I hope you don't mind me asking on here, I want to make it clear that I don't consider religion in itself to be the issue, and I don't want to come across as saying that everyone who is involved in the church is nutty as a fruitcake.
However with my Mum it's a bit more complicated.
She's always been obsessive and until recently she was getting on pretty well, being fairly normal and so on, only occasionally very annoying (not good on boundaries) and we sorted those things out as they came up. She had long term therapy which seemed to help a lot, but it stopped a few years ago and I wonder if this is why it's going a bit wrong.
Lately she's started being really odd and I don't remember her being like this since I was a little girl, so it makes me really uncomfortable.
She's started to confess things to me. She has got very heavily involved in the church, struggling it seems all the time with overscrupulous thoughts and behaviour - really obsessive - asking me what she should tell the priest about, going to several groups which is a good thing, obviously, in terms of helping the elderly and so on but it's becoming constant.
She starts conversations wherein she 'needs' to confess or apologise to me for past perceived wrongs (I don't want or need this from her, they are not things I considered wrong, but she says the church does) and worrying too much about what my children might do, which I shan't go into as it gets into embarrassing territory, but you can probably guess.
I'm not a church person though I hold my own sort of faith - I just grew up to distrust many elements of the organised set up I was exposed to as a child (Catholicism) though I appreciate it had many good points also.
I wouldn't mind her going to church or being religious but this is extreme and I feel it's just an outlet for her obsessiveness - it seems really unhealthy to be constantly worried, overanalysing, feeling guilty (eg the other day, they passed a dead rat on the road and it took her about another mile to decide that she had to go back and make sure it wasn't in need of help, because God would want her to)
I just feel lost about it, tempted to write her an email saying how I feel worried about her and do on but I'm not sure it would help and I don't want to make things worse.
I just feel like I'm turning into the adult and she's becoming a vulnerable, unhappy child again and I can't deal with it very well.
Any guidance would be much appreciated, thankyou.