• Hello everybody! We have tons of new awards for the new year that can be requested through our Awards System thanks to Antifa Lockhart! Some are limited-time awards so go claim them before they are gone forever...

    CLICK HERE FOR AWARDS

Help/Support ► My mother needs psychological help



REGISTER TO REMOVE ADS
Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
May 16, 2007
Messages
5,612
Awards
4
Location
∵Иೆ!?तっФ」
I'm just going to re-post what I typed on Yahoo answers:

I have legitimately began thinking that there is something mentally wrong with my mother. I don't know if it's a disorder or not.

Basically, I have found her to be (especially after the divorce with my father 10 years ago) emotionally unstable, erratic and manipulative. She is prone to unfair outbursts of anger over things that should be inconsequential. When a switch of the schedule is made due to my father's business trips, she accuses us of spending more time with him even though it always works out to be the same time with both parents. She tells her kids how we "love our father more" and uses other guilt trip tactics. For instance, she acts like something is wrong and then intentionally doesn't say what is bothering her, just so we can know that something isn't right (but not WHAT).

She has shown me that she has no interest in seeking psychological help. A year ago, I tried to convince her to see a psychologist, as she was telling me that she had suicidal thoughts (and had lost the will to live, had "been" a good mother, etc). I told my psychologist about this episode and she had a talk with my mother. After being assured that the cost would be covered, my mother still refused. I can't help her if she doesn't want to help herself.

Just recently, my mother has been continually telling me about how she is "not well." She went as far as to say that, by the time I was finished studying abroad next semester, she would be dead due to illness. I know she's lying about this because she has not visited any doctors and she said that my uncle knew everything about it. Upon secretly talking to my uncle, he was never informed of anything (she said that I couldn't talk to him, only after she is "gone" and that he would "explain everything").

This is becoming a big concern for me. I know Alzheimer's runs in the family, as my grandmother has it. My mother does exhibit the trait of memory loss, as she must write many sticky notes to remember details of conversations or her plans for the day. She is about 50. But could it be that? Or something else? It seems as though she has exhibited traits of Munchhausen syndrome, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Empty Nest syndrome, but I really can't say for sure what's wrong.

Can someone please point me in the right direction?

Also some additional information (where I was responding to someone):

As far as the conditions I mentioned, I was merely throwing them out there, because they were the closest things I could find to what my mother seems to have. You are also mistaking munchausen by proxy (where the conditions are imposed on another for attention, like a child) with regular munchausen's, where illness is feigned for attention. I brought this up in reference to the fact that she has lied about fatal illness (as I found out talking to my uncle).

Also, my parents have shared custody. My father pays full child support. My mother has had many more boyfriends than my father had girlfriends (she has a social life- though she has, as of late, intentionally isolated herself even though she has the time).

I realize the toll raising children can have on parents, but you must realize, my sister and I are in our early twenties, and my younger brother is in his late teens. We are at the tail end here. We are posing less of a financial and physical burden (with paying jobs and the ability to take care of ourselves) than we ever have. So, if anything, that this would have anything to do with the stress of raising children doesn't make sense, especially since it's grown worse NOW than it ever has before.

To suggest that doing some extra things for her around the house would solve the problem seems very silly. Definitely, if she needs the help, we should be there for her, or hell, I'd even be spontaneous about it. But just what do you think that would do for a person who tells their kid, "I will be gone by the time you get back," while refusing to clarify (intentionally leaving them to assume the worst case scenario)? The problem is obviously much, much deeper than that.

With all due respect, I'm looking for direction in regards to psychological help for my mother, not a lifestyle change for myself based on assumptions.


Honestly, for a while now I've felt like I had two mothers, and the other one is taking over. Sometimes my mother is her normal self, the one I remember from my childhood. Other times, out of nowhere, she becomes a different person. In retrospect, I didn't realize it when it started happening since I was younger, but she started becoming that other person when she was drunk. Now it's happening more than when she's drunk. She becomes distant, yet... very manipulative. It's hard to describe. And I think she knows it too. She constantly says (when she jumps into the rare apologetic mood) that she knows that she hasn't been there for us for years. Which isn't entirely true. I know she still loves us very much. And I know she cares about us, and she definitely shows it. But then she will just act... disturbed.

At times I've felt like she's dead.

And my family does not help.
I'm just now coming to terms with the fact that my siblings and I are the black sheep of the family. For a while, I've had sneaking suspicion that they have... not really liked us as much as our cousins. And it shows.

We have been accused of being lazy, arrogant, selfish, immature and many other things.
Why do they do this?

