My UBPD UNPD MOM won't leave me alone

[Star0009]

Hi
My Mom has always ignored me when she has a man in her life but has always used me as her scapegoat with her whole extended family. My sister still thinks I bullied her as a kid when it never happened but she lived with my Mom in high school when I stopped talking to her after she would physically attack me and sexually attacked me on one occasion. She would then call the cops or her family and they would say be nice to your mother. My whole life it was "look after your Mother and siblings" Since I was like 6 years old. I'm 40 now and try to stay low contact but she constantly calls and texts me Usually its very long and mushy until she doesn't hear from me and then she blows up my phone with waif texts. Her new thing is nobody calls her so her wrist hurts from texting. Also that she is above 65 and needs someone to call her every few days. Again her side of the family who doesn't want to deal with her themselves is now saying her kids should be taking care of her. She has played this card my whole life though and she has more money than all of us combined. We are all struggling to survive. Then she sends threats and waif texts like this one yesterday
"since no one checks up on me?
And I am trying to stay connected briefly each week.
what is my next approach?
It cannot be unannounced visits unless I won the lottery." (she lives in another state)
mom Peace"

This is what happens literally of she doesn't hear from me for more than 4 days sometimes less. When I do actually call her its hell. She cries about her divorce from 5 years ago and how he left her (She stole her husband from her sister while she was dying in a coma). She complains about everyone in the family who I don't want to hear about because they have scapegoated me and shunned me my whole life. She grills me to try to pry into my life. Tries to come up with anything to bring me down like "hows your new apt.? do you have bugs? Its ok if you do." I don't have bugs... Complains my sister is in trouble and prob living at a homeless shelter. My sister is fine and texts her and living her own life. I tell her this and she say "oh why are you so mean to your sister when I'm telling you she is in some sort of trouble." She is fine and living a very nice life! I talk to her. She even talks to my Mom and says she is fine. etc... I texted my Mom yesterday ' I love her but I'm taking some me time for me and I don't know for how long and to please respect this but I need to get my health back in order'. All totally true. She responded "Absolutely but for how long? How about you copy paste me each week to let me know if you need more time?" Then this morning I get one of these cryptic bizarre BPD texts signed ALBA ( a name she came up with when she ran off with her sister's bf. meaning to her  "Always love B A'ie" To her. Her name is B A not even A'ie. The text goes on about a message she was supposed to give my grandmother a month ago how I couldn't make it over her house but its like written to my grandmother.  I guess to make me feel bad or worry she never told her the message. I dunno. Then she ends the text with saying "its ok yr still a loving daughter.' It was to get a rise out of me.

Bottom line she is nothing but drama and bad energy and she is most fixated on me. When I do call too even after talking to her 20 mins and listening to her complain about people and stir up drama (I can't tell her anything happy bc she will try to take it from me or dismiss it) she won't let me hang up the phone. Sometimes to the point I have to hang up on her only to get a bunch of angry texts or she tries to make me promise to call back again every few days. Then she plays the waif and says I need to do this favor for her. She is all alone. I tell her I cannot do that she needs to get a friend or therapist and she gets mad and says "never mind" Thank god she doesn't have money to come here bc she would be at my door everyday and knocking on my neighbor's doors leaving them things for me or trying to get in on their lives. If she ever found out a workplace she would show up and try to friend everyone there. She wants everyone else's life but is incapable of making her own. It is all control, drama, fights, jealousy constantly, then these super sappy loving texts and emojis. I don't feel guilty like she wants me to feel.  I don't want to have no contact but how do I get her to leave me alone? I need peace in my life right now and everyday even when I'm not talking to her she sends some text to get my attention in some way. Some texts are like entire crazy essays. I figured out how to set my phone to silent with her texts but at some point I have to read them bc I worry I will miss an emergency with my other family or I feel bad or just have a hard time ignoring someone texting me but its like I'm her full time therapist always trying to divert her and calm the storm. How do I stay Low contact and get her to stop harassing and fixating on me and my life?

[Star0009]

Sorry I guess this is too long a post. Bottom line I'm trying to stay Low Contact with my BPD NPD Mom but she will not respect my boundaries and continues to contact me constantly happy, mad, sad etc... no matter what I say. Any ideas how to get her to give me more space?

[Harri]

Hi Star!  I don't think your post was too long.  I have not been able to be online as much though.  Sorry.

About your boundaries... .they are going to work better for you if you build them around how you will respond rather than expecting her to follow your wishes.

