Dear flavia:

Yes, I think that I may have had a similar experience to yours, but I think that I felt worse than you do about your mother (I may be wrong):  I had an excruciatingly troubling relationship with my mother. I suffered intense and prolonged guilt in regard to her, and fear, for decades. I finally ended all contact with her, it’s been seven years.

It was not easy to end contact and keep it in the past, but it was my only shot at experiencing sanity.

anita

I don’t knot know really where to being I get that moms and daughters when they are teens and enetering menopause do not lead to the most pleasant situations but I am always trying to figure out and wrap my head around they way my mom thinks and her logic behind certain things a good example is of today. My sister and I both take things from her and I’m not saying that it makes it right but the worst we take are things like clothes. I had two old shirts of hers that I never even ever see her wear to being with, and when she found out I had them she flipped out said I could see my boyfriend for two weeks and scream at me and before that to get my attention she threw a rock at me. Like I don’t care if she gets mad I know I should have asked to show her respect but she has so many of the same white tank tops ( multiple of just basic clothes) and she I normally cool if I borrow things so I didn’t think anything of it cause it wasn’t something Fancy and nice or high end or something she routinely uses. And this is my last summer before o go off to college to see my boyfriend and plus right now I have had a lot of issues with friends bullying me so at the moment he is what I have to have social interaction and hang out with someone. But when my sister takes my moms hair iron or clips or even jewelry my mom gets mad and my sister gives her very sassy responses and is extremely more disrespectful and my when my mom asks for it back she will not bring it to her and laugh at her and my mom doesn’t even punish her not one thing and just lets her get away with it she only gets yelled at. I do the same thing and I get punished for two weeks and I don’t hear the end of it. And when I bring that up to her my mom will all of sudden cover for her and under inflate the situation just to make me wrong and I can only argue so much cause I know I will get no where. I just don’t get why I get the most extreme punishments for the littlest things and they way my sister talks to her and disrespects my mom she just gets a slap on the wrist but I get treated as if I was caught like taking her wallet or hiding drugs or something way worse than it is
update so sometime dishes we have end up in the either the dishwasher or hand wash so anybody could put things away yet today my mom saw some dishes that she didn’t like how they were put away so of course she yells at me about it when it could have been anyone who did it so I just go and fix it and the she keeps barking in my ear so I say it’s just not fair how when my sister  runs her mouth or “doesn’t know when to stop” she gets no disciplinary action toward her and my mom went off saying this why I have punished you cause your rude and don’t know when to stop. It’s just not fair why do I get to be the one that gets grounded or something taken or I can’t see someone or go out and My sister does do worse and gets away with it. I just wish I could understand.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by tinybuddha.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by tinybuddha.

I am wondering if your mom has some undiagnosed mental illness, or maybe even diagnosed? The things you describe, the mood swings, the irrationality, the accusations are not normal everyday human behavior. If she is past age 60, and this is new behaviors, this could be dementia. If you mother has something wrong in her brain to make her unstable or irrational, then you may want to limit your connection if there is nothing you can do to improve things. I do not like estrangement as an option because I think it hurts both the parent and the adult child. Not talking about abusive situations where the parent harms the child. Just talking about difficult people. Your mother may just be a difficult person. Can you accept her for how she is and then deal with her in a way that supports yourself? Screaming and throwing a rock sound like perhaps a person with a brain health disorder. This situation of your mother is likely not fixable by yourself. So how does one deal with difficult people? We can choose to limit contact, we can argue and cause problems with them, we can set boundaries, and maybe we need to accept that they are not “right” and can’t help themselves. You have learned much about yourself but know it is hard to set boundaries and it can be very hard to accept our parents as being flawed or difficult or damaged people. But accepting people for who they are is key to our own happiness in life. As long as we expect others to act in a certain way or talk in a certain way, then we feel great disappointment when they don’t. And sometimes we have to accept that our parents have their own character or personality limitations. They are simply flawed because all humans have flaws and problems. Sometimes we have to change how we react and how we set our expectations. Sometimes we have to accept that the parental love we had hoped for or wanted is not within our parent’s capability. We can love flawed people without pretending what they did was okay or perfect or that we are safe with them. So once you think this out and maybe even look into mental illness or dementia, you can decide what works best for you. You can tell mom you will call her every month but you think her texting as much as she does is obnoxious or whatever you feel. You can set limits with her but expect her not to obey them either because she won’t or can’t. Both of my parents were flawed human beings and I decided to just love them and forgive them when I was in my late twenties. I accepted who they were and it made it easier to put up with their aggressive ways. My in-laws were very narcissistic and demeaned my partner all the time until and we finally changed how we reacted and thought when he got counseling and we realized we could love them but not like them. This is about us changing our perspective not about us changing them. That doesn’t work and if your mother has some kind of brain health disorder, then her dysfunctional life and thinking will impact your relationship with her. Sometimes the adult child becomes the mature one, and has to parent the parent later on in life when the parent can’t function at all any longer. Life gives us many lessons and you already have great insight and wisdom.

Hi Flavia,

You sound as if you have thought about this well and carefully.  I’m going to ask what might be a strange question:  have you thought about it from your Mom’s point of view as a complete human for whom being a mom was part of her life, not all of it?  She is a whole human being separate from you with a whole history before becoming a parent, and after her parent duties ended when you became an adult.  Can you try to relate to her as another adult, not only seeing her as a person with a role relevant to you, but that her Mom role is ONE PART of her life, and try to look at all that whole rest of her life, not just looking at the one slice of the pie that relates to you?  It is hard to see our moms except in-terms-of-us, but it’s a good exercise to see tham apart from us, with a whole set of things about them that has nothing to do with us.

Ask yourself:  if she were one of my adult friends, what would I say to her and think of her? How would I talk to her? What expectations and assumptions and boundaries would I hold, if she were one of my closest adult friends? How would I think of what she has been through?

I hope this helps,

Liz