Tips for dealing with mentally ill/personality disorder MIL

[AuntieMeemz]

I'm loosing with my sanity with this woman! Severe control issues, extremely domineering. All attempts to fight her off exhausting! Need tips on retaining my sanity. Every day she calls to demand we visit (we have decided twice a month is enough) Every single visit involves bizarre, irrational and abusive attacks from her. If we don't answer the phone, she calls police to tell them i'm not looking after husband or children! If we decline to visit, we get endless, endless demanding calls. Once we have declined or accepted, the cycle begins again and again and again. Each visit demand is for a VERY important matter and if we don't go, we are selfish, heartless, mean, unloving, cruel etc etc.
I could write pages and pages of torment and misery here, but you get the picture. All advice from counsellors have failed, all attempts at setting boundaries useless. What I could do with is light hearted tips to mentally survive this.

Hey soul sister! My MIL is similar, but not as extreme as that.

My goal is to MOVE!

Don't leave a forwarding address.

Perhaps a Greek Island that requires two flights and two boat journeys to get to. Hopefully, she will neber catch up with you.

Turn your phone off.

Buy a new one. Gove it to trusted people only.

Flunkey ·love it.. Made me laugh and I needed that. Thinking now... Croatian islands even better..

Hook her up with a nice widower from the area....

Chypre - love the idea, but not confident it would last. She has got through 4 live in carers in 2 months! Agency are now refusing to send anyone else.

She can't go into care, she is obsessed with dominating everything and everyone, and is very abusive and aggressive.

How old is you MIL? The reason I am asking is this could be dementia related. But this could also be that she is bored. But yeah a Greek Island sounds terrific. I am sure you have, time and time again, tried conversing with her how demanding she is, that she is out of order calling the police with false accusations, making your life a pure misery, but this must be really tough on your DH?

Can you get a cheap phone and give her that number? Block on all other devices. Check in once a week /whatever you can realistically deal with... Be very less available irl...

Shoutatthewind MIL is 94, but has been this way for the 20+ years I have known her! It is absolutely exhausting fighting her off day in and day out! No point in telling her she is out of order, she goes berserk, and gets very abusive. She is absolutely convinced that she and she alone knows exactly what we should be doing and when. She shouted for 10 mins that I was extremely rude when I said I wasn't going to argue with her.
We leave/hang up.. and the next day., she is on the phone again demanding that we visit/call.
It is tough on DH and me. It caused his breakdown some years ago, and I work hard to make sure it doesn't do the same to me.

Thesunwillcomeoutverysoon good idea, but we tried it. She gets her other son to call us, email to demand we contact/visit. She also gets other family members and friends to call us. When we ignored ALL that, she insisted the police visit us, 3 times! She has even tried to contact the children's school, but I lied about which school they were at! She is absolutely obsessed and nothing, but nothing will get in her way! We changed our mobile phones though, so we have some peace. However, she will call the land line again and again until she catches us out! It's like stalking really.

Did the police turn up at your home?

Did they charge her with wasting police time?. Such behaviour from her is harassment and her age is no excuse.

Drop the rope completely here with regards to her. She wants a response from you and a response to her is the reward. Your twice a month visits to her are two visits too many, she should not be visited by you people at all. Why are you rewarding her bad behaviour her with a fortnightly visit?. Doing that also plays into her hands.

Ask yourselves this question too. Would you tolerate this from a friend?. No you would not and she is no different.

Its not your fault she is like this and neither you or her son made her that way.
Am not at all surprised she's always been like this either. She was once young and abusive and now she is old and abusive. Read Susan Forward's book called Toxic Inlaws.

You need to block all ways of she being able to communicate with you both; the "normal" rules of social interaction go out the window completely when it comes to such disordered of thinking people. Like many such types as well I see she has brought in the flying monkeys (sometimes relatives but always easily manipulated people into doing her bidding for her). Their opinion needs to be ignored too as they do not have your best interests at heart, they also need call barring.

You say she is mentality ill /personality disorder?
what has she been diagnosed with and by who? how old was she when she had this diagnosis? Which team in mental health services is she being referred to ? Does she have a care coordinator in that team

i ask, because this site has way to many people thinking they are psychiatrists and diagnosing people with mental illness , or god forbid personality disorders.

There are many reasons why elderly people can behave irrationally or unreasonably. It does not make them mentally ill or have a personality disorder . It can be delirium if come on recently (UTI s most common cause), it can be early signs of any number of forms of dementia, it can be just plain old fear and anxiety that makes allot of people irritable , it can be loss of hearing, vision etc that can go undetected and are very disorienting.

you sound like you are at end of your tether. If her children believe she has deteriorating mental health they should ask for an assessment with her GP, if she does not, despite your ascertainion , have a diagnosis yet. If she does have a diagnosis please speak with her care coordiantor about her behaviours and ask for advice and support .

Move country if you can. If you can't, try and move somewhere at least a couple of hours away so it is inconvenient to visit. Change your landline and any other contact details she has and email/text all family members to say you have cut contact with her due to her verbal abuse and threatening behaviour and you do not wish for them to pass on any details about you to her or vice versa.

She seems like an extreme narcissist and if you have fears she'll contact the police again be proactive and contact them first to say your cutting contact with your MIL and she has been known to report you to the police in the past.

You're letting her ruin your happiness and enjoyment of your life. Her behaviour is completely unacceptable and I'm surprised its gone so long without you cutting contact.

Oh wow...did the police turn up - if so id be sending them round to arrest MIL for abusing the 999 emergency system.

Honestly Id block her completely and unplug the land line...no-one needs a landline anymore 😂 ..... not being funny but at 94 hopefully she doesnt have long left. No way would I allow anyone to be that rude and abusive to me.... stop it now OP!

Get caller ID and auto send her to voicemail.

I would honestly go no contact with this woman. Life is too short.

I agree with @Ilikewinter I know it sounds harsh but she is VERY elderly now, I know it doesn't help right now but she is not going to live forever and there will be an end to this.
In the meantime go no contact

Cut all contact with her and anyone who does her dirty work. I really can't understand why you haven't. It is absolutely batshit to pander in any way to this woman.

Chypre · 05/06/2023 16:18
Hook her up with a nice widower from the area....

this is the best advice. Only when she finds someone

or what was it lol, adult social services. a welfare check with particular emphasis: loneliness

She's 94 FGS! I wonder what you will be like at 94? ... or indeed any of us. There will be reasons for her behaviour ... but very likely simple fear ... she is losing control of everything in her life and is trying to claw back something .. anything ... that gives some back.

I honestly think you just have to suck it up. I certainly do not think that non- psychiatrists here should be labelling her .. especially narcissistic... it is just the latest buzz word.

What you may be sure about is that she is a very unhappy lady. I think you should cut her a bit of slack and rise above it. See her not as your enemy, but a frightened old lady.

My late OH had a neurodegenerative disorder and I had this kind of stuff 24 hours a day for years. I did not reject him. I understood he could not help it.