How no one is safe from a narcissist’s influence
There was no funeral for my mom.
No memorial service, no slideshow, no casseroles dropped off at the house.
She’s still alive. She still texts sometimes. Her name still pops up on my phone. But the woman I knew as “Mom” – the one who laughed with me in the kitchen, who danced around with a spoon in her hand, who would quietly circle back and reassure me, “Your dad is wrong about you” when I asked what she really thought – I lost her.
And I didn’t lose her to death.
I lost her to a story.
To someone else’s version of events.
To someone else’s emotions.
To someone else’s control.
I lost my mom to the influence of a narcissist.
When your mom slowly stops being “your mom”
Losing a mom like this doesn’t happen all at once.
It happens in moments that, at the time, you try to shrug off:
– When she stops asking, “How are you really?” and only wants to know why you’re upsetting him.
– When “I believe you” quietly fades into “Well, your father says…”
– When you talk about how unsafe you feel, and she talks about how stressed he is.
What makes it even more disorienting is that before everything exploded, we actually were on the same page.
While I was still living there, we would quietly commiserate about the dysfunction and the abuse.
Late-night talks in the kitchen.
Little looks across the room when something was said that we both knew was not okay.
Mom and I both knew certain things weren’t normal… weren’t healthy.
We named it together, even if we couldn’t always say the full words out loud:
– The way he talked to her like she was beneath him.
– The way the whole house would tighten around his moods.
– The constant walking on eggshells.
I hated hearing the degrading way he spoke to her. It made my stomach knot up. It made her smaller and smaller. And I wasn’t just afraid for myself — I feared for her and for my sister. I could see the toll it was taking on them.
In those quieter moments, it felt like I had a person.
It felt like she understood exactly what I was thinking and feeling, because she’d been living it too.
But when the heat of the moment came — when things escalated, when it was time to actually stand up and say something out loud — she went quiet.
The mom who nodded with me in private disappeared in public.
Instead of standing beside me, she started standing beside his version of me.
After I left: the version of her that still got it (for a while)
When I moved out, there was this window of time where she still clearly saw what was going on.
While she was in Arizona, away from the daily pressure, she understood why I moved out. She told me she was proud of me for it:
– Proud that I got out.
– Proud that I stuck up for myself.
– Proud that I wrote the letter.
She said she understood.
She even said she thought it might be the wake-up call he needed — that it could be good for him and maybe get his attention.
She didn’t appreciate the way he used her as a prop to create a fake united front. He loved to say things like:
– “Your mom and I talked and she agrees.”
– “Your mom and I talked and she’s upset with you.”
– “We talked, and if you don’t believe me you can even ask her. I encourage you to ask her.”
So I did ask her.
And her answers were consistently:
– “No, that never happened.”
– “I didn’t say that at all.”
Eventually, exhausted, she said the quiet part out loud:
“It sounds like your dad has been doing a lot of speaking for me, using me to say things that I never did, and didn’t know about.”
She was noticeably underweight from all the stress of being in the middle between me and Dad. I could tell in our talks and in the way she sounded. And I could tell she dreaded going home. The way she talked about going back wasn’t excited or rested — it sounded like bracing herself to re-enter a storm.
For a while, from that distance, she was clear-eyed. She saw the manipulation. She named how he put words in her mouth.
And then she went home.
The slow fade to his side
After she returned home, things started to change.
It didn’t happen in one big conversation. It was more like a slow leak.
I started noticing that when I talked to her like I used to — honestly, openly, naming the dysfunction the way we had in the kitchen — she was quieter.
Where she once gently agreed with me, she now paused.
Where she once said, “I know, that’s not right,” she started hesitating.
And slowly, she began to take up for him. Almost timidly at first, and then more confidently — using lines that never sounded like her but were exact phrases I had heard come out of his mouth.
Sentences that had his rhythm, his tone, his theology.
Just… coming out of her.
It was a slow fade:
– From “I’m proud of you for getting out” to “You need to understand what this is doing to your dad.”
– From “He shouldn’t be speaking for me” to “We’ve been advised…” and “We talked and we agree…”
– From “He’s been using my name to say things I never said” to her almost unconsciously becoming the one repeating his narrative.
The woman who once quietly circled back to encourage me — who laughed, who danced in the kitchen, who told me Dad was wrong about me when I asked what she really thought — started sounding less like herself and more like his echo.
And there was something else:
When Mom is in Arizona or away from him, she is light. She laughs and dances and makes jokes and sings. There’s a freedom and brightness in her.
But when she’s near him, there is a visible shift. She’s quiet. Meek. She looks mentally heavy, like she is carrying something you can’t see but can’t ignore.
