Does anyone else feel like this re: parents

My mum’s response would be “oh well, it’s not that bad, at least your arms work - when I was hit by a bus I couldn’t walk or move my arms, count yourself lucky that you weren’t as bad as me.” 🙄

I think there is a difference between someone who is not able to give emotional support and someone who actively behaves hurtfully.

It sounds like OP's mother is the latter. If a complete stranger told me they'd been knocked down by a bus I would manage a "how awful; are you ok?" type of response before trying to change the topic as I didn't want to get embroiled in their woes. Not even managing this is just uncaring.

My mum would do that, or more likely find a way to criticise me, blame me or make it my fault. Learned long ago that I can’t talk to her about anything. I am now VERY low contact with her.

I'd never go to my parents with a problem because I know they won't be of any use. It used to make me sad but I've made peace with it. We have a relationship with no drama, no expectations, no disappointment. I love them, they love me, they just can't do emotional support. Why do you continue to call her with problems when you know it will make you feel worse? Are you hoping for change?

Is she autistic? I have known a lot of people with autism throughout my life and this sounds like how they can respond, focusing on stuff that doesn’t matter. Or could be she just really can’t handle emotion due to bad childhood or something?

Can relate. I can’t speak to my mum about anything deep.
She is very opinionated and just cannot take onboard anyone else’s. I have also come to realise that a lot of my bad life decisions were down to my mums advice, so 2026 is all about not asking her opinion on anything unless it’s clothes as she’s quite stylish and does have good taste.
My mum has also only recently started asking me how I am - but doesn’t have a great deal of interest - it does feel quite unusual. She would normally just launch into telling me all about the neighbours daughters aunts cat or Mary from church’s hip operation, etc.

Does your DM expect support from you when things go wrong for her? As in, is it an unequal relationship, or is it more that she's stiff upper lip?
My mum was like this and i had to alter my expectations of her, and accept she was not going to be someone I could go to for emotional support. She would give practical support if I asked for it specifically. Funnily enough she did get better as she got older, and started to at least pretend to be empathetic, although it was a bit superficial at least I knew she was trying.
If she is asking support of you, you can call it out and say come now DM, that's not what we do is it? You'll have to offload to a friend like I do. Do you need some shopping getting in? Reflect her behaviour back at her.

Try to remember that it isn't personal and it isn't a proxy for your value as a person, or her love for you. She just isn't capable

As others have said, she is not going to change. It's best to accept that your mother is never going to be the emotional support that you want and that you will never have the close relationship that your friends have with their mothers. this is really hard to do, so in some ways it's easier to cling to the hope that next time she'll be different.

Accept that your relationship is going to be superficial and talk to her about the weather or the garden but never anything that you actually care about.

I have a mother like this. More often than not, she would just explain why I needed to stop feeling the way I felt and start feeling some different feelings. Or she would just not engage at all. You cannot change her. In fact, I’m sorry to have to tell you but she will probably double-down on her self-centred behaviour with every year that passes. Old ladies do not suddenly develop introspection and empathy.
All you can do is reflect on why you continually feel the need to talk to her about emotional issues. You probably don’t want to accept her limitations because society says your mother should nurture you, But she’s not capable and, to protect yourself, you need to seek support elsewhere.
It’s probably also worth reflecting on why you chose a husband with similarly limited scope to offer you comfort but that’s a question for another day. I know you asked for mother advice, not husband advice. What you need is a good friend and/or a therapist. I know neither of those is especially easy to rustle up but you can certainly stop bashing your head against the wall with people who are consistently unhelpful.

I had to withdraw from my mother a lot as the years went on, as she was so ridiculous, and I sought my comfort and support elsewhere as one does. When she aged and really needed me I did try hard to help as much as I could but it was always so difficult because it's just about impossible to change ingrained ways of communicating (or, in her case, not communicating).

MIL does this a bit, I think she’s just not wired to be emotionally supportive and quite inappropriate with her replies - one memorable one was when when FIL (so her own husband) had recently passed away and then a couple of months later my DF also passed away. She thought it was perfectly reasonable to say to DS something along the lines of well I bet you didn’t think you’d lose both Grandads in the space of 2 months - accompanied by a little laugh! DS & I were gobsmacked so made our excuses and left. To her it was just a cheery conversation, no idea where her head is at most of the time to be honest.

As others have said, I would stop calling your DM in search of support as that isn’t coming, and I think the interactions you are having with her are of no benefit to you.

