Reply to I Cannot Stand My Mother

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[quote=Anonymous]OP let me share my perspective with you. For background, I was raised by a wolf mother too - actually, that’s an insult to wolves - so I’m acutely aware of the particular cruelty of a psychologically twisted mother. This stuff comes from personality disorder, it is not easy stuff to fix especially because most of these cold critical nasty negative mothers are up there on the bad end of the narcissistic personality traits spectrum, and do not even have the capacity to recognize their behavior is dysfunctional thus no willingness to work on behavior change which requires insight. Narcissists do not progress much in therapy, even if you can get one there.

Now, after spending all my reproductive years on academic and career achievement in law and then having a health breakdown in my early 40s, I have spent the last 7 years working as a caregiver primarily for hospice status patients. Beyond my personal experience of dozens of clients, I have read extensively and shared experiences with other caregivers in support groups - yes, even unrelated caregivers need support groups and other strategies to cope with the harrowing effects of the work, which is too often with angry bitter people who lash out on the regular even at their paid, non related caregivers.

What I’ve seen is that people usually become more of what they always were as they age and decline both physically and cognitively. The Scrooge transformation upon realization of impending mortality is a fantastical imagination - the truth of most of humanity is much more evident in Miss Havisham, and Dickens knew better than most how fraught the parent child relationship could be. Your mom is not likely to get any nicer and is much more likely to be more and more cruel as she becomes more vulnerable in her body and mind. She cannot help but be especially cruel to you, because mothers of this type have spent a lifetime installing our psychological vulnerabilities in us and they can trigger them with very little effort, even if we have the insight and work very very hard, it is toxic to live day in and day out with a bully. If you keep your mother at home she will likely steal at least 5 years from your life expectancy, time you could have with your kids and grandkids at the end of your life. In the meantime the toxic dynamic she exudes into your family home will have effects that you may not even perceive now - children who live with a bully and watch that bully do their bullying to someone they really love are impacted by that, trust me. It will impact them in how they feel about intimacy with family, friends and someday potential partners and their own kids.

I would urge you t set aside any misplaced guilt and research options for your mother to live in assisted living or other similar setting. Take a long, hard realistic look at what she is doing to your mental health and ask yourself how you will feel a few years from now if things don’t change but instead get worse. I have seen adult children eaten alive by caregiving abusive parents. You DO NOT owe that to her. Your primary obligations now are to your own offspring. Think hard about how this impacts them.[/quote]

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