Quarterly update: narcissist miserable anxious mother with no permanent home by choice continues insanity.
sum: seen her 10x in 20 years. She left my father. She traveled world for 15 years in fancy places but on budget through demands. She is now 77. 100k in bank. We fund 35k. Social security 10k. 2-5 emails a day for this year with:
”are you going to let me die”
“if you think I am going to get on with my life you are in a fantasyland.”
”I’m not going to make it.”
”You want to buy me a house and you expect me to live alone?”
”the prices of houses have doubled - even if you are paying for it; now I have less money from you.”
”I don’t want you to buy me a house.”
”nobody does this alone.”
now, for the past year, rabbis, psychiatrists, my stepmother of all people and us have tried to come up
with solutions.
now she is begging us to “make a deal” that she can come to see us for 2 weeks and just get some love. We held our ground and said no. She said, let me come and then you can decide whether to buy me a house in California or put me in a home.
for background, she did not sacrifice for me. She divorced my father when I was 13, he raised me. She never paid a nickel for college or bought me anything. She was never there emotionally. Ever. She sent one email from 2014 where she showed that I thanked her for her ideas about a mosquito
problem. Her problems are worse, but she ignores my ocd saying it isn’t her fault. I recently had an incident where I lost feeling in my leg and my husband told her and she can’t see it. Even people with cancer have it better than her because they have family. My mil can’t walk, but she has a house. When we offer her a house, she says it’s different because my mil has been in her house. I know it is insane and I should just stop reading the emails. My husband has taken over and she bombards him. He’s ready to cut ties completely but we still want to monitor where she is and need to send her funds. There is still a nagging sadness that she isn’t welcomed by any family - but she was - she just abused everyone to a point of no contact by everyone. I’m not supposed to judge as I’m not g-d but it has deeply affected my family and it’s not ending.
Do you feel bound by that particular cultural tradition?
If you study religious/cultural traditions, you will find a commonality is that they arise from the particular historical and political situation a people find themselves in.
If you live in the US, your mother has a social safety net she can access. This applies in the EU as well.
You don't love your mother. So what? Not loving her isn't what is going to kill her. Her mental illness and HER ability not to love may possibly do that.
She doesn't sound very loveable to me.
Please find a therapist.
For one birthday I got her an upgraded diamond ring. Another a vacation in Bermuda then Hawaii, then London, etc. etc. She lives and thrives, I don't. No safety net.
I just responded back to your response to my post about you feeling as if this is a moral dilemma.
I see so much confusion in your words. Please seek therapy.
You need professional help to help you heal and also to reprogram your mind. A lot of deconstructing is going to have to take place before you will be able to see things for what they truly are.
It’s okay that you haven’t been able to figure things out on your own. There is absolutely no shame in needing extra help from time to time.
You have been dealing with this for a long time and you won’t heal overnight. Please commit to a substantial amount of time in therapy. Don’t go once or twice and feel like it isn’t working. It’s going to take several months before you start to get a grasp on the situation.
A good therapist will know how to approach this situation with sensitivity and understanding.
A person who has been through trauma is fragile.
You will be safe to speak openly and freely about whatever you feel with your therapist.
Best of luck to you.
You say that you can’t imagine the pain your mom must feel in not being loved by you, but you are inflicting it.
She absolutely needs therapy to do serious deconstruction from all of her mom’s brainwashing since early childhood.
Then her mom walked out when she was 13. This is a vulnerable age. She has had a lot to deal with. This situation is more complicated than we think.
I don’t understand how you can be so cavalier about your financial situation. Your mother isn’t just draining your time and energy. She’s putting a huge dent in your financial future.
Unless you’re independently wealthy, the endless supply of money that you are doling out to her is continuing to add up and will have an impact on your family’s future.
You have a young son that still has to go through college. You or your husband could become ill and need money for serious health issues. We never know what the future will be.
((((Hugs))))
Please explain why you see this situation as a moral dilemma.
While I believe that everyone should be treated humanely, I don’t feel that we have to personally care for someone that has harmed us emotionally or physically.
If caring for her is causing major grief then you should stop trying to help her.
Do you fear that she will become homeless? Is this what you are referring to by a moral dilemma?
My oldest brother was homeless for a time. It made me very sad to think about him being on the streets without food and shelter.
My brother overcame serious issues from his youth. He started his own business, was successful, had a wonderful woman in his life and so forth. Things were looking up.
He ended up making some really bad choices and lost everything! When he asked to move in with me, or requested money, I said no.
I wanted to help him at first. I bought him food. I listened to his concerns. Ultimately, he was in a downward spiral and every suggestion that I made to help him was declined by him.
So, I told him that I loved him but that I was going to walk away and I did. I didn’t see him again until I received a phone call from his friend saying that he was in hospice and was dying.
