Feeling Bad Rambles About My Mom

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I don’t know what is going on with me but I’m having serious blues lately about my Mom. I’ve been having nightmares about her pretty regularly, mostly dreams that we start talking again.

We are estranged for a number of very good reasons. She has diagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder. Her symptoms were severe throughout my childhood, with violent outbursts, threats of extreme violence, and threats of self-harm being very much the norm. A typical marital argument would result in something like trying to wrest open the passenger door and threatening to throw herself out of the car while speeding down the highway. This was not a stable person. She refused help, even after an attempted/near-attempted suicide. I was… oh, fourteen maybe. I think a very telling moment was when I came home that day, saw three different family vehicles in the driveway, the window on the back door busted out, and I walked in to see nobody but her husband sitting on the sofa and the first words out of my mouth were, “What did she do?”

It was just the norm. She threatened to kill me more than once, and not in a cute way. In a way that she often had to call people to come get me because she was genuinely afraid she was going to kill me. And a part of me hoped she would cross some kind of line because then maybe someone would take it seriously. Once she got mad at her husband, announced that she was going to kill herself, and then got in the truck to drive away. I was afraid she was going to kill herself so I tried to stop her from driving away by standing in front of the truck, and she nearly ran me over. Intentionally. I was twelve. When I say my mother had the capacity for great physical violence, I am dead serious. She got into these mental states where she just didn’t care who she hurt, and even times where it seemed like she enjoyed it.

She refused help, and worse, she refused me help. As a result I became severely depressed as a teen. I legally emancipated when I was 17.

She wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult and made all these noises about being changed, and she had changed in the sense that she was no longer overtly violent, but she continued to emotionally abuse and try to undermine everyone and destroy other people’s relationships in the family, including trying to destroy my relationship with my Aunt and emotionally abusing my grandmother. She also did this in the most annoying way possible, by weaponizing therapeutic concepts she had learned during her brief stint in therapy, while simultaneously denying her diagnosis. She repeatedly ignored my boundaries, so about three years ago I ended it yet again. At this point, nobody, not one person in my family, has a relationship with my mother.

I tried so hard to make a relationship work, but you can’t fix a relationship by just changing one person. I also hated the times I lost my temper with her. I’ve never cursed out anyone in my life other than, on three occasions, my mother, and I hate that I ever did it once. That’s not the person I want to be.

So I’ve been thinking about what happened. My Mom was not free or problems from the time I was born – she was already doing the serial dating thing and moving us from house to house all the time – but she wasn’t abusive to me for like the first six or seven years of my life at least. I have only one clear memory of abuse before that age. She had a good head on her shoulders in terms of taking responsibility for my health and safety, she completed a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering as a single parent, she was expressive of love for me, in many respects she celebrated me. For a long time I’ve framed it as, I’ve been grieving some ideal of a mother that didn’t come to pass, but that’s not it. I’ve been grieving the mother I actually had, who became a completely different person in her 20s. I think part of the reason I have a hard time separating is that I’m clinging to the person she once was.

What happened to her is similar to the onset of my uncle’s schizophrenia at a similar age and my husband (who is a clinical psychologist) thinks there’s a case for mild psychosis in my mother, something called delusional disorder which results in paranoid ideation. Some people with delusional disorder obsess about their spouse cheating on them - my Mom would obsess about everyone in the family secretly trying to betray her. This disconnection from reality seemed to be worsening with age - the last time I talked to her, she would frequently become unhinged in difficult to follow rants about trauma and politics that had nothing to do with the subject at hand. It was disturbing.

This is also complicated by the fact that I’ve come to realize over the last week or so that she’s probably autistic. I wanted to tell her about my son because they share an obsession with math, but I know it’s a bad idea to reach out to her, so last night instead of sleeping, I just wrote a letter as if I was going to share it with her, and there are so many similarities in terms of their interests, their mental rigidity, their sensory issues, and my Mom is very similar to my grandfather and I would bet 99.9% he is autistic. I’ve talked to him about Wee Weasel and he has really come to understand there’s actually a label for what he is, for the first time, at 86. He has found it delightful to see a little kid like him. (There are also personality aspects where Wee Weasel is totally different than both of them, so it’s not like I feel like I’m raising my mother or anything weird like that.)

