My mom is coming home from the hospital today...yesterday i wasn't feeling well because i'm menopausal and she made it about her by saying, "happy homecoming"
Thankfully there are other caregivers who come into the home and i have my alone time away from her...
What are some ways you are surviving her personality and not reacting to triggers?
To avoid getting sucked into the mind games takes a lot of practice and mental energy. It's a matter of achieving a state of benign detachment.
Or perhaps she's just one of those people who should be loved from afar.
Blessings for your own survival.
Growing up, I didn't realize how awful my mother's behaviors were because it was my only reality. I think it finally struck home when I gave birth to a son with a chromosomal abnormality. We were staying at our mother's home to be closer to the specialists in Wash, D.C. I think you can imagine the stress my husband and I were going through on the morning we were to meet with the geneticist who would reveal the findings of his and our tests. Would our child ever learn? Would we be able to have other children that were unaffected? At 26, we felt like our entire future was about to be spelled out for us.
So, when we got back to mom's place did we get compassion from my mother? Nope. Instead, my mother took me aside and let me know how inconsiderate my husband was because he'd left a few hairs in the shower of the bathroom we were using. Of course, that should have been his first priority! I contrast her behavior with my dear in-laws who, knowing we would be tired and emotionally wrung out upon arriving at our own home, had come earlier and left an entire home-cooked meal for us in our refrigerator, complete with dessert and wine, too!
What I decided to learn from this was that I could never change my mother but I could the yin to her yang, the good to her evil, and always try to emulate the kind of compassion my in-laws demonstrated and that has gone a long way to dissipate my anger and heal my soul.
Smitty, I'm sorry your mother could not see that you were hurting, but I hope you can take some comfort from the many responses that show that others are here to help you.
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