Mother’s Day When It Hurts: 7 Signs of a Toxic Devouring Mother

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]Hi everybody. I'm Art XF family scapegoat and with Mother's Day around the corner, I'm dedicating this video to all the scapegoats out there who are struggling because of a toxic, narcissistic, and devouring mother. And I am going to go through a list of secretly manipulative, controlling behaviors that you're going to find in these relationships and that are often absolutely normalized in abusive families so that you can recognize them and protect yourself. And also so that you can work on ridding yourself of any guilt or shame or burdens and responsibilities that you've been conditioned to carry but that actually don't belong to you at all.

[00:00:50]Now when you think of the word mother right I mean a mother is supposed to represent a safe harbor and a foundation of unconditional love for the for her children right I mean she's supposed to she's supposed to be the one who cheers for your independence and celebrates your growth but for us scapegoats this is exactly what they actually don't want to see happen because when that happens They lose their main source of supply.

[00:01:23]To me, a toxic mother fits that crab in a bucket narrative perfectly. You know how it works. When one crab tries to climb out of the bucket to find freedom, the other crab will reach up and pull it back into the pile. So this is how a typical narcissistic mother will operate except that when she pulls you down back into the bucket, she will tell you that she did it for your own good with a smile. You know, so this leads me to the first point that I'm going to make, the first tactic, which is your independence being evil.

[00:02:04]You can never leave. And the truth is toxic narcissistic mothers can't stand it when their own child becomes a fully functional person independent of them.

[00:02:18]That is seen as a betrayal because your purpose in her eyes is always to fulfill her unmet needs and remain under her wings forever and ever and ever where you are safe and protected.

[00:02:35]But I mean, are you really, if you think about it, you know, because that space under her wings or beneath her really is where it's the only space that you're ever going to be allowed to take up. I mean, that's the limit of what you are permitted to ever do. And if you're a daughter, and I'll get to the boys in a second, but if you're a daughter of a narcissistic mother, surpassing your mother in any way, whether it's through your success or your happiness or your look or your independence, your adventurous spirit, you know, any of that is going to be met with passive aggression and this calculated quiet character destruction.

[00:03:22]It can also be met with violence. This is how I was raised. And you know, the competition that you deal with from your own mother is a constant thing. It just never stops. It is a lifelong, you know, situation that you're just going to have to deal with for the rest of your life. I mean, any form of independence of breaking away will result in your name being smeared until you are completely ostracized.

[00:03:52]And if you're a son, you're going to be forbidden from ever prioritizing another woman over your mother, especially your girlfriend or your wife, the mother of your children. Because your role is to be your mother's personal emotional servant. You know, you're her emotional support, neverending support soothing system. And for this is for the rest of your life. And you know there better never be another woman who interferes with your purpose you know. So a narcissistic mother will really act as a parasite when it comes to any personal relationships actually or your life choices you know and she's always going to ensure that you can never really feel confident enough to make a move without her approval.

[00:04:47]And there is no such thing as you thinking for yourself, you know, or making your own decision because again to them it's betrayal. They really like that to use that concept a lot. That whole thing of you betraying them, you know, and this leads me to the next point which is this is the trap of their care.

[00:05:08]All right? This is a trap of their care.

[00:05:13]There's a specific trap these mothers set. what you are damned if you accept their help and you're damned if you don't.

[00:05:22]Now, in a narcissistic world, care isn't really a gift, okay? It's a down payment for ownership. So, by forcing their help on you, which is what they do, they create a psychological debt that can be weaponized the second that they need a scapegoat or a dose of supply.

[00:05:44]And this often starts with your infantilization, you know. So whenever a child or a teenagers tries to move forward, right?

[00:05:53]You reach a new milestone in your life, you develop your independence, you start doing things on your own, whether it's about like doing your laundry or learning to cook your own meals or like making your own decisions.

[00:06:08]This will always be met with resistance.

[00:06:11]So in this system, you're never really going to be adult enough to to adult on your own. And if you push for independence, a fight or a guilt trip of some sort will ensue.

