Mom had a terrible life. Wants to tell the horrible stories over and over. Wants reassurance that she was a great mother. Wants explanations over and over of how she ended up in NH. Everyone involved tried their best, she accuses them of stealing her money, home, car, in reality, Medicaid contract made most of that happen. In every instance, she veers from mournful losses, to victimization, to nefarious plots, must talk, talk, talk, can be on phone for hours, wanting to know why no one loves her, why family isn't visiting, why family won't talk on phone. She is hateful to every roommate, competitive with even younger staff regarding looks, demanding, accuses male nurses of sexual innuendos and flirting, wants the life of a princess, with every comfort, complains about everything, refuses to eat, refuses to drink water, pours food and liquids down toilet, lies, wants other food, regardless of what she ordered now she doesn't want it, is very proud of her size and weight, brags, accuses all of jealousy because she is younger and hotter and can walk without walker, insatiable need for attention, threatens everyone with a lawyer anytime she doesn't get her way. That covers about a 1/4 of her issues.
She refused to arrange for long term care, so she is where she is, and this is how it is going to be. It is a nice NH, she has had many diagnoses: executive function strokes (decision making, inhibition, impulse/compulsive issues), 40+ yrs of treatment for mood disorder (Bipolar Mixed), personality disorder (Borderline), schitzophrenia (visual and auditory hallucinations and paranoia); now mild dementia, memory loss, obviously she is narcissistic and always has been.
Nothing I do appears to help. In many ways, it seems that the more I try to help, the worse I make things. She appears to have lost an internal structure and must rely on describing things to validate the event occurred. I have actually experimented on the phone, letting her direct the conversation to see if uninterrupted or redirected, if she is able to resolve anything at all. The answer is no.
The clock has curly numbers, so she cannot read it. She doesnt appear to know that 12 is traditionally at the top. Since the numbers are curly, she is unable to believe that a 1 and a 2 is a 12, she has no proof that those are the numbers. They don't want her to have a digital clock yet. She has no idea if it is day or night, she refuses to look out the window, doesn't care if it is dark or light, she wants to be told, because she "doesn't want to think". She refuses to eat or drink water, has a morbid fear of being overweight, (she weighed 250 lbs before gastric bypass 15 yrs ago but has no memory of ever being fat, she is horrifed at the thought and claims photos of her then, have been tampered with) and simpers and pretends to be appalled at her mere 114 lbs. Maybe 114 is a lie. Because almost anything, regardless of how small or simple it is, must be spun into the tallest tale imaginable, everything is huge, giant, the worst, the best ever, the most horrifying, incredible, dramatic, outrageous thing that has ever happened, even if it is simply that her laundry was delivered.
She is incredibly articulate, verbose, rarely confused, devious, manipulative, and yet lonely, and at times a heartbroken and vulnerable child. There is no therapeutic help for her, other than drugs and activities and physical therapy. She requires invitations to activities, she won't initialize anything on her own, including hygiene. She is jealous of anyone receiving any care that she doesn't receive, including wanting people to stand by as she poops. Since the staff assists her roommate in the bathroom, she must have that too.
She is paying the consequences of all her poor decisions and refusals to be responsible, and I see little to nothing I can do to help. At some point, I must just let the state have control of her and give up, before she eats me alive, like a parasite that devours it's host. I am sad.
Please do whatever you need to do to protect yourself from further abuse. You are worth it!
Seriously, I don’t know how you have survived this long with your mom.
I don’t think that I would even consider attempting to make sense of any of it.
I certainly don’t think that I would try to please her. That’s an impossible task.
I would not be as concerned about communication with her, but focus more on your reaction to her many issues. Better still, consider dropping out of the picture entirely.
If you do remain in her life then
please speak to an objective professional such as a therapist to help cope with this stressful situation.
I would speak to the social worker at your mom’s facility to get her feedback on your mom’s behavior.
Are you satisfied with her psychiatrist? Please discuss all changes in behavior with her doctor. Be open to trying new meds.
