Most of the time my mum and I get on well. I do love her, and I trust her with most things and she is really supportive of me. No problem, then...
But every now and again this issue comes up. I am looking for some external viewpoints on this. i'm sorry it is awfully long, but it has helped me to think through a bit while writing it out.
I get really upset when mum starts going on about people being cruel or selfish or abusive towards others. My coping strategy with this is to avoid, escape, or tune out. I am absolutely fine with listening to and working with other people who are talking about similar experiences or perspectives btw, it is just with my mum I cannot handle it.
I understand why this is. When I was a teenager I was fairly depressed, self-harming, intrusive thoughts of suicide, using sex and drinking and excessive perfectionism in study. Mum did know about the self-harm and thoughts of suicide - once she saw cuts, another time I told her i was feeling suicidal - but she wasn't able to act on it in a way that might have helped. She didn't really do anything that helped. I think she tried to distract me and re-focus me on positive things. but i didn't actually see anyone, not even the GP, and I didn't talk to her about it again.
mum was under a lot of stress herself at the time, and there were other adults around ie dad who could have noticed or acted, and didn't, so i do not want to go blaming her. I have never talked with her since about these early signs of depression or explored what might have happened had we acted on them then.
So, when I was 17 my parents separated. a very acrimonious divorce, lots of blaming on both sides, mum accused dad of physical and sexual abuse, and he accused her of lies, manipulation, and bullying. I have younger siblings and fell into a totally inappropriate role of being confidant and emotional support to both my parents.
Mum would tell me how awful my father was, what he had done, what he was doing. i would not be able to escape and woudl feel totally trapped. she would keep going trying to get some reaction or response out of me, trying to get me to agree with what she was saying and this just made me all the more stubborn.
most of the time i wound up in tears! writing about this now, it was a totally fucked up situation. i'd go off and self-harm after it, or whenever i had to think about it. which mum would never have wanted, but somehow this was the cycle. she does not know what a bad effect this was all having on me. she thinks it was the divorce, or dad "deserting" us, that had the effect, but it was the way should would talk about him.
she did/does same thing when talkign about her family, who all took dad's side.
as i said I have a coping strategy now which is to avoid, escape, or tune out when she brings up things in this same, angry, emotional, accusative way.
Given all that it is really no wonder i ended up with a serious mental collapse at 19 and was hospitalised briefly, again a couple of months later and then, over the next 4 years, made a slow, steady recovery. 12 years later, in my 30s, I am doing really well, no reoccurence of mental health probs, good relationships with all family members and the extended family as much as possible. i do fiercely defend my peacekeeper, neutral role in conflct and am very good at helping people explore how they feel and try to reach agreements. it was all excellent training for my work in mental health/ social work!
most of the time mum and i get along well. we do genuinely care about each other and want the best for each other and she is so supportive of me - and great with dd! but every now and again this issue flares up.
recently she was describing something my gran had done which she took issue with and I responded in my 'coping' way (avoiding, tuning out), she got upset, accused me of lacking empathy, that i would ignore abuse in my work which is absolutely not true. This has got me thinking about it all again. it is so sad that we have this difficulty between us. sometimes i don't trust her, i am angry, i don't want to be close to her.
so, do i do my best to restore the status quo, move on from this latest row, keep going in this way of carefully avoiding raised emotions between us,
or try to explain why I respond in this way, and through doing this try to change this cycle of anger/response we have going. I am very afraid of hoping for mum to change her behaviour in this way as i wish so much for it and nothing has ever helped before.
i would appreciate your views or just the chance to have this heard, it is so complicated and difficult it is not something I really talk about much in real life. plus i spent a very long time getting to the stage where I can have a non-complicated, workable, even good relationship with mum, i do not want to screw that up. don't want to make life diffiuclt for siblings either, mum tends to become very emotional with all of us if something is going wrong with her relationhsip with one.