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Elderly parents
Original poster

Attention seeking behaviour

27 replies

HettyMeg · 27/12/2024 00:36

Feeling very sad and fed up about my DM's behaviour. She has never been able to cope very well with her own emotions and has used me for emotional support since I was a child. She isn't abusive but she has often exhibited attention seeking behaviours or somehow made a situation about her while disregarding my feelings - this has included e.g. her sobbing in my room on my first day of university because I "snapped" at her. Not wanting to drive to see me in hospital when I was acutely unwell because it was unfamiliar roads but also refusing to take a bus or taxi meaning my DH had to drive her. Ringing me at 9pm, drunk and upset, because her friend was dying, while I was staying in an airport hotel and getting up at 4am for a work trip. The friend's condition wasn't a new fact and hadn't deteriorated rapidly that evening. I share these to give a bit of context. In amongst this she is not an involved mother or grandmother. While these things aren't new, I have come to dislike our interactions as she rarely asks how I am and instead tells me banal stories about people she knows who I don't, or slags off other family members. I've had a lot of therapy this year to deal with anxiety and trauma and have seen the light a little bit and I believe she can sense that something has shifted ie that I am less pliable and willing to be emotionally available. As such she has begun to lash out in passive aggressive ways such as guilt tripping, silent treatment etc.

I often feel guilty without really knowing why, feeling like I'm a bad person, analysing things I've said and done and replaying conversations with her. I find it hard to relax and I'm also increasingly just finding it hard to be around her as I can't help but think about all the negative things.

Can anyone relate and am I being unreasonable for feeling this way?

OP posts:
Interlaken · 27/12/2024 06:02

I don’t think it’s clear OP wants a relationship at all! I think OP wants to escape rather than get further enmeshed in her mothers disordered way of thinking.

It isn’t your job, OP to fix her. She probably has no interest in that. So you need to find ways to emotionally withdraw.
The guilt is a sense of living independently of your mother, and knowing she has to cope with her own emotions.
You are deep in FOG, fear obligation guilt, and part of the FOG, is the fear and guilt at even trying to get out of it.

Lysco · 27/12/2024 05:50

Sounds like a complex history that can’t be solved in a mumsnet chat. I wonder what made your mum into the person she is? Perhaps some trauma in her younger days? Possibly finding out how she is feeling and why she is behaving as she is might help? You clearly want to have a relationship with her, she appears to want one with you. I don’t think any of your feelings are unreasonable. You can only feel the way you feel. There’s a lot of history in your feelings, so difficult to unpick. You mention your first day at uni, that she was sobbing because you’d snapped at her. Maybe she was feeling scared she was losing you, uni often is the start of independence for many young people. Mums can feel suddenly unneeded and feel a sense of loss. I accept though from your position, you needed her support that day/term/year because you were starting a new phase in your life that was likely also scary for you. Your mums friend dying also likely to trigger a fear response in her, particularly as she struggles with emotional situations as you’ve described. Did she know that you were away on your work trip? We often need to speak to people in the moment of feeling that sort of grief/fear. Maybe your being ‘away’ made her feel more lonely? Your mum sounds fearful of your position now, as it is shifting and she is struggling with the change. She is responding with fear and using coping mechanisms, like guilt tripping, to keep you from changing. My position is entirely different to yours, so I cannot ‘relate’ directly to your situation perhaps in the way another person might if they have experienced similar. I have been very lucky to have an amazing mum who gives great advice and is very supportive. I am sorry that your experience hasn’t been the same. You say you mum is a grandmother, not sure if they are your children or a siblings’. But if yours, no doubt you will be able to draw on your experience of parenthood to understand more from both sides of the parent/child relationship. Parenting is hard and we often repeat the mistakes of our parents. Perhaps that is why your mum is struggling to be a good parent to you? Good that you are noticing all this, it will help you ensure you don’t pass on the same to your children.