Please re-read Shayna & Catrandom’s posts. Everyone offers great advice, but I want to emphasize what they said - it is right on target.
Cowgodmoo, you’ve been here a long time & I’ve read the boards a long time - you know this is a caring place and (if you haven’t read the threads to know it) many posters have been in very similar if not identical situations. Your feelings are important to us & we want to help you all we can. If what is posted doesn’t work or help, come back and tell us, we will continue to help you all that we can.
As a last resort (one I’ve had to use, and I had to do it over the phone, long distance) the local police department takes this issue seriously, and will take all necessary action to get the suicidal person to the hospital. If you are away from home and check in on Mom and get any suicide hints/intentions - call the police. I know it sounds drastic, but it’s better than a funeral. As stated previously, you are the one who is there, not me, so only you can judge what to do, I just want you to know what you can do if you have to.
I’ve never dealt with anything like this, but there are people and agencies and groups that specialize in these types of crisis situations.
You can’t deal with this alone. You and your mother need professional help. Please start looking for it, for your sake and for hers.
This message board is a great place to vent your feelings, and the respondent posts so far have been supportive, which you need. But you need concrete assistance, which this board can’t really provide.
Please try to get some help somewhere, Cowgod. And remember, there are lots of people on this board pulling for you.
Professional help is good. I never thought I would ever say that, being the independant “I don’t need no stupid shrink” bull headed person I am. Just do it. Get yourself an appointment while you are at it. I had a bad year, i figured out I wanted therapy. My mom, who has been horribly depressed for years, decided that when I went through the work of finding a therapist she could sign up too.
Pets are good as well. Caring for another being gets you out of bed, even when breathing seems to daunting. Knowing that an innocent could suffer because you are too blue gives an extra push to recover. Small simple pushes are good.
A hobby, a class she always wanted to learn. (I started weaving at the local Art Institute) Something, anything that is neutral, new, interesting and productive. You do not have to be good at something you have never done before and the freedom to fail is a comfort. I lean toward the arts for this because I’m a Chem E major, I don’t have to be good at painting/pottery/photography. In fact, I can suck. Also the arts are usually more loose about what is good. In math you have to get the right answers, there are no right answers in most arts.
Get her involved with living a life. Get her in therapy. Therapy isn’t just for sick people, it is for the overwhelmed as well. She wants and needs help.
I have to agree with those who’ve suggested a pet, as well. There are times when knowing SOMEONE needs you in an immediate way (is dependent on you) is really a good push to get out of bed and do what needs to be done. It might help her to feel needed in a way she probably misses, since you are all grown up. Please keep us posted!
In addition to the great advice (counseling, pets), once she gets more stabilized she might want to look into volunteering. When you work for the right organization, you feel NEEDED and you feel like you are making a difference. That’s a big boost. The types of volunteer work someone can do is staggering, even stuff you’ve never thought of.
Also, remember that all therapists are not created equal. Some are better than others, and some are a better “fit” than others. If you mom feels like counseling or therapy isn’t working, she shouldn’t give up, she should try someone else. And you too should see someone, just to talk a bit about how this feels for you.
Oh, and something else: anti-depression meds really should come from a psychiatrist, not a general practitioner.
I got teary-eyed reading what some of you have faced.
Yes. It scared the shit out of me. But after a few days she seemed better so I didnt think anything of it. I was wrong. ** DO NOT IGNORE THIS!! GO GET HER HELP NOW!! ** If it seems like she is getting better it’s not. If only I did something to help my mother she would still be alive today. So please force your mother into counseling. Don’t take no for an answer. Drag her if you have too. Tell her shes loved, tell her you need her, tell her you love her, tell her anything!! Just make sure she knows shes cared about. I didn’t do that for my mother and now shes gone. So don’t take this lightly! Get your siblings involved, her friends, anyone that cares about her. Make sure she knows she’s loved. I wish I knew this a year ago.
First of all, {{{{{CowGod}}}}} Oh, sweetie, I wish I could be there with you. I must echo the predominant sentiments here–get your mother professional help immediately. She has a serious, painful, paralyzing fear of being alone that must be addressed…the thing is, she may refuse to get help. If it gets bad enough, you can override her authority; but first, try, try, try to convince her to talk to a professional.
