Three

Taken from: http://www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/characteristics-of-narcissistic-mothers.html: The Destructive Narcissistic Parent creates a child that only exists to be an extension of her self. It's about secret things. It's about body language. It's about disapproving glances. It's about vocal tone. It's very intimate. And it's very powerful. It's part of who the child is. -Chris Characteristics of Narcissistic Mothers 1. Everything she does is deniable. There is always a facile excuse or an explanation. Cruelties are couched in loving terms. Aggressive and hostile acts are paraded as thoughtfulness. Selfish manipulations are presented as gifts. Criticism and slander is slyly disguised as concern. She only wants what is best for you. She only wants to help you. She rarely says right out that she thinks you’re inadequate. Instead, any time that you tell her you’ve done something good, she counters with something your sibling did that was better or she simply ignores you or she hears you out without saying anything, then in a short time does something cruel to you so you understand not to get above yourself. She will carefully separate cause (your joy in your accomplishment) from effect (refusing to let you borrow the car to go to the awards ceremony) by enough time that someone who didn’t live through her abuse would never believe the connection. Many of her putdowns are simply by comparison. She’ll talk about how wonderful someone else is or what a wonderful job they did on something you’ve also done or how highly she thinks of them. The contrast is left up to you. She has let you know that you’re no good without saying a word. She’ll spoil your pleasure in something by simply congratulating you for it in an angry, envious voice that conveys how unhappy she is, again, completely deniably. It is impossible to confront someone over their tone of voice, their demeanor or they way they look at you, but once your narcissistic mother has you trained, she can promise terrible punishment without a word. As a result, you’re always afraid, always in the wrong, and can never exactly put your finger on why. Because her abusiveness is part of a lifelong campaign of control and because she is careful to rationalize her abuse, it is extremely difficult to explain to other people what is so bad about her. She’s also careful about when and how she engages in her abuses. She’s very secretive, a characteristic of almost all abusers (“Don’t wash our dirty laundry in public!”) and will punish you for telling anyone else what she’s done. The times and locations of her worst abuses are carefully chosen so that no one who might intervene will hear or see her bad behavior, and she will seem like a completely different person in public. She’ll slam you to other people, but will always embed her devaluing nuggets of snide gossip in protestations of concern, love and understanding (“I feel so sorry for poor Cynthia. She always seems to have such a hard time, but I just don’t know what I can do for her!”) As a consequence the children of narcissists universally report that no one believes them (“I have to tell you that she always talks about YOU in the most caring way!). Unfortunately therapists, given the deniable actions of the narcissist and eager to defend a fellow parent, will often jump to the narcissist’s defense as well, reinforcing your sense of isolation and helplessness (“I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that!”) 2. She violates your boundaries. You feel like an extension of her. Your property is given away without your consent, sometimes in front of you. Your property may be repossessed and no reason given other than that it was never yours. Your time is committed without consulting you, and opinions purported to be yours are expressed for you. (She LOVES going to the fair! He would never want anything like that. She wouldn’t like kumquats.) You are discussed in your presence as though you are not there. She keeps tabs on your bodily functions and humiliates you by divulging the information she gleans, especially when it can be used to demonstrate her devotion and highlight her martyrdom to your needs (“Mike had that problem with frequent urination too, only his was much worse. I was so worried about him!”) You have never known what it is like to have privacy in the bathroom or in your bedroom, and she goes through your things regularly. She asks nosy questions, and snoops into your email/letters/diary/conversations. She will want to dig into your feelings, particularly painful ones and is always looking for negative information on you which can be used against you. She does things against your expressed wishes frequently. All of this is done without seeming embarrassment or thought. Any attempt at autonomy on your part is strongly resisted. Normal rites of passage (learning to shave, wearing makeup, dating) are grudgingly allowed only if you insist, and you’re punished for your insistence (“Since you’re old enough to date, I think you’re old enough to pay for your own clothes!”) If you demand age-appropriate clothing, grooming, control over your own life, or rights, you are "difficult" and she ridicules your “independence.” In a bizarrely childish behavior, your mother may even select choice tidbits off your plate to eat or to give to a more favored child: Food was frequently taken from me. The most vibrant memory was having the watermelon heart eaten off my plate. “Oh, I thought you were going to throw it away,” was the common comeback to my protests. -Judy The most abusive element in this story is the subtle torment visited on the child who dared to protest the confiscation of the best part of her piece of fruit. The parent repeatedly engaged in the same violating behavior, each time needling the child with the same, laughably transparent, excuse that she thought the child was going to throw away food that the child was still eating! The parent was thus able to compound the child’s frustration at the loss of an anticipated treat with the message that the parent enjoyed not only the child’s food, but her unhappiness. Unsurprisingly, Judy describes a lifelong battle with eating issues that is common to the children of the harpy. When eating is fraught with deprivation and cruelty, it’s hard to imagine having a healthy relationship with food. 3. She favoritizes. Narcissistic mothers commonly choose one (sometimes more) child to be the golden child and one (sometimes more) to be the scapegoat. The narcissist identifies with the golden child and provides privileges to him or her as long as the golden child does just as she wants. The golden child has to be cared for assiduously by everyone in the family. The scapegoat has no needs and instead gets to do the caring. The golden child can do nothing wrong. The scapegoat is always at fault. This creates divisions between the children, one of whom has a large investment in the mother being wise and wonderful, and the other(s) who hate her. That division will be fostered by the narcissist with lies and with blatantly unfair and favoritizing behavior. The golden child will defend the mother and indirectly perpetuate the abuse by finding reasons to blame the scapegoat for the mother’s actions. The golden child may also directly take on the narcissistic mother’s tasks by physically abusing the scapegoat so the narcissistic mother doesn’t have to do that herself. 4. She undermines. Your accomplishments are acknowledged only to the extent that she can take credit for them. Any success or accomplishment for which she cannot take credit is ignored or diminished. Any time you are to be center stage and there is no opportunity for her to be the center of attention, she will try to prevent the occasion altogether, or she doesn’t come, or she leaves early, or she acts like it’s no big deal, or she steals the spotlight or she slips in little wounding comments about how much better someone else did or how what you did wasn’t as much as you could have done or as you think it is. She undermines you by picking fights with you or being especially unpleasant just before you have to make a major effort. She acts put out if she has to do anything to support your opportunities or will outright refuse to do even small things in support of you. She will be nasty to you about things that are peripherally connected with your successes so that you find your joy in what you’ve done is tarnished, without her ever saying anything directly about it. No matter what your success, she has to take you down a peg about it. 5. She demeans, criticizes and denigrates. She lets you know in all sorts of little ways that she thinks less of you than she does of your siblings or of other people in general. If you complain about mistreatment by someone else, she will take that person’s side even if she doesn’t know them at all. She doesn’t care about those people or the justice of your complaints. She just wants to let you know that you’re never right. She will deliver generalized barbs that are almost impossible to rebut (always in a loving, caring tone): “You were always difficult” “You can be very difficult to love” “You never seemed to be able to finish anything” “You were very hard to live with” “You’re always causing trouble” “No one could put up with the things you do.” She will deliver slams in a sidelong way - for example she’ll complain about how “no one” loves her, does anything for her, or cares about her, or she’ll complain that “everyone” is so selfish, when you’re the only person in the room. As always, this combines criticism with deniability. She will slip little comments into conversation that she really enjoyed something she did with someone else - something she did with you too, but didn’t like as much. She’ll let you know that her relationship with some other person you both know is wonderful in a way your relationship with her isn’t - the carefully unspoken message being that you don’t matter much to her. She minimizes, discounts or ignores your opinions and experiences. Your insights are met with condescension, denials and accusations (“I think you read too much!”) and she will brush off your information even on subjects on which you are an acknowledged expert. Whatever you say is met with smirks and amused sounding or exaggerated exclamations (“Uh hunh!” “You don’t say!” “Really!”). She’ll then make it clear that she didn’t listen to a word you said. 6. She makes you look crazy. If you try to confront her about something she’s done, she’ll tell you that you have “a very vivid imagination” (this is a phrase commonly used by abusers of all sorts to invalidate your experience of their abuse) that you don’t know what you’re talking about, or that she has no idea what you’re talking about. She will claim not to remember even very memorable events, flatly denying they ever happened, nor will she ever acknowledge any possibility that she might have forgotten. This is an extremely aggressive and exceptionally infuriating tactic called “gaslighting,” common to abusers of all kinds. Your perceptions of reality are continually undermined so that you end up without any confidence in your intuition, your memory or your powers of reasoning. This makes you a much better victim for the abuser. Narcissists gaslight routinely. The narcissist will either insinuate or will tell you outright that you’re unstable, otherwise you wouldn’t believe such ridiculous things or be so uncooperative. You’re oversensitive. You’re imagining things. You’re hysterical. You’re completely unreasonable. You’re over-reacting, like you always do. She’ll talk to you when you’ve calmed down and aren’t so irrational. She may even characterize you as being neurotic or psychotic. Once she’s constructed these fantasies of your emotional pathologies, she’ll tell others about them, as always, presenting her smears as expressions of concern and declaring her own helpless victimhood. She didn’t do anything. She has no idea why you’re so irrationally angry with her. You’ve hurt her terribly. She thinks you may need psychotherapy. She loves you very much and would do anything to make you happy, but she just doesn’t know what to do. You keep pushing her away when all she wants to do is help you. She has simultaneously absolved herself of any responsibility for your obvious antipathy towards her, implied that it’s something fundamentally wrong with you that makes you angry with her, and undermined your credibility with her listeners. She plays the role of the doting mother so perfectly that no one will believe you. 7. She’s envious. Any time you get something nice she’s angry and envious and her envy will be apparent when she admires whatever it is. She’ll try to get it from you, spoil it for you, or get the same or better for herself. She’s always working on ways to get what other people have. The envy of narcissistic mothers often includes competing sexually with their daughters or daughters-in-law. They’ll attempt to forbid their daughters to wear makeup, to groom themselves in an age-appropriate way or to date. They will criticize the appearance of their daughters and daughters-in-law. This envy extends to relationships. Narcissistic mothers infamously attempt to damage their children’s marriages and interfere in the upbringing of their grandchildren. 8. She’s a liar in too many ways to count. Any time she talks about something that has emotional significance for her, it’s a fair bet that she’s lying. Lying is one way that she creates conflict in the relationships and lives of those around her - she’ll lie to them about what other people have said, what they’ve done, or how they feel. She’ll lie about her relationship with them, about your behavior or about your situation in order to inflate herself and to undermine your credibility. The narcissist is very careful about how she lies. To outsiders she’ll lie thoughtfully and deliberately, always in a way that can be covered up if she’s confronted with her lie. She spins what you said rather than makes something up wholesale. She puts dishonest interpretations on things you actually did. If she’s recently done something particularly egregious she may engage in preventative lying: she lies in advance to discount what you might say before you even say it. Then when you talk about what she did you’ll be cut off with “I already know all about it…your mother told me... (self-justifications and lies).” Because she is so careful about her deniability, it may be very hard to catch her in her lies and the more gullible of her friends may never realize how dishonest she is. To you, she’ll lie blatantly. She will claim to be unable to remember bad things she has done, even if she did one of them recently and even if it was something very memorable. Of course, if you try to jog her memory by recounting the circumstances “You have a very vivid imagination” or “That was so long ago. Why do you have to dredge up your old grudges?” Your conversations with her are full of casual brush-offs and diversionary lies and she doesn’t respect you enough to bother making it sound good. For example she’ll start with a self-serving lie: “If I don’t take you as a dependent on my taxes I’ll lose three thousand dollars!” You refute her lie with an obvious truth: “No, three thousand dollars is the amount of the dependent exemption. You’ll only lose about eight hundred dollars.” Her response: “Isn’t that what I said?” You are now in a game with only one rule: You can’t win. On the rare occasions she is forced to acknowledge some bad behavior, she will couch the admission deniably. She “guesses” that “maybe” she “might have” done something wrong. The wrongdoing is always heavily spun and trimmed to make it sound better. The words “I guess,” “maybe,” and “might have” are in and of themselves lies because she knows exactly what she did - no guessing, no might haves, no maybes. An Nmother will say whatever feeds her purpose of the moment, without regard for the truth, so when her purpose shifts, the Nmother must contradict her past statements. This contradiction may occur within the context of a single conversation, or even a single sentence, as the following story illustrates. In this story, Caroline describes the aftermath of an agonizing emotional drama in which her mother wept over herself and pitied herself because she had just found out that her unemployed son had found a job, but in another state from that in which the mother lived. It was filled with thinly veiled suicide threats and deniably phrased accusations that Caroline was “so selfish” and that she did not love or care about her mother. Before, during and after this appalling drama, Diane repeatedly justified her behavior by saying that she “just needed to feel sorry for herself.” After being forced to participate in two hours of this drama, Caroline was reduced to helpless sobbing. She told her mother that she was so distressed, that she wanted to have no contact for a while. Two weeks after I got home, Diane violated my request by sending me a letter. One pair of sentences stood out: “I have no idea why you’re so upset with me, and besides, I just needed to feel sorry for myself. Besides, I didn’t think it was that bad.” -Caroline The first sentence contains two inherently contradictory statements: That Diane had “no idea” why Caroline was upset, followed by yet another repetition of her justification for the abusive drama! On closer examination, Diane’s intentions in writing this note become clear. Caroline’s request for no contact was almost certainly a terrible shock to Diane: Although this drama was longer than its predecessors, and had escalated to include suicide threats, in form it was pretty much the same as those she had previously indulged in without consequence, in which she had clung to Caroline, sobbed on Caroline’s shoulder, bemoaned the hardships of her life, and accused Caroline of being uncaring, unloving and selfish. But this time there were consequences, and Diane clearly felt impelled to do something to diffuse her shame and to attempt to fix the problem that she created. So she fell back on a classic defense: gaslighting. Diane had “no idea” why Caroline was “so upset”, even though both she and Caroline were present when she upset Caroline just two weeks earlier! She thereby implied that nothing had happened, or at least, nothing about which Caroline could legitimately have been upset. She thereby insinuated that Caroline’s distress was a consequence of Caroline’s own irrationality and oversensitivity. In the second half of the sentence, the subtlety of the lying that permeates Diane’s interactions with Caroline is apparent. Diane justifies her abusive drama by claiming that she had a need that required her to cry, pity herself, and accuse Caroline of a multitude of character flaws. That is dishonest in two ways. No reasonable person would define a self-pitying sobfest as a “need,” and in any case, the drama was not a consequence of Diane’s “need” to pity herself, but of her desire to make Caroline suffer. Diane never mentions or alludes to that desire in any way, even though the manipulative accusations Diane hurled at Caroline make it clear that Caroline’s suffering was Diane’s dominant motivation for the drama. The kind of fluid, highly expedient, version of reality that results in self-contradiction is typical of disordered people. When stressed or threatened with consequences, they almost always start with denial, responding to accusations with declarations of bewilderment, saying that they have “no idea,” what the problem is, or that they “can’t imagine” why their behavior has been deemed intolerable. Any further defensive lie, including distractions, rationalizations, justifications and blaming will then automatically contradict the prior assertion of bewilderment. You can’t explain why your behavior wasn’t your fault, was someone else’s fault, or was actually acceptable, without implicitly admitting that you know what you did! 9. She has to be the center of attention all the time. This need is a defining trait of narcissists and particularly of narcissistic mothers for whom their children exist to be sources of attention and adoration. Narcissistic mothers love to be waited on and often pepper their children with little requests. “While you’re up…” or its equivalent is one of their favorite phrases. You couldn’t just be assigned a chore at the beginning of the week or of the day, instead, you had to do it on demand, preferably at a time that was inconvenient for you, or you had to “help” her do it, fetching and carrying for her while she made up to herself for the menial work she had to do as your mother by glorying in your attentions. A narcissistic mother may create odd occasions at which she can be the center of attention, such as memorials for someone close to her who died long ago, or major celebrations of small personal milestones. She may love to entertain so she can be the life of her own party. She will try to steal the spotlight or will try to spoil any occasion where someone else is the center of attention, particularly the child she has cast as the scapegoat. She often invites herself along where she isn’t welcome. If she visits you or you visit her, you are required to spend all your time with her. Entertaining herself is unthinkable. She has always pouted, manipulated or raged if you tried to do anything without her, didn’t want to entertain her, refused to wait on her, stymied her plans for a drama or otherwise deprived her of attention. Older narcissistic mothers often use the natural limitations of aging to manipulate dramas, often by neglecting their health or by doing things they know will make them ill. This gives them the opportunity to cash in on the investment they made when they trained you to wait on them as a child. Then they call you (or better still, get the neighbor or the nursing home administrator to call you) demanding your immediate attendance. You are to rush to her side, pat her hand, weep over her pain and listen sympathetically to her unending complaints about how hard and awful it is. (“Never get old!”) It’s almost never the case that you can actually do anything useful, and the causes of her disability may have been completely avoidable, but you’ve been put in an extremely difficult position. If you don’t provide the audience and attention she’s manipulating to get, you look extremely bad to everyone else and may even have legal culpability. (Narcissistic behaviors commonly accompany Alzheimer’s disease, so this behavior may also occur in perfectly normal mothers as they age.) 10. She manipulates your emotions in order to feed on your pain. This exceptionally sick and bizarre behavior is so common among narcissistic mothers that their children often call them “emotional vampires.” Some of this emotional feeding comes in the form of pure sadism. She does and says things just to be wounding or she engages in tormenting teasing or she needles you about things you’re sensitive about, all the while a smile plays over her lips. She may have taken you to scary movies or told you horrifying stories, then mocked you for being a baby when you cried. She will slip a wounding comment into conversation and smile delightedly into your hurt face. You can hear the laughter in her voice as she pressures you or says distressing things to you. Later she’ll gloat over how much she upset you, gaily telling other people that you’re so much fun to tease, and recruiting others to share in her amusement. . She enjoys her cruelties and makes no effort to disguise that. She wants you to know that your pain entertains her. She may also bring up subjects that are painful for you and probe you about them, all the while watching you carefully. This is emotional vampirism in its purest form. She’s feeding emotionally off your pain. A peculiar form of this emotional vampirism combines attention-seeking behavior with a demand that the audience suffer. Since narcissistic mothers often play the martyr this may take the form of wrenching, self-pitying dramas which she carefully produces, and in which she is the star performer. She sobs and wails that no one loves her and everyone is so selfish, and she doesn’t want to live, she wants to die! She wants to die! She will not seem to care how much the manipulation of their emotions and the self-pity repels other people. One weird behavior that is very common to narcissists: her dramas may also center around the tragedies of other people, often relating how much she suffered by association as she cries over the horrible murder of someone she wouldn’t recognize if they had passed her on the street. 