Toxic, manipulative but frail elderly mother

[TheIncongruousPheasant]

I tried to write a post, but it's so long that nobody would ever be able to read it. I've had to split it into two massive, unreadable posts, and it doesn't get across even a quarter of it. My MH is shot to pieces. Please don't feel obliged to read it. I've also changed my name, so please don't say if you recognise me.

Mum is 86, with minor cognitive impairment (lifelong, not age-related). I live nearby and help her, along with my sister. Mum can be loving, but is also self-centred, childish and manipulative. When we were children she was generally neglectful, and enabled/excused physical and sexual abuse by family members. Until now, I’ve found helping her to be a healing experience, but lately I’m struggling. I think I’m losing a fiction I’d built of a happy family, being a good girl, looking after Mum ‘as she looked after me’, when really she didn’t.

After an illness last year, Social Services helped us arrange a supported housing place, as even before this she’d only been coping with lots of support from us, and she’s now very unsteady on her feet. She doesn’t like it and wants to live alone, or with one of us. The supported place provides meals, housekeeping and an emergency warden. She has carers for washing and dressing, after many episodes of turning them away and calling us to wash her instead. Dsis and I do the rest (e.g. replenishing toiletries, changing sheets, admin), and visit her daily.

But her demands for transport are breaking us. She can’t drive, or walk outside unsupported, and refuses a frame or stick so it must be a person. She relies on us to take her places. Under normal circumstances this would be fine. But for Mum’s whole life she’s operated entirely on her own terms, with no consideration of others. She doesn’t make arrangements or agree convenient times like other people. Everything is spur of the moment. She won’t make appointments, even with the doctor: just turns up, expecting to be seen. (This works for her, as people usually cave after she’s been there a while.) Now that she’s old, she still wants this spontaneity – but expects us to facilitate it, and gets us to do it by bullying, manipulating, guilt-tripping and outright lying.

When she wants to be taken somewhere she never asks in advance. She just rings, wanting me to come now. Or I might arrive for a different reason, and find her all ready to be taken to the optician’s or wherever. Simple enough with advance notice and an appointment: hours of awkwardness and embarrassment with Mum. Often I have to refuse, because it doesn’t work with something else I have to do. I’ve tried explaining that I’m happy to take her anywhere, as long as she lets me make an appointment, or asks me earlier to be sure that it works for me. I’ve tried ringing or arriving at a regular time each day, asking if there’s anywhere she wants to go. She says there isn’t – and then rings later on, expecting me to arrive. And often I just can’t.

But if I don’t come, she very often sets off walking by herself. She’s been hurt many times after falling in the street. She then displays her injuries and tells everyone she fell when going to buy the paper (or whatever) by herself, ‘because I wouldn’t come’. The supported complex doesn’t provide care and she is free to come and go, so the staff can’t stop her and have no responsibility to watch her. They tell me that one day she’ll be seriously injured.

I had a look inside one or two on Amazon, but didn't think they'd be relevant for an elderly dependent parent.

Honestly, it sounds like she's making herself out to be far more dependant than she really is. Might come a time when she genuinely is but for now, she's laying it on as a way to guilt you further and have you at her beck and call.

(I really need to get on with some work for a while, but appreciate everyone's input. Thank you all so much )

Interesting point, TLS. We used to help her much more practically, and expected things to get easier when she moved to the supported place which did all that for her/us. But since she went there she's ramped it up and kept us running in other ways instead.

Your mother has created a deep sense in you that you are obligated and a bad person if you don't hop to her demands, as and when they occur, immediately.

There -is- no moral high ground here though she's created that sense of battlefield rather effectively. She's playing very effectively on it too, making you feel bad directly and making you out to be the Bad Guy if you don't jump at her say so.

But there isn't a moral high ground or low ground. It's a matter of what is possible and not possible. Your priority is your children and (fortunately for them!!) you are able to put them first over her.

Arranging to see her once a week is okay. She is your mother, you might be tied to her by duty more than love but she doesn't need to consume your life. She will fight it and do what she shouldnt but the only way to stop that is to have her live with you full time and do be her full time on tap carer isn't it? She wants her own way all the time.

You need to keep good communication with yoru sister going, no matter how deep she is lost in the FOG, otherwise your mother will effectively drive a good deep wedge between you; doing everythign for her, your sister will become tired and quite possibly resentful specially as she is ill.

Do read Toxic Parents. You need to put yourself, your children and your husband first in your life. Most decent people feel a need to care for their parents but they have to live their lives. Given her behavioru as you grew up too, your mother is a consumer of people, not a giver.

