E011: Mommie Dearest - Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers
Understanding Today's Narcissist
Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC
4.6 • 602 Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2017
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mommie Dearest: Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers: The 1981 movie, Mommie Dearest, has the infamous wire hanger scene where Joan rages over a single wire hanger in her daughter’s closet caused a stir with Joan’s physically abusive behavior. Daughters of narcissistic mothers report similar rages over small incidents. The constant shifting standards of perfectionism designed to elevate the narcissistic mother at the expense of the child defies the customary nurturing maternal instincts.
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| 0:00.0 | This is understanding today's narcissist. |
| 0:13.8 | Brought to you in part by psychcentral.com. |
| 0:19.9 | And now here's your host, Christine Hammond. |
| 0:27.3 | In an effort to try to understand one of my client's experiences better, she has a narcissistic |
| 0:33.9 | mom, I decided to rewatch the movie Mommy Dearest. |
| 0:56.0 | That was done in 1981. And I remembered it from a long time ago, but I couldn't believe some of the things that I had seen in that movie. And just how strongly it highlights what a narcissistic mom actually does to her child and how other people don't even get to see most of the damage that's actually done. |
| 0:59.9 | So today we're going to be talking about that movie. |
| 1:02.8 | And I want to explain the difference between what a narcissistic mom is versus what a nurturing |
| 1:10.0 | mom is. |
| 1:11.6 | And the reason I want to highlight the difference here is for all of those people who have come from a narcissistic mother. |
| 1:18.6 | Because what I have seen over and over again from my clients is that when you have a narcissistic mom, you think this is normal. |
| 1:26.6 | You know obscurely that there are other people who don't experience the same things that you do, |
| 1:33.4 | but you think that it's quite normal what you're experiencing, |
| 1:39.0 | and you tend to minimize some of the damage that a narcissistic mom really does and not even recognize what they're doing to you along the way. |
| 1:48.9 | And this is really important because the only way to stop this pattern from one generation to the next is by highlighting these parental differences so that you can truly see what it was, truly see the difference between what is |
| 2:02.3 | a nurturing mom and what is a narcissistic mom. |
| 2:06.7 | So let's go back to the movie for just one second. |
| 2:09.8 | The movie was done in 1981. |
| 2:12.4 | It was called Mommy Dearest. |
| 2:14.7 | And it was based on the autobiography of Joan Crawford, which was written by |
| 2:19.3 | her daughter, Christina Crawford, and Christina wrote about her experience with her mother. |
| 2:25.9 | And there's a lot of speculation as to whether the story is true. |
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