To uninvite my mother for Christmas?

[IsThisYourSanderling]

She will probably end up coming anyway, as we already invited her, but oh how I wish she wasn't.

Reasons she should come:

• We had a baby in September, it's her first grandchild and his first Christmas
• When he was 8 days old she travelled up to help us on short notice (when I realised we were completely out of our depth) and stayed for nearly three weeks, doing laundry and other less than fun tasks. It was a lifesaver.
• She'd have a shit Christmas if she can't come here.

Reasons I don't want her to come:

• She has extreme paranoia issues that make her very difficult and often miserable to be around, you have to creep around on eggshells and she'll still find something to latch onto as proof you're conspiring against her.
• Her main thing is to accuse me of betraying her, conspiring, talking behind her back to relatives I haven't seen in years, etc. She brings it up whenever we're alone and won't believe me no matter what I say or do. When she was last year I had to leave the room with my newborn attached to my breast because she'd started attacking me about my supposed contact with my grandmother and uncle (I'm not in contact with either more than a card at Christmas, not that it should matter). She proceeded to follow me to my bedroom to keep going with the accusations. It's like this every time she visits, but I didn't expect to get chased around the house while breastfeeding a three week old.
• She's a pathological liar. These vary from extreme and damaging lies I won't ever really forgive her for, to silly ridiculous lies aimed at saving face, to lies that allow her to effectively pocket the occasional tenner here and there. It's a terrible bore and if you call her out you'll always regret it.
• Her latest thing is this: I suggested my husband and I get her a railcard so she can travel up to see us more (long train journey). She replied to say it wasn't like me to make practical suggestions and that I must be being coerced (she's always been obsessed with the idea of me being brainwashed/ coerced - even though I'm now in my thirties, have a PhD, a husband and a child, I still apparently am being brainwashed and marshalled against her by influences I do t understand...). So, friendly offer of railcard = getting accused for the millionth time of being coerced. Fuck that.
• She never, ever apologises for anything ever, and so me asking for an apology has been met with silence. What will happen now is that she'll refuse to acknowledge me for a while, then send a breezy text pretending nothing has happened so as not to endanger her Christmas up here. So far she has been giving us the silent treatment since Wednesday evening, when I asked if she would apologise or if she still thinks I'm being coerced into handing out railcards. She hasn't asked about her ten week old grandson once. She hasn't looked at his Instagram page (set up so she and in laws could see pics of him regularly) because she'd have to use the library computer and is too suspicious of the librarians, who must be spying on her. Her delusions and paranoid suspicions are more important to her than her only grandchild (and much more important to her than me).
• Her expectation will be that I shut up about the coercion thing, pretend it's fine that she withheld interest in my and my son as a punishment, and go ahead with our jolly family Christmas. I don't want to. I don't like being around her. But the guilt of telling her she's no longer welcome is pretty huge, because it means her having an absolutely shit time at her mother's (she lives with her mother and they hate each other)

So yeah. WIBU to uninvite her?

Forgive typos. I tapped out this entire saga with my thumb whilst breastfeeding.

I wanted to say how well you've done to come through such a difficult childhood and remain a kind, well balanced person.
My DM has some similar issues and I have long given up hope of expecting change.

Those saying talk her into seeking help/admitting there is a problem have no idea how impossible this is.
I accept DM as she is but it does place limitations on our relationship and my DCs' exposure to her.
I wish things could be different and I can't help but feel guilty that she's on her own but it really is her choice.

I think you have to have her this year. Will she accept boundaries you put in place for your own sanity or, like my DM, view them as a red rag to a bull?

But if she comes to you for Xmas,what about her mum,your grandma left alone at home?? You said they live together

"Those saying talk her into seeking help/admitting there is a problem have no idea how impossible this is. "

very true.
though remarkably my mum is getting a bit more insight as she ages.
I cannot tell you how surprising this this.

re boundaries, we've always had them more by achieving physical distance than any success whilst in the same building!

Oh that sounds like such a difficult situation.

I think I'd grit my teeth and get through this Christmas with her, I'd be concerned that she may have a serious breakdown if she's on her own at Christmas. I'd imagine it will make her paranoia go into overdrive if you uninvite her. What's she like with your dp?

After Christmas try to have a serious talk with her. Could you send her some leaflets on ppd for her to look through on her own or would that make her worse?

I feel terrible for both you and your dm.

"SukeyTakeItOffAgain
lougle it's very easy to say things like that if you've not experienced someone in your family who acts like this. It's genuinely exhausting and has you questioning all sorts of things about yourself."

You say that as if you know I haven't experienced this in my family?? What qualified you to make that assumption?

The thing is, even if the OP' s mum wanted help, there is precious little help to be had - it could take years and years.

Forgive me but your post suggested to me that you hadn't. You're saying I was mistaken - I apologise. Nothing "qualifies" me except three close family members with moderate to severe mental health problems - I said on my first post I don't have mental health qualifications as such.

At the risk of seeming like a troll (thread developing in real time!) I have had a communication from her this evening, of sorts. Got a letter in the post (our post arrives at 4pm...) from my grandmother. It had been opened and resealed, which my mother does to all my grandmother's communications with me. Inside was a Christmas cheque for me and my baby, with a chopped up segment of her letter. Why send me a chopped up bit? Why not just pretend there was no letter? To open my mail, vandalise the contents and then send it on seems like an escalation in her behaviour - an aggressive act. And I should still have her for Christmas? I really don't know now, it's getting a but awful.

Side note: I've always hated how she accuses other people of going through her stuff, but is quite happy to intercept my mail.

That must be very hurtful Sanderling and I'm guessing is one of many similar upsetting incidents.

If it's possible, please disregard the 'but it's your Mum' type of posts on here. Some people just don't get it.

