My Family is Falling Apart in New and Interesting Ways

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Breaking the codependent bond is hard anytime, if you wait until the other is in poor health, (mental or physical), it’s only all the harder.

I spent 6 yrs caregiving, in my home, for a woman twice my weight, fully bedridden, adult diapers, 17 pills a day, laundry up the wazoo, etc, etc. It was my mother-in-law. When my own mother was effectively dying of breast cancer, and called to say, “I suppose you have such clinics and hospitals in your city?”, words I knew full well were extremely difficult for her to say - it just hung there in the air. (This was before my caregiving for MIL started!)

I found myself unable to make the offer to caregive. (With MIL, there was never a moments hesitation and if it had gone on for ten years I’d have done it.) Because I knew, as surely as I knew the sun would rise tomorrow, that my own mother would not hesitate to take me apart emotionally piece by piece, until I was a shattered teenager all over again. Partly for her amusement, partly because she could, and partly because, well, that’s what she’s good at.

Those intervening years, that I had removed myself from the codependent relationship, had, made me stronger and more sure of myself. Those years had made me sufficiently circumspect to recognize that she wasn’t going to change, and to stop expecting her to be anything other than who she’d always been. In refusing to play along, like my siblings, with the dysfunction, I had grown. I had built a good life, of healthy relationships, without the drama and accompanying chaos. And I knew I couldn’t risk what I’d built for myself, I just couldn’t go back there.

Let me ask you this, if she was ill with ebola virus, would your need to take care of her be overridden by the fact that you could/would contract the virus? I think you’d understand that you weren’t in a position to provide the care she’d need. And that’s the crux of the issue right there.

You are one of the players in this little codependent triangle, and as such, it is as toxic to you as ebola. You cannot help her in the way she needs to be helped. And if you and your Auntie died in a fiery car crash tomorrow, (God forbid!), she’d still be cared for, perhaps by the state, or another relative (do you even have a sibling?), or her church, but my point is she’d get by without you. And do you know why? Because she’d have to.

My brother thought he could handle keeping one foot in the crazy. That just made it all too easy to drag him back into it. Just as we’ve seen you get dragged back into the crazy, again and again. It cost him his life in the end.

I, for one, am glad you are thinking very hard about your next move. I believe that something inside is trying to tell you something. But mostly, I have nothing but faith in you Olives. You didn’t get out of that hell by luck, it took damn hard work, and lots of growth and difficult life lessons, to get to where you are today. It didn’t just happen, you made that happen.

I think you’ve reached a threshold moment in your life. Only you can choose whether your right to, your hard won mental health, out weighs her needs, (needs you cannot possibly hope to fulfill.) You’re going to have to decide what Olive deserves. Are her needs second to the dysfunction, or do they come first?

42

I agree with PPs that you need to create much more distance from your mother. My own mother is not 1/16th so toxic to me, and I have very little contact with her and it’s such a relief. Of course, the avoidance is mutual and that makes it easier.

Take care of you, please.

43

Wow. Just wow. I think you have just changed my way of thinking about my best friend. He’s certified. I fully expect him to climb a clock tower someday. You are right, I can’t control him. I can’t control anything in his life. He’s a feral human and I need to remember that.

Thank you so much.

44

I just want to remind people that the best treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder is therapy, not medication. Schizophrenic medicines have been tried, but they don’t work nearly as well as DBT.

I also want to point out that, while BPD has a lot of elements of emotional manipulation of others, that does not imply that the suicide risk is nonexistent. People with BPD actually believe what they say they feel, even if their reason for expressing it is to get sympathy.

Finally, I want to point out that feeling responsible when someone you love commits suicide is normal. It’s a normal part of the grieving process after any cause of death. The more logical you can make it sound in your head, the worse it is. If you didn’t feel this at any time after the death, I’d be concerned that you weren’t actually grieving.

My point is to tell olives not to beat herself up over feeling as she does. Same goes for flatlined. It’s a strong temptation, as you will want to justify your feelings of inadequacy. Instead, realize your feelings are based on your love. Love can unfortunately have downsides.