Your post put a little fear in my heart…your mother sounds like she is mortified, to the point of preferring death, of being alone. My older sister is absolutely compulsive, she is so afraid of being alone. She has always had a boyfriend–since she was raped at age 13. She never told anyone, until a decade later, and never got help. I don’t think Mom or Dad know, still to this day. Seriously, she has not been single (and not dating anyone) for more than 2 months in the last 18 years. She recently got divorced after a 9-year marriage, because she was unhappy, lonely…and has had 4 boyfriends in the last year since filing for divorce. Though she denies this, she is repeating the same pattern she has followed all her life.
Hang in there, hon. Keep us posted (no pun intended).
Thanks for the wonderful support guys, it means a lot that total strangers give a damn about me and my mom. Since this weekend my mom has been ok, as long as I keep her busy and keep her from thinking about what has happened in the past year.
I found out why my mom cracked on saturday. Apparently John was supposed to call and didn’t. He said he was and when he didn’t my mom got the thought that she was driving him away. Another thing that added to it is that she had gone over to her friend Chris’s house (also her boss) to swim and relax and met Tony (another friend of a friend, whom she has met before). It was Chris, her husband and family, Tony and my mom hangin out by the pool. Tony left shortly thereafter leaving her alone with her boss’s family. Since my mom didn’t feel very comfortable being alone with all that family around, she left too. When she came home she was alone, my younger sister had gone to her friends house and I was out at Best Buy, picking up some new tunes. This brought back the loneliness feelings… but the thing is that had my mom stayed for another 20 minutes at Chris’s place, she would have found that Tony came back looking for her! This could have saved her from much heartache and anguish. As much as I’m sorry that this didn’t happen, I’m glad it did, because I wouldn’t have seen how sad my mom was and how bad she was feeling.
I’m going to wait on the shrink thing for a little longer. I want to see how she is after this week and take things from there. I think the only time she really gets lonely is on weekends, where she sits by the phone waiting for someone to give her a call. Plus, I’d like to see her dump John’s ass and go for Tony, he seems like a nice guy.
thanks again for the advice, and I’ll let ya know how things are going in a few days
CowGod, I don’t really have anything to add except my good thoughts and prayers for you and your Mom. I hope everything works out for her and you. Keep us posted. You’ll be in my thoughts.
Cautiously glad to hear the crisis has passed, cowgod. I say “cautiously” because while Tony sounds like a good guy, your mom just can’t risk what’s left of her self-image and respect on someone else. She sounds about as vulnerable as anyone can be right now.
With any luck, Tony is the fine, caring man who will see all the wonderful things she is. But let’s face it, romantic anything can get hinky in a moment, and even the best intentioned suitor could put a foot wrong.
If nothing else, you’re mom will stand a much better chance at whatever relationship may crop up if she’s centered in herself.
This unasked advice is based on “wish more than anything I’d done it”: sit her down. Just come out and tell her how much you love her and rely on her. Come clean about the past. Don’t minimize the damage; it’d be condescending and she wouldn’t believe it anyway. Her guilt and imagination have already painted it much blacker than it actually was. As far as possible, be two adults who went through a common history.
Believe me, family questions unasked and things left unsaid don’t go away. They just fester, and after someone’s died there is no way to go back and heal the wound cleanly.
But make her understand how much you love her, and want her to get help healing the unasked, undeserved wounds she’s taken.
I’m thinking about you and your mom every day, cowgod. Please email me if you, and I’ll send you my home phone number. Amazing how much it can help sometimes to just talk.
First, to all of you who have had a parent hurt themselves in front of you and ** Talkinsquirrel ** to lose a parent this way, my heart goes out to all of you, what a horrible thing to endure!
CowGod, while I’m glad things seem to have settled a bit, your mom’s still got some serious problems, not the least of which, the need to fill an inside problem with an outside solution. I’m with the others who have urged BOTH of you to get some help. I’m also facing watching one son in his third year of college ready to go out and one more child at home, it is an awesome thing to know what’s been your ‘career’ is ending. But it can also be an enormous opportunity if one decides to see it that way.
Take care of yourself in the midst of all of this, ok?
I guess we experts are in agreement about professional help You’re walking on a tight rope now CG: be observant but don’t wait too long – it’s for the best.
Community service and, accessorily, social clubs sound viable: your mother would definitely feel needed, and would find herself among people who share her interests. It would give her something to do, keep her busy, make her feel useful.
But first and foremost: yes, professional help – for the both of you.
Best of luck to you CG. My thoughts are with you, your mom and your sisters.
Sorry to ressurect a dead thread, but I just ran across an article today that was talking about menopause. The early stages can start early, and go on for quite a long time. And mood swings and depression are signs. So it might be that hormones are also working against her right now, making it harder to bounce back from the other things that are happening. This might be worth seeing her doctor for.
