There needs to be a category for adult children dealing with parents - apologies if this should be somewhere else.
A few years ago I embarked upon a new profession (personal project you could say) which is incredibly visible, and from the beginning my mother has been involving herself, behaving inappropriately and causing me a lot of stress. We have been having the same conversations for a few years and I am incredibly burnt out and fed up of her behaviour. Her behaviour has been adding to my high stress levels which have manifested as physical symptoms.
She has been following me on every social platform, and jumping in to make announcements before I am ready to do so – one post, which I responded to publicly because I was terrified of losing a deal (and I couldn't get hold of her to take it down urgently) led to my mother bombarding me with immature messages such as that I should be ashamed of myself and making out that she was the victim, even though she was the one who acted out of line. Most recently, she contacted someone who neither of us know, telling them to support my work (not asking), and this was a reply to a social post of theirs’ which came across as a bit silly (aka this person's post was a bit silly). Their post wasn’t to my mother directly, just generally on this person’s platform, my mother had no reason to reply to this person and I was very embarrassed and mortified to be associated with this. I told my mother to remove the post, and she did, but she hasn’t responded to my message at all. I don't know if there are other posts of this nature out there. There has never been an apology for her actions, only excuses and insults, or “Ok.”. Throughout my life, I cannot recall a single time that my mother ever took the blame for, or apologised for anything meaningful.
One of her excuses is “I’m proud” but being proud doesn’t give anyone the authority to behave however they like and cause someone else stress and upset, and potentially undo the good work that I have been doing.
I have tried the “I feel”, telling my mother that I feel stressed, upset and annoyed by her behaviour. I have made it very clear that she has crossed my boundaries, to leave me alone to get on with my work and I have said repeatedly that I won’t be discussing this again (but then something happens and I am having to discuss it again). Nothing I say is making any difference at all. She will ignore me, and then reply with "i did this then, is this okay?", "I said this other thing, is this okay?". It's like a child, if you say you can't have sweets, "Can i just have the red sweets then? Can I just have one sweet then? Can I have a toy instead?" etc.
I have tried talking to some people close to me, but all I hear is "But she's your mum", so I really don't want comments of that nature, I need some solid advice. I'm at my wits end and even seeing any message come from her at all causes me to feel frustrated.