Hi,
I wrote about my situation last year when I was contacted about my mother because I’m her only next of kin & went no contact with her. The hospital deemed her incompetent where she lives 3,000 miles away. I stood strong saying no to being her guardian & refused to take away her phone as their solution to her calls. However, she is at the facility & stalks me with 20+ calls/ day (I block her), blaming me for her life choices, telling me she’s being starved & continued histrionics. A good friend advised I get a restraining order on her because she’s done this since I moved away @ 18, she just had different complaints. She believes my role is to serve her & is a borderline mother who can’t be pleased. I’ve tried to speak to her, but she continues to lie, manipulate & tries to convince me I’m responsible for her. I know this isn’t true but don’t know why I even care & don’t just shut her out completely? She’s been dying or threatening suicide since I was a child. She forbid me from calling her guardian but she isn’t in her right mind. She will be angry if I call to request my mother stop calling me. I save her messages to the cloud as proof of her calls because she will deny them (usually don’t listen) except I recently did because I can’t delete/save as fast as she fills my voicemail back up. I don’t want to change my number because I’ve had it for over 25 years & it’s something I’ve kept where old friends can still reach me. Basically, she lost her rights but still uses scare tactics because I’m a pushover. I did make it clear in a brief text I’m NOT responsible for her & to threaten “ they” will come find me no longer applies because she has a legal guardian and is safe. I suggested she tell her guardian if she’s going to kill herself. She literally doesn’t understand why I don’t want her in my life & I feel sorry for her despite her being a gaslighter & her willingness to do anything to hurt me if she still could. She forgets all the horrible things she’s done since I was a child, continues to do & refuses to discuss them. The bottom line is how can I take back my power by saying no more because she can’t respect my boundaries? I miss time-sensitive calls because my voice mail is full & don’t want to give her another day of my life. Should I just contact her guardian to request she leave me alone or I will have to file a restraining order? I’m sorry I wrote so much. It’s just hard because I wish I didn’t care if I hurt her feelings. I wish I could just be numb to her but it’s not my personality makeup because I’m an empathetic person. She cries we will never see each other again & I will get the call she’s dead & it will be all my fault. She said I deserve to suffer and live with the guilt I killed my mother for the rest of my life.
Anyone who may have some advice or techniques on how to deal with her would be greatly appreciated.
On my iPhone, if I block a number then calls from it don't connect and no message can be left. So I don't understand how your mother is still able to swamp your mailbox if, as you say, you have blocked her. Do you mean you just reject her calls? - not quite the same thing.
But in general you have to take only one decisive action: stop engaging. You don't need a restraining order; you positively shouldn't attempt to enlist her guardian's support because it simply adds connections and complications; you haven't a snowflake's chance in h3ll of making her understand your point of view; and meanwhile she's 3000 miles away and can't possibly just turn up on your doorstep so if nothing else you're physically well out of her reach. Her remaining access to you is in your head, and in your hands. Do you have help from a therapist in getting control of this?
If you do that, she won't be able to leave messages.
Yoy have to decide that you can't deal with her anymore or she will always be able to create this push pull in you. It is okay to decide that she is to toxic, even though she has the title of mom. It doesn't give her any right to jerk you around and make you responsible for her choices and actions.
If you can't arrive there on your own, I recommend seeing a professional to help you find a way to protect yourself from her insanity.
1st step is to call that guardian and tell them she needs to stop with the phone calls, even if that means no phone. I have gone into my dads phone and changed numbers of people he would continually call, so he would get a non working number message, just one digit can do this and is hard for a broken brain to catch, maybe that would stop her calls.
You don't have to take her abuse.
In the short term, as much as it is a logistical pain, you need to change your phone number. It's the only way you're going to stop these unwanted phone calls.
In the long term, I think you need to seek some therapy, to see why you are allowing her to still have any access whatsoever to you. Why are you saving all of these messages? You say for "proof" - what sort of proof do you need at this point? You have already said you informed the hospital you wanted no contact with her, the hospital respected your decision, and the hospital has deemed her to be not competent to live alone- no small feat, by the way. It seems to me that there is no "proof" required anymore, since you don't have to "prove" anything to anyone - except maybe to yourself, which is why I think counseling would be in order here.
I hope you can find a place of peace. (((hugs)))
She's your mother. Yes, she treated you with cruelty and abuse your entire life and still does. Yes, she is a big time gaslighter and a martyr who made you a scapegoat to blame every problem she and the whole world ever had on.
