"I'm not doing anything," hisses Nmom as she repeatedly crashes into me with a shopping cart.

(Disclaimer: I don't know anything about you or your mom outside this post and I'm not trying to be offensive or rude.)

I know this sub is about narcissism but is your mother autistic? Has she ever been tested? I work with autistic children and adults daily and have done so for 11 years, and a lot of flags for her being somewhere on the autistic spectrum are in this post.

1) Rage at things not being find how they're expected or "should be".

2) Not understanding and accepting change as something that happens.

3) Violent lashing out because she can't deal with the stimulation and cognitive dissonance The change causes.

4) Repetition when distressed, the way she kept hitting you and doing the same thing over and over as if that's going to make things go back to the way they're "supposed to be". This disorder is BIG on repetition.

5) She genuinely doesn't seem to understand that she's done anything wrong. Autistic people have a huge problem with social cues and norms. Your mother sounds like she is incapable of acknowledging she's done something socially wrong and that sounds like a learned defense mechanism to hide her disability.

I see this last one a LOT, my clients will do something like steal someone's food in a restaurant and then deny they did it and try to shift blame and focus from them to me because now I'm the one "making a scene". They do this because it's frightening and embarrassing when you have to call them out on their behavior that they don't even fully understand themselves.

My point is, in this particular case it sounds like your mother may very well have a mental impairment, not narcissism. I'm not saying "oh she's crazy" or "autistic" like the internet uses it as an insult. I'm concerned she has a genuine medical problem that you should approach carefully and do what you can to get her help.

/r/raisedbynarcissists Thread