Mum Hypochondriac?

[Chitterchatter48]

Ever since I was small my Mum has had endlessly had something wrong with her. My memories growing up were always Mum being in bed feeling unwell. My Dad was very much the 'panderer' which, now I'm older, I feel she enjoyed. Her own Father was quite a cold character and I feel having my Dad constantly molly coddling was something psychologically she needed as didn't have growing up. Even old school friends I see remember Mum as 'very sickly' and laugh about it. I'm now in my 40s, Dad's passed and everytime I call or visit she has something else she feels unwell with. She's always on the phone to the Dr or trying to get hospital referrals and when she succeeds it always amounts to the same - there's nothing wrong. Yesterday I visited and she got annoyed that I didn't have my reading glasses so couldn't look at her Consultants paperwork he'd given her (but she'd already told me verbatim everything he'd said) he's given her some tablets and will see her again in 6 months. Now she's hounding the Dr for a blood test, but they won't give her one without a bloods form. She loves ringing friends and telling neighbours about her ailments, I feel she has a problem whereby she needs sympathy constantly but I've struck cold with it all, it's been my entire life.
I absolutely know she thinks I'm cold and awful, but I'm worried one day it will be cry wolf and I won't know if something is really wrong.
I text her last night but she didn't reply for a few hours. I know from past experience this is a ruse to get myself and DH panicked into going round or ringing a neighbour to check on her for attention, but I've given up. Obviously I do worry because she's 80 now - and one day it will be true and I'll live with guilt.
I've no idea why I posted this really. I guess to vent. Does anyone else have a permanently ill parent?
Oh, and I saw my 82 year old neighbour yesterday who was going to Pilates then driving to Wales for a holiday! How I wish my Mum would alter her mindset from frail old lady syndrome to making the most of life - she's very switched on mentally, so it's definitely a mindset thing, but it's wearing me down!

Yep, my DM has massive health anxiety, but she never used to be like this.

My MIL was very like this. Poor health one-upmanship. Without fail if conversation turned to someone having a health issue - she had had it, only worse.

In her case it wasn’t anxiety, although there was some of that, it was also attention seeking.

It wears you down.

She had a parent child relationship with your DF.

She now wants one with you where you are the parent.

Don't play the game.

Thank you for my post. My mum is like this also, I believe that it is possible my mum doesn’t have hypochondria but maybe manchussens though. She seems to actively want to be ill as she enjoys the attention and drama. I try to grey rock any conversation about health issues but I’m very low contact for this and other reasons so it doesn’t have the impact on me that it does on other family members.

I wonder would it be worth getting her an appointment with a Geriatric mental health professional. This is something you can't help with. It's beyond your skillset

I also try to steer conversation away from any health issues. It's not my nature to be uncaring and so I feel constantly guilty when I don't message or ask how she's feeling, but I'd just be asking the same question on repeat. Her neighbour has just had a cancer diagnosis and so obviously people are more concerned with him at the moment which has upped the ante on her ailments. Sometimes I feel like screaming at her that she's had every test/scan/blood test known to mankind and there's NOTHING WRONG!! Obviously I don't but inwardly I am!

The reason I suggested the mental health side of things is, your mother is very unwell. This behaviour has been life long, you are using reason with her but she can't be reasoned with because her way of thinking isn't logical. My own mother is a retired psychiatric nurse and she would have dealt with this a lot in her career. If you speak to your gp and look to having her refered , a geriatric team will assess her. Otherwise this pattern of behaviour will never change sadly. Just to add, it's very scary for the person too even though they are driving you crazy. They genuinely believe they are ill or will be. It's compulsive obsessive behaviour

It sounds to me as if she has mental health problems than actual physical ones , but I can hear your frustrations and it seems the medical profession just say ' bloods are fine ' and leave her to it , when it's obviously something else wrong with her that would take time and effort to unravel , but nobody has the time to get to the bottom of it all.

I think hypochondria is what is now more accurately called “health anxiety” which is a genuine belief that something is wrong. What you are describing feels different, possibly more in line with personality disorder.
My great aunt was like that and it didn’t end well. She was “sickly” her entire adult life, started taking some sort of tablets without prescription (sourced it from another family member). She had a fall and broke her elbow at the age of 60 and stopped leaving the house. Told everyone she was going to die at 67. When she was 70-ish and told her long-suffering husband that she is going to die this year, he finally told her “darling, let’s agree - this year it is either you or me”. She ended up calling everyone telling he is an arse and then took herself to bed and never got up. He spent the next 8 years waiting on her hand and foot. Eventually she decided she wasn’t ill enough and decided to stop eating and died from dehydration a short while after. It was a horrific situation for everyone involved, most of all for her. I can’t believe she wasted her life like that.
I have very fond memories of her nonetheless but, sadly, I am the only person in the family she managed to have a good relationship with.