It’s okay to love your mom but despise the things that she has done. Don’t mix up ‘love’ with ‘moral dilemma.’ I loved my brother but I also loved myself and my husband and children. I couldn’t put him before any of us.
Am I immoral because I walked away from my brother? I don’t think that I am. It was his responsibility to turn things around, not mine.
My life would have been turned upside down had I continued to help him. I saw that it was futile to keep doing so.
This truly isn’t a moral dilemma with your mom.
A mantra is a nice place to start, but the damage that has been done to you has taken decades. Therapy is going to last for longer than a couple of sessions.
AND from experience, if the therapist doesn't seem to "click" it may not be the right person.
We're all allowing ourselves to be caught up in trying to guide a person/profile that is just gaslighting for whatever nutty purpose and for whatever entertainment this provides her/him.
It's a waste of time!
Can you imagine how her husband and child feel being caught up in this crazy crap? Her child is going to need therapy due to growing up in a terribly dysfunctional family.
I wouldn’t even say that the OP has a ‘relationship’ with her mother. She is allowing herself to be tormented by a woman who walked out on her at age 13 and has only seen her once in a blue moon ever since.
I have mentioned this before but I want to say it again. Please be honest with yourself. You are in major denial.
If you do choose to speak to a therapist and I seriously hope that you do, please be honest with them. Otherwise, you are wasting your time and theirs as well.
Don’t be embarrassed about screwing up and allowing all of this chaos into your life. People will respect you for owning your mistakes. What they won’t respect is if you deny it.
Admit that you lost your way. It happens. I don’t even think that it’s totally your fault. Your mother is an expert in coercive control. She has been doing this since you were a child. You can turn this situation around. She doesn’t have to be in control of your emotions.
Start by wanting to make healthy choices. Can you do that?
If you really want to, you can get off of the emotional roller coaster that you are on.
If you speak to a therapist they will help you to recognize the signs. Therapy is crucial because you are blind to what is going on. Therapy will show you that you have essentially become your mother’s puppet. She has been pulling your strings for a very long time!
I would seriously consider taking Caroli up on her offer to speak with you.
She will be a big help to you if you allow her to.
Think about it. Best wishes to you and your family.
So what you're basically saying is exactly what myself and others have been telling OCD from day one, but only in plain and simple language.
Stop playing your mother's games and enabling her behavior.
The OP has tried nothing to get her mother to stop.
She doesn't want to listen to her mother on the phone.
Don't take her calls. Change your phone number.
She doesn't want to hear her mother's abusive messages. she can go outside and have her husband or someone else delete the messages so she doesn't have to hear them.
She doesn't want to see emails from her abusive mother.
Delete the email account mother uses for the messages.
She lives in fear of her mother's retaliation if she doesn't obey her commands.
Yet she won't do a single thing to stop her mother. Like going to the police. Getting a restraining order. Or installing a home security system.
You know what else is true about many people like OCD? They actually enjoy being abused and taken advantage of. The complaining rights, sympathy and support they solicit and get from others makes the abuse worth it. OCD will always be a willing participant in all of her mother's games because she enjoys playing them.
Here are links to your past posts; this is hardly a "quarterly update."
August 23, 2022: https://www.agingcare.com/questions/mothers-constant-misery-is-destructive-she-wont-live-anywhere-any-advice-476776.htm?orderby=recent
October 7, 2022: https://www.agingcare.com/questions/misery-manipulation-and-threats-continue-any-advice-477574.htm
Go back and read all the past responses on this forum alone. Have you done anything, apart from changing your email address? Gotten the clinical mental health care you require, disengaged with this toxic mother figure? Enough already!
Every email platform has the same feature to bounce back and block the sender and any emails and yet, you keep reading them and are so obsessed that you are providing their content here for forum members. You want to wallow in her drama but we don't want to wade in the same cesspool of craziness.
STOP READING HER EMAILS!
And please don't send me any more messages on my profile trying to engage me in your madness, I'm not interested in your crazy drama. Seriously.
You stated before that you post this same insanity about your sick mother-daughter non-relationship on multiple platforms and you get the very same response here as you do everywhere else. You don't heed any advice and choose to remain her willing partner in this bizarre dance. And you continue to finance her!
When are you going to get yourself some mental health care and cease these pointless requests for support and guidance that you never follow anyway?
Many of us in this forum have taken the time to read your posts and provide empathetic support and guidance and now, here we go again with more of the exact same from you, nothing has changed because you choose to remain in this illness with your mother figure.
You choose this life with her and lean into your addiction to her drama, endlessly spinning it, endlessly running on that same hamster wheel. Why involve all of these strangers on different support platforms for no resolve, whatsoever?
What do you gain from this attention? Truly, that's all you're seeking, the very same attention that your imagined mother figure seeks from you, right?
GET MENTAL HEALTH CARE!