This is my mother too. Yet they are still our mothers and some part of us will always care about our moms no matter how bad they are.
She's still your mother and it's okay to want to know that she's being looked after and taken care of. This doesn't have to mean you want to see or speak to her. She will never respect your boundaries. She will never apologize for any pain, abuse, or wrongdoing towards you. She will never even consider the possibility that even one tiny part of it could be her fault.
You already know all of this, but still want her to validate your feelings. She's not going to. My mother isn't going to either.
Give up your phone number and get a new one. Call her guardian and explain that you do not want your mother having your new phone number. Then tell them that you would like to check in with them once a week or every other week, for updates on your mother's welfare. If you want to actually speak to your mother for some reason, call her but block your number so she can't call you back. If you don't know how to do this, go to where you got your cellphone and ask someone to show you how to do this. I had to have the guy show me how to do this from where I bought my phone. No shame in asking. I pay my bill every month.
This is the way to keep a connection with your mother that you are in control of. Good luck.
You say you don't want the calls. The change your number. Don't answer your phone. Screen your calls and delete them. I am glad you gave up her management to the state if you couldn't be involved, but she cannot change what she is doing while she has access to the phone.
You might consider also trying, as Burnt suggests, some limited contact. A call in the a.m. or a call every Sunday; that's what my partner came to.
Stay away orders don't control the demented. Stay away orders cannot control phones. Only you can control phones. We used to have phones with off and on switches that didn't take messages and that you didn't carry with you. Imagine THAT!
First of all change your number. Yes I know you say it is hard and old friends have it, but I listened to a woman complain for 16 years that she got so many wrong numbers, when it was evident within 3 days of her being assigned the number that it was one digit off the bank and had formally been a prostitutes number. If she has changed it that week, all would have been good. But she liked to have something to complain about and it also gave her an excuse to not answer her phone.
Yes it will be a pain in the butt to contact everyone. But you may find it is a nice trip down memory lane to reach out to your old friends and give them your new number. Yes, you will miss a few, but that's ok, your mental health is more important than a call from someone you have not spoken with in 20+ years.
She is not going to respect a restraining order, you know that. She feels she is in the right and nothing is going to change that. A restraining order is a piece of paper, what's going to happen if she breaks it? Nothing at all. I had to get a restraining order on someone who was threatening me with violence, the police were very clear that a piece of paper does not stop a punch, but with it and my address registered with 911, my address would be at the top of the response queue.
She can say, "I forbid you from calling my guardian." but she cannot stop you from doing so.
I have two narcissistic parents. I know the pain of just wanting to be loved for who I am and knowing it will never happen. My Dad is in hospital and seriously ill. I know he has never and will never love me. But there is a little girl inside of me who desperately clings to the dream that he loves me. I know it is not true.
It is not empathy that has you stuck. Being empathetic does not mean putting yourself in the firing line. I am sure some of the other replies, which I have not read, mention FOG, Fear, Obligation, and Guilt. Narcs are fantastic at grooming their children to live in a constant state of FOG.
You don't need to change your number to do this. Just hit "block this contact" from your phone. If she calls you from any other device, simply block that one.
Burnt says she loves her mother even as she was as bad or worse than yours is, but she has chosen to live in with her mom as a caregiver. Mom observes her boundaries because Mom still understands that this is the only way to keep Burnt in this role.
You can use a similar tactic by doing the above. A couple months of no contact followed by a letter or text that really boils down what your boundaries are. As in:
"Dear Mom. I'd like to talk with you again if you want to, too. I will listen to you about your life and situation, but I will not listen to you telling me that it was or is my fault. I will be a sympathetic ear or return texts, but I can't do this more than once or twice a day (or week, whatever your threshold is OP). Mom, if you would still like to talk, reply to this text or write a letter back. If you don't, that's OK. I'll respect your decision either way. Love XXX"
I'm also my mother's caregiver for other reasons that aren't as noble as love and compassion. Money and property. The situation is mutually beneficial to us both. If I didn't benefit from it, I wouldn't be here.
The moment dementia shows up, I am out and everyone knows it.
The boundaries are for YOU. Set them and stop picking up the phone.
If you make contact with the guardian, make sure s/he understands that you are concerned about your mom but can have no contact with her.
