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Title: Mom is gearing up Post by: Sarah girl on November 13, 2015, 08:22:55 AM My mom fluctuates between queen/witch and waif/hermit depending on how she's processing the events in her life. She will start a new job with great enthusiasm and success and without fail, create some kind of catastrophe or fight and quit in a rage. Yesterday, she told me that she plans on creating a huge fight and quitting her job right around the time I go on my maternity leave. She said things like "I shouldn't be working at my age" , "I will sell all my assets and live off of them until I die.", "I'm tired too and I'm also entitled to time off."
She's basically gearing up to come over every day once my baby is born. I can't handle that. She did this with my other two kids and made what should have been a precious time into a living hell. When my babies fussed, she fussed even more and criticized my parenting. When my babies were joyful, she ruined the moment by obsessively talking about her awful past and telling me all these peaceful moments are being wasted on someone as inept as me. She even did this when I was delivering my son in the hospital. I can't do this anymore. She is utterly toxic but gets angry when she isn't given full access to our most personal and significant moments. She does these things under the guise that she's helping me out and "raising grandchildren". She boasts to people about her family (us) and takes credit for how beautiful we all turned out. She also tells me that she's putting her life on hold for us. Nobody has ever asked her for help. In fact, whenever there was a true crisis, she was nowhere to be found. I've always faced things alone and that's ok. She only ever makes things worse. Yesterday, my husband told me that he's had enough. He's been quietly watching in sidelines for years as she destroys our happiness. He said that he's going to tell her that she can only come over when he's here. He said he's ready to be absolutely cruel about it and doesn't care if he's the bad guy. I know this will only push her further into psychosis and give her fodder. Not sure if this is a good idea. I'm very worried about what's going to happen in the next couple of months. She's preparing to go back to hermit/waif mode. She will burn through all her money in no time and become the helpless angry child that I've had to look after since I was four years old. All this while being criticized, raged at and looking after my newborn infant. She will demand that we go to the mall, the restaurant, the clothing store. She will ask me to deal with her personal finances, write letters of complaint, call the banks, talk to investors, tax people, professional association, etc. She will re-tell all her childhood stories of being hard done by, and compare them to "how lucky and undeserving I am". She will insist on spending money on my son that she doesn't have. I just want to run away. I plan on telling her that I'm busy and can't have her over all the time. My plan is to avoid her. My husband thinks I should just confront her. He says I should call my dad (haven't spoken to him in over 14 years) just to make her angry enough to make her go away. I'm not sure if I'm ready to contact my dad yet. I have much more empathy for him now, but he was not the nicest guy either. There's also my brother who always tells me how I'm being cruel to our saintly mom. So if my mom is out of the picture, the kids will also lose the only uncle they know and love. I feel stuck in the middle. But I think I will push back this time. I need peace and serenity. I want the joyful experience of having a newborn without having to deal with the anger, nagging and guilting of my BPD mom. Thanks for reading my long post. Any advice would be appreciated. Title: Re: Mom is gearing up Post by: Kwamina on November 13, 2015, 08:48:39 AM Hi Sarah girl,
I can understand how your mother making announcements about how she's gonna start a big fight at work, right around the time of your maternity leave, would cause you anxiety. Especially considering your past experiences with her. As hard and terrifying as it may seem, the time has perhaps come to really start setting and enforcing/defending some firm boundaries with your mother. Several of the tools on this site can help you with that. I've selected something from our article about fear, obligation and guilt that might help you deal better with your mother's demands: Excerpt Change Your Response, Change Your Life In the simplest sense, to change this dynamic we need to alter the way we respond to it. Step One :)on’t respond the moment a demand is made. Give yourself time to think and assess the matter. We want to respond - not react. Step Two Let go of your emotional ties to being controlled, at least briefly, and try to be an independent observer. Gather the information you need to construct a wise response - one that is neither enabling nor confrontational. Likely there is a long history of bad, demanding behavior and enabling responses / resentment, so this is going to take some discipline not to be triggered or to overreact. You may want to enlist a confidant - someone you respect for their emotional maturity and ability to read others - to act as a sounding board. Remember, it's problem resolution, relationship retraining - not a battle. Focus on the demand at hand, not all the past history. Assess how significant a particular demand is. Remember that there are different levels of demands, and know where to be strong and where to be flexible- demands that are of little consequence, demands that involve important issues or personal integrity, demands that affect major