OP told me at one point during this insane scenario that she feels like she does need therapy, but that if she goes to therapy, it won’t stop her mom from emailing her.
This is how twisted her thoughts have become! There is absolutely no logic in her thinking.
Seriously, no one has to be this deeply affected by ‘lame’ emails She can easily delete the emails without even bothering to read that nonsense!
When you called the suicide hotline for your mom and they advised you to get help for yourself, what did you think? They were probably concerned that your mother is going to drive you to the point of suicide!
Your mother has serious mental health issues and her behavior is enough to drive even a saint or a Rabbi insane! Her Rabbi is very smart to have left her to fend for herself.
I don’t want to be cold here, I prefer to offer comfort to those in need. I know that people can become confused and fragile when they are hurting.
I am truly sorry that you have been hurt by your mom, but surely you must realize that you have to assume some responsibility for your part in creating this mess.
Please do as the suicide hotline and many of us on the forum have suggested, GO GET HELP! There is no shame in seeing a therapist.
What is stopping you from seeing a therapist? Therapists are available to help us sort through our issues. You have multiple issues!
We have all had our share of problems. Having problems is a part of life. Not dealing with the problems is your BIGGEST PROBLEM and that is what is destroying you and your family.
I learned a lot about myself and others when I sought therapy. My therapist was wonderful. He helped me to see my situation more clearly and put things in perspective.
You haven’t helped anyone, including your mother, by prolonging this agony. You taught your mother to lean on you like a crutch. YOU ARE NOT A CRUTCH! YOU ARE HER DAUGHTER! BEHAVE LIKE A DAUGHTER OR WRITE OFF THE RELATIONSHIP ALL TOGETHER.
Personally, at this point, I would write her off.
When are you going to stop? Not for your mother's sake but for your own and your own family's.
Your sister somehow manages to stay out of your mother's toxic net of gaslighting, guilt, dysfunction, and abusive neediness. How about you pick up a phone right now and give her a call? Ask her right now how she does this.
I am sure she'll tell you exactly what I've been telling you all along.
STOP PLAYING YOUR MOTHER'S GAMES!!!!!
Your sister doesn't her play her games and gets about her daily life. Yet every time mom deals the cards, you pick them up. STOP!
Stop. Go no contact with her. Let her call your stepmother. Why should you care about that? She's an adult and can handle hanging up the phone. Let her leave emails threatening to kill herself. Don't acknowledge them. People who are determined to end their lives don't use it as a threat to get their own way. They go ahead and do it. This woman abandoned you and missed out on half of your life. A selfish narcissist who cares for no one but herself and now she's alone.
She made her bed and now has to sleep in it. You will never be free of her abuse unless you take your freedom and fight to keep it like your sister does.
But if you're still willing to play at whatever games she deals you in on, you do not need or want any help or advice.
Cut her off. Enough already.
Choices have consequences. Here they are psycho.
Like I said at first, she is playing you for a fool and YOU keep laying down to let her and you NOW have your husband and son laying down too. Apparently you didn't fall far from her tree of let's screw over our family. You are just doing it differently but, still doing it. Your choices have consequences too.
Great response!
Even her mother’s Rabbi cut her off! That’s saying something…
When a charitable man walks away, you know it’s bad!
She sounds like Veruca Salt, the character in Charley and the Chocolate Factory.
I can’t even imagine desiring either of my daughters to buy me a home.
I certainly wouldn’t expect it.
Wouldn’t expect them to pay my hotel bills either.
Entitled doesn’t even begin to describe this woman.
Please follow your Rabbi’s lead!
He set out to help your mother. When he saw her behavior he realized that his efforts were in vain. He saw where it was completely futile to keep trying.
He is a very smart man who set strong boundaries with your mom and then allowed her to go her own way. Some people have to hit rock bottom before they change their lives for the better.
Give her that chance, allow her to fall. Maybe then, she will decide to pick up the pieces and move forward in a healthy direction.
As long as you are holding her hand, she isn’t going to let go. You have taught her to hold on. Teach her to let go.
subject: You're going to let me just gO?
...
How can you turn your back and leave me without a family support when I can't see this solitude and aloneness and I desperately need to ferme went home connection, I can't think of anything but how I failed and need to touch and be.
Touched NOW!!!!!!! How you do this to a mother who just wants a reason to get out and start to eat and live and help you if she can feel not abandoned?
Sent from my iPad
Here is the second one. For the record, we have told her that she will get a total of 30 from us and my dad will give nine. With 10 from Social Security that will give her 50 a year. Note that she didn’t work more than 10 years total and my dad worked his whole life and she didn’t raise the family for sure. She went back to work when I was 9 and chose to stop working when I was 16 because she wanted to go to Europe. So, she is getting almost as much as my dad with our supplement and she’s saying it’s not enough.
“Even your father must get almost 3000 in benefit plus sandy is over 4000.
