I have noticed for a long time that my mom has slowly stopped caring about stuff that needs to be maintained for the safety and common courtesy of others around her. If I bring these things up, she gets ridiculously upset and breaks down crying like I'm judging her for everything she's doing.
She is also super sensitive about the things that I'm supposed to be letting out instead of keeping inside. I do this by the instructions of professionals and therapists that I talk to. I'm stuck in an endless loop that keeps an empty shell attached to me that was supposed to fully break off 5-10 years ago when I originally started therapy. I'm still carrying that shell around only because me successfully developing characteristics about my true self in therapy made her not recognize me at home anymore, and suddenly she was questioning things like what I was doing, if I was doing the right things medically, or if my therapist was good for me, when she never even encouraged therapy when I was a kid (she was always the "shut your mouth and do what I said because I'm your mother and I said so" while-whacking-you-with-the-hairbrush kind of mother, who stormed around the house thinking that was all effective discipline).
Today she is not the least bit stable, based off what I know stable is from when I was in therapy originally. But if I even approach that direction with her, the finger is pointed back at me - she'll go, "YOU'RE calling ME unstable?!? You won't even go to therapy!" when I'm in between people and support methods trying to find something that can handle my difficulties with her.
This next paragraph is all assumptions based on my observations: Her attitude and mindset is really only to go to therapy just so she can be recommending it to others and saying that she's doing it. I can tell nothing is sinking in because she tells me about how she mentions me and my problems to her therapist and how it upsets her. Her thoughts about everything seem to present themselves in a way like, "Since I'm doing it and I think that's the only way people can get help, you need to do it before I can think of you as a healthy person again. If I don't hear you say 'my therapist said this, my therapist said that,' or 'I have an appointment,' then you're not okay and I'm threatening to call the police the MOMENT you upset me." Severely entitled behavior that attempts to get me in trouble and her looking "better" when there is nothing to call for that.
I can tell something is not being incorporated into her actual routines outside her therapy sessions. I can tell she is still mentally ruminating on things that SHOULD be coming out and going to therapy, because she talks to me about them to try to solve them. It's kind of like she's only doing it herself to go, "see, i'm doing it, so you should too, and I'll invalidate every valid reason you have for not going until you do," while not using therapy correctly. She has asked me, "do you want to talk with my therapist when I'm meeting with them? Maybe it will help you." I had to refrain from getting angry.
At the same time, she carries this clingy energy that always has to be the excuse as to why she behaves the way she does. "I only ask you these things because I worry and care about you." I can't begin to say how much I have learned in life not to worry about things, solely because I visually see how her worrying about so much eats away at her physically. She is chronic with this though.
This is a lot, a rant, and is all over the place. It's also my first post here. I'm sure there will be more concrete and pointed questions later on. But right now I really feel like my future is hindered the longer I continue to live with her. I can't get away from home at the moment but that moved itself to priority number one several years ago, and I'm still working on a way to do it while continuing to avoid her pulling me all the way down.
If anyone has input or general suggestions I'd appreciate it-thank you!
There is a LOT more than untreated ADHD going on here; you seem unable to appreciate the fact that your mother might be toatally fed up with the idea of having a 30 year old child still living with her.
I am the same age as your mom. I like to be alone and unencumbered by others in my home (ie., I like to walk around in my underwear). My children, some of who don't make a lot of money, live with roomates or in low cost neighborhoods in order to get by. Living with me was never on offer.
Get qualifird for Medicaid, Disability and low cost group housing. Move out and move on.
So I know I need to do it. ADHD (which was wildly present long before living at home was an individual stressor) makes it difficult. The steps I need to take have to be done with care so as not to create a new problem that's so easily attached to how I personally accommodated so early for my attention symptoms. Most who don't have ADHD symptoms do not understand how this works and it easily sounds like I'm making unnecessary excuses when it's my reality, especially when her over involvement was an issue successfully treating the ADHD to begin with. That's why there's more today than just ADHD - it ballooned into things that weren't there before my mom was even able to comprehend all that was going on in my mind attention wise and causing me grief in grade school.
As much as I want to just move out and move on, it doesn't make anything any easier for me to just drop all at once and do that. This disorder is weird and trauma makes moving forward incredibly difficult as well. But I can say I'm actively working on a plan. Thanks.
She will or will not progress at her speed, and you will progress at your own speed.
Focusing on yourself, and your own goals in therapy may help you. Making concrete plans to move out for example.
Can you go one session in therapy without making it about your mom?
It is okay to take breaks from therapy. You will find the right therapist at different times. We can maybe point you in the right direction (s), and you choose.
Can you start to get out more now, be at home fewer hours in the day?
With a Mother like that, who needs enemies? You explained: "she was always the "shut your mouth and do what I said because I'm your mother and I said so" while-whacking-you-with-the-hairbrush kind of mother, who stormed around the house thinking that was all effective discipline)." So very sorry that happened to you by your own mother!
Just growing up with abuse is one reason you will be needing therapy. Is it okay to be calling that abuse?