I have a really awkward relationship with my mum.

She talks about my brother and his girlfriend constantly. I don't say anything as well get along but the other day brother annoyed me slightly so I made a comment to my mum who responded "I'm not saying anything as I'm always in the middle".

I was shocked as I never talk about him and she does! It does imply he says things which may the the case but very self unaware of how much she talks about other people.

For me, it’s DD who couldn’t face negative stuff. This started as a young adult. She has repeatedly got in a mess due to not facing up to facts in life which may feel uncomfortable so she ignores them. This has been for many years.
Currently worn out by her emotional dumping of problems caused by her own actions. I just make the right noises now. She needs to learn for herself. I don’t reassure her any longer, just tell her that it is up to her what she does and consequences will depend on that.

Only posting this as it’s not always the parent at fault.

My DM is a bit like this, not as extreme. She just can’t handle negative stuff, she finds it very distressing. She also thinks giving oxygen to other people’s problems will deny her problems the attention she wants to give them.

I’ve just stopped talking to her about stuff (so now she complains I never tell her anything 🙄).

I have a friend like this and I agree it's often not malicious. Seems like low emotional intelligence combined with childhood trauma.

It seems cruel to me to cut your mother out, as some of the advice here recommends, because she didn't/ couldn't behave in a good enough nourishing way. She still gave a huge part of her life and hard graft bringing you up. None of us are perfect mothers, and many of us know what a struggle it can be having children.

You cant change your mum or your husband, but you can chose not to be around either of them.

We can't change others, only ourselves.
Time to start thinking about you, and whats best for you alone.

Hope you feel better soon.

I empathise. My own mum has low emotional intelligence - which I think links to what you've described.

When I was a child, a close family friend, who I spent a fair bit of time with, died. She chose to break the news to me by saying in an off hand way 'ah well, [other relative] will be sad, because [family friend] has died!'. She simply couldn't come out and tell me properly.

She has a good heart but is pretty clueless how to deal with many situations in life...

My mum is another who couldn't seem to deal with anything that I was going through. As others have said about their mums, I don't think it was nastiness, I just think she was not capable of talking about anything that wasn't about her.

I've always had to rely on friends for emotional support as I'm a widow and my mum has always been all about her emotional needs, even when I was a young child.

My mum is more like this:

Me: I have a migraine
Her: I don't get headaches. Not ever, not in my life. Don't you think that's interesting?
Me: I am currently experiencing severe pain. So no, I don't find your lack of pain interesting.
Her: Oh, but it is!

She can only relate if it's something that happened to her. But then my grandparents were very neglectful, I think she's missing a few chips.

My mum is similar only her next question would have been, how did you let a bus hit you? Were you on your phone and not properly looking?
If I have a problem, she's always seeking to find how I somehow caused it. It's really shit so I totally get where you're coming from, OP.

It sounds like, for whatever reason, she's unable to respond in an empathetic way. Was she always like this, when you were growing up? Some people are just not wired that way or they instinctively shy away from emotional conversations because it causes them discomfort (possibly from her own childhood/trauma)

I think it's normal to feel sad that you don't have the relationship with your mum that you would like to. Acknowledge it and accept the reality that you cannot change her and she is not the person to go to for sympathy and support. Do you have siblings, friends etc that you can talk to?

Yes, this. Your mum is incapable of being empathic and nothing you do will change her. There is no magic fix to this, nor is there a magic phrase, it's her core personality. It's akin to you expecting an apple tree to bear oranges - it will never happen because the capability isnt there.

You can't control her but you can control your reaction to her by not building an expectation that she will support you only for you to be re-disappointed and crushed every single time. Dont expect support from her. Tell her generic things about your life but seek actual emotional support from other sources such as close friends or a therapist if you feel it would help.

Hmm. There is an instinct as a parent to want to try and fix things. So you - 'I broke my leg' , if she had said something like, 'oh, but your other leg is OK?' I would say she is trying (in her mind) to solve the problem.

Being generous, maybe she is trying to distract you from your problems by talking about something else.

But people often listen to reply, rather than listen to hear. I also think parents are more likely to do that because deflecting kids' incessant 'asks' can become a habit. Sounds like she's stuck in a dynamic.

I am sorry to read this. I fully understand how you are feeling, I am the same with my mum too, you need to protect yourself, do you have a friend you can talk to?
You need to accept your mother is like this, don't make regular contact with her, be very disinterested when you speak to her, good luck xxx