It seems as if all of our narcissistic mother's issues stem from her narcissistic wound.  This wound was perpetrated upon her in childhood by her own parents, when she needed attention or love or admiration or comfort, and instead was ignored, shamed, or humiliated.  I assume this was an ongoing thing that happened, and not just one particular incidence.  You can't have loving parents who make one mistake and then end up with a narcissistic child.  No, this has to be cemented in a child's brain, that they are only good enough when they are perfect.

This wound is opened up every single time they receive an injury (whether real or perceived).  This is the deep and everlasting and immortal thoughts of their parents "You aren't good enough" repeated in their heads which causes them to lash out.  Now, you have to have a special type of person who hears these words and lashes out in rage rather than funneling that feeling into something more healthy such as fuel to propel their lives forward to prove they certainly are worth something.  Although some, like myself, have taken those words and internalized them which ends up stunting many areas of our lives rather than propelling them forward.  But still, neither of these types of people are narcissists, even though we received the same narcissistic wounds as our parents.  If someone points out we're wrong, we don't retaliate by smear campaigns or screaming at people and belittling them back.  We might feel hurt, and that's normal, but the narcissist will feel utterly ashamed and humiliated over tiny little things.  Because that same wound, that one website describes as one that "opens us up to the nothingness of the dissolution of the self", for the narcissist isn't integrated into their emotional being as it is for the rest of us who aren't narcissists, but had narcissistic parents.  Instead, it stunts their growth right then and there, and they stay forever as that little child who learns not only that he or she will never be good enough, but takes it so internally as an utter humiliation to their core.  

But here is why I think this is total bullshit:

We ALL have narcissistic wounds.  Every single child of a narcissistic parent has them.  But not all of us follow in our parents' footsteps to become what they are.  Raise your hand if when you fail you've felt shame?  Or when you've said something you perceive as dumb, you have gotten red in the face?  Or have been embarrassed of your lack of knowledge on something?  And then raise your other hand if you've felt pretty humiliated or ashamed when these things have happened, perhaps a little more than you should?  Now raise your right foot if you've heard or felt the words "you're not good enough so why even try?" when you've tried to learn something new and failed?  Now raise your left foot if you've been told you're a highly sensitive person (or felt like you're one)?

I see a lot of hands and feet waving in the air right now.  (Now wave them like you just don't care!)

So, what's the difference between us and them?  Why was their horrible treatment of us not internalized as the need to construct elaborate lies and stories in order have to hide what we don't want others to see (which is that we're total failures)?  Why were the words "you're not good enough" told to us by them not treated as a way to pretend that we are not only good enough, but better than everyone else?  How come when we feel bad about ourselves, we'll wallow rather than retaliate?  How come when we feel ashamed about ourselves we will ask the other person what we did wrong rather than accuse them of being the one who did something wrong, because fuck that noise, WE'RE PERFECT DAMMIT!  Why don't we react that way?  

Because, friends, we're not fucking narcissists, that's why.  We carry the same narcissistic wounds (which are literally wounds created by our narcissistic parents) as they do, yet, we aren't narcissists.  

So tell me, psychologists of the world, again how this is the hole in which our abusive and narcissistic parents were born from?  You should me one and I will show you 100 more that didn't turn into narcs with the same wound.

No, my friends, narcs are born, not created.  They are high functioning sociopaths, plain and simple. And every single family I've ever interviewed or talked with, you can clearly seen the line in which the genes are passed down from parent to child, over and over again.  

