Help - I can't be my mother's keeper/therapist

[Maisha]

Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum and have been looking through the posts, learning so much.  I started therapy a couple of months ago to deal with the constant guilt and conflicting emotions I felt about my BPD mother. I am making baby steps, and am now approaching my first challenge - setting a boundary.  I don't even live in the same country as my parents (I moved away from home when I was 16 as the home environment was so much chaos), yet my mother completely controls my life.  I am an only child, so my mother always parentified me - expecting me to take care of her, also treated me as a replacement spouse as my dad's job involved him being away a lot. My dad caters to her every wish and demand but she still will seek me out and use me as her emotional dumping ground.

Lately, its been quite bad.  Her rage/anxieties are triggered by perceived feelings of abandonment.  A couple of her good friends are leaving the city where she lives, and my father is approaching retirement from his job. She sends me dozens of messages on whats app every day, asking me to console her, to help my dad find a job post-retirement, telling me her financial worries, etc. She claims she is going through "major anxiety", and won't leave me alone until I indulge her and spend hours talking her out of her attack.  When I recommend that she should see a qualified professional, she brushes it off. 

I am exhausted of constantly placating her. Nothing I do ever makes a difference, she always ends by saying "if only you could move back home to be with me" (I am a 32 year old, recently married woman, in a long distance relationship with my own husband due to our careers, so I have my own share of things to worry about). 

I feel that she does not want to seek help, but enjoys keeping me captive and involved in her life.  She has my dad, and a thousand friends around her, but she is irrationally possessive of me, and if I'm not involved in her daily life, she feels neglected.  I am trying to work out a good way to respond to her next barrage of messages.  Does anyone have experience in setting this boundary?  I was thinking of saying  "Look mother, I am sorry that you are going through these anxious episodes, I know it is difficult, but I am not qualified to help you.  Remember that I am the child and you are the mother.  I cannot be responsible for consoling you and solving all your problems. I have to focus on my own future and worries. Please understand that when you offload your anxiety on me, it also makes me anxious, and is having huge emotional impact on me." 

Sadly, I can already predict her response - she will say, "I gave birth to you, I raised you, so of course you should solve my problems", or with "you are selfish, you have no time for me and my issues, all you care about is your own life". 

Any advice or input?  Thanks!

[Kwamina]

Hi Maisha

Welcome to bpdfamily and congratulations on your recent marriage

Being the only child of a BPD parent can be quite difficult. I have siblings but they are way older than me and for many years I lived alone with my undiagnosed BPD mother and it wasn't easy  Has your mother been officially diagnosed with BPD or perhaps some other disorder?

I don't even live in the same country as my parents (I moved away from home when I was 16 as the home environment was so much chaos), yet my mother completely controls my life.  I am an only child, so my mother always parentified me - expecting me to take care of her, also treated me as a replacement spouse as my dad's job involved him being away a lot. My dad caters to her every wish and demand but she still will seek me out and use me as her emotional dumping ground.

Definitely sounds like there is parentification going on here and also what I think can be described as some level of unhealthy 'emotional enmeshment':

Patricia Love, Ed.D., past president of the International Association for Marriage and Family Counseling, defines emotional incest as "a style of parenting in which parents turn to their children, not to their partners, for emotional support."  According to Love, emotionally incestuous parents may appear loving and devoted and they may spend a great deal of time with their children and lavish them with praise and material gifts - but in the final analysis, their love is not a nurturing love, it's a means to satisfy their own needs.

The term "emotional incest" was coined by Kenneth Adams, Ph.D. to label the state of cross-generational bonding within a family, whereby a child (normally of the opposite sex) becomes a surrogate spouse for their mother or father. "Emotional Enmeshment" is another term often used. And the term "emotional parentification" describes a similar concept - it describes the process of role reversal whereby a child is obliged to act as parent to their own parent.

Many parents and children are close. Closeness is healthy and desirable. The difference between a healthy close relationship and an incestuous one is that in a healthy close relationship a parent takes care of a child's needs in an age-appropriate way without making the child feel responsible the emotional needs of the parents needs. In an emotionally incestuous relationship, instead of the parent meeting the needs of the child, the child is meeting the needs of the parent.

Emotional incest happens when the natural boundary between parental caregiver, nurturer, and protector is crossed and the child becomes the defacto caregiver, nurturer and protector of the parent.

Do you feel like the above description applies to your situation and the way your mother treated and continues to treat you? You can read more about this subject here: Was Part of Your Childhood Deprived by Emotional Incest?

Based on your post it seems to appear that your mother uses things as fear, obligation and guilt to try make you do what she wants. Would you say that this is correct? We have an article on this site about this subject, here's a short excerpt:

fear, obligation or guilt ("FOG" are the transactional dynamics at play between the controller and the person being controlled.  Understanding these dynamics are useful to anyone trying to extricate themselves from the controlling behavior by another person and deal with their own compulsions to do things that are uncomfortable, undesirable, burdensome, or self-sacrificing for others.

