Well, I just don't even know where to start today. I just had a huge blowup with my mother over how I've been "leaving them out of my life" for the last year, which I would consider to be the most emotionally healthy thing I've ever done. Actually, what happened was, I've been taking a class on codependency at church, and I've figured out that my mother has narcissistic personality disorder. This means that everything has to be about her - her thoughts, her feelings, her way of doing things, her needs, her attention, etc. And combined with my being an only child and a perfectionist, I could pretty much never measure up to meeting that bottomless pit of needs that she seems to have in order for her to be happy. This unhealthy relationship had continued into my adulthood, and got especially creepy since I had children, when she would call and tell me to put a coat on my child because it was cold outside! It continued to get worse until somehow 2 years ago I ended up quite by accident in this class (by the grace of God) and became free of her hold on me. It's been absolutely wonderful to learn that I don't have to please her, I will never please her, that she is sick, and I don't have to try and make her well.
Now, fast forward to tonight. My parents are here to "help" me with the fallout from my husband's abandoning me one week ago tomorrow. We are sitting around the table after the kids have gone to bed, and somehow the conversation turns into a major hissy fit about how much I have hurt them over the last year by "pulling away", how I am never nice to them until I "need something", and she is crying and yelling, and once again it is ALL ABOUT HER. No surprise there. So I try to explain what I've learned. "That's just psychobabble!" she says. And my poor, henpicked Dad just sits there and tries to calm her down. Once she is this far gone, there's just really no reasoning with her. So I let her rant and rage, and, like a 5-year old out of control, she spews out all her bitter venom, and then calms down. Now she feels better.
But how do I feel? Like I have a 5 year old for a mother and a 13 year old for a husband.
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3 comments:
I am so sorry you're having to deal with difficult family the same time as you're dealing with everything else. It just seems unfair. (but then again, as we've learned, life certainly isn't fair).
Lucky for me, my family will be supportive. But your mother sounds just like my mother in law. It's going to be a brutal next few months, isn't it?
Hope you are able to find some measure of peace and calm in an increasingly chaotic world.
I will add you to my blogroll, if that's ok with you.
My mom's the exact same way! I can never meet her standards and nothing I say or do is right! It's always about her! & how my sisters and I are so rude to her, and even if we try to be nice, she ignores that and rants and raves how she would have never treated her mother that way! I'm only sixteen and I have to constantly deal with a dysfunctional mother! She recently cheated on my steod dad with the man we live with now. She's very unhealthy in relationships... Nothing ever works out for her, ir she won't let it. She's oh so very selfish, and I always feel like I treading on thin ice around her. If I so much as breathe wrong she freaks out. She's very dramtic, and I guess it doesn't help she's a recovering drug attic. I just need some extreme help, and she does to. I'm afraid of ending up like her, and I can't stand to see her face... She makes my skin crawl... what do you do when you start to hae the woman who gave birth to you?
Hello there Kaleigh,
We have something in common ... A mother who is a nutcase, selfish etc etc.. so how is it possible for this to not make your skin crawl... Hey I am 32 and I have to deal with this crap till now. But I did have a huge major breakthrough recently and I thought maybe I can share it with you .... It's going to sound obvious but for me it was a major revelation. It's called "GUILT" and it leads to fear and condemnation.
That's what my mother is an expert and triggering in me... until a couple of weeks ago I never actually recognised it.
You really need to get the help of a good Christian counselor. At your age it's impossible to deal with this junk. I have been talking to an awsome lady I met up with her at Bible College (the counceling teacher!) - what she has been teaching me (yeah us guys are a bit slow at this stuff) is how to slow down and identify the emotion that mother's behaviour is triggering in me.
The fact is she is your biological mother but not a mother to you at all. She is not nurturing you - that is a mother's job - to provide NURTURE - lack of nurture is abuse - and I know all about the skin crawl thing ... you a re normal ..
hope that helps
rj
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