You will never move past your guilt/enmeshment if you don't take steps to understand why you still allow her behaviors to reach you. Start with reading about narcissistic mothers, their affects on their children. You seem to have a good handle on the gaslighting, manipulation, etc. so use this knowledge to start purging yourself of your emotional ties. Forget asking people like your mother to respect your boundaries; they won't and they never will. If fact, it just gives them more fodder for drama. How do you enforce a boundary? Block calls, don't listen to messages, purge them from your phone. It gets easier; I blocked my mother's calls and you know what? Nothing bad ever happened; in fact, only good came of it, for me, for the first time, in my 'relationship' with this disordered woman called 'mother'. That is how I 'took back my power'. You take it, don't ask for other people to do it for you.
Your profile says you were abused physically by this woman. You have to realize that she has a mental problem that you will never be able to fix. That you don't have to love this woman. That this woman can never show you love, she doesn't know how. Maybe she was abused as a child and it warped her mind. You can forgive her because she can't help who she is. But you don't have to love her and should not expect Love from her.
If all Mom uses her phone for is to harass you, then she does not need it. I would talk to the guardian and tell her that you are blocking Mom completely. That her continuous calling/texting is effecting your mental health. That there is no way you can have any kind of relationship with her. That the guardian is welcome to keep in touch with you but you have to stop all kinds of contact with Mom. Mom is safe and cared for. Thats what you did for her. Found a solution where she is safe, warm, fed and cared for. Actually, her 20 calls a day is probably causing some anxiety for her. So, going no contact may be good for her too.
I also learned that there are apps that can help with that:
https://infostans.com/best-free-call-blocker-apps/
Hopefully one of these will work for you medicineislogic
Done & done.
Or, you will continue trying to figure out ways to make this work, knowing it won't.
Maybe it's best if you go see your mother and have a face to face meeting to make SURE you never want to see or hear from her again. Maybe you need more closure or resolution to this situation than you're letting on, otherwise you would have made ONE simple change by now that would have stopped mother dead in her tracks. You would have changed your phone number. But you haven't. Which tells me you want to keep the lines of communication open b/c you still hold out one tiny shred of hope here.
If so, go see her and find out if there is any. You never know. Good luck!
Don't waste time trying to get her to be part of the solution. Take back your control over your life.
Since you don't want to change your phone number, and your blocking isn't working, what I did with my mother (who was calling me at all hours of day and night with every little possible 'problem' and issue) was I didn't answer her phone call (I figured if it was an emergency either the hospital or facility would call me), and when she left messages, I would just delete them without listening to them. At night time, I would turn the ringer off so it wouldn't wake me. I had a separate cell phone next to my bed that the facility and/or hospital had number so if it was a true emergency they would call on that phone. When I would visit her (just about everyday), she would complain she couldn't get a hold of me and I would say that 'there was as power outage' 'my phone is having issues' or whatever.
A restraining order won't do squat. She is elderly and possibly beginnings of dementia. I am not quite sure what you mean by 'guardian' - if it is someone at the facility, they technically can't prohibit her from using a phone in her room.
Setting boundaries is most important for yourself - they will help you keep you sanity. They won't remove the guilt, which, unfortunately, is more challenging to not feel, especially if one has been a caregiver or is a family member. But, if things keep going the way they are, trust me, eventually, you just get so wore out, that there won't be room for guilt anymore. That is what happened to me. And even after my mother passed, the guilt didn't return. Sadness that things couldn't have been different, but I knew, deep in my heart that I did absolutely everything I could without sacrificing myself completely (although 10 months later I am still attempting to physically recover from that last year of nearly 24/7).
Keep upfront that you have been conditioned through ongoing abuse to feel this way. You felt powerless as a child, and you are still reacting out of this fear. Work on releasing the "FOG" which is fear, obligation and guilt. I often wonder how many of us are actually empaths or if we are just reacting out of this fog from the ongoing abuse that triggers this childhood trauma.
It's like being on automatic pilot. Take a time out to figure out if there are other choice behaviors that may be more effective in handling these tirades. We have been trained to jump to their commands and to take on the first feeling which is fear. If you get angry first, the motivating factor behind this anger is fear.
Fear will keep you a prisoner to these tyrannical people.
This behavior is very narcissistic on her part.
This is a battle of wills. You say one word & she wins. Hang up. Immediately. Every. Single. Time.
Like every toddler, she will test you and even one victory proves there’s a chink in your armor. Toddlers also know to ramp up the tantrums when they’re losing so expect mom to get worse before admitting defeat.
You have to fight the fight to win. If you relent, there’s something else going on in your relationship.