45

Thanks for pointing this out. You are actually more right than you realize - the risk of suicide for people with BPD is incredibly high compared to other psychological disorders. In terms of fatalities it’s really secondary only to anorexia. I’m not suggesting this changes anything for me, but at least let’s dispense with the myth that people who frequently attempt suicide will rarely succeed. The risk increases significantly with every attempt. (My Mom has attempted twice - once when she was twelve and once when I was fourteen. I never got over it I guess.)

Elbows (and everyone) thanks for sharing your experience with me. It seems I have found a way to successfully navigate everyone in my family but my mother. And since you asked, no, I don’t have any siblings (other than a half sister by my Dad, but she’s been in foster care and I have no idea where she is.) My aunt is the closest thing I have to a sister -she is 13 years my senior. I have a young, small family, and often feel like a sibling to my aunts and uncles and a child to my grandparents.

[QUOTE=elbows]
I think you’ve reached a threshold moment in your life. Only you can choose whether your right to, your hard won mental health, out weighs her needs, (needs you cannot possibly hope to fulfill.) You’re going to have to decide what Olive deserves. Are her needs second to the dysfunction, or do they come first?
[/QUOTE]

They told me they wouldn’t put me in the middle, they told me they didn’t want me to feel like I was involved, but I dove in head first. That’s the truth. I guess after a while you get addicted to the drama. I decided I needed to know everything so that I could help or at least feel like I had some kind of control over it, just by knowing. (I recognize this is not rational… I’m working on it.)

It’s true there is a part of my identity wrapped up in this - because this is where I came from, and frankly I like who I became. My family may be nuts, but it’s also full of smart, interesting, hardworking people. It would be easier if they had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

I’m not using that as an excuse to continue unhealthy patterns, just trying to explain some of the conflict. Even my husband likes my mother. (Though I ran this thread by him and he agreed I need to let go of some of these beliefs that are harming me.)

I’m just trying to let this stuff percolate for a while.

46

OtakuLoki, that is the most insightful and personally relevant statement I’ve read anywhere in a long time. My siblings and I are were definitely raised with guilt and self-sacrifice as the markers of good character. It has indeed created significant damage, most notably manifesting as mid-life disease. I’m going to send that to my sisters and print it off for myself. Wow! Thank you so much. I’ll try to remember this every day.

47

I recognize this stumbling block, and I feel you. But stop and think, would you stay with a man who beat you because he made lots of money? Or was an awesome cook? I doubt it. I don’t doubt that Hitler and Charles Manson both had some redeeming qualities.

But this isn’t really about them, Olives. It’s not about how young they are, or their positive attributes, it’s about you.

You say you like who you are, (hey, so do we!), and you recognize, as dysfunctional as they are, that they played a big part in who you became. I get that, totally. When people ask me would I change anything about my past, I say no. As difficult as it may have been, it made me into who I am today.

My brothers and sister were all smart, witty, fun, high functioning, successful people, at one time. But it was like they were on a string, that my Mom could always pull them back into the vortex of dysfunction. Over the years, in order to justify that behaviour, to themselves, they developed delusions of their own. That she needed them, that it was okay because they’d forgiven her, that they could see what she was doing, they were now adults, etc, etc.

She never developed any other support system, largely because she knew she didn’t have to, she could always suck them back in. It was incredibly painful to watch. But she had them snagged and she knew it. They were all self aware enough to know, keeping one foot in the crazy came with risks. They all thought they could handle it.

One is dead now, one is on the brink of being certifiable, the other is a raging angerfest at the whole world. And none of them ever became self aware enough to recognize that the crazy was infecting them. The delusions, once you accept them without question, start to affect other parts of your life. Delusions obscure reality, when you embrace them, or, make no attempt to challenge them, they grow and spread throughout your life. Until you are seeing a reality no one else shares.

It was almost as if she’d created her children to be satellites, orbiting around her, making her the center of the universe. She certainly installed that software into them as children, and I think it was supposed to last a lifetime. She could and did, yank them back in, at her whim, only to abase them, in some fashion or other, and then send them back out into orbit, till it struck her fancy next.

