Everything a Narcissistic Mothers and Food Abuse does is about getting her need for supply and control met. It is therefore no different when it comes to food and feeding her children.

Narcissistic Mothers and Food Abuse use all the tactics of manipulation and control especially when it comes to mealtime preparation and at the dinner table. The kitchen often becomes a place of uncertainty and fear at the heart of the home. One day Mum may be pleasant, baking cookies and the next day she is in a rage about having to cook at all. This mirrors the love bombing/discard of narcissistic relationships.  

The message that is sent out to the children especially? You are a burden on me, I don’t want to be a mother, because of you I am stuck in this life, I might not feed you’. This creates guilt and shame in the child who then feels obliged to make up to Mum for having to cook and slave away in the kitchen. In reality, the narcissistic mother is simply manipulating and controlling the entire family to put the focus on her and to serve her needs. 

We know well by now that Narcissistic Mothers and Food Abuse, and indeed all narcissists, are intent on control by means of gaslighting, guilting and creating confusion. These aspects are also present in the narcissistic mother’s use of food.

As one client recalls:

‘Mum would often tell us how she just loved cooking for the family and always prepared meals ‘con amore’. However, for those in her family, it often felt like the total opposite as Mum would swear and slam around and show her annoyance when having to cook dinner. 

This is classic narcissism in a mother- she does not want to have to do the things required of being a mother. She only wants to do them when she wants to, like the child who has a toy and plays with it one minute but discards it in the toybox moments later for something else. The Narcissistic mother does not want to do ANYTHING that does not fit her needs in the moment and if she has to, then she will absolutely make everyone else know of her annoyance at having to do so. Her children will be made to feel guilty that Mum has to spend time in the kitchen cooking for them when she is clearly tired and does not want to. And for a young child to be aware that mummy is fed up with having to feed it- is devastating! 

And the child suffers as a result because it is always in a situation of existential fear- what if one day Mum just decides not to feed me again? I might die. And it is here that the narcissistic mother stamps her control! She knows that she can groom her child to put HER needs at the centre of their thoughts and become enmeshed with her because they need to, in order to survive.

The same client goes on to say that: (paraphrased) 

‘She would then shove the food down on the table, when it was finally ready, sometimes it almost looked as if it was thrown on the plate. Those meals so incredibly awful and so traumatic.’

The children of narcissistic mothers are made to feel as if they are a burden upon their mother, who would (in a different life) have been lounging in a mansion with servants and a better husband, living a wonderful life, had it not been for them (and their father). 

The pain that this inflicts upon the child is so very deep. It wounds at the core. I mean if your own mother finds you a burden then what hope do you have later on as an adult? These children are thus set up with the blueprint to seek care from people who hate them and so the WTF patterns ensue down the line in relationships.

These children generally respond to the demeaning behaviours of their mothers by:

1.  forever trying to make up to Mum for being a burden by becoming whatever she needs them to be. In so doing they attempt to manage her emotions and prevent her from abandoning them permanently. These children fear loss of attachment more than they do being abused. This is how the co-dependent is formed.
2. They try to get rid of themselves, their true selves by cutting off from their intuition and their gut feelings. This may in fact be an early factor in the development of binge eating and other eating disorders. These disorders and addictions in general are about trying not to ‘feel’ and numbing out. 
3. They find that they need to check in with Mum a lot about everything and indeed even the thoughts they think, just in case they get it wrong! And of course, mother is always right because she says she is. In this way the mother fulfils her aim, and the aim of every narcissist in fact- to be God in the life of the child…
4. They develop comfort eating as food takes on the role of substitute for mothers love in their lives.
5. Narcissistic mothers may wish for their daughters to be overweight and subtly foster overeating or be put out if their daughters are thinner than they are. 
6. They may set unrealistic expectations for the daughters appearance and insist on her losing weight/going on a diet/dressing fashionably etc.

Interestingly, if we trace things back to when children of narcissistic mothers first experienced being fed, in the moment of breastfeeding/being bottle fed, there are some striking assumptions that we can make:

• Even the act of breastfeeding is about the mother! That crucial attachment moment is not one of safety but either of being rejected or smothered.

How can we say this? Well, as one client recalls:

Mum always said she breastfed me but that it was so painful for her that she only did it for a few months and then gave up. Now knowing this mother is a narcissist, my client believes that her mother would have blamed it on her for not fulfilling her grandiose image of the perfect blissful moment for her. Thus this client believed from the earliest of days that she was a disappointment, a burden and that her need for food was too much and that her mother might at some point just stop feeding her as she did then. She became a compulsive overeater unsurprisingly. 

• On the other hand, the narcissistic mother may breastfeed her child for too long as having a baby feed from her provides comfort and soothing for her! It also means the baby is dependent upon her and this she likes as she has someone who adores her without question and has her as the focus of all their attention!
  It also means that the baby is less able to self-soothe later on and then becomes dependent upon her. This is the start of the manipulation and grooming of the child into the perfectly enmeshed source of primary supply that the mother has intended for her child- forever.