I wish I could have been more helpful in my response to you but you are dealing with very serious issues that are extremely challenging.
Best wishes to you. I sincerely hope that you find a suitable solution to your horrendous dilemma.
Sometimes the best we can do is find some humor in all this nagativity (yes, I meant NAGativity!) I would limit exposure, dismiss phone calls, cut off calls when she gets to be too much, etc. Same if visits are involved. You can only take so much, so just excuse yourself and hang up or leave.
Sad your Mother suffers these problems. Sad there doesn't appear to be solutions. She seems one of the baby birds of life. Fragile & needy, flapping for attention.
I suppose I would call, often but keeping it short. Trying for positive. What was the best thing today? Did you go outside? Are you wearing your favourite clothes & jewellery?
I am not trained but have read about the human life stages:
Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial development lists Stage no 8 : Integrity Versus Despair. She seems stuck in despair 😞.
Maybe a professional could help her shift her thinking from despair to validation (ie her life was worth something, she did as good as she could as a Mother..)? This helped another poster's MIL who was suffering regrets, was vain & struggling with aging. I have no idea if it is always possible.
But if she has an ongoing Psychologist, that would be the person she can pour out all the despair, dread & regret to. (They have time limits & are paid!). You don't need to be her therapist.
Maybe start with the phone calls. Set a timer. After 15 minutes, say that you have “an appointment to get to”. The next day, set it to 10 minutes. Do you have peace with that amount of time? Yes? Stick with it. No? Down to 7 minutes.
After you have mastered the phone calls, move on to the visits, or whatever your next challenge is.
When are brains are used to all that awful input, we stay where we are, until WE change it. Create BABY STEPS to peace.
Best wishes, and let us know how you proceed and progress.
To thay end, you need to make sure she has access to the psychiatric and psychological practioners at her facility. What she is doing is called "rumination" and there are antidepressants that target this symptom. Make sure that her behavioral team knows about these endless loop conversations.
Setting boundaries will help her and you. As someone wrote above, therapists get paid for a certain session and then your ability to take up their time with complaints stops. You should do the same. Set a timer, maybe 5 minutes to start (I am not as generous as Beatty!). When I was a kid, my mom always called HER mom from a payphone; when the dime dropped, that was it.
I would read the book Boundaries by Townsend and Cloud. Lots of good techniques and explanations.
You are sad and that's understandable. She lives where she needs to live. You live where you need to live. The phone does not have to be your only means of communication. Get a bunch of cards and postcards and send them once or twice a week with small talk - "The trees have flowered", "I saw an eagle", "The fish are jumping in the river", etc. Maybe if she gets mail she will feel she's getting attention.
Your mother has serious mental health problems. You cannot help her. Your mother is safe and will never be happy. She is an energy vampire. That's sad but it's not your problem. You do not owe her your own wellbeing. You have choices. You matter.
I think its cruel they don't allow her a digital clock. She can no longer read a clock thats not going to change. We got Mom one that the numbers are over an inch high.
Now you. You can't change Mom. Trying to set boundries with someone suffering from a Dementia is a lost cause. They don't remember from one day to the next. They don't remember from one minute to the next. So you need to change. Like suggested, limit the time of her calls. I know its rude, but I may just quietly hang up and she can continue to talk. Does she use the phone to call other people. Are ur phone calls with her productive at all or just same old same old. Maybe time to take the phone away. Just keep telling yourself its the desease. She is safe and cared for. Let the staff deal with her. Thats what they are trained for. At this point you cannot change her.
Ellery, quite honestly that is the beginning and the end of it.
How in the world can you fix that life? Let us say you are a Saint. Let us say you are the Fairy with the Magic Wand? Let us say you can wave that wand and she's fixed now. You still can't fix the past, can you? And soon your Mom won't even remember it.
So, Ellery, what is left? Well, there you are! YOU ARE LEFT. It now has to be about you. Growing up and feeling obligated to fix everything for your poor, severely limited Mom has now become a habit for your own life. I truly fear it is holding you back from having a life at all.