11. She’s selfish and willful. She always makes sure she has the best of everything. She insists on having her own way all the time and she will ruthlessly, manipulatively pursue it, even if what she wants isn’t worth all the effort she’s putting into it and even if that effort goes far beyond normal behavior. She will make a huge effort to get something you denied her, even if it was entirely your right to do so and even if her demand was selfish and unreasonable. If you tell her she cannot bring her friends to your party she will show up with them anyway, and she will have told them that they were invited so that you either have to give in, or be the bad guy to these poor dupes on your doorstep. If you tell her she can’t come over to your house tonight she’ll call your spouse and try get him or her to agree that she can, and to not say anything to you about it because it’s a “surprise.” She has to show you that you can’t tell her “no.” One near-universal characteristic of narcissists: because they are so selfish and self-centered, they are very bad gift givers. They’ll give you hand-me-downs or market things for themselves as gifts for you (“I thought I’d give you my old bicycle and buy myself a new one!” “I know how much you love Italian food, so I’m going to take you to my favorite restaurant for your birthday!”) New gifts are often obviously cheap and are usually things that don’t suit you or that you can’t use or are a quid pro quo: if you buy her the gift she wants, she will buy you an item of your choice. She’ll make it clear that it pains her to give you anything. She may buy you a gift and get the identical item for herself, or take you shopping for a gift and get herself something nice at the same time to make herself feel better. 12. She’s self-absorbed. Her feelings, needs and wants are very important; yours are insignificant to the point that her least whim takes precedence over your most basic needs. Her problems deserve your immediate and full attention; yours are brushed aside. Her wishes always take precedence; if she does something for you, she reminds you constantly of her munificence in doing so and will often try to extract some sort of payment. She will complain constantly, even though your situation may be much worse than hers. If you point that out, she will effortlessly, thoughtlessly brush it aside as of no importance (It’s easy for you…/It’s different for you…). 13. She is insanely defensive and is extremely sensitive to any criticism. If you criticize her or defy her she will explode with fury, threaten, storm, rage, destroy and may become violent, beating, confining, putting her child outdoors in bad weather or otherwise engaging in classic physical abuse. It’s easy to provoke her wrath because she takes everything personally and any attitude short of constant emotional and physical availability is perceived as a slight. If you’re short with her because you’re exhausted and depressed, she has to have it out with you over your “hostility.” If a toddler shouts “I hate you” at her she gets angry and punitive. If you refuse her nosy request to let her read the letter you got she shouts about how unappreciative you are and how hard she has it. She has no sense of perspective or separation and she can’t let anything go. 14. She is rejecting. She doesn't love you, she doesn't care about you and she doesn't want you around. That message is an extremely ferocious weapon in the arsenal of the emotionally abusive mother, because human children are natively wired to understand: If your mother rejects you, you will die. Despite, or perhaps because of the brutality of that weapon, the narcissistic mother utilizes rejection frequently, and it is often an essential element of other abuses. You stand in the rain and the cold for an hour, waiting to be picked up, while the golden children are warm and safe at home. You're left home on a flimsy, manufactured excuse, while everyone else enjoys a treat. You're told that you can't speak to your father because he's sick of your bad behavior, and doesn't want to see you. The harpy's child often represses the memories of his or her mother's assaults, but rejection is such a fundamentally terrifying form of abuse, it seems to burn into memory in a way that other bad behaviors do not. Consequently, there is an abundance of stories about it. Kira left home at the age of 16 to save herself from her mother's relentless abuse. The day she left her mother delivered one more assault: Back at home I packed my belongings and left the next day. My mother was watching me moving out. I remember asking her if she wanted my address or phone number, she declined. -Kira What kind of a mother doesn't want to know the whereabouts of a 16-year-old child? One who is completely self-centered. One who is sadistic, and would prefer to let the child know that she won't be missed. A narcissistic mother. Other mothers make their dislike for the victim child known more subtly: A few days after Christmas, I was alone with LaVonne, helping her take down the Christmas tree and pack up the Christmas ornaments. She picked up the Christmas stocking I had used since infancy and, without looking at me, handed it to me and said in a hard tone: "Do you want this? Then take it with you." I had never spent Christmas anywhere other than in her house and I lived in rental housing with its attendant frequent moves. What was I going to do with the Christmas stocking? As I left her house, I dropped it in her trash can. A year later, like the sap I was, I again went to LaVonne's home for Christmas. One night as she started to put up the Christmas stockings, she realized that mine wasn't there. She said wonderingly "Where's your Christmas stocking?" I said furiously: "You gave it to me last year and told me to take it if I wanted it." She walked over to where I was sitting and bent over me with her hands on the back of the couch so I was trapped under her. She said: "Sometimes I do small things." and then she turned and walked away. As always, we were alone. She never did things like that if anyone else was around. After that I quit being a sap. I stayed home and saved the money and time I had wasted going to LaVonne's home for Christmas, so that she could give herself a holiday treat of abuse. Many years later I told my husband this story and he said: "Was that an apology?" -Mary When LaVonne told Mary "Sometimes I do small things," she was not apologizing; an apology expresses regret and takes responsibility; LaVonne did neither. Like the bully she was, LaVonne was expressing defiance. In the face of evidence that she had engaged in the hurtful behavior of which her daughter accused her, she essentially said: "So I did something mean to you. So what?" That statement was unusual for a narcissistic mother; it was an acknowledgement that she had purposefully hurt her daughter. The message LaVonne sent when she forced her daughter to take away her Christmas stocking was clear: You don't have a place in this home, you don't have a place at my holiday table. After many years of receiving that message in various forms, Mary finally got it. As she says: After the first year that I didn't go to her home for Christmas, LaVonne quit asking me. Eventually I realized the obvious truth: the reason that LaVonne didn't ask me to come to her home for holidays was that she didn't want me there. That's why, when I was in college, LaVonne had me spend 3 hours on public transit each way going home for holidays, even though I lived a 30 minute drive from her house. That's why, one Thanksgiving, she left me standing on the street in the sleet and the dark for over an hour before she bestirred herself to drive the five minutes to the bus stop and pick me up. That's why she handed me my Christmas stocking and told me to take it away. It's not amazing that I stopped coming home for holidays. It's amazing that it took me so many years to realize that I wasn't wanted. -Mary In her book "Mean Mothers,[/size] Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt" (HarperCollins Publishers, 2009) Peg Streep describes the ultimate rejecting mother, who comfortably forgot her daughter the minute that the daughter ceased contact:[/size] One morning in February of 2001, my phone rang. I picked up to hear my brother's voice. "Mom is dying" he said, "I thought you might want to come see her." At that point, I hadn't seen or spoken to my mother for over ten years; in fact, I didn't know she'd even been ill. "Has she asked for me?" I asked. There was silence, and then he cleared his throat. "No," he said, "she hasn't." "Has she ever mentioned me in the last months or years?" I asked. There was another pause and then the word "No." [/size] 15. She terrorized. All abusers use fear to control their victims, and your narcissistic mother used it ruthlessly to train you. Narcissists teach you to beware their wrath even when they aren’t present. The only alternative is constant placation. If you give her everything she wants all the time, you might be spared. If you don’t, the punishments will come. Even adult children of narcissists still feel that carefully inculcated fear. Your narcissistic mother can turn it on with a silence or a look that tells the child in you she’s thinking about how she’s going to get even. Not all narcissists abuse physically, but most do, often in subtle, deniable ways. It allows them to vent their rage at your failure to be the solution to their internal havoc and simultaneously to teach you to fear them. You may not have been beaten, but you were almost certainly left to endure physical pain when a normal mother would have made an effort to relieve your misery. This deniable form of battery allows her to store up her rage and dole out the punishment at a later time when she’s worked out an airtight rationale for her abuse, so she never risks exposure. You were left hungry because “you eat too much.” (Someone asked her if she was pregnant. She isn’t). You always went to school with stomach flu because “you don’t have a fever. You’re just trying to get out of school.” (She resents having to take care of you. You have a lot of nerve getting sick and adding to her burdens.) She refuses to look at your bloody heels and instead the shoes that wore those blisters on your heels are put back on your feet and you’re sent to the store in them because “You wanted those shoes. Now you can wear them.” (You said the ones she wanted to get you were ugly. She liked them because they were just like what she wore 30 years ago). The dentist was told not to give you Novocaine when he drilled your tooth because “he has to learn to take better care of his teeth.” (She has to pay for a filling and she’s furious at having to spend money on you.) Unlike psychopaths, narcissists do understand right, wrong, and consequences, so they are not ordinarily criminal. She beat you, but not to the point where you went to the hospital. She left you standing out in the cold until you were miserable, but not until you had hypothermia. She put you in the basement in the dark with no clothes on, but she only left you there for two hours. Narcissistic mothers also abuse by loosing others on you or by failing to protect you when a normal mother would have. Sometimes the narcissist’s golden child will be encouraged to abuse the scapegoat. Narcissists also abuse by exposing you to violence. If one of your siblings got beaten, she made sure you saw. She effortlessly put the fear of Mom into you, without even touching you. 16. She’s infantile and petty. Narcissistic mothers are often simply childish. If you refuse to let her manipulate you into doing something, she will cry that you don’t love her because if you loved her you would do as she wanted. If you hurt her feelings she will aggressively whine to you that you’ll be sorry when she’s dead that you didn’t treat her better. Anytime she feels hard-done-by, she pouts, whines and gives the silent treatment. When you were a child, she would justify things she did to you by pointing out something that you did that she felt was comparable, as though the childish behavior of a child was justification for the childish behavior of an adult. “Getting even” is a large part of her dealings with you. Anytime you fail to give her the deference, attention or service she feels she deserves, or you thwart her wishes, she has toshow you. 17. She “parentifies.” She shed her responsibilities to you as soon as she was able, leaving you to take care of yourself as best you could. She denied you medical care, adequate clothing, necessary transportation or basic comforts that she would never have considered giving up herself. She never gave you a birthday party or let you have sleepovers. Your friends were never welcome in her house. She didn’t like to drive you anywhere, so you turned down invitations because you had no way to get there. She wouldn’t buy your school pictures even if she could easily have afforded it. You had a niggardly clothing allowance or she bought you the cheapest clothing she could without embarrassing herself. As soon as you got a job, every request for school supplies, clothing or toiletries was met with “Now that you’re making money, why don’t you pay for that yourself?” She also gave you tasks that were rightfully hers and should not have been placed on a child. You may have been a primary caregiver for young siblings or an incapacitated parent. You may have had responsibility for excessive household tasks. Above all, you were always her emotional caregiver which is one reason any defection from that role caused such enormous eruptions of rage. You were never allowed to be needy or have bad feelings or problems. Those experiences were only for her, and you were responsible for making it right for her. From the time you were very young she would randomly lash out at you any time she was stressed or angry with your father or felt that life was unfair to her, because it made her feel better to hurt you. You were often punished out of the blue, for manufactured offenses. As you got older she directly placed responsibility for her welfare and her emotions on you, weeping on your shoulder and unloading on you any time something went awry for her. The narcissistic mother's self-absorption is so complete that she may require her children to meet her emotional needs even when the children are in great need themselves, as the following story shows: My father died when I was 17. At the time, my brother was 19 and my younger sister was 13. My mother felt just terrible for herself and availed herself frequently of the captive audience we represented. She cried on my shoulder, she talked about how unfair it was that my father's death had robbed her of her entitlements ("He was going to retire at 55 and we were going to travel!"), she took us out to the cemetery and held little ceremonies. For the final act of the cemetery drama, she would step onto my father's grave, knead it with her feet, and wail "Oh Eddie! How could you leave me!" followed by an hour of sobbing and self-pity. A week after our father died, she took off for two weeks leaving my sister and me alone without a car, because she felt that she just needed to get away. If it hadn't been for my friends who had cars, we would have run out of food. And what about her children? I never cried for my father. I don't remember any of us children crying. We didn't even talk about our father's death with each other. It was years before I realized that we didn't cry because we knew better than to cry: it wasn't allowed. We knew the rules: Only LaVonne suffered. Only LaVonne had the right to be unhappy. Everyone else existed to take care of poor, suffering, widowed LaVonne. It never occurred to her that her children had also suffered a loss. It was ghastly to be bereaved of our father - in fact, of the only parent who genuinely loved us - and not to be allowed to grieve, because to do so would infringe on our self-absorbed mother's monopoly on pity. -Mary It is even sadder that even now, that Mary wishes for so little. All she wants is to have been able to have her own feelings. But LaVonne was so utterly self-seeking and self-centered that she not only forbade any expression of sorrow by her children, she saw them as a resource to be consumed. 18. She’s exploitative. She will manipulate to get work, money, or objects she envies out of other people for nothing. This includes her children, of course. If she set up a bank account for you, she was trustee on the account with the right to withdraw money. As you put money into it, she took it out. She may have stolen your identity. She took you as a dependent on her income taxes so you couldn’t file independently without exposing her to criminal penalties. If she made an agreement with you, it was violated the minute it no longer served her needs. If you brought it up demanding she adhere to the agreement, she brushed you off and later punished you so you would know not to defy her again. Sometimes the narcissist will exploit a child to absorb punishment that would have been hers from an abusive partner. The husband comes home in a drunken rage, and the mother immediately complains about the child’s bad behavior so the rage is vented on to the child. Sometimes the narcissistic mother simply uses the child to keep a sick marriage intact because the alternative is being divorced or having to go to work. The child is sexually molested but the mother never notices, or worse, calls the child a liar when she tells the mother about the molestation. 19. She projects. This sounds a little like psycho-babble, but it is something that narcissists all do. Projection means that she will put her own bad behavior, character and traits on you so she can deny them in herself and punish you. This can be very difficult to see if you have traits that she can project on to. An eating-disordered woman who obsesses over her daughter’s weight is projecting. The daughter may not realize it because she has probably internalized an absurdly thin vision of women’s weight and so accepts her mother’s projection. When the narcissist tells the daughter that she eats too much, needs to exercise more, or has to wear extra-large size clothes, the daughter believes it, even if it isn’t true. However, she will sometimes project even though it makes no sense at all. This happens when she feels shamed and needs to put it on her scapegoat child and the projection therefore comes across as being an attack out of the blue. For example: She makes an outrageous request, and you casually refuse to let her have her way. She’s enraged by your refusal and snarls at you that you’ll talk about it when you’ve calmed down and are no longer hysterical. You aren’t hysterical at all; she is, but your refusal has made her feel the shame that should have stopped her from making shameless demands in the first place. That’s intolerable. She can transfer that shame to you and rationalize away your response: you only refused her because you’re so unreasonable. Having done that she can reassert her shamelessness and indulge her childish willfulness by turning an unequivocal refusal into a subject for further discussion. You’ll talk about it again “later” - probably when she’s worn you down with histrionics, pouting and the silent treatment so you’re more inclined to do what she wants. 