How do you discuss difficult stuff with a person who claims to not be able to handle hard subjects?
My MIL is a narcissistic drama queen. We moved across country to help manage her health care. Her medications were so out of whack that she was acting goofy and she was in the hospital every month for one illness or another. My husband has been taking the brunt of the work and has done an amazing job getting her back on track and keeping her out of the hospital. Last year, we realized that our marriage was suffering a lot due to the stresses that she put on him. She feigned illnesses and always found something "important" for him to do over at her house. We realized that she was creating drama and that helped us a bit with our approach to her. Since her illness, she has had to retire and doesn't have the social outlet she once had. She has no desire to get out of the house to do things other than shop for food on a RARE occasion. She over exaggerates her health issues and has now taken to making herself sick in order to go to the ER for attention. She is now taking advantage of my husband and trying to force him to manage her personal relationship with her abusive husband by saying that she was in the hospital because she was stressed out from her husbands abuses. When my husband attempted approach his dad, she got incredibly angry and said that she never told him to do that. My husband took her comment as a threat to her health. It's not my husband place and told her that he won't do it anymore. Now she is even MORE angry and has taken to hiding dr appts from him, adding medications without dr visits, not eating and then taking opiates. She has even taken to messing up her own medication dosage. This isn't the first time that she has taken advantage of a situation for her own personal attentions. She's manipulative and frustrating. When my husband tries to approach her and have an open and frank discussion with her, she tells him that she has some kind of illness that makes it so she can't handle stress, which includes having heart-to-heart conversations about relationships. When we DO try to talk to her, she zones out like a freakin' teenager! She has NO problem handling the stress that comes with traveling for a 2 week cruise! We are at our wits end trying to figure out how to talk to this woman. She can NEVER admit that she has done anything wrong. She falls into the "I'm the victim", but she has created the environment herself and refuses to see her part in it. How can we tell her that she's being horrible and that we know she's being manipulative? How can we tell her that she is ruining the last good relationship she has by being manipulative? How does one handle their sanity with a person who believes that they can do no wrong? MIL is 75.
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I think your MIL is playing her "victim" and "needy" personae for all it's worth. Unfortunately, you have to recognize that attempting to respond on a rational basis to irrational claims and arguments isn't going to address the core problem. Sometimes you just have to work around that core issue.
You and your husband might want to sit down, detail as much as you can the various arguments and complaints your present, and determine if there are concrete ways of addressing them or if they're not the kind of issues that can't be addressed, treated and/or resolved. In other words, sometimes her complaints probably just need to be ignored, unless, obviously, they're medical ones of verifiable concern.
But from your post it seems as though she manages to segue into this explanation as justification for her behavior. It can be hard to sort out which medical issues are real and which are cries for attention.
Sometimes you can provide a witty retort that will stop her, likely by surprise and shock.
One issue to address is that of co-opting your husband to do chores. Suggest she make a list, your husband will look it over when he has time and decide which he can fix or which need to be contracted out. Your husband takes a stand, it will challenge her and she will be mad. But your husband has stated he won't be manipulated into changing his schedule, doing work which could be hired out, or backed through trickery into allowing her to manipulate him.
You may have to think of responses like this for all her actions, as well as stating firmly that you either can't or won't get involved, such as stepping in between the abusive relationship she has with her husband.
Since she turned on your husband, next time tell her that your husband tried to intervene, she countermanded him and denied her statements, and that there is nothing he can do in this situation. Then terminate the conversation and don't give her time to respond.
You'll have to find similar methods of response for all her different charades, and it won't be easy either doing so or dealing with her reactive behavior. Expect that at times she'll be more angry. Think of it as driving on a dirt road filled with potholes and bumps. You never know when you'll hit one.
There have been other discussions on this forum about how we sometimes enable our elders behavior and their refusal to allow outside help. I had to pull back from my folks a little. They don't mind me working my ass off for them but refuse to let paid help in the house.
And if these folks have the funds for a two week cruise it would seem as though they could hire some help and ease up on poor Hubs.