It's been this way since my parents divorced. Any time spent with our dad, my mom's side of the family (and our mom herself) seems to antagonize us. It's ridiculous. The only ones who haven't grown up are our parents. We got over the divorce many years ago. They haven't. It's still a source of friction between the two sides.

So despite the fact that we spend a week with our mom and a week with our dad (it's ALWAYS equal time), we are always accused of spending more with our dad... and WANTING to spend more. It would be hilarious if it weren't so pathetic.
I am 20. My sister is 22. My brother is 16. We are practically grown up. Really, my sister and myself ARE, we are ADULTS. And they still pull this shit. It's almost embarrassing to talk about.
I don't know how many times my mother pulls the "I know you love/want to spend time with your father more, I know you hate it here, etc."

My mothers side of the family is fed her side of the issue. And she tells them how sick she is.
As I've said, she definitely IS sick. And part of the problem is that, in the settlement of the divorce, my mom ended up getting screwed so that my dad didn't have to pay for her health insurance. She can't afford it. So she never wants to go to the hospital. But the thing is, as I've pointed out, even when the option is presented to her (when my psychologist said she would be COVERED with my expenses), she still refuses to go. She doesn't want help.

So her family hears of her ailments and then takes it out on us. We have honestly been ingrained with the idea that we are bad children, and I am only now beginning to realize how much this has bonked us up. I was talking to my sister the other day and we amazingly described how we were in the same condition- we have become jaded, emotionally exhausted from being blamed and pressured all the time.

I have barely felt any true emotion for the past... two years? Like, I think, "I should be feeling this," but it only comes up as a thought and not a genuine emotion. Happiness, sadness, anger, haven't really felt it. So I've stopped caring about a lot of things. I'm sick of it. And whenever I can feel any sort of emotion (positive or negative), I RELISH it. I think it's just a coping mechanism our minds have come up with in order to deal with this shit.

So, you know what, I guess my family is right. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I really don't care anymore. I at least try to, but it's getting harder and harder.
 
Last edited:

LongLiveLife

Bronze Member
Joined
Aug 11, 2010
Messages
2,102
Change is stressful even when it is slight, and your mother is losing everything that once defined her life. She was a wife but lost her husband ten years ago, something she evidently never learned to deal with in the first place. She was a mother to three children; now two have left the house and one will be leaving soon. What she will be left with is absolute solitude, which her prolonged depression post divorce and subsequent relationship history indicates she truly fears. What I believe you’ve overlooked in your extensive analysis here is the possibility of bipolar disorder. She ticks many of the boxes, but it is the cyclical nature of her symptoms that cinches the deal for me.

I doubt her personality changes are the result of Alzheimer’s – mainly because her age doesn’t fit the bill but equally because Alzheimer’s is associated with apathy, and, if anything, she’s caring too much. Also, conjuring up fanciful stories about illness and death requires planning and abstract thought, which is lost in Alzheimer’s patients, right from the onset.

I am sorry to hear that you are caught in the middle of this and that your mother’s condition has permeated to the rest of your family. You are right: doing a few chores around the house is absolutely not going to do anything to help her. What will are a psychiatric evaluation, some SSRIs and other mood-modulating drugs, and verbal psychotherapy.

I have barely felt any true emotion for the past... two years? Like, I think, "I should be feeling this," but it only comes up as a thought and not a genuine emotion. Happiness, sadness, anger, haven't really felt it. So I've stopped caring about a lot of things. I'm sick of it. And whenever I can feel any sort of emotion (positive or negative), I RELISH it. I think it's just a coping mechanism our minds have come up with in order to deal with this shit.

I can completely understand this, because it’s happened/happening to me, too. Clearest memory of it is when – oh, I’ve forgotten now – for whatever reason, I felt genuinely sad. But a part of me felt like screaming with joy that for the first time in months I felt something.

I wanted to do everything, be everyone – the best son, the best student, the best pianist, writer, et cetera, et cetera. But in the end it boiled down to one thing: I took on more than I could handle. Which is what you’re doing now. It’s not your responsibility to ‘fix’ your mother. It’s not your burden to bear. You may want to do it, and I applaud the fervor with which you have approached it already, but you have to realize that you’ve done the best you can.

You can’t force help on someone who won’t take it.

Best thing for you to do now is to help her realize that she has a problem. If you’re ever going to succeed in helping her, you have to change your approach. Don’t tell her she needs psychiatric evaluation – people hate it when they’re tossed aside with the crazies – but get her to seek help herself. Placebo effect or not, people recover faster when they want to make a recovery. Tell her how her condition has affected and continues to affect you, your sister and your brother, and if there’s even a spark of a mother left in her, she’ll want to stop your pain. Appeal to emotion, not reason.

Good luck.
 