20. She is never wrong about anything. No matter what she’s done, she won’t ever genuinely apologize for anything. Instead, any time she feels she is being made to apologize she will sulk and pout, issue an insulting apology or negate the apology she has just made with justifications, qualifications or self pity: “I’m sorry you felt that I humiliated you” “I’m sorry if I made you feel bad” “If I did that it was wrong” “I’m sorry, but I there’s nothing I can do about it” “I’m sorry I made you feel clumsy, stupid and disgusting” “I’m sorry but it was just a joke. You’re so over-sensitive” “I’m sorry that my own child feels she has to upset me and make me feel bad.” The last insulting apology is also an example of projection. In the following excerpt from a letter written by a narcissistic mother to her daughter, and signed by the mother and her passive, enabling husband, apologies are used to demean and invalidate the daughter, and to minimize the mother's despicable behavior: We are sorry if you feel we have failed you and fallen short. We are sorry if we could not live up to whatever expectations you have placed on us. We are sorry if you suffered from our dynamics -contributed by "upsi" This quote contains no actual apologies, despite the multiple iterations of the words "we are sorry." The Nmother is not sorry at all, and she makes that clear to her daughter by following each "we are sorry" with the conditional "if." Instead of apologizing for the abusive behavior originally under discussion, the mother thus questions the legitimacy of the daughter's complaints. The vague language she uses to describe the failings for which she must purportedly apologize also underlines the mother's refusal to acknowledge wrongdoing.Perhaps the mother caused her daughter to have "suffered from our dynamics," an admission which is so imprecise that it means nothing. The mother multiplies the insult implied by a conditional apology when she says that she is sorry if her daughter feels that her parents have failed her. In this statement, the writer drops any pretense of apology and moves on to assault. It is always condescending to say that you are sorry about the way someone feels, because it means that you find them pitiful and emotionally inadequate. No regret for the speaker's behavior enters into such a statement. Indeed, the mother's fury at being put in a position requiring apology leaks through when she says that she is sorry if she failed to live up to "whatever expectations you have placed on us." The snide, self-pitying and dismissive tone of this quote makes it clear that the problem is the irrational and self-centered demands of the child, not any behavior of the mother. In reality, the mother (falsely) told her daughter's acquaintances that the daughter's husband was a batterer. Another time, the mother wrote to the daughter's in-laws expressing her concern that the daughter and the husband were severely impaired by (imaginary) drug use. But in this letter, the mother reduces this contemptible conduct to a contemptuous “whatever .” These condescending insults masquerading as apologies are very familiar to the children of narcissistic mothers, who seethed impotently at hearing "I'm sorry if you felt..." in response to any reproach. 21. Sometimes she seems to have no awareness that other people even have feelings, and other times she is brilliantly sensitive to other people’s emotions. Every child of a narcissist recognizes this contradiction because narcissistic mothers do possess the ability to exercise empathy, and in abundance. Sometimes this ability also leads them to identify emotionally with people who are suffering and to express caring for them. When caring about another’s suffering interferes with something the narcissist wants, though, the caring vanishes. When a narcissistic mother wants validation, when she feels like eliciting some emotional pain, when something she wants hurts someone else, the empathy is turned off as though it never existed. From the perspective of ability, narcissists are extremely empathetic; indeed they have a gift of telling what other people are feeling and thinking. Their skill at discerning and guiding the emotions of other people is the basis of many characteristically narcissistic interactions. Narcissists are very socially adept, which is why no one ever believes their children when they complain of their mothers. They know just how to make everyone think that they’re delightful. Narcissistic mothers are exceptional manipulators, and manipulators must be extremely aware, on a moment-by-moment basis, of the emotions of their targets. If you don’t know what people are feeling, you can’t push their buttons. Their exceptional sensitivity to the feelings of others is also the wellspring of their pleasure in inflicting emotional pain through dramas and no-win scenarios. Narcissistic mothers enjoy eliciting emotional pain, and they do it very well because they know just what their target children are feeling. That exquisite sensitivity is the reason they don’t need to batter. They can inflict agony without lifting a finger, so why risk exposure and waste effort with beatings when they can elicit the same emotions with words alone? What narcissistic mothers lack is concern for the consequences of their actions, a behavior that seems rooted in profound selfishness, rather than in the absence of empathy. Mothers with NPD are certainly capable of feeling for others: they’re always feeling for the people with whom their scapegoat has conflicts. They feel for their fellow narcissists. They feel for people who have validated and praised them. They even feel for their child when it doesn’t cost them anything to do so. They just don’t feel for their child when they’re abusing him. They don’t feel anything that interferes with their absorption in their own wants and needs. Because they scour their environment for validation of their own abusiveness, they defend their fellow abusers, so they don’t have any empathy for the victims of those abusers, as the following story shows: A four-year-old had come to school with a hand print on her face, which had been inflicted as the result of a slap by her mother’s live-in boyfriend. As a mandated reporter my mother had called the authorities, but she told me that she could understand why the boyfriend had hit the child: she was so annoying. Then she said in a dramatic tone dripping with sympathy “You should have seen the parents. They were so ashamed!” In outrage I said “What difference does that make to the child?” Her mouth dropped open and I realized she not only didn’t care at all about that poor little girl…it would never have occurred to her to care. -Sarah This story shows the misplaced empathy of the abuser for other abusers. There was no empathy in Sarah’s mother for the actual victim as there had never been any for Sarah. Instead empathy was reserved for the woman who let her boyfriend batter her child. Sarah’s mother identified with the abuser, a mother like herself, afflicted with a child who didn’t meet her needs. Her empathy actually attributed virtues to her fellow abuser and faults to the victim that weren’t merited in reality. Someone who hits a small child hard enough to leave a handprint, then sends that child to school, isn’t ashamed, and the personality of a four-year-old is not the fault of the child! 22. She manufactures “no-win” situations. In the classic “no-win” scenario, the narcissist’s child is manipulated into a corner and then presented with a demand that the child do something degrading, humiliating or painful in order to please the narcissist. Any response other than compliance triggers retaliation. As always, the payoff for your mother is the elicitation of painful emotions. Whether you subject yourself to her degradation or you fight back and end up subjected to shaming, threats and blaming by the narcissist, you will experience a sense of helplessness and fear, and those emotions are very satisfying to the narcissist. That feed is also augmented by the pain she elicits by undermining, insulting and demeaning you and, as the scene winds down, by blaming you for the entire event. These scenes are great fun for your narcissistic mother, for whom they are exciting and entertaining as well as satisfying, and who gets to feel as though she has been very clever. She commonly has an attitude of pleasure and excitement throughout, which she will make no effort to hide. The children of narcissistic mothers often describe the “little smile” their mother had as she played out the no-win scenario. She wants you to know how much fun she’s having and how much she loves your pain. There is no betrayal more wounding than knowing your own mother is reveling in the pain she deliberately caused, nor any emotion more delicious to your narcissistic mother than your sense of shock and misery that she is hurting you deliberately and for fun. In the following story, an adult daughter is manipulated into a no-win situation. She is given a choice between accepting and expressing gratitude for a gift clearly meant as an insult, or provoking certain retaliation from her narcissistic mother: A few days before Christmas, my mother walked into the room where I was sitting carrying a pair of old, worn tennis shoes - the kind with the rubber soles and canvas uppers. She said “I know you asked for a pair of running shoes for Christmas. I thought I could give you these and get myself a new pair instead.” My mother was a clothes horse, and generally had ten pairs of running shoes in her closet at that time. What’s more, her feet are bigger and narrower than mine, so there’s no way her shoes would have fit me. I said “I don’t want your cast-offs!” and she looked very satisfied and pleased and said “Fine” and walked away. That year I got no gift for Christmas, even though I had bought her something from her wish list, and even though my brother and sister got gifts from her. I did get a letter after I got home that started “I’m sorry you felt that I offered you “cast-offs” and went on to describe how good her intentions were, how she thought I would be happy to let her do something nice for herself, and how hard she had it as the mother of an “unappreciative” child like me. This wasn’t the first time either. The preceding year she had also tried to give me an old, rusty bicycle for Christmas with the stipulation that she would then get herself a new one. - Sarah Sarah’s mother never planned on giving Sarah a Christmas gift. She was angry that Sarah had made herself unavailable for use by going to graduate school in another state. So she engineered a scene in which she could simultaneously insult Sarah and twist Sarah’s predictable angry response into an opportunity to depict herself as a martyr to the selfishness she later projected on to Sarah in her blaming letter. In this aggressive letter, the insulting apology "I'm sorry you felt..." loses even the thin veneer of sincerity that upsi's mother maintained. 23. She’s shameless. She doesn’t ask. She demands. She makes outrageous requests and she’ll take anything she wants if she thinks she can get away with it. She won’t take no for an answer, pressuring and arm-twisting and manipulating to get you to give in. She doesn’t seem to feel any regret for or embarrassment about her behavior, no matter how appalling. Some writers have asserted that narcissists appear shameless because they repress their shame, or alternatively, that they appear shameless because they lack empathy, and are therefore unaware of the pain they cause with their shameless behavior. As discussed earlier, narcissists do not lack empathy; it is obvious from their skillful manipulation of other people, and their delight in sadistic behavior, that they are well aware of the emotions of others. It is possible that narcissists repress the shame they feel at their deliberately hurtful behavior, but such an explanation assumes that the narcissist felt shame, even though there’s no evidence that she did. A much simpler explanation is that the narcissist does not show any shame because she does not feel any. Narcissistic mothers are simply too self-centered to feel any concern or responsibility for the pain they cause to others. In the following story, Mary’s mother, LaVonne, isn’t repressing shame at her bad behavior; she can’t repress an emotion she doesn’t feel. Just as it never occurred to Sarah’s mother to care about the well-being of a child sent to school with a handprint on her face, it never occurred to Mary’s mother to care about the well-being of the child she was abusing herself, or to feel shame for the injuries she inflicted: My sophomore year in college, I learned to make these delicate little birds out of multicolored ribbons and I decided that I would make my mother a mobile of ribbon birds for Christmas. Each bird took about 45 minutes to make, and I was making a dozen of them, so I really couldn’t hide my bird-making from my mother. I just said that I needed the birds for a project. One day when I had about eight birds made, my mother suddenly said in an excited, happy voice: “I have an idea! How about if I take those birds and use them to decorate presents for my friends?!” I said calmly “No, I’m making them for a project.” In response she flew into a rage, accusing me of being unappreciative and selfish and of only caring about myself. After abusing me for ten minutes or so, she stomped off angrily to another part of the house, and I went back to my bird-making, imagining her reaction in a week when she opened her Christmas present. As LaVonne opened the box containing the ribbon bird mobile Christmas morning, I watched her face carefully, expecting to see her look embarrassed or abashed, but there wasn’t a flicker of emotion that showed that she even remembered the scene she had put on just a week before. Every expression on her face and every word from her mouth made it obvious that, in her world, nothing had happened. It wasn’t that she was playacting; the sight of the birds just didn’t trigger any memories. It wasn’t until some years after I completely cut contact with her that I had the emotional distance to realize: I couldn’t ever remember seeing her wrap a gift for a friend, nor do I ever recall a wrapped gift for one of her friends under the Christmas tree, waiting to be given. She didn’t get gifts from friends and she didn’t give gifts. So what was she going to do with those eight ribbon birds? -Mary The scene LaVonne staged is a straightforward example of a no-win scenario; LaVonne thought up the scenario, she launched her attack with an outrageous demand, when her demand was denied, she used the denial as a justification to berate and demean her daughter -and then she forgot about it. The simplest explanation for this apparent memory lapse is that the act of ambushing and emotionally abusing her child was too inconsequential to recall. LaVonne’s casual forgetfulness illustrates the critical division between a person who behaves badly because that person is greedy, or immature, or spoiled rotten, and one who behaves badly because she is disordered, as LaVonne was. LaVonne had an excellent memory, and she probably would have remembered her rant about the birds had Mary reminded her of it. Indeed, as she did in the story above, in which she tells her daughter to take her Christmas stocking, LaVonne had remembered previously forgotten instances of abuse and neglect when Mary reminded her of them. When she was prompted only by the sight of the ribbon birds, however, she didn’t recall her abuse of Mary because, to LaVonne, that abuse was no more memorable than the apple she ate for lunch that day. She fed on Mary’s shame and unhappiness as casually as if Mary’s emotions were as insignificant as a piece of fruit, and remembered her behavior toward Mary no better than she would any other inconsequential daily action. Her behavior was not the result of an absence of empathy. LaVonne knew exactly how Mary felt about her ranting and accusations; there would have been no point in enacting the drama otherwise. LaVonne's selfishness was simply so far outside the bounds of normality that it didn’t occur to her to even consider the harm she had inflicted on her daughter. There was therefore nothing to remember. The children of emotionally abusive mothers are often terrified to tell stories of their mothers’ abuse, thinking their mothers will see themselves and retaliate. In reality, disordered mothers never recognize themselves in the stories their children tell about them, no matter how memorable the behavior was to anyone else. Without a direct reminder from the persons involved, a narcissistic mother can't remember her past assaults on her children any more than she can remember what she had for lunch a year ago. It would never occur to her that she was the screaming, selfish harpy in a story posted on the Internet. 24. She blames. She’ll blame you for everything that isn’t right in her life or for what other people do or for whatever has happened. Always, she’ll blame you for her abuse. You made her do it. If only you weren’t so difficult. You upset her so much that she can’t think straight. Things were hard for her and your backtalk pushed her over the brink. This blaming is often so subtle that all you know is that you thought you were wronged and now you feel guilty. Your brother beats you and her response is to bemoan how uncivilized children are. Your boyfriend dumped you, but she can understand - after all, she herself has seen how difficult you are to love. She’ll do something egregiously exploitative to you, and when confronted will screech at you that she can’t believe you were so selfish as to upset her over such a trivial thing. She’ll also blame you for your reaction to her selfish, cruel and exploitative behavior. She can’t believe you are so petty, so small, and so childish as to object to her giving your favorite dress to her friend. She thought you would be happy to let her do something nice for someone else. Narcissists are masters of multitasking as this example shows. Simultaneously your narcissistic mother is 1) Lying. She knows what she did was wrong and she knows your reaction is reasonable. 2) Manipulating. She’s making you look like the bad guy for objecting to her cruelties. 3) Being selfish. She doesn’t mind making you feel horrible as long as she gets her own way. 4) Blaming. She did something wrong, but it’s all your fault. 5) Projecting. Her petty, small and childish behavior has become yours. 6) Putting on a self-pitying drama. She’s a martyr who believed the best of you, and you’ve let her down. 7) Parentifying. You’re responsible for her feelings, she has no responsibility for yours. 25. She destroys your relationships. Narcissistic mothers are like tornadoes: wherever they touch down families are torn apart and wounds are inflicted. Unless the father has control over the narcissist and holds the family together, adult siblings in families with narcissistic mothers characteristically have painful relationships. Typically all communication between siblings is superficial and driven by duty, or they may never talk to each other at all. In part, these women foster dissension between their children because they enjoy the control it gives them. If those children don’t communicate except through the mother, she can decide what everyone hears. Narcissists also love the excitement and drama they create by interfering in their children’s lives. Watching people’s lives explode is better than soap operas, especially when you don’t have any empathy for their misery. The narcissist nurtures anger, contempt and envy - the most corrosive emotions - to drive her children apart. While her children are still living at home, any child who stands up to the narcissist guarantees punishment for the rest. In her zest for revenge, the narcissist purposefully turns the siblings’ anger on the dissenter by including everyone in her retaliation. (“I can see that nobody here loves me! Well I’ll just take these Christmas presents back to the store. None of you would want anything I got you anyway!”) The other children, long trained by the narcissist to give in, are furious with the troublemaking child, instead of with the narcissist who actually deserves their anger. The narcissist also uses favoritism and gossip to poison her childrens’ relationships. The scapegoat sees the mother as a creature of caprice and cruelty. As is typical of the privileged, the other children don’t see her unfairness and they excuse her abuses. Indeed, they are often recruited by the narcissist to adopt her contemptuous and entitled attitude towards the scapegoat and with her tacit or explicit permission, will inflict further abuse. The scapegoat predictably responds with fury and equal contempt. After her children move on with adult lives, the narcissist makes sure to keep each apprised of the doings of the others, passing on the most discreditable and juicy gossip (as always, disguised as “concern”) about the other children, again, in a way that engenders contempt rather than compassion. Having been raised by a narcissist, her children are predisposed to be envious, and she takes full advantage of the opportunity that presents. She may never praise you to your face, but she will likely crow about your victories to the very sibling who is not doing well. She’ll tell youabout the generosity she displayed towards that child, leaving you wondering why you got left out and irrationally angry at the favored child rather than at the narcissist who told you about it. The end result is a family in which almost all communication is triangular. The narcissist, the spider in the middle of the family web, sensitively monitors all the children for information she can use to retain her unchallenged control over the family. She then passes that on to the others, creating the resentments that prevent them from communicating directly and freely with each other. The result is that the only communication between the children is through the narcissist, exactly the way she wants it. 26. As a last resort she goes pathetic. When she’s confronted with unavoidable consequences for her own bad behavior, including your anger, she will melt into a soggy puddle of weepy helplessness. It’s all her fault. She can’t do anything right. She feels so bad. What she doesn’t do: own the responsibility for her bad conduct and make it right. Instead, as always, it’s all about her, and her helpless self-pitying weepiness dumps the responsibility for her consequences AND for her unhappiness about it on you. As so often with narcissists, it is also a manipulative behavior. If you fail to excuse her bad behavior and make her feel better, YOU are the bad person for being cold, heartless and unfeeling when your poor mother feels so awful. © 2007 All rights reserved[/size] <a data-ipb="nomediaparse" data-cke-saved-href="https://www.google.com/a/UniversalLogin?service=jotspot&continue=https://sites.google.com/site/harpyschild/theharpy" href="https://www.google.com/a/UniversalLogin?service=jotspot&continue=https://sites.google.com/site/harpyschild/theharpy" schild"="">Sign in| Recent Site Activity|Report Abuse| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIs9sFyFSDk http://www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/characteristics-of-narcissistic-mothers.html