We have two chances for family in life. We have the one we are born into and I hate to tell you, luck of the draw wasn't with you on that one. But we have also the life we make for ourselves and the family we created, nuclear or friends.
Please limit Mom; create healthy boundaries. Read the book Boundaries. And most of all seek the help of a very good psychologist. Not one who will sit and endlessly listen to a life long full of tales of misery, but one who will help you shake loose of the past, limit the incursions of the present, and move FORWARD to making a new life.
I wish you the best. To be frank, this is about YOU now. Mom cannot really be fixed. You can give her some limited support and love, knowing and accepting that nothing will be changed for her. But you MUST move on with your own life now. That will be scary. Because you are used to this habit of it being about Mom. You are used to the Mom stories. And when someone says they don't want to hear it anymore; they want to hear what you will do with this your ONE life, it will make you anxious.
I wish you the best. There is a whole life out there waiting for you. Stop being the parasite's host. YOU CAN DO THIS. You are exceptionally articulate, and bright. You CAN do this.
Dh has tried, the last year or so to work with her (I don't know why, really, at age 90+ she's not very invested in changing).
He tries to point out the joy, the happiness, the good that has been a part of her life ALONG with the trials and sadness. And to accept BOTH.
Nobody gets through life without some, or a lot of sadness and sorrow. And also joy and incredible happiness.
Yet she maintains she has lived the MOST awful, sad, depressing, poor life of any person, ever. You cannot talk her around that.
In Fall, we see the gorgeous colors of the trees and the change in temperatures and the world around her: she sees leaves that are NOT from her trees and calls the police to come make her neighbors rake 'their' leaves.
She has 22 great grandchildren and acknowledges only 3 of them. She has never even seen the youngest 3. IF these families should go to visit her, the kids are required to stand on a rug and not move. My daughters have simply opted out of seeing her.
She has 3 brilliant, wonderful adult kids, yet she openly hates the 2 oldest boys (DH being one) and tells them on a regular basis that she hates them. (shot gun wedding in 1948---everything for her has been downhill since).
Breaks my heart how she treats my DH. I know he will not have closure until she has passed and he is able to think and talk about her to a therapist. Right now, all visits end in him spending a day in bed with the blankets pulled over his head.
BIL went black rock with her 4 years ago and hasn't spoken to her nor seen her. And won't until she's gone. How sad is this family??
And also, not that unusual!
As far as supporting her 'paradigm' we don't and never have. That just makes her madder.
I think you have already answered your own question in the last paragraph of your post.
I wish you all the best for the future and thank you for sharing, it has helped me so much, more than you know.
(a) 90% patient advocate/distance caretaker (NOT hands-on), AND YOU must adopt the mental philosophy that you are doing it FOR A COMPLETE STRANGER (i.e. "THIS IS NOT MY MOM"),
...and (b) 10% as the child of your mother...
Then, let ALL her calls go to Voice Mail, and BEFORE you even talk to your mother or take action on anything, first LISTEN to the tone of her voice (in what it seems will likely be a complaint) and only then decide whether the issue belongs in category (a) or (b)...
If (a) you can handle it with her doctors or the staff where she's living, which does not require any consultation with mom. Done (90% if the time) !!!
Or if it's (b), YOU and only YOU can choose to be "the dog or the cat" - - Dogs come when they're called; Cats take a message and get back to you later. So YOU will be able to turn that 10% into 1% or less.
When dealing with a person who has a combination of mental health issues AND dementia, it becomes critical for your own sanity that you are able to separate your actions on their behalf into "something you're doing for someone unrelated to you who needs dire assistance" - - otherwise, your involvement will eat you alive.
The the fact that you're already experiencing severe burnout from a distance means that YOU must change YOU, right now, immediately.