life directions, and/or demands that are dangerous or illegal. Step Three Respond in a constructive way. - Non-defensive communication :)o not defend or explain your decision or yourself in response to pressure. Use phrases like "I’m sorry you are so upset. I can understand how you might see it that way." Without fuel from you, the controller's attempts that worked so well in the past will fizzle. Choose time and place carefully. Lay down conditions for the meeting, announce a decision and stand by it – offer a suggestion that they not respond immediately. Anticipate their answers. Practice or role play. Consider how to respond to the person’s: Catastrophic predictions and threats, name-calling, labeling and negative judgments. The deadly whys and hows – demanding explanations and a rationale for your decision. For silent angry people, stay non-defensive. - Enlisting the controller as an ally When emotional control reaches an impasse, it’s often helpful to shift the conversation by involving the other person in your problem-solving process. Approach with curiosity and a willingness to learn. - Bartering When you want another person to change his or her behavior, and at the same time you acknowledge that you need to make changes of your own, barter may be in order. It’s win/win. It enables resentments to be put to one side. - Using Humor In a relationship that is basically good, humor can be an effective tool for pointing out to the other person how their behavior looks to you. Step Four Be ready for some pushback or more aggressive responses. Often things will get worse before they then get better - our resolve will be tested - this is common in any type of relationship retraining. We need to have perseverance and confidence that both sides will eventually adjust, and it will end or reduce the feelings of being controlled. Step Five Periodically evaluate the progress. Keeping a log of events, actions, and outcomes is helpful for this purpose. A lot can be learned from looking at the history - what works, what does not, and if progress is being made. All of this should be factored into our decisions of how we go forward. I also suggest you take a look at our article about the D.E.A.R.M.A.N. technique which is a tool designed for helping you assert yourself: Excerpt After wandering in the FOG )fear, obligation, guilt) for a longer time we have lost the natural instincts and ability to ask for something. Fear is controlling our thinking. Our family-member/partner/friend is super sensitive and tends to over-react. We get ever more careful, stopping to ask for things needed in our or our relationship's interest. Resentment breeds. Resentment is sensed. Communication grinds to a halt. How do we get back to normal? A big step is start asking again for what is needed and this is where D.E.A.R.M.A.N can help us. ... . D.E.A.R.M.A.N. is used when you have an objective, you want something specific, such as to get more sleep, to have help with the chores, to affect a change or to say NO to a request. You want the other person to come away feeling good about you and not full of resentment. This preserves the relationship. You also want to protect or even enhance your self respect. ... . DEARMAN is not simple to do: Steering a conversation through 7(!) defined steps with a person that is prone to dysregulation while you are feeling possibly weak and insecure is virtually impossible. The key to acquire the skill for DEARMAN lies NOT in following the letters. It lies in learning the underlying skills and practicing them well enough to then being able to steer a conversation through DEARMAN. When looking at DEARMAN it is clear that we are to express needs for change. ... . DEARMAN is valuable skill that at its very core boils down to: We have a right to ask for change - the other side may or may not agree, that is fine too. When owning up to our requests, staying respectful and focused on what we want we improve our chances for affecting change. You can read more about D.E.A.R.M.A.N. here: Assert yourself: D.E.A.R.M.A.N. --> Describe, Express, Assert, Reinforce, Stay Mindful, Appear Confident, Negotiate (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=160566.0) Your mother's behavior is quite unpleasant indeed. I hope that these tools will help you better deal with her Title: Re: Mom is gearing up Post by: futurecatlady on November 13, 2015, 11:14:52 AM Hi,
I don't know about this from personal experience, but both my brother and sister have kids and have dealt with my overbearing mom in different ways. My sister cut off contact completely just before her 1st child was born. The pros and cons of this are sort of obvious: she doesn't have any support of my mom, and the kids don't really know their grandmother, but she doesn't have to deal with all the ___, either. My mom has been devastated by this. My brother allows my mom to come over almost every day. I don't know how he deals with it, but he's pretty emotionally closed off and if she says anything offensive/awful, he basically tells her to leave. His wife is the "bad guy." My mom sees her as evil, but on the other hand, she knows that if she pisses his wife off, she doesn't get to see the grandkids. And when my sister in law is home, basically my mom is not allowed over. So there are limits. It seems cruel to me, but it does allow both sides to get what they want, in ways that are tolerable for both of them. He uses seeing the grandkids as leverage. It seems cold to me, but seeing as I definitely don't have a functional relationship with Mom, I see where he's coming from. I guess the good news is that you're not alone. You definitely deserve to have a wonderful time with your infant. |