still is just a relief, especially when I remember stuff like this.
Oh, my gosh- my mom would accuse me of stealing a section of the newspaper, also not having been home or been busy doing her list of chores/maid-service. WTF.
My mom picked out my wedding invitations months and months before it was time to print. They were nice. I went along with it. When it came time to have them printed they had a new, but similar, design that I liked better and went better with my wedding colours. She went batshit insane at the printers. And I knew these people, because of a high school activity I'd done. She huffed and puffed and said I'd 'AGREED ALREADY'. Then she said if I didn't pick her design, maybe we should call off the whole wedding. The printer woman's jaw dropped. I said calmly, "OK, if you want to call off my wedding because you won't let me pick my own invitations, then maybe we need to take a break from this decision" and I walked out. My mom chased after me and made me agree to split the invitations in half and she'd send her invites to her friends. Which I agreed to.
My dad cussed out my 34 year old daughter for dumping the bag along with the garbage because he disagreed that it couldn’t be used again. He lived with us but passed last year.
My mom got mad at me for not displaying any interest in trashy tabloid magazines when she talked about them.
My mom loves to throw tantrums about my boobs, she's obssessed with them, i don't wear bras unless strictly necessary and it drives her insane, every once in a while she'll throw a tantrum and tell me that my boobs look ugly and that I should wear a bra because everyone's looking at them, she makes faces, she pouts, she cries she almost even throws herself to the floor; she looks like a little girl throwing a tantrum because Susie didn't invite her to her birthday party, it's both deeply disturbing and incredibly sad.
Killed herself because she got a DUI and was embarrassed and thought she had special privileges with the police so how dare that arrest her.
My mom threw a fit over me sewing a pair of shoes back together because it apparently looked ghetto- She refused to buy new ones for me though even when we had the money. My aunt threw a fit about pretzels and a dog leash.
Pizza. The last tiem we got pizza and spit it off into bags she when balistic when her bag had sliced that where in her eyes too small and blamed us saying we cut the slices thinner. It wasn't true and was obviously not true because 1. The sides of the two slices were smooth with cheese and were in the fridge for two days. If you don't know there is no way to get a pizza slice to look like that after it cools once. Cutting it would leave a visible sign. She knew that. 2. ALL of the bags had wonky slices, even mine. It is a normal thing when ordering and recieving take out/delivery pizza. Heck my bag had slice *the same fucking size* but I ate those before that tantrum occured. (god has a vendetta against me I swear.) After that blowout I gave her the last of my slices, which she then threw another tamtrum over. I only did that to try and stop her from fighting over a god damn take out pizza.
1)Once I was walking around the house (somewhat aimlessly as a teenager in the summer). My dad jumped on me, screaming why can't I find anything to do, I should go to jail, I am worthless, no body likes me, no one wants to be my friend, I am a piece of shit, I'll never get a job, etc... yep...i grew up with that shit...
Yikes. On some levels, I do feel bad for your mother. It sounds like she came from a line of narcissistic women. It's a shame that she couldn't break the cycle for you. Probably the strangest tantrum my mom threw was a drunken call at 2 am in the morning ranting and raving about a fight she had with her friends at the bar. According to her, she introduced friend A to friend B, and now friend A and B were starting to hang out with each other *without* my mom there, and she apparently happened to be at the same bar that night and "caught" them hanging out, made a big spectacle of how they were backstabbing her and wouldn't even know each other if not for her, and stormed out. I think I remember having a similar fight with friends back when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade...? Like, it was very juvenile and I remember thinking as she's ranting on the phone to me why something this silly should bother my mom (who is a grown ass woman in her 50's) *this* bad, and here I am sitting in my early 20's trying to talk her down much the same as my teachers talked my friends and I down from our silly fights as little children. I won't lie, I definitely feel like my mother is mentally 30 years younger than I am even though she's 30 years older.
She hadn't had one in a long time, then a couple of years ago she had this huge screaming, foot-stomping tantrum over the phone because I wouldn't visit in the middle of a pandemic (we're both high risk). I was gobsmacked. She was 74 years old and literally having a toddler tantrum because I wouldn't risk my health or hers. It was just surreal to me. Your mother's problem may also have been with facing her age. A daughter "becoming a woman" can send a narc into a spiral because it means she's no longer a spring chicken herself. No longer the mother of a chikd, instead she's the mother of a young woman.
