Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers

by Karyl McBride

Overview

The first book specifically for daughters suffering from the emotional abuse of selfish, self-involved mothers, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? provides the expert assistance you need in order to overcome this debilitating history and reclaim your life for yourself. Drawing on over two decades of experience as a therapist specializing in women's psychology and health, psychotherapist Dr. Karyl McBride helpsyou recognize the widespread effects of this maternal emotional abuse and guides you as you create an individualized program for self-protection, resolution, and complete recovery.

An estimated 1.5 million American women have narcissistic personality disorder, which makes them so insecure and overbearing, insensitive and domineering that they can psychologically damage their daughters for life. Daughters of narcissistic mothers learn that maternal love is not unconditional, and that it is given only when they behave in accordance with their mothers' often unreasonable expectations and whims. As adults, these daughters consequently have difficulty overcoming their insecurities and feelings of inadequacy, disappointment, sadness, and emotional emptiness. They may also have a terrible fear of abandonment that leads them to form unhealthy love relationships, as well as a tendency to perfectionism and unrelenting self-criticism, or to self-sabotage and frustration.

Herself the recovering daughter of a narcissistic mother, Dr. McBride includes her personal struggle, which adds a profound level of authority to her work, along with the perspectives of the hundreds of suffering daughters she's interviewed over the years. Their stories of how maternal abuse has manifested in their lives -- as well as how they have successfully overcome its effects -- show you that you're not alone and that you can take back your life and have the control you want.

Dr. McBride's step-by-step program will enable you to:

(1) Recognize your own experience with maternal narcissism and its effects on all aspects of your life
(2) Discover how you have internalized verbal and nonverbal messages from your mother and how these have translated into a strong desire to overachieve or a tendency to self-sabotage
(3) Construct a step-by-step program to reclaim your life and enhance your sense of self, a process that includes creating a psychological separation from your mother and breaking the legacy of abuse. You will also learn how not to repeat your mother's mistakes with your own daughter.

Warm and sympathetic, filled with the examples of women who have established healthy boundaries with their hurtful mothers, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? encourages and inspires you as it aids your recovery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439123232
Publisher:	Atria Books
Publication date:	09/23/2008
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	37,894
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Karyl McBride, Ph.D., is a licensed marriage and family therapist with more than thirty years of experience in public and private practice, specializing in treatment of trauma. She is a leading authority on narcissism and author of Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers. She is a contributing blogger for Psychology Today and can be found online at WillIEverBeGoodEnough.com, KarylMcBridePhD.com, and Facebook.com/DrKarylMcBride.

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

Our relationship with Mother is birthed simultaneously with our entry into the world. We take our first breath of life, and display the initial dependent, human longing for protection and love in her presence. We are as one in the womb and on the birthing table. This woman, our mother...all that she is and is not...has given us life. Our connection with her in this instant and from this point forward carries with it tremendous psychological weight for our lifelong well-being. Oddly, I have never wanted to believe this.

First, being a feminist-era mom myself, I didn't want mothers and women to bear so much responsibility or ultimate blame if things go wrong. Certainly many factors other than mothering shape a child's life. Second, I didn't want to face how feeling like an unmothered child had such a devastating effect on me and my life. To acknowledge this meant I had to face it.

While doing research over the years, I have read many books that discuss the mother-daughter bond. Each time I read a different volume, unexpected tears would stream down my cheeks. For I could not recall attachment, closeness, memories of the scent of Mother's perfume, the feel of her skin, the sound of her voice singing in the kitchen, the solace of her rocking, holding and comforting, the intellectual stimulation and joy of being read to.

I knew this was not natural, but could not find a book that explained this lack. It made me feel somewhat crazy. Was I delusional, or just a chick with a poor memory? I could not find a book that explained that this phenomenon of feeling unmothered could be a real deal and that there could be mothers who are not maternal. Nor could I find a book that discussed the conflicted feelings that their daughters have about these mothers, the frustrated love, and even sometimes the hatred. Because good girls aren't supposed to hate their mothers, they don't talk about these bad feelings. Motherhood is a sacred institution in most cultures and therefore is generally not discussed in a negative light. When I decided to write a book on mothers who don't mother their daughters, and the pain this causes girls and adult daughters, I felt as if I were breaking a taboo.

