Issue with my mom caring for her mother

[Our abuse recovery guide]

Do you see it as something like a push-pull dynamic, the desire to connect, yet your gut emotional reaction reaches your face?

Interesting question, I too had wondered, is it a trigger (i.e. the fear is entirely due to my experiences of closeness in the past, likely with my parents, not much to do with this situation at all), or is it a "gut reaction", that is, an intuition that this person is not safe or that I do not want further intimacy with them (aka emotions are kicking in to set healthy boundaries)?  Or, a bit of both?

I will have to keep observing.  I think I'll get a better idea once I start to channel more rightful anger towards the appropriate targets.  (by which of course I mean feelings not actions.)  I have a feeling that what's coming up now is appropriate reactions to past violations of my autonomy/differentiation in my FOO.

[eeks]

Do you see it as something like a push-pull dynamic, the desire to connect, yet your gut emotional reaction reaches your face?

Interesting question, I too had wondered, is it a trigger (i.e. the fear is entirely due to my experiences of closeness in the past, likely with my parents, not much to do with this situation at all), or is it a "gut reaction", that is, an intuition that this person is not safe or that I do not want further intimacy with them (aka emotions are kicking in to set healthy boundaries)?  Or, a bit of both?

I will have to keep observing.  I think I'll get a better idea once I start to channel more rightful anger towards the appropriate targets.  (by which of course I mean feelings not actions.)  I have a feeling that what's coming up now is appropriate reactions to past violations of my autonomy/differentiation in my FOO.

[Earl Hegge]

I hope this is okay to post and add.  New to the group.  I just am a person with a disability who had a roommate with BPD that I had to eventually end the relationship with so I was going through the threads and yours caught my attention because of the caregiving aspect (which is a great interest of mine as someone with a disability).

It is SUCH a difficult balance.  Caregivers intrinsically tend to overextend themselves and ignore their own needs.  It makes me wonder by the way the whole thread is if your mom is not just the caregiver of your grandmother, but the caregiver of EVERYONE.  (Very common).  You mentioned she has sisters and they all call grandma the "martyr", but are they absent or?  Is there a reason your mom at least sounds like the only caregiver?

It is just making me wonder.  I may have missed a response, but I tried to read them all.

In my family we have a genetic disorder and many mental health issues as well, but my mom was always the caregiver, and I started out being one, but then became very disabled by the genetic disorder - neither here nor there, but I feel even more guilty having to take mom's time.  She says "It's okay you're my daughter, you're the one I SHOULD be taking care of".  She's gotten better at saying "no" too.  And I do think it's good, because she has her own needs.  But occasionally we have fights very occasionally because my hospitalizations maybe have started to be the straw that breaks the camel's back -- not that she won't do anything to help, but if I say something the wrong way it triggers her feeling "walked on" when I'm in pain and not able to walk on eggshells, and it's hard for both of us with my disability.

And that makes me think about your grandmother being her age and wondering how her health is at that age and eventually if some of her "I need to go home" might be age / pain / disability related -- because the truth is that if we don't die, then we often do end up disabled at some point.  It's just the way life is unfortunately.  Hopefully she is healthy.  But often by that age most people are having some difficulty.

I know that when I tell my mom "I need to go home" -- hand cream is not important.  I will be passed out or vomiting on the floor if it takes too long.  And now because of some medical malpractice I also may have some permanent damage that may mean me losing organs / dying -- which is something we're dealing with a day at a time.  However at the same time my grandma who is in her 80s smoked her whole life because it was the only way to control her anxiety.  She now has lung cancer.

My mom is the only healthy caregiver in our family.

I'm not sure what we're going to do if we both end up literally on our death beds at the same time -- heaven forbid it.  But I do know that even though mom has gotten good at setting boundaries, she's also learned when boundaries are important (i.e., when to say "no mom, I'm not buying you cigarettes" or "no Earl, I know you like blueberries better, but cherries will have to do since I left the store."

But I also know that being up and out anywhere for too long is now dangerous to both of us.  But we have other family members who are also tugging at her where she has to be firmer because her child AND her mother are dying -- she has a disabled brother and sister, and also a another son and husband in the mix who have milder forms of our genetic disorder who would love her attention too.  For them if they want to go home when she doesn't, then it's more like "Nah, you can wait til I'm done" because they're fine.  For grandma and me -- both of us will faceplant -- but to be honest we kinda just don't even go out anymore hardly at all due to that, but sometimes we need to, and sometimes we need people to take our health needs seriously.

