I can't cope with my mother

[tiredcat]

This is my first time posting. I'm not a mum so I'm sorry for coming on here, but I'd really like to vent to someone. Nobody ever responds on Reddit and I can't talk to anybody in real life either.

I'm home for Christmas and I can't cope at all with my mother. She has been the same way all my life, but for some reason it's getting harder and harder to deal with her hysterics. I'm 25 now and my mother and I can hardly spend one day together without a screaming fight. I know this makes me sound really melodramatic but knowing I'm going to have to face this every time I come home honestly makes me feel like life's not worth living, and whenever I'm home I feel completely overwhelmed and fantasise about hurting myself just to escape, even though I'm not depressed.

This evening, she became really angry over the fact that my father had asked me to pick up some fresh thyme the last time I was in the supermarket, which was about a week ago. I didn't really think anything of it at the time. My mother said that she had planned all of the dinners that we would be eating as a family over the Christmas period and none of them included fresh thyme, and she was furious that my father was trying to interfere with her plans. She started a huge argument and spent probably over an hour ranting and shouting about thyme, dragging me into the conflict by asking me repeatedly why I had helped my father to undermine her and ignoring whatever I said to try to de-escalate the situation. Her ranting escalated and escalated until I got frustrated and told her that the thyme wasn't a big deal, and she completely lost it. She started screaming at the top of her lungs, calling me a demon and a c-word over and over again until I lost it too and screamed back, telling her I thought she was disgusting.

Then, she went to her bedroom and I followed her and told her to give the Christmas gift that I gave her yesterday back (I regret this now but I was lashing out because I was angry.) She threw it down the stairs and I left. For the past couple of hours she's been intermittently silent and screaming that I'm a demon. She's claiming to my father that I punched her and beat her up (I never touched her) and that she can't hear out of one of her ears. She's also calling me an evil witch and accusing me of taking part in seances when I was at university (I never did), calling me a fat b-word, a demonic little b-word, and threatening to call the police and report me for beating her.

Just now, I went outside without a coat or anything, just to escape her for a minute (her shouting is extremely loud), and she locked me out of the house, then stood in front of the glass door goading me while refusing to let me back inside. She opened the door for one of our cats and when I saw it was open I hurried towards her to try to get back inside because I was freezing and she shouted to the neighborhood at the top of her lungs that I had just assaulted her. I was nowhere near her, I couldn't possibly have touched her. She eventually let me inside the house again, pretending that she was too scared to come near me because I'm a dangerous demon.

I know the hysteria and name calling and false allegations are going to drag on for days because they always do; she has episodes like this all the time. I go through this every single time I come home but I feel like I'm reaching my limit now. My father says I shouldn't be so upset by her calling me a c-word and a demon because that's just the way she talks. It really upsets me, though, especially because she genuinely considers herself a devout catholic. Sorry for how long this post is, I just wanted to rant but I'm genuinely considering calling the police sometime soon and telling them everything. She has a long history of violence and when I was a child she used to throw me around quite a bit whenever she was angry but my father says it wasn't as big of a deal as I think. My brother gets really frustrated with me whenever I fight back, and he and my father both say I need to just shut up and deal with it quietly. They think I've completely overreacted tonight. AIBU to be totally unable to cope..?

Where do you usually live and why do you go back and visit?

I'm living in a flatshare and I've come home for the holidays because I didn't want to spend Christmas alone

I voted you are being unreasonable purely because why are you subjecting yourself to her behaviour

She sounds utterly unhinged. Is she actually ok? Could she be suffering from sort of mental health problem? Obviously Yanbu to find this behaviour totally unacceptable and I don’t understand why you are staying there when she’s acting like a complete psychopath.

It sounds very distressing. She sounds mentally very unstable. Does she have a history of hospitalisation for this?

sounds like you would be better off alone than with her, I would go home tbh

She sounds mentally ill and if your father dismisses it as "just the way she talks" then perhaps she has been for some time, Why is no one getting her the medical help she needs?

YANBU to be at the end of your tether though.

Honestly I think you would be much happier to go very low contact with your family and not visit them.

Arrange to meet in public where your mother will be better behaved.