What's important is that you do what would be best for you and your immediate family - by which I mean you, your DS and your DH. Have a think about what you would actually like to do at Christmas and not what you think you should do.

I'm veering to the side of uninviting.

This strikes you as the behaviour escalating, so who knows where that will go?

Do you know who her Dr is? While they won't discuss your DM with you, you could send a letter or email explaining your concerns about her behaviour, and apparent escalation.

That's starting to be a lot more disturbing isn't it? I don't think I'd be having her for Christmas. Are you concerned about your grandmother? Maybe that could be a way in with the GP - that you're concerned about a vulnerable older person.

Uninvite

Seriously, if she has mh problems as seriously as it sounds, it sure as hell isnt your job to be a healthcare professional.

She might be 'family' but you are under no obligation to put yourself in harms way. If she gets help(vanishingly unlikely I realise) THEN you can look at rebuilding. But not until.

At the end of the day, you need to make a decision you are least uncomfortable with. There is not going to be a comfortable decision here and a hundred posters validating your decision to uninvite won't achieve what you want it to - you'd still feel awful. But perhaps less awful than you'll feel with your Mum there at Christmas; only you can know, deep down.

I'm not saying you have to have your Mum, or that her behaviour should get a complete pass because it has a MH origin. I'm simply saying that you can't ascribe malicious intent to genuine paranoia, because genuine paranoia perceives the situation to be real.

But it's more than paranoia isn't it? The OP has described all sorts of toxic behaviours.

It's terribly sad and frankly it's not a question of "getting it". Too many of us get it all too much.

For most of us there is a fine line between the mh issues being tolerable or intolerable and the person with the mh issues can cross that line many times.

The OP is going to pay a price whatever she does.

I think it would be great if the OP could make progress with her FUG, especially guilt. I don't feel guilt about my mum because her issues are not my fault and this is why I can continue to interact with her without further damage.

That's very true eyelevel. It's not a situation with an easy or simple solution.

"But it's more than paranoia isn't it? The OP has described all sorts of toxic behaviours."

It depends if the behaviours are a direct consequence of the paranoia. For example, the letter: It could be that the original letter contained stuff the mum was paranoid about, so she cut out the offending bits, sending the rest, which happens to be very little. But the intention wasn't to deface and destroy the letter, or invade OP's privacy - it was to remove the stuff that she was alerted to by her paranoia.

But the lying, the denial, the refusal to apologise, the ignoring followed by breezt texts as though nothing has happened and so on?

Thanks flippanda x

The letter situation is tragic.

I think all these threads are about trying to get to a place of strength. For some of us that does mean cutting contact, other not.

I think getting to a place of strength is more important than the contact/no contact decision which is often not permanent anyway.

Ignore the "But it's your Mum" brigade. I suspect that many of them have zero experience of what it is like to have a parent like this. They aren't just 'difficult' they are nightmarish and there is no respite from it. The fact that she lied to you for years that your Father was dead only for you to find out the truth too late because he had subsequently died after trying to find you, is something that I would never forgive her for.

In your shoes OP I would do two things:

Contact your GM to thank her for the cheque and advise that you didn't get her letter.

Dis-invite your Mother and explain that you are so unhappy with her behaviour that you cannot accommodate her in your home.

You feel bad for leaving her alone at Christmas. YOU aren't the reason she is alone - her behaviour is.

And for those suggesting that she's sectioned, do you have any idea how hard it is to get MH provision now? The waiting lists are huge and quite frankly the infrastructure isn't there. The murder of Donald Lock is a tragic example of this - the Mother of the person responsible had begged for her son to be sectioned and the local Trust refused despite the fact that he had a long history of MH issues.

OP have a look at the Stately Homes threads.

IsThis, reading your description of your mum is the closest I've ever come to reading one of my own. My DM cannot be helped, everyone is out to do her down. Growing up in a house with her was a constant batter against suffocating accusations of all sorts of shit. Luckily for me I have a brother (who got the same crap so we bonded over it) and my DF was relatively normal (though he stayed with her for various reasons, some of which I understand). Everyone has a hidden agenda and her house is littered with cuttings from newspapers where she underlines sentences and add little comments about how the message in the passage links to some terrible betrayal in her own life.

Since the DCs were born she's got so much better. It's also linked I think to my DF dying about the same time and she doesn't like to associate with anyone else. She's pretty elderly now too so it suits her to have a little family company and the rage in her has diminished. I usually have her for Christmas but one year I didn't, I had my own family and thought bugger this to the FOG. She never actually mentioned it through.

The DCs are basically a benign human shield, we can talk about them rather than to each other and she is actually a good grandparent as she doesn't have responsibility for them and the stress which goes with that (one of her triggers). It's funny because when my DBs partner was pregnant with their first child she completely ignored it, no acknowledgment of the obvious pregnancy in front of her. My DB tried to get her to talk about it once during the pregnancy and she dismissed him. When he phoned at half seven in the morning to say the baby was born she just said "I'll get your father". She does love the DCs now and generally doesn't come out with the same nonsense we grew up with in front of them but if she does she knows I don't take any crap now, I just leave and the kids come too.

I'm not sure what I am trying to say here. I was just so struck by how similar your DM sounded to my own and whilst it's far from perfect and we'll never have a normal family relationship it has got better. I know how exhausting it is and I hope yours does too.

Oh, my DM will never apologise either. Nor admit any potential for MH problems (though she frequently claimed my DF's family all had MH problems inc my DF & I and these were not statements that were made to be sympathetic).

Does it bother you that she will never apologise Eddie?

It doesn't bother me- far too many bigger issues.

As someone else asked, what happens to your grandmother if your mum comes to you?