Caught in the Crossfire: When Daughters Speak up
Navigating the Emotional Storm of a Narcissistic Mother and an Enabling Father
"In our family portrait, we look pretty happy / Let's play pretend, let's act like it comes naturally." - PINK
One of the most devastating and invisible wounds a woman can carry is to have been raised by a narcissistic mother. Men raised by a narcissistic mother are equally wounded but in a different way. Today we are diving in the realities of a girl, a woman being raised by a narcissistic mother. Those who have lived through this and have a personal experience might recognise some aspects. Others, might find it interesting and notice some traits in their friends, work colleagues, society at large. Some already know that the pain runs deep. They have spent years, often decades, being told they are imagining things, “too sensitive,” “selfish,” “dramatic.” These daughters live a lifetime under the shadow of manipulation, never being allowed to feel safe in their own skin or in their own house, room. They feel tolerated but never accepted.
As Alice Miller wrote, “The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday the body will present its bill.”
THE BODY ABSORBS IT ALL
Autoimmune diseases, mental health struggles, and various physical ailments often trace their roots back to years of emotional abuse. When we speak of emotional abuse, it’s vital to remember that while we inhabit a physical body, our true powerhouse is our energetic body — invisible, yet deeply affected by the world around us. Words carry energy. And abusive words, especially repeated and unhealed, tear holes in our energetic field. We live, often unknowingly, with these leaks — patching them occasionally, yet still vulnerable to fresh attacks that rip us open once more.
VALIDATION IS KEY
Unacknowledged, unvalidated experiences don’t simply disappear — they linger, fermenting into chaos within. Worse still, such energetic wounds seem to attract similar patterns and people, like honey draws bees or blood draws predators. For some, energy is a resource — they sense yours and feed off it, growing stronger as you grow weaker.
“Be a good girl, you’ve gotta try a little harder / That simply wasn’t good enough to make us proud.” - Alanis Morissette
Folk stories, myths, and ancient teachings all knew this truth: energy is life force. And when it’s taken or fragmented, the body eventually bears the cost. Modern society has lost much of its wisdom about how to understand and transmute such experiences. Without this alchemical insight, many live lives of constant repair — applying patches to deep wounds — until, one day, the body can no longer hold the dissonance. It speaks in illness, in exhaustion, in dis-ease.
You wouldn’t wish this on anyone. And I admit—when I’m not feeling charitable—I wouldn’t even spare my enemies from it. Because when the one who was supposed to love you most becomes the architect of your trauma, it marks your soul in ways most people can’t comprehend.
GENERATIONAL TRAUMA
A narcissistic mother is often the product of generations of emotional abandonment as showcased in psyco genealogy a topic I am going to cover in the next blogs. Or she might be the one who starts it all—the origin of a lineage of pain. This mother cannot love. She doesn’t know how. She may envy her daughter’s spirit, youth, potential, and femininity. She might hate her child, even if she can’t consciously admit it. That hate is often masked with control, criticism, coldness, or suffocating “love” that’s always conditional.
THE MOTHER CHILD BOND
The mother-child bond is foundational. In those early years, a child needs her mother’s warmth, attention, and connection. It’s about survival. Nature knows this—just watch a mother wolf with her young, a duck with her ducklings. But human mothers can deviate from this natural instinct in terrifying ways.
When your mother is emotionally immature, toxic, or narcissistic, you are not safe in her care. And this lack of safety becomes the filter through which you experience the entire world.
Dr. Karyl McBride, author of Will I Ever Be Good Enough?, writes:
“When you are raised by a narcissistic parent, you learn to believe that love must be earned and that your worth is tied to how well you serve someone else’s needs.”
YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU ARE TOLD
You grow up believing you are not enough. That you must constantly fix yourself just like Tinker bell has a compulsion to fix everything. . That you are broken, burdensome, unlovable. You become your mother’s scapegoat—blamed for her unhappiness, her regrets, her life, her broken dreams or illusions. Her shame becomes your identity. Her lack of belonging your curse.
YOU TRY HARDER BUT IN VAIN
And yet, the pull toward her remains strong. The abused daughter often returns—again and again—hoping that maybe, just maybe, things will change. That the person in front of her will finally show something other than the familiar disapproval, expressed in countless subtle and overt ways. For many, it's not love they long for—because love, in its true form, is still a foreign language. What they crave is relief: for the constant criticism to stop, for a warm smile to replace the cold gaze, for genuine interest in their lives to take the place of interrogation. What they want is simple—to be accepted, not scrutinized. To feel safe, not threatened.