Joined
May 16, 2007
Messages
5,612
Awards
4
Location
∵Иೆ!?तっФ」
Change is stressful even when it is slight, and your mother is losing everything that once defined her life. She was a wife but lost her husband ten years ago, something she evidently never learned to deal with in the first place.

I should also say that my mother and father never had a happy marriage. My dad got my mom pregnant with my older sister, and they decided to marry even though they didn't really want to. And they were both divorced before they met.

So maybe it's less of her missing her old husband, and more just being depressed about never really having a good marriage in the first place.

What I believe you’ve overlooked in your extensive analysis here is the possibility of bipolar disorder. She ticks many of the boxes, but it is the cyclical nature of her symptoms that cinches the deal for me.

Yeah, I seemed to have missed the forest for the trees. "Two mothers," right?
I will definitely look into it, thanks.

But at the same time, I have never seen my mother as manic. Even when she's in her normal moods, she's just that, normal. Not manic, not depressed.
She is prone to extreme outbursts of anger (I still remember one time when she flipped a table years back), but this more so because she always bottles up frustration, until she explodes.

So maybe it's more of that second type of bipolar disorder with "hypomania"?


I doubt her personality changes are the result of Alzheimer’s – mainly because her age doesn’t fit the bill but equally because Alzheimer’s is associated with apathy, and, if anything, she’s caring too much. Also, conjuring up fanciful stories about illness and death requires planning and abstract thought, which is lost in Alzheimer’s patients, right from the onset.

Thanks, that's reassuring, and a very good point.
But why, I wonder, does she always have to write those notes?
She's not faking short term memory loss. I've found in the drawers in the kitchen tons of sticky notes filled with daily information that I could easily remember, like "Call dad- he is upset about blah."

Like, I'm just paranoid that it's early onset for Alzheimer's and other symptoms like apathy haven't set in yet (then again, she does go into those moods of "I don't care anymore"...). It doesn't help that someone on our street was diagnosed with dementia recently, and she's my mother's age.


I can completely understand this, because it’s happened/happening to me, too. Clearest memory of it is when – oh, I’ve forgotten now – for whatever reason, I felt genuinely sad. But a part of me felt like screaming with joy that for the first time in months I felt something.

I wanted to do everything, be everyone – the best son, the best student, the best pianist, writer, et cetera, et cetera. But in the end it boiled down to one thing: I took on more than I could handle. Which is what you’re doing now.

Yeah.

It’s not your responsibility to ‘fix’ your mother. It’s not your burden to bear. You may want to do it, and I applaud the fervor with which you have approached it already, but you have to realize that you’ve done the best you can.

You can’t force help on someone who won’t take it.

I just don't want to regrettably look back and say that I didn't do enough. And honestly, I appreciate your support, but I still don't think I have.
But there is that dilemma- does she even want help?

Best thing for you to do now is to help her realize that she has a problem. If you’re ever going to succeed in helping her, you have to change your approach. Don’t tell her she needs psychiatric evaluation – people hate it when they’re tossed aside with the crazies – but get her to seek help herself. Placebo effect or not, people recover faster when they want to make a recovery. Tell her how her condition has affected and continues to affect you, your sister and your brother, and if there’s even a spark of a mother left in her, she’ll want to stop your pain. Appeal to emotion, not reason.

Good luck.

Thing is, at the time I told her that she should see a psychologist, I was seeing one. And she had been seeing one before that and stopped going. So I don't believe that she thinks I'm insinuating she's crazy or anything like that.

It's also really hard thinking about bringing this up to her and telling her outright. When you have a conversation with my mother, and she's in one of those moods, it's one-way. You're wrong regardless of what you say. So whenever she's talking to us, she always ends it with, "Do you have anything to say?" Which is the trap.
I am a horrible liar and I'd be disgusted with myself if I said I agreed with her when I don't (and I almost always disagree with her entirely because she's often being irrational). So the two options are either: tell her the truth or don't say anything.

If I tell her the truth, she continues to argue and gets even more pissed off and it has NEVER solved ANYTHING, despite my attempts to convince my mother to see things from a different perspective (and it's not just me, but my siblings as well). Once she's set in her ways, that's it. There's no convincing her otherwise.

So 95% of the time I just shut up. I WANT to say something but I know it will make things WORSE. And she still gets pissed because she knows I want to say something, but it never ends as badly when I just shut up.

I honestly don't know how she'd react to me telling her all of this. Not well, I'd imagine.
It'll take a lot of courage to ever bring it up, because I risk furthering the rift between us.

And the rift between us has always been larger than with my other siblings. She sees me as her ex-husband. She's even said, "Matt, you're too damn much like your father." And she has it in her head that I'm very close to him.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top