Mother-daughter relationships

[Capitaltrixie]

I'm literally going to tear my hair out.

My mum is a nice person & a brilliant grandmother to my 2 LOs, kind and helpful. She is on the whole kind to me, not critical like some mothers can be and is supportive.
On the flip side she can be highly neurotic, constantly disects things & analyses everything, quite negative/judgey about people and was HUGELY overprotective of me and my brother when we were growing up (both me & him are are quite neurotic & anxious, low self-esteem & have terrible relationship histories.. but on whole we're not that bad ha!)

She makes my blood not just boil but the whole of my being practically internally combust. I do feel like the biggest cow on the planet as some people have horrible abusive parents.
I don't blame her for passing on her anxiety & neuroses, I'm big enough to accept resonsibility for my behaviour as an adult and I'm doing my best to break the cycle. She's only human & it's not her fault she's the way she is, why cant I be a nicer better person & not such a cowbag!?!!?!?!?!?

I just wondered if anyone else has had a similar experience of this love-hate dynamic..and can anyone shed some light on how they got a grip on it & moved on to have a good healthy relationship with their mother.

Wow blowcushion!.. mmm don't think my mum is a mner..but maybe..??! , as nicolette says, any experiences from the other perspective would be surely helpful (unless you really are my mum ha!)

That's very insightful sternface, the list above makes a lot of sense..it's tricky as dm is due to look after LOs for 2 or 3 days/week when I go back to work. Its lovely of her to offer, but I can't say I'm not worried about our lives getting even more enmeshed. Take on board what you say about my brother. He works in Mental Health & sometimes thinks he has the most rational take on things, so its not easy.
I agree - I DO think one of her fears is that we will gang up against her or something, so although she says she hates falling out with one of us, she always contacts the other one to discuss. Dh does doubt me already (she told dh that I'd fallen out with db..oh my life!!) he told me to apologise to them both
Dealing with her & the kids will be tricky..I will, as you've suggested, be as open as possible when the time (age-wise) is right. I need to ration my alone time with her - going to be selfish and concentrate on me and kids for however long it takes for me to feel ok and not panicy/depressed about this. Taking heed from earlier poster, some noses will be out of joint but who cares!

fuzzy to Izzy.. my dad always says that (they divorced years ago), he uses the latin version - Illegitimi non carborundum (funny old lovely quirky dad)

This does sound just a little bit familiar 'Narcissists have such an elevated sense of self-worth that they value themselves as inherently better than others. Yet, they have a fragile self-esteem and cannot handle criticism, and will often try to compensate for this inner fragility by belittling or disparaging others in an attempt to validate their own self-worth'. Feel bad now, like I'm being unfair to my mum somehow..

Phew! OP is not my daughter! Such a relief!

OP are you me? I can't add anything as I would be just saying the same as you have already done, my experiences with my mother are exactly the same as yours. I have now cut her out of my life completely, it was painful but I now feel like such a weight has been lifted. The catalyst was seeing her pull the same stunts on my daughter as she did on me. The cycle stopped with me