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OK need support. I have a npd father & dry drunk alcoholic mother. Dad is enabler. So my sistter and father hired home health sitter for my mother who has dementia - recent MI & stroke & not supposed to be left alone. Sitter comes in 3 days a wk so my father can run out in the car and go to meetings and all the things he wants to. Well - he has been cancelling the sitter claiming he wants to use her judiciously and he pays for her but - going into a home is more $$$$$. Despite the constant dialogue that I am telling him I cannot do it all he insists he will take my mom when he goes out (BAD IDEA!!!!!!!! HE Can barely walk much less can she!) yet leaves here here alone. He will ask me last minute to stay with her while he goes off to a full day meeting for whatever activity and never comes back on time. If I explain it is interfering with my job or own life he gets pissed off. He has the money to pay for the sitter. He has also cut down the house cleaner from once a wk to every other wk and let me tell you the man craps in the bed and pisses on the floor and refuses to wear accident underwear or sit on the loo. He has always peed on the floor even when not elderly. He is an extreme unfeeling narcissist and he and my one mentally ill sister have upped the smear campaign against me. My mom wants me to stay but I am done. I have to get a FT job far away and never look back. My father is a FOOL. He says he does not want to go into AL and I have said whatever they want to do is fine by me. But then he has extreme mood swings (always has) and he will tell me all about my failings and how I should feel. I have HAD ENOUGH. My question is - as I get my life ready to get out - my dad is claiming to have care for my mom and will take her if he goes out but DOES NOT. He still asks me last minute to care for her and its not fair to her if I say NO. She had an MI the last time her did this and I was at work. He tried to take her to the EYE doctor when she had a stroke and lost her vision. UGH! He did it again today after swearing he would take her with him so I went to therapy and when I got back she was home alone. The man is MISERABLE and moody. There is NO TALKING to him. I was NOT selected as power of attny. MY SISTER IS and she does NOTHING to help.

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Make your plans to leave. Once you're ready, write to your sister with a situation report on both parents and remind her of her responsibilities. Copy it to their doctor, if you like. Then leave, and don't look back.
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Just leave. If you don't have POA; you have no obligations.

Save your own life, please!
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Your situation is special and extreme. Give notice in writing, sent certified mail to copy all concerned. Resign as a caregiver or helper due to health concerns.
I agree with the others, you need to save your own life first.

If you need help wording it, making it brief, just ask.

Godspeed no longer scared!
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This situation will NOT get better. Your mother's dementia will get worse. Your father will always have Narcissistic Personality Disorder. You will always be the scapegoat. Nothing you can do will change this. It is Not Your Fault.

So I think you have made the right decision. Start looking for full-time work some distance away. Figure out your housing there. Then LEAVE. It would be courteous to give them a couple weeks' notice so they can start making other arrangements, but if you think that will make those weeks especially traumatic for you, tell them on your way out the door.

You have grown up in an extremely dysfunctional family. But you seem to have your head screwed on right. You know what you have to do. My best wishes to you as you do it!
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Thank you all. It can be hard when being part of the dysfunction merely in staying! Difficult to believe in myself while being emotionally torn up by the very family I am serving.

Such good advice. My father is a rage a holic and resistant to any sense of logic - especially when shame and guilting his own kids overrides a family of his own design. SHEESH.

It's crazy making - gaslighting - and the mask has slipped while he denies the weirdness of his insistence. I imagine aging at his stage must be scary. Depressing. I certainly do not want to be angry, bitter and cruel at his age. I hope I am mindful enough not to hurt others the way he and my mom have. At least my mom has tried. But it gets maddening with his mood swings and her pretending to cry when I have to do things that do not involve waiting on them hand and foot. Gotta love guilt inducing childish and UNHEALTHY behaviors.

At this point I am either working on job apps, a business I am trying to start & yoga, therapy & speaker meetings to stay sane in the land of OZ.