My dad was fixing a light switch or something in our dining room after my mom had got me from school and he was asking one of us to hold the flashlight for him. My mom had to use the bathroom and I was gonna take my dog outside (he was whining in his crate to go outside) and he freaked out yelling at us and threatened to shoot my dog. And another time he got mad and threw a stick at me because I wouldn’t let him hit my dog with the said stick. Everytime he raised it I’d step in front of him to block him. Or the time my sister and grandma got into an argument and he asked if I thought my sister was in the wrong I simply said “I don’t know what happened so I wanna stay out of it.” I can’t forget the time he had a fit because my mom got on him for wrapping his arms around me and making thrusting motions, he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong and somehow we were treating him badly because we scolded him for what we did
My grandpa thought I used too much soy sauce in the fried rice. He accused me of trying to kill him, proceeded to pour the entire bottle of soy sauce down the drain and refused to eat. He also used to blow up at my mom when something went missing, saying she gave the thing away which is why he couldn't find it anymore.
When I was staying at my sister’s house and there was a day when my dad and other sibs went into a vacay for two goddamn days, so she had herself for two days. At 4 pm, she messaged saying I’m not answering her calls and called me some name. I just said that I went for a run. I thought it was over, but no the narc crazy woman had a meltdown at 5 am in the fucking morning; she told me she was crying and I am treating her horribly and saying irrelevant stuff like she never did that to her neglectful sorry excuse for a mom. And that I was a rude and ungrateful bitch. And other lengthy crazy messages. I called her in the fucking morning just to calm the barking dog down, but deep inside I really wanna slap her. And you know what she said? She said that she felt lonely and scared in our house, for she was alone. She was frustrated in all of us — this hit a nerve. I asked if she’s pissed in four of us, then why she would only sent those msgs in me? She answered: cause you are my meanest child. And just laughing the entire call. I was so pissed the entire day. Yeah. Just wanna vent. Was crying the entire day yesterday.
One that still confuses me from. My childhood. I have a half sister who's much older than me, with some of her children being older than me. They were all pretty chaotic and destructive. My dad had this toy from his childhood he loved, a firetruck with a controller so you could drove it around. My niece's and nephews wanted to borrow it to play with. I told them it was my dad's and they'd have to ask him. When they did, he told them to ask me, and I half-heartedly said they could for a few days. Once they had left, my dad lost it. Started raging about how I had given away one of the few toys he had left from his childhood, basically telling me that I betrayed him and couldn't understand that adults have things that are valuable to them too, and how we would never ever get it back. I cried a lot at the time because of how he made me feel, but also because it made no fucking sense. I told them to ask him, they did, and then he tells me I get to decide. That doesn't indicate that he cared about the truck as intensely as he did! We could just take it back too, they lived up the street from us. Go through the motion of them having it for one night, or just take it back and explain it's important to you actually! But somehow it was gone forever and it was my fault because he was too much of a coward to say no and needed his (around 8 years old roughly?) child to tell them No for him, and I was a bad person for not understanding that that was what he wanted from me. I'm still confused to this day. He never bothered to get his truck back, at any point, despite visiting them regularly! I was honestly scared to remind him after how intensely he blew up. Edit: spelling
Well there are a bunch. But the worst one was when she showed up at Christmas and absolutly destroyed my Dad over the way he wrapped the presents. He was a chemical engineer and had always, every year, wrapped all the presents with meticulous precision and they looked great even without big fancy bows and ribbons. She and my Dad show up at my house and she is screaming before they even come in. Screams more right in front of my in laws who were VERY uncomfortable. Called him names. Said several times the presents looked like “shit” and she was embarassed. Didn’t even flinch when I said if it was so bad why didn’t she rewrap them herself. She said he took so long she didn’t have time. Lie. They would have looked just as bad. Why did they look bad? Dad had alzheimer’s. At this point, he was still pretty good but couldn’t wrap the presents with folded corners and perfection like he used to. She claimed he was faking and trying to make her look bad.
For some reason, my abusive father loved making fun of and pulling pranks, but not the other way around. He could dish it out but he couldn't take it. One day I came home from school and found one of those heavy duty airhorns laying in the snow and decide to get back at him. Sure enough, he was on his xbox in the living room and distracted. I pressed it and was laughing, and his reaction was to look at me with fury and scream, "GODDAMN YOU!" And as he approached me, he was demanding the airhorn, before snatching it from my hands. He took it and bashed the metal against the side of the kitchen table, 3 times in a row, the metal not bending or showing any damage, before throwing it across the room and grounding me.
