Finding Your Professional Voice: Overcoming the Influence of a Narcissistic Mother
The words we hear from our mothers can become our internal monologue as we grow older, influencing all aspects of our lives, including our career. The childhood influence of your narcissistic mother can become an integral part of your self perception and understanding as an adult. You may find yourself, a capable professional woman, with a host of doubts, porous boundaries, and difficulty speaking up for yourself. This can be directly attributed to the influence of a narcissistic mother, but it isn’t a permanent state. You can reform your inner voice to speak the way you need to be spoken to, not the way your narcissistic mother chose to speak to you.
How a narcissistic family background impacts your professional life
Being raised in a narcissistic family environment can have far reaching impacts in your life, well past childhood. A lot of the interactions you had with your narcissistic mother growing up were attempts to control you, to force your behavior into a pattern that suited her bottomless need for control and adoration. These interactions can turn harsh and abusive if your actions don’t suit your narcissistic mother’s expectations. You may have been treated as an accessory, as an unimaginable burden (when you were merely existing as a child in a family), or as someone whose personality, needs, and wants, are totally irrelevant. This can taint a lot of interactions for you, into adulthood—particularly professional interactions—as these can often seem like another attempt to control or punish you, or an avenue for your ingrained people-pleasing to be leveraged against you, repeatedly.
Impacts of narcissism on professional women
Below are just a few of the ways an upbringing with a narcissistic parent can impact your professional life:
You may find yourself scrambling to anticipate everything that might be expected of you in the professional workplace, since you were raised in an environment where you were expected to anticipate the whims of a narcissistic mother.
You may have an underlying, pervasive fear in your work interactions. Concerns about being punished or fired for small perceived slights, worry about what others think of you at all times, and fear of making any mistakes, can all be traced back to an upbringing from a narcissistic mother.
Speaking up for yourself may feel difficult or impossible, as this was heavily punished in childhood. This may limit your professional contributions and reduce your ability to advance in your work. It may also result in work overload, since saying “no” was not something you were raised to be able to do in the face of authority, even if it was an entirely reasonable “no”.
You may assume you will fail before you even try; consistently being undermined while growing up to ensure you stayed within your narcissistic mother’s orbit has led you to believe failure is inevitable for you. Trying feels like a waste of time in your professional life, even though you’ve demonstrated clearly you can attempt and accomplish many things.
You may more readily accept of narcissistic behavior in the workplace; it is not uncommon for professionals to encounter a narcissistic coworker or supervisor in their career. Being accustomed to narcissistic abuse in childhood makes it more likely you’ll bend when subjected to it in the workplace, instead of standing up for yourself and enacting change that is needed to keep you safe and to ensure your workplace is a successful one.
Developing Your Voice As A Professional Woman
The effects of being raised by a narcissistic mother reach into your everyday life, but can be particularly striking when building your career as a professional woman. There are several approaches you can take to expand and improve your professional voice, ensuring you speak up for yourself and advocate for change that is needed. These techniques lay the groundwork for you to navigate a career with less fear, more poise, and more satisfaction that your talents aren’t being dampened by the remnants of your childhood influences.
Shift your voice to support your professional efforts:
When offering ideas or leading projects, look at how you speak. Do you suggest things, or state them as fact? Do you apologize, even jokingly, for merely existing and participating in the workplace? Look at where you can adjust how you speak in professional settings to make statements; instead of offering a maybe, possibly, could we, state your idea firmly and with conviction. Instead of “I’m sorry”, consider, “Thank you”, or simply stating an unqualified fact without the apology ahead of time.
Remind yourself that you’re in a space where you are not going to be punished for doing the work; your successes make yourself and your company look good. Being belittled for offering good ideas was probably common growing up, so apologizing for them is your habit. Offering them with qualification allows you to deflect if they’re immediately shot down, but you’re not in your narcissistic family environment anymore. Make the change and offer your work with pride.
Measure your efforts by your own best, not by “perfect”:
Ashley Judd once said, “Perfectionism is self-abuse.” Pursuing perfectionism can be a protective attempt to avoid criticism and belittling from a narcissistic mother. Extending it into expectations for yourself in the workplace isn’t uncommon, but it is stressful, damaging, and difficult.
Instead of pursuing perfectionism, look at what your own best effort can be. Try to look at yourself through gentler, more supportive eyes. See where your efforts have paid off, see where you’ve learned and improved. Try to approach your own work as if you were a supportive supervisor; what would they say about the quality work you do? Look for the quality, and the effort, instead of the “perfect” that can never exist.
Consider how you speak to yourself:
Take a detailed inventory of your inner monologue. Consider even writing down all the negative thoughts you have about yourself, particularly when it comes to your career. Take a look your this negative self-talk, laid out in black and white, and consider how it shapes your life.
Next, write out alternatives, kinder and more accurate things to say about yourself. Telling yourself you always fail is not accurate or kind. Pointing out you try new things and sometimes they succeed is accurate, and a gentler approch. Consider “I can learn something from this” instead of “I made a mess of this.” You’re in a process of offering yourself the parenting you never got, and finding kinder words to support yourself will go a long way toward ensuring you can speak up for yourself professionally.
Therapy For Professional Women at West Hartford Counseling & Coaching
You aren’t stuck with the patterns you developed while being raised in a narcissistic family. You have the power to overcome childhood influences, especially when it comes to how you navigate your career. Along with the points suggested above, therapy can be a very useful tool to create space for you to make change in your professional life.
At West Hartford Counseling & Coaching, I work most often with professional women who have been influenced heavily by a narcissistic upbringing. My experience and compassionate expertise may well be a good fit for you and your needs in developing your professional voice while also tackling the fallout of your narcissistic family. Consider scheduling a 15 minute consultation today to see if I’d be a match for your needs.