Is it normal to blame Nmom for crappy adulthood? At what point should I stop blaming her, and blame myself?

I mean, technically, much evidence suggests we don't really have free will anyway (in the physical sense) so everything is the Big Bang's fault. :P

It's a silly example but it does make a good point for me: Causality/blame needs to be decoupled from what we "ought" to do or feel in order for any of this to be useful.

You may be able to trace back several problems to the actions or words of your N-parent, but ultimately, what good does it do to assign blame? It doesn't actually solve anything.

I used to complain a lot about how unfair my N-mother was to me, and I think subconsciously I just wanted someone to take pity on me and somehow solve all my problems. I can now look back at that and recognize that this is exactly what fosters narcissism in the first place: A chip on the shoulder and a need to blame someone and have them do right by you.

Being raised by a narcissist isn't fair. You deserved better. But, what's done is done. No one is going to swoop in and make up for your lost years. The only person who can fix anything is yourself.

Your parents may be to blame, but now that you're an adult, you have something you didn't have in your younger years: Autonomy.

This means learning how to say "My mother is to blame for a lot of this. But that's fine -- I don't have to associate with her anymore. I will use what I've learned from my upbringing as fuel for self-improvement. I will set goals for myself and constantly work towards them."

For me, this meant getting my finances in order by visiting /r/personalfinance and picking up all the good habits I never learned in my younger years, going to /r/fitness and learning how to put together a healthy lifestyle, learning how to make trips to the dentist and doctor, learning how to improve my marketable skills so I could become employable, going to meetup groups to meet new people and make new friends, etc etc etc. All of these things have synergistic effects on each other.

You'll be spending so much time trying to improve yourself that you won't have time to sit back and throw shade at your mother. She's in the wrong -- and she's to blame -- but she is incapable of apologizing, and incapable of giving you what you need in the most basic human sense.

So use that pain to fuel your forward momentum and focus on becoming the best version of yourself -- even better than the version of yourself in the alternate realities where you weren't raised by N-parents. :P

/r/raisedbynarcissists Thread