A couple of years before he took his life, my brother asked me why I didn’t seem to be manifesting the same problems as he and my other siblings were plagued with. (by now their careers, families, and stability had all shattered!) I told him, I had snapped that string that I no longer orbited around her, and refused to be sucked back into the vortex. But it was too late for him. It had become such a big part of who he was, and he’d grown so attached to it, he couldn’t give it up. He couldn’t get away, and he couldn’t live with it, in the end.

As for the cultural meme of ‘you must care for your aging parents/loved ones’, I’d be willing to bet the house there are other cultural memes that you have managed to evade, like marrying young, or marrying a rich man, or making babies or being a church goer, whatever, because you rightly recognized it wasn’t for you. Somehow you found the strength to act in your own best interest, in those cases.

I have always found you to be both extremely intelligent and surprisingly questioning, Olives. More than once your posts have given me much to think about. I have an enormous amount of respect for you. Please proceed with an abundance of caution as you continue dancing with the dysfunction.

48

This thread is full of good advice, some of which I am copying and pasting for my own reminder. My mite to add is this: when you feel the tug of the undertow, ask yourself if you would advise a friend to enter those waters. Chances are not. Also, think of each time you have set a firm boundary as a place of safety, peace and quiet. Honor those boundaries for within them healing can occur. I wish you well.

49

Of course first and foremost: my condolences for your pain, truly.

On the subject of what can you do: you can focus on accepting that loving them doesn’t mean you can save them. And on accepting that loving them doesn’t mean you have to try, and you particularly don’t have to try when it costs you too much.

What you can do is work on learning how not to get sucked in to drama that is being created by mental illness, because it is pointless: it is mental illness, how are you, a normal, healthy, loving person supposed to fix a broken mind?

To the extent you can actually “do” anything, the thing to do is to get your mother treated, if you can. If you can’t, the focus for you needs to be on accepting.

I’m sure you know the serenity prayer:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.”

Love and acceptance. Know that your mother’s terrible words about your aunt are just illness. Love her. Love your aunt. Love your grandmother. Accept accept accept. Forgive your mother, and forgive yourself. The best gift you can give them and yourself is peace in your own heart. Find it in yourself, and then you will have it to share.

50

Do it.

:frowning: on Sta. Olives, I hope she’ll be able to get the help she needs.

I don’t want to go over time, but Olives, look up the lyrics for Cecilia’s “Dama, dama”. “she’d be the bride at the wedding, the child at the baptism, the corpse in the funeral, if that made her the center of things”. Sound familiar?

51

Holy socks, Batman. I love this place. I am not the OP, and her problems are only tangentally similar to mine, but I wanted to put this on the record: there is some amazing, amazing stuff in this thread, in addition to all the pain being dredged up. elbows, Cat Whisperer, QtheM, et al: I need to thank you all from the bottom of my heart with all the sincerity I can put into words. I’ll be meditating and thinking over what you and the others have written - they need to percolate in my head, too. Thank you…

52

I’ll second this. My problems are very different from the ones Olives and the others describe here, but so much food for thought anyways. You guys are strong.

53

I hope you don’t mind if I try to revive this thread. For the last two months I’ve been going about my life and seriously mulling over the advice here.

First, a little update - my grandmother is doing much better, went through surgery just fine, is back to her old self and apparently even has a gentleman caller now. In fact, she’s back to oil painting which she hasn’t done in decades. I think it’s kind of a rebirth for her.

I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I think part of what I need to do to get into a healthy frame of mind with my mother is to own the choices I make. Yes, I could cut her off completely, but I do believe the good outweighs the bad in our relationship. I realize that may be hard to see because the only time I post about her is when the shit is hitting the fan. Sometimes it hurts, but it doesn’t hurt every day, all day, forever.

I think it’s easy to apply one’s own personal perspective to the relationships of other people, but the bottom line is, I have to be the one to decide how to relate to my Mom and where I stand with her. It’s my choice to make. And at least for the time being, I do choose to have her in my life.