Anyway, as long as I’ve been alive my Mom has been telling me stories about her life, stories she’s never told anyone else, and I can see the patterns there. I think her difficulty with understanding why people did certain things really exacerbated her Borderline Personality Disorder. Her social calibration of what’s appropriate or not has just been off-kilter for so long, she was rigid and controlling when I was growing up - there was only ever one right way to do anything, unable to think in very abstract terms, very physically reserved, it was this bizarre combination of highly organized and methodical and complete and utter chaos (the BPD.) She was either very buttoned up or explosively angry.

And there’s nothing I can do to fix any of it. I’ve thought, is this something I should maybe tell her about, to look into? I know some people find it valuable to learn why they are the way they are. Could it help her with her current relationships to look at it through an autistic lens?

I just feel this weird reckoning with who my Mom is and who I am and the genetics that produced my son. I’ve even been starting to look at myself and my own characteristics differently.

I can’t really reach out to her. One of two bad things could happen. Either my son could grow attached to her and then for some reason I would have to end the relationship with her and cut her off from my son, OR, he could grow attached to her and then I would feel stuck in an unhealthy relationship with her for my son’s sake. Either me or my son could get really hurt. Or my Mom, obviously. I’m sure it’s very hard for her not to hear about her grandson.

And anyway she lives halfway across the country and doesn’t travel.

I just feel really bad about all of it.

I’ve thought about just sending her letters about her grandson and only sticking to that topic, but she would try to re-engage. And I have a hard time resisting.

I talked to Sr. Weasel about it last night and he said, “I will support whatever you choose, but it’s a terrible idea and you should not do it.”

I keep wondering when it’s just going to feel better, you know? I don’t think about her all of the time, sometimes an entire month or two goes by and I don’t think about her, but when I do, the pain is so acute. I just really wanted things to work out and I wish they still could. I wish she could see my son and hear stories about him, I know she would be so proud. I’d like to believe if I meditated enough I could develop perfect equanimity and not be bothered by her being how she is.

But Sr. Weasel has walked me through the events leading up to the last time I ended our relationship. He said, “This is a person who has never taken accountability for anything. It’s not going to be different this time around.”

It sucks.

Feel free to tell me what a terrible idea it is to contact my Mom. I could use a good dose of reality right now.

2

ISTM you have done your due diligence and then some.

Removing toxic people from your life can be difficult. Especially when they are family (doubly so with parents). I’m a big proponent of always being there for family. Yet it can be the best thing you can do to help yourself to detach yourself from a toxic person…especially a family member.

This seems too much IMHO. She has been a constant cause of damage in your life. Sadly, I think this one is best left alone and put behind you as best you can. You’ve tried really hard to make something work but nothing has ever gotten better.

Do the perfunctory stuff. No need to feel bad about not doing more.

Just my $0.02

3

Thanks for sharing. Sorry to hear what you’ve been going through.

I Agree with your husband, FTR.

My father shares many of the same traits as your mother, though not to the same degree. He’s now 84. I haven’t completely cut him off, but I touch base with him a few times a year, and I try to keep the discussions somewhat superficial (else he will inevitably start talking about his religion). I’m not sure if this is possible with your mother, though, given her abnormally extreme behaviors and mindset. In which case, sadly, it would be best to minimize your interactions with her, be at peace knowing it is not your fault, and go on with your life. As for your son… I dunno. I would mostly stay out of it.

4

It’s so easy to see the answer from the non-emotional outside looking in. The obvious answer is to sever all ties and pretend she no longer exists. Yeah, right… No possibility of guilt there…

How old is your son - old enough to understand what’s going on with his grandmother? Does he ask about her? Does he think he’s missing out on something? I only ask because I wonder if he resents not having her in his life. It would be a tricky line between that resentment and exposing him to her unstable self.