Reading books about the mother-daughter bond always gave me the sensation of a deep loss and the fear that I was alone in this suffering. Experts wrote of the complexity of the mother-daughter connection, how it is rife with conflict and ambivalence, but I felt something different -- a void, a lack of empathy and interest, and a lack of feeling loved. For many years, I did not understand and tried to rationalize it. Other members of the family and well-intentioned therapists explained it away with various excuses. Like a good girl, I tried to make excuses and take all the blame. It was not until I began to understand that the emotional void was a characteristic result of maternal narcissism that the pieces began to fit together. The more I learned about maternal narcissism, the more my experience, my sadness, and my lack of memory made sense. This understanding was the key to my beginning to recover my own sense of identity, apart from my mother. I became more centered, taking up what I now call substantial space, no longer invisible (even to myself) and not having to make myself up as I go along. Without understanding, we flail around, we make mistakes, feel deep unworthiness, and sabotage ourselves and our lives.

Writing this book has been a culmination of years of research and a soul journey that took me back to when I was a little girl who knew something was wrong, feeling that the absence of nurturing was not normal, but not knowing why. I am writing this book now in the hopes that I can help other women understand that those feelings were and are not their fault.

This does not mean that I want you to blame your mother. This is not a journey of projected anger, resentment, or rage, but one of understanding. We want to heal ourselves and we have to do that with love and forgiveness for ourselves and our mothers. I do not believe in creating victims. We are accountable for our own lives and feelings. To be healthy, we first have to understand what we experienced as daughters of narcissistic mothers, and then we can move forward in recovery to make things the way they need to be for us. Without understanding our mothers and what their narcissism did to us, it is impossible to recover. We have been taught to repress and deny, but we have to face the truth of our experiences -- that our longing for a maternal warmth and mothering is not going to be fulfilled and our wishing and hoping that things will be different are not going to change things. As girls, we were programmed to look at the dynamics of the family in a positive light, even though we knew we lived under a shadow. Our families usually did look good to outsiders, but though we sensed something was wrong, we were told that really "it is nothing." This kind of emotional environment and dishonesty can be crazy-making. Smile, be pretty, and act like everything's good. Sound familiar?

I am still amazed whenever I talk to other daughters of narcissistic mothers at the similarities of our internal emotional landscapes. We may have different lifestyles and outward appearances for the world to see, but inside, we wave the same emotional banners. My greatest hope is that this book will offer you acknowledgment and validation for your profound emotions and allow you to feel whole, healthy, and authentic in who you are today.

In writing this book, I had to fight many internal battles. First, I had to trust my ability to do it, as I am a therapist, not a writer. Second, and of more interest, I had to talk to my mother about it. When I brought it up with Mother, I said to her, "Hey, Mom, I need your help. I am writing a book about mothers and daughters and I need your input, suggestions, and permission to use some personal material." My mother, bless her heart, said, "Why don't you write a book about fathers?" And of course, she was worried about being a bad mother, which would be expected. She was able to give me her blessing, however, and I think it is because she was trying to understand that this is not a book about blame, but a book about healing. I have to admit I wanted her to say many things like: "Are there some things we need to discuss or work on together?" "Do you have pain from your childhood?" "Is there anything we can do about it now?" "Can we heal together?" None of this happened, but after all these years of my own recovery work, I knew not to expect her to be able to do this empathic inquiry. I was grateful that I had mustered the nerve to broach the book to her, which admittedly took me some time to do. At one time in my life, this exchange would have been unthinkable.

Somehow, after taking this risk, I found it easier to move forward and be authentic in talking about my own experience as well as about my research. Although it would have felt emotionally safe to write at arm's length from a purely clinical perspective, I hope that my own stories of being a daughter of a narcissistic mother will help you know that I do understand. I have been there.

I've divided the book into three parts that parallel my approach to psychotherapy. Part 1 explains the problem of maternal narcissism. Part 2 shows the impact of the problem, its many effects, and how it plays out in daughters' lifestyles. Part 3 is a road map for recovery.