Tough love is definitely needed and already tried but she turns it around to appear like we are emotionally abusing her if we try to set boundaries. In the fall, we all sat down to do a "check in" to discuss how we all could better help each other. Hubs and I set boundaries for days when he needs to work on setting up his business and that was immediately ignored due to home remodeling that she needed done ASAP! It didn't really need to be done, she just made it a HUGE deal until hubs caved. All tough love is met with her excuse of "My health conditions requires me to stay away from stress." So this excuse causes us to put off talking to her, which creates more friction and no seeming way to deal with it.
We have asked them to be honest with us and to tell us if we are going to far or to tell us what they need. Their answers are always the same; "We don't want to be a burden." or "We just want you to be happy." But who are we kidding, they can't be honest with themselves so how in the world are they going to be honest with us!
They really don't have the funds for a 2 week cruise, but did it anyway. The financial stuff is it's own quagmire. :(
Rainmom, this reply has been used. She responds with "I don't know what I'm going to do. What should I do?" When we don't give her an answer, she retreats and isolates herself by watching TV and ignores the problem until it's too much for her to handle....then she makes herself sick from the stress and we are in to hospital again and my husband cleaning up after her. We came to manage her health care, not clean up after her. She's got like 15 doctors.
I work for the cruise industry. If she is well enough to take a two week cruise you are d@mn straight that she doesn't need help with every little thing. Cruises are stressful, even for healthy people (planning, executing, packing etc)
You won't be able to fix her. Let her handle her own illnesses, relationship with her husband (why won't he help her?) etc.
No is a complete sentence.
Angel
My own situation is similar except I stayed put and did not move across the country to care for my folks. If I were there I can see how it would be soooooo easy to get trapped in the daily grind of fixing everything, cleaning, doc appointments and all the rest.
If you think about it, many elders of our parents generation got to enjoy their retirements. Cruises, traveling, time with the grandkids. My folks weren't caregivers for my grandparents, they put them in nursing homes. And keep in mind, most of our grandparents didn't live to be 98 like my parents probably will due to the marvels of modern medicine. My folks have had close to 30 years of enjoyable retirement. It's not fair for us to give up our best years consumed with the nightmare of elder caregiving.
That may all sound a bit hard@ss but it's true. Nothing has steeled my resolve more than reading all the horror stories of lives gone down the drain of caregiver h3ll on this forum.
The dr at the appt told her for the umpteenth time to see a psychiatrist. She doesn't think that she needs it. *groan*
It's getting harder to deal with her passive-aggressive nature. What adds insult to injury is that she was a terrible mom to begin with. She adopted my husband because she had to have an early hysterectomy. Then proceeded to be negligent. She ended up sending him to boarding school because she didn't want to deal with him. Both MIL and FIL have told my husband that he's "not really part of the family". How are we supposed to continue to care when this is their attitude?
Her biological son wants nothing to do with their care. Won't bring his children and never visits unless it's to get something from them. The biological son also has the same "head-in-the-sand" trait. Doesn't want to discuss anything stressful or negative. *heavier groan*
FIL is unable to care for her due to a stroke that he had a few years ago. He has never fully recovered.
Letting her deal with her own illness is what got her so sick to begin with. She's got some autoimmune disease that effects the muscles. It's pretty convenient for her cuz not a lot of people have it so she can claim it's flared up and we can't argue with her about it. She has like 15 doctors and NONE of them communicate with each other. If she was just regular old, we'd probably leave her alone, but since she's got this crazy rare disease, she needs the help managing the doctors, the medications and the PT.
Her husband is a stroke survivor who has never fully recovered...not to mention also narcissistic. They have been "married" for 40 years but never really married, like they have never had a husband/wife relationship. They can't even talk to each other about stuff. They are not friends, mostly roommates living in the same house. He lives in the basement, she gets the upstairs. This whole family is like nothing I have ever experienced. I have NO idea how my husband became the person that he is. He is the complete opposite of them.
The other thing I do is turn it on her. For example, she'll say her blood sugar reading is too high because I put so much stress on her earlier. I'll say it is more likely caused by that pack of crackers she ate a few minutes back. She has dementia, so it doesn't really stick, but it does back her off from blaming me for something that wasn't my fault.