Plus the pens sis from ford
I gave up working 15 year to raise family.
I didn't ask for part of social unity or pension when duborcinf.
I sold my Diamond ring for house purchase.
I'm so stupid I can't stand it.
I should've stayed working till 65 but I thought I had enough money.
Then I lost it all.
I can't afford to live and I can't live like a pauper. And be alone.”
My stomach was tied up in knots for hours as she shot criticisms and negativity--cussing all the while. Cleaned her dishes, collected trash, took her to UrgentCare for a wrist x-ray (swollen, but no break)...to grocery shopping..to Rite Aid for Cigars....to get her 7 ft tree--took it in off my car roof .decorated it, while she sat in other room... Put everything away..Drove down to dump her trash & bought her matches for her cigars. Couldn't find a single matchbox in her Hoarder home that is in a most beautiful zipcode & neighborhood.
Sad, but I am willing to lose myself or my soul. I have given so much in my lifetime and have lost a lot because of her Alcoholism and Mania and now the NPD and Borderline...
She is like your MOM. Angry at the world because she is unhappy with herself.
I do my best, but I draw lines in the sand...
Takes its toll on me..mentally & a bit physically...lose sleep..ruminate on it so much...but nope...not caving...
Be well and know you have and are doing what you are capable of.
Proud of you for knowing your limitations! Your health matters!
She brought up the why can't you live here...did you not want to stay in this community... I tell her NOOOOO.. not good for my health.. I would be miserable .I have Kids..a Career.. Want to live & experience more yrs ahead... Hope to be a FAB G-Ma..
She is sooo NPD... I drove home the 2 hrs...couldn't play music the 1st hour...trying to sort out best sitch for her.. Told her we need to bring in aide..once a week after the New Year...
OF COURSE her claims are getting more outrageous! Next she'll be hanging off her balcony by her fingertips in order to get you to jump through the next fiery hoop she demands you to jump thru! Mother has your number girlfriend. Big time.
If this story is true, which I'm beginning to doubt, WHO puts up with such a mother for so long, doling out $35K a YEAR in addition to all the rest of the demands?? And still worries it's 'not enough' while mother has $100K in the bank but is SO SHREWD and SO WILY that she can get a $3K per night hotel suite for $200? If so, she can live the rest of her life on her $100K bank account w/o another penny of help from you. You can cut her off completely, block her emails and phone calls, and rest assured that with the $350,000 (at least) you claim to have already given her over the past decade, she's way ahead of the game and can have 'her hair washed' at the finest salon in California. This latest bit of BS from a woman, by the way, who's 'scrupulous with every piece of food she puts into her body' and 'incredibly health conscious', but 'no longer washing her hair.' She must be laughing all the way to the bank at the way she's been able to play you!
You end by saying, ......"although it might be an illusion that I have any control over anything." You DO have control.......over YOURSELF and how you choose to handle this situation with your mother. Yet you keep going back for more and more of her con games, over and over again. You relinquish what control you DO have by giving in to her demands & sending her $$$. When you cut her off and say ENOUGH is when you take BACK the control you lost when you gave it to HER in the first place. So what if she shows up at your house? You've given up control of your entire life over the fear of such a thing happening, yet it hasn't in ALL THESE YEARS! End this insanity NOW; that power IS in your hands, you just won't embrace it.
I'm signing off of this thread myself now. I just wanted to add my last comment in and ask you to think about what I said. You've gotten a lot of other good advice, you're just closed off to hearing it, unfortunately. Good luck.
No multiple choice here. Tell us how you formulate this, and then, if you like, I (and some others perhaps) will tell you our take.
We had a poster here for many years who always said "allow your parent the dignity of paying their own way".
“Your mom is going to be upset if you do everything she wants because she will find something that isn’t to her liking. She is going to be upset if you don’t do everything that she wants. So, why are you doing all of this?”
He was so right!
Yes, I do believe parents are happier having dignity. Even near the end of mom’s life I saw a dramatic change in her personality when she no longer felt dependent upon us and no longer feeling like she was a burden to us.
She was well cared for in her hospice home and she appreciated it.
Thanks, Barb for posting this insightful comment!
I wonder if like many of us did or do, are you trying to get approval from your mother you perhaps missed as a child.
Sorry for my non professional opinion, but, as I tried that for years with no results, just similar to your story, how many times I heard that I am not going to make it, I am so alone etc.
Manipulations, lies, everything to get her way, no regard for others.
For example, my SO works at a ccrc, technically, but it’s focus is mostly active adults in Ops moms range. Condos start at 325k, but then there’s the 4500 mo hoa fee. They come clean your room for you, maintenance will do small honeydos. That’s about it. If you want the chef prepped meals, it’s about 70 bucks a day. There are sparse caregiver services unless one graduates to a small room in al. The vast majority needing that instead subsidize private help to the tune of 150k a year or more.