"Addicted" to people doing things for you?

[Notwendy]

It's become apparent that my mother has an extreme need for people to "do things for her". She has actual needs for some tasks- she needs someone to drive her places, do laundry, assist her in dressing, etc- these are provided by the assisted living center she is in.

In addition she continues to hire people to do jobs that she may not need and also for jobs that don't have a completion. It's the "need for someone to be doing something for her and being the boss of them" that she craves.

It's like an addiction in a way because she can't seem to stop. She finds some excuse to "need" something. Some people are genuinely helpful and others take advantage of her.

Since she's still considered "legally competent" I can't intervene. I did speak to a lawyer about this so I know the limits of what I can do.

Having spent time in 12 step groups, I also know that I am "powerless" over this and she seems to be as well.

I know there's nothing anyone can do to control her as she's self directed, but wonder if anyone's heard of this? I have seen examples of reluctance to hire help. Part of this is relational. It makes sense she wants interactions with people but this is the only kind of interaction she seems to want or tolerate. She needs to dominate and control and no friend will put up with this.

In a way, we- her family- have this pattern with her.  Our relationship consists of BPD mother ordering us around and insisting we obey her. She tells me what to do and I have to do what she wants. If you ask her to do anything, she becomes indignant. You do not dare ask her to do something.

I haven't heard of this kind of thing and wondered if anyone has insight to it? She is primarily BPD but also has NPD traits. This could fit with that.

[zachira]

This sounds somewhat like one of my aunts. Her children found it hard to visit her because she expected them to cook, clean, do her errands, and fix anything wrong with her house. When she needed home health care, all the workers quit because she constantly had them waiting on her with no breaks. She went to a nursing home, despite likely qualifying for assisted living. I was at the nursing home for lunch one day, and my aunt seemed to be the only resident who could carry on a conversation, feed herself, and walk unassisted to the dining room. The staff told my cousins that my aunt was the most difficult resident that they had.
I don't know if the types of behaviors you are describing are an addiction. My feeling is that the need to have someone constantly wait on you, comes from severe deprivation and not knowing how to relate to people any other way. My aunt seemed like a small child who needed to be taken care of like one, unable to do things for herself, and I am not sure at what stage of development she was stuck at. My grandmother, her mother, was unable to relate to small children and had full time help living in her home, never learned to cook, and her demands for full time assistance in everything nearly bankrupted my grandfather.
Perhaps Dependent Personality Disorder might best fit the description of the behaviors you are describing.
I am sad for you. You have been very kind and generous to your mother. I once told myself I could never lower myself to my disordered family members' level,, because otherwise I would not be who I am. I know you continue to help with your mother despite how she treats you because you feel you have to because you are not the kind of person to leave your elderly mother to fend for herself. Still it is normal to keep asking why would a person act so badly that they make everyone around them eventually dislike them.

[Notwendy]

I looked up dependent personality disorder and they tend to be submissive. Some of the characteristics apply but BPD mother has to be superior and she insists on submission while at the same time being completely dependent on the person helping her. It's the strangest thing. She will also put you down. If we tell her to stop doing something that is causing harm to herself she replies " I am not an idiot!" (even if she's the one doing the action) but she also will call you one too.

Maybe it's the NPD and BPD in the mix. There is overlap.

She also acts like a small child sometimes. From what I have heard, her mother wasn't disordered but she had asthma that they didn't have the treatments they have today so there were times she probably wasn't able to be of support. BPD mother didn't grow up deprived though- she was well taken care of. Hard to know what is going on with her.

[livednlearned]

Notwendy, did this get worse as she got older? I'm wondering if some of it may have to do with feeling relevant as she gets older, mixed in with the BPD/NPD traits you mention.

It also seems like a way to keep some chaos balls in the air. I wonder if feels her own emptiness if she doesn't have something going on.

One thing I keep thinking about is how people with no self or a weak self seem to have diminished capacity to self reflect. I guess if you don't have a sense of self, then there's not much there to do the reflecting. But in absence of a strong sense of self, what is going on in there?

I can imagine someone who does not reflect feels terribly empty and has to fill the void with either drama or _________. Maybe for your mom it's jobs so she can be a boss.  

It struck me as odd when my mom would visit how she would get fixated on a task and spend the whole visit searching for something, like some item she found years ago in a supermarket. We would spend days hunting the dumb thing. She would talk to several people in the store and get them to help find it, and then if that didn't work, she would go find the manager. This could go on all week. Or she would arrive and immediately begin talking about how she had to print her boarding pass for her return trip, when were we going to leave for the airport, did we have a printer, was there enough printer ink, where was the website, when would the boarding pass arrive.