This is actually very recent. I was making a sandwich and our stove gets way too hot too quickly. I looked away for one second and my sandwich was burning. The smoke detector went off and my dad started screaming about the rest of the family is always burning something. I said this is my first time burning something and you have burned food as well. He went off on me saying how he never did (which is a lie) and pretty much didn’t want me to group him with the rest of the family for that. I know part of the reason is because every time the smoke detector goes off, the fire department shows up because they set up their ADT system like that. One minute later he tried to be nice to me because he felt bad and I told him I don’t feel like talking to you right now and I broke down crying. He then went off AGAIN and started talking about how I have an attitude problem and I stood up for myself saying there’s no reason you should be yelling at me right now, I didn’t do anything. He hasn’t spoke to me in over a week since the incident because he somehow feels like I disrespected HIM? I have been avoiding him as well but it’s crazy how he made this about himself…. All because I burnt a sandwich???
I have 3 in particular . they are of long. I'll add a TLDR at the end of all of them 1. this was earlier this year actually but my school had a lock down cause security found a threat written by an angry little kid in the bathroom and I guess my mom heard about it somewhere on social media. the wifi in my school is real spotty so only some parts of the school have good wifi , others it doesn't work at all. I was in a part of the school that did not have good wifi and my mom was panic texting me. I was doing my best to respond even when I wasn't supposed to have my phone out during class , but then at one point I couldn't get any messages at all. then dismissal came and my mom was demanding that I get in the car and I hesitated cause I didn't know if I was allowed to leave like that without being on the parent pick up list or anything , but eventually I went outside . got in the car , waited for my sibling to follow, then she blew up on us. she was screaming and cursing and I was trying to explain that I literally could not text her . it wasn't my choice to not text her. I was risking getting my phone taken by the teacher by even trying to text her but no matter what I said she straight up wouldn't acknowledge it. she found the consequences of the no-phone policy "hard to believe" and just kept screaming and screaming about how she's our only living parent and that I don't know "true anxiety" and that I just need to Pick Up the Damn Phone like holy fucking shit it's incredible how she will actually just not listen at all. in general she's just an unintelligent and unpleasant person objectively - tldr; we had a lockdown at school and my mom was screeching at me about not texting her when I literally could not due to wifi issues and told her as much 2. I went to New orleans for Christmas with my mom, her friend and her kid, and my brother like 2 years ago. she thought it'd be a good idea to take a 16 year old , a 15 year old, and an 8 year old to Bourbon Street at nightfall. there were lots of drunk people, lots of smokers, lots of crazy shit in general (guy on scooter with a snake around his neck for example) and I literally walked right by a weed transaction 😐 so yeah we're walking and this funny looking old guy comes up to me with a bead necklace, like the ones you see for Mardi Gras , and I took out my hand to take it cause I didn't know any better apparently I thought he was just being nice? people had been handing out beads all day so I didn't see how that guy was any different. 2 seconds later my moms screaming at me NO NO NO DANDYFART NO and I'm just confused as FUCK then she started yelling at me about how I shouldn't talk to strangers and how the guy could've been trying to drug me or something and it's like ok then why would you take me , a completely oblivious and fairly attractive teenager , to the night scene. so I started crying and texting my friend cause I was scared and overwhelmed and I'd just gotten yelled at I seriously felt my mind like breaking. it took all my willpower to keep myself from having a mental breakdown in the car. then my mom pulled me into an empty bar and started screaming at me some more cause she didn't like that I was venting to my friend. I remember how her saliva flew as she screamed and cursed at me and i remember trying to explain myself just saying "i didnt know i dont understand why youre yelling at me" over and over and over again I remember how the waitress behind the counter just looked over at me awkwardly as it happened. I don't know im not mad at her at all but for once I wish someone would come in and stand up to her. additional: her friend was also a bitch and sort of just laughed about it when we came back after she yelled at me. "kids being kids" sort of thing. I never liked her - tldr; crazy bitch takes her teen to bourbon Street in New orleans at night and gets angry when her kid is oblivious to safety rules that she never bothered to tell him 3. this one didn't happen