I sincerely hope that you can break free, if even emotionally. And, congratulate yourself every time you are living a 'stable life'. Because, that is you doing it!
It knocks everything about my pride out the window to think about having to do this the way that I now am approaching it. Takes so much longer to get everything done. Makes me feel like efforts I put in before are just erasing in order for me to move on. But yeah me too, once I'm on my own I'll even be more willing to open up and discuss things with someone. I feel beaten and battered in ways that physical contact can't describe.
I am aware that its hard to live on ur own in this economy. I don't see where Mom is going to change. At this point, you must have enough therapy to work this out. Just my opinion, you and Mom can't live together. So, maybe time to start saving money to move out.
Neither your mother nor mine will ever admit to ever being wrong about anything, and they will never validate our feelings. That will never happen.
When adult children live in a parent's house that is more often than not a free pass for the parent to behave as bad as they want because they have no respect for us. Even if they want us living with them or if we're their caregivers and they can't get by without us. Either way, there will be zero respect for us.
If you're not able to move out right now, try to put some emotional distance between you and your mother. You don't have to discuss things with her that you don't want to discuss. You don't have to tell her where you're going when you leave the house. You're an adult, not a child.
I'm sorry you were treated abusively growing up. I know how that is. Continue in therapy because it will help.
>If you're not able to move out right now, try to put some emotional distance between you and your mother. You don't have to discuss things with her that you don't want to discuss. You don't have to tell her where you're going when you leave the house. You're an adult, not a child.
I have been working on this. She is the type that will spend 3 hours on the phone talking to someone, then whine that she never has any time or a life, so that tendency to talk forever gets herself in trouble, and it messes with my ability to communicate with her. Thing is i've had so much I wanted to say to her over the years that has to wait because she was on the phone. I get sucked in to that tendency of hers to yap so easily, and have had conscious efforts in place to not be sharing so much that doesn't need to be shared. Then she'll enter the territory of, "I always give you the freedom to do what you want, never ask where you are when you go out, but you still have issues and are still like this with me!" Her logic does not match anything about what my logic has been trying to put together since I was a kid.
>I'm sorry you were treated abusively growing up. I know how that is. Continue in therapy because it will help.
Thanks. I'm realizing now how much it was not any kind of normal to go through what I went through, because back then I accepted it as "well, I did something wrong. that's what happens when I do that. so I'll try not to do that again, even though I can't really tell the difference between legitimately answering her question and 'talking back to her.'"
Feel free to rant! Many posters rant. We understand.
I am so sorry that you are struggling with all of this. I am glad to see that you enlisted the help of a therapist.
I read your profile. You don’t say your age or your mother’s age. Also, you only list depression for your mom. Please give us a bit more information, if you don’t mind.
It is clear that you aren’t happy living with your mom. You are making plans to move. Good for you! Follow up on that! Make this your first priority.
As far as your mom is concerned, stop trying to correct her behavior. It will only frustrate you. You may have her best interests at heart, but she isn’t interested in how it effects you. Instead, start focusing on your reaction to her words or actions. It may be more effective to walk away, rather than debate an issue that she isn’t willing to budge on.
If she isn’t willing to listen to what you are saying, then don’t speak to her. If she doesn’t want any suggestions on how to improve her situation, then don’t offer any advice. Allow her to figure it out on her own. Then anything that goes wrong is on her, not you. If she does figure things out, congratulate her and be happy for her. Stop making her problems, your problems. Does this make sense to you? All I know, is whenever I tried to help someone that didn’t want my help, I wasted my time and theirs. It’s futile to even try helping others who either aren’t ready or capable of receiving help. Let your mom deal with her issues with her therapist.
Have the two of you only done individual therapy? Individual therapy is good but there comes a point in time when a therapist will invite other family members that are involved in our lives, in order to achieve harmony in the family.
Best wishes to you and your mom.
She has severe depression and it has always been in her family, but what she complained about never bothered me even while I was growing up. It still doesn't really. I saw it affecting her from the outside and always felt bad that she was always so sad. But also my dad continued a LOT to her sadness that exists today. So that makes me aggravated to some degree having to live with her alone and feel all of this. She was exuberantly happy when she was having kids. She started falling so far down when my dad something like redoing a mortgage without telling her, or something like that. They constantly argued and he ultimately made her a literal example of a female losing her voice but in the 2000s. His ego issues completely shoved her into a corner.
>Stop making her problems, your problems. Does this make sense to you?
Absolutely. She never got this though. Her route has always been to talk to other people about what's wrong and never bring it to a higher level than that. So it just stays in the mundane chat level of life instead of going somewhere productive because she does not like confrontation.
>Have the two of you only done individual therapy? Individual therapy is good but there comes a point in time when a therapist will invite other family members that are involved in our lives, in order to achieve harmony in the family.
Because of what happened when I was younger, there is an incredibly tough layer that's grown into my life preventing me from wanting to do this while I'm still with her. I'm working on figuring out which is more important for me - maintaining that layer because it grew in for this specific reason, or tearing it open to redirect how I'm approaching things in life. I don't want to do group at this time, even don't feel comfortable talking to a therapist while I'm so scattered.