One time H and I went on a short trip and my mother flew in to look after my son, who at the time was 11. He wasn't interested in socializing much so I suspect she spent those days more or less living inside her own head. I told H that my mother could get really wound up about things, and when we returned he got to see that when we walked in the door. Her flight didn't leave for 2 days but she was in a full blown state of panic that she couldn't find the boarding pass anywhere on her computer and couldn't print anything out. H is a physician and he sees anxious older people all day long, day in and day out, and after we calmed her down we were by ourselves and he just said, Wow. It's validating when other people see it and think yeah, that's not normal.

I think for my mother it's a sign of disconnection. Not just disconnection from people right in front of her, but disconnection from her authentic self.

She creates jobs for herself, and because she's so child like, even regular jobs are a big deal for her, like getting on an airplane. Then, on the flip side, she fights to be taken seriously. She literally stamps her foot when she's angry. She loves polka dots and pink and the combination of child-like clothing with that kind of behavior doesn't make it easier to see her as a serious adult.

It's like a loop. She is a child, acts like one, isn't treated like an adult, wants to be one, creates jobs.

I don't know if it's a BPD thing. To my knowledge, she doesn't have BPD, her self and her emotions are severely arrested so maybe it's more about feeling desperate to be someone.

[Notwendy]

Livedndlearned- I think you have described this exactly. The emptiness is vast for her. And she seems to be constantly trying to fill it in some way but it's large and overwhelming for her. When she is alone, her anxiety is very high. She feels her needs must be met immediately. To wait is overwhelming for her. If she asks someone to do something for her and they don't respond immediately, she gets upset. So the only people who will tolerate this are people she pays to take care of her or to do things for her.

I don't think it's gotten worse as she is older- she always had this need but as she has aged, she also has an actual need for assistance and in a way this is connected to her emotional needs because now she has a way to validate them. But her emotional needs are in excess of her age related needs.

She, herself, doesn't have her own accomplishments and I think this is a part of it. She was raised in the era where her expected role was to be married and be a housewife. Nothing wrong with choosing that role except that her BPD got in the way of actually doing that role. Also, many women of her era had additional roles that were fulfilling such as volunteer work, hobbies, and she couldn't achieve these. Even if employment outside the home was something common when she married - she would not be able to do that. In a way- the idea that women didn't work outside the home at the time was a more favorable situation for her.


So it makes sense she'd seek validation in other ways but her behaviors are counterproductive. She may feel a sense of power by dominating people but it also pushes them away.

[zachira]

Perhaps goes back and forth between avoidant and anxious attachment.

[Turkish]

My mom was born in 1942, Silent Generation, though she was affected by deprivation since her parents and older siblings experienced The Great Depression. She was orphaned; first at 12 by mom, then at 14, by dad (who raped her and her older sister and beat the crap out of them, especially the boys). She emancipated herself at 16.

Though not a Boomer, she flirted with the Hippie lifestyle in San Francisco in the late 60s. A 1st Wave Feminist, she adopted me in 1974, which was controversial as a single parent then. She drove a 3/4- ton Ford truck in the 70s into the 80s which got her comments.

Mom finally admitted to me that she was likely BPD (and DX'd with PTSD in the early 80s), and Anxiety. Depression I learned in 1989 when she was in major crisis when her baby moved out.

Drama ensued over 2 decades.

My mom would help people, then get taken advantage of. Looking back, this started in the early 80s.

Now? I'd classify this as typical BPD: searching desperately for validation that she was loved, while believing at her core that she was unlovable.

In her elder years, she pivoted to helpless waif: needing rescue, and also presenting herself as an old woman needing it, which she was. A marked change from how she acted  for decades.

At the end of the day, she wasn't a queen, though sometimes acted like it. But she was basically an abused, orphaned girl who was searching for love, so sad.

I and many others who helped her and gave her money were only enabling her, but she, by dint of her situation, helped. And that worked for her to help her survive.

[Notwendy]

Now? I'd classify this as typical BPD: searching desperately for validation that she was loved, while believing at her core that she was unlovable.

In her elder years, she pivoted to helpless waif: needing rescue, and also presenting herself as an old woman needing it, which she was. A marked change from how she acted  for decades.

At the end of the day, she wasn't a queen, though sometimes acted like it. But she was basically an abused, orphaned girl who was searching for love, so sad.

Interesting as my BPD mother has embraced the helpless elderly woman role- and has received a lot of positive reinforcement for this as she is elderly and needs assistance with some tasks. However, when she's been assessed physically- her needs are determined to be at assisted living level. Physically she doesn't need more than the help she gets there. The rest is emotional need.

Her expectations are as Queen but she also now embraces Waif as this gets people to assist her.

"Typical BPD: searching desperately for validation that she was loved, while believing at her core that she was unlovable. "

I think you are correct here.