[00:06:27]So she might insist that, you know, mama knows best and she will really like snake around that concept that she knows what's best for you and you don't. or will she will start sulking and crying framing your desire for autonomy as a personal rejection of her love. And I think that many of us of us will eventually, you know, just shut our mouths and we will let them do things for us because saying no is such a huge massive energy draining endeavor.

[00:07:05]And even if you explicitly do say no, don't do it. In my experience, the way I was raised anyways, she would do it anyways. And she would get angry that, you know, that I would get angry because a boundary was crossed. And this is when I would often be labeled as ungrateful.

[00:07:27]Like if if I really was firm, no, please don't do this. I'm going to cook for myself tonight or whatever. I mean that was always met with anger. So this really is a setup the moment that you know the mother needs a scapegoat you know or a place to vent or rage or to let whatever pump pent up energy she has in her system that care is going to be immediately weaponized.

[00:07:58]So, she might start a fictional fight.

[00:08:00]Like, for example, my mother would often accuse me of walking around the house angry when I wasn't because of my resting face, my resting face was a point of fighting for her. And so the moment that I would actually react to this false accusation and then you know one thing would lead to another um and then the shouting match the the drama the invented conflict would begin and then she would scream I cleaned your room. I did your laundry. I cooked your supper. I'm a slave for you. I'm a slave for you. I mean, all the care they ever did is going to come out as soon as you do something that they don't like. And suddenly, the help you never asked for, the help you were actually forced into accepting or manipulated into accepting becomes the very evidence and proof that you're a monster. And this is how they maintain the role of the perpetual victim Martier right while keeping you in that role of the evil ungrateful child.

[00:09:11]It was actually never about helping you.

[00:09:13]By the way, it's not about helping you.

[00:09:16]It's about ensuring that you stay in depth to them so that they can control you. And my mother loved to do this especially when my dad or brother came home. I mean, it would reinforce my position as the devil in the house who was abusing her and taking advantage of all the nice things she ever did for me with when when I actually did not want those things. I really didn't. I was really starting to feel like I wanted my independence and that was something that was always blocked. Right? So this leads to another type of abuse that they do and it's the grooming and gaslighting.

[00:09:58]So when she would provoke huge fictional fights and get aggressive toward me or ostracize me and bring me to a point where I would want to stay in my room, I didn't want to leave. Then she would walk into the room in the aftermath, you know, and hand me like a freshly pressed juice or give me some meal or something and say, "Here, even though you don't deserve this, you don't deserve a loving mother. Here, here's what you get. You monster ungrateful child or whatever, you know?" So, this tactic, it's literally disguising their abuse and twisting it around to make it look like you're the problem. And she's the same taking care of you in the aftermath of the abuses that they caused in the first place, but they make it look like it was you the whole time. And everybody I love always fell for this. And this is a huge way that narcissistic parent actually manipulates the whole family into believing that you're the problem.

[00:11:05]It's a kind of twisted mind game that they play which is so difficult to explain when you haven't lived it. And this is a form of grooming and gaslighting because when following, you know, uh physical or emotional abuse with a kind gesture like juice or a meal or a present or money or an outing, you know, they confuse your nervous system.

[00:11:30]They are literally training you to associate abuse with love, making it absolutely impossible for you to trust your own instincts in the aftermath.

[00:11:41]This is designed to keep you in a state of obligation so that simply wanting to do your own laundry feels like an act of betrayal, you know, and and your journey towards becoming a healthy independent adult is sabotaged right at the get-go.

[00:12:00]And this leads me to my next point which is condition conditioning you through their distress, their never everending distress.

[00:12:12]And you will feel that distress all the time when you come when you're raised by a covert vulnerable narcissist. There's always this hum in the background. It's like the home will always feel heavy and you can feel it in the way that they walk in the footsteps and the way that they will like open the door and the way that they sign. You know, the mother will use her pain, her fragility or her victimhood to keep you from self-actualizing, which to her self-actualizing equates to you abandoning her. And if she's hurting, you're not allowed to have a life because your only job is to fix hers.

[00:12:58]Now, in a healthy home, you know, a mother attunes to her children, right?

[00:13:02]The end goal is for them to leave the nest as well as just the adults and and the grown up that the child who's growing up, you know, should feel light and confident enough to like explore the world, right? But in the dysfunctional home, the roles are reversed. And we are the ones who are trained to pick up on their emotions and their distress and their heaviness and their anger and their issues 24. Like it's all the time.

