Having therapy for abusive mother, it's hard going

[IncessantNameChanger]

I'm mid forties and have posted under various names about my mum.a few times since I realised it was abuse about five years ago.

I have had CBT twice and talking therapy about my hoarding tendencies but never gone into why hoarding started as a physical wall in my teens to keep my mum out of my room.

I thought it's the right time to look at why I hoard. It's got much better over the years and I'm practically living a normal but sometimes cluttered life.

My God it's so painful talking about my mum. She is 76 and hasnt seen my kids since last March saying it's not allowed dispite her, me and dh being double vaxxed.

The therapist has explained my mum simply doesnt want to see us, which I know really but saying things out loud hurts more than I expected.

I cant really say this to anyone. I have come to unpleasant conclusion that closure can come one way.

I know she will never change or say sorry and I honestly dont care, she is dangerous and I dont trust her. I dont like her.

Cant quite say those words to my therapist. The power she has over me stops when she dies. How sad is that to say. I get final closure once she has gone. She still wants to hurt me now and I let her.

It's so unfair but my abuser is my mother. She cant ever be anyone else to me but my abuser can she? With no acknowledgement from her of what she did, we can ever move on from abuser and victim?

I wish I could hate her. It would make my choices simple but life isnt as simple as that.

She is a horrible person but I pity her.

What a fabulous son you have raised, that was a lovely comment he made.
You have evidently been a better mother than yours was.
Your comment about owing your mum everything because she have birth to you made me wince a bit.
I hope you can resolve the trauma and appreciate your own worth, sooner rather than later.

Yes you all right. When my therapist said I was seeking out her approval and love and hoping she would change, I was thinking she couldn't be more wrong, but I'm the deluded one. Inside I am and I do.

I also know I go back for more as even negative attention is attention. She is frail and old and if there was going to a epiphany it would be before now.

I dont need any grandparent to fawn overall boy who turns 18 this year.

She said to him when he was about 12 in my earshot ( enough to be sure I heard but far enough away to say I misheard) "your like her (my) father, and i always hated him".

How fucked up is that? Also that I exposed him to her.

Talking about it here is helping me. Thank you for listening.

Like others have said it's heartbreaking reading this thread, especially when some things are eerily familiar from my own experience.
I don't know if you know much about it, I only know a bit; but EMDR therapy can be very helpful with traumatic experience and PTSD. You don't have to talk about what you experienced and that's so different from the work you've already done that it might be a game changer.
One thing I do know is that you have to find a way to forgive yourself and considering that after 10 years of therapy you still feel obligated to your mother for your life then it must be worth trying a different way, especially because it's so difficult for you to fully say these things out loud.
I wish with all my heart that it wasn't so difficult to access therapy and find the most suitable type and person.

I think you sound amazing OP and I mean that in the truest sense of the word.
Despite all that you endured as a child and a teenager you kept yourself alive and literally built a wall to protect yourself.
Then you've been brave enough to spend the last ten years knocking that wall down in therapy and been willing to look at the very deepest of wounds. You also courageously had your own children and clearly showered them with the love you never had from your own parent.
You've developed a great relationship with your son and I imagine with your other children also.

The fact that you have done this (without experiencing anything similar yourself as a child) is your biggest success and I hope you celebrate that everyday!

I don't know what will happen when your mother passes in terms of your feelings but I do think that you've spent many years grieving already.
You and I and the others on this thread and unfortunately many, many thousands of others didn't get the parents we needed or wanted. That's just the way it goes sadly, it's actually not anything to do with us. The very best we can do is not repeat it with our own children but also by treating ourselves in the way we longed for our parent to treat us.
I hope you are able to see that your arms are already so full of good and great things that you really have no other choice than to put your burden down.

Im in therapy because of my mother as well. She would be OUTRAGED to read that, but it is very hard. I have found the psychotherapy a little bit of a crutch but it certainly doesn't solve the practical problems or make all of the anxieties go away. It's a long old haul. I feel guilty for saying it but I will feel a bit free when my mum dies but I wouldn't say that to my therapist.

I like to fall asleep to a self compassion meditation, I recommend Chris Germer on youtube. He has a really good one where you talk to yourself like you're your friend.

It’s so sad reading the stories on here and in a way comforting to know I’m not alone. My DM is also elderly and has had MH issues all my life, she thought nothing of physically harming me and I was physically frightened of her as a child and as an adult dealing with her outbursts even now fills me with dread. My father is emotionally abusive and extremely controlling I have a vague relationship with my parents but keep them at arms length for my own sake. I have a wonderful relationship with my own DD and have broken the cycle but I realised how low my DM would go when after an epic outburst I cut contact from her for a while for my own sake, I should have known better her attention was turned on my DD and she would not leave her be and DD was begging me to make contact to get her GM off her case.

The latest thing is now she’s full of apologies about how she let me down and should of protected me from my DF and how he should never have had children etc, it all sounds so sweet and kind doesn’t it? She doesn’t apologise for the physical and emotional abuse she meted out to me, the embarrassment of her screaming at me in public, being hit with a riding whip, verbally abused and bullied and seems to have forgotten the times when sides with and gleafully joined in with my DF bullying. She’s lucky I speak to her at all.

Why is she apologising? Because it makes HER feel better and she’s playing the victim as DF has turned the full force of his bullying on her now as everyone gives him a wide berth. If she wanted to the clear the air she should clear it all not just the bits that suit her to address.

Both of their behaviour has left me damaged, I have anxiety and OCD (diagnosed) I have said to her I see other people with their DF and I am jealous that they have a father that clearly loves them and is proud of them I would so love that. I can’t address with her any of the things she has done because she will just have one of her meltdowns and I just can’t cope with it. I think it’s something that will just be unresolved with both of my parents and I have to live with.

Thank you for starting this post op. I am a similar age and just about to head to therapy. I cannot believe the amount of damage my parents have done through neglect and abuse. Now estranged. And I agree as to your premise of closure sadly.

I forever feel unworthy.

This. I feel like I have an awful wound that no amount of therapy is going to heal. A mother myself (and although not a perfect one), I cannot believe how my own mother has behaved, it seems incomprehensible to me. I struggle with trust issues, it's like the loneliness within perpetuates itself.

I owe my mum everything as she gave birth to me

You owe her nothing because this seems to be all she actually ever did for you.

She gave birth.

She wasn’t a mother.

But we are hardwired through evolution to always go back in hope to our primary caregiver (mother) in order to survive because they provided essential food and shelter - even if they were emotionally and physically abusive, as a child we still were attempting to attach because we needed that food and shelter.

We also needed the emotional warmth and support which we never got ..... but we still go back now hoping and hoping unconsciously for this ..... as adults we don’t need to go to them for food and shelter.

Therapy can help us see this, to grieve for our loss and to build our emotional resources and resilience to do a 180 degree turn and to find the emotional support elsewhere and to stop going back in to get stung.

As PP have said once you drop the futile emotional hope of trying to find healing from the person who hurts you ..... you will be lighter and liberated .... you will also then not be in pain, drained, distracted, distraught and preoccupied - you will free up your energy, heart and mind to be more emotionally available to the uplifting, radiant people in your life who love you and need you - because you have finite energy and you can’t be in two emotional places at once.....choose carefully and invest in yourself and your loved ones and this effort will be reciprocated.