It's not finished, but I was so eager to share what I had, I felt like posting. Enjoy In the film Tangled, Disney's version of Rapunzel, the story begins by having the film's anti-hero, Flynn Rider, give the audience back-story which introduces us to our main characters. Rapunzel is a daughter of royalty. Her parents rule over an unnamed kingdom that is home to a magical golden flower that has the incredible ability to heal wounds, illnesses, and even reverse aging. However, the flower is only a legend to the King and Queen as well as to the rest of the kingdom. The only person who is certain of this flower's existence and its location is the film's antagonist, Mother Gothel. Mother Gothel is a very old woman who uses the flower to to stay forever young and beautiful. In order to continue using it, she hoards it by making sure it is hidden under an artificial bush. When the Queen is pregnant with Rapunzel, she becomes struck with a fatal illness. Desperate to keep his wife alive, the King sent his army to search for the Golden Flower to use its healing properties. The film then shows us Mother Gothel attempting to use the flower again. Before she can activate its power, she becomes startled by the sound of a squad of the Kings' soldier's footsteps moving towards her location, so she quickly rushes to conceal the flower with her fake bush and hides. Unwittingly, the accidentally knocks over the flower's cover with her foot as she hurries to get out of the approaching men's sight, leaving the glowing magical flower visible. Once the soldiers see the flower, they immediately take it back to the castle and use its magic to save the Queen. Thus, a healthy baby Rapunzel is born. Rapunzel was not merely healthy, though. Thanks to the potion's magic, Rapunzel was born with golden blond hair with the flower's ability to heal. All seemed well in the Kingdom, but Mother Gothel was not unaware of Rapunzel's whereabouts. In fact, she followed the guards and witnessed what became of the flower. Eager to keep getting her fix of age reversing magic, Gothel kidnapped Rapunzel and took her to a faraway tower where she decided to raise the baby as her own daughter. It is at this point our exposition scene ends and the actual film begins. So far, my first impressions towards the film are very positive. The animation is breathtakingly gorgeous, the humor is charming, and the pacing is just right for my taste. And while there is much to say about the technical aspects of the films, my purpose in this review is to bring attention to the more disturbing and subtle psychological themes within the film, so my main focus will be on the characters. I do want to be clear that I am not a psychologist and thus am not trained to diagnose mental illnesses. These are simply my thoughts that I will try to make a rational case for with the help of some very useful material I've read. Some of the terms I'll be using are based on highly complex concepts that have a plethora of literature written about them, which I have only been exposed to a small percentage of, so I'm in no way an expert. The first character that I want to explore is the evil Mother Gothel. I originally thought this character was a typical narcissist. Her gross obsession with youth and beauty, the multiple mirrors in her house, as well as her exploitative tendencies, all of these things seemed indicative that Gothel was a Narcissist. However, after giving the idea more thought I realized that, due to Gothel's willingness to murder, kidnap infants, and chronically lie to get what she wants, I decided that she would best be described as a sociopath, although it is clear that she exhibits classic narcissistic characteristics, such as vanity. To use the helpful distinction that clinical psychologist Martha Stout lays out in her fascinating book “the sociopath next door”, the difference between Narcissism and Sociopathy is that ”Narcissism is, in a metaphorical sense, one half of what sociopathy is. Even clinical narcissists are able to feel most emotions as strongly as anyone else does, from guilt and sadness to desperate love and passion. The half that is missing is the crucial ability to understand what other people are feeling. Narcissism is a failure not of conscience but of empathy, which is the capacity to perceive emotions in others and so react to them appropriately.” Thus, Narcissism is a lack of empathy, while sociopathy is a lack of conscience. The way that sociopathy is portrayed in most films is not entirely accurate. Most of the time the villains in cinema are exaggerated characatures of sociopaths at best. Sociopaths in reality are not so obvious or grand. They do not normally kidnap babies. They do not wear dark, hooded cloaks. They do not laugh maniacally. In fact, according to Martha Stout, “the only emotions that sociopaths seem to feel genuinely are the so-called 'primitive' affective reactions that result from immediate physical pain and pleasure, or from short-term frustrations and successes.” Dinsey villains appear to be passionate about being evil, but sociopaths cannot experience love, passion or joy. They are in fact not usually violent. How do I know this? Well, have you ever came across anybody like this in your life? Probably not,(I genuinely hope not) but statistically you have certainly came into contact with a sociopath. It is estimated that 1 in 25 Americans are sociopath. That is more than anorexia, which is considered to be an epidemic. The fact that you most likely cannot recall where or when this occurred demonstrates what I mean when I say that sociopaths are much more subtle and hidden. It is this subtle and hidden nature of sociopathy that I think Tangled portrays quite well in some instances, most notably in the interactions between Rapunzel and Mother Gothel when Rapunzel is an adult. After the film's exposition scene, we are introduced to Rapunzel, who is now a young adult. She starts off the main plot of the film with a wonderful song entitled “When Will My Life Begin.” The song communicates her weariness and frustration at living in a tower,regardless of having as much time as she wants to spend on improving her plethora of skills and talents, such as, pottery making,painting, ballet, guitar playing, and sewing. My interpretation of this scene is that mere productivity without growth is not living. So much of what we do during the day, what we call "living life" is not actually living. Each day, without striving towards a noble goal, such as individuation, living with integrity, and speaking the truth, simply becomes a photocopy of the last day. And in much of the same way a copy of a copy becomes more and more degraded, so too do our lives lose definition when do not raise our standards. So, why does Rapunzel stay inside and continue to choose the comfort of routine and repetition? Because her "mother won't allow her to leave." is her stated reason. Yet, as she soon discovered, her prison was only internal for she eventually left the tower. She could have left anytime. Perhaps that's why many of us choose the familiar. To avoid the pain of knowing that the jail cell that we thought was permanently sealed, the cell that we spent years of our lives in for the sake of appeasing empty people, was unlocked the entire time. The following sequence struck a deep emotional chord with me. It was almost as if every interaction I had been in where I ended up being on the receiving end of some type of emotional abuse was spliced together so that I no longer felt like I was watching a film based on an old fairy tale, but was rather reviewing my own memories. Because of this, it was very difficult for me to re watch these scenes. It is these exchanges between Mother Gothal and Rapunzel that motivated me to write this paper. One of the main purposes of emotional abuse is to obscure the source of the abuse. Unlike physical abuse or even some verbal abuse where the victim can clearly see what is being done to them, emotional abuse makes the victim feel like she is in a fog so that when she feels hurt she isn't able to figure out why. This keeps her in a perpetual state of confusion, which is then taken advantage of by the abuser to continue the abuse usually to convince the victim that she is imagining things, there is no abuse, and that she is misinterpreting the situation. An error of reality processing on the victims part. If the abuser is successful in convincing her that her pain is entirely self generated by her erroneous thinking, then she has been programmed to abuse herself. Nothing could be more satisfying to a sadist. It's the perfect scam. To abuse anyone in such a way as to get the victim to doubt her own ability to press reality is called gaslighting. Mother Gothel arrives at the tower and calls Rapunzel to let down her hair. Immediately, the first interaction that we see between the two is entirely destructive to Rapunzel. After Gothel is pulled up from the tower she asks Rapunzel with an obviously disingenuous tone of voice “Oh, Rapunzel. How do you manage to do that every single day without fail? It looks absolutely exhausting, darling!” Rapunzel hesitantly replies, ”Oh, it's nothing.” “Then I don't know why it takes you so long.”, Gothel tauntingly says in which is followed by a hearty laugh at her own “joke”. “Oh, darling I'm just teasing!” Rapunzel says nothing with a confused look on her face. Gothel walks towards her mirror to inspect her reflection. Rapunzel follows and tries to express what's been on her mind. “All right...so, mother. As you know tomorrow is a very big day” Gothel interrupts showing no sign that she's listened.“Rapunzel look in that mirror. You know what I see? There's a short pause and during this moment you an see by her uneasy facial expression on that Rapunzel is anticipating another attack. “I see a strong confident beautiful young lady.“ Rapunzel is relieved that no put down was made. She lets her guard and even allows herself to smile. Then the trap is sprung. “Oh, look! You're here too!” Gothel one again ejects an intensely derisive laugh like cannon fire. Rapunzel's distress becomes more apparent by the expression on her face. Gothel continues the abuse, “I'm just teasing, stop taking everything so seriously.” . So, here we have in manipulation put forth as compassion and concern, put downs and insults disguised as humor, invalidation of the the person's feelings, which then finished off by gas lighting. And the order in which these things occur is no accident. There is certainly a kind of brilliance in the way that these abusive strategies are executed. Abusers want two things; to hurt you and for you to stick around so they can keep hurting you. For example, a good action film doesn't start with the most intense sequence nor does it keep the action non stop. If it did, the audience would lose interest or find the excess of stimuli unbearable. Then they would leave the theater Instead, a good action film builds the tension gradually. Once the tension of an action scene reaches its pinnacle, it is then released by allowing the next sequence to be more focused on dialogue and character development in a relaxed environment. This allows the audience to relax before the next action scene wherein the tension becomes even greater. Similarly, a good abuser, such as Gothel, always leaves room for “down time”, where she compliments Rapunzel or asks a question out of “concern”. This allows Rapunzel to relax and thus let her guard down, which only makes the next blow's impact is that much greater. As Vin Deisal says in the film Riddick “It's always the punch you don't see that puts you down.” It is not hair, but Rapunzel herself that is tangled, tangled in Gothel's web emotional vampirism and abuse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIs9sFyFSDk http://www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/characteristics-of-narcissistic-mothers.html Perhaps the most tragic thing about being tortured in this way for many years is that the abuser becomes internalized. Internalization is the process by which the attitudes, values, standards and opinions of others is integrated into one's own sense of identity. It happens automatically and cannot be undone. The result is that even after Rapunzel escapes her prison and her torturer, Gothel is still in her head. Remember how I said that gaslighting, getting the victim to doubt her ability to process reality, leads the victim to attack herself? Again, this is something the film portrays surprisingly well, which is not only the abuse, but its effects. After Rapunzel is free she constantly doubts her decision and castigates herself, proclaiming that, "she is a bad daughter", "breaking her mother's heart", and a "horrible person". And for anyone who has gone through the rough process of breaking out of abusive relationships, it is not uncommon for this doubt and self flagulation to occur. Even when the person has treated you egregiously your entire life, this process can take years.