[00:13:31]It never stops. And this leads us to constantly have to scan the room to see what's the next storm that's going to come at us, right? And they will use their distress to ensure that you never leave that you never think for yourself and you will feel perpetually guilty for existing. This is where toxic guilt comes from. So you're conditioned to believe that your independence or your personality equals their pain. And this creates a fun response in the scapegoat.

[00:14:02]You know, we start to prioritizing their needs, everybody else's needs all the time. And oftent times this starts when we're really young. So we were never equipped to handle you know this sort of responsibility.

[00:14:18]And I think that so many of us will have abandoned our own dreams and aspirations you know because it's just to avoid dealing with the soul crushing guilt of hurting them for doing something that's healthy for us.

[00:14:33]And you know, whatever we do to help them heal, to help them, you know, alleviate their pain, to try and cheer them up, it will never be good enough either. It doesn't matter how much of yourself you sacrifice and how much you give them. It will never be enough for them to actually stop using their distress as a tool for attention. So, you know, um we can never do enough to cheer them up or to heal them. And of course, this is not because there's something wrong with you or something's wrong with your, you know, techniques, right, with how you cheer people up or this is nothing to do with you. This is because they need they actually need to do their own inner work for healing.

[00:15:20]Nobody can do that for them. So, but they don't do it. They never do it. They never look at themselves in the mirror, you know, they will utilize the their own children as tools to to regulate themselves, right? So when you inevitably fail to soothe them because there's that's what happens. It's not possible, you become evil in their eyes for that failure. And this is why smear campaigns are always present because you can never rescue them enough. and you are framed as the one causing the pain because you can't soothe their pain.

[00:16:01]So again, like I said, this has nothing to do with you. An adult is responsible for fulfilling their own needs. We're all responsible for our own healing. You know, they are not supposed to extract that service from their own children.

[00:16:18]And this is a loop that goes around and around and around whether you're 10 or 50 years old. I mean this mindset never stops. And this leads me to the next point which is the conditioning through abandonment.

[00:16:35]Now why is this my next point? because usually their end their endless distress will eventually lead to you being punished, you being cut off or you being given the silent treatment. Now, for a child, being ignored by a caregiver is a primal survival threat. Okay? And I think that this is one of the most evil forms of abuse a parent can inflict. I was raised with the silent treatment and with physical abuse. And I think that really the psychological abuse and being erased, not being spoken to for days or weeks, months when I was a child, teenager, I mean that really messed me up in a level that I couldn't even put into words at the time. I mean it's traumatic you know and as a child your nervous system is hardwired to understand that if your mother stops acknowledging you you die. This is something that we're that is hardwired within us. And our mothers instinctually know this. They know that when they do this it will cause severe distress.

[00:17:45]So they will use silence as a weapon to trigger a state of absolute visceral panic in a child's body. And this is psychological eraser. The silent treatment, you know, is basically her way of saying you do not exist to me until you are who I want you to be. And not only does this force you into self-abandonment, but entrains you to believe that your safety is only guaranteed if you can manage the emotions of everyone else. It convinces you, convinces you that the truth doesn't matter. Your feelings don't matter. Your boundaries don't matter. You are an inconvenience. You are a problem. And you know, this really leaves us in in complete shock. And I have to say that when I became an older teenager, I mean that silence actually became soothing because it meant I was going to be left alone for a period of time. But this again also leaves us deprived of the healthy guidance that a young person actually needs, you know, as they become an adult.

[00:18:54]So, while we're talking about guidance, this also leads me to the next point, which is the weaponization of any information that they actually have about you.

[00:19:09]Anything that you have ever shared with your mother in a rare peaceful moment, right? um dream, fear, secret, you know, in that rare moment when you thought, "Oh gosh, maybe I can't have a mother."

[00:19:25]You know, maybe, you know, you give it a try. You try and confide with them.

[00:19:30]That is going to be thrown back in your face the second that they start the conflict immediately.

[00:19:38]A narcissistic mother doesn't listen to connect. She listens to gather ammunition.

