My parents were married for 40 years and my dad recently passed away unexpectedly. I had not seen him in 7 years as they moved clear across the country over 15 years ago. He always controlled everything... house, cars, money, budgets and treated my mom horribly and made her cry daily with huge fights of rage and just nasty mean and berating comments. I know because I took them too growing up.
I've always felt the need to protect my mother since I was a little kid and saw her getting attacked daily by my dad. When they moved I felt so helpless that I couldn’t be there to monitor and so I’d call almost everyday to get a temperature read on that day. It’s been a huge strain on my mental state to always worry. That is, until a few months ago when he suddenly passed and my mom called in hysterics because he has just passed in front of her and she was in major shock. I flew out with my husband the next morning to be with her and help.
Through the past 3 months, I have had to take over all her bills, get taxes ready, see lawyers, deal with his debts and unknown credit cards, fly back and forth between my home and theirs and try to keep my job by working remotely.
40 years of verbal abuse has not treated my mother well. She’s severely depressed and has seen a psych for 15 of those years. My dad’s recent passing has seemed to change her in ways I’m trying to understand as she is full of rage and just plain mean. To me and my husband who have tried to help with all aspects.
First she was glad to have us there helping and then it quickly turned to paranoia.. thinking my husband was going to steal her Social Sec #. Then she started freaking out on me when I would say how to handle the life insurance. Saying everything had to be “my way” and that I think “she’s stupid”. Really, she has been very foggy since his passing and drs said it is shock but she already had mentioned last year that she feels confused more often so dr put her on dementia medication. I’m worried because she is so not her and just wants to fight and be negative about everything.
Due to Covid, we are all stuck at my house. I am trying to keep her safe by waiting a day to get the mail so there is no virus on it. If order out, I try to plate all the food so she doesn’t touch any plastic surface and we limit exposure in our home. Little did I know these would cause hysterics and crying and her finger in my face saying that I think she’s stupid and how horrible I am. We took a drive to get out of the house and ended up finding the park was closed due to covid. Even that was a fight that she thinks my husband and I connived to bring her there only to not let her out of the car? Police were there giving tickets! Then we come home and order out and hubby goes to get it and we plate carefully. When she comes to eat, she pushed the food aside and played silent treatment until she could no longer hold on that she was pissed we touched her food and that we think she is stupid and can’t wash her hands. Hubby tried explaining calmly that we have a system to disinfect. She didn’t want to hear and accused him of plotting with me.
Today, I happened to be outside and she walks by me all pissed to take a walk around the block. I said you can’t still be mad about me putting your food in a plate and she turns around and says “you make me sick” and hustles off. She comes back when I’m doing laundry and kicks my door open and just gets in my face while crying hysterically about how she knows how hubby and I talk behind her back and how we lied about going to the park and walking around. Then she goes starts yelling at hubby and he wouldn’t engage so she berated him and walked away. I tried to use reason and ask why we would lie and connive about such stupid stuff and she just says to go away, leave her alone.
Don’t know what to do and I’m getting sick losing weight. I fight back as I can’t hold in and then she says I’m awful cuz Im treating her badly knowing she has depression. Pls help
Sounds like you need to get mother back to HER home asap. Then see about getting her placed in either an Assisted Living or Memory Care Assisted Living facility, based on her needs. She obviously cannot take care of herself independently, and you should NOT be committing yourself and your husband to taking care of her for one minute longer than is absolutely necessary. You've already lived a life of walking on eggshells and getting 'temperature reads' from her on a daily basis. I know what that feels like...........I have a 93 y/o mother who I've been dealing with for 63 years now, and she is SUPER personality disordered herself. No joke, and NOT someone I would ever live with, EVER, under any circumstances. Seriously. She lives in Memory Care and Assisted Living before then, since 2014. I will apply for Medicaid next year, if she's still alive, and get her transferred to Skilled Nursing.
See if you can speak to your mother's doctor and get his read on things, since he's already prescribed dementia meds for her. Memory Care seems to be the right answer here, but let her doctor guide you.
You can't fix this. You shouldn't be willing to step up and take a ton of abuse from this woman now, because she's sad or depressed or whatever. You deserve respect yourself and so does your husband. She'll be just fine in a community where all the elders are in the same boat and have a staff waiting on them 24/7.
Best of luck!
