No matter what…I feel guilty and can’t stop. How can I stop this?

Loriander, welcome!

Has your mother been assessed for depression?

Has your mother always been negative and pushed your "guilt" buttons?

Have you read anything about F.O.G.? Fear, Obligation and Guilt is a way many parents see fit to control their children.

Why do you call twice a day?

The only thing you have control over is YOUR behavior. Change that and the situation will change.

Can you please give us more detail so we have some context to your circumstances? How old is your mother? Does she have any cognitive or physical impairment? Does she live in her own home or in a facility? If in a facility, when did she move there?

Guilt is an emotion that one feels when one has done something wrong. Please think about what you're feeling as grief, since you're mourning the changes that are happening and inability to really fix the situation. May you gain peace in your heart!

With what you just wrote, why are you feeling guilty? For those exact reasons, I never felt bad about not visiting my father as much as he wanted.

Decide what YOU are comfortable doing. I think your first issue is that you have TOO MUCH contact with your mother. I always found the more I did, the more they wanted/expected. Start lowing her expectations.

Start small. Drop the calls to once a day. A month from now, change that to every other day. If you visit with her on the weekend, it is a half-day at most., no more full days, you have things to get done. Start being busy...or at least tell her you are. There is no shame in wanting to use your time for you, especially with someone who in the past wouldn't give you the time of day if they had a better offer. Nothing wrong with her living the consequences of her actions.

Your mom is only 73???!!!??

Why doesn't she have a life?

And if she doesn't, how is that YOUR problem?

Even if she was the best mother in the world, that doesn't make you responsible for her happiness.

I am an only child and was insanely close with my parents (we ran a small business together). When they retired they bought a house down the street from me and became super draining. Their marriage started to deteriorate (fought all the time), I had to constantly referee, got sucked into driving them to doctor's appointments, running errands for them. Heck, they could not even walk down their driveway and I had to go every morning and get their newspaper, drag their garbage & recycling out & back every week, etc., you get the picture. It just got worse & worse, year after year. Dad developed dementia and I had to put him in memory care (all by myself, mom refused to help in any manner). Right after I dumped him at the memory care, mom was on me for even more moral support. Of course, I was disgusted with her behavior toward my ill father at this point. I finally had to outright declare to her that I was "not responsible for her happiness". I had to repeat it a few times. At this point, she was the exact same age as your mom.

Mom, I'm sorry you have lived in this same small town for 40 years and you have no friends. Mom, I'm sorry that you didn't value family and now have only an estranged brother who lives many states away and that you two don't speak. Mom, I'm sorry that you have shut yourself in the house and avoid the neighbors at all costs and do not know them. Mom, I have built a life, a demanding life, that I deserve to continue to nurture & enjoy.

Mom is still kicking, she will be 80 next month and is currently living in Assisted Living. I still get the phone calls, the guilt, the "when are you going to come & see me". I lay awake at night, almost every night, with a crushing sadness at the way things devolved and that my parents lost their ability to live independently before age 75.

For me the primary thing is knowing my limits, that I did not cause my parents problems - they ended up isolated and, evidently, thought their 40-something year old daughter could do everything & be everything. I tried, for a while, but then I had to start to build a wall, boundaries, to insulate my life & the things I had built. If you stay on this forum long you will see stories of marriages deteriorating, careers declining as a result of ongoing elder care. I have seen it in my own social circle, and it's usually a mom demanding that, well, you "owe" her. Don't fall into that trap. It's too easy for our lives to slip away and then what do we have? Especially as "onlies", there is no support network. I once told my mom that if she planned to be so needy when she got older, she should have had the fricking Brady Bunch, not just one kid. It's too much for just lil ole me.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with your introductory statement.

YOU are the one who IS responsible for your guilt.

“Guilt” does NO GOOD THING. There are MANY of us here who are only children/only relatives/only survivors, and many of us are offered the chance to be guilty by our “Loving” relatives. It’s part of your job, as a loving, caring adult, to say “Something’s come up Mom, and I will try to plan to see you NEXT WEEKEND, if POSSIBLE”.

By your comments, you are willing to make your mother (and her complaints) more important than your husband. Not fair, to you, r to your husband, and quite possibly, to her either.

She will continue to complain as long as you do what she wants in the nano- second that she wants you to.

As long as she’s able to take care of herself otherwise, it’s at least partially possible for her to fight her “loneliness” without using you as her 24/7/365 conduit.

Be kind, be firm, and DON’T enter into her guilt chats. “Oops, doorbell Mom, talk to you soon!!” HANG UP THE PHONE.