I don't have very many friends (and none who I could spend Christmas with) and my brother and I have never been allowed to have relationships with anyone else in our family so she's pretty much all I have

Your mother is, at best, extremely mentally unwell and a raging, abusive narcissist at worst. You should think about going no contact for your own sanity. Then start building other relationships. You do not have to subject yourself to this treatment.

No, in the past neighbours have called the police when they've heard her screaming but my father has always covered up for her. She's very anti-psychiatry and critical of people with mental health problems in general so she'd never allow herself to be helped

This is abusive. I would recommend going low contact, doing the Freedom Programme to recognise the abuse patterns in the future and cultivating other relationships. Your father/brother minimise and deflect as they would rather you took the blame instead of them.

This is not normal. You do not need to put up with it.

I think she does have mental health problems but there's nothing anyone can do because even suggesting that something might be wrong would cause her to blow up... I came home because I'm not coping very well in my flatshare either to be honest but if I had my own place I probably wouldn't be here

Thank you, I might talk to a GP or something but it all sounds so silly when I try to explain out loud

I’m so sorry this has happened to you. Christmas is often a stressful time and you shouldn’t be put in that situation.

The AIBU forum can be quite tough - you might get some rather unsympathetic answers - please do look after yourself, maybe try Samaritans, or talk to a counsellor for your own mental health once Christmas is over. It sounds like your DM is complicated and you might need some help to sort through all the issues. Do keep yourself safe and try really hard to deescalate and maybe leave early if you can.

I’d be going home. Surely your flat share isn’t as stressful / abusive as this? She needs some serious mental health help. My mum was mentally unwell when I was growing up, when help was much harder to obtain and a lot more stigma in the 80’s than today. She is much better but I find spending Christmas at hers too stressful as she gets stressed and I can’t deal with that. Your mum sounds like she needs some serious help.

It's not obligatory to spend Christmas with other people. Just stay by yourself - watch Netflix, eat something nice - no drama. Honestly, if you try it you'll wonder why more people don't do it.

This definitely

Do you think it would be possible for you to try and reconnect with other family members? Aunts, uncles, cousins maybe? I'd try and build up your network this year so you can go no contact with your terrible excuse for a mother and still have somewhere to spend Christmas.

I wish she could be helped but there is no way she would ever acknowledge that she needs it. My father has no desire whatsoever to try to talk to her about it because of how she'll react.

The reason why I'm not going back to my flat is because we got into an argument about chores last month so I tried to move out and find a replacement tenant and things got pretty nasty. One of my flat mates called me an effing b-word and said she hopes bad things happen to me, so I'm dreading going back there. Two of them have been trying to get me back for not taking the bin out by playing the radio through the night and I can't leave because I signed a fixed term contract. My mother's hard to deal with but at least I can sleep through the night here.

Leave as soon as possible. I wouldn’t be hurrying back to see her either - horrible beha. She sounds deranged and unsafe and your father is an enabler (“it’s just her way” is BS). Stay safe - this is really really bad.

I'm sorry to shut down your suggestion but I don't know if that would be a good idea... On my mother's side, my uncle is a pretty much non-functioning alcoholic, my grandfather is dying, and I have no address/contact details for my aunt because she and my mother haven't spoken since they were teenagers. If I tried to establish any contact with my father's side of the family, my mother would never forgive me because it would be considered an enormous betrayal. Also, my father has always lied to his parents about our family life so I wouldn't know how to explain suddenly wanting a relationship. They all live on different continents anyway so everybody is at least 12 hours away. My mother, father, brother and I are the only members of our family living in England.

I don't think my mother, brother or father would forgive me for not coming home for Christmas. They'd definitely say I was attention seeking and they'd be annoyed at me for ruining the holidays because, despite all the stress my mother causes, we do manage to have a reasonably nice time as a family. We usually go to midnight mass, exchange gifts and eat a meal as a family and they'd be angry if I were to ruin the day by not showing up.

She sounds mentally ill . Your dad and brother are enabling this with their silence buy you must realise this is not normal behaviour. You have a very dysfunctional family and need to distance yourself . Leave now and go back home .

OP I'm so sorry your mother is so awful and abusive.

Christmas alone would have to be better than this. She is going to hurt you if you stay.