That’s the cruelty of it. You keep trying to turn rejection into acceptance when you are 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and so on. You keep trying as if you are on a self destructive mission. It is a kinda of a trance you know’ But a narcissistic mother cannot love or accept you the way you deserve to be accepted and even loved. She never could. She never will.
She competes with you. She envies you. She gaslights you. She blames you. She punishes you when you assert independence. She manipulates with guilt. She sabotages your relationships time and time again . She plays the victim. Her emotional immaturity and inner misogyny shape how you see all women—including yourself.
She expects you to care for her emotionally. You become her therapist, her emotional sponge, her audience. Your needs are irrelevant. Expressing feelings gets you labeled “dramatic” or “difficult” or ungrateful. You learn to ignore your needs entirely, until you no longer recognise them as valid.
She demands control, not connection. She distorts your reality, rewrites your memories, calls you a liar to preserve her image. Every attempt at boundary-setting is met with rage or punishment—often the dreaded silent treatment. Sadly this is how you carry in in life - with a dangerous lack of boundaries which puts you in more emotionally damaging situations until you wake up and start to believe you are worthy.
NOTICE YOUR PATTERNS
Your pattern is clear - You begin to live on high alert. You scan rooms for moods. You become hyper-vigilant, always anticipating others’ emotional needs, because your survival once depended on it. As trauma expert Pete Walker writes:
“Children traumatized by narcissistic parents become codependent. They learn to obsess over other people’s feelings in order to stay safe.”
You grow up afraid to be seen, yet desperate to be chosen. Your inner voice constantly whispers you're not enough. That voice? It’s hers.
You might struggle to trust women. You may attract narcissists in romantic relationships. You may sacrifice your autonomy for crumbs of love—because that’s how your nervous system was trained. Love and anxiety come together in your world.
And the most tragic part? You live as though your life is a debt you owe to her. You are emotionally fragmented, walking through the world with parts of you stuck in childhood—abandoned, afraid, unseen.
HEALING JOURNEYS ARE CHALLENGING
Many daughters, in their healing journey, come to a terrifying, liberating truth: to reclaim your life, you must cut contact. You must reparent yourself. You must give yourself what she never could: safety, love, truth, and dignity.
As Dr. Jonice Webb explains:
“Emotional neglect is invisible. Yet it affects everything—the way you feel about yourself, how you treat others, and your sense of belonging in the world.”
You didn’t deserve a cruel, emotionally absent mother.
You didn’t deserve to be someone’s emotional punching bag.
You deserved love. Kindness. Empathy. Nourishment. To be seen and held.
She may never admit the damage she caused. She may believe she is the victim. But your healing begins when you stop trying to win her love and start giving that love to yourself.
Reparenting is a radical act of rebellion. And it’s also an act of survival.
It means choosing, every day, to give your inner child the safety, warmth, and voice she was once denied. Hold her hand in your mind. Tell her she’s not too much. Not too needy. Not a burden. Remind her—gently—that she is worthy of rest, of joy, of being loved simply for existing.
And remember: that harsh voice in your head is not your own.
It’s time to soften it, to let your true voice emerge—the one that speaks with compassion and curiosity.
Healing is not linear. It will start, stop, stumble, and restart many times. That’s natural. One of the tools I found deeply helpful is writing. Sometimes, all you’ll manage is a single word or a row of simple lines, even symbols. That’s okay. That’s your subconscious beginning to release, to speak.
Other days, you may fill a page—or ten. Whatever comes, welcome it. This is not about performance. It’s about presence. Too often we wait for someone to tell us what to do. That’s understandable. But part of healing is gently learning to trust your own rhythm. Your own intuition.
TRY THIS
Still, when you feel stuck, have a few gentle prompts ready.
Before you write, give yourself just five minutes. Sit quietly. Breathe. Ask yourself:
What do I need to let go of today?
What truth is asking to be shared?
Then wait.
Close your eyes. Let your favorite music play softly in the background. Breathe deeply, kindly. And begin.
Until next time, stay kind to yourself. And if the words move you, I’d be honoured to hear what they stirred in you.
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