I wish I had words of wisdom to offer, but for what it’s worth, I think keeping your distance is the right thing to do.

5

I will simply say that your mother and my birth mother share many, many characteristics, so I can relate to your situation maybe more than most. It is a lot to overcome, but the silver lining is that you did overcome it! When my birth mother died in 2005, my best friend said, “You’re finally free.” And I was.

Don’t take the step backward that you are now contemplating. She is out of your life for good reasons. Don’t regret not having what can never be a productive relationship and one that will only harm you.

My best to you. It’s a really hard situation.

6

I think we’re going through some of the same things right now. I just get so tired of the old issues coming up over and over when I’ve been in such a good place for a while. I think “will I ever just be fixed?”. I’m trying to accept that healing isn’t linear and the same issues will keep coming up. But maybe each time I can deal with it with a bit more clarity, self care and grace. I’m not as eloquent as you in writing everything out, but I know that you know that I get it.

7

I actually made a thread about this recently - he’s been asking and I had no idea how to handle it. Maybe that triggered this?

He’s five.

In short, I told him that my parents couldn’t do the things that make a good parent, and that we don’t see them right now as a safety rule. He seemed fine with that. He hasn’t asked about it since.

Yeah. Every time you’ve ever talked about your childhood here, I’ve thought, “she gets it.”

And yeah, I’ve made a lot of progress the last few years - incidentally, since our relationship ended, so it’s frustrating to feel all vulnerable again.

8

I’ll add two more cents and agree with Sr. Weasel and Whack-a-Mole. It’s a terrible idea. Don’t do it. You are one of the sanest, most insightful, caring posters on this board, someone who has gracefully and maturely dealt with a pernicious, frightening hand that no one should ever be dealt in life. You’ve built a loving relationship and strong framework within which to raise a unique child. Bringing your mother into the picture will ultimately create more stress for you and your family than it could possibly be worth.

And once you let your mother in, you can’t go back. I mean sure, you can cut off contact a second time, but the genie will be out of the bottle with regard to your son. ISTM that it would be better for him not to have her in his life at all, rather than to get to know her, have the relationship go south, and then need to cut it off. Also, if she knows where you (and he) are, it might be difficult to keep her away even with a restraining order.

My view on this comes from having had a childhood with a mother about 20% as insidiously crazy as yours. I know, it’s not a contest - “you win, and I’m first runner up in the who-had-the-worst-mother sweepstakes” - but still, I think that’s about right.

As for my own crazy mom, supportive spouse, and one son situation, it was very difficult to manage a family relationship with her, and things were getting worse as my son approached adolescence. My mother actually died while I was on the way to visit her with my 15-year-old son, and I was dreading her seeing him again, because since our last visit he had turned into an adolescent with moods and pimples instead of the sweet pliable little boy who had initially charmed her. I was braced for the worst. TBH it was kind of a relief when her friend called and said she was on life support following a stroke that had rendered her brain dead.

So there you go. There’s no magical way to negotiate these circumstances, only some paths that are less terrible than others. It sucks that you’ve been burdened with this situation, but you are doing a stellar job managing it.

9

Thank you. Just trying to take it all in.

There are a lot of ways involving my son could be disastrous.

I know, I know, I know.

I hate it.

10

@Spice_Weasel I have a much, MUCH milder situation in my life but where there is some commonality that I think might be helpful for you. Some background (you may know some of this already from previous posts): my mom is very functional as a human being (she didn’t do any of the violent stuff that your mom did at all), but was also very harsh on my sister and me – not nearly to the same degree as your mom was! but enough that I am comfortable calling what she did verbal and emotional abuse. I escaped relatively unscathed, but my sister carries scars on her psyche. She continues to emotionally abuse our dad. (They are co-dependent and he has dementia symptoms, so it’s just a whole cluster of ugh there that no one is going to escape from.) She (unlike your mom) is able to control herself just enough that she and I, and she and my sister, can have a low-contact relationship where we talk mainly about superficial things, though she still complains that she has to “walk on eggshells” around us (usually to the other daughter).