Incongrous - picking out the things you really need to talk about out of a rant is one of the key skills of a counsellor. I would say please do go to one. And rant, and don't expect thinsg to be any better for the first few sessions. but then it really will help.

I have BTDT with the FOG, and when I first went to counselling, I came out with a long spiel about why i had to be fixed - mainly so I didn't fuck up my kids or my marriage by turning into my mother. And after half an hour of ranting al0ng similar lines to your posts here, my counsellor just asked why I felt I didn't deserve to be happy? Why I hadn't come to her and said I needed her to help me feel better, just so I could feel better. And my mother had done such a good job of making me only consider myself in terms of what i was to other people that I had genuinly never considered that question before, let alone answered it. Have you?

In therapy (and I'd suggest therapy over counselling) you take your time to get your story out. the therapist will get the measure of it pretty quickly anyway - manipulative people /behaviour is remarkably uniform. Therapy is a safe place for YOU and a therapist will not rush you to get the facts out but will be mindful to gently pace you.

I say that about therapy over counselling bcs you need someone who has years and years of training - as well as having had extensive therapy themselves as part of their training; whereas counselors can be woefully (and imo dangerously) underqualified.

I know precisely what you mean about the stories filing the universe - and even then you will not have told them all. The level of manipulation in people like this is so dense; thick and fast, never ending. It's astonishing what they can pack into a day, never mind a week. It feels like it would take forever to explain every strand - and the thought of explaining it all is utterly exhausting: we leaves swathes out. Bit at the same time we long to be heard, to get the whole story out.

Take heart! You are not alone! I'm sorry to say your sister sounds like she's got the martyr role down to a fine art (but look who was her teacher...) which will make you feel doubly bound and obligated, guilty and fearful.

So yes, take heart: many of us have been bound tight in the manipulators Web and found a way to step out of it. Seems impossible when you're in it but it isn't, it's like stepping over a low wall. But you will need the best professional support to get there.

To go on with I would urge you to stop explaining things to your mum - she has no intention of listening and you're just wearing yourself out (eg 'i said I couldn't possibly do it and explained why... When I arrived... '). Also - and you'll need support to get to this - give up all hopes of her miraculously changing and becoming the mum you've always deserved and longed for. She will never be that mum, she is incapable of it (even if she were inclined). I'm so sorry (join the club).

I would say let's hope her next defiant fall is her last but as a pp said their legacy continues even long after their death so it's probably better for you to pull off the agonising plaster and face what's under there so you can finally start setting some healthy and appropriate boundaries at last xx

Thank you, all of you.

springydaffs, I see that you really do understand. Your third paragraph nails it down. Even though you've never been told the thousands of individual anecdotes about things Mum has done, you obviously know. That's been such an eye-opener on this thread. I've been so lost in the mesh of individual things that I thought my family was unique. A major reason I've never sought help before is that I thought there was too much ever to explain. It was all just a huge jumbled mess. But so many people have come here and shown me that it's a recognisable pattern. I'm only sorry about what you've all gone through to get to that understanding.

TJ, your question about whether I may see myself only in relation to other people is interesting. I recently realised I have little to no agency on my own account. I have plenty of energy for any purpose to it that's useful to other people, but none if it's for myself. This sounds strange, but it's a good (trivial) example. I spent a day last week drinking my coffee black, because we'd run out of milk. It got close to the time that my dds get home, so I took my purse - which had money in it - jumped in the car - which had been outside all day - went to the shop and bought milk for their tea. I realised on the way that I could have done that first thing in the morning. I hadn't decided I was too busy or couldn't be bothered to go. I'd even been grumbling to myself about not having milk. But it literally hadn't occurred to me that I could change that. If you scale that up to general life, that's how I am.

I'm going to try to approach it with logic. If I say no to Mum, she may go out and injure herself, and she may upset her friend. But those things are happening already, despite all my worry and running around. I've tried everything I can think of to stop it, and still it goes on. The only way to stop it is to be always instantly available to Mum, and that isn't physically possible. Therefore, my conscience should be clear. I'm not a bad person.

I can't promise instant results - have already done something massive by stepping back for these few days. But I'm going to start by setting Dh like a guard dog (he's delighted) against everyone apart from Mum and Dsis who tries to ring or come round to berate me about things they don't understand. Another priority will be to try to let go of my guilt and need to protect Dsis, although I'm going to suggest the book that's been recommended here. As I'm not good at doing things on my own account (I'd like to change that, but it's too much at the same time), I'm going to do it so I can stop setting such a bad example to my dds.

I know so little about counselling/therapy that I didn't even know there was a difference. I will do some research. But picking key points out of a massive rant - that's what I need, and it's what the replies on here have been doing. I'm so grateful for that.