Hubs and I try very hard to not let it affect our lives. We try to have a very separate life. We need to get out more.....right now he is so emotionally drained he doesn't want to go anywhere.
https://www.agingcare.com/questions/borderline-personality-Narcissistic-mother-142833.htm
On our move down here a year and a half ago, we were 90 miles into the trip with a moving truck (him driving) and our personal car with three cats (me driving) when my husband got violently ill. We ended up spending 10 days in a town I had no idea how to get around in (good thing for Google Maps), with no money (we had budgeted just enough for the move), and hubs in the hospital. He was in the hospital for a total of 7 or 8 days, depending on how you count. I was stuck in a hotel with three cats! It was terrifying. During this stressful time, his family, parents and brother included, had the audacity to question us about how we were going to pay our bills when we got there. They offered no help (we had to beg for $$). His brother had the balls to offer to fly over and drive the rest of the way back under certain conditions. To top it off, they NEVER called to ask how he was doing! I can't believe the selfishness in that family. My parents were ready to drop everything to come help us.
After that ....interesting...encounter, we made sure to have an agreement. If our marriage starts to suffer, we are outta here!
Meanwhile, every time your husband tries to discuss finances or practical management with his mother he gets shut down. Nobody in the family wants to talk about it? - or talk to him about it?
And now you'd like to move back but you, kind of, have an inheritance to take care of.
You do realise how this sounds, don't you?
And for heaven's sake, are the parents married or not? "Married: yes/no" is not a qualitative datum.
I used my parents as an example. His parents did help us out, but help was never offered, we had to ask. Most people I know would offer or ask if there was anything they could do, but none of that came from his family.
His parents are married, but they do not have what I would call a "marriage".
In regards to the doctors, Yes, she has a lot but not 15, maybe closer to 7-8. All are necessary due to her comorbidities.
I don't really have anyone to talk to about this(other than hubs) and I'm just looking for some kind of direction. Sometimes I need to vent, this does not appear to be the place for it. Sorry. I'll try to be more tactful.
The most recent situation we are dealing with threw us for a loop and we are trying to figure out how to navigate. The suggestion about BPD was golden. I'm still researching but I hope that will help.
Thanks to all who supplied helpful and caring comments!
Sorry when people post blocks many of us cannot read the content.
Here is the original post again...
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My MIL is a narcissistic drama queen. We moved across country to help manage her health care. Her medications were so out of whack that she was acting goofy and she was in the hospital every month for one illness or another.
My husband has been taking the brunt of the work and has done an amazing job getting her back on track and keeping her out of the hospital. Last year, we realized that our marriage was suffering a lot due to the stresses that she put on him. She feigned illnesses and always found something "important" for him to do over at her house. We realized that she was creating drama and
that helped us a bit with our approach to her.
Since her illness, she has had to retire and doesn't have the social outlet she once had. She has no desire to get out of the house to do things other than shop for food on a RARE occasion. She over exaggerates her health issues and has now taken to making herself sick in order to go to the ER for attention.
She is now taking advantage of my husband and trying to force him to manage her personal relationship with her abusive husband by saying that she was in the hospital because she was stressed out from her husbands abuses. When my husband attempted approach his dad, she got incredibly angry and said that she never told him to do that. My husband took her comment as a threat to her health. It's not my husband place and told her that he won't do it anymore.
Now she is even MORE angry and has taken to hiding dr appts from him, adding medications without dr visits, not eating and then taking opiates.
She has even taken to messing up her own medication dosage. This isn't the first time that she has taken advantage of a situation for her own personal attentions. She's manipulative and frustrating. When my husband tries to approach her and have an open and frank discussion with her, she tells him that she has some kind of illness that makes it so she can't handle stress, which includes having heart-to-heart conversations about relationships.
When we DO try to talk to her, she zones out like a freakin' teenager! She has NO problem handling the stress that comes with traveling for a 2 week cruise! We are at our wits end trying to figure out how to talk to this woman.
She can NEVER admit that she has done anything wrong. She falls into the "I'm the victim", but she has created the environment herself and refuses to see her part in it.
How can we tell her that she's being horrible and that we know she's being manipulative? How can we tell her that she is ruining the last good relationship she has by being manipulative?
How does one handle their sanity with a person who believes that they can do no wrong? MIL is 75.