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When it comes to negativity in a person, from my experience with my mother (she also has a personality disorder and Alzheimer's), the negativity is so ingrained that she thinks it is normal to be this way. It is what she was taught, to be distrusting of family and anyone who contradicts her way of thinking.What I did with my mother 30 plus years ago was establish boundaries around my life with my husband and children. I limited contacted, and made it clear that there were behaviors and attitudes I would not accept being placed on my children. There times I did not speak to my mom or visit her and my father (dad stood up for mom even though he knew she was out of control). Dad passed in 2003 from Alzheimer's. mom was diagnosed in late 2009 with Alzheimer's. Sis and I have worked together to help mom from a distance, helping her when it was necessary but staying out of firing distance from her negativity and venom. The point I am trying to make is that you have to develop boundaries of what you will and will not accept in her words and behavior. Then you have to learn to detach with love. You can google setting boundaries and detaching with love. Many good articles and advice. Hugs to you!!
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Sounds like we are all in the same situation. Yesterday, Mother's Day - my children came and I did not get ONE minute alone with them and Mom took over every conversation. If I manage to say anything, she repeats everything I saw. That is because she wants them looking at HER at all times. One of my sons says I have to do something, that he can see the change in me and he's worried about me. I thought, for once, my sister would invite her over to spend time with her family as they had a cookout -- but no such luck. I never get to enjoy a holiday with my children. Never.
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Correction: "She repeats everything I SAY" (not saw) She's like a parrot.
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Hey. I know it sucks to have a had a stressful rather than uplifting Mother's day, but Mom probably wasn't repeating yrou every word because she intended to make you miserable. She is almost certainly having judgement and memory problems and/or no awareness at all that it got to you and ruined your day. It is irritating, but maybe not as ruinous if you do not see it as intentionally hurtful. What did your kids say about it - other than express their concern for your obvious distress??
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For the first time ever I didn't send a Mother's Day card, gift, or visit my mother. Her meanness is so overwhelming. I also didn't get a Mother's Day card from my own children. My mother has convinced even my own children that they should "take care of yourselves" thinking. She is 77 and was born on May 11th! Had 11 children. I am second oldest and know the abuse she has dolled out all of her life. She is just becoming more of who she really is as she ages. I do have trouble with boundaries, never learned them properly, was never taught how. I like the word "intentionally hurtful" as it is all about INTENT isn't it? I don't totally believe that dementia is making her this way. I believe she has some evil intentions that are just now coming out as she, as she says, "has nothing to live for". I have never felt such anger towards her as this past year. I have put up with her ignorance all my life but this is too much! I don't care if she is my biological mother, she is not my "spiritual" mother. God is my spiritual mother, father, sister, brother, etc., etc.
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Perhaps there are cases out there where the dementia causes the meanness, but in my mother's case while there is dementia I'm with MECK1234 I don't think it is the dementia talking. I think she has always had this cruel, controlling streak, but before the age and dementia kicked in she could remember to act nice sometimes and bridle some of the toxic stuff.

Now that the memory and age has come into play she forgets to act nice. I don't know how they can have memory impairment and still remember how to be such master manipulators.
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Thanks DonnaCG. Your comments and answers have given me encouragement that I'm not alone.

I've mentioned to some of my 10 brothers and sisters that I think mom has developed some dementia and/or her meanness is becoming profound, but most of them are not "awake and aware" as I call it and choose to be in denial about it. They say "well I love my mother!" The ones that are the worst are the ones that live far away from her and haven't and won't spend much time with her. They make me out to be hyper critical of her and won't see the truth of her mental demise and personality changes. Our family is so dysfunctional now because of her. I must admit sometimes I wish she would just pass. She could have had the most beautiful family (11 children) but as the matriarch she does not want us all to be close to each other as I think she is afraid we will see her for who she really was as a ignorant mother and remember her bad parenting. When I confronted her recently about some childhood issues that I had never brought up till now (I'm 54), she had an immediate answer for everything like she knew that the day would come when I might confront her and she was prepared....boom, boom, boom with her answers!

