The nosey mother - who i would rather like to strangle

[andnowthewait]

Its STILL going on.
Im STILL not talking to her, and its been about 6 weeks now.

Apparently i 'snarled' at her husband when he drove past me the other day. I never even saw him!!! but sister says thats what she said i did and she cant understand why i would behave that way!

THEN - mum has apparently taken to buying clothes for DD and was saying to siser, while crying how DD was missing out, and how i was being selfish etc..

THEN Sister called me today. shes coming round mine for tea. Mum had called her and told sister to pick my DD up and take her to hers for a few hours. When sister said she didnt think that was appropiate mum firstly went mental, then told her to think about it.
Its MY DD - not sisters, i was to not be consulted on it. Sister isnt coming till 5.45 and bedtime is at 7. AND why would i be happy with that.

Im seriously flabergasted. I do not know what to think let alone say.

I have read a few of your threads. Your mum sounds derranged.

Personally (and I know it is easier said than done) but I would cut all ties.

So what has happened is that the shit storm has passed from your door to your sister's. Tough luck for her but at least you have a break from it (apart from what gets filtered through sis)

Your sister needs to decide whether she has had enough and wants to join you in splendid isolation from it all. Until then I would say to her that there's no point in you not speaking to your mum if all the crap is going to reach your ears anyway - so please stop telling you stuff unless you really need to know (like the stuff about taking your DD round)

sounds derranged. IS derranged.

On what planet did she think it was ok for sister to pick my dd up ( without telling me... and what about car seats> and how was she going to get DD out of the house without telling me... its basically kidnapping!)
Why did she think it would be sisters decision??

Thats before you take into account she needs to eat tea and go to bed.

and i just cant get over the fact that i apparently snarled at her husband. WTF!

She clearly thinks a lot of me... and yet wants to steal my daugher.

sister will contuine to talk to her, she just says thats how she is, and just avoids her as best she can ( but still ends up in tears frequently, ie less than 2 weeks ago)

Sister is panicking that i may not ever speak to mum again, and to be honest, im not entirely sure i want to at the momemnt. Her behaviour is not getting better, in fact its just getting worse.

If she showed even a tiny amout of understanding, or of being sorry i would talk to her, but continuingy to bad mouth me and then planning on stealing my daugher, well.. its just not helping

You are doing really well in ignoring as much as you can.

Stay strong, vent to us on here and don't back down. You aren't the one with the problem, your mother is.

Also, you might want to ask your sister to stop passing messages/info to you. You don't have to have the information relayed to you, it isn't helping - quite the reverse

Yep, Seabright's right. Your sis can carry on talking to her if she wants, that's your choice. But she is not free to dump her frustration on you, you've chosen not to speak to your mum (with good reason by the sound of it) and you don't want to hear about her - that's your choice.

Sorry the first 'your choice' was meant to be 'her choice'!

thanks

I think if/when i do speak to her its going to have to be a very different relationship.

It gets me very angry the things that get reported back to me via sister, and she says she isnt telling me everything mum is saying else i would have a fit.

What i dont understand is why is she making up stuff that i have done ( the snarling.. ) and bad mouthing me to anyone that will listen. If thats what she thinks of me, as her daugther, then she can actually go fuck herself.

That sounds harsh, but really. Ive had enough. Your mother is not meant to make your life worse, and certainly not meant to go about speading crap about you that makes you look awful. Why would she do it?

Unfortunately there isn't a sensible answer to the question "why would she do it", as a rational person simply wouldn't behave that way. I don't know what is wrong with her, but something clearly is. She perhaps can't help it, who knows? I think all you can do is continue to protect yourself, as you have been doing, because really, giving in to her is not going to help her in any way and will just make you feel worse - not to mention potentially having a bad impact on your DD. This plan to "borrow" the child for an evening is clearly from another planet.

You do seem to feel a bit guilty about cutting her off and certainly your sister feels bad about it, although it is in no way her fault or her responsibility. Would you perhaps consider feeding back an offer via your sister, whereby you take DD over to mum's for say an hour one afternoon, if she promises not to kick off? (I say you, because I wouldn't be awfully happy to let someone else take DD, given that your mother has been trying to organise other family members to kidnap her!) She probably will kick off anyway, of course, but when you've had enough of being ranted at you can say well, thanks for sharing that, I'm off now, and leave. A short session of this every week and maybe she'll begin to learn that the sooner she starts with the nonsense, the shorter these visits will be. If it starts to work, you can step up the visits to twice a week; if it's a disaster, you stop going over at all, again. Meanwhile you can't be accused of not seeing your mum ever, but you will still be having 6 days and 23 hours of not having to listen to her!

i feel very guilty. Sister makes me feel guilty too.