So if you want her to stop contacting you so frequently, I would suggest that you take action by not answering every call or text and when you do to set a time limit and then end the conversation.  So say a 5 minute limit when she calls and after 5 minutes, you say someone is at the door, you have to go to the store, etc.   Boundaries work best when they govern your actions and keep the power of enforcing them in your court.  If you make them contingent on her obeying or agreeing to act in a certain way, they will seem to not work.

Make sense?

[Star0009]

Thanks! No prob. I appreciate as always the response. I agree. I guess since she was the one who enforced I always "be nice" I feel rude or mean not reading every text as my brother tells me to do. He is fine just ignoring her because its overwhelming. It is constant with her. I guess it is not mean of me to make up my own boundaries with how often I respond to her texts and read them if she will not respect mine. These boards always help clarify things so much. Thank You. 

[Turkish]

That's just an odd interaction between her and you and your sister, like dramady odd. Sorry, I imagined it like a tv show when I read that part a few times. 

She sounds like a very lonely woman who has been lonely her whole life no matter who or how many people surround her. 

[Star0009]

She is out of a tv show or movie.  She is alway huge dramas and attention and meltdowns. She is very attractive and loud and has no boundaries with people and their lives. She always dreams of riches and stalks yacht clubs and stuff. She is lonely at the end of the day but she doesn't know how to make herself happy.

[Star0009]

She can be very beautiful and loving at times too full of all of the beautiful thing my soul connects with but then the other side of her is dark and scary and abusive. As a kid I used to want to draw her like one of those clowns who is happy on one side and sad on the other. I feel scared of her but once I'm around her I seem to adapt to her energy. It is all really affecting me these days all of this pain and dark energy I feel like I absorbed from my parents. It almost would have been better if it was all bad but then the other half of the good parts of their personality and the loving times they did share also shapes who I am.

[madeline7]

My uBPDM is now elderly, widowed and moved a few years ago to my home town so her "kids" could take care of her. And she won't leave me alone either. She demands a phone call daily, even admitting in her rambling that when she was my age, she was retired (she never really worked outside of the home) and traveling and didn't talk to her mother daily. She does not understand or respect boundaries. She will talk for up to an hour and does not know how to get off the phone. When she was first here, me and my sisters would alternate seeing her. One week she had visits from us 6 out of 7 days and on the 1 day she didn't have one of us around, she went into one of her silent treatments and would then rage. What I have learned is that no matter how much you do for her, it is never enough. It is exhausting and overwhelming. I have started to make long overdue changes in how I am 1. mastering the controlled response and 2. learning to act rather than react. Being here for support has been a tremendous help.

[risingtide]

I'm sorry about the situation you find yourself in.  It's not dissimilar from my relationship with my own mother, although we're 13 years older than you and your mother.

I actually got my mother to agree recently to go to counseling with me.  She quit after two sessions.  I think it's because the therapist knew he likely wouldn't have too much time with us, so was pushing both of us fairly hard from the get-go.  Mom doesn't like discomfort, and will run from it any chance she has.  The good part was mom agreed I could continue seeing the therapist, and that he had the benefit of experiencing her first-hand, so has been able to work with me constructively (third solo visit is tomorrow).

One thing we've worked on is focusing on what I want out of the relationship.  There's a DBT hierarchy for that, asking if you want an objective (something for me), a relationship (assuring it is positive and others feel good about themselves and me), or simply self respect (no real focus on nurturing the relationship - just on maintaining self respect). 

I would love to be in the "objective" arena, but that would involve negotiating with my mom and giving of myself in hopes of getting something from my mother that she's incapable of providing, ie., a stop to the blaming, the raging, the guilt-tripping, the goading, the attempts to turn others against me . . .  I've realized that expecting her to change is a fool's mission. No matter how many backflips I turn, I'll be one short. So then I moved toward the idea of just maintaining the relationship.  But that involves a great deal of being nice, validating, empathizing . . . and expecting nothing in return. I think this would be possible if mom's issues were in the abstract. If she were complaining about friends, or doctors, or neighbors, or life in general. However, like you, I'm the subject of the bulk of her discontent.  I would wind up trying to "actively listen" and validate her along the lines of "so I hear you saying I'm cruel and abusive and neglectful. I realize how hard that must be for you."  It's a Catch-22: the only way to validate her is essentially to admit to her impression of your many failings.  This is where I'm struggling, and why I'm leaning more toward the "self respect" model.

When the goal is self respect, you're to be fair to yourself and your mom.  You validate your own feelings and wishes as well as your mom's.  You're not apologizing for having an opinion, for disagreeing.  You stick to your own values and integrity and are clear on your belief.  I'll admit this is all new to me and I haven't quite sorted out how to deal with it.  But it's given me a framework that I lacked before, which is helpful.