Meanwhile! My awesome daughter was diagnosed with ASD, and I’m pretty sure I have it too. And the more I have been thinking about it, and the more I have discussed it with my sister, the more we are convinced our mom is also autistic. She is basically completely incapable of theory of mind – she cannot conceive of someone else thinking differently than her. (Sometimes this is even hilarious, like when she didn’t understand how my sister could not like the same foods she liked.) She is a very smart person – and also majored in math, by the way! – but is rigid, controlling, there is only one right way to do anything. Socially she actually does pretty well because she is so smart that she can figure out social interaction rules, which is also how I do it, but occasionally she gets one bizarrely wrong.

That’s the background. Here is what I want to tell you:

  • My mother knows (because we are in contact) that my daughter is ASD. She does not accept that I may have autistic tendencies (because that would make her a bad mom). There is no way in the world that she would accept that she had autistic tendencies.
  • But if she did (and your mom might, as she is different from my mom, who doesn’t believe in therapy), she would weaponize it, the way she weaponizes everything else.
  • She won’t change. If she were going to change, she’d change regardless of whether she had another diagnosis.
  • My mother has never taken accountability for anything in her life, most especially anything in the relationships with her family, including my sister and me. The best she can do – and it’s way better than your mom – is to accept the simple fact that if she behaves in way A, I will stop talking to her and she’ll lose access to her grandkids, so she doesn’t do A to me. My sister would love my mom to apologize or to admit that my sister may have a point, but she will never do that. It’s not going to change. Your mother won’t change either. She isn’t stupid, she knows if she behaves in way A you’ll stop talking to her and she’ll lose access to her grandkid, and she does it anyway. Maybe it’s her brain chemistry, maybe it’s her own self, but the fact remains that for whatever reason it is more important to her to have her own way than to see her child and grandchild. Your husband is wise and entirely right that it’s not going to be different this time around.

I wish my mom were able to look at herself and see that she was the problem with her relationships. I wish your mom were able to look at herself and see that she was the problem with her relationships. It’s not going to happen. It sucks.

But in addition to it being a terrible idea to contact your mom in general, I feel that you are hanging onto some idea that you could maybe help her, and you feel that you are choosing your mental health over the possibility that you could help her. This is a false choice. You can’t help her. Telling her she may be autistic will not help her the way you think it will. Giving her access to your son will not help her the way you think it will (and, as you know, it will devastatingly hurt both him and you). The only person who can help her now is herself, and she is choosing not to take that route.

11

Spice, you know most woman go thru a time in their young parenting when their Mother looms heavy on their minds.
You think “What would my Mother have done?” And you have to make choices.
As your son ages and his life becomes more complicated you’ll question every decision you have to make. It’s natural you would draw on mothering you’ve known as a kinda of resourse.
Wrong or right, you knew intimately how you were Mothered.

I said in the other thread. You don’t owe her a relationship with your “maybe” fragile son. You owe your son a stable and thoughtful parent. If your own Mother can’t be trusted it causes a riff in you, emotionally. In your mind you’re thinking, if my Mom is cuckoo, I must be.
It undermines your ability to make safe decisions.

A broken Mother/child relationship is what you’re fearing for you and your child.

Remember, you were a child. You did NOTHING wrong. Anything you might feel guilty about(cursing her out, giving her grief) were survival tactics.
As humans that is our first instinct. To survive.

I would not try to have her back in your life, for your own mental health.
Which will, anyway you look at it, impact your child.

My Mother was long deceased when I was a young Mother. I still questioned every decision and thought “what would Mother do?”
I had no answers or any way to find out.

