6. They try to wear your clothes or act like you.
This one was just weird AF. My family and I joke about this now because who TF tries to wear their teenage daughter’s clothes, and gets genuinely offended when she tells you they don’t fit you? True story, I told her that my jeans wouldn’t fit her once, and she yelled at me because I was being too ‘negative’. Yikes, how self-obsessed. I’m pretty sure she still has some of my clothes in her closet. Weird.
7. They feed off of compliments.
Narcissistic people LOVE being complimented. It boosts their already huge ego, and adds to their already heightened sense of superiority. Plus, it makes them look like they have their sh*t together in front of everyone around them. Naturally, my mother thrived off of any compliments, but ESPECIALLY when the boys in my grade would tell her how pretty they thought she was. She literally talked about how kids my age thought she was pretty for years. It gave her this weird sense of success being the parent that kids in my class thought was pretty, and it made her feel even better thinking that they all thought that she was prettier than I was. Narcissistic AF.
8. But, they don’t like when someone compliments you.
My mother could not handle other people complimenting her daughter. I remember all the times one of her friends told me I was pretty or smart or doing good things in life and have her immediately jump in with “well she CLEARLY got it from her mother” or “she’s really not that pretty. She’s kind of plain”. My narcissist mother hated when her daughter was getting more praise than she was.
9. They need to be told how important they are or how much you love them.
This was just so weird to me. I was around 7 or 8 at the time and she was mad at me for something, and while she was lecturing me, she gave me a piece of paper and a pen and told me to write her a letter telling her how much I loved her. I didn’t realize that it wasn’t something that all parents did until I told my dad about it years later. I was young at the time and it was embedded in my mind that my mother knew what was best for me- even if it meant writing her a letter telling her how much I loved her. Looking back on it, it was just plain f*cked up.
10. They ignore your problems and your issues because they are more important.
This was the breaking point for me. I have no idea why it took me until I was a senior in high school to realize that my mother was not a mother, but it happened, and I’m glad. I was diagnosed with depression after telling my mom so many times that I knew something was wrong with me. I had to book the appointment by myself and go alone even though she had the day off of work, and when I got home and told her, we started arguing. She said that it was all in my head and that I was putting all of this unnecessary pressure on myself. Then she tried to blame my father, my friends, my school, everybody except for herself. When she found my self-harm scars, she yelled at me for not trying hard enough to get better. When I went to therapy for the first time, she came home (from her affair might I add), talked to me for a minute and a half about it, then left. If anybody asked how I was doing and how I was handling the stress of graduating high school, she lied and said I was really happy.