Why do we put aside our feelings to help our parents?

You’ve been programmed to believe that you have to be available for your dad.

He expects you to serve his every need. What would he do if you weren’t around? He would find a way to have his needs met.

You can offer suggestions to him. There are people that he can hire to help him.

Don’t drop everything and run off to help him. Would you do this for everyone else? I doubt it.

I worked with an older woman who stopped working and thought it would be nice to volunteer in the community. She enjoyed it for awhile.

Then, she found herself working more hours volunteering than she had been working in a full time job!

She quit volunteering and returned to work. She said to me at lunch one day, “I decided that if I was going to work full time as a volunteer, and have listen to a pushy chairperson order me around until I was exhausted, then I will return to working a full time job and be paid for it!”

You’re miserable, so I am going to suggest a few comebacks to say to your dad when he makes his unending requests.

Dad, I am so sorry. I have a dentist appointment. Can’t possibly make it today!

Dad, I have a doctor appointment. Sorry!

Dad, That doesn’t work for me. My friend is visiting from out of town. I promised her that we would do lunch. Sorry!

Dad, I’m feeling under the weather today. I have to rest. Sorry.

You can give him phone numbers of suitable helpers.

Look for a therapist that charges according to your income. It will be money well spent.

Best wishes to you.

One answer may be that, too often, many of us hurt, neglected, abused as children by the very people in charge of protecting us, grow up to be overly giving and dutiful as adults...in part, I think, because we long to give what was withheld from us...we seek satisfaction in giving. Not that it is consciously calculated in that way. But my experience has been to find many wounded people turn out to be natural caregivers...could be their over-developed empathy as a result of childhood wounds.

Faithful, only you can answer why YOU do that.

Many of us were trained early on to ignore our feelings so that our parents' lives could be more stress free and so that our families could look more "perfect" and normal.

I would strongly suggest you make some excuse and back away from "doing" for your father for a few weeks. See if your level of anxiety goes down. Then you'll know you need to make that change more permanent.

All these things you do for dad can easily be done by paid help....groceries ordered, a housekeeper hired, laundry pick up and drop off service and hired caregivers to drive him to doctors appointments, on his dime of course. Or, you just tell him you're going back to work and are no longer available for ANY of these tasks, here's the number of an agency to send out a CG for 4 hours a day to do it all for him, easy peasy. Whether you actually go back to work or not is up to you and none of his concern.

In the meanwhile, you're choosing to do all these things and "I'm so depressed and anxious and I can not afford counseling right now." Only you can change this situation and make it better for yourself. How do you plan to do so? Establish boundaries immediately or nothing will ever change, but continue to worsen as dad's needs increase. My mother thought I worked full time even after I'd retired precisely so she didn't feel like I was available at her beck and call. It's called self preservation, at 60-something years old, and a necessity.

Good luck to you!

I would seek out a counselor for this one. Much has to do with early childhood training. Much has to do with our own habitual behaviors.

I was just talking to someone seeking medical advice here on Forum. And I said that there's sometimes danger in seeking expert advice from people on a Forum. You end up with sympathy, not help. You end up with their OWN sad story rather than any ideas of change for your own life. And you end up repeating once again the old familiar pain, making it with each repetition STRONGER and more real.

There have been three times in my life that I was in or close to crisis point, and sought the help of a therapist. Each time taught me more than I can say; and it always helped. I do admit to having been lucky in getting therapists who didn't just sit and listen while they counted out the cash, but rather shook my world until I was uncomfortable enough to truly look at what I needed to CHANGE.

Change is more difficult than we think. Our habits, while they cause us pain, are the "KNOWN" world. And choosing another path is a walk into the dark, scary. But so worth it for the discoveries you will make.

For me personally, the challenge is accepting that I'm going to have to be "mean" in order to save myself. I've accepted that, have a hard line with my mother, but I constantly have to redraw that line in stark, sometimes harsh language. This casts me as being unsympathetic, unkind, hard, a b***h, selfish, etc. All words my mother has used for me. She badmouths me to her friends, trash talks me to my sister, constantly lets me know that I've let her down, plays the victim, gets indignant and angry, yada yada yada.

It used to be easier to just cave and do what she wanted. There's a cost to sticking up for yourself. I've accepted the cost. Being "hard" is worth my mental health and time.

Good luck, hon.

How old is Dad? How old are u. If he can drive, what do u do for him he can't do for himself? Will taking off a weekend be so bad?

You posted before about Dad always criticizing. An example was him just dropping by and criticizing everything about ur house and you. I will say this, your Dad needs you more than you need him and you need to make this clear to him.