Some days I feel a lot of pain because of the way things are and other days I am OK with just living my life with my husband. It's just so sad that there is no continuity of the generations. I miss my family...
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My 85yo mother, too, is one who points out something negative in EVERY situation. One day we went out for a drive, and I live in a gated community. We weren't even out of the gates yet, when my mom had already criticized five different things (the way the landscapers trimmed that hedge is sloppy, those homeowners should get a new roof, the flowers planted there are ugly, those trees are making a mess on the sidewalk etc etc) and I turned to her and said, "Are you really that miserable that you can't find something positive to say at ALL? Like the sun is shining, the weather is nice, it feels good to go out?" She gave me a look of petulance and said, "I'm just making conversation. Why are you always criticizing me?!?!" WTH?!?!? Somehow she turned it back on me so she could be the victim. It is really wearing me down. Everything I do or say is twisted by her to be "wrong". Just now she pointed out that the two large curio cabinets I bought to house her BOXFULS of knick-knacks are not even in height, and it's bugging her! Oy!!! Now I'm gonna have to hear about those uneven curio cabinets until I get someone over here to visually even out the height, cuz God knows she's gonna keep pointing it out to me!!
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When my mom gets her snit on I just say "Thats nice,,,," in a kinda sarcastic tone. Can't help it, it just comes out but sometimes it works. Then I just try to let it roll off my back. Luckily she does not pull this with my daughter or hubs.
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Kitty, your cabinets made me smile - I know what my brother would do. He would wordlessly go out to the garage, come back with a saw, and...
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Sorry I should explain: when I was a teenager I had a friend to stay one weekend. He was cutting a loaf of bread at supper and she said (like teenagers do) "huh, that's not very straight." The next slice looked like a corrugated roof.
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My mother is very negative and I assumed this was part of her manipulative repertoire. Control freaks and manipulators don't like the people around them to be happy - that could lead to emotional stability, resilience and, worst of all, self-confidence, which might lead to making good relationships with other people, even people outside the family. No, unhappy people who are often isolated people, are much easier to control and manipulate.

My mom appears to resent my relatively good health, even though she also wants to make use of that health. So she is constantly attempting to undermine my health routines and as an added bonus, keep me from leaving the house. I mustn't walk around the lake because of the bears - there was a bear scare one single year but usually it is safe. It used to be rapists but bears are better. I'm a city slicker; rapists aren't as scary as bears. I mustn't swim in the lake - the fish pee there. So she is really trying to keep me scared in order to make me do what she wants. Her negativity has a purpose. These days it is comical, at least sometimes, but when I was a kid, it wasn't. I was scared rigid of telephones for some reason I can't remember which suited my parents. I wonder what I was told.
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Bears??? Cool! And lions and tigers..?

As far as I remember, fish pee is the least of your worries. W.C. Fields would never even drink water because, he said: "fish f*** in it."
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Donna big hits to you. My mom manipulates and lies and has been socially uninvolved her entire life and has no relationship with any of her 8 grandchildren. My dad was dying of cancer and mom couldn't walk due to arthritis (late 50's) and couldn't drive. The day my dad died she was walking and driving. She puts me down and swears and blames and refuses to eat much like a three year old having a tantrum. She is in the hospital right now (as is her norm) and I can't visit her, my visit yesterday was so abusive. Like a previous poster said ;
CHILD ABUSE THAT DID NOT END WHEN ADULTHOOD BEGAN. THE CONTINUING VICTIMIZATION OF GROWN CHILDREN BY THEIR ABUSIVE OR CONTROLLING PARENTS, SIBLINGS, OR FAMILY MEMBERS "

All I can say is simply walk away, leave the room, do not acknowledge the negative remarks and celebrate that despite being raised by such a negative woman you yourself have made a conscious decision not to be like her and instead you have been able to live your life in a positive manner filled with enrichment and satisfaction.

This is what gets me through as I see my sister living the same life my mom did, treating her children the same way and being socially uninvolved and negative 24/7.

