Help!
My mum is old but in good health for her age.
She's always been a 'worrier' - catastrophising about everything especially anything to do with travel but at the same time has a lopsided perspective- ie won't go on a longish journey with my brother who holds an Advanced Motorist cert, but she will go out on local trips with her 80+ yr old friends who are terrible doddery drivers.
Just giving you the picture.
She's begun to get worse with her anxiety. I live a long way from her and drove home recently. I was stopping to see a friend en route for a cuppa, and mum casually asked how long I'd be seeing her for. I gave an estimation.
Later that day mum was calling my DH to see if I'd arrived back, had he heard from me, she'd heard the weather might be getting worse etc etc and this was all down her to her 'estimation' of when I ought to be home.
I always tell her that I will call her as soon as I arrive home and I DO!
My brother is going on hols soon and she wants him to call her daily to say he's okay.
Once, a couple of years ago, I was staying with her and went into town to shop etc and said I might have a walk along the river bank (busy- tourist destination.) She was calling me on my mobile, asking if I was okay as I didn't come back when she expected. (I was sitting in a cafe having a cuppa.) I wasn't even out long, just longer than she 'thought'.
She thought I'd been murdered ( she didn't say that, but that was her train of thought- me on a riverbank, must be attacked.)
Years ago when my DCs were young and DH travelled a lot, she'd call me in the morning to check 'we were okay' joking had we been murdered overnight.
It's exhausting. The back history is that years ago when I left uni, I left home and moved 300 miles away (partly as that is where the job offer came from) but ALSO because she was suffocating then, I had no privacy, she wanted to know all my movements (with boys/men) .
Even now in my 50s I feel she is keeping tabs on me in a way that I resent.
She does things like calling my brother - who works 30 mins drive from his home- if there is bad weather, to ask if he's got home okay.
There is caring and there is obsessive behaviour like this.
If she was younger, I'd suggest CBT or something but even now me and my brother are worried that she is going to make herself ill with the stress she puts herself under with these dark thoughts she has.
Is there anything we can do? I feel if I talk to her she will just dismiss her behaviour as being 'caring' but it's more than that- it's like a MH issue.