If he is capable of driving to your house, what do you do for him that he can't do for himself. Laundry...my husband is 76 and has done his own in the 42 yrs we have been married. Cleaning...how dirty does one man get a house, tell him to hire someone once a month, bi-monthly. He leaves dirty dishes in the sink, he is capable of washing them himself. If he can drive he can grocery shop.

You need to start standing up for yourself. Learn the word No. Really, the more you use it the easier it gets. If he criticizes something your doing for him, tell him, "Well I guess u think you can do better so do it" and walk out. He may have more respect for you if you stand up to him. Respect goes both ways. You are not a child anymore. You are an adult who holds down a job and has a home of your own. You need to demand that respect. Look up the "grey rock method" and see if you can use it on Dad. Read the book "Boundries" by Townsend and Cloud. The one thing my daughter liked about it was...
When you say NO your are not responsible for the reaction u receive.

No is a one word sentence (meaning u do not need an excuse)

Guilt is self-imposed.

My mantra is "I am here to help people find a way, not be theway"

Therapy may help you find tools to deal with Dad. Just remember you place Boundaries for yourself. People like ur Dad will try to cross them but u never give in. I think in your last post I replied that he needs to call before he comes over. Your home is your safe place to fall. You control who comes over and who doesn't.

What caretakers do is fail to take in down time. You can't be on call twenty-four seven. Hire a home care agency for these abusive parents using their money! Medicaid will also pay for home health aide services. You will never get validated or approval from narcissistic parents. I think if I would have been a little bit more assertive during my younger years, I could have been in a much better place financially, emotionally and physically today. This stuff will haunt you years later if you don't handle it now. Don't sacrifice your life and happiness for a miserable old person who has done nothing but made you miserable. People can create children, but it takes a parent who is willing to care and protect them. For abusive parents, don't take on a POA and be treated like trash throughout the process. I never had a POA, but I did catch a lot of flack from the government agencies and people trying to monitor my life constantly when I was at home with my younger sibling. I was in college at the time and caretaking placed a real damper on my life. I eventually gave up the caregiving to a severely disabled sister, got all the ducks in the row for her care and moved out. My dad had married a golddigger who wanted me to sign for a house loan so that she and dad could go riding off in the sunset living happily ever after. Well, that didn't happen. I was not willing to allow myself to be exploited any longer. Financially, I was just getting started out on my own in life. Unfortunately, he saw this setup for what it was a few months before he died. This woman was only in it for what she could get financially. She got a lawyer when my dad was on morphine and had him sign over all of the assets, boat and house to her and her children. His bio children received one dollar. Then his wife had to nerve to wonder why none of his children contacted her after his death. I get calls for her at my home from bill collectors trying to collect on student loans.

You are not responsible for abusive parents. You don't owe him anything.

We set step up because of our basic humanity recognizing their basic humanity. It doesn't mean we forget any of the abuse, harms, or mistakes our parent(s) made but because we know it's the decent thing to do, within reason. Some situations are too heinous to stay involved, but we do what we can because each of us deserves a decent ending to our life. This is not a requirement, no matter what anyone here says, but a highly individual decision each of us has the right to make. I stepped up for my mom because I knew she was a deeply wounded/fallible human being, aside from the rotten treatment I often got from her, and because I wanted our 'parting' to be as 'clean' as possible, for both our sakes. It's as if the behaviors of the offending person are 'mask's, ugly masks sometimes, which is simply 'personality'...not the essence (soul) of the person; so I think we care for the essence of the person, to whatever extent we can commit to, or not (that is an entirely legitimate choice in some case and not subject to judgement by any outsiders, btw), to have a clean conscience yourself, that we did right by another human being, and a humane sendoff for the parent/loved one.

I think we do it because polite society expects us to do it. Most people want to believe we all lived a Norman Rockwell childhood. So therefore of course we would want to be there for our aging parents. Those that say they did not have ideal parents get told "they did their best". You know what, sometimes someone's best isn't good enough and it isn't an excuse for falling short. People chose to decide if they want to have children so shouldn't those children get to chose if they are up to the task of caregiver.

My father wasn't a bad father it just seemed that everyone else was more important to him than I was. That lasted until he got old and everyone else stopped visiting, then I was the most important person in the world. He was 40 years too late. I made sure he was well taken care of but very rarely did I do any hands on caregiving. I don't think he ever understood why I was so emotionally distant. I'm not even sure he noticed. And the few times I tried to tell him he'd act as if I was overly sensitive and needed to just get over it. My feeling was if you easily get over things, people tend to treat you poorly because there are no lasting consequences.