One family in particular, the woman was born to a family of 6 kids.  She's the youngest, along with her twin brother.  The brother was the golden child, as were the rest of the children, and she was the scapegoat (who was the scapegoat before she was born is unknown).  Her mother was horribly abusive and narcissistic and never once told her "I love you".  But her brother was the best thing since sliced bread.  She eventually got away from her family, joined the Navy, and married a man she met while deployed, who was also in the Navy.  They had four children.  But before the next three were born, she noticed there was something wrong with her oldest.  He liked to kill small animals and had no regard for anyone but himself.  Eventually, after all the kids became teenagers, he hatched a plan murder his entire family.  He picked up his grandfather to drive them out to murder them, but the plan was botched by a passerby who saw him with a gun on the side of the road with the grandfather.  The passerby got shot (though he didn't die), and the kid was put into prison.  

All of her children were raised with love and caring from their mother, but that gene was passed down from her family (and her husband's bloodline) and created a psychopath.  He wasn't severely abused, horribly neglected or hurt as a child, but sociopaths and psychopaths are all cut from the same cloth.  Both her and her husband suffered the same narcissistic wounds as children, but she didn't become a narcissist, though her husband was.  Their kids all suffered the same narcissistic wounds from their father, yet only one turned out to be a narcissistic psychopath.  And we can't sit and say "Well, he was born that way" and not realize that every single narcissist were also born that way.  That every single narc has it running in there genes.  Do your own research, and you'll see just how true that is.

Another family I met had a narcissistic son, the overt type.  He was the apple of his mother's eye.  She, a narcissist herself, raised her son with total acceptance, every single thing he did was right, even the bad stuff.  He was the best of the best.  He was perfect.  His narcissistic wounds differ from those who are told they aren't good enough.  These types are told "you are always good enough, you are always better".  So they get the idea that unless they are performing at the top of their game, they aren't good enough, whether they are actually told that or not.  My own uncle was treated as a king, he was always perfect in the eyes of his parents, and he believed that he was perfect until the day he died, that he was above everyone else and didn't have to conform to social norms and held everyone else to a higher standard than he did himself.

The question remains, what if a sociopath is born to a family who aren't narcissists?  I say it's impossible.  If you really look closely, you'll see that every single psychopath and sociopath in prison and otherwise, that somewhere in their bloodlines, there are narcissists.  And always, always, at least one parent, if not both are.  

The narcissistic wounds had by non-narcissists and their narcissistic parents are the same.  The difference is the way we internalize it due to the way our brains work.  We aren't sociopaths.  They are.

MD Health.com says that you need to have at least three of these to be considered a sociopath (anti-social personality disorder):

According to ICD-10 criteria, presence of 3 or more of the following qualifies for the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder (~sociopathy):

1. Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.
2. Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, and obligations.
3. Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them.
4. Very low tolerance to frustration, a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence.
5. Incapacity to experience guilt or to profit from experience, particularly punishment.
6. Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalization for the behavior that has brought the person into conflict with society.

Well, according to that, my mom is a sociopath.  And I bet yours is, too.  According to one website (I read awhile ago, when I can find the link I will link it here), one psychologist suggests that all narcissism is just low level sociopathy.  That it's a spectrum disorder, just like autism and schizophrenia, and the higher you go, the more likely you'll be diagnosed with it.  As we can see the strides made in the diagnoses of autism (aspergers or ASD) with the diagnosis criteria being more widely recognized, I am sure in the future that narcissism will be seen on the sociopathic spectrum, as well.

I don't believe you can create a narcissist.  You can create a certain type of narcissist, yes, but not a narcissist themselves.  And it's definitely NOT only created by a narcissistic wound, as the information out there would lead us to believe.  Because if that was the case, then every single child of a narcissist would be a narcissist themselves.  And we know for a fact that's simply not true.






How about you?  Do you agree with my conclusion?  Do you recognize your own narcissistic wounds?  Can you classify your mother as a sociopath as stated by the above criteria?  Let me know and share your thoughts below.




Books and websites to check out:

The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout

I quoted this website above, even though it's a total New Age idea of narcissism, it's an interesting spin.  Feel free to check out out here: A. H. Almass (I do not condone anything in this website, I am only including it for informational purposes only).

Identifying and healing narcissistic wounds from HubPages.com