1.Get a cheap phone and new number. Give her that number. Don't put voice mail on that phone!
2. and then BLOCK her from your personal phone. Tell her your old phone number no longer works to contact you.
3. Decide how often you'll talk to her. Once a day? Once in the morning, once at night? Then TELL her that is your plan. And stick to it. Also how long will you listen? 15 min. Perhaps that's enough. Practice a stock phrase for ending the call.
Ok, mom Im so glad we could talk and I'm going now.
That's all for now. We will talk again our regular time.
That's all the time I have so Bye for now.
And hang up.
IF your mom has anxiety, she has to have coping mechanisms. Calling you is one of them. That's not an option anymore, so, consider what she might do instead and help her with that.
There are help lines for seniors who need to talk to some one. Program those numbers into her phone.
No one, and not your mother, has permission to harass you. Unless you allow it.
Good luck!
Ps You might want to talk to her doctor about anxiety meds.
You don't need to talk to her ever. Your mother will keep being abusive. Block her completely.
I'm so sorry it comes to this for too many people with abusive family. We just have to protect ourselves.
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Blocking calls/specific phone numbers is different for Landlines or Mobile phones.
Landline: Go into service provider's website, your account settings and enter the phone number you want to block under blocked numbers. Your phone won't ring and the caller gets a message like "the number you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this time." Easy peasey.
Android cell phones: This was a nightmare. I blocked my father's number per instructions. Your phone doesn't ring at all but the caller can STILL LEAVE A VOICEMAIL. I didn't want him to think he was even getting through, so just deleting the voice mails was not enough. I called my service provider and they were no help. Explained I had a stalker and needed a specific number blocked from leaving voicemail messages. Their answer was delete the messages without listening or change your phone number. I then asked if we could disable or uninstall voicemail entirely and that was a hard no.
Here is what I ended up having to do: I blocked the number on my landline, though he always called my cell phone. I then did the call forwarding thing so all calls went to the landline, so he got that message and couldn't leave one. Unfortunately, my cell phone didn't ring for a year, but at least other callers could leave a message on my landline and I'd call them back. It was worth it to not hear my father's demands and swearing at me in 2 languages. When he finally passed, I tried to cancel the call forwarding but it didn't work, so I ended up dropping that provider and bought a new phone. I still have the same old number though! LOL
I spent 60+ years in the F.O.G. before I reached my breaking point. Realized I should have gone No Contact years ago.
One time a staff member at the ALF called and I answered, thinking it might be important/urgent. She then put my father on the phone! Afterwards, I told her don't ever do that to me again. After that, the staff would give me a list of what dad needed and I would drop the items off at the front desk and leave. That system worked until the end.
The easiest thing might be to just get a new number and give it to your contacts and old friends, just not your mother or her caregiver. Best of luck to you.
At first when she was placed in the NH fall of 2020, I would often get ten or more calls in a row. Calls all hours of the night. Crazy rants about this or that. At first, I tried to take the calls and then, choose to let them go to voice mail. But the constant pop ups on my phone were maddening intrusions. So I blocked her number almost 7 months ago. And have also gone not contact, although as her only child I am the POA and "health agent" so no "direct contact" with her, but still in contact with her health team.
I figured out, on an iPhone (not sure about androids) if you block a number, the person in theory can still leave a voice message which will appear in the "blocked messages" section of your phone but person cannot text you. So block the number as a first step.
And, then you have options:
1) Choose to NOT look at your phone's block voice message section; much less listen to her blocked messages. Ignore any messages that may be there. And, then choose a once a month day to just delete them without listening.
2) Leave your voice mail full, so she cannot leave a message at all. Just let friends and family know to text you OR email you. Call attempts will still show up with the number from all unblocked callers even though they too cannot leave a voice message but you will know if folks other than your mom are calling.
Try 1 and 2 for about 6 months. I have found that over time in my case -- the no contact, no response to any of her voice messages -- that is NO REACTION -- over time they become exhausted or perhaps bored with the game. See with a narcissist (your mom sound like one) they choose to be drama queens like this to create conflict, controversy and to push your buttons so YOU WILL REACT and that then given them the "supply" they need, they GOT YOUR JUICES GOING and to them that is mana from heaven.
Hard, but just block, ignore, do not listen and delete. The more reaction -- seeking a restraining order, talking to her guardian, changing your cell humber -- they more you are playing her game, on her playing field with her rules. CHANGE THE GAME and make it your choice to ignore it all and MOVE ON.