Elderly parent’s behaviour

[RellieAngst]

I am observing a constant decline, both physically and mentally of one of our 80 year old relatives.

It’s hard to explain what I’m observing but I’ll try.

The thing front and centre of this is their perceived health. According to them, they are chronically ill, got lots of different things wrong with them, and it’s a full time job for them trying to find out what it is. They go to the doctor literally every week with different ailments, convinced they have something sinister wrong with them, and they come away really angry when the doctor dismisses them, and then they go for a second opinion. This ailment then falls by the waste side, and then another one pops up and it’s months long cycle again. Repeat.

The doctor has now got short with them and told them that there is nothing wrong, just old age. TBH this person is not ageing well. They haven’t ever done any physical activity, nor had a great diet, is overweight and unfit. They got very angry and upset at being told it’s just their age.

On the surface this looks like health anxiety but I think there’s more to it than this.

This elderly relative has always been very difficult, controlling and manipulative. I’d say that they had very strong narcissistic traits and I mean that. It’s like as if this person realises they are getting old, and losing control, and they are lashing out. Right now they are only hurting themselves (although their spouse looks stressed out big time) but I think it’s only a matter of time before they start lashing out at others.

When they don’t get what they want from the medical profession they lash out and cause trouble. It gets very nasty. This is the only topic of conversation with them, and it lasts for hours.

I’ve raised my concerns about this persons behaviour with other family members but it has fallen on deaf ears.

I’ve posted this as I don’t know what I am dealing with here, but think it’ll escalate. They aren’t ill, but it’s like Münchausen syndrome.

Anyone else seen anything like this in an elderly relative. For me the most worrying thing is not the fact they think they are sick, my other elderly relatives refuse to accept old age too, but the awful toxic behaviour alongside it.

Gp are fully of the worried well, who are they to you, do you need to be in contact with them.

@RellieAngst sympathy with you. Sadly you have very successfully nailed the issue yourself regarding ’control’ issues. I suspect some of the older generation think going to the GP with what are simply ‘life issues’ will miraculously get them a diagnosis and medication to fix things.

They are a generation who call younger generations ‘snowflakes’ but in my experience-and it is only my experience-many older people have very poor coping skills in terms of dealing with aging. Happened with my parents. None stop comments about how old everyone looked, how their peers were ‘giving up’ and moving to/downsizing to (more appropriate) places to live.

Sadly you cannot medicate difficult people and they rarely mellow with age.

I post this regularly- it is a great help https://outofthefog.website

Thank you BlueLegume

That’s what I’m worried about. In the past this person’s narcissistic behaviour has been pretty awful but I managed to deal with them. However this behaviour is bizarre.

Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with this person, but they have everyone running round after them like they’ve 6 months to live. The bitterness is growing and I fear them reaching a point where they lash out at us.

I just wondered if this is a common elderly tactic for someone with previous narc behaviour?

Is there possible cognitive decline as well? I ask because my DM, who is a similar age, has a very similar obsession with her health - there's a collection of whack-a-mole symptoms that never get diagnosed. She doesn't have a history of narcissism - she's lovely - but she does have a history of anxiety. She also (I suspect) has early dementia, and her memory and cognition are starting to struggle significantly.

I think that part of the reason for the health obsession is that she now genuinely finds it hard to get a perspective: she can't really get a handle on the frequency or severity of her symptoms, and she's beginning to lose full command of the language to describe them (I don't mean that she's anywhere close to properly losing her speech, but she does forget words and loses her way in sentences). She can get quite angry and snappy these days, and I think it's really just fear, anxiety, frustration and loss of control, as she knows what's happening to her but doesn't fully understand it, and can't do anything about it.

With her, it's just desperately, desperately sad. Every conversation now revolves around her health problems (perceived or real), because she has nothing else going on in her life, and because she can't remember what she's already told you from the last conversation. She does still ask about the kids etc, but she struggles to keep those conversations going, because she doesn't really know how to chat easily any more, or to sustain a really meaningful dialogue for very long - so everything goes back to her health, and when she's exhausted that topic she just wants to end the conversation.

This may be irrelevant to your relative - but it might not. Although DM's cognitive decline is quite obvious now, it was only just beginning around the time her health obsession started.

Sadly the elderly can use health and its decline in old age as a weapon to manipulate others , gain attention and sympathy - it isn’t specific Narc behaviour it can be for a variety of reasons, cognitive decline, fear of growing old, fear of losing control, wanting attention as their friendship circle declines. I had a relative who did this, it’s draining , exhausting and such a waste of the health professionals time - particularly when it is so difficult to get appointments for the genuinely ill.

In the end my siblings and I dealt with it by applying the grey rock principle. We took little interest just acknowledged and changed the topic. Declined to get involved in collecting meds / ferrying to appointments and insisted they organised getting prescriptions delivered and organise taxis / hospital transport for their appointments ( where we could see it wasn’t needed - helped assess as one sibling was a health professional ) Eventually when they realised they weren’t getting the attention, the GP was telling them it was just old age and it was inconvenient strangely the symptoms got less !

The key was all siblings and Grandchildren were on message and consistent in our approach.

Not to this extent but relative around same age seems to have life increasingly revolving round health issues/ seeing or trying to see metrical professionals. Started to wonder if this is how it is when you get older

I don’t remember my grandparents acting like this. I spent a lot of time with them. One had diabetes. I never heard them moan about being ill, or going to the doctor.

It doesn't sound like factitious disorder, previously known as munchausens.

Sounds like health anxiety or just getting older and feeling shit most of the time because of being 80 and knowing that at that age, they're at high risk for virtually every serious health condition. Or a combination of all.

I know someone like that in her late 30s. I wouldn't even call it health anxiety with her, as someone mentioned upthread, GP surgeries are full of the worried well.

My brother is a bit like that with my parents. Keeps contacting the GP about life problems they have then moans that theNHS is useless because they can't force mum to wear hearing aids, stop doing stupid stuff, magically fix her dementia.

Not the case with my parents nor in laws, nor even what I remember of my grandfather nor OHs grandmother. All barely went to doctor or hospital unless specific conditions, never made a big thing of their declining health - just got on with dealing whatever illness etc they had with minimal fuss even through serious things like cancer, hysterectomy, hip replacements!

My grandmother was a different kettle of fish - nothing actually wrong with her, no diagnoses etc, but would take to her bed regularly, insisting doctor came out, bad back, bad leg, bad shoulder, etc. Loved playing the invalid and martyr to get attention. Pretty sure the GPs gave her placebo drugs/injections to stop her calling them out. She was perfectly mobile, took the bus and walked places she wanted to, but never made her own way to gp surgery - always too poorly when she wanted the gp!