Posted by Danny on June 3, 2000, at 2:33:29
In reply to Mother relationship/therapy, posted by JennyR on May 28, 2000, at 23:56:25
I have cut friends and relatives out of my life, or at least minimized contact for much less severe abuse than you suffered. Put your mother on the back burner and if she keeps misbehaving, put her on the way back burner. You don't owe her a thing. If she really, REALLY, wants to see the kids, she can improve her behaviour. I have seen cantankerous oldsters make changes (unless senile), but they have to be disciplined. And it doesn't always work. Your mother, as you describe her, falls into the "mother from hell" category, which means she's unlikely to change. She's not going to "learn" good behaviour from your advice, only from you saying "If you act in this way, you will be left alone." You have the power. It's sad, in one way, but when you take charge, really take charge, your life becomes much cleaner, more joyful. You'll be happier, your kids will be happier and your mother will be left to deal with the responsibility of a failed relationship. And I'm not downplaying how hard it is. You've been in this pattern a long time, but you're aware that she's not changing so you're half way there. I know it's hard and I wish you the best of luck.
> I'd like to know if others have shared this experience and how you've dealt with it.
> Being in therapy seems to have forever changed how I feel about my mother. She was a very vicious, angry woman when I was a kid. SHe had a lot of grudges against a lot of people, including two sisters of hers that she had no contact with at all (therefore I never knew two sets of aunts, uncles and cousins). She didn't interact much with me and I was mostly left to my own devices. She was very quick to anger and hit me a lot. She sometimes hit me with an electrical cord that left welts. We didn't do much mother-daughter stuff if any. My father and brother were fanatical baseball fans, but I was mostly left out of that as my brother was 6 years older. My father didn't interact much with me - I don't think he knew what to do with a girl.
> My therapist really emphasizes the past, so he is forever relating why I do certain things or feel certain ways to the past. As a result, I have a lot of very bad feelings toward my mother about how mean and unreasonable she was. How all those growing up years there was no closeness, and she had to be right at any cost. She could never admit she was wrong or apologize, just bully one way or another til she won out.
> Now, in her old age, my mother is more bitter and vicious than ever. She doesn't have a kind word about anybody, gets in angry confrontations with people. Because of remembering the past so much in therapy, I now have very little tolerance for her and want little to do with her. But because she is old, I do maintain as much contact as I can, particularly because she is always saying she misses my kids, even though when she sees them, she barely interacts with them. she is always bitching and complaining and trying to lay guilt on me about not calling enough, not seeing her enough. The times I confront her on the mean and inappropriate things she says/does, she lies, denies and attacks viciously. It tears me up. I want to back away for my own self-preservation. Then I'm a bad daughter for backing off. She never apologizes or admits the nasty stuff she says and does. It's supposed to just evaporate by the next time we speak, only I can't operate that way.
> I know I'm rambling, but what I need to figure out is this. If you realize in therapy that a parent was pretty shitty to you, and you are all shaken up about it, and can't shake those feelings, and they are still a lousy person and you're even more sensitive to it because you've dredged up the past so much, how do you deal with them in the present? Paricularly when they are old and there is not a prayer they will ever develop a shred of self awareness, and to them it's always everyone else who is the problem? How does all the awareness from therapy help when it just makes the present with that parent harder to bear? If you back off, you feel guilty. And if you keep subjecting yourself to their various forms of verbal and emotional abuse, you know you are harming yourself.
> Thanks
poster:Danny
thread:35043
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000526/msgs/35800.html