You can read the entire article here: Fear, Obligation and Guilt (FOG)

[Maisha]

Thanks for the welcome message Kwamina!  Emotional incest and FOG are both concepts that resonate with me entirely.  My work with my therapist has also helped me see the manipulation that my mother uses to control/guilt me.  My greatest struggle will be to get out of this guilt trap.  My mother has not been diagnosed BPD (largely because she refuses to see a therapist), but I am more or less certain she suffers from it.  Christine Lawson's book was extremely validating form me in that regards - my mother is mostly BPD queen, with the witch's annihilating rage on certain moments when she feels betrayed.  I look forward to reading through this site and learning some coping mechanisms.

[Sunfl0wer]

This sounds like such a tough situation you are in.  It also sounds like you are doing great and working hard at trying to have a healthier r/s with your mom.  Sorry that you, the child, have to be the one to manage this.

While my own mom did not expect me to be her confidant in any way, (she just saw me as insignificant) I just wanted to pop in to join Kwamina in welcoming you! 

I'm sorry, I do not know what you can say to help you begin in setting boundaries with your mom.  Certainly she is crossing many healthy parent-child boundaries.  It must be awful to hear her express that she only sees the solution to her problems being that you moving back home to her.  It almost makes me wonder if the whole rest of her conversation is just complaints to get to that one point of hers.  That must be awful to endure.

I imagine that whatever you say to her will cause her to react poorly, as you said.

You probably need to focus more on a plan, than the actual verbiage for one conversation.  As anything you say is likely to be perceived as her as abandonment.  And then you are likely to be left with MORE FOG to manage.

By plan, I mean, decide what your boundaries are, then decide how you will consistently respond to protect them each time.  This is not a one time conversation, but rather an ongoing process of telling her either through words and/or actions, what new role you will and will not partake in with her.

(I'm not so good at leading one through this process... .I've seen it done here tho... .so please take over more experienced member)

So what specific behavior of hers can you set a boundary around?

How can you maintain that boundary?

Also, what has your T suggested in this regard so far?

[Kwamina]

Hi again Maisha

Sunfl0wer has given you some excellent advice To overcome emotional incest and deal with the FOG, setting and enforcing boundaries is very important. Boundaries help to protect and preserve your own well-being:

When we speak of “boundaries” we are really speaking about our personal values.  This point is often overlooked.  Personal boundaries are simply one way we define our values to others.

... .

Boundaries are how we define our values to others.   A boundary is nothing more than the outer perimeters of our independent core values -  it's like a fence  - anything inside the boundary is consistent with our core values and anything outside the boundary is not.  For example, if your independent core value is "always to be respectful of others" a boundary question might be "would abruptly walking out of the room when someone says something offensive be inside or outside of your definition of this value?"  It's not always obvious as we all see things differently.  As you can quickly see, with values, we have a significant responsibility to lead, educate and inform others - we must walk the walk, have effective communication and be consistent.

How does the thought of setting and enforcing boundaries with your mother make you feel? Is this something you are comfortable with doing?

We have some resources here about boundaries that you might find helpful:

Getting Our Values and Boundaries in Order

Examples of boundaries

[Maisha]

Thank you so much Kwamina and Sunflower, this is absolutely excellent advice.  I have been mulling over my therpaist's suggestion to "out the truth" and something about it didn't quite click with me.  I understand where my therapist is coming from - she also recommended that I read the book, "Toxic Parents" by Susan Forward, which also leans in favour of confrontation.

But I have had confrontations with my unBPD mother in the past - normally when she flies into an irrational rage over some mundane happening, then lashes out at me.  At those times, I am very direct with her (possibly the atmosphere of heightened drama and emotional turmoil helps).  But she forgets everything I said moments later. 

What you say about drawing boundaries through actions not just words is advice that I will follow over the next couple of weeks.  I am trying to tread a fine line between validation "I'm sorry to hear you are feeling lonely mother" and finding solutions - "Sorry you are lonely, why don't you go visit a friend/watch a movie/etc".  This is something that I will definitely need to be conscious of, and also have the power to say, "Look I'm sorry you are lonely, but I don't have any solutions for you." 

I've read many posts on this board on striking that balance.  Would be interesting to hear from others' experience.   If any of you were in a similar situation where you BPD parent made you their therapist/problem solver, how did they react when you started withdrawing?  How did you start withdrawing?

Thanks!

[Sunfl0wer]

What you say about drawing boundaries through actions not just words is advice that I will follow over the next couple of weeks.  I am trying to tread a fine line between validation "I'm sorry to hear you are feeling lonely mother" and finding solutions - "Sorry you are lonely, why don't you go visit a friend/watch a movie/etc".  This is something that I will definitely need to be conscious of, and also have the power to say, "Look I'm sorry you are lonely, but I don't have any solutions for you."