That said, there have been a lot of thoughts that need correcting in my muddled brain, and this thread has been instrumental to helping me sort them out. I have been working really hard at changing the way I think about our relationship. I realize that a lot of decisions I make around our relationship are out of fear of how she will react. I didn’t realize until this thread how much of my decisions within our family are motivated by fear - either fear for her safety or fear she will be angry with me.

The best illustrative example I have right now is the fact that I’m graduating Monday and I invited her to come visit for commencement. I would very much like her to be there. But for months I agonized over all the little decisions that come with that. I found myself making decisions based on ‘‘what this means to her’’ and not what this means to me. I had to correct myself many times throughout the planning of this event, to make sure I was making choices based on my own needs instead of what I imagined she needed. I learned that I have a real tendency to place her emotional needs above mine, to almost infantilize her, which she wouldn’t even want anyway. In fact, when I called and asked if she would ‘‘be okay’’ with us only attending the departmental ceremony, her response was basically, ‘‘It’s your day, do what you want, it’s your graduation. I’m just happy to celebrate with you.’’

I decided not to invite anyone but Mom to minimize the drama. At first it felt like I was doing this to please her, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized this is what I want. Because my family is what it is and I can’t change it, the least I can do is protect myself from the stress of familial conflict. Fortunately my other relatives were very understanding and feel it’s important for me and my Mom to have this moment together.

Sr. Olives is helping me return her phone calls only when I want to. There are times when I’m feeling too stressed to deal but I just feel like I ‘‘have to.’’ I’m really working on not picking up that phone unless I know it won’t affect my mood.

Then there was the phone conversation me and Mom had yesterday. She’s stressed out and recently lost her temper and attacked herself, resulting in self-injury. Well, truth is, I had my own mental breakdown earlier this week (not at all related to her) where I was too depressed to make it through my volunteer shift (and this is the difference between my and my mother - I went home, found a list of emergency help numbers, and immediately called a therapist to set up an appointment, and am also arranging for a psychiatrist to adjust my meds.) Usually in these circumstances I would try to help her based on my own experience, basically be a stand-in therapist. She didn’t want to accept responsibility for what she did (’‘my hand did it’’), she looked into DBT but it’s expensive and a high time commitment, but she’s so confused and doesn’t know what happened and feels like she needs ‘‘tools’’ to learn to deal with her emotions. She was basically just talking in circles around actually getting help. And I just said, as often as warranted, ‘‘I don’t want you to hurt yourself or continue to suffer. I think therapy would really help give you these tools you need.’’ I feel like it’s one of the first times talking to her where I actually distinguished between the role I could play and the role a therapist could play.

And I also said, ‘‘I’m really looking forward to you coming to visit, because I think it will give us a chance to just put all these stressful things aside and enjoy ourselves for a while.’’ I really meant it, but I think it also sent the message that I really wasn’t going to indulge in any drama on my graduation day. And after our phone conversation, I didn’t dwell on it. Because there’s nothing I can do. She knows I love her, she knows there is help available, and everything else is up to her.

So I guess what I am trying to say is, while I’m sure many Dopers are confused that I care so much about my Mom, I’m not going to stop caring. But I am going to learn how to relate to her in a healthier way. I feel I am getting more successful at this. I know these aren’t changes that can happen over night, which is why I’ve taken months just to consider the advice in this thread.

54

For what it’s worth, I am not a bit confused by that. She is your mother. I’m glad that you’re finding a way that works for you to move toward a healthier relationship with her.

55

Hey Olives, I never saw this thread until now. Wow.

I can relate on certain levels, as my daughter (12 now) has a host of mental issues as well, and learning to deal with them from the aspect of a parent has been such a great toll on my wife and I these last few years. Not to mention dealing with my own (less severe, but certainly not helping) issues.

