09 Oct Is Mom Suddenly a Narcissist?

“I looked up the diagnosis on-line, and I think my mother’s a narcissist. She knows everything, endlessly talks about how important she used to be in her job (she’s retired), believe’s she’s SO special, and takes advantage of people around her.” 

Sue sat upright in her chair, chin jutting out, staring at me as if daring me to argue with her. 

“What made you look up narcissism?” I asked.

“Since COVID-19, my mother has become a different person. She was always a bit grandiose (her dinner parties were 5 course gourmet affairs with the house decorated to the extreme), but 2020 seemed to usher in a new era of Mom.” 

“All of a sudden she knew everything about everything, talked in this commanding no-nonsense voice, and stopped asking anything about her children and grandchildren’s lives. She’s always been a generous person but all of a sudden her “generosity” became connected to attention; the more attention she’d receive from a cause, the more money she’d give.” 

Sue’s face began to crumple and her chin started to wobble. 

“I miss my mom,” she whispered, in-between tears. 

Personality Disorders, of which Narcissistic Personality Disorder is one of them, begin in adolescence or early adulthood. Psychiatry (and the DSM-5-TR) uses language like “enduring patterns,” “behaviors deviating markedly from norms of the culture,” “pervasive and inflexible.” 

Treatment often looks like a lifetime of mental health support, learning to cope with (not change) the disorder.  

Sue’s mother, although seeming to check all the Narcissistic Personality Disorder boxes, was a normal, generous, empathetic, thoughtful person before 2020. 

Plus Narcissistic Personality Disorder ranges from 0%-6.2% in community samples and 50%-75% of those diagnosed are male.  So it’s a pretty rare diagnosis, especially for women. 

What could have brought such an extreme change to Sue’s mother’s behaviors?   

“What was COVID-19 like for your mother?” I asked. 

“Oh, it was brutal. She moved my grandmother (her mother) out of her childhood home, then in with my parents, then into a home, and then she died. Mom didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye because the facility was closed to non-residents during that time.” 

“Then my dad got cancer. He’s fine, but they had to do all the chemo treatments and stuff during COVID-19. I don’t know if you remember, but hospitals were crazy during that time.” 

“Plus my sister had 2 miscarriages, and my mom was her main support.” 

What current research shows is that people who have survived trauma can exhibit changes in their personality traits. 

However if the changes come from traumatic experiences, there is the possibility that the person can work through their trauma with counseling and return to their previously healthy traits.  

For some people diagnoses are life-changing. It can be the answer to the question they’ve been asking for years, “What’s wrong with me?” and provide specific resources for healing. 

For others, a diagnosis can feel like a prison sentence, locking them in to a medical model they disagree with from the start.

Sue found it comforting that there was a chance her mom wasn’t a narcissist, and it gave her the courage to sit down and talk to her mom about the changes she’d seen. 

Her mom was grateful for the conversation, and together they started looking for mental health support (and assessment) for her mom. 

Photo by Richard Brandon, Mud Lake, on a sunny summer day, offers a reflection of the shoreline in the water, much like the original Greek myth of Narcissus.