It's not finished, but I was so eager to share what I had, I felt like posting. Enjoy In the film Tangled, Disney's version of Rapunzel, the story begins by having the film's anti-hero, Flynn Rider, give the audience back-story which introduces us to our main characters. Rapunzel is a daughter of royalty. Her parents rule over an unnamed kingdom that is home to a magical golden flower that has the incredible ability to heal wounds, illnesses, and even reverse aging. However, the flower is only a legend to the King and Queen as well as to the rest of the kingdom. The only person who is certain of this flower's existence and its location is the film's antagonist, Mother Gothel. Mother Gothel is a very old woman who uses the flower to to stay forever young and beautiful. In order to continue using it, she hoards it by making sure it is hidden under an artificial bush. When the Queen is pregnant with Rapunzel, she becomes struck with a fatal illness. Desperate to keep his wife alive, the King sent his army to search for the Golden Flower to use its healing properties. The film then shows us Mother Gothel attempting to use the flower again. Before she can activate its power, she becomes startled by the sound of a squad of the Kings' soldier's footsteps moving towards her location, so she quickly rushes to conceal the flower with her fake bush and hides. Unwittingly, the accidentally knocks over the flower's cover with her foot as she hurries to get out of the approaching men's sight, leaving the glowing magical flower visible. Once the soldiers see the flower, they immediately take it back to the castle and use its magic to save the Queen. Thus, a healthy baby Rapunzel is born. Rapunzel was not merely healthy, though. Thanks to the potion's magic, Rapunzel was born with golden blond hair with the flower's ability to heal. All seemed well in the Kingdom, but Mother Gothel was not unaware of Rapunzel's whereabouts. In fact, she followed the guards and witnessed what became of the flower. Eager to keep getting her fix of age reversing magic, Gothel kidnapped Rapunzel and took her to a faraway tower where she decided to raise the baby as her own daughter. It is at this point our exposition scene ends and the actual film begins. So far, my first impressions towards the film are very positive. The animation is breathtakingly gorgeous, the humor is charming, and the pacing is just right for my taste. And while there is much to say about the technical aspects of the films, my purpose in this review is to bring attention to the more disturbing and subtle psychological themes within the film, so my main focus will be on the characters. I do want to be clear that I am not a psychologist and thus am not trained to diagnose mental illnesses. These are simply my thoughts that I will try to make a rational case for with the help of some very useful material I've read. Some of the terms I'll be using are based on highly complex concepts that have a plethora of literature written about them, which I have only been exposed to a small percentage of, so I'm in no way an expert. The first character that I want to explore is the evil Mother Gothel. I originally thought this character was a typical narcissist. Her gross obsession with youth and beauty, the multiple mirrors in her house, as well as her exploitative tendencies, all of these things seemed indicative that Gothel was a Narcissist. However, after giving the idea more thought I realized that, due to Gothel's willingness to murder, kidnap infants, and chronically lie to get what she wants, I decided that she would best be described as a sociopath, although it is clear that she exhibits classic narcissistic characteristics, such as vanity. To use the helpful distinction that clinical psychologist Martha Stout lays out in her fascinating book “the sociopath next door”, the difference between Narcissism and Sociopathy is that ”Narcissism is, in a metaphorical sense, one half of what sociopathy is. Even clinical narcissists are able to feel most emotions as strongly as anyone else does, from guilt and sadness to desperate love and passion. The half that is missing is the crucial ability to understand what other people are feeling. Narcissism is a failure not of conscience but of empathy, which is the capacity to perceive emotions in others and so react to them appropriately.” Thus, simply put, Narcissism is a lack of empathy, while sociopathy is a lack of conscience. The way that sociopathy is portrayed in most films is not entirely accurate. Most of the time the villains in cinema are exaggerated characatures of sociopaths at best. Sociopaths in reality are not so obvious or grand. They do not normally kidnap babies. They do not wear dark, hooded cloaks. They do not laugh maniacally. In fact, according to Martha Stout, “the only emotions that sociopaths seem to feel genuinely are the so-called 'primitive' affective reactions that result from immediate physical pain and pleasure, or from short-term frustrations and successes.” Dinsey villains appear to be passionate about being evil, but sociopaths cannot experience love, passion or joy. They are in fact not usually violent. How do I know this? Well, have you ever came across anybody like this in your life? Probably not,(I genuinely hope not) but statistically you have certainly came into contact with a sociopath. It is estimated that 1 in 25 Americans are sociopath. That is more than anorexia, which is considered to be an epidemic. The fact that you most likely cannot recall where or when this occurred demonstrates what I mean when I say that sociopaths are much more subtle and hidden. It is this subtle and hidden nature of sociopathy that I think Tangled portrays quite well in some instances, most notably in the interactions between Rapunzel and Mother Gothel when Rapunzel is an adult. (For more on the dispassionate nature of the Sociopath, please check out my article "Sociopathy is nothing to Envy" http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/39611-vengeance-and-out-sun-bathing-the-lizard-sociopathy-is-nothing-to-envy/ ) After the film's exposition scene, we are introduced to Rapunzel, who is now a young adult. She starts off the main plot of the film with a wonderful song entitled “When Will My Life Begin.” The song communicates her weariness and frustration at living in a tower,regardless of having as much time as she wants to spend on improving her plethora of skills and talents, such as, pottery making,painting, ballet, guitar playing, and sewing. My interpretation of this scene is that mere productivity without growth is not living. So much of what we do during the day, what we call "living life" is not actually living. Each day, without striving towards a noble goal, such as individuation, living with integrity, and speaking the truth, simply becomes a photocopy of the last day. And in much of the same way a copy of a copy becomes more and more degraded, so too do our lives lose definition when do not raise our standards. So, why does Rapunzel stay inside and continue to choose the comfort of routine and repetition? Because her "mother won't allow her to leave." is her stated reason. Yet, as she soon discovered, her prison was only internal for she eventually left the tower. She could have left anytime. Perhaps that's why many of us choose the familiar. To avoid the pain of knowing that the jail cell that we thought was permanently sealed, the cell that we spent years of our lives in for the sake of appeasing empty people, was unlocked the entire time. The following sequence struck a deep emotional chord with me. It was almost as if every interaction I had been in where I ended up being on the receiving end of some type of emotional abuse was spliced together so that I no longer felt like I was watching a film based on an old fairy tale, but was rather reviewing my own memories. Because of this, it was very difficult for me to re watch these scenes. It is these exchanges between Mother Gothal and Rapunzel that motivated me to write this paper. One of the main purposes of emotional abuse is to obscure the source of the abuse. Unlike physical abuse or even some verbal abuse where the victim can clearly see what is being done to them, emotional abuse makes the victim feel like she is in a fog so that when she feels hurt she isn't able to figure out why. This keeps her in a perpetual state of confusion, which is then taken advantage of by the abuser to continue the abuse usually to convince the victim that she is imagining things, there is no abuse, and that she is misinterpreting the situation. An error of reality processing on the victims part. If the abuser is successful in convincing her that her pain is entirely self generated by her erroneous thinking, then she has been programmed to abuse herself. Nothing could be more satisfying to a sadist. It's the perfect scam. To abuse anyone in such a way as to get the victim to doubt her own ability to press reality is called gaslighting. Mother Gothel arrives at the tower and calls Rapunzel to let down her hair. Immediately, the first interaction that we see between the two is entirely destructive to Rapunzel. After Gothel is pulled up from the tower she asks Rapunzel with an obviously disingenuous tone of voice “Oh, Rapunzel. How do you manage to do that every single day without fail? It looks absolutely exhausting, darling!” Rapunzel hesitantly replies, ”Oh, it's nothing.” “Then I don't know why it takes you so long.”, Gothel tauntingly says in which is followed by a hearty laugh at her own “joke”. “Oh, darling I'm just teasing!” Rapunzel says nothing with a confused look on her face. Gothel walks towards her mirror to inspect her reflection. Rapunzel follows and tries to express what's been on her mind. “All right...so, mother. As you know tomorrow is a very big day” Gothel interrupts showing no sign that she's listened.“Rapunzel look in that mirror. You know what I see? There's a short pause and during this moment you an see by her uneasy facial expression on that Rapunzel is anticipating another attack. “I see a strong confident beautiful young lady.“ Rapunzel is relieved that no put down was made. She lets her guard and even allows herself to smile. Then the trap is sprung. “Oh, look! You're here too!” Gothel one again ejects an intensely derisive laugh like cannon fire. Rapunzel's distress becomes more apparent by the expression on her face. Gothel continues the abuse, “I'm just teasing, stop taking everything so seriously.” . So, here we have in manipulation put forth as compassion and concern, put downs and insults disguised as humor, invalidation of the the person's feelings, which then finished off by gas lighting. And the order in which these things occur is no accident. There is certainly a kind of brilliance in the way that these abusive strategies are executed. For example, a good action film doesn't start with the most intense sequence nor does it keep the action non stop. If it did, the audience would lose interest or find the excess of stimuli unbearable. Instead, a good action film builds the tension gradually. Once the tension of an action scene reaches its pinnacle, it is then released by allowing the next sequence to be more focused on dialogue and character development in a relaxed environment. This allows the audience to relax before the next action scene wherein the tension becomes even greater. Similarly, a good abuser, such as Gothel, always leaves room for “down time”, where she compliments Rapunzel or asks a question out of “concern”. This allows Rapunzel to relax and thus let her guard down, which only makes the next blow's impact is that much greater. As Vin Deisal says in the film Riddick “It's always the punch you don't see that puts you down.” It is not hair, but Rapunzel herself that is tangled, tangled in Gothel's web emotional vampirism and abuse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIs9sFyFSDk http://www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/characteristics-of-narcissistic-mothers.html Perhaps the most tragic thing about being tortured in this way for many years is that the abuser becomes internalized. Internalization is the process by which the attitudes, values, standards and opinions of others is integrated into one's own sense of identity. It happens automatically and cannot be undone. The result is that even after Rapunzel escapes her prison and her torturer, Gothel is still in her head. Remember how I said that gaslighting, getting the victim to doubt her ability to process reality, leads the victim to attack herself? Again, this is something the film portrays surprisingly well, which is not only the abuse, but its effects. After Rapunzel is free she constantly doubts her decision and castigates herself, proclaiming that, "she is a bad daughter", "breaking her mother's heart", and a "horrible person". And for anyone who has gone through the rough process of breaking out of abusive relationships, it is not uncommon for this doubt and self flagulation to occur. Even when the person has treated you egregiously your entire life, this process can take years.