If you can't do this, the only option would be turning your mom over to the state. I don't recommend it as a first choice unless you absolutely can't make the healthy choice to extricate yourself - - the reason for that is because state involvement pretty much takes everything out of your hands. You are so interconnected with your mom that you may personally experience way too much guilt for doing something like that.
What what I'm suggesting is an interim pathway. Think of it as a trial run.
Many people think being POA means being hands-on, even to some extent if someone is in a facility. Nope. ANYONE can be named POA, including lawyers. Do you think they would be taking any of this garbage? No. They would manage the finances. They would arrange medical care. That's it.
IF OP can find a way to limit exposure, it would help. No matter what afflictions a person has, WE can't change them. We can only change how we react to them. Self-preservation would require backing off, considerably, from these toxic events.
As for the curly numbers on the clock, it sounds like her strokes have left her with mild aphasia. Speech therapy and related games may improve this condition, but it is probably somewhat permanent damage from the stroke. When she tells you the numbers are curly, she is telling you the truth, from her perspective.
Don’t remind her of painful parts of her past (obesity, etc.). If she forgot it, let it be forgotten forever.
it sounds like she is self-critical and stressed. Don’t add to that by remaining as calm and positive as you can muster. When you visit, bring simple (non-frustrating) art projects. Tell her she is doing a good job. She is beating herself up in her head and she just needs love and support.
Give her however much love, praise and attention as you are comfortably able to. Then stop.
Because she doesn’t live with you, you have the all the convenience and freedom to choose when you need distance and how much. Allow yourself permission to accept that you need breaks.
Reading your question is a good reminder for all of us to prepare and have our affairs in order.
Even if you turned her care over to the state, is that really going to stop these conversations or her behavior? No. If you plan to do that and walk away, then ok, you won't have the conversations anymore. If you plan to continue visiting her, it resolves nothing.
Evidently her weight was a mental issue for her to the point that she got the surgery to fix it. She may have gone through hell at some point being teased, compared to other siblings, etc. So being down to 100+ pounds gives her something to brag about and it also put her in the position of ridiculing others for weight. Sad, but true.
If she wants to be treated like a princess - did her husband do that for her? Was she treated badly as a young person and then found someone who overlooked the weight (and other issues) and doted on her? If so, her life and mind have changed a great deal. But, there is still enough of the mind working to want to make sure she gets the same attention another patient gets. When other lady is out of the room, you might point out how many things she can still do, how fortunate she is not to need a diaper/so much care/can get out of bed/etc. Emphasize her good physical health. If she needs help with the toilet, ok. If she doesn't, ask the staff to do minimal assistance and leave her to do her business.
Her questions and comments indicate huge insecurity problems. Instead of engaging in the conversation, try to come up with other topics as soon as it starts - ignoring where she wants to go with the conversation. You might ask activity director if there is some task she can help with that would make her feel important. They might be able to help put her back on her pedestal for a while.
I don't know what her poor decisions are so no comment on that.
I have family members and former inlaws with some of the mental health diagnosis that you mentioned, I cannot imagine how challenging it is for you and your family to have them all in one person.
It is ok that you are sad. And turning her over to State Guardian does not mean you do not care, it means you care about your own health and well being and recognize that you cannot do anything more for her.
Set Boundaries regarding your visits and phone calls.
Choose you argument.
it doesn't really matter if she doesn't think she was ever fat or rather the fat puts have been fixed.
She try to carry on a nice conversation letting her talk and try not to disagree, let her say and think whatever she wants.
At least the talks and visits won't be so straining.
Try building her up, as she has very low self estem.
Maybe she would enjoy music which van be very good therapy.
Prayers
Not all who have dementia become smiling happy souls. Would be nice, but it doesn't always happen. Every person's journey with dementia is unique to them and their background and co-existing issues can "color" the dementia extensively!
* You must set boundaries for yourself.
* Listen to her (if you decide to) for 10 minutes, let her talk, do not respond other than 'ah ha' as an acknowledgment then say you need to go.
* What exactly do you want to do?
* Sounds like you need A LOT of distance from this situation - to regroup and find your SELF again.