Huge sympathies my mother's similar but not as old yet.

Practically speaking...

You need to make a big calendar that she can't reach/take down, and in it mark every date and time that you are coming to see her. You can even make a key like a green marker to show the times that you are available and can take her places/do things for her. The rest of the time, diligently marked by you, should be when you are not available and alternatives listed if she needs anything. You also need to get her an emergency cord that she puts round her wrist (tho knowing her she won't wear it, but have it anyway.)

Have all these measures in place and documented so that you can state clearly to yourself and others that you are doing everything you possibly can.

Aside from that, there is no age limit on going no contact with people, as I'm sure others on the thread will be telling you, but if you're anything like me you don't want to feel guilt on top of everything else.

Therapists are professionals with extensive training. They operate on a while different, deeper, plain. If you present as a person bound tight in the manipulators Web, a therapist knows what to do, how to approach that. You wouldn't be the first, sadly. It's not up to you to present yourself tidily for a therapist to know what to go on, like cleaning up before the cleaner comes. You present yourself as your are.

Have you looked at codependency? Do. Melodie Beattie is the one to watch ; also CoDA. Manipulators train us to mould our very being around them, it takes work to live for and from ourselves.

Damn - after just about a week, she's just left a message on my phone, saying she 'can't wait any longer to hear how we all are', and asking me to ring her. I want it to be because she really does want to know how we are, but I don't know what to think. Hearing her voice on the phone makes me feel both panicky and guilty, skulking in front of the answer machine ignoring the call of an old woman and then deleting it. I am planning to give her a call, to try and set up some more normal level of contact - say, once a week visit with dh and another visit at an arranged time through the week. But I didn't want to do it yet, because I hadn't worked out exactly what I was going to say. I'm now physically shaking. How pathetic, to be reduced to trembling and hiding away at the voice of an 86 year old woman .

It's not pathetic at all. My heart drops when my house phone rings incase it's my mother. I'm scared of her, I admit it!

Don't ring your mum back too quickly, give it a day or two.

Thanks, Simon, so much. Of course it had to happen when dh wasn't here. He'd promised to field as many calls as he could for me.

Aha - Dh just called. What he's doing today is a charity street collection, and the first person who came up to him was Mum's elderly friend (as I said, this is a tiny place!). Friend was asking all about me, where I was and what I was doing, and Dh let slip that I wasn't in fact away - I was around, but taking a break. Friend must have gone straight off and rung my mother.

Aha - Dh just called. He's away doing a charity street collection, and the first person who came up to him was Mum's elderly friend (as I said, this is a tiny place!). Friend was asking all about me, where I was and what I was doing, and Dh let slip that I wasn't in fact away - I was around, but taking a break. Friend must have gone straight off and rung my mother.

Aha - Dh just called. He's away doing a charity street collection, and the first person who came up to him was Mum's elderly friend (as I said, this is a tiny place!). Friend was asking all about me, where I was and what I was doing, and Dh let slip that I wasn't in fact away - I was around, but taking a break. Friend must have gone straight off and rung my mother.

You poor thing it sounds very difficult
And this phrase
'bound tight in the manipulators Web'
Is so spot on!

I cut the cord years ago and it's great!

It's a very simple solution to such a complex situation. You are the problem here, not her. You know full well what she's like. You are allowing yourself to be imprisoned through the guilt she has created. You are allowing the meaningless opinions of the others to seed in your mind like weeds, when really, they should wash over you like waves over sand.

Pettiness - don't have the time for it. When she learns that you remain ever unperturbed by her selfish behaviour, she will move onto someone else.

My 52 year old father is the same, toxic type of person. I haven't spoken to him for nearly two years now, despite his numerous attempts to guilt-trip my sister and I into talking to him again. It was hard at first, but now it's like a massive, hulking weight is no longer on my shoulders. My conscience is totally clear.

It feels so good. No shit to deal with, I don't run around, or play silly buggers.

You could have this freedom too. Why do you have to wait until she croaks?

Change your phone number, change your email address, block any protestors on Facebook - or whatever else you use.

Cut the cord.

How about you spend the time you you spent running around for your 'mother' doing something with your kids and OH instead?

I cut the cord years ago and it's great!

It's a very simple solution to such a complex situation. You are the problem here, not her. You know full well what she's like. You are allowing yourself to be imprisoned through the guilt she has created. You are allowing the meaningless opinions of the others to seed in your mind like weeds, when really, they should wash over you like waves over sand.

Pettiness - don't have the time for it. When she learns that you remain ever unperturbed by her selfish behaviour, she will move onto someone else.

