My mother is upset with me because I didn't go to help prepare the turkey for Thanksgiving and she feels that I didn't sympathize with her when she was crying on the phone yesterday.
Let her feel her feelings Wmm, including the crying. They are
hers. Just because she feels them,
doesn't make them yours to feel with/for her. You had a car accident. You had your own problems. She had and has hers. She will try to make her problems your problems, but they are
not, right? She is an adult. Let her self-soothe.
I was exhausted and wanted to rest. I also had an appointment related to my car accident. I told her I couldn't help that day but I would help the next day. She ended up cancelling Thanksgiving dinner because she said she was in too much pain. She then told me she cancelled it because her children wouldn't help prepare the dinner on Friday.
It kind of sounds like your mom decided to "cancel" Thanksgiving because it was too much for her (still recovering from surgery), and because she was unsuccessful at manipulating her kids into doing it with her. It also kind of seems like she may have cancelled it to try to guilt you...? Am I wrong in thinking that she laid some heavy FOG on you regarding the Thanksgiving dinner?
I also don't feel comfortable seeing my family inside. We are in the second wave of Covid right now and we have been told that we should only be close to the people we live with (I don't live with them). My mother doesn't care and wants to get together inside anyways.
Wmm, I would suggest that your own values and rational thinking should guide your decisions, not your mom's feelings. As adults, we must think and make our own decisions, just like our mom's can think and make their own decisions. As different people, the thinking and decisions aren't likely to be the same, nor should they be. In my experience, my mom never thinks about consequences (I actually believe her brain is not wired up to anticipate consequences), so my mom wouldn't be capable of following the medical officers guidelines and deciding that a Thanksgiving gathering is not a good idea because of Covid. She would only be governed by what she wants (which is for everyone to go to her house and do all the cooking work, but then she could brag to her friends later that she cooked a big Thanksgiving dinner for her family). Therefore, as the adult, it is my job to say mom, we can't do Thanksgiving this year because of Covid. She's not going to like it. Where I live, it's not warm enough to sit outside for Thanksgiving, so that's even close to being an option.
I'm afraid to not go because I have such a hard time with her being upset with me.
This is the kicker. I am hearing that you are afraid, i.e. fearful of her reactions. It kind of sounds like she has had a lot of power over you in the past. Does she use FOG to manipulate you to have her own needs met? One of our jobs as children of pwBPD is to differentiate from our parent, and
let her sit with her feelings. I have recovered from a time when I was emotionally terrified of my mom. I had relinquished all power to her, and tried to do everything to make her happy. In a way, I was kind of owned by her. It was a process, but I slowly took my power back, and I'm not afraid or fearful of her anymore, or the things she could say to me. I have a manageable level of contact with her now.
This is kind of a big question, but why do you think you have such a hard time with her being upset with you?
Sometimes we just have to let people be upset. If she's upset because you didn't cook the Thanksgiving dinner with her (after your accident and her surgery), she's probably disappointed, can't regulate that intense feeling of disappointment because of the BPD, and just needs time to get over it. Let her self-soothe.
I was almost going to apologize to her even though I don't feel like I did anything wrong just so she would stop being mad at me. I can't stop thinking about her being mad at me. What should I do?
Don't apologize. Apologies need to be genuine, and used only when we know and believe we have erred. In all my reading about BPD, the message I have taken away on this topic is to NOT apologize if you have nothing to apologize for. Doing so, just gives them a dose of power, which continues to fuel the BPD.
As to what to do, perhaps the answer is, to do what is in line with your values, and also consider your own well-being.