I try not to judge too much by age because I do know active people who are 70s - 90s, many who are WAY healthier than me in my late 30s.  And then I know people who are kids who will never be as healthy even as I am now, so I know age does not 100% correlate with disability.  But it does affect the inside and outside of the body in many ways, and so it's just something I wonder about.  I know far FEWER people in their 90s who can do unlimited outings and so I am guessing your mom can tell when her mom just wants vs. needs to go home?  I hope so. 

And I just also kind of hope that instead of boundaries being set "the same" that they are being set fairly.  People don't always need the same boundaries and helping someone as a caregiver doesn't intrinsically mean co-dependent.  It CAN mean that, but sometimes it just means ... .being what most cultures are.  Taking care of aging family members.

[eeks]

So I have a question.  What does it accomplish for a parent, to hold the attitude and state (implicitly or explicitly) with grandiosity and finality on a regular basis that the child is not good enough?


I don't think it is something a parent does with full consciousness, but something that is passed on. I think if a parent has poor boundaries- and that is the case for people with PD's, they see the child as an extension of themselves. When the child does something that brings external praise- such as winning in sports, the parent feels this reflects on him/her. If the child makes a mistake, then the parent also feels that they are a mistake.

Earlier in this thread I mentioned my mother hissing at me to say goodnight to my grandmother because she thought I wasn't going to.  She told me afterwards that it was because she was afraid her mother would think she was not a perfect parent.  So what you are saying makes sense.

I am working on cultivating the rightful anger at their intrusions on my autonomy.  The challenge I face is that anger quickly bypasses into shame because anger was not allowed, and especially because my mom used to respond to it with slow, quiet, seriousness (as though a hush had fallen over the community because someone had broken a taboo) and it felt as though she wasn't there to bump up against/engage with (I think it was dissociative), grasping at smoke, it's very hard for me not to collapse.

And yet, I find when I do continue to feel angry, in this little visualization I find I want to be physically violent to her (like, destroy her.  don't worry guys, I'm not a violent person, I'm just curious about these images since I have such challenges around anger)

I have two speculations about this

1) I just want a response from her!  I want her to stay and engage with me, let's wrestle it out, negotiate!

2) A burst of the rightful anger against the inner critic, and because it has been stifled for such a long time it shows up as destruction

If the parent feels he/she can never be good enough, I think this reflects in how they relate to their child. I think also, if they were raised this way, then they may not even know a different way to do this. I don't think these parents are all bad parents. They can be loving caring parents, but still have this attitude.

I agree.  When they get triggered, their allegiance to their "ghosts" takes over.

[eeks]

I had observed a few months ago with a friend, an acquaintance (who seems pretty self-aware emotionally) and my former therapist, that there is a threshold of emotional intimacy that I reach and reflexively I want to shout "get out!" Which seems weird to me because I want more closeness in my life.  So I contemplated and puzzled over this.

I can relate to this with my H. I pushed for closeness, but his response is to withdraw from it or fight it. Yet, if I back off, he doesn't like it. I believe he really wants it- and I think he likes my pushing for it as it isn't his nature to do so. On the other side of this- me- is that it is emotionally tiring to do this and not really feel as if it is effective in the long run. Eventually, I just stop pushing, and we then drift apart. For us to stay connected, I usually have to reach out to him, as it could go on indefinitely, even if he doesn't like it. Emotional distance is both the comfort zone but lonely.

I can also relate to the anxiety. If I push for closeness, I can feel him getting anxious. If I start a conversation that is personal, he responds by trying to deflect it and I can feel his agitation over it. So, I tend to avoid doing them, and yet, he doesn't like it. His pushing me away is effective- it works for him, but he also doesn't like it when I respect his wish for space.

Dr. Sue Johnson (whose work is based on adult attachment styles) uses the metaphor of a "dance" for love and emotional intimacy.  When a dance is working well, partners are in sync, and if things get off track the partners find a way to get back.  And many couples' "dance" often looks more like what you describe.

From what I have observed in myself as well as your account of your "dance" with your husband, I can see that the task for me is to keep on observing, emotional awareness, notice when fear or shame kick in and what's that about. 

[eeks]

I hope this is okay to post and add.  New to the group.  

Hi Earl Hegge,

Welcome  Yep, it's OK.  We learn together.  Of course, if you would like to discuss the caregiving scenario in your family in greater detail, you can always start your own thread as well  

I just am a person with a disability who had a roommate with BPD that I had to eventually end the relationship with so I was going through the threads and yours caught my attention because of the caregiving aspect (which is a great interest of mine as someone with a disability).

It is SUCH a difficult balance.  Caregivers intrinsically tend to overextend themselves and ignore their own needs.  It makes me wonder by the way the whole thread is if your mom is not just the caregiver of your grandmother, but the caregiver of EVERYONE.  (Very common).  You mentioned she has sisters and they all call grandma the "martyr", but are they absent or?  Is there a reason your mom at least sounds like the only caregiver?

