sanityLost

Hi Sanity. Your comment to my post made ME lol as well !! Yup, your mother sounds alot like mine. On rare occasions she will start to be funny and nice, and if I fall into *the trap*, she suddenly turns it around into complaints !!!! aaaargh .. so annoying. My husband and I never go out because the few times we have (in the past 6 years mind you), she will say things like "well have fun. I don't feel well, so if you come home and find me dead, you will know why". Honestly, she's so exasperating !! I have a sister, but she lives 100miles away so that's her excuse for not helping. She's gone on a few cruises though. One she tried to hide from us, but my niece (who I am practically best friends with) told me. Oh well .... I hope to talk to you soon. Maybe we can keep making each other laugh !! :D

God bless!

sainitylost it sounds like you are on your way to gaining back your sanity.

Obligation is very over kept in place the most by either guilt or fear and sometimes both. Obligation like the other two lead us to walk on eggshells around the person and around the issues that really must be discussed.

For the most part, a family member or a spouse can get us with fog if we have let our relationship become codependent or enmeshed with the other persons feelings to where we find it very hard to feel our own feelings, think our own idea, and make our own decisions without their stuff in our head getting in the way.

It's the enmeshment with the parent that so often makes the adult child melt back into the little child and the relatonship slants into child-adult instead of staying adult-adult.

With spouses what often happens in enmeshement is someone gets treated as the child or someone feels like the other spouse is expecting them to be the mom or dad they never had. Thus, it stops being adult to adult.

Here is one helpful point from writing about living and speach.. Teachers encouraged us to write in an active voice. However, so much of our speaking is in a passive and reactive voice. We burden ourselves with I ought to, I should have, I might, I must, I need to, etc. A more proactive way to address life is to make declaritive active statements like, I will, I shall, I can. Active statement also tend to be very clear without any doubt of which direction you have decided to go.

You have already made an important step in recognizing the fog and where you are in dealing with it. I wish you well in the rest of the journey in getting out of the fog. Just because you get of the fog does not mean that they are not going to try to hoover you back into. That's when you let them deal with their own internal drama that they feel a need to suck you into.
You could read up some on codependency or better yet if you can afford to find a good liscenced clinical social worker to do some cognitive therapy with you and tell them right off the bat that you want to get rid of the fog and which part has you the most stuck.

Dear sanity lost,

I love your statement about your icon is busy looking for its sanity. My biggest suggestion for finding your sanity is gaining some freedom from this F. (fear) O. (obligation) G. (guilt) that I hear in the statement "mom made me promise that I would not leave her alone."

Thank you so much and I wish you much love and blessings as well.....I love my parents with all my heart......and I understand and empathize all caregivers.... Much Love.....

thank you for answerin me back soon . now we can sleep good tnite . (maybe) hope our parent sleeps good tnite .
im seeing more new names poppin up and those new ones sounds like jerry springer shows , eeek,
big hugs to you goodnight xo

hi , want to say im sorry if i upset you . i was not talking about you . i was saying if whats her name was offened by what others had to say i just told her to ingore it , cuz there has been times that i made some commets it turned into a disagreement and i learn to ingore that person . cuz i got my feelings hurt too ,
now i wish i didnt say anything guess i didnt learn haha .
honestly i wasnt talkin about you ..
i also made a commets that she should be glad that her mother is not ahateful person like some is .
i agree with what you said (claimin my mother as a dependent) she sounds like somebody came off the jerry springer show .
living in cat urine smell etc ,etc .
honey im sorry if i upset you , like i said i wasnt talking about you ....god bless ....

You are awesome! Thank you! :)

Thanks for your hug and message. I hope you are doing okay today. You have your hands full, that's for sure. I am happy to provide support and comic relief when possible!

Here's a big hug for you. My situation is not even in the same stratosphere as yours, but I totally sympathize with you. It does SUCK, and if people would finally be honest and truthful about it, perhaps the notion of assisted suicide would finally not be a taboo. My father has always told me that he does not ever want to go into a nursing home and that we should "off" him when the time is right. Well, according to the laws now, that would be considered murder, so it is doubtful that he will get his wish. It is just so awful to be old, ill, alone, demented, and have zero quality of life. What is the point??? NOW. Put earplugs in your ears. Or the headset with the IPOD. Act absent-minded, like you did not remember her requests. Save yourself!!! A big hug to you.
Fran