elderly mum lonely, not coping but won't do anything to help herself

[spiggyholes]

Hoping for some kind advice. My mum is 85, lives alone but increasingly struggling due to limited mobility and short term memory loss. She's extremely anxious, so tends to blow anything up into a huge catastrophe/stress.

I feel torn in two between having huge sympathy and feeling huge resentment because she refuses any suggestions I or my brother make that might improve her daily life: writing things down to help with the memory loss, reaching out to make small social arrangements, calling age concern help line when she feels lonely at night time (we're usually in bed asleep way before her!) She won't do any of it yet is constantly on the family WhatsApp complaining how lonely and frightened she is. It breaks my heart but also makes me frustrated when she won't help herself in the tiniest of ways. ie: when I suggested calling a local friend to invite her for coffee she said she can't possibly manage that - and yet she can seem to manage to message us constantly about her loneliness. Is my job just to soak up her misery and give up offering solutions? I feel so guilty and stressed out. I also worry that because she flip flops so much between total despair and sort of vaguely managing, that I won't recognise when she's in genuine crisis!

When she messages you ask her (nicely, not bluntly like I'm writing it now) if she wants sympathy or problem solving

Then only give her the one she wants. It's a lot less frustrating!

Would she consider or be able to afford a move into residential care? I had a distant elderly relative like this, whose life had become bogged down in so many worries and anxiety as she got older. She chose to go into a residential home and it was such a positive move - no longer had to worry about house maintenance, cleaning, laundry or meals. Plenty of companionship when she wanted it. Lovely meals and a range of entertainment options, she really blossomed and put on weight.

It wasn’t cheap though!

I wonder if she’s moving beyond memory loss into dementia, or more simply if she’s depressed. If you said you were worried about her, would she see her GP?

Sounds like the start of dementia hence why she can’t help herself.

Has a GP assessed her memory? like others have pointed out, it could be a sign of cognitive impairment.

I sympathise OP! My mum was exactly the same (she used to call though as didn't use a smart phone). Any solution I put forward was rejected, if I arranged something she wouldn't do it, but then the next day would complain she was lonely. She called pretty much constantly about the house needing work or the garden needed doing, but what she really meant was "I want you to be here all the time to do my house and garden". Obviously impossible as I was 3 hours away, have 2 DC and DH and a full time job.

I found the thing that took her off the constant complaints was getting her to remember something from the past. Things like "I remembered the other day when I was little and we went to St Ives beach in Cornwall... do you remember that". That kind of set her memory off on a different path. It's not a solution, but it did stop the complaints for a bit. She did end up going into a care home - which she absolutely loved! There was always someone to talk to, her meals were provided, washing done to her stand etc.

Has she been tested for dementia. Is there an LPA in place?

My DM has told me that when she is frightened in her own home that’s the time to move to a care home. She had extensive experience in geriatric nursing. Maybe it’s time to have that difficult conversation.

I'm wildly tempted to rant about my own Mother here, but I won't, it's not my post. Just want to say, I'm in a very similar position. You are not alone. My elder brother does not get the guilt trips that I do at all, it's saved up just for me. I wish I could give you advise, but I am lost for an answer myself.

Thanks for the replies. She is on wait list for dementia assessment and is just about to do a couple of weeks respite care at a care home. I'm a little nervous as I fear she may look for reasons to take against it in her generally negative mindset (when we looked round she complained it was full of old people! heh heh!) but she has agreed to go & yes I think care home may be what we have to go for in the not too distant future. I do feel sad though that her over-anxiety seems to be shutting down aspects of her life that don't necessarily have to be shut down yet! But there's only so much you can do if someone resolutely refuses to step out of their (very small) comfort zone isn't there.

My mum is like this. She complains she hasn’t seen anyone for days but then tells us about a trip out she’s had or the friends she’s met. Her happiness seems to be dependent on others rather than from coming from within IYSWIM.
Shes given up her main hobby which she is excellent at and can be done at home, but then complains she has nothing to do.
I live a 6 hour drive away and she’s refused to move closer so I’m not sure what she wants. It’s very frustrating.
Ive decided not to react to the drama now and just make sympathetic noises.

We’re just waiting for a crisis now as it’s the only thing that will change the situation.

It sounds very likely that your mother has dementia. And if so, it is not a case of won't help herself - she cannot help herself.

Writing things down to prompt her memory will not help, as she won't remember to look at the written prompt. And it sounds like she has lost sequencing ability, she cannot organise things for herself, even simple things like meeting up with a friend.

She is already in crisis. She is anxious and scared most of the time (that is very common). It's good that she's trying out a care home shortly, because residential care will be able to help with all of these issues.

I’ve found, with the elderly people in my life, that they like to have something to rant and complain about. If you try to fix the problem, they don’t want you to.

You have my sympathies as I have this with my DF and it’s been going on for a few years.

I’ve put so much pressure on myself to solve all his issues that it was affecting my own MH - every time I saw him he would reel off a list of ailments and woes, I’d try and offer solutions and he would nod along but do none of it.

Eventually I realised that I can’t solve everything and need to just let it go over my head to some extent. I started just nodding along and being sympathetic without trying to offer solutions, changing the subject rather than spending an hour going round in circles about his problems and then feeling completely weighed down once I got home.