It is just making me wonder.  I may have missed a response, but I tried to read them all.

No, you didn't miss anything.  My mom's sisters do take care of their mom sometimes as well, but the youngest lives in the States (we are in Canada) and her middle sister often babysits/helps take care of her grandkids (one of whom has a disability) so since my mom lives closest, it ends up being her.  

The issue of caregiving in families is complex, for sure.  Somebody has to do it, and sometimes sacrifices (of one's own time, money, effort) are made for family members.  That's just the way it is.  My concern in my mother's case is that she does not seem to have emotionally individuated from her FOO (family of origin) and is still under the spell of her parents' rules.  

If she were to do her own autonomy work (which would have to include therapy, it's tough enough to find a skilled practitioner for developmental trauma let alone in a small town) then she could come back to the caregiving with a more balanced approach.  So, you're right, caregiving is not automatically co-dependence, what I am talking about here is the emotional dynamics involved.  

However, the issue with she and I is complex because I too have not "emotionally left home" (not as entrenched as her, but still some work to do), and my mother cannot support my individuation because she has not gone through her own.  (I try to support hers, but she has so much fear and shame from trauma, very likely complex PTSD, that I, as a pretty smart cat but not trained as a therapist, do not know how to help her feel safe enough to talk about the trauma, and feel the feelings.)

So I've had to work on getting it through my head that there is nothing I can do (including meeting my parents' expectations) that will make them emotionally validate me, meet my emotional needs that they could not meet as a child.  They are cognitively and physically adults (and intelligent ones at that), but emotionally they are not "there".

And that makes me think about your grandmother being her age and wondering how her health is at that age and eventually if some of her "I need to go home" might be age / pain / disability related -- because the truth is that if we don't die, then we often do end up disabled at some point.  It's just the way life is unfortunately.  Hopefully she is healthy.  But often by that age most people are having some difficulty.

Fair point.  However, my mom says my grandmother has been like this as long as she can remember.  When she's ready to go home, it's time to go home.  (And you'd think if it had to do with physical pain or exhaustion or other symptoms, she would have said so at least some of the time.)  My grandmother is remarkably healthy for her age, in any case.  

My mom is the only healthy caregiver in our family.

I imagine this is a tremendous burden on her.  A difficult situation, simply by virtue of circumstances.

[eeks]

I know that when I tell my mom "I need to go home" -- hand cream is not important.  I will be passed out or vomiting on the floor if it takes too long.  And now because of some medical malpractice I also may have some permanent damage that may mean me losing organs / dying -- which is something we're dealing with a day at a time.  However at the same time my grandma who is in her 80s smoked her whole life because it was the only way to control her anxiety.  She now has lung cancer.

It sounds like you're bearing all of this courageously.  I don't mean to be flippant when I say that, no doubt you have gone through anger and grief, I just thought the tone of your post seemed like you have processed much and have found at least some peace and acceptance in the midst of it.  When so many members of your family either have a disability or are dying, so many health concerns, so much care needed.  Is that accurate?

I'm not sure what we're going to do if we both end up literally on our death beds at the same time -- heaven forbid it.  But I do know that even though mom has gotten good at setting boundaries, she's also learned when boundaries are important (i.e., when to say "no mom, I'm not buying you cigarettes" or "no Earl, I know you like blueberries better, but cherries will have to do since I left the store."

But I also know that being up and out anywhere for too long is now dangerous to both of us.  But we have other family members who are also tugging at her where she has to be firmer because her child AND her mother are dying -- she has a disabled brother and sister, and also a another son and husband in the mix who have milder forms of our genetic disorder who would love her attention too.  For them if they want to go home when she doesn't, then it's more like "Nah, you can wait til I'm done" because they're fine.  For grandma and me -- both of us will faceplant -- but to be honest we kinda just don't even go out anymore hardly at all due to that, but sometimes we need to, and sometimes we need people to take our health needs seriously.

It sounds like your mother was in a situation where she didn't really have a choice but to learn boundaries and do a sort of "triage" of family members' needs as you describe here.  What I'm getting out of this is that it was a process for her, to learn this, and will be an ongoing one.  

[Notwendy]

This whole co-dependent/  connection and spectrum is interesting. I would say neither you, nor I, or my H would fit on a diagnosis, but we each have traits that we picked up from out FOO that place us on this "dance" with someone else who is also doing the matching steps. It is interesting to what side the traits fall on as well. Even in different siblings of the same parents. It doesn't even have to be with a PD. I think co-dependency in one or more parent paired with a matching parent can set this in motion. On my side is a fully severe PBD mother/co-dependent enabling father. Both of us are fine in terms of relating to other, but these things affect the most intimate of relationships. As far as intimate relationships go-I came out on the co-dependent, people pleasing side. For my H, he came out on the blaming, projecting, and angry outburst PD-like end. A perfect match for drama between us. 