You know the answer. It’s not safe for you son to be around her. Its not safe for you.

She’s threatened your life. Do you really think she couldn’t or wouldn’t do that to your son?

You don’t want that. Stay away from her.

This too will pass.
Time is what you need. And distance.

12

I wish I had time to write a lot here, but I’ll try to summarize.

My sister has BPD, so I know something of what you are going through - and I’m sure what you had gone through was much worse than my growing up.

You don’t need your mother in your life, and your son doesn’t need her in his. What you’ve told him about her is fine and appropriate for his age. He’ll have more questions later, and I’m sure you’ll be able to answer them when they come up. My kids are very much estranged from their aunt (which she blames on me “poisoning them against her”) because she couldn’t be stable around them, and we have told them why and how we have drawn the line we have - again, using what they could understand at the ages they are (they’re in college now).

Your letter was particularly salient for me right now because I had a recent interaction with my sister where she was being very nice to me because she wanted my help with something. Of course she snapped as soon as I told her I wouldn’t be able to in the way that she wanted, and that was kinda it for effective interaction for a while. Know that a lot of us here have had similar experiences, and we’re pulling for you to have the strength to do what’s best for everyone.

13

I appreciate your whole post, but…

I’m questioning myself now too!

I just think I’m way too socially observant to be autistic, and have a strong grasp of my own emotions, but push come to shove all of that information about what to do is useless, because I can’t do the dance. I can’t fake anything. I can’t even pretend to be in a good mood when I’m in a bad one. I can go back and forth on it. It’s totally normal to spend your childhood writing fiction instead of playing with other kids on the playground, right? Right?

I mean I played with people sometimes, but I was a weird kid.

I’m a super abstract thinker. I’m not into math, I’m into writing fiction.

But I had to go to a field trip last week at a farm, there were a million people there, and it was horrible. I assumed my husband knew how hard it was because I ended up leaving the barn to go stand outside in the sun (which I’m allergic to.) Like, I preferred to be in the sun than around all that stimulation. He asked me about it last night and I said, “It was a living hell. I can’t stand the noises that crowds make.” It bothered me way more than it bothered my son. I think it was the first time my husband realized how aversive I am to that kind of stimulation.

But people with ADHD have sensory problems too.

I just don’t know.

This has been a heavy week.

14

What stood out to me as I was reading your post is this all seems to be rooted in a desire to help your mother. You want to tell her about your son’s autism so she can see it in herself and get help (which is a terrible idea, btw, because you explicitly said she learned to weaponize therapy speak after just a short time. You would be putting another quiver in her bow - yet another way to manipulate the people around her). You feel bad about her not having access to her grandson but she isn’t owed contact with someone simply because she is genetically linked to them. If she truly cared enough to have that relationship she would make the changes necessary to allow it.

You can’t find sufficient coping skills after decades of trying, and you want to expose your young child to this because she would be proud? Why is the possibility of making your mother proud overriding your son’s right to not be emotionally abused? And he has none of your hard-fought coping skills. You would be neatly setting up her next victims - both you and your son. Because absolute best-case scenario is she can mask enough to seem to be a decent person to him, and that just makes you even easier to torture and abuse and manipulate because now she truly can dangle your son’s attachment to her to make you tap dance how she wants.

This may be true, or you may have been too young and naive to perhaps see or remember clearly what was going on. I say this due to mine and my sister’s childhood memories of our abusive father. When I was 8 (and my sister was 5) I remember the police coming after a particularly violent episode and he was escorted out of the house. I was standing next to my mom when the officer came back over to her and recommended she find somewhere to stay that he wouldn’t know where to find us, because the only thing he took with him when he left were a couple of guns. We stayed in a hotel a couple of towns over for several nights and I was terrified.