* You are taking the bait - stop.
* Consider HOW you value your own life and decide what QUALITY of life you want for yourself.
* If you need a therapist to help you separate and clarify your feelings and life patterns, conditioning, etc., get a therapist ASAP to support you to do this.
* This is about YOUR self-esteem and what YOU feel you deserve. It is hard to change one's feelings and decades of conditioning. However, once you decide to change, it will be a path of more peace, increased self-esteem, and self empowerment. You need to decide to make changes. Certainly your mom won't / cannot at this point. Gena
My mother has narcissistic personality disorder. Like your mother, there is no conversation: just endless complaints/monologues/rewritten histories. Generally the same subject matter. So I question: are narcissists wired to complain? As they enter the active dying process, is this the part of their brains that still functions? Or is it what I think: that NM is so entrenched in creating drama/misery that she is afraid of leaving this life without leaving as much drama/misery as she can...and just where did this incredibly maladaptive behavior pattern spring from? From a Darwinian perspective, I would have thrown my mother out of the tribe after the first plain was crossed and she complained endlessly about the heat, thirst, dirt, bugs, lack of food choices, the weight she was carrying....just a thought, and a laugh (hopefully). Thanks all, really appreciate this forum.
You got a chuckle from me! My first degree was in Anthropology and I often read about ancient humans, tribes, etc., so I *could* picture this happening!
Do let them work their "magic" and hopefully some will help and stick. Meanwhile, limit your exposure as much as you can. Being POA doesn't mean you have to maintain any kind of contact. If going no-contact for a while, or longer, is necessary, you can still be POA. POA means you manage her affairs, financial and medical. ANYONE can be named POA, including lawyers. Do you think lawyers would take all that she dishes out? Nope. They'd manage the finances, medical and paperwork, then go home.
So, try not taking all her calls - let them go to voicemail. She can ramble on all she wants. If you do take a call and it is the usual, either set a time limit for yourself and end the call asap, or just lay the phone down, giving a few um-hmms and oh, really now and them, but limit the call too.
Based on your profile location and saying she's in the midwest, it doesn't sound like you have a lot of in person visits. Keep it that way! Nothing says you have to visit. She's in a safe place, and you now have a good contact person for keeping up to date on issues, from both sides. IF you choose to visit, have a limit. If it means traveling, plan maybe to stay a few days, but limit the visits, leaving if she drones on with the negatives.
While most want to provide good care and be there for our parents, sometimes it is better for all to stay away. Your mother has a host of issues and nothing you do will change those. We can't change other people, even if they are just cranky buggers with no medical issues causing it. We can only change how we react to them, how we deal with what they dish out. Sometimes it does mean breaking contact if it is just relentless.
We CAN still care and ensure they get the care they need. We just have to do it from afar. It does NOT make you any less of a person or a daughter if you have to choose this route. You DO still care, but you have to care for yourself as well. Don't take on guilt, either your own internal or dumped on you by mom or others. Guilt is only for those who have done something wrong, and you have not done anything wrong. You've tried and it hasn't worked, but that isn't for lack of trying!
Maybe given some time and perhaps some medical intervention they can help tone down her behavior and you can try more visits or calls in the future, but take it slow. Limit exposure for now and see how things progress. Stay in touch with the staff. Rome wasn't built in a day!
If she had all those psychiatric issues, she is not logical, rational, cannot make decisions for herself or regulate her behavior. My question is why she has a phone? It's obviously not for her benefit. So get rid of that first.
You also mention "I must let the state have control of her..." Is she in a state mental hospital? I don't understand the statement otherwise. I don't know of any state that assumes "control" over citizens unless they are in the prison or involuntarily committed to a mental health facility. Otherwise, decisions are made by the POA, and if none is available, the guardian appointed by the court if she's judged to be incompetent.
You don't want to deal with her anymore. So don't. Make the hard decision. Make sure her bills are paid and she gets medical care but don't engage her.
Step back and take care of you.