Just realised that my mum is an emotional vampire. How do I set boundaries?

[Polocake]

For years now I've wondered why and how my mum has been able to drain and sap every last little bit of energy out of me, and then today I read an online article about "emotional vampire" and the penny finally dropped. My mum is one, and this is why she's been making me feel the way she does.

Some background. She's always been a moody woman prone to epic whinging about the most mundane things, being around her is like treading on eggshells as you never know what your going to get with her. One minute she's happy and warm and the next minutes snappy, irritable and grumpy. Think lots of sighing, door slamming, one word answers to questions and getting your head bitten off for breathing, she can't handle criticism in any shape or form, despite being overly critical about everyone else, and will explode if you dare to criticise her. She can also sulk for Britain.

Funny thing is, she will do everything she can to drag down the mood of everyone else around her if she's unhappy, but if she's happy and someone is upset or down for some reason she can't handle that and will get snappy and impatient with them. She has a need to dictate the emotional atmosphere,

So today I realise finally, that she is sapping all my energy and it needs to stop. I need to put some boundaries in place to do this, obviously I doubt want to cut her our altogether but I can't go on like this.

Any advice?

If you don't feel ready/able to cut her out totally then you need to reduce contact or go "Low contact."

This means reducing both the quantity and quality of contact. So you see her less often/call her less often. You see her/talk to her for less time too. So if you currently see her twice a week, for 4 hours each time, cut it back to twice a month, for 1.5 hours each time ( or whatever feels right for you at the moment, but cut it back just a bit more than you think she will tolerate.)

Also, you need to stop feeding her any useful information about your life. Safe topics for conversation tend to be the weather, TV, or ask her questions about herself. Try not to tell her where you are thining of holidaying/what colour you want to paint the kitchen, about the pain in your foot, if these are the things that will bring about an undesirable conversation. Again, you will know best which aspects of her personality you find the most draining so you will know what is likely to trigger a critical/unbearable response.

You also need to start saying things like "No, that doesn't work for me." if she invites you someplace you don't want to go etc.

Emotionally detaching will become a lot easier once you reduce contact and start putting boundaries in place. Try to think of her as just an annoying person you have to deal with every now and then.

Good luck.

What Hampton said

Have you got a partner or very close friend or sibling you can talk this over with and plan how to do it? that helps.

I have a sibling yes, and funnily enough he doesn't spend as much time with her as I do. We've joked a bit about her negativity before and how nothing is ever her fault though. I think my problem is that I'm naturally a listener rather than a talker and she tends to offload on me because of that.

people like this are exhausting!

it might be your natural state to be a listener (yay for listeners!) but in this situation I think you might have to adopt different clothing and listen less. Other than that, hampton's advice is spot on