Stating a validating comment is a good tool to learn.  

However, after you state it, she probably will persist in attempting you to solve her problem.  What will you do if she replies, "Yes, I am glad you see how lonely I am, I don't understand why you don't just move back?"

This is where planning and boundaries come in.  Can you decide for yourself what is acceptable?  If she persists with playing a victim role, and you try to validate, then she replays a victim role... .at what point do you enforce?  At what point do you end the conversation? Or state, "I'm not moving back, I don't appreciate you mentioning that, please stop bringing that up, if you bring it up again, it is uncomfortable for me, I know you don't want that, so I will have to cut this conversation short in the future."

Ok... .that all sounded a bit sloppy, however, I hope you get my message.

Would be interesting to hear from others' experience.   If any of you were in a similar situation where you BPD parent made you their therapist/problem solver, how did they react when you started withdrawing?  How did you start withdrawing?

Yes, this would be helpful!

[GreenGlit]

So - you just gave me advice on my own thread, and then I saw this one Hopefully I can return the favor.

I have experience setting this boundary. I live states away from my mom, and since I was a teen my mom kept me on a tight leash, even 5 states away when I went to college. To paint the picture, once in college when I didn't answer her phone calls - she left 30 voicemails within the span of 2 hours - she called the campus security office and had my dorm room searched. Officers were on the freshman quad asking if they had seen me.

Things didn't change much in medical school. If I had an overnight call she would text me upset that I was "keeping her up with worry" since I worked at a hospital in *surprise!* not the best neighborhood. She's a doctor herself and has worked in sketchier places but... .that doesn't matter.

I started dating someone seriously and am getting married in September, and about a year ago I started seeing how much her influence had an effect on my relationship with me and my fiancé. My sister placates my mother and feeds her emotional needs, and I think her marriage seriously suffers because she doesn't side wither her husband and doesn't behave like they are a unit. I didn't want that to be the picture of my marriage and so I set up walls.

What I did was, one day when she was calling incessantly, I said, "Mom, you can't call me all the time. I'm working, i'm in a professional environment in a hospital, or I'm working or spending time with my fiancé. I'm happy to talk to you once every other day in the evenings, but you can't expect me to answer all your messages. It's not good for me." She threw a fit and said all the things you would expect, but I really and very firmly held my ground. This was my new rule, and I wouldn't budge an inch. I think this detail was really important because I spent most of my life trying to set up boundaries and then caving when she would throw a big enough fit. But I had really had it - this treatment was ending. So she really freaked, and it was pretty rough for a while. But eventually she realized i wasn't kidding. On top of that if she called to yell at me, I would say, "It makes me upset to be yelled at, Mom. If you would like to talk to me I'm glad to have a conversation, but I'm not going to be screamed at. We can talk later if you wish." Click. The end. Again, she freaked, but eventually she learned that I wasn't going to let her yell at me. Now she knows that if she starts yelling, that's the end of the convo. It's not unlike training a child - action leads to consequence.

The only thing I can emphasize is this: be consistent. This is very important. Setting up a boundary and then caving will let her know you are still vulnerable to her emotional ups and downs and, like a child will find any hole in their parent's rules, she will continue chipping away because she nows she can. Decide what you want to do, make your rules, inform her, and then stick to it.

Good luck

[Finding Courage]

My mom is very similar.  What helped me was finally realizing that enmeshment and emotional incest is essentially abusive.  And as a grown woman I get to choose now.  Although I do have some limited contact, I could say no more if I choose.  Her illness and problems are hers alone.  Despite her insatiable desire for me to fix her, nothing I could ever do will fix her or save her.  And it isn't my job.  Freedom for me has meant limited contact no matter how much she presses for more.  This stuff is hard!  Best wishes.

[Maisha]

Thank you Sunflower, GreenGlit and Finding Courage for your words of advice and encouragement.  I am starting to learn indeed that consistency is something I will need to cultivate - afterall, BPDs don't understand the word "no" at first instance.  So far in life, I've used avoidance techniques - leaving home at a young age, saying "I'm driving, in traffic, or busy at errands" to not deal with incessant conversations with my mother. 

Finding courage- you raise an important point about how the BPD mother's problems are hers alone to solve .  Mine will pull every guilt trip in the book, when I refute her claims, then she will end with "but I gave birth to you, I took care of you, now you take care of me".  I had an interesting thought today - so I managed to get "time off" from my mother this weekend, and she didn't text me or call me in 24 hours.  It was probably the first time in months this has happened.  And while I was relieved, I suddenly got worried that maybe something happened to her.  I shrugged off the thought, remembering that she's not a child, she lives with my dad, so must be fine.  But isn't it ironic.  I wonder if being the parentified child also ends up making us fully codependent on our mothers. 