[00:19:45]She teaches you that being honest is a liability. And this is why so many of us grow terrified of actually connecting with people, of being vulnerable, of expressing ourselves, you know, because we've learned that our inner world is a target.

[00:20:04]and she will use your vulnerabilities to hurt you and often even comparing you to the golden child or a successful cousin or someone on TV. I mean, this is all calculated moves to make you feel like you're the problem, like you're defective and and you know, any information they know about you will be used then and twisted around into reactions into you having reactions. And when you have those reactions, they play victim and again we go into the loop into and and around and round and round it goes, right? I mean, the point of this is to teach you that you're the problem, not the environment, not them, but you. So, finally, as an adult, you know, when you try to set a boundary, when you try to adult, you know, and especially when you have to deal with things like Mother's Day, you know, you really watch what happens. And this is the hoovering, okay? This is the hoovering crisis.

[00:21:11]So I mean the moment that you protect your peace, expect a health scare, a sudden family emergency or some sort of drama. You know the diving mother will use her own mortality or a crisis of some sort to pull you back into the family system. And this is where the guilt and everything else that I've talked about so far really kicks in. I I can't tell you guys how often I was told that she was dying of cancer only to have the cancer magically disappear without chemo and and no doctor's appointments and no treatments, you know, like poof, she was cured.

[00:21:50]Suddenly, my dad stopped talking about it and everything resumed as it always was. I mean, this is crazy to me. And this is their final play to prove that your independence, your limits, your boundaries are killing them. This is really what they will have the family believe. You know, your independence is killing them. So, she wants you to believe that your peace is an act of violence against her.

[00:22:21]So, you know, having said all this, um, I want to tell you guys that it's really time to focus away from them and to really focus on your own healing. And first of all, I want to invite you all to repeat after me.

[00:22:44]It's not my fault.

[00:22:49]It's not your fault. None of this is your fault. None of it. Okay? You're not responsible for another adult's life.

[00:22:59]Okay? You don't have the power to change the dynamics in that home. It's not in your control.

[00:23:07]And the reason why you can't change it is because you actually can't do somebody's healing work for them. This is something that they have to initiate for themselves. Okay? No one can truly ever fulfill someone else's needs fully as the way that they expect you to. You know that is an impossible objective because true fulfillment is an internal process. It's not an external delivery.

[00:23:36]Okay? So when we try to carry the weight of another person's entire emotional like all their burdens, right, we're not really helping them. We're actually becoming enablers, you know, we're becoming an enabler that prevents them from ever having to face their own problems themselves.

[00:23:58]Real peace really comes from realizing that yeah, we can offer support and we can offer kindness and presence and but the responsibility of their inner world belongs to them. You can't kill yourself for someone else. That's not how healthy relationships work. You know, their inner world belongs to them. Your inner world belongs to you. Their healing journey is theirs and your healing journey is yours.

[00:24:31]And by the way, I also want to say that you're not the only human being on this earth capable of fulfilling their needs or whatever crisis that they're inventing next. Okay? There's countless professionals out there. There's a lot of enablers in their life, I'm sure, that they can turn to if they choose to.

[00:24:51]Okay? But they don't do those things because that it's not really about the crisis. It's really about control and it's about them not wanting to lose their main source of supply which is you and it's about them evading accountability and it's about them not wanting to do the hard work of healing.

[00:25:13]So the most important thing that I can tell you today really is this is when you define you know what you are okay with what you're not okay with when you express yourself when you follow a dream when you choose a partner when you strive for independence when you prioritize your emotional safety when you make choices that align with who you are and not the collective right I mean the people who truly love you and who genuinely want what's best for you will respect you and will encourage you. They will want to see you thrive and spread your wings and be happy. Okay? But if they only want you for the role that you play in their head, okay, you're going to be met with their rage. You're going to be met with resistance.

[00:26:08]You're going to be met with passive aggression. You may even be met with toxic gifts and long speeches about love and loyalty. Okay? There's going to be a lot of triangulation happening. You'll be met with drama. You will be ostracized.

[00:26:25]And none of it, I repeat, none of it is an indicator that you are bad or that you did something wrong.

[00:26:35]This is what actually happens when manipulators realize they can no longer manipulate you into making them comfortable anymore.