My 52 year old father is the same, toxic type of person. I haven't spoken to him for nearly two years now, despite his numerous attempts to guilt-trip my sister and I into talking to him again. It was hard at first, but now it's like a massive, hulking weight is no longer on my shoulders. My conscience is totally clear.

It feels so good. No shit to deal with, I don't run around, or play silly buggers.

You could have this freedom too. Why do you have to wait until she croaks?

Change your phone number, change your email address, block any protestors on Facebook - or whatever else you use.

Cut the cord.

How about you spend the time you you spent running around for your 'mother' doing something with your kids and OH instead?

A web is definitely the word for it. If I want any confirmation of how ridiculous it all is, I just have to compare the way I felt this morning with the way I'm feeling now.

Over the past week I started off still with all the panic and guilt, then another few days trying to sort it out in my head (posting here, talking to dh). Yesterday and this morning I was feeling so much more positive. I got loads done practically, and went out with dh and the family - which I do anyway, but I felt fully entitled to do it and enjoy it, answerable to nobody. Usually I feel guilty about doing those things, as if I'm only pretending to be occupied just to avoid seeing Mum. (That isn't true, but it's how I feel.) And I didn't have to tell anybody chapter and verse what I was doing, either in advance or afterwards. It was fantastic.

This morning I'm back to feeling crap again, but realistically I did know it was coming, and with nothing actually resolved it couldn't have gone on forever. This is the point where I have to draw the boundaries, and not cave. I've decided that I am still prepared to see her, but only once or twice a week, bar emergencies. But it creeps around you like treacle and I still have to work out how I'm going to avoid that.

I like theshame's post.

I do think that you have some level of responsibility to a frail older person but its not appropriate to be running your life around her.

Could you sit down with your sister and tell her clearly when you are available for your Mum and be absolutely clear what you can and cannot do.

Then visit your Mum and fill in a calendar of when you are available. If she needs you to take her somewhere it must be within those times.

If she makes demands at other times consistently ignore them. Also if your sister makes demands at other times be clear with her that you aren't free.

If your Mum tries to do things on her own and gets in a mess it isn't your fault-don't feel guilty about it. If anyone rings (neighbours, social services) just be clear "I offered to take her on Wednesday I had no idea she would try to go today".

Do not answer to third parties you don't owe them an explanation and its irrelevant what they think.

If your sister continues to fill the gaps its her own decision. She really needs to be clear with your Mum too. Would she be amenable to making some form of rota?

If your Mum can't cope with the amount of help you and your sister can provide between you she will need carers to take up the slack. If her cognitive impairment means she needs more supervision in order to be safe she may have to move again.

Personally I think cutting contact isn't right in this situation but you do need much stronger boundaries and to clear the FOG.

The Elderly parents section is very helpful. It can be hard going even when the parent hasn't been as difficult as your mother.

Lived's post is spot on. Your mother is playing a game for two players. You can opt out of the game right now. I would tell your husband and daughters that you are going to change how you operate with your mother because it's time to set some boundaries. You know they will support you and can strengthen your resolve if and when you feel wobbly.

Agree the days and times you will visit your mother, tell her and stick to your plan. Get caller display on your home phone so you can screen calls. You don't need to justify your actions to the extended family, if they want to run round after her they can crack on with it.

As for your sister - she can do as she pleases with regard to your mother - let her make a rod for her own back but not one for you.

Good luck OP - this can be a proper game changer for you if you see this through. X

What a horrible situation for you, OP.
I would suggest that the next time she chooses to injure herself, you use a magic phrase to any healthcare staff involved.
Say there is a safeguarding issue here, and that you have been abused by your mother all your life, and can't deal with it any longer. This is true, and you don't have to say much more. That phrase will ensure 'they' pull out all the stops so you do not have to be involved, but this will only work if you allow them to take over, and you stop helping.
Good luck OP, I have come across something very similar at work. You will be believed.

There is a site on the web called Womb of light run by a lady named Bethany Webster. Her work talks about the 'mother wound', she has some amazingly insightful and compassionate articles on there relating to manipulative, narcissistic mothers that may help you.

Thanks, everyone. Dsis has now also texted me, saying that Mum is getting more and more anxious, and could I give her a message to pass on. I said that nothing has changed, that as I'd explained I was taking a break. It turns out that Dsis also hasn't seen Mum since for a few days, as her drug infusion treatment happened on Tuesday (I got it wrong - thought it was Tuesday coming) and it always puts her off her feet for a while. She's been calling Mum every day but unable to go to her. No wonder her friend was so keen to ask Dh all about where I was - Mum's been without both of her handmaidens for nearly a week!