((Sippi)), I can totally relate to what you are describing. It can most definitely be triggering when someone like this gets condescending and choses to enact some kind of punishment simply because you chose to stand up for yourself in some way.

It's good that you came here and vented this challenge too. Sadly, this is how your mother tends to behave and I believe you when you describe how she genuinely believes she has a right to behave this way towards you too. Often the reality is how it isn't all your mother, but behind her is her own mother and possibly her father too, that treated her this way and this is something she began to believe is how she is supposed to behave.

My older brother was taken out to a shed anytime he failed to behave as expected. He was actually punished when instead he needed help due to his ADHD and how much he struggled with his attention span and also how he was so active too. But, how he recently explained this was it was two men standing behind him beating him, his father and his father's father and may even have also been his father's father's father too.

We often get hung up with "my narcissist parent" and how "narcissists don't know they are narcissists". Yet, often the reality can come from how a parent is themselves taught that this kind of behavior is right when as you know, it's not.

It can be very hard to "not" react the way you do, because you did experience behavior patterns that hurt you in some way, I can SO RELATE to that challenge. However, it's very helpful to learn "why" this is so and that your mother may never have the ability to change this pattern of behavior she exhibits, especially considering she is 88 years old now and often by that age people don't have the capacity to change what took years of practicing/doing in their brain.