I could not take DD over to mums without having it out with her first, mum is not one to let things lie and WILL NOT have my child witnessing my mother screaming at me.

Besides i didnt see her weekly,before and certainly not twice weekly.. unless i bumped into her in the park or something.

OK, forget that idea then!

Guilt is a pointless emotion in this case.

Your mother believes her own version of reality. There is nothing you can do that will change that. She has some sort of personality disorder. Possibly NPD.

SO you have to manage things in terms of how you let it affect you. And you sister could do with waking up to this point really - she is trying to keep the peace but there is no useful peace to be kept. And using your DD as a weapon in her war is very worrying.

Have you got the Toxic Parents book from Amazon? Might help you with some strategies for youself, if you not both you and sister.

here they don't seem to have any new ones in at the moment but these are cheap...

Oh here is the new version - must have been looking at hardback versions before

Like msboogie said. You need to tell your sister that you do not wish to talk about yoru mum or what she has been saying about you.

I have also seen some of your threads. And think that you are doing the right thing ignoring her. But you need to make sure that the ignoring is actually removing her from your day to day - currently the running commentary is just as annoying as actually talking to her....

andnowthewait - you and your sister seem to be trying to manage your mother, each in your own way. You cannot manage someone who is mentally/emotionally unwell.

She will not see your side, she is unable to rationally see the effect her behaviour has on others, and she cannot engage with you from a balanced and fair perspective.

Google "narcissistic personality disorder". I've read your other threads, and her behaviour is classic.

(this is not me "diagnosing", you understand, but her personality traits are almost textbook...)

What i'm trying to say, is that people who exhibit this disorder cannot be rationalised with.

It's like trying to cure cancer by rubbing the affected area...

Exactly

X posts with Katisha there!

i know. If i do try to talk to people about it they are just baffled. They cant understand why someone would do that, or sat' but yout mum is SO nice'
Noone else bar immediate family see it. But then, she doesnt behave that way with them.

You are all right - you cant engage or ratonalise with someone like her. WHich is why ive not spoken to her for so long already, because there is just no point. It would be equal to shouting at a wall. Just totally pointless.

mad - shes more than textbook - if i listed everything.. well she would blow the textbook away. She was once sectioned as well for truely horrifying behaviour and we were whisked off to a police station for our own safety while she went on the run. But they found no mental illness and she can justify her behaviour so that what she did wasnt her fault.. it was everyone elses.

Most of the time she is fine, its just when something happens she doesnt like, or someone behaves in a way that she doesnt like, or sometihng happens that she didnt know was going to happen, she just goes totally off her trolly.

Ive not minded not speaking to her, its given me a break and not really bothered me, im a lot less stressed from it. I think ill have to start talking to her at some poiint, but i need to find ways to manage her behaviour so it doesnt effect me, and i think that means having a very different relationship with her.

Its a pain, ive got a crap mum and a crap dad ( he gives money, but i dont see him, speak to him, no relationship at all)

Whats more upsetting i think, is once you have your own children, you sort of cant believe how they could treat you like that.

Yes that's one of the most frustrating things, other people being baffled.
These NPD types do reserve their behaviour for those closest to them, and present a pillar of the community front to everyone else, who think they are great.

Also, people who have no experience of this weirdness can't actually believe it, so tend to either ignore it or explain it away - even victims do this eg "I must have provoked them, it takes two to tango etc..."

After a while you wake up to the fact that it's not you - it's them, and there is nothing that can be done except read up on it, and know how to handle it. What you don't get is the perpetrator showing any sort of change/remorse.

And you sure as hell don't want her turning her attentions to DD and starting to screw her up.

I agree totally with Katisha.

I feel your pain, and I know just what you're going through, my Dad took 18 years to be diagnosed finally as paranoid schizophrenic, after appalling and very disturbing behaviour for a lot of his adult life. It took that long to get a diagnosis because he was very clever at hiding it to everyone else, and our family was just too frightened and controlled to section him. He started out with major narcissism coupled with Bipolar, but left untreated over years just got worse.

I have a very different relationship with him than I did, essentially i'm the adult, and I don't feel I have a father figure in my life at all. It's been very hard, but it does get easier to cope with and you will find ways of protecting yourself from it.

He is very heavily drug managed, but still is very unstable and occasionally comes out with a real pearler. I just don't take any nonsense from him at all when this happens, and I distance myself. He knows he can't get away with the behaviour that he used to, so will back down like a small child.

When my DS arrives, I will watch my Dad like a hawk, believe me.

Don't worry about other people's inability to understand. Just make sure that you and your siblings are clued up, and remember that you're more capable of dealing with life than your Mum is, so treat her as such.