Could she possibly be neurodivergent with a special obsession on bodily symptoms? Women from that generation were literally never diagnosed and many aspects of ND manifest in odd ways. ND is often linked with poor or acute perception of bodily symptoms, sensory issues, rumination and the tendency to obsess over one thing. Covert narcissism (not the same but very similar outwardly with autism) also often manifests as hypochodriac manipulation. They use their health issues to blackmail others into doing things for them or for an endless source of narcissistic supply.

A big disclaimer now that some sufferers are genuine, but in modern times you see a lot of similar behaviour from the Long Covid community. Many are ND or covert narcs who have fixated onto one condition (which obviously nobody can prove you have or don't have) and convinced themselves they are gravely ill. The telltale sign is an odd dichotomy between desperately wanting to be better but simultaneously making their chronic illness their whole personality and enjoying the attention that comes with it.

My df is like. He's utterly delighted when he's ill. I don't understand it at all.

My late mil did have ailments with her back , but it was her mental health that forced people away and although I can ' see ' it now ( she was a narcissist) I couldn't back then.
She also ' took to her bed' for years and drove her daughter away.
A very difficult woman to deal with all round , but maybe she'd have much more sympathy these days ? She was with a therapist team for years , but they just gave her meds and left everyone else to pick up the pieces.
Hope you can get to the bottom of your mums problems op , but not everyone is sympathetic or willing to help and any kind of referral for MH issues probably takes a long time too( if it is this)

Also wanted to add that my mum is the same. She was/is obsessed with temperatures and worrying about catching a cold. She would deliberately go outside when it's cold and then convince herself she's ill and somehow make it the fault of everyone else and demand the attention that comes with it. She's also a very solitary person and insists on staying home alone and having everyone leave her alone. But at the same time we are not permitted to enjoy ourselves with the awareness that something is wrong with her (if that makes sense). Your mention of her ignoring your text in hopes of making you worry more sounds similar to that.

My late mother was widowed quite young and had a history of anxiety. She relied on a sibling who moved away and from then on I would ( whilst getting ready for work kids fed and struggling with poverty and physical ill health myself) receive a morning phone call about the state of her bowels . Nothing wrong just that I had to be told . I tried to help and I did listen but she appeared to have few interests other than illness . She later developed arthritis but couldn't accept that she was getting older .( not that being old means you should accept being ill ) but she couldn't see why it would happen to her. Anyone ,her friends or relatives,mentioning they had any problems at all were dismissed . I challenged this once and she told me she " musnt be worried"
I later found out that her own mother had eventually died following a miscarriage and not receiving any medical care .Her step father was disabled and they had an awful childhood .
Oddly in her later years she did become seriously ill and approached death with immense courage and good humour . She became interested in others and the world around her in a way she rarely had before.

My own late mum had her own theory that the ' change ' ( menopause) could make some woman much more sensitive or make their mental health worse ( probably more to do with thyroid issues I would have thought too?)
We do change so much and with hormones all over the place , it can't help matters
I think there's more awareness of this now and I've heard HRT as being a life saver for many these days.

If she actually believes she is ill, it's health anxiety/hypochondria in which case she needs professional help to deal with this.

If you think she knows she's not really ill and likes the attention then that's more maunchasens.

I have health anxiety and hate being told I'm doing it for attention. It's not. It's literally how my brain thinks! And I hate it.

My mother is like this and always has been.

In her case, she doesn’t remotely have health anxiety, it’s purely manipulative attention seeking behaviour. She’s as fit as a butchers dog and knows it.

She saves the “big gun” illnesses for times when someone close has had the temerity to challenge her or stand up to her. This behaviour has been going on since she was a child.

My SIL is exactly like this! It drives me mad!! She never has just a cold, it’s a very SEVERE cold, she monitors her blood pressure twice daily and phones to report what it is (‘medical household’) she has a headache and worries she’s having a stroke, she has blood tests/scans/X-rays doesn’t believe the results are normal ‘they’ve definitely missed something’ back to the Dr she goes….she’ll no doubt live to be 110! As my grandmother used to say ‘creaking gates hang the longest’

That's true. The people who make a point of saying things like, 'this will be the last time I will see the leaves fall' tend to be the ones who are still saying that 20 years on.

Just say "mum you're 82, just try and make the most of the years you've got left" be firm, no pandering.

Exactly! Most of her Friends have either passed, have alzheimers or in a care home etc, meanwhile my Mum seems so much younger and is very switched on. It's almost as though the more she invents illnesses, the more frustrated she gets being well!