Loriander, your mom is USING you to fill a void in her life that her choices created, why do you feel guilty?

I am going to ask some questions that I have asked myself dealing with parents that lived their lives, on their terms, with no thought about me unless I was being USED as a tool to fulfill something for them. I have found that answering them, to myself, has enabled me to deal with my parents as an adult and not their obedient child.

If this wasn't my parent, would I even associate with this person?

How do I make this relationship, that I only have because they are my parent, work for me?

What can I say that isn't disrespectful but, stops the push of authority over me, that they THINK they have?

Do I have anything that I have done to them that is subliminally causing me to feel like I need to put up with so much crap from them?

Why does it feel so wrong to protect myself from their unrealistic demands of me, my time and my life?

What is a realistic schedule, not something they want, that I can comfortably see, talk or help them?

What is available in their area to give them something to do besides lean on me.

How do I disconnect my time lovingly from their demanded time?

You have fallen into a trap that many of us do. We love our parents and want to have a relationship with them. My problem was that my parents set the ground rules before I was old enough to have a say. Then they conditioned me to do as they say, regardless of how it affected me. Then there was decades of minimal contact, mostly because they had better things to do then have a relationship with their children. Then they had massive changes in their lives and I was expected to be that obedient little girl they thought they trained well enough to ask how high when they said jump. The problem was, I was an adult that had cultivated healthy relationships and I wasn't giving them the ability to make me crazy and to hurt my heart all over again, because I knew that I would be dropped like I didn't exist if something better came along.

It wasn't easy and they put lots of effort into trying to figure out how to manipulate me right where they wanted me. Knowing this fact made it easier to deal with the antics. You can do this too.

Your mom isn't your responsibility. She needs to find other outlets, on her if she doesn't. You can't make her happy, content or be her surrogate spouse. Your life gets you and you make some time for her.

Right now, you have way to much contact. This would be different if there ever was a healthy, adult relationship that was a friendship as well.

What would be the ideal contact for you?

You are an adult and no longer under her parental authority. You get to make the ground rules for yourself and how you spend your time. She doesn't get to dictate what you do. Saying no is completely okay. Not offering any excuse or explanation is completely okay.

I have found that my mom regularly pushes the boundaries and when she gets pizzy because I say no, it helps to disconnect for a bit. I never say anything, I just don't answer her calls and I don't call her, if I was close enough to visit, I would skip a couple of visits with no notice or explanation. I was busy is the most I would offer.

Of course your mom is lonely, she created her very existence by her choices. It is incredibly sad to see but, she is young enough to do something about it and not suck your life from you. You didn't create this and you can't fix it. Put it where it belongs, right on her.

You can take back the control of your time. It will probably be hard, it seems you haven't told her no much, so be prepared for the guilt trip of a lifetime but, remember that you haven't and aren't doing anything wrong by setting and enforcing boundaries, it's what healthy adults do and it's what they teach their children to do.

You can do it!!!!

Perhaps you should seek out some professional help to help you comb out your unrealistic feelings of obligation to your parent; perhaps you were raised to have these feelings.
We all feel the G-word at some point, but most of us know it is grief we feel. Grief that we are not god, but merely one person who has human limitations. That we cannot do it all. That we are not responsible for it all. That not everything can be fixed.
You may always mourn that your efforts to help result only in more needs and a feeling of helplessness, but it is very useful to learn to meld reality into our thoughts, to learn that our inner child is ever with us making pronouncements on our abilities and behaviors, but that the child is simply that, a child.
I wish you the best. Do understand that your choosing to stay in these feelings is robbing another of your company, of your love, and that is the person you SHOULD be responsible to, you SHOULD care for, you have pledged to support.
It is pitiful when our parents don't raise us to be independent, don't raise us to do our best and accept we are not omnipotent, to raise us to understand our obligations go forward to our chosen family, spouse, children, friends, not backward.
RealyReal's question to you about looking at the life your parents lived on their own terms is an excellent one.
I wish you the best.

Lori has posted before with info on her Mom.

This is YOUR weekend. Thats what you tell ur Mom. Tell her you have had a hard week and you need to have time with your husband who is...#1.

You need to set boundaries for you. As you have said in previous posts, Mom wasn't there for you. Now her husband is gone she is looking for you to fill the void. She needs to realize you are not able to do that. You have a life that she chose not to be part of previously. She cannot expect that after all this time you welcome her with open arms. At 73, she should hear that.

I think you have done quite a lot for Mom. You have nothing to feel guilty about. She needs to realize that she is not your life, she is a small part of it.