Have I been perfect? No. Do I yell back? Yes. And then she twists what I say and nudges me with digs till I engage again. If I try to leave her be, she just simmers and blows up again while ruminating about how bad a person I am. Yes, I have tried to control things to help as I see she gets very knowing gets confused over all the stuff for my dad. She doesn’t use computers so I have to take everything over to pay. She hates that she has to ask me to get the bank balance because she can’t check online. It’s ALL a control thing.
Shes always been a little negative but lately it’s all “oh my life’s over, I’m no spring chicken” and “I’ll never be able to sell my home in this pandemic” or “oh I’ll never afford a nice place near you and I’ll have to live in a $hithole.” Very victim mentality... she says “my whole life is over” I said “you have an opportunity to start over!” And she says “oh yeah, pppfftt at my age”. Just so negative and it hurts my soul deep to hear the constant negative talk.
ive been very negative too. Toooooo much on my plate and my dog just died which was another huge fight. Hers died 3 months before my dad so she keeps saying first my dog and then my husband. So I said I know Mom.. first my dad and then my baby furry boy and she said “oh well so you know how it feels then” I said it’s not an effing competition!! It is just only her hurting, you know? I haven’t even had time to grieve my dad and now dog.
I’m really at my wits end and feel so guilty for even writing this. I would give my life for hers. I’ve gotten very angry and sad and depressed myself and can’t contain it anymore. I’m not the same person and I hate the new me. I’m so on edge and my heart beats out my chest when she’s in these moods. I’m a huge empath and it really effects me. I’ve lashed out too but always try to talk logic after and still get the “I don’t want to see you.. get out!!”
im so hurt and confused and just want my mom back. She wanted to be free of him for so many years and I am starting to think she doesn’t know how. When she would visit me twice a year I’d always make it like a giant vacation by bringing her to baseball games and concerts and St Thomas and Vegas. I knew she needed a break and always tried to be the outlet she needed. Now I’m just angry and snippy and not helping the situation and neither is this quarantine.
I just miss my mother and my old life. I so regret screaming back at her but my emotions are frazzled and I am so past done. Tonight she mentioned that I never have anything nice to say and that I’m always negative and when I help her I gripe about it. Honestly? Yeah, I do because I feel unappreciated and not acknowledged that I’m hurting too! She said you’re the one who needs to see a dr (after I mentioned how she needs to talk to her psych) and I told her I DID!! (Which is true) I was honest and told her “and do you know what she said? She said I’m trying to help and protect someone that has never wanted to be protected!!” My mom just said “fine whatever, I’ll do it all myself”
She just locks herself in my extra bedroom and watches TV all day and night. Keeps saying she’s getting out of here. Wants to go back home alone and I’d be worried sick if she did but lately, once relatively safe to travel, I may just let her go be alone since it’s all she’s preached lately.
My dad died of cancer almost 6 yrs ago. My mother knew nothing about finances and when I offer to help she jumped all over me saying that "I think she is dumb and she can handle the bills and the house." So, I let it be! We talked on the phone almost everyday and she seemed fine. Then it became obvious that she wasn't fine! She asked us to move in and man was I surprised by what happened!
The next day after moving in she started in on me! Tell me I can't do this or that. That my SO and I wasn't locking the back door correctly. I could not wash pans right and she would tell me that I was stupid. She would take my things and hid them. She told my brother that we (my SO and I) were not paying any of the bills and we were stealing from her. She also told people that we were not letting her have any food, which none of it was true; in fact she would not let me use her kitchen. If we wanted to eat we had to go out to eat. It was a nightmare. She called me nasty names, told lies about me, she told people that I was trying to kill her. I can go on and on. I cried every night for a month! I begged God to help get me out of this mess, but we had no money to move and I had not found this forum yet! Honesty, I wanted to die! I did not know this woman that I use to call mom!!
Because my mother was being a power hungry, ego tripping, paranoid crazy woman talking to me as if I was some low life no body, I let her have it! She got in my face one day and I treated her as if she was someone who I didn't know and got back in her face. Am I proud of that moment--no, but I could not reason with her and I never let people talk to me any way they want...NEVER!! I finally told her that I am moving out and for her to NEVER call me; moreover, that when anyone ask how many kids she has to tell them she has one--a son because I am dead to her. I am Done!!
Then something change...she ran out of money in fact, she spent 89,000 dollars in less than three yrs! She needed me to help her filed bankruptcy. She could no longer afford the house and my brother was stealing from her and bullying her. Go figure!!
