How to Overcome a Narcissistic Mother Wound Without Therapy

I first walked into a therapist’s office at age 19 to find support to deal with my negative thought patterns, self-sabotage and fractured relationship with my narcissistic mother.

Except, at the time, I had no idea my mother was narcissistic.

And, despite a full intake on my clearly dysfunctional family, the therapist made no connection between my problems and the home I grew up in.

Why Therapy Didn’t work

Now, this was the early 90s before the ACEs study that made the proven connection between childhood trauma and negative adult outcomes.

But my therapy journey continued for 20 years without any of my providers making this connection. Instead I was given strategy after strategy designed to fix me and help me get along with my mother.

Unsurprisingly, exactly none of these methods worked. At least, not for the long-term.

Not trauma-informed

None of my therapists were trained to see childhood trauma when it was right in front of them. Nor, were they able to discern that my mother had a personality disorder.

Not until one therapist after 20 years uttered under her breath that my mother sounded like a malignant narcissist or borderline personality.

Mind you, she did not give me any strategies to deal with this personality type/disorder. But, at least I had words to describe what I was up against.

Now I could begin to do my own research and finally understand why none of the therapeutic modalities fed to me ever moved the needle on my healing.

therapist had no lived experience

None of the therapists I sought to help me heal from my narcissistic mother wound had experience with the problem I faced.

I believe this is why they could not imagine a mother without empathy or compassion for her own child. They did not equip me to deal with a maternal figure whose motivations differed greatly from that of a normal mother.

When I suggested distance from my mother, one therapist said, “you will always regret not having a relationship with your parents.”

She encouraged me to do whatever it took to maintain a connection with my mother. This meant trying every self-abandoning strategy under the sun, in an effort to make things work.

Little did she know that nothing you say or do will help you get through to a narcissistic personality. All my attempts to forge a functional relationship with my mother had been futile.

therapy focused on surface changes

Thanks to the ACEs study and my own research, I now know that my self-sabotage resulted from my traumatic childhood.

Yet, every therapist I saw treated my self-defeating behavior as a character flaw. I was told to replace negative thinking with Learned Optimism, the name of a positive psychology book shoved into my hands by my first provider.

She reasoned that it was just as easy to expect the best as to expect the worst, so why didn’t I do that?

Now, I know that negative thinking was my inner child’s way of protecting me from the pain of disappointment or surprise outcomes.

When you grow up with a narcissistic mother, surprises are rarely good. It feels safer to anticipate a negative outcome than to hope for a positive one.

Rather than delving into the reasons behind my thought processes and behaviors, I was encouraged to change them.

But only when I learned to get curious about my thoughts, feelings, and actions was I able to alter them in an authentic, rather than surface, manner.

When I began to examine the root causes of my issues, true healing finally happened. This led to an internal transformation from which change came naturally, rather than the forced change that therapy encouraged.

How to find help that works

If you do choose to go the therapy route, find someone who has lived experience with your issues and who understands childhood trauma.

Read everything you can find that explains the link between childhood trauma/narcissistic abuse and adult negative outcomes.

Do the opposite of what therapy taught me and get curious about your thoughts and feelings instead of changing them without examination.

Do inner child healing and understand how self-sabotage is your child’s way of protecting you and preventing your pain.

Delve into the research on self-compassion, one of the only forms of therapy that has helped me heal my narcissistic mother wound. You can use this helpful modality on your own by visiting Kristin Neff’s self-compassion website.

Learn to regulate your emotions and nervous system through techniques such as EFT tapping. Find thousands of tapping videos on Brad Yates channel.

final words

Therapy is not the only way to heal your narcissistic mother wound. In fact, 20 years of therapy failed to help me at all.

Finding a new approach to healing that flew in the face of everything I had been taught on the therapist’s couch finally set me free.

If you’d like to learn how you too can heal from a narcissistic mother without wasting 20 years in therapy like I did… join me for a free training where we’ll dive into these concepts together. Register here now.