I'm really glad you found the discussion valuable! And like to know what you think about Tangled after you watch it. Also, on the topic of cats, did notice the line in the 'mother knows best' when Mothel Gothel calls Rapunzel her "pet"? I'm really glad you found the discussion valuable! I cant think of any other movies, though.

A thought just occurred to me. A part of me just yelled out, "FREEDOM! Write however you want to, however is productive and fun for you."So, maybe the part of you that says, "it's a problem as if you journal for other people", is a parent or other authority figure speaking that you've internalized?I wonder why that part thinks it's a problem?

We were owed having our emotional needs met. To be deprived of that is something to be angry about. I still dont feel like I've fully processed my anger, though. But, there's another feeling I'm processing from this, which is horror. I also have a hunch that the fact you picked this korn song, the one where a lullaby baby bedtime melody is played, after we had a conversation about infanttilazation and how it is rejecting a human's personality as if they are "no one" and how your mom turned your brother into her surrogate husband, isn't accidental. Infantilization and emotional incest is terrifying and sick. Also, i'm sorry man. you deserved a warm place where you could talk about whats on your mind. home is for healing and for expressing our feelings. just some thoughts. maybe youve thought of this before. what do you think?

here's the song I was talking aboutinteresting fact, this was the 2nd most expensive film ever

i made the wrong post and deleted it.

This was so cool, guys. Thanks again everyone for the call and thanks Ivan for recording and editing. Great stuff.

As I've been listening to the older music from the late 90's and early 2000's that I grew up with around my preteen years, I've been really fascinated by some of the themes in the lyrics and music videos that keep showing up. These themes include explicit anger towards parents, family dysfunction or some kind of sympathy toward children in these environments. Not that it makes these people philosophers. It just interests me that these themes were present in these popular songs and makes me wonder why they were popular when they were. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrZ4sMRYimw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkcbxjWG9Mc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BFHYtZlAU

haha oh yeah, I remember that scene. there is example in the book "The Sociopath Next Door" wherein Martha Stout describes what is known as a covetous sociopath,"where covetous has its usual referent: an inordinate desire for the possessions of others. Since it is not possible to steal and have for oneself the most valuable possessions of another person- beauty, intelligence, success, a strong character- the covetous sociopath settles for besmirching or damaging enviable qualities in other so they will not have them, either, or at least not be able to enjoy them a much.The covetous sociopath thinking that life has cheated her somehow, has not given her nearly the same bounty as other people, and how she must even the existential score by robbing people, by secretly causing destruction in other lives. She believes she has been slighted by nature, circumstance and destiny, and that diminishing other people is her only means of being powerful. Retribution, usually against people who have no idea that they have been targeted, is the most important activity in the covetous sociopath's life, her highest priority."So, no I wouldn't use envy as a way to seek vengeance upon a sociopath. If they target you, they will make your life miserable. They don't have to be violent to do this. And they don't feel shame. The best thing to do is to get away from them, cease contact.