I invite you now to come with me to learn about yourself and your mother. It won't always be a comfortable and easy trip. You'll be emerging from denial, confronting difficult feelings, being vulnerable, and facing characteristics of your own that you may not like. It is an emotional undertaking. Sometimes you will find it funny. Other times you will feel a great sadness as you try to understand what you experienced and heal from it. By doing so, you will change the legacy of distorted maternal love and make a lasting difference for your daughters, sons, and grandchildren. As you face the honest reflections of your life patterns, you will ultimately like yourself more and become better at parenting, in relationships, and in everything else in your life.

Emotional legacies are like genetic legacies; they pass along to each generation without anyone really taking a lot of notice. Some of the "hand me downs" are endearing and wonderful and we feel grateful and proud, but some are heartbreaking and destructive. They need to be stopped. We need to stop them. Having done my own recovery work from my distorted maternal legacy, I can say that I've been there and I can help you change yours too.

I welcome you to read further with me. Sit with me, talk with me, cry with me, laugh with me. Together we will begin to deal with the reality of your emotional legacy. Even if it's always been "all about Mom," it's your turn now. It gets to be about you, the "you" that maybe you've never discovered or didn't even know existed. Copyright © 2008 by Dr. Karyl McBride

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One: Recognizing the Problem

Chapter 1 The Emotional Burden You Carry

Chapter 2 T he Empty Mirror: My Mother and Me

Chapter 3 The Faces of Maternal Narcissism

Chapter 4 Where Is Daddy? The Rest of the Narcissistic Nest

Chapter 5 Image Is Everything: Put a Smile on That Pretty Little Face

Part Two: How Narcissistic Mothering Afects Your Entire Life

Chapter 6 I Try So Hard! The High-Achieving Daughter

Chapter 7 What's the Use? The Self-Sabotaging Daughter

Chapter 8 Romantic Fallout: Trying to Win at Love Where I Failed with Mom

Chapter 9 Help! I'm Becoming My Mother: Daughters as Mothers

Part Three: Ending the Legacy

Chapter 10 First Steps: How It Feels, Not How It Looks

Chapter 11 A Part Of and Apart From: Separating from Mother

Chapter 12 Becoming the Woman I Truly Am: Deserving Daughters

Chapter 13 My Turn: Dealing with Mother during Recovery

Chapter 14 Filling the Empty Mirror: Ending the Narcissistic Legacy

Notes

Suggested Reading and Movie Viewing Source Lists

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The author provides parenting tips as well as advice on maintaining healthy love relationships and friendships." —-Publishers Weekly Starred Review

Editorial Reviews

Psychologists estimate that 1.5 million American women suffer from narcissistic personality disorder. Many of these women are mothers. But during her quarter century as a therapist, author Karyl McBride has learned that these women do not suffer alone: Often their daughters are scarred with the emotional burden of the mother's psychological problem. Will I Ever Be Good Enough? is the first published book specifically for daughters suffering from this emotional abuse. Steeped in specificity, Dr. McBride's helpful guide first discusses the wounds caused by maternal narcissism, then presents steps towards recovery. She writes frankly about setting healthy boundaries with mothers and also offers parenting tips to prevent women from "becoming their own mother." You might know someone who needs this book.

After 26 years of practice, therapist McBride discovered a distressing commonality with her female patients: a narcissistic mother. "I had treated scores of women who shared many of the same symptoms.... oversensitivity, indecisiveness, self-consciousness, lack of self-trust, inability to succeed in relationships, lack of confidence... and a general sense of insecurity," McBride writes, and she ties these traits to growing up without a nurturing maternal figure. According to the author, as many as 1.5 million American women have narcissistic personality disorder and can be detected by their self-absorption, inability to empathize and fixation with looks and appearance. McBride presents specific steps toward recovery that daughters of any age can use as they grieve for the love and support they didn't receive, set healthy boundaries with their mothers and access an "internal mother" as a source of self-comforting. The author provides parenting tips as well as advice on maintaining healthy love relationships and friendships-all of which tend to be weak points of the daughters of narcissistic mothers. An excellent bibliography rounds out this revealing book, which ends on a hopeful and pragmatic note. (Sept.)

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Publishers Weekly

"The author provides parenting tips as well as advice on maintaining healthy love relationships and friendships." —-Publishers Weekly Starred Review

From the Publisher