Does your elderly mother worry this much

[Sarahpaula]

I am 36. My mother is 72. She always seems to imagine the worst case scenarios for me in everyrhing I do. She wants me to tell her where I am. She seems to imagine me killed or missing every week. I am at the moment travelling around Mexico and working remotely, But I am 36! She wanted daily contact, I managed to get it down to once a week, but she is always panicking and stressing. I once sent her a text saying i wouldn't be in touch for a couple of weeks and she told me that she thought that some one had kidnapped me and sent her that text.

How do you deal with an elderly, worrying mother. It is exhausting. I don't know if it is genuine worry, or if she uses worry as an excuse for attention and to know what I am up to. she doesn't have much going on in her life, she is divorced and lives alone
.

How did you deal with an elderly worrying clingy mother?

That is another thing that my mother does.

If I say I want lower contact, she will say that I am mentally ill. She will say "Because you were so nice to me a few weeks ago, now you don't want to talk to me, you have moodswings, I think you have bipolar".

Even though I actually think that she has a mental illness.

Then she will tell me I am mentally ill like my father. Who had an anxiety disorder, and they divorced. Then she will talk really badly about my dad, and how badly he treated her. He has passed away. So that upsets me too.

Sigh, reading that back, she does sound really abusive.

Can you just update your Facebook or whatever (If you are into that kind of thing) and your brother can see from that you are still alive and provide the mandatory update to your mother (whom I’m presuming isnt on Facebook - incidentally neither am I so apologies if I am being stupid, just trying to think of a potential solution to stop her worrying and not cause you hassle)

She is abusive, it would seem

Some people never let themselves realise that, you’re doing well

So with low contact, I still have to handle her worrying

No, she has to handle her worrying. You need to handle disengaging.

You need to draw your boundaries and stick to them. Ask your brother for support and tell him not to call. Tell your mother when you will next text, then (reliably, regularly, specifically) text her at those times. Tell her you probably will not send follow up texts - and don’t.

At the beginning I would make the texts fairly regular (like every two days around lunchtime) and then start saying ‘not Tuesday I am busy, I’ll text on Wednesday’ and start adding days on. I think a week is quite long at the begining and you need to work up to that.

In my experience it helps to have stock phrases such as
"Mum's being ridiculous and you know it, I'll ring her once a week like I said, just don't answer the phone if she's bugging you"
and
"I love you but you're being ridiculous"
(Or just, frankly, "You know this is ridiculous, I have to go now...talk next week" as it sounds as if the first bit might stick in your throat!).

And YY to the #whatWouldaReasonableBlokeDo as that often provides, at least, a different perspective. When my rellies wound me up I would channel some sort of amiable middle-manager type with an unfathomable love for say F1, and think, "What Would Steve Do?" as a guide to inching away from the F.O.G while remaining a vaguely decent human being. e.g. #Steve just gives all the nephews money, is blithely deaf to stuff he doesn't fancy,
and cares very little about whether his in-laws like their Xmas presents if they didn't provide any hints :D

You may find the Out of The Fog forum helpful.

outofthefog.website/

I just think that level of worry is not normal I probably worry that much about my DC. So I think the worrying is normal, it's how she deals with it that is not normal. You're 36 - she's had another 36 years of experience on top of the 36 years that you have had. At that age, you look back to 36 and realise how little you knew then (despite your confidence) compared with what you know now. So of course you're going to worry. But you have to accept that they're grown-up now, and have to sort their own messes, and find your own way of coping with your worries.

Not my mum but my dad. I just found myself unavailable and busy a lot so couldn't reply to messages or if I did it took so long to do so. Just sorry, busy can't come round. Still did a few visits a year his birthday my birthday around Christmas & Father's Day but not much more than that. It clearly drove him nuts but I was consistent with it.

If she wouldn't take that the way you'd want it to just stop it altogether. It's your life & time is too precious op. Xx