About Me

Hi, I'm Danu Morrigan.

It's not my real name. I don't want to use my real name on this website as I don't want it coming up in search engines. I don't want my parents finding this website, because their wrath would be awful to behold and I am, frankly, scared of what they would do. Their rage when I tried the slightest speaking up for myself was bad enough - I really think this would be beyond awful.

Staying anonymous also means that I can be more honest about my experiences.

It's hard to encapsulate a lifetime of experiences here. And in many ways there's no point in doing that. This website is about YOU, and my experiences are only relevant in as much as they give you examples you can relate to.

I believe that my mother is Narcissistic, and that my father is Enabling.  

In fairness, though, there are many Narcissism Traits she does not have.

She does not seem to have fantasies of unlimited success. Her grandiosity, if it exists at all, is about her importance in her own sphere rather than any global grandiosity.

She is not rude to people such as waiters and shop staff - on the contrary, she is very polite and friendly to everybody.

She is not inappropriate sexually.

She is not vain - again, the contrary, she never really bothered about her appearance beyond proper hygiene.

But having said all that, she does share many traits.

It's always about her. She's totally self-centred. She demands respect and obedience. She gives blatantly unsuitable presents. She talks non-stop about herself and her doings. She has no real interest in me or mine.

She likes my successes so she can boast about them but never celebrates those successes authentically with me. She has no real empathy for my problems and tragedies, but feeds off the drama of them. She does not tolerate me being my real and authentic self.

She would deny all the above, of course. As she has denied them to my face when I have said this, often in a bullying and aggressive way.

But all of the above is true. Or at least, I am not privy to her thoughts, feelings and motivations. But her actions shout loudly that this is the truth and I am finally learning to believe my perceptions.

I went NC - i.e. No Contact - with both her and my Enabling Father last September, after a last-straw meeting with them. It was just unendurable - we were at a restaurant for two and a half hours, and except for ordering food and other such exchanges, she talked non-stop about a holiday she'd recently been on.

Such things had happened a million times - it was standard procedure. What was different about that meal was that a friend of mine came. And it was she, who, horrified, sat me down afterewards and told me just how dysfunctional this was.

She acknowledged that I had told her beforehand how awful spending time with both my parents was, but said she just hadn't understood, that she simply couldn't have imagined that depth of dysfunction.

She had been observing, she told me, and saw that my mother never once even so much as looked at my son. Apart from saying hello to him when we met, she, and my father, ignored him. Likewise with my sister - neither parent seemed to register her presence. (Needless to say, they didn't have the courtesy to speak to my friend either.) As for me, my mother latched onto me as the Official Audience and spoke at me, but she didn't see me or register me either.

It was so liberating to hear this perspective from my friend, and I realised that I really did not want to see my parents again. Ever. It was as if her validation gave me the permission I had longed for, to cut off contact with them.

But how to tell them?

I spent two weeks being literally nauseous at the prospect of telling them this. As I said above, the simplest request to be treated better brought wrath and abuse upon me - I dreaded to think how they'd react to this.

Would I write to them? Or phone them? Or text them? Or just ignore them and hope they got the hint?

Two weeks later my father rang and suggested we meet again for lunch. I said that I did not want to. He asked, in a dangerous voice, why I didn't want to. I - shaking and terrified - said that the previous lunch had been an ordeal and I was not anxious to repeat it. He asked how it had been an ordeal. I told him, as calmly as I could - with him repeating this to my mother as I spoke. This was very unnerving, it was like speaking with an echo on the phone. I asked him not to do this but he insisted he had to, and I accepted it.

Once I had finished he took a deep breath and the abuse began. He called me names and made hugely sweeping statements about my horrible character and personality. I, like a fool, sat and listened to it and tried to defend myself from his attacks. I was still trying to be calm and reasonable and use *I* statements, rather than attack back.

After a while my mother came on the phone and took over the second shift of abusing me, gaslighting me to the max over what had happened. She denied everything I said, even to the extent of telling me that I had, quote, 'a very vivid imagination'. And she finished by ending up in tears, saying that she was going into hospital soon for a major operation and was really worried about it - the subtext being that she didn't need the upset of this row. I apologised for the timing, but stood over what I said. (I didn't think to point out that it was my father who had precipitated the conversation - I had not phoned them to have this discussion. And yes, I could have waited till after the operation, but believe me, she would have found some excuse no matter the timing.)

It was horrible.

It ended with us hanging up the phone in mutual fury, and that was it. We haven't spoken since, and that was seven months ago, at the time of writing.

The Narcissism Realisation

It was in mid-October that it happened:  I was doing routine stuff (going to the bathroom to brush my teeth before bed - it couldn't have been more mundane!) and wasn't thinking about her. But out of nowhere the realisation hit me, as clear as a voice, "She has Narcissistic Personality Disorder".

My reaction was: "Of course!"

I had researched NPD for a project a few years previously, so did know about it. But I had not equated it with her until that moment. What I had been researching had been Narcississtic men, and the grandiosity etc, as I say, did not apply to her. And the classic idealisation/devaluation pattern did not apply either as she and I had never met as strangers.

The next day I researched NPD with a view to considering if it could be true. And Oh. My. God. The boxes that were ticked! The lightbulbs that went on!

And so began my DONM (Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers) journey.

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