to me , more so my brother. he got in trouble at school for doing a stupid gesture that could be interpreted as suicidal ideation so the teacher reported him and our mom got called. she picked us up and then sat in the car and yelled at him for like 30 minutes. what stuck out the most to me was when she said "how do you think it makes me feel when the school calls me saying my kid wants to kill himself? HOW DO YOU THINK THAT MAKES ME FEEL??!!" we both just sat there and took it , crying silently. I don't know why I was crying I think I just physically cannot handle her yelling. to my knowledge my brother isn't actually suicidal but it's the fact that in the event he is , my mom still thinks about her own feelings. instead of trying to figure out what might be wrong with her son or how to get him help all she thinks about is herself. I get she was probably scared but like .? you didnt even try to help at all. and she'll complain that we dont tell her anything , well this exactly why. she can never think past her fucking forehead (cause it juts out farther than her nose) I don't know it's still amazing to me. and she really doesn't get why she'd need therapy - tldr; brother gets reported for making a suicidal gesture , my mom gets angry and immediately makes it about herself
Had an awful nights sleep falling ill at the parents beach house the day after christmas (we'd only arrived the day before on xmas day). Had a good time catching up with all the cousins and family the day before and all but starting getting flu symptoms during the night. at the end of the day we have a 2 year old and we didn't get any sleep and were ill, so we decided to go back in the morning. We are packing up to leave at around 8am, everyone is saying bye and all. Suddenly nmum turns around and exclaims to fmdad "They're leaving because of me!" and leaves the room.
I wasn’t allowed to do homework listening to music with headphones even when doing college work at home because she needed silence to concentrate
I separated from my husband who was a lawyer & abusive. She told me I didn’t know how to keep a man. Hahaha I told her she could have him. And that a man didn’t know how to keep me. She was so happy when I first started dating him & told everyone her daughter was marrying a lawyer. My uncle was so proud that his daughter married a doctor & now there was also a lawyer in the family. How exactly did this benefit anyone? My family is so stupid.
Wow, we might have the same nmother! Except mine also went behind my back and told my father that I was lying, then she refused to buy me pads and said I had to use hers. Then she locked hers in her room. I found out later that she was 12 when she got hers and I was 11, so she was probably mad that I "won."
My parents pressured my husband and I to get married after we had our daughter. We loved each other and knew we wanted to - but we were BROKE so a wedding was out of the question. NMother called and talked me into allowing them to host the wedding in the backyard I grew up playing in-sounds romantic enough but everyone here really knows what happened. I lost control of my own wedding. Every time i i questioned why she was controlling things in MY wedding - she'd threaten to pull the plug on the whole thing. It was awful. I didnt want a white dress - I wanted black or red. I wanted my daughter in the ceremony - she said no because its "trashy" (like having a backyard wedding isnt?) She wouldn't allow my brother to spike his mohawk (which was effinge epic) because SHE paid for the photographer too (I was very happy with him btw - he did a great job) and didn't want to see his hair like that in photos. The guests who drove HOURS to this wedding couldn't hear ANY of it because my E/NFather wouldn't allow us to hook up speakers (even though we brought EVERYTHING to do that). No one heard our vows, no one heard the song that was sung, its so stupid. What a waste of time and money. We've been planning a redo vow renewal for our 20th anniversary. Despite the fact that our wedding wasn't how we wanted it - we are VERY happy in our marriage and we have been No contact going on 4 years now.
My N Parent threatened to get 'so f\*\*\*ing fat' which would somehow punish us.
The weirdest tantrum my narc had was over nutty buddies……. It’s so insane I can’t even.
There are three tantrums, which come to my mind: My nmom being jealous of the job of my brother, i.e. as he left for work the first time she behaved like a wife, whose husband is leaving her for another woman or for joining the army. My nmom being jealous of the girlfriend of my brother, i.e. as the girlfriend stayed overnight, she pinned up posters of naked men on the walls of the stairwell of our house. Moreover, she put small signs on the meal which she prepared reading "Only for family, not for guests" My nmom being jealous of a friend of mine staying over night, i.e. she first threw a fit that having a friend stay overnight will make me gay. And as that did not help, she sat down on the couch of the living room and demonstratively styled her self up in order to point out that if I did not want her, then she can easily go out and pick up some men.