Even with all my hocus pocus positive coping go-to's, the damage these two have on my esteem is penetrating. I hate how I feel around them and I am trying to change my perspective but its no longer enough.
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Why do so many elderly parents refuse outside help and fire them? I hear of this too often.
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I am glad to hear you are going to therapy. You deserve all the help you can get to overcome your upbringing.

Post here often to report your progress. The folks here understand and are on your side!
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Answer: Because they can get away with it.
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Can you leave early, sit in a starbucks posting a few hours on AC, sending out resumes? Then Dad cannot make you stay with Mom.
If he leaves her alone, knowing you are not there and not expected to return, and does not call a sitter, that is criminal neglect.
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My father refused outside help because he believed they would mess with his medication, steal from him, mess up his organization, etc.

He had some experience with a in home aide that actually pull that stuff on him and Mom once, so it wasn't just his paranoia.
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It sounds as though your father resents paying someone $x per hour to "sit around and do nothing" anyway, and more especially he resents it when "your mother's coming along with me." Which at the time he probably believes. Then it's time to go, and your mother doesn't want to, so he leaves her behind.

It all makes sense to him at the time. And since it's only you who is inconvenienced, he *genuinely* does not perceive that there is a problem.

It is very important to put yourself coldly, impartially, inside their heads and see things from their point of view. Otherwise what they do makes no sense. How can anyone be so inconsiderate? How can anyone care so little about his wife? How can he not remember what happened last time? Well, this is how:

#1 Inconsiderate? Why, who's complaining? Oh - *her* - well, she's always complaining, she whines about everything! I'm not inconsiderate, she's a whiner.

#2 I want to go out. She'll be fine. Daughter will be here.

#3 I'm not paying all that money for a sitter! They charge a fortune! We can't afford it. Anyway, wife told me she'd love to come with me. I want to go out. It'll be fine.

This will help you to grasp the full import of your father's narcissism and understand it. It will hurt you a lot less when you realise, truly, that there is nothing wrong with you and * a heck * of a lot wrong with him! Also, you need to realise that his goal is not to hurt you but to please himself - you get hurt because you stand between him and what he wants to do, or perhaps express disapproval which threatens his self-image. But it's not his intention to hurt you. Which is why, when he does, he blames you for that as well.

When you've got to the stage of finding this sort of exercise more interesting than painful, you're almost there.

Bottom line: you're fine. He's the one with the problem.
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Can the housekeeper stay all day, working, given special assignments-at least the housekeeper can call 911 if needed? Pay a little extra? Arrange that on regular days Dad will be going out?
Maybe Dad will do better and your Mom too if on a schedule.
I know this sounds too simplistic, and may not work with a narcissist.
So sorry you are going through this.
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sendhelp - it is simplistic and should work in theory...but has not in practice. Not a housekeeper. She is a "sitter". They have the money. NH would be more $$$. But father is disinterested in actually following through.

"Also, you need to realise that his goal is not to hurt you but to please himself - you get hurt because you stand between him and what he wants to do, or perhaps express disapproval which threatens his self-image. But it's not his intention to hurt you. Which is why, when he does, he blames you for that as well.

When you've got to the stage of finding this sort of exercise more interesting than painful, you're almost there.

Bottom line: you're fine. He's the one with the problem."

Well said. Problem is that I do see things through their eyes always - and act out of the shame & blame to please them - guilt that has historically been taught to me: favor parents while forsaking the self.

While my father does things to please himself, I have been forbade to do the same unless he and my mom think of something I "would like". They don't know me at all. Never tried.

He wants to please himself 1st up. I want to please myself, but always have been breaking to meet their neediness and wants. So we both ant to make ourselves happy. Problem is - she is his wife. I am not. He signed on the line to care for her as long as he lives. I offered to help - not be her husband. I have given up my mental wellness in trying to do their bidding while dodging the scapegoat hatred by all siblings. It is a cup I will never fill to make them happy. I have lost my sense of self.