[00:26:47]And so when you break away from a narcissistic family system or when you try to demesh from a devouring mother, a push back is to be expected. That doesn't mean that you're wrong. And you will have flying monkeys show up and try to recruit recruit you back or try to make you feel terrible for protecting yourself or just for being independent, right?

[00:27:14]And sadly, this is also when we realize that many of the people we thought loved us genuinely never really actually had our back but were always the narcissistic trained soldiers. Right?

[00:27:30]So the guilt and the shame that comes with the territory of this type of upbringing is a weapon that's going to be used against you. And this is the tragedy because it's not a weapon that you see coming from the outside. This is your own inner emotional world that is twisted and trained to act against you.

[00:27:54]Really, when you think about it, that's what toxic guilt does. So this wound, this feeling can be lodged so deep that you might actually imagine people are hurting specifically because of you because you took care of yourself. And the flying monkeys will reinforce that conditioning, especially when you finally begin to prioritize your life, which needs so much attention and so much care, especially after this type of upbringing.

[00:28:30]So, I really encourage you to make a list of what you have to do. Write down exactly what happened to you. Um, you know, write down the things that they did to you, the the words that they used to hurt you, the things they prevented you from doing, and especially the cycles that keep going in circles round and around and around. And really, those cycles look some that look like something like this. You know, you express a need, your need makes you a demon, and then the attention goes to the narcissist who becomes the victim.

[00:29:04]And this is the roof. This is what goes around and around and around.

[00:29:10]Put this on paper so you can refer to it the moment that the guilt kicks in, you know, for daring to actually break that loop. And you know, when you deal with them, remember that any sort of engagement only provides them with information that they can relay back to the narcissist.

[00:29:29]So really the rules of non-engagement are your best form of self-p protection even though it may not feel like it in the moment. You know, keeping your sentences short really helps. Like something like, "I can see that you're concerned, but right now I'm doing what's best for me and for my emotional safety and that's it. Close the door."

[00:29:49]You know, you don't need to explain or or dive into all the millions of things that they're going to tell you about how evil you are, right? There's no point because they're not listening to you.

[00:30:01]They are committed to bringing you back into an abusive relationship where you don't have your freedom to exist as you are, where you can't be your own person.

[00:30:11]And I want to speak to you as a mother myself. I mean, the most important thing that you could ever really do in this life is number one, find yourself, figure out who you are, and then find the courage to be yourself no matter what.

[00:30:29]The hardest part of this healing journey really is about showing up as your authentic self.

[00:30:37]Now, if you spend your life conforming to a mold that they built for you, this is not living. Peace is never going to be found by fitting into somebody else's expectations, living somebody else's dreams or being there, somebody else's permanent need nurturer. Okay? Staying in that role doesn't just hurt you, but it actually prevents you from ever self-actualizing.

[00:31:06]One day you will walk out of that fog.

[00:31:11]And when you do, the world will start looking different. And then you will realize that you were never the problem, that you were never this terrible person that they portrayed you as. This is really the conditioning, the fog that keeps you stuck there.

[00:31:27]There's going to be, you know, a time, a period where it's going to be really super uncomfortable because anytime that you break a loop, I mean, you know, there's going to be chaos, right?

[00:31:40]But as you break it and as you move out of the fog and as you work on your healing and as you discover yourself, you will find peace. And fe peace does come in the small things that life has to offer, you know. And you will feel the joy of making a decision freely without that weight dragging you back and without second-guessing everything that you do. I mean this is what true freedom really looks like is the freedom of you being you without having to apologize for being you without having to change yourself constantly without double triple checking everything that you do. Freedom is just you being at peace with yourself for who you are exactly as you are. And that is the goal. That is the goal.

[00:32:32]And this is what happens when you reparent yourself. You know, it's about learning to give yourself the protection and the boundaries and the validation that no one else was willing to give you.

[00:32:45]So for this period, you know, protect yourself and don't feel bad about it.

[00:32:50]Protect your emotional space. Be yourself. Because this is what a healthy mother would actually want for her children. And this is truly what I wish for all of you survivors. Be yourself and don't apologize for it. And always repeat, I love myself. I trust myself.

[00:33:11]And I'm going to see you guys soon.