I am now 41 and my sister 38. This somehow came up in conversation about a year ago with a mutual friend and I talked about what happened. My sister was stunned - she had absolutely no memory of the violence or the police. Instead she remembered this wonderful time we got to stay in a hotel and play in the pool all day and that she made friends with the other kids there. We have since talked about a couple of other incidents from around that same time and the difference in our memories is quite stark. She has no memory of abuse or being afraid until later in childhood.

Quoting to repeat this, because I think rasberry_hunter really hit the nail on the head.

Lastly, I wish I could give you a hug. I’m sorry this has been so heavy on your heart recently.

15

Question for the OP: do you believe family is who we choose or who we share chromosomes with. I’ve seen people who believe the latter keep going back to destructive relationships because “they’re family” whereas those that believe the former have an easier time maintaining distance after the final straw.

16

Well, this all started when I told my Aunt and my grandmother that I thought my Mom might be autistic, and asked them what she was like. And all agreed she changed dramatically in her 20s. In some oddly specific ways.

Also I know what triggered it because she told me.

I think I’m somewhere in the middle. I have family members I am close to that I would do things for that I wouldn’t do for friends. Like, take care of them in their elderly years. But I don’t feel obligated to take care of my biological father.

My problem, and it’s a problem with friends too, is that I can be loyal to a fault. Once I hitch my wagon to someone, it’s hard to unhitch it.

Yeah, I needed that too.

17

No, instead, I’d rather tell you that you are a good person for caring! She is you mom and, despite all that has transpired and all the suffering you’ve endured, you still love her. I think that’s beautiful! :heartbeat:

18

As someone on their own relatively recent journey understanding their own neurodivergency, this sounds exactly like me. And I don’t think it precludes autism.

Another thing you posted that resonated was mourning the mother you had at a specific moment in your life. I do not have the complicated people or relationships that you do in your family history, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how a lot of my anxiety and frustration and other feels about my parents comes from the fact that I want them to be the people that they were 30 years ago (and for parts of our relationships to reflect that moment, and for parts of me to still be that person). And those people are gone and never coming back.

I don’t have children, but when thinking about the possibility, if I’m honest a part of me is sad/resentful that my potential kids will never know the version of my parents that I knew then. I think that’s important to remember with regards to your son. He will never know that best version of your mom (who hasn’t existed since your grade school years).

19

It wasn’t totally hitting me until I started looking into AuDHD (combo diagnosis.) It might explain why I don’t have the ADHD love of novelty but have in fact been trying my entire life to do the exact same thing every day to create, beautiful, blessed, sacred routine and failed at every attempt because this other part of my brain derails everything.

It also explains why my very autistic son is constantly demanding novelty - as long as you don’t screw with his routines.

He’ll be like, “Something different!” And I’ll be like, “Ugh. Whyyyyyyyy?”

Not the dynamic you’d expect. I will be looking into it.

I’m still feeling shitty but I appreciate everyone’s support and I’m definitely able to see that helping my Mom is not a choice.

20

Spice. You are ok. You’re fine.
You obviously care about your child.
You’ve written extensively about getting him everything he needs to succeed.

I really believe reconnecting with your Mom is a bad idea. She won’t have a bond with your son and treat him just like shes treated other children. You know what she’s capable of.
Answer his questions the best you can, always adding you don’t feel safe around her, for him.
Sure he’s gonna ask questions. Lots and lots of questions.

But…seriously don’t take your kid around her. Just don’t.

If you want him to be around aging grandmotherly types take him to visit nursing homes.

Hey, I’m weird too. Was the strangest child. There’s nothing wrong with being on your own, writing fiction, reading or doing art. Nothing is wrong with that.
Really, you’re ok.
You’re a big girl now. Big girl decisions are difficult. It gets no easier. I finally got to the point with my kids to ride this problem out and try not to worry about the next one. There’s always a next one.

Its ok to be weird. How boring would it be if everyone was the same?
You’re loved.
We adore you here on the Dope.
I’m sure your husband loves you. And friends.

Try not to question so much. Some times your psyche just needs a break from all the analyzing every detail.

Rest your mind. You’re ok.