In my H's family, all appears normal, but they are all WOE around angry critical dad who would have outbursts if his co-dependent wife and the whole family didn't WOE around him. So the appearance of happy and stable was achieved this way. In my FOO, mother was so severe that no amount of appeasing would keep her stable.

So like you, emotions were not allowed in my H's family and anger was not allowed- probably because it would set off dad. Mom is very co-dependent and controlling. Like you, I can feel my H fighting intimacy with me because of this aversion to being engulfed and controlled- even though I didn't intend for it to be that way. However, in my FOO, I had to work hard to be loved and so turned my attention to my H- and he both liked that I pushed to be close to him while at the same time pushing me away. On the emotional feeling side of this, he, like you could be acting out the anger at his parents while I was still trying to make him happy hoping to get the love I wanted.

But I decided I didn't want to do the steps in that dance, and have made efforts to change my steps in it.

The thing is- I recognized the issues in my FOO ( it would be hard to miss them). However, my H doesn't have the experience of thinking anything is wrong with his FOO. Like yours, there isn't anything majorly off in either of your FOO's, yet the relationship patterns are not good for intimacy. I think what you are doing-looking at the influence of your family patterns,  will be so good for you in terms of your happiness and relationships.

[eeks]

I just had a memory when reading another thread, where a member was saying her ex's parents slept in separate bedrooms.

My parents slept in separate bedrooms as long as I can remember.  By about age 9 or 10, I realized there was something "different" about that, that most people's parents had sex and mine didn't, and I felt embarrassed about it.  My dad's bed was in his office, to which the door was usually closed (and behind a bookshelf, not literally covering it but at a right angle) so no one visiting would necessarily think anything, but when I had friends over they would see my mom's room and say "is that your parents' bedroom" and I would say "yes", but feel uncomfortable.

It might sound strange, but I remember feeling like I "came from a different source" than other kids because of this.

There were a couple of kids in my grade whose parents were divorced, so I knew about that, so the only thing I can think of for why I would have felt this way is because it was a secret.

 

As an adult my mom told me that when she was 30, she told my dad he could take a mistress if he wanted.  He didn't.  (She speculates that was because he didn't think anyone would have him.)  She claims to have no interest in sex, but I am not sure if I believe it, I think it may be because she was abused.  She once said to me (in discussing whether one ought to be physically attracted to one's partner, which of course she has an opinion on like everything else) "I am lucky I found someone with the same level of interest [in sex] as me" (which I don't believe either).

I remember in high school finding in my dad's office books with the spines not even cracked, with titles like "The Art of Sexual Ecstasy".  When my father has a problem, he buys something.  I feel embarrassed and sad, thinking about this.

My mother (with some contempt) in reference to this says "He buys something, and then it's done" (as in, he doesn't have to do anything... .weight loss pills, pain products, etc).  And although I do not have many good thoughts for my father, for some reason I feel uncomfortable when she speaks to me about him this way.

[Turkish]

Why do you feel uncomfortable when she speaks about him that way? How do you think you might feel if it were the other way around, he speaking about her?

[Notwendy]

I think you are beginning to get a glimpse of some of the issues between your parents. Perhaps this is the difference between families that hide it well and families that do not. The issues in my FOO were beyond obvious to me. It is hard to miss raging screaming mom and pretend that is normal.

My H, on the other hand, recalls his childhood as normal and his parents appear that way. He never saw his parents argue or disagree, or get emotional.  However, getting to know the family, there are cracks in the veneer. His parents didn't argue because, well I didn't ever see them talking to each other.  Reading about relationships, I learned that we tend to "match" each other with some issues, issues that relate to our FOO. This idea intrigued me because I wondered how on earth our FOO's could match each other.

It is interesting how kids pick up on relationship issues between their parents. I tried to hide ours from the kids. I think in the long run it was better for them than the scenes I grew up with, but I was shocked to find out how much they picked up.

I am also sensitive to boundaries. My mother told us TMI about my parents' sex life. However, I think family secrets, WOE, can also be damaging. My own personal solution was to not lie to my kids while keeping strong boundaries on the personal info between their parents. I also don't triangulate and keep the focus on discussing me.

My solution was to be open about my own work on co-dependency and my own FOO. They are old enough to understand some of this. So when they asked I would reply that I am working on learning to have a better relationship. They are aware that I am working on co-dependency, that people are not perfect, and that it is OK to ask for professional help if you need it. I felt that presenting an "everything is perfectly fine all the time" as was done in my H's FOO was not the answer to the scenes I grew up with.