There is also a sibling issue revolving and bubbling around all of this, to the extent that the issue is making it so they don't need to be involved, when there was never an agreement that I was going to be living at home for so long, while she has been in despair for so long.
What would be reasons 2 & 3?
2) I can not feel comfortable applying for or holding many types of jobs because of untreated ADHD symptoms that worsen things like social anxiety, preventing me from functioning well with other people. I'm okay with up to like two people in the room - any more than that and I naturally/habitually clam up and feel uncomfortable talking. This aspect of my life - the ADHD and how it affects me socially - remains untreated due to literal borderline malpractice that manifested symptoms of PTSD in me. Mom thinks not talking to someone is making me worse, but I can't feel any individuality or privacy getting help while I'm living with her, which creates this cycle that I cannot handle because of my original lack of attention and focus. I feel like moving out will improve these symptoms, but I can't get there because of the symptoms.
3) She and I were living in a previous house (used to be her, dad, me and two siblings) until it foreclosed after many years of no mortgage payments from dad. Family helped me move somewhere else and housing is no longer an overhanging issue. So that is not a full blown "reason I can't move out," but even though I'm adjusted to the new neighborhood and house, and have moved on myself after the foreclosure, the fact that my mom is still having a hard time living in the new house is a tug of war for my mind because she is already totally uprooted from a house we all lived in for 27 years, so I feel like moving out would trigger more guilt in me, the kind of guilt feelings that her situation has tripped me into. That's why this makes it to my list as #3. It's not that I don't know moving out will help me - I just keep getting my feet stuck in little pools of quicksand along the way.
#2 and #3 inherently feel like they are issues that will take longer than three months to begin to solve.
If you mean ADD/ADHD there are medications for this. My grandson was on Adderall and he will tell you it slowed his brain down and helped him focus. He had to go off Adderall because of epilepsy medication. After brain surgery, he is being weaned off of the epilepsy meds and hopefully he can, at 27, go back on the Adderall. We live near an interstate that has nothing but warehousing up and down it. Grandson seems to do well in Warehouse work. I think its because its the same thing over and over.
I think you know you need to move out. 67 is not old. Mom should be OK on her own. Maybe u just oversee.
Without going into too much detail, I tried medications and they worked, but it's too big of an adjustment for me to make in front of my mom while I'm in the "earlier stages" of learning the executive types of functions I still need to learn at age 30. Back around 2011-2012, I was on medications for a little less than 2 years and I reached an optimal dose that totally worked to curb all of my attention difficulties. I had to transfer to a new professional and it was later suddenly halted by that person without tapering, so now I can't function the same with or without them (retried it last year and had weird side effects).
I worked in a retail store for a while but they constantly reduced the hours in my position to the point where I wasn't making enough money for the travel. I don't drive and they preferred "more reliable transportation than public transportation" for me to advance and get more hours. I liked the position I had for the same reason. I'm constantly looking for a type of work that will fit my capabilities.
I agree with getting qaulified for full disability---and then cutting ties with mother for good.
My mom was a lot the same and I still have her in my life, but on my terms, entirely. I could NOT live with her one-upmanship about who is more mentally 'off'.
You are in control of your life and your mom doesn't need or deserve to be a part of it. Sadly, this is a common occurence. I have gone a full year w.o speaking to my mother and she didn't even notice. And I thought she cared! Nope.
Therapy helped me a great deal. To let go, to forgive, to put the 'abuse' in a drawer and not open it.
You can be OK. Better than OK.
I can sort of see this happening later for me, haha.
>You can be OK. Better than OK.
Thanks. I'll get there.
" I don't drive and they preferred more reliable transportation than public transportation"
Is there a physical reason you don't drive? Or is it a financial reason.
Seems your in a Catch 22 here. We can give you all kinds of suggestions but at the end of the day, your the only one who can make the change. And as you get older its going to get harder.
So what you need is to find a job any job that gets u out of the house. Then you need to find a doctor to treat your ADD and explain what happened. Sounds to me the new professional was weaning you off your med. Did he/she think u had outgrown it? Then you need to get your license, then a car. But, this is not going to happen overnight. Its going to take a while. So you need to set boundries with Mom. Maybe "letting it out" is not good when Mom is not ready to except the candor. Maybe therapy would be good together then u have a mediator. I have found that in families you can have 3 kids and each one saw a situation in the family different. It happens with my girls all the time. My oldest was a drama queen when she was little my youngest a realist. My oldest saw things so differently dramatizing them. My youngest tells her "I was there and it did not happen that way" My BIL will say "Dad was never around" My husband says "he played sports and always asked us if we wanted to go and watch and I was the only one who went".
So you and Mom have different perceptions to what happened. Maybe you needed more attention but Mom wasn't the attentive type. Does that make her wrong? After 10 years maybe instead of trying to bring out all Moms bad points your therapist should be helping you to move on with your life. You can't change the past but you can change the future.