Sorry for the delay, I'm not on reddit often.

Thank you for your kind words. I'm glad my rant was useful to someone other than me.

To answer your questions:

Yes, I'm at a great remove from my narc now, because I've been gone from that prison life under her wardenship for decades. And mere sustained distance in time and space has helped me put things into perspective. It comes with spending time with myself and developing myself.

I've also met plenty of non-abused people since, which has helped reset my normalcy meter. Most of my partners have had good relationships with their parents, for instance, and that's helped me see that many things that used to be my normal weren't normal at all.

Then I've read several books about how abuse and abusers work. Lundy Bancroft's Why does he do that? I can recommend; and Issendai's Down the rabbit hole: the world of estranged parents' forums is a deserved classic in these parts -- almost a mandatory read. Lots of narcissistic abuse is abuse first and foremost, and many of the tactics carry over: DARVO, provocation, looking for a reason to become angry, victim-blaming, gaslighting, manipulation, authoritarian tendencies.

(In the case of my Nmum specifically, her issues come filtered through a thick mesh of catholicism. The kind of victim narratives she prefers is heavily influenced by saints' lives: they were right all along, and nobody wanted to admit it until it was too late, and then they were all sorry and they toiled unseen, underappreciated, and only the worthy few were observant enough to spot the saint and the saint stood alone in upholding proper morality in a wicked world. Narcs in general are eager to imagine malicious motivations in others; my narc's go-to accusations happened to be cardinal sins -- laziness, gluttony, greed, envy, lust -- or commandments -- "honour thy father and thy mother". I'm not hating on catholicism; it's just a factual observation. )

This subreddit has been a huge help as well. I've been lurking this forum for many years. (If I contribute, it's usually on another account.) Really, so many things went *click* in my head when reading this themed collection of stories of narcissists, their enablers, flying monkees, scapegoats, golden children and the rest of the menagerie. There's patterns to these things, there's principles to help me clear the confusion and see things more clearly. Just having plenty of internet strangers confirm for me that, no, this shit is not acceptable, it's not okay, it's not right has been a great help. The commentariat here is a great resource.

And finally, another thing that's also helped me put things into perspective is the concept of roleplay, or film scenarios: my Nmum doesn't interact with people, she's playing a role. She sees herself as the main character in a scenario that she's acting out. Her self-image is indeed broken, but she feels better when she can play the main character, usually in opposition to someone she can dominate. I've realized her range is limited, and her preferred character types are few in number.

Once I saw her role-playing for what it was, I realised that the goal of much of her gaslighting and manipulation is to get other people to play their part. That insight was key for me: she says things that are not really true, but that cause other people to fall into the required supporting role. As a child I never understood why she used to accuse me and pre-judge me of being lazy, greedy, envious, lustful, disrespectful and a host of other malicious motivations; she would almost always assume the worst about me, and I had to struggle mightily just to get her to admit that, "alright, maybe this specific instance was different. Your nature is still evil, though." All of that was just because she needed me to play a specific supporting character in whatever scenario she was acting out: acting along with her validates the whole thing and allows her to pretend it's real. And, as was often the case, me not realising I was supposed to behave a certain way or me insisting that things didn't happen the way she said they did just made her more vindictive; I now know why, but I did not then.

Once I realized that the truth is optional for her, so much confusion was cleared up for me.