So my mother and I have a strained relationship. She is extremely stubborn, avoid any confrontation and most conversations. She's also super emotional and I feel like she plays a lot of emotional warfare.
Recently she was staying with my husband and I will she got back on her feet after being sick and in the hospital.
She she asked if she could just live with us permanently and I said no.
She is healthy and fine and needs to be on her own.
She's made a ton of bad financial decisions and always plays the victim card.
She moved out of my house today and didn't say anything.
Just left a thank you card.
I go to the store tonight and I see her car in the parking lot.
She's deciding to live in her car, again.
I've tried to put her in her own apartment and even tried to pay the rent she wouldn't allow me to.
If she wants to live in her car that is her choice.
The part I have the biggest problem with is the fact that it's at the grocery store right next to my house.
I feel like this is another one of her games and I don't know what to do.
I lose sleep over this.
But we live in a state that has hardly any housing and I don't know how to help her if she won't take my help.
I think it would be fair to say that many of us on this site are dealing with quilt.
As many have stated, you can't help someone who doesn't want to help themselves.
Having said that, you can help yourself.
Depending on Moms age, there may be help for her. If she is a senior, your local Council for aging services could give you advice.
Do what you can for her to keep your sanity without allowing her to be intrusive in your life. What you accept, you teach!
Maybe you should seek a counselor. It helps to speak to an objective person who can also offer good advice for your mental health.
Hang in there! God bless!!
I would go with the majority of posters and assume there is some history here where you have been used and abused before. You could anonymously report to the police that you think someone is living out of their car at such and such a place. They will see that Mom is put in a shelter, hotel or HUD housing if she can't afford a place. You will probably get a call from the police or APS. Just say, sorry she can't live with me. Tell them you have tried everything but she ends up right back where she is. If abuse was in the past, tell them that. An abused child should not take care of their parents or anyone for that matter.
Let APS do the work. You will have it on record that she has problems.
She is a risk to herself - usually means she is suicidal
She is a risk to others - usually means others could die because of her
She is not mentally competent - she does not understand consequences of her actions and/or can not plan and carry out plans that sustain herself
A good psychiatrist can evaluate her to get answers to all the above questions. If she is not "at risk" and mentally competent. you may have to get used to the idea that your mother is exercising her rights to live very differently than you expect. Allow her to experience consequences as long as her basic needs are met.
It helps me as I am stuck on the decision of intervening for my sister. She is not suicidal or a danger to others but cannot self-care (unhygenic, poor diet, falls). She is in a care facility through this virus crises but will return home alone after that.
A psych eval stating a person IS competent could release family from fixing, saving & enabling.
Does she have any income to pay rent? If she has income, but not the ability to make good money decisions, you may be able to be a payee on her income. The police reports for living on a parking lot might help with that. Other proof of not having ability to manage money may help, too.
If she happens to need hospitalization again, talk with social worker at hospital to explain her situation and maybe she can be evaluated to be eligible for some kind of group living facility, assisted living, etc - but you need doctor data to support what level of care she needs. She might be happy in a group setting if she doesn't like living alone....although....she is living alone in a car right now and has done so in the past. (Might be living with you pays all the bills and frees up her own money to spend recklessly)
Wanting to be looked after by others - maybe she has the insight to know she just can't manage alone but not enough planning ability to arrange help to find alternatives? Living with you is her best solution (in her mind).
It does not sound like reason has or will work. Try, but if no good, working behind the scenes to steer her towards a safer place instead. That may be getting Police, social worker, APS or other agencies involved so the heavy steering is done by them.
Youneed to talk to your mom to make it clear that you don't want her to live with you and let her know it isn't safe to sleep in her car and that the Police would make her move and possibly even arrest her or call Social Services on her.
Tell her you will help her find an apartment .
It isn't safe for anyone to sleep in their car.
You could always call it in and the Police would make her move.
Or you could let her continue to live in her car, even tho there are safety issues.
You could spend the money you said you would put down for her Rent and add a room to your house that she can come and go only from outside without actually being able to get in to the Main House.
You could buy a portable Bldg to put in your back yard and turn it in to her place with a window AC unit which would be safer than sleeping in the car and more space.
If she actually can afford to pat rent. You could take her to visit some Senior Appartments where you only have to be 50 to live there and discuss her living there.
Mmaybe she just doesn't like living by herself.
You might try to find a place for your mom that is renting out a room, where she'll have others around her.
You also mentioned that she was staying in her car again????
Are you sure she has the money for a Rental and are you sure she doesn't have a mental issue?
Right. And if anyone tries to help her or asks if she needs help, she will be sure to villainize you and probably point shakily to your property and exclaim, "And she lives right THERE!"
Homeless shelter nearby? With Covid 19 it may be tough to find a bed.
You have tried so hard but your mother resists at your expense.
I would switch grocery stores as well.
Try to assess if mom has completed applications in HUD housing. You may have gotten her on that list already from your prior posts (idk).
Won’t a law enforcement officer eventually knock on that car window? Maybe he will call and have her placed somewhere in the interim.
It must be heartbreaking for you. I’m so sorry.
Good luck. I suspect if you do anything short of getting her into an apartment , you will get no rest.
It may sound emotionally cold, but why are you taking this bait?
Sometimes the 'best' support you can do when others use manipulation and self-destruction is to step back and allow others, with 'authority' to deal with the situation. If she decides to continue to live in her car, or act out in any other ways, there is little you can do unless she is 5150'ed - and ends up in a locked facility. I wonder-does she care about personal hygiene? Can she take a shower somewhere?
Consider your own emotional and psychological (and physical) boundaries. Has she baited you in this way before, for years? for decades? You need to STAND FIRM and hold your ground. It might be harder for you to do than for her to change however it may be required/needed for your own sanity and equanimity. And, once she realizes she isn't activating your emotions, she may stop. Providing more information here would have been helpful (her age, mental capacity), even though you say she is healthy. On the other side of this coin, many people in this country have low paying jobs or no jobs and sound mind who must live on the streets to make it. They do it somehow. While your mom doesn't have to do this, it is a choice she is making. Don't take the bait.
Do me a favour and read "The Glass Castle." I can't remember the author's name but she wrote this book based on her life with her mother. As she becomes successful her mom becomes homeless and how she handles it. This is NOT a self help book but it might help you. I must warn you; once you start reading it you will not be able to put the book down! LOL!
You did all you could to help. You offered, she refused. The ball is in her car, court, whatever.
"This is obviously some definition of the words 'healthy' and 'fine' of which I was not previously aware."
Your mother is desperately afraid, it seems, of being alone behind a closed front door.
Risking the stupid question: why?
It gets easier. Once mthr was demented enough, we were able to have her placed and she did not object.
i obviously don’t know your mother, but I can almost guarantee that she’s having a wonderful time treating you as her “puppet”. She pulls the strings and you dance around and do whatever she wants. You’ve tried so hard to do your best for her, but that’s not what she wants, because then she’d have to be grateful to you and owe you one. If “she (truly) is healthy and fine” and there are no serious health complications or mental issues with her, let her be. If the grocery lot is large, she can park her car there and pretty much not be noticed. But, if she is, she could wind up in the pokey and/ or have to go to court for vagrancy. If that happens, I sincerely hope you won’t rush to her aid. She needs to ”grow up” and be responsible for herself. On a side note, my mom wanted to live with me, too. She had it all planned out. I’m sure that after I said no, she resented it until her dying day.
Calling the poster honey is condescending in the context you used it.
Maybe you have no personal experience with people that will stoop to unimaginable levels to mind #uck others. This is obviously a warped game that she is playing with her daughter.