Hello! I just watched this video and found that it rang true with me on many levels. What I wanted to do in this post is to hopefully add some value to the discussion by sharing with you some information that I found to be very interesting. In this video the argument was made that, 'Evil people, people without conscience, are people who are missing both arms. Thus, the desire, while understandable, to want to make cruel people feel bad is akin to saying you want to arm wrestle people who don't have arms. It will never work. you cannot make them feel bad because they lack the capacity to feel bad. Sociopathy has been described as about the most pleasant mental problem that their is. I mean how many people would love that from time to time, a lack of conscience, a lack of sensitivity to others, feeling swamped and overwhelmed by the needs and preference of other.they will try to draw you in, but you wont win." I couldn't agree more. I think that given those facts, it is not a wise, and even dangerous to seek vengeance against an evil sociopath. And from my own experience, my heart has indeed been crushed in all the attempts I've made to seek vengeance upon others. The best way to protect your heart is to avoid bad people completely. However, while sociopathy might be described as being the most pleasant mental problem that there is, I want to make the case that even so, sociopathy is still a very unpleasant mental problem. Hopefully by sharing these facts, I can not only further help free others from their occasional desire to be without the "burden" of a conscience or for vengeance, but also give you the additional satisfaction from knowing that sociopathy is nothing to envy. The information that I'm sharing comes from clinical psychologist Martha Stout's fascinating book, "The Sociopath next door." Many of us imagine that to be without a conscience would mean that we would be without the negative feelings that our conscience inflicts upon us when we compromise our values. Have you ever witnessed a person drop some considerable amount of money, a cell phone or maybe his entire wallet and then with out hesitation picked it up and gave it back to him, except maybe after you returned it you might have thought, "dang, that was a lot of money. I wish I wasn't such a good person. I totally would have kept it." I know I have, even though I know that if I were to keep the money, I'd be miserable from feeling guilty. So, from instances like this it's easy to think that being a sociopath would allow us the benefit of keeping the money without suffering negative repercussions from our guilt. It sounds like a sweet deal. In some sense, this is true. A sociopath would not suffer guilt, so it's understandable to think that it would be great to not have a conscience sometimes. To digress a bit, I think that the way many film's portray sociopathy might contribute to re-enforcing this desire. The way that sociopathy is portrayed is that the bad guys are kind like you and me. They enjoy life as much as we do, they are sometimes passionate and they 'love' being evil, hence the maniacal laughter. And if you're watching a Tarantino Film, they look so "cool". In reality, sociopaths are not so obvious or grand. They do not wear dark, hooded cloaks. They do not laugh maniacally. In fact, according to Martha Stout, “the only emotions that sociopaths seem to feel genuinely are the so-called 'primitive' affective reactions that result from immediate physical pain and pleasure, or from short-term frustrations and successes. sociopaths cannot experience love, passion or joy." She also states, based on a collection of studies she lists in the book(for the sake of brevity I will not list all of the studies here), that sociopathy "involves an altered processing of emotional stimuli at the level of the cerebral cortex. This neurobiological distinction is at least partially responsible for the still-unfathomed psychological difference between sociopath and all other people, and it implications are startling. Sociopathy is more than just the absence of conscience, which alone would be tragic enough. Sociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love. It is an aberration in the ability to have and appreciate real (noncalculated) emotional experience." Because of this inability to process emotional experience people who are sociopaths report that they are always bored or understimulated. The kind of painful boredom that a child might experience. They constantly crave extra stimulation to compensate. We don't experience this form of agonizing boredom because we have our emotional life. We are stimulated by our meaningful relationships with other people, sociopaths do not have this emotional life to live. In fact, a major study published in 1990 in the journal of the Medial Association estimate that a many a 75 percent of sociopaths are dependent on alcohol and 50 percent abuse other drugs. Besides, being bored and loveless, they also are not very comfortable in their own skin. To again use Martha Stout's words, "The absolute elf-involvement of sociopathy create an individual consciousness that is aware of every little ache and twitch in the body, every passing sensation in the head and chest, and ears that orient with acute personalized concern to every radio and television report about everything from bedbugs to ricin. Because his concerns and awareness are geared exclusively toward himself, the person without conscience sometime live in a torment of There is much more detail in the book and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topic. In conclusion, what I wanted to help ease the pain of knowing that you'll never be able to make sociopaths feel bad by pointing out that at least they have no capacity to feel Joy like we do. Sociopaths not only do not experience guilt, they cannot feel love or passion either, which is something I wouldn't want to experience no matter how much you paid me!

It's not about Stef, FDR, or the board. It's about the truth, virture, and living your values. If taking a break from here helps you achieve your goals, then by all mean do what you gotta do, brother. I haven't listened to the podcast series in like a month.

Amazing, I look forward to seeing more!

Today, I want to talk about a form of emotional abuse. But first, I want to share a bit of my history as well as my reasons for writing this. About 2 years ago I decided to move out and break from my parents. The reason I had to cease contact with them, particularly my mom since my Dad was often over seas for work, was because I felt entirely wretched living with her. I felt like my soul was slowly coming undone, that I was deteriorating from the inside. It was extremely terrifying making the first steps towards adulthood. I didn't feel like I was ready to move out. After all, I didn't even know how to use a washing machine, how insurance worked, or even how to write check. And boy, did I experience a great amount of shame, humiliation, and anxiety trying to learn these things from people. It felt like I was telling people that I still wet my bed and that I needed them to potty train me. I was afraid of being attacked or being perceived as a burden. I remember when I'd attempt to ask about how to use a washing machine, I would get replies that assumed I new something about what to do. "Oh, you just put in your change and press start!" "But, what about separating whites from other colors? What's the setting I need to put it on. Cold or warm water? What' the right amount of soap I should put in there? Do I use any other kind of detergent?" These were all questions that would go through my head, but I dared not to ask them. Not until I found a person who seemed kind and patient. Even then, for someone who was still bleeding from the wounds of neglect and verbal aggression, to reinforce this feeling by provoking the inevitable "You mean you don't know how to do this?" response from someone would be too overwhelming. So, while moving out was a definite improvement, there was a lot of work I needed to do on myself. During that time, I remember driving to and from work having conversations with imaginary people. In one imagination, a person would ask me, "So, why don't you still see your parents?" "Because they make me feel bad", I would say in response. "Oh? What is it that they would do that would make you feel so bad?" I would be asked in return. To my surprise, I was stumped. I had an awful lot of trouble articulating exactly what happened in a way that would do my experience justice. My mom rarely yelled, spanked me once, and called me a basket case once. Surely there had to be more to it than that. She did always ask if I wanted any of the food she cooked, which she'd leave wrapped up in tin foil on the stove. This was always really frustrating because I thought it was unnecessary to ask an able bodied 21 year old man if he would like some food when he can get some himself, especially since this happened almost daily and since I'd usually say no. Was that it though? When I said it like that, it didn't sound so bad to me and I began to question if whether or not I was just making a big deal out of something small. My mom, after all was only trying to help... Or was she? After spending a good amount of time introspecting and researching the answer eventually revealed itself as a definite no. But, it was a struggle for me to figure out why. My goal in this article i to help other who might be struggling to answer similar questions as well as to provide more clarity to myself while writing this. What was actually occurring in the example with my mom asking me if I wanted any food was an insidious form of abuse that is directly related to the fear, shame and the feeling of being unprepared for the world that I mentioned earlier. Can you see it? Do you know why it's so bad? If you don't know, that's okay and understandable. Especially, if you've been subjected to it. This form of abuse is called infantilization. To use the definition from the website http://outofthefog.net , Treating a child as if they are much younger than their actual age. Honey, will you please NOT Grow up? Some parents with Personality Disorders feel an overwhelming compulsion to be loved or needed. In some cases, this manifests itself in a dysfunctional style of child raising which constrains the child’s normal mental, emotional and social growth. As children mature, they progressively develop an increased sense of independence and capability, and as they do so, they naturally want to make more of their own choices and exert more control over their lives. This also means they gradually put more distance between themselves and their parents. For some PD parents, this development of independent thoughts, actions and opinions can seem threatening. All parents naturally experience a degree of stress as their children become more self-directed - the PD parent however may respond by taking increasingly desperate actions to delay or hinder their child's development. What it Looks Like A parent routinely and voluntarily shares the same bed as their 10 year old child. A parent routinely speaks in a baby-style sing-song voice to a teenager. A parent routinely assumes completely unnecessary responsibility for an older child’s wellbeing, including dressing, bathing and feeding. A parent routinely buys their child age-inappropriate clothing and toys or arranges age-inappropriate activities. A parent routinely and inappropriately cuts in and speaks for a child when someone else speaks directly to the child. How it Feels A child who is subject to Infantilization may be inclined to try to “let it go”, and not challenge a parent who is treating them in an age-inappropriate way in order to keep the peace. Some may develop the habits ofEnabling or Learned helplessness. Others may act out in anger, become prone to avoidance, or commit acts of sabotage. Children who remain infantilized into their teen years and beyond often feel shame and embarrassment in front of their peers, especially if their parent acts out the trait in public. Some may begin to avoid friendships and social interaction, or may be actively prevented from age-appropriate activities by the PD parent, further hindering their social and emotional development. Children and youths who are infantilized may be at an increased risk of acts of Self Harm or Impulsiveness, experience academic difficulties, and may possess poor social skills in adulthood. Sometimes, one parent will disapprove of another dysfunctional parent’s infantilization, yet fail to proactively address the problem in an attempt to keep the peace and avoid conflict. This is a form of Enabling. Infantilization is a form of Child Abuse, which starves a Child’s emotional being to feed the PD parent’s emotional need. There is no known legislation which outlaws Infantilization. However, some observant child advocates, guardian ad litem’s, therapists and evaluators may recognize the abuse, and take it into account in their reporting and decision making. That's a lot underneath a simple, "I cooked some food for you." And part of the reason it's so hard to see is because it's disguised as something nice, something helpful, something for you. This allows the abuser to decouple the cause and the affect of the abuse, so it' easier to deny. This way, you're left humiliated and hurt, but unable to figure out why and if you do speak up against the attack, the abuser can simply continue the abuse by invalidating your feelings and insisting that "they were only helping". And there are many more examples, when I was nineteen, my mom took me shopping. As I was trying on a pair of shoes, she said in front of the sales associate, "okay, now get up and walk in them to see if they fit!". Sometimes she would put my mail in front of the door step. Or she would insist on letting her tell me the directions to a place and that "I didn't need my GPS." Or when my windows were down while they were raining she would get my keys and roll the windows up. I remember my aunt buying me a remote control car for my 19th birthday. My mom and dad would talk to me in a baby voice. I remember sitting on my dad's lap until I was a teenager. And even when I was 20 I till would it next to him and lean on him and I called him "Deddy". The list goes on. Of all the damage this does to a person, it especially erodes one's self efficacy. Self Efficacy is one's perceived capabilities for learning or performing actions at designated levels. There are a number of things that affect or self efficacy. Vicarious experiences help. When we see people like us achieve something great we feel like we an o it to. Hence why o many fitness instructors will say, "I use to be fat", followed by presenting the before picture. But, by far what helps the most is our actual achievements. If you rated your confidence in making a basketball shot from 20 feet away a 5, but you managed to make the shot 10 times in a row, you might rate your confidence higher. Thus, when your parents don't allow you to achieve by taking responsibilities away from you or by shielding you from mistakes which allow you to grow, then you will essentially have your self efficacy eroded. Anyways, I hope this helps! Take care.

He made some progress, but It's not a proof.

Yeah, to use an analogy. Disassociation is like choosing the laughing gas to make the pain of the dentists operation more tolerable. But, maybe that analogy doesn't work, because usually when we disassociate we are only being tortured, whereas a dentist is inflicting pain on us to help.And we usually don't have a choice, our body just happily supplies us with a way to tolerate pain whether we like it or not. No shame in that!

That's interesting. What you're talking about happens to me too. Did you go to a public school where you constantly had teachers look over you to see your work? I remember that in elementary school a lot of our work would not only be taken up and graded but posted up out in the hallways with our names on it so everyone could see! These were mainly artsy stuff, but I think I recall even writings being put up as well. Either in the hallway or on the class room walls. So, it would make sense after doing that so much that maybe it became a habit to keep an audience in mind. Also, I don't think I was ever asked , "how do you think about your work?". It was always somebody else's standards imposed on me. I could never just try my best and feel good about that. Everything had to be excellent. I couldn't just jam on bass and have fun playing a riff that sounds like 12 other songs. I had to play things that were "original.", which made things very stressful when the standards are so high.So, it's like I imagine someone behind me saying "that's really good. That's very well written." Maybe, I'm trying to impress somebody still and that person was originally a parent. I dunno. But, what's depressing about having narccissitic parents is that the focus becomes pointed towards them. This happens because the bond is so weak you have to do anything to please them. What we should be encouraged to do was to develop our own standards and to go out in the world. Not stop looking towards the world and focusing on the parent.just some thoughts!

