14 Oct Perspective of a counsellor: Unloved daughters of Narcissistic mothers

Unloved daughters of narcissistic mothers usually grow to hate and resent their mothers, and rightfully so. When reading this post, it’s important to differentiate between feelings and behaviours as they are two separate things.

In my observations, when any grown child says they hate or resent their mother there’s usually a long history of abuse, neglect and intently withhold of love and acceptance. Children naturally love their parents. Parents are the child’s lifeline and main focus of attention their entire young lives. They couldn’t survive without the parent.

So when a daughter grows up and creates distance from her mother and can easily say she hates her or just can’t love her anymore, it’s usually rightfully so when the mother was narcissistic, selfish, emotionally abusive, self centered, looked at her daughter as competition, used her daughter only to validate herself, made things always about herself, blamed everything on her daughter, constantly shaming her daughter, jealous of her daughter, tells her daughter she will never enter paradise and God is angry with her constantly making dua against her, only provided scraps of love and approval if her daughter does what she wants, telling her how she regrets giving birth to her, constantly put her daughter down telling her how she is a failure and never good enough.

When a daughter grows up and says she hates her mum, don’t be quick to jump in with all the religious texts guilt tripping and shaming the daughter for feeling this way. You get treated the way you treated your children. Children love you when to show them love, they respect you when show them respect. These feelings didn’t just come out of nowhere because the child woke up feeling rebellious. The narcissistic mum planted these feelings years ago.

If your child is saying they hate you, get off your high throne for a minute and look within yourself, ask yourself what you have contributed to this and take responsibility.

Daughters of narcissistic mothers, the way your mother behaved toward you was not your fault, know that you didn’t deserve this unkind treatment even if she told you that you did.

Abuse from a narcissistic mother is really the most painful. Mothers are supposed to be a child’s source of affection and unconditional love, not the source of chaos, pain and suffering. What usually happens is when the unloved daughter grows up and realises the one person who was supposed to protect her from harm is the one source who harmed her, this is when they start moving away leaving the narcissistic mother to die in her rage.

This is not a call to disrespect mothers. It’s identifying a common problem. If you’re an adult child of a narcissistic mother, it’s possible to feel both the deep resentment for the abuse and at the same time love for whatever good they did while learning how to navigate these conflicting feelings by treating your mother within the Islamic framework and boundaries.

Invalidating your feelings and pain or lying to yourself that those feelings are not there because of the guilt of being a bad Muslim child does not make the pain go away nor does it allow you to heal. It’s ok to acknowledge how you feel.

By: Mohamed Rima