I found this forum and made a friend on here. Who saved me! My mother backed down because that is what weak bullies do!
Once she realize that the one person who always had her back was leaving for good she changed her tune!
This is what I learned going through 2 yrs of h3ll. 1) My mother was Dx with Vascular Dementia (VaD), 2) She was Dx with Border Personality Disorder, 3) She was also Dx with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and the last thing I learned was I and my dad never really knew her. Our relationship has forever change. I no longer see her as I once did.
Now, she is different because of the meds she takes. Yes, I still live with her, but now she is different, I still have to lock up my things because she will take them and she still lies, but she doesn't talk to anyone any more. She no longer gets in my face or call me names and my brother is no longer welcome here.
I am so sorry that you are going through this. The feelings of not understanding what is going on along with the hurt feelings of someone who you love turning on you is just...heart wrenching with more pain then any one could ever imagine. Moms are suppose to be the person who loves you and a safe person, but not mine and maybe not yours either!
I am sorry this is so long, but I wanted you to read my story in hope that it helps you.
By the way, Lea and many on here knows what you are going through...You are Not Alone!
Best of luck with lots of hugs!!!
I’m sorry you also know this pain and there is nothing anyone can do to change the situation.
She was never like this. Sometimes saw the negative and pointed it out but over the past few years it is mostly begun to be raw anger that always had to do with me telling her what to do.. like “your dr said you can’t have that” or “don’t microwave styrofoam, it releases chemicals.” It is always about CONTROL.
now it’s just erupted since his passing and she won’t recognize it or that she’s even angry!
i don’t know how to help anymore. If I back away and let her flounder, I don’t think I could live with the guilt of not helping till I had nothing left.
I don’t know if your mom was always like this but mine was not and her dr said it’s bottled up anger as a result of taking my fathers abuse for 40 years. I can’t help but think it’s a mixture of deep depression, shock from the loss, anger and resentment plus some cognitive decline from all the paranoia(?)
Hoping we can all get through this mess and get to a more normal place soon.
Maybe your mom is a mixed bag?! Your father abused your mom so I am sure she has some underlying mental problems because no one can be abuse for that many yrs without causing some damage. Then there is shock from your father's passing. And I am sure your mom has some anger with his passing. My own mother was mad that my dad left her. He died and she is mad at him?!! Then you have her with some cognitive decline. But honestly I don't know if you can help her. It just might be to big of a price to pay. Perhaps she needs to see someone.
My mother was the most positive person I ever knew. But then became the most negative person I ever knew!!!
I have come to realize that dementia takes on many forms in the beginning. I am not saying that your mom has dementia, but it sure seems like it.
I also think we don't always know people the way we "thought" we did.
Have you thought about moving mom closer to you when things get back to normal. Just Please don't have her keep living with you when things do get back to normal!
Im very worried about her and she’s made it clear she wants to go home and be left alone once we can travel a bit more. She needs to go talk to her dr but none of this will come up except for maybe that I’ve gotten annoyed with her. Maybe it will even sound like I’m a bad bad daughter (her dr knows otherwise as we’ve met) but think her current depression meds aren’t doing the job and something else is creeping in.
She must be in emotional freefall, don't you think? Completely unanchored, disoriented, and now on top of that the entire world has been rocked and she's trying to get her bearings just when all around her have lost theirs.
I mean, it *could* be the beginnings of some kind of dementia - simply because nobody is immune from that, either. But I don't think you need any more explanation, really, than the life she's had and has suddenly lost.
All that time married to a very controlling and overbearing person, I suppose would mean she doesn't have much in the way of a good, supportive social circle of her own, does it? Nobody she's in the habit of unloading to, nobody on her wavelength she can confide in?
I don't mean this in any way critically of her; but it would be astonishing if your mother had survived her marriage without sustaining any form of psychological injury or damage to her personality. For short-term tactics, I would recommend (I'm always recommending, nobody yell "boring" at me!) 'Understanding The Borderline Mother' by Christine Ann Lawson - not because I would be so hasty as to suggest your mother has a personality disorder, but because the book provides really useful, practical tools for relating to someone you love who is nonetheless challenging to the point of toxic to your own mental health.
This is about the first time in her adult life that your mother has been free to express her anger and resentment without fear of the consequences, isn't it.
She probably has quite a lot of that to clear out of her system. Duck and cover!
good call countrymouse.