Continue being a ray of sunshine.
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big hugs, not hits.. oh my spell check
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Has anyone had any kind of experience as this:
I am dying inside. I cannot get the hook out! My Mother suffered so much loss but never dealt with any of it, lost a son and grandchildren she adored. Lost her Husband my Father of 44 years. Has no Friends. Has become negative and depressed and has some form of dementia...here is the kicker...she has been so ANGRY at me so nasty I had my brother come from out of state to get her... she just could not live alone anymore but they had other plans...her paranoia won out and they decided to move her out of state behind my back. Now she says she hates me and she will talk to me when she is dead
OMG I am dying inside
advice anyone?
K.S
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When your own mother "hates" you, how can you begin to feel that you are not an awful person? But, you are not. Mom is the one with the problem, and Mom is the one who scapegoated and turned on her own daughter, whether out of meanness or the irrationality of dementia plus depression. No, it is good that she went, and maybe they can persuade her to be treated for the depression.

I had an experience this weekend with pulling out some very nasty thorn vines from our backyard. Ultimately, that back yard will be a garden. But those vines - thick and strong, hurtful, tenacious and treacherous, you could hardly tell which end was the root and which was the shoot going up to the tops of the trees, where they grew leaves and blotted out the sun from them. Once they were cut off at the root and pulled free - sometimes with some damage to the other, better plants they were infesting -THE TREES ACTUALLY STOOD TALLER! The thorn vines had been pulling them downwards and matting them together. The thorns, even on the cut-off vines, went through gloves and scratched me up so I look like I've been in a cat fight; just pulling them down was not enough, they also had to be removed from the yard, and even a splinter removed from my hand. My arms are sore and my body ached from it, and then I found even more that I had missed. And these were just vines - no flowers, not pretty like holly, no fruit. Just parasitic and destructive vines.

As I did the work, my mind came back to here, on this site, where so many have been so hurt through no fault of their own, and how hard it is to remove all that hurt from our lives. The thorn vines will end up dried up, and either burned up or in a landfill. But I'll be OK with maybe a few scars to show for it in a few weeks, and I'll have to watch that none of them grow back, but I WILL have a garden instead of a tangled mess that only inflicts pain.
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Donna's story is a mirror of my situation. Queen of negativity/paranoia all her life. Never had friends and never wanted any -- just her family. She wants me close -- doesn't like it when I go out with friends (and I do) and doesn't like my husband. (She didn't like my first husband either). When he comes home from work she says "Here comes the intruder." I am losing patience with her and dread going home after work. I am ready to find alternative living arrangements for her before I find myself divorced at 61!
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They need to be punished and they need to get a taste of their own medicine. How they treated their poor daughters. I know the pain. They won't truly be sorry for what they've done until they experience it. Negative people need to be shunned and isolated. Then list out what they did to you back when they had power over you, and do it back to them. These people don't change their negative behavior and attitudes because nobody's taught them that it's wrong. Actions have consequences, even for abusive parents such as these. They should've thought about it before they abused you (their child). They think they can just get away with it, they can't. Once they've been punished, they will change their behavior and be better people.
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The kind of mothers who beat their poor daughters when their father is away at work (no witnesses), thinking the girls were too young to remember it in adulthood. Thinking that they can lie their way out of it. They deny it if she goes to the ministry to try to tell someone who's in a position of authority. The scary thing is, those people often betray the young girl and side with the abusive mother. The girl gets punished for telling the truth and what does she learn? She learns to withdraw. Until adulthood. The mother thinks the girl has forgotten the long-term abuse but no she hasn't. Is it any surprise that some adult children (especially women) don't want to visit their elderly mother? I wouldn't be surprised. Don't ask me how I know these things in such detail. I'm in my 20s and I have a very good (and long memory). One good thing I guess is that such behaviors help force out the kid to become independent "on time"----no prolonged adolescence, and no "entitlement". Girls who grow up this way also tend to be more cautious in their business and personal lives ( I would know.) ...It takes one to know one. Is it wrong to want revenge? No it isn't wrong. It's not wrong at all because you've given the system many chances to correct it, and it has failed you. The best revenge one can do without sinking to their level---is to expose them for what they did and what they are. Trust me, some mothers are not worth feeling sorry for.
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