I can’t tell her story or speak for her.
But this is my experience.
And I truly miss my mom so much. I hope one day she can live in freedom and lightness.
What no one prepares you for
No one prepares you for the guilt you feel for the people who stay behind in the toxic environment.
Nobody tells you that when you finally leave, part of your heart will stay in that house, pacing the floors at night.
When I left, I felt like I was abandoning them.
I was scared for them.
I was scared for me, too.
I hoped that me leaving would give them a safe spot to go if they ever needed it — that maybe my getting out would crack a door open for them, show them it was possible, give them a place to land if everything collapsed.
But no one prepared me for this:
– No one prepared me for my safe person, my mom, to slowly look at me differently.
– No one prepared me for my safe person to start using the same phrases as my dad.
– No one prepared me for the moments that made me sick to my stomach, when the woman who watched me grow up and understood me when no one else seemed to, suddenly no longer understood me at all.
It was like years of confidential conversations had never happened.
I wasn’t prepared to be seen as the outsider by my own mom.
I didn’t expect to need boundaries with her.
I didn’t expect her to be the one trying to get me to take them down.
I didn’t expect her to mirror my dad so much that she stopped being someone I trusted myself with.
That was devastating.
Over the last year, I’ve had a lot of lies told about me and a lot of lies believed about me.
I’ve watched people who said, “I’ll always be there,” slowly disappear.
I’ve seen people look at me differently, like I’m the problem, like I’m the drug addict who hit the dog with the car and kept driving.
And as painful as that is, I still wasn’t prepared for my mom to start looking at me that way too.
If I’m honest, I’ve had moments of anger and resentment toward her.
Then it turns into deep sadness.
Because it’s my MOM.
But I also know this isn’t all her fault, and she isn’t the same woman I knew a year ago. The pressure she’s under is real. The fear, the spiritual twisting, the years of trying to keep someone else calm — all of that has shaped her reactions.
I always prayed and hoped she didn’t feel like I abandoned her or left her behind.
But I have to keep reminding myself: both my mom and my sister are adults. They could leave.
They choose to stay and look out for him.
I chose to go and finally repair and look out for me.
That makes me a villain to some people, and I’ve made peace with that.
I’ve accepted that as long as people only hear one side of the story, I’ll be the bad guy in their version.
I’m hoping that one day my story can come out in its entirety.
“No one is safe” doesn’t mean “everyone is evil”
When I say no one is safe from the influence of a narcissist, I don’t mean everyone around them is a bad person.
That’s actually what makes this so heartbreaking.
Narcissistic control works best on good people:
– People who want to be loyal.
– People who hate conflict.
– People whose faith has been twisted into “submit, overlook, forgive, repeat.”
– People who are exhausted and just want peace in the house.
My mom is not a villain.
She’s not a monster.
She’s a tired, overwhelmed woman who has spent years in a system where keeping him calm feels like survival.
In that kind of environment, truth becomes negotiable, but his feelings never are.
How the narcissist slowly takes your mom from you
Here’s what it looked like for me, in real time.
1. He made everything about his pain
If I set a boundary, it became:
– “Look what you’re doing to your father.”
– “He’s so hurt, he’s crying, he can’t sleep.”
– “We’re both so stressed.”
My letter about my mental health, anxiety, and feeling unsafe got turned into how much he was suffering. How much they were crying. How worried they were.
Mom’s role became echoing his pain back to me:
“Your dad feels bad. He knows he messed up with you girls and feels really bad for it.”
My pain became optional. His pain became sacred.
2. He recruited “authority” to back him up
Instead of just saying, “This is how I feel,” he lined up support:
– Pastors
– “Trusted friends”
– “People who know and love you”
– Even “legal advice” and “a deputy told us…”
By the time it got back to me, it wasn’t just his opinion anymore. It was:
– “We were advised…”
– “Everyone we’ve talked to agrees…”
– “Spiritually, we’ve been told…”
And my mom joined that chorus.
It’s hard to argue with a whole invisible panel of “experts” you’re never allowed to see, hear from directly, or question.
3. He rewrote the story, and she repeated the script
If I left because I was anxious, depressed, and unsafe, the story became:
– “You left your family.”
– “You’re listening to horrible, un-Christlike, even satanic advice.”
– “People told you to blow up your family.”
If I set a communication boundary (email only), the story became:
– “You’re hiding in the shadows.”
– “Email creates drama.”
– “You’re avoiding real conversation.”
If I protected my fiancé and wanted him included, the story became:
– “We legally can’t be around him.”
– “We’re afraid of escalation.”