Eventually he went to therapy (through the GP) and has also been put on anti depressants which have really helped. A lot of his physical aches and pains seem to have alleviated (I suspected they were down to anxiety and seems I was right)

Is your DM on any anxiety meds?

Watching with interest-yet another thread where elderly parents are unreasonable-want their busy probably middle aged adult children to drop everything and ‘parent’ them whilst criticising everything.

We're 2 years in with the same problem, mum says she wants to go into a care home, so we go and look at one , it's really lovely (it should be at £8,000 + a month) but then says she doesn't want to go. We get calls from her at all hours of the night and day , she won't use the electric recliner chair to make it easier to get up. We also suspect dementia creeping in.
I don't know what the answer is but you have my sympathy.

Its a difficult one. I think the suggestion of anti anxiety meds is a good one.

People with memory issues can be very lonely even if they are seeing a lot of people- eg family visiting every other day, because they're living in the moment.
I would doubt the age concern help line would run at night.

A friend's mum is happier in a care home, despite previously living in an annex to her house and having visits daily - because there's always someone around. But care homes are expensive so may not be the answer if she's otherwise coping at home.

I get that with wanting to go into a care home and then changing her mind. The big problem I have is she insists she wants to stay in her very small town with only 2 homes one of which doesn't cater for dementia. She has Alzheimer's, guess which one she insists she wants to go to. The other one is ghastly anyway, definitely god's waiting room. I took her to see a lovely place near me with activities she'd love but "my friends won't come this far to visit". She never sees people outside the organised activities she goes to. She had 2 close friends. One died in May and one is virtually housebound with a terminal illness but mum is convinced she meets up with both of them nearly every week.
So I'm just waiting for the inevitable crisis that will mean she ends up wherever has a place immediately available regardless of where and how she'll fit in.
In the meantime she's switching off her heating and calling British Gas because the boiler hasn't come on on an almost daily basis and managed to flood her kitchen, goodness knows how, 3 times in the last couple of months.
And I'm not local to keep an eye on her.

I'm afraid I also have no actual advice OP but wanted to show some solidarity, and it seems there are plenty of others with similar experiences.

With my DM, she also used to save up her woes/ paranoid theories for me but has since exposed my brother to it, he's put his foot down sharpish and now she's arguing with him about how he sounds 'just like Bluddy' when challenged about her completely outrageous behaviour, some of it captured on cctv. Will not consider winding her neck in, much less counselling or meds. It's not palpitations or panic attack, it's definitely her heart, endless tests, nothing wrong with her heart... Hates everybody and has fallen out with all of us. Won't join any groups for spurious reasons (wrong day of the week, doesn't know what the parking situation is, won't get a taxi, doesn't like the woman who runs it...) Currently she's decided to put her flat on the market and move to the next place up the road. I confidently predict that the next I hear will be a phone call from the hospital saying she's trying her best to have a funny turn. God please don't let me get like that when the time comes, I can't imagine myself putting DS through it...

💐

I'm afraid I also have no actual advice OP but wanted to show some solidarity, and it seems there are plenty of others with similar experiences.

With my DM, she also used to save up her woes/ paranoid theories for me but has since exposed my brother to it, he's put his foot down sharpish and now she's arguing with him about how he sounds 'just like Bluddy' when challenged about her completely outrageous behaviour, some of it captured on cctv. Will not consider winding her neck in, much less counselling or meds. It's not palpitations or panic attack, it's definitely her heart, endless tests, nothing wrong with her heart... Hates everybody and has fallen out with all of us. Won't join any groups for spurious reasons (wrong day of the week, doesn't know what the parking situation is, won't get a taxi, doesn't like the woman who runs it...) Currently she's decided to put her flat on the market and move to the next place up the road. I confidently predict that the next I hear will be a phone call from the hospital saying she's trying her best to have a funny turn. God please don't let me get like that when the time comes, I can't imagine myself putting DS through it...

💐

This is a really interesting observation- I’d never considered that. Mum will say she hasn’t spoken to anyone all weekend but she’s actually been out and met up with a couple of different people. I’ve found if I remind her of that she’ll say it was only 2 hours for the whole weekend, so it somehow doesn’t count in her mind.
She’s always relied on others to make her happy rather than happiness coming from within as as she’s aged this seems to have got more pronounced.
She has said in the past it was my job to make her happy. 🤨

an update: mum went into a care home for 2 weeks respite on Sunday and hates it, already begging us to come get her out. Other residents seem much more 'out of it' than her, she says, and barely even speak to each other, so it's no good for socialising. Ugh, not how we hoped it might go. I just hope that the experience might make her more open to more care visits and befriending services that she's previously refused - now she knows the alternative is defo not what she wants, but I fear that, in reality, she'll soon forget and we will be back to square one. It's so difficult and stressful trying to sort things out as well as deal with kids and work and everything else. Sandwich generation eh?!

Yes I've just been thinking that the inconsistency of elderly parents is one of the hardest things. It's understandable why they're inconsistent but trying to problem solve for them is pretty impossible.

Sorry the care home respite didn't work out. ☹️