How do you cope

[Januarybluesss]

I just need a bit of a rant. I’m struggling at the moment with my mum, she is mid 70s and a hoarder. The house is in a terrible state of disrepair. Just unlivable and unsafe especially for an older person. She does not have funds to fix it, refuses help from outsiders etc but she has mental capacity. Her mobility is getting worse due to a back condition and I’m so worried. She has had issues with hoarding and lack of cleaning since I was a child, it had a terrible impact on my life growing up. I moved out at 17 and never moved back there again.

I’m also finding it sad as she gets angry if I try to get her to see the problem. I am going through my own health issues atm with some worrying symptoms and I feel unable to speak to her about it. We used to be really close. As she gets older I feel more and more like the parent and I hate it, I’m only mid 30s and I feel so old. I’m an only child so there is nobody else to help. My partner is lovely but I keep the worst of it from him because I’m so ashamed. His family are normal and active, his gran is late 80s and still very independent and tidy.

How do I help? How do I help myself as well? I’m so overwhelmed , my dad died years ago so my only close family is mum. If I even mention social services she shouts and gets hysterical saying she will have a stroke. Her blood pressure is high. I feel anxious and on edge most of the time. I look at my friends and I miss the relationship with my mum. Apologies for the essay, I just needed to write it down.

Hoarding is a mental health condition; you can't fix it with logic. Social services won't intervene if she has capacity. The council will only step in if there's a health hazard to others.

You cope by accepting the things you cannot change.

It's hard to step back, I know, but you need to protect your own health.

@ProfessorBinturong is right @Januarybluesss This is not your fight. You can only be there when she lets you know she needs you. If she has capacity then what else can you do. You need to protect your own mental Health.
I am sorry that you are missing your mum.

This is very sad to read. You must first and foremost know that your mum’s MH isn’t your fault, nor is it strictly speaking your problem. I do sympathise - after my dad died, my mum was alone for 20 years and she moved to live near me and we were very close - I used to worry about her intensely although she was mostly normal and fine. I can’t imagine layering a MH condition on top.

Would she consider downsizing or moving to a property that’s easier to manage with her bad back eg ground floor flat? That would be an opportunity for a reset, you could also suggest hiring a cleaner. Perhaps if it was an objective third party - brisk and impersonal, maybe even cleaning when she’s out shopping? - she would be able to tolerate it.

It sounds like a very deeply ingrained situation, she sounds very stubborn and you are not going to be able to change it or her. I’ve had a relative who lived like that (an Uncle, never married). The only thing I could do was offer to help. I gave him brochures for Assisted Living flats, offered to help, but ultimately my words fell on deaf ears. I think my relative either didn’t want to change or was so overwhelmed, that he didn’t know where to start. I always knew there would be some sort of a crisis issue with him and indeed there was.

He fell over at home and couldn’t get up. My Mum had been trying to phone him but couldn’t get through. Paramedics were called and he ended up in A&E, unable to walk or move. I found him a lovely care home for ‘respite’ which is now permanent and he’s settled well. He never went back to his house. I arranged for it to be cleared by a specialist company and it’s now sold.

It had a considerable adverse impact on my life. He has absolutely no concept of this as he now has dementia.

The most important thing you should try and do is get Power of Attorney put in place for your Mum. I’ve had it for my Uncle and without it, it would have been an extremely difficult situation to manage. I think my Mum and I would have had to fund his care home fees extensively while we went through the Court of Protection to get the correct permission in place to sell his house.

I'm so sorry you're going through this. I recognise elements of this from my own experience and it's hard when you need some support yourself and it's not really there. You need to focus on yourself, especially if you have your own health issues. And all PPs are right, you cannot fix this.
I found the Let Them book useful last year in helping me take a mental step back. It's not about giving up on your mother, but acknowledging she is who she is and living with that in a way that doesn't hurt you.

If you feel you can’t manage or things deteriorate and she’s unsafe, I think you can refer to Social Services anonymously so they are made aware. Unfortunately you have to try to box it off mentally or they take you with them and you become unable to help at all.

Thank you so much for your responses, it is hard being unable to share the burden in real life. I know there’s not a lot I can do if she won’t accept help.

Yep, been there got the T shirt.

As others have said your Mum's MH issues are not yours to resolve, all you can do is step back and wait for the inevitable crisis. This may take years.

A couple of things you can do in the meantime though:

(1) alert social services to your concerns. They may send someone out to check in and you never know, your Mum might listen to some outside help. You will need to make an anonymous referral though.

(2) alert your Mum's GP that you have concerns. I didn't realise I was able tp do this for years, but explain you have concerns that your Mum won't accept direct help but ask that they check in on her - particularly her back issues - and flag she is likely to have some underlying MH issues too. This may be something that needs to be periodically followed up on, but it is a start.

(3) plan for how you not her want to handle her care as she ages. What are your boundaries? What will you cover / won't you cover? What are your expectations of the formal services and are you clear on what needs to happen to access them? In reality social services will only signpost until crisis point is reached, and there will be a huge expectation on you as an only child to pick up the pieces in the meantime. You don't have to do this, but you need to steel yourself for the guilt trips that will be placed on yoir from social workers, GPs and family members when the time comes. It is also extremely hard to watch someone become a risk to themselves and step back and let it play out. But I would prepare yourself for the fact that if your Mum has difficultiea now, something like dementia will amplify them 100-fold.

Good luck. This board in particular has kept me sane.