– “You’re being manipulated.”
Mom repeated those lines.
Sometimes I could almost hear the quotation marks around her words – like she was reading a script she didn’t write, but felt obligated to perform.
The day it really hit me: “I’ve lost her”
There wasn’t one giant explosion that did it. It was more of a quiet snap inside of me.
I remembered all the times we had quietly agreed things were unhealthy. All the times she’d sighed and said, “I know,” under her breath. All the times she’d told me Dad was wrong about me when I asked what she honestly thought.
Then I heard her say something I knew, deep down, she didn’t fully believe. Something that came straight out of his mouth, wrapped in “we.”
In that moment, I realized:
– She was more afraid of upsetting him than of losing me.
– She was more loyal to his version of events than to what she’d lived through with me.
– She would bend her words, her memory, and even her integrity to avoid being on the “wrong side” of him.
That’s when the grief hit.
Not “I’m mad at my mom.”
Not “My mom is evil.”
But:
“My mom is not free. And if she’s not free, she can’t be safe for me.”
My therapist helped put words to this. She told me:
“Your mom has a reality she’s living in, and in order to be okay in her reality she has to quiet or diminish yours. It doesn’t mean that yours is wrong or untrue, but it means that your reality makes hers more difficult. She has to make your lived reality smaller so she can cope with the one she is living, and that is truly sad but understandable.”
Hearing that hurt, but it also made something click. My mom isn’t just ignoring my truth for fun. She’s shrinking it so she can survive inside the version of life she’s chosen — or feels trapped in.
I had to accept that I could not “out-love” the system she’s still inside of.
Grieving a living mom
Losing a living parent like this is a weird kind of grief.
You grieve:
– The mom who laughed with you until you both cried.
– The mom who danced with you in the kitchen for no reason.
– The mom who, when you were brave enough to ask, quietly said, “He’s wrong about you.”
– The mom who sat with you and admitted, even softly, “This isn’t right.”
And then you grieve again when that same mom:
– Questions your choices based on his panic, not your reality.
– Uses spiritual language to pressure you back into unsafe patterns.
– Chooses silence or “neutrality” in situations where you desperately needed her to stand beside you.
It feels like standing at a grave while the person you love walks past you, holding someone else’s hand.
“No one is safe” – including the people you love
When I say no one is safe from the influence of a narcissist, I mean:
– Not the gentle mom who just wants peace.
– Not the sibling who is terrified of conflict and will agree to anything to make it stop.
– Not the pastor who only hears one side and believes it because it’s loud and polished.
– Not the extended family who get a carefully crafted version of the story.
– Not even you – the one who got out – if you slowly start doubting your own reality.
Narcissistic systems run on:
– Fear (“What will happen if I don’t go along?”)
– Guilt (“If I stand with them, I’m hurting him.”)
– Spiritual pressure (“A good Christian forgives and reconciles on our terms.”)
– Image (“What will people think of us?”)
Good, kind, loving people get swept into that current all the time.
My mom did.
My sister is in that danger zone too.
Honoring my mother… from a distance
Here’s the part that hurts and heals at the same time:
I can love my mom without giving her the power to hurt me.
I can honor who she is to God without letting her be the deciding voice over my life.
For me, honoring my mother looks like:
– Telling the truth about what’s happening, even when it makes people uncomfortable.
– Refusing to participate in lies or half-truths, even if it would make things “easier.”
– Keeping space so I don’t become another casualty of the same system that’s swallowed her.
– Praying for her, not as the all-powerful mother who can fix or break me, but as another woman who is deeply loved by God and deeply stuck.
I can’t drag her out of denial.
I can’t argue her into freedom.
I can’t prove my worthiness enough times to make her choose me over his comfort.
What I can do is live in truth, stay in safety, and keep my heart soft enough that if she ever does wake up, there’s still a bridge she can walk across.
If you’ve lost your mom this way too
If you’re reading this and thinking, “That’s my story,” I want you to hear me clearly:
– You are not crazy.
– You are not ungrateful.
– You are not dishonoring your parents by telling the truth about harm.
– You are not selfish for stepping away from a system that was slowly destroying you.
You are allowed to grieve a living mom.
You are allowed to protect your heart.
You are allowed to build a life where you can breathe again.
No one is safe from the influence of a narcissist – not even the people you miss the most.
But you are worth fighting for.
Your peace is worth protecting.
Your future is worth stepping into, even if some people choose not to walk there with you.
And if you’ve lost your mom without a funeral like I did, I’m standing with you in that strange, aching space:
Not motherless.
But not mothered, either.
Seen.
Loved.
And no longer controlled.