Your mom is family, it’s only natural that you care for her. It seems hardwired in your nature, anyway. From the way you describe it, I’d say you’re doing the best you can, and certainly seem to be reaching out for help from those in your life you know you can get it from. With my daughter, I’ve learned to not react to her with anger, or fear, or frustration (or I smother it as best I can), because I know it’ll just make things worse – for all of us – as cathartic as it can feel at the time. You seem to be using some relational tactics I’ve found helpful, especially in one that’s a fundamentally dependent nature. It’s a dichotomy from both sides, because I get the sense she loves you, truly, and vice versa. Yet, the things said and done usually contradict that, and can be so immaculately draining on your mental state. I seek emotional energy from those who can understand and be supportive when I’m drained. It sounds like your Aunt and your husband are there for you. LEAN on them, when you need to. You probably know when your mom calls, it’s going to be an emotionally expensive and long conversation. I understand the feeling of beating yourself up if you… just… can’t… deal with it right then and there. Unfortunately, my mother has some personality issues I feel have gone undiagnosed and untreated for far too long, and she simply refuses to even entertain the idea that there might be something off balance in her mind, which of course, leads to unwarranted and concerning actions. Whatever her perceptions are, imagined or not, that’s just how it is with her. It becomes dangerous when she misinterprets the slightest of notions. Anyway, she’s no where near the degree you describe your mom, but she’s off-balance in ways that I realize I can’t seek help from her, because she doesn’t understand. The timing of your post is weird, because it took me all these years up until just yesterday to realize this (due to a disaster of an outing between my mother and my daughter).

You’re inclined to shoulder her burdens because it’s in your nature to care for her. Me too. I love my mother to death, I want her to get help, I want her to understand what my daughter’s issues, my own, and what it’s doing to our family is putting us through. But, all I can do is communicate as best I can on how I feel, in all vulnerable honesty, the issues at hand, and let her know that even though I understand her actions and attitude is due to overwhelming feelings of insecurity, dependency and obsessiveness, it’s my duty as a son to express when it’s gotten to the point of when and how I think she might be abusing the situation (read: playing me); whether or not she’s aware of it, and even when I express I don’t fault her for it. I do the same in my duty as a father to my daughter. Lastly, presentation can be everything. You know where the exposed nerves are. They know where yours are. I’m learning how to weave around those, because nerve-plucking is not a healthy avenue. Couching my communication from a starting point of empathy and understanding seems to drop my daughter’s and mom’s defenses, which I’ve found can lead to a far more productive discussion, and might even start to pry everyone’s eyes open a bit further.

So, yeh, caring for someone who’s hurting isn’t something many people can just shut off, even if it means receiving some collateral damage (especially for family). Sometimes we risk ourselves for them. Sometimes it makes us crumble. Sometimes it relieves the pressure. But everyone’s right, that there is no cure, only ways to mitigate the symptoms.

Stay true, I wish everyone well.

56

I was a little afraid when I saw the thread title, then more relieved when I saw the date and realized it wasn’t new. Whew.

I’m glad to hear you’re figuring some stuff out, Olives (you too, cmyk). My mom is visiting right now, and I’m back in the middle of, “I love my mom, so why does she drive me so crazy?” too. I always feel like I should find some better way of communicating with her, but I just can’t seem to find the key. Family, man. Always keeping life interesting. :slight_smile:

57

I don’t have any psychological advice for you, just practical advice.

If your mother does crazy stuff with cars, insist on taking a taxi when with her at all times. She won’t be able to pull the I’m going crash the car and kill myself … No, wait! I’m going to crash the car and kill us all! Or maybe I’ll crash the car into a crowd of strangers and make you feel the guilt of what you made me do for the rest of your life! crap if she isn’t behind the wheel.

58

I’m simply pleased to hear that you’re working on how you can have a healthier relationship with your mother, and considering your own needs on par with your mother’s. I don’t mistake this for being easy for you, but I believe that you’re doing all you can while still being you - and that’s someone damned awesome. Congrats on your graduation, and take my best wishes as you work to find a healthier way to deal with your mother.

59

You sound like you have come miles and miles and I’m very happy for you. It is great news.

60

I cheered right out loud when I read this Olives! Good for you. It sounds like you’re on the way to a better relationship with your Mom, I’m so happy for you!

It’s not about breaking all contact, few people can or want that, it’s about having contact that is good for you, not undoing you.

I hope you know you’ve done something wonderful, not just for you, but for your Mom!

Wow, Olives you never fail to impress.