The therapist sucked. She was great at first - but new at her job. Used a lot of colorful language in our sessions. Sessions she said were useless unless I left the house. She suggested I go into a womens shelter... right. Sure. So I quit since she likened my situation to a BAD BF. Big difference.

Anyways. Good advice from everyone.
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PS I love my mom - and it is so hard. Because I act out of love. But have lost myself out of the inflicted and deeply rooted shame and cast as a role of scapegoat. My dad has done the same to her for yrs - she hated and drank due to his behavior. She has more heart than he - but dementia has robbed me of what vestige would be my mom without alcohol (she is sober). It's heartbreaking all around. I can't make them happy - cant say no without being gossiped about by siblings as a POS if I say no. I have to work, care for them & be entertainment. I had no idea I was signing on to be cast as the villain until the end of time.

I got home from work and called by bereft co worker who was targeted and scapegoated by a toxic co worker having leverage....she was let go today. It amazes me that people are able to manipulate the truth to escape accountability and suck the life out of others to that end.

I fear this tap-dancing stress will kill me before either of them. Some days I wish I had the strength to fight for myself. I feel worn down and depressed. I don't know what am fighting for...my life is not my own and it's been so long that I cannot recall that it might be worth my effort. I am tired and feel so hated. It may not be the truth about who I am - but it is difficult at best to stand tall knowing you are doing your best despite the naysayers and manipulators who toss a spin on things to assuage their own guilt in not helping much...if at all.
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So in your first post you said that you needed to get a job far away and leave.

But when you went to therapy and was told that the first step was to leave this situation of abuse, degradation and abuse, you said you couldn't.

You leave. You call APS and report your mother as a vulnerable adult.

Your father is mentally ill. You can't gain love from a mentally ill parent, not the kind you're looking for.

Your mother has made a choice to stay. You don't have to make the same choice.
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And you can't go to a shelter...why?

Because in your head, you deserve this abuse? Because you're better than that? Because...?

Okay, it's different from a bad boyfriend, more akin to a bad husband and a child is involved. You're afraid to leave mom.

So call APS and see if THEY think she is safe if you're going to leave.

Mom DIDNT leave when she was competent. YOU don't have to make the same choice.
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The therapist may have been new, but what she said to you was true. You need to leave and tell them you are through.
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Look at leaving as saving a life............your own.
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I have no where to place my dog. I am trying to find work. I am over 50 and not sure if anyone is aware of how much a joke that is for former stay at home mothers....therapist needed to be there to help me cope while I sought a job.. Not tell me she cant help me because I am akin to dating a bad bf. That made me sink into despair. JC, came to the wrong place apparently. I dont need people to tell me living in a shelter is less mentally damaging. I was a supvsr in one and had to quit due to the sh*t that went on there. Try it. I wonder if anyone would. I have often thought death would be preferable to living here - so I tried reaching out here and being told to go to a shelter in a cold ...or "tough love" montage. Thanks. I was feeling like sh*t and this just added to it. I wont make that mistake again
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"And you can't go to a shelter...why?

Because in your head, you deserve this abuse? Because you're better than that? Because...?"

Excuse me that was uncalled for to infer I am better than going to a shelter. I was a spvsr in one and the trauma from some of it caused me to leave. Your comment was really rude.
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I was asking an honest question.

I admire you for working in the social service field; I do too.

One of the things I learned in my training and in my own time in therapy is that at times, there is a question that's the elephant on the room.

The thought of going to a shelter makes you feel like sh*t. Frankly I think the system is designed that way. Policy malers think that if sheltwrs are awful, people will be motivated to leave.

You feel like sh*t in your father's house and elsewhere. You have internalized your father's image of you as unlovable and worthless.

You really need to get out in order to start to change that self image.

I'm not sure how you expected your therapist to be a support while you were living in such a vile environment. But if you disagreed with her opinion, what you do in therapy is talk about that. Not quit.
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