[Trollvaaken]

I can relate 100% to what you have written. Most of the advice given to you is effective.

To paraphrase what someone else wrote to me on this very forum regarding a similar issue: that you feel guilt about not wanting to be her therapist is normal (you worry about her, feel it is your duty to console her and she expects it of you), but you aren't really helping her when you have to console her all the time, but simply placating her and you are not respecting your own boundaries. So, you can show her you care (because you do!) by making validating comments as suggested by others here and by respecting yourself. Be prepared to meet some resistance.

On a more practical note, what excuses could you use to get out of such situations? For my mother, 'being busy' is a good excuse.

It is normal that adult parents and children share their worries, but not to this excess and it can be difficult for a BPD parent to understand where that limit goes and by participating in some discussions and not others where you feel she just wants attention, you may seem inconsistent to her. It might not be possible for you to strike a balance.

It's also important to fully understand boundaries. You naturally want boundaries, but for me, rationally understanding the importance of boundaries and separating my identity from hers was necessary for me to enforce those boundaries. You are a separate person, with your own life and problems. While you care about your mother, your main priority it taking care of yourself and tending to your relationship with your husband. Her problems are not yours, her interests are not yours... .Also validate yourself, clearly, as this forum demonstrates, there are many people in your shoes, you have a right to feel the way you do. Your friends' relationships with their parents probably are not the same.

[losthero]

Dear Maisha, I can only tell you how things went with my emotionally emeshed mom when I told her exactly what you said what you wanted to say to your mom in your first post. My mother became MORE posessesive of me as she felt I was abandoning her. Everything became more intense.  I had to enforce more physical boubaries such as I would only talk to her twice a week but her respecting any boundary lasted only a short time. She would leave rageful or waify needy messages. She would acuuse me of being a bad daughter, she would use against me any personal information or weakness (such as my anxiety from HER) against me or mock me.  She would then apologize and tell me all the things I wanted her to say and then I would feel guilty and go bsck to her. Her behaviors had really escalated after my dad died. My mom has had several dianoses over the years, bipolar, borderline, narcisstic personality disorder and schizoaffective.  My mom doesnt have halucinations but she does have some paranoia and delusional thinking.  I am a mom and wife and my mom is ruining my ability to focus on my own family and not be a nervous wreck. I recently had to go no contact. I do suffer from some withdrawl from her. We are raised to be hyperalert all the time and feel guilty for "abandoning them" but they set up this scenario when they continue to treat us like their possessions and objects and not as our own adult human beings.  Everyones situation is different, I just wanted to give you a glance at how things went for me.  Wishing you some peace.

[keldubs78]

I'm so sorry.  I completely understand.  My mom does this to me too - and I'm also an only child.  My dad just passed away so the level of emotional neediness has gone up exponentially.  She also is now relying on me to help fix every other problem she has like household issues and paying her bills.  I feel the same way you do.  I have my own life and my own young kids to raise.  I can't be expected to be involved every single day with her issues.  But, OH does she expect that is the way it should be.  Just this morning she called me to ask a questoin about a bill. (I live 4 hours away so it's not like I can run over there and take a look at it - THANK GOD).  She could hear my kids in the background and she made a pissed off sighing noise as if I'm not supposed to be in my own house in my own kitchen feeding my kids breakfast.  I mean, I should have known that my nightmare of a mother would be calling about one of her various demands and put everything on hold so I could give her my undivided attention and fix her problem of the moment.  It's emotional terrorism.  That's what these people do.  It's so unfortunate that we not only have to deal with someone with BPD but that that person is the very person we should be able to trust - our mother.  It's such a confusing, exhausting, irritating life to have this burden.  They are toxic and each and every interaction sucks the life out of me a little bit at a time.

[Smile41869]

Hi Maisha

It looks like you have some great advice here. I just wanted to give you one strategy I have used to create a boundary. I told my mom that my work hours were being increased and It was very stressful and tiring (it was sort of true). So, she will have to wait until X day to talk - when I have my ONE day off work.

Of course this has resulted in a range of other boundary violating attempts such as mental/physical health 'emergencies', but for the most part I have ignored them and managed to cut down our daily interactions to once/twice a week maximum. I will admit it wasnt easy.

I should mention that this hasn't stopped her attempting to contact everyday/ every second day, but for the first time I can get a call/text/email and I feel no obligation to respond. She is constantly working at trying to increase the contact but it doesn't impact me the same way anymore. Sometimes I completely forget she even contacted me at all (those are the good days). Its taken a few years of working at it, but this is a huge step toward setting a boundary.

In essence, she hasn't stopped her enmeshing attempts at all, but I have changed the way I deal with them. I found my excuse and stuck to it. I continually remind myself that I have the right to contact ON MY TERMS.

I hope that it might be of some help dont give up!