Loriander, I get really surprised by how much time many of our posters put into their mother/daughter contacts. Just to give you a comparison, my ageing mother lived in something like AL a few miles away. I was the only child in the same city. She came to lunch with me and my daughters every Saturday. We rarely spoke on the phone, only when something needed to be done. I loved her very much, we had a good relationship, and I moved in with her to provide 24/7 care when she was dying at home aged 78.

My daughter now invites me to dinner with her family when I go to stay in town for a night or two (less often with Covid). She rings me for a chat about once a week (we apologise to each other when it stretches much longer), and comes to stay on the farm for a night or two every few months. We have a good relationship, and enjoy each other’s company.

Perhaps our family is less in each other’s pockets than usual. But you are so much more ‘obligated’ to ‘contact’ that it just amazes me. Why not just STOP. No reason to feel guilty. Just that you want to do things differently!

"I only live 4 miles away so there’s no excuse for not visiting other than that I just don’t want to".

Who schedules your time?
Who owns your calender? Who adds any appointments in?

My folks started thinking MY calender seemed to belong to the whole extended family.

(I could blame some cog decline on one, as was not always like that, but the other? Just looking for solutions & wanted an easy 'fixer' I suppose & I was it)

So MY time would be assumed as OK to allocate to others' needs as THEY needed. Eg Dr apts during my working day, weekend chores, endless requests that seem to fall on my days off.

I fell for it for a while. What time do you finish work.. what days are you free.. I realised any *not work* time was seen as time THEY could claim on.

Now if you had a part-time job - bingo. You can build on that - suddenly you are so busy working, all week, every day - except the day you put aside to visit her. (As the older generation usually respect work).

If not working, insert other. New class, new walking group with friends, gardening club etc. It doesn't matter what it is. Just a stock standard "I'm busy" would do. The *reason* is more for you to feel ok until you build better boundaries. So you can see YOUR time is for YOU to schedule.

Someone told me their Mother thought she owned all her adult daughters time (not the sons, funnily enough) & this was actually quite common. She advised me to block out chunks of time. So not I have a haircut Mon @ 9 coz that leaves from 10:30 or so all free. Better to say I'm busy all Monday morning, or ALL Monday.

Many people set aside one regular day a week to visit, plus a few phone calls.

Keep culling the time down until it stops the resentment. Then you know you have it right.

I just read your last post, so it didn’t go into what I just wrote.

My suggestion is that you work out three closure comments.
‘Sorry mum, I’m too busy too talk at the moment. Bye’
‘Mum, can you find someone else for a visit? It would be good to make more contacts. I just don’t have time this week'
‘Mum, I need to spend more time with my husband. I think at the moment he’s lonelier than you!’

Write your own if you don’t like these (or the mum spelling). Practice saying them until they get automatic. They need to come easily, and be natural in your mouth and in your head. They are what you can and will say “that isn't disrespectful but, stops the push of authority over me, that they THINK they have? ” They are the answer to your question.

Here's the whole problem in a nutshell which YOU have outlined by saying, "I feel sorry for her and she makes sure I do. She makes her problems, my problems and gets very hateful so that I fall right back in to my old patterns."

She has set you up in a trap that you fall for every time. She sets you up to feel sorry for her, creates problems which she puts on YOU, when you don't respond as she wants you to, she gets ugly & probably lays on The Silent Treatment which gets YOU to cave in and 'fall right back into your old patterns." It's a passive/aggressive tactic from way back.

YOU are the one who has to acknowledge HER personality traits/flaws and learn how to deal with them by establishing very very VERY strong boundaries and making rules you NEVER break under ANY circumstances. If you do, she'll see the crack in your armor and say AHA! I KNEW IT! She's ready to CAVE and then she'll pounce. Your mother is using you and you are allowing her to, just complaining about it over & over again but not actually DOING anything about it, which is what she counts on.

Read this:

https://lifelessons.co/personal-development/covertpassiveaggressivenarcissist/#3

See if you can recognize any (or all) of these 25 traits in your mother; then take the strategies given to deal with passive/aggressive narc-type of behavior and stick to your GUNS with it. ALL of the time. Once mother knows you're not playing this game anymore, she'll go elsewhere to find her 'entertainment'. And that's how you learn to disentangle yourself from these types of relationships that keep you hooked on dysfunctional behaviors. It takes TWO to tango; once you bow out of the dance, she has no other choice but to find someone else to tango with.

Good luck; remember, it's up to YOU to change this dynamic. She's not going to.