My goodness, what a day. Today marked a milestone in my progress. Today I was assertive. I stood up for myself. And it feels good. I might not have done everything ideally, there are a few moments during this conflict that I got stumped and a few things I wish I would have said. But, I'm okay with that because I set boundaries. I wanted to share this experience here to process my thoughts and in the hopes that it might be helpful to others. Nagging to me is undoubtedly emotional abuse. It is just another strategy to control, bully,humiliate, belittle and brainwash another human being. And like all emotional abuse, it can be very difficult to spot. The reason for this has to do with one of the main goals of emotional abuse, which is to get the victim to question her instincts and to attack herself. In order to do this, the abuse must be camouflaged, it must be presented as a virtue. Have you ever expressed your hurt to someone who has just put you down in front of others only to be told that "there's no reason to be upset and that it was only a joke." Have you ever expressed to someone that you don't like it when somebody does something only to be told that what they did was for you! Perhaps, they might have followed such protestations by putting you on the defenses with something akin to, "What would YOU have done to make the situation differently?" Even if you went through the horrible experience of something more easy to identify as abusive, like being hit or yelled at, the worst thing about these experiences is not the actual hitting or screaming. The worst part about these experiences is the emotional abuse that shortly follows, which is to be told that it was for your own good!This is what happened to me at work today. This guy chose to nag me and being someone who has a history of being nagged at, this really made me mad. While I feel some sympathy for the guy, one of the first things he told me about himself was that his "mom nags, but means well", that sympathy evaporated once he started to act out this machiavellian emotional bullshit onto me. What's really changed for me is that recently is that I've become a lot better at trusting my instincts and to have the courage to be able to say to myself, "I'm not fucking insane, damnit" And from my experience, your instincts are sometimes the best way to identify and counter emotional abuse. Before you can untangle the manipulative knots that are tightening around your self esteem with intellect, there tends to be a gut feeling that something is wrong. If you're really sensitive to this kind of stuff like me, then you will probably get really mad like me. It can be kind of overwhelming, but don't fight it. That is after all what you've been trained to do if you've been abused in this way. Rather, welcome it. embrace it. Fear not what others will think if your eyes gets glassy, your voice trembles, or if your cheeks flush from the intense feeling. This might look funny to others, but so do scabs and like scabs it is there to help heal you. I know that when somebody asks me to do a number of things, maybe more than once, who truly has my best interest at heart I feel it. I feel the compassion and concern. I might get a little annoyed, but it's totally outweighed by the feeling of appreciation. Similarly, when somebody makes a good joke, I'll laugh. I have a good sense of humor. So, when all of a sudden I feel the exact opposite of what the other person claimed to have intended, it's more quite likely that they in fact doing something cruel. Other than your gut, another way to tell that someone is nagging is that, once you do all the things the person asks, it's never good enough. There's always an escalation in the complaints.As I was wiping down some equipment, this guy jumped in to tell me, which would make his forth or fifth correction of the day, that what I was doing made no sense. "Hey, man. You're nagging. I don't like that." I replied. "Man, I wasn't nagging I was giving you the facts", he retorted. Notice here is where is tries to portray his abuse as, "for my own good." He was only "showing me how to do things correctly so the manager doesn't get on to him"Due do my history, I would get stumped from time to time, but I was determined to stand my ground. Even if I had to fight dirty, so I decided to hit him where I knew it hurt."Even if you're right, I don't like that. You don't like it when your mom nags you do you? " Harsh, but I think it was a pretty reasonable thing to ask. I'm tired of letting dirty fighters kick me in the nuts all the time. After this he went on about lecturing about how many things I had done wrong during the day, how such and such has to be done correctly. It's all about the job ect ect. In the past, I would get in the the trap of debating this crap. Sometimes, as this guy was, sophisticated abusive debaters will actually bring up things that are true. Then I would be on the denfensive saying, "but I am doing a good job!"Instead, I simply said, "you're being very rude and insulting.""Look, I don't care what you like, I'm going to tell you how to do this anyway. It's a job. It doesn't matter and you have to do it right"OH, the hypocrisy, the think about nagging, what makes it so infuriating is that it's so hypocritical. This was coming from a guy who basically sat on his ass all day, while I tried to keep myself busy.It was at this point, I lost all interest. Oh, so it's not okay for the manager to bitch at him, but it's okay bitch at me. You're just "giving facts?" Well, so was I. The fact was that he was being a jerk. He "doesn't care", what I like, so why should I care what he likes. There were so many mind fucks in there he might as well have just said "square circles - circle squares equal 5 because 2+2 really is 4 when the color of jealousy is red...personified. ". I just said "it's whatever, man." He mocked me, "it's whatever, man."I left him with the last word(I know this is might be false bitchiness, and am open to any better ways of handling these situations)"Well, I'm going to ask the manager what I can do around the store, since there's nothing to do over here. "Again, it isn't the nagging that's as destructive as the attempt to convince you that the nagging was justified and your fault. Anyway, I wanted to share my thoughts as well as vent and process this. Hope some of it's helpful. Take care.

I personally love talking philosophy to myself while pacing back and forth in the shower.

I actually asked the same question on another post a few days ago. My thoughts are similar to yours. I think ironically that originally self erasure was a self preservation mechanism. A plea to be allowed to live, especially if your parents hate you or feel like having you ruined their life as mine did. As a result, I would spend hours playing video games in my room alone.To be so deprived for love throughout life leaves a very painful wound. If we were taught how to grieve, how to identify, how to express compassion and curiosity towards ourselves, then this would be something we would do in response to our wounds. However, since we have internalized our parents hatred towards us, since our parents responded to our wounds, needs and deprivation with hostility and indifference, we respond to our wounds in the same way. Thus, self erasure to me is when we alleviate our anxieties by taking on the role of our parents and in some degree or another act out their aggression towards ourselves. Similar to how a bully acts out his parents physical aggression and alleviates his anxiety by beating people up. Depending on the severity of the aggression, this can look like anything from food addictions to self mutilation.

This is a fascinating topic. Stef runs through the basics of sexual imprinting in the last 3rd of this call in show.Hope this helps!http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_2644_Wednesday_Show_19_Mar_2014.mp3

Thank you for your time, vulnerability and courage to put this video out. It taught me something really important, which is that it's okay to make these kinds of mistakes, to learn from them, and to share your experiences with others. My usual pattern, after a break up or ending a friend relationship, has been to self attack and feel crippling shame. I've experienced voices like, "how could you have let this happen, you've read RTR, you know better!" This left me with much shame, so much that, while these are important things that have been going on in my life, I haven't shared these things on the board or thought about them as much as I could have. However, while watching your video and noticing that I was not harshly judging you, I couldn't help but wonder why I do that to myself sometimes. It's something that's been improving, but this video has motivated me to do more and in the future be more honest and vulnerable so that I can help others. I would like to get your thoughts on this, though. It's a question I've was asking myself as I watched your video. What do you think are the secondary gains to self erasure. Why do you think people self erase? Some reasons that occur to me are from my experience are that The alternative, being myself, would be extraordinarily anxiety producing. It's difficult for me to be authentic sometimes due to fear of attack from others in the moment, but it's also the long term consequences that are scary for me. I know deep down that If I am myself, that I will probably start looking for a different job, I will move somewhere else, I will change eating habits ect haha I was going to make a list, but my thoughts aren't very list like at the moment, so I'm going to ditch dots. So, I'm thinking maybe people self erase through bad relationships for the same reasons people self erase with drugs. To self medicate and to avoid grieving. And to not sit down and feel your own pain, to avoid grieving, would be doing to yourself what was done to you by your parents. Thus, in moments where we self erase, we are taking on the role of our parents, in much of the same way a bully who identifies with their abuser is taking on the of their parents when he hits others the way he was hit. The difference is that we are acting out our parents aggression not towards others, but rather to ourself. And presumably, since the more violent a parent is the more violent the bully tends to be, the more a parent hates her children, then more severe the self hatred in that adult child would be. And the more a person hates himself, because he's internalized his parents hatred, the more extreme the self erasure tends to be. I'm thinking of like self mutilation and things like that. Maybe this is helpful, maybe this doesn't make sense. I'd like to you or anyone else's perspective.

I think that taking baby steps, so as not to provoke feelings of futility and self attack, has been very helpful for me. So, instead of trying to answer big questions like 'what do I want to do with my life?' you can start with 'what do I want to do in the next twenty minutes?' And just trust your instincts. I think self trust is something that would be more valuable to you now than knowing how to sell. Maybe you already have this down pat, if so, please ignore what I'm saying here. Perhaps this podcast will be helpful.http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_973_Your_Next_20_Minutes.mp3Also, when you ask yourself sometimes i wonder why I can't use my knowledge and or ideas about society to make money. I can't understand why i haven't figured it out yet. I would encourage you to not look at yourself as if you are isolated. We can only be as large as the people around us let us be and if you live with parents who are abusive, who do not celebrate your mind and encourage your growth, or who are just boring, then your capacity to figure these things out is going to be severely diminished. And that's not your fault.In my experience, I have grown more in the past 3 months and tried more new things than I have in the whole year of 2012 and 2013. These are things such as writing music, writing articles, journaling more, learning html, recording my thoughts on video to getting prepared for youtube,.What's difference? I don't have negative relationships in my life, whereas before I was was living with my parents or hanging with people who didn't respect me. Now, I live all alone, I work at a minimum wage job, I make about 800 dollars a month, even so I worry a whole lot less about what my future because I've gained self trust. I do feel panic from time to time, but at least now I am in a position where it's not unbearable to me. When you are in an environment where you are feeling pain from being attacked and feeling anxious about being abused, it becomes very difficult to process additional stress like panic about the future. In conclusion, I would say it's not all your fault that you haven't figured this out. If you had parents to guide you into your passion who modeled how to achieve financial success and happiness or if you weren't trained to be a brain dead tax cattle for years in public school, you would have figured this stuff out when you were 14. You probably have not been trained think or been shown how to think make these decisions. I would find an environment that's conducive to growth and healing before figuring out how to sell stuff. A crappy job free from a horrible environment is better than no job, and financial security in a horrible environment, in my opinion.What made it hard for me to move out was that I projected in my imagination how I felt living at home into the future, so I added the stress of a crappy job, and subtracted the comforts of financial security and the outcome looked like a net negative. Like I was just going to be adding on additional stress. However this was not true, the additional well being and happiness that came from being away from my parents was a gain that far outweighed the negatives and inconveniences of moving out and being out on my own. I hope this helps, This is just my experience. Take care.

I am not entirely sure. I don't have a youtube channel, let alone a successful one but, I wanted to add to what Tyler was saying by sharing with you experiences I've had of being attracted and repelled by authorsFor example, the first time I came across Christopher Hitchens being interviewed about his book "God is Not Great" 7 years ago as I was exploring ideas on youtube, before I knew how to think, the first thing that came to mind when I saw him was "well, he looks like he needs Jesus." and I didn't finish watching the clip. I couldn't get past the baggy eyes, the annoyed look on his face, the messy hair. It was really distracting. He looked miserable, more miserable than the the High Priest of the Church of Satan, who's interview I managed to get through just a few minutes before! It wasn't until I read the God Delusion and got some foundation for how to think critically that I went back to read Hitchens' critiques of religion. And what got my then christian hiney over my reservation towards reading a book called The God Delusion was when i turned the book around and read that 'Richard Dawkins is one of the top 5 intellectuals in the world.' "Well, if he's that smart he must have some good reasons!", I thought. . I think making your appearance more mainstream is a good idea because when people have a look that stands out it can really interfere and distract the listener from the content. And I think the content in your videos are good. I've even tried some of your suggestions from the video 'how to jump into anyone's circle of conversation' today by asking a coworker if they like cats or dogs, which I found successful. But, I did find your look distracting. Maybe you can ask people for feedback and have a list of your reviews be one of the first things people see on your site. Like how Stef asks for itunes reviews.Speaking of mainstream maybe you could every once and a while dip into pop culture! I'm sure Stef got a lot more listeners with the "Truth About" Series talking about what 'everyone else' is talking about like Miley Cyrus, the Zimmerman trial, reviewing blockbuster film ect. Also, when I type something in the youtube search bar like "pulp fiction review" I'm attracted to videos that have titles that stand out as well as artwork which makes the video look interesting. I hope this helps!