Anyone else’s Mum just dumps emotionally on you?

[Cherriesandstrawberries]

I’ve just come away with my Mum for a few days for a long awaited beach trip in the UK. We spent a few hundred each which I didn’t really have the money to do but my Mum really wanted a little holiday with me.

It’s the first night and she’s literally just used me as her therapist. She’s in a deep depressive hole and everything is miserable and overwhelming for her. I’m now really missing home and my teen at home and regret coming.

AIBU to not want to have to take this on? I’ve kept telling her she needs to revisit a therapist but she’s not very proactive. I’m feeling awful now and feel really negative and down myself but aren’t you supposed to be there for your loved ones? Feeling confused as I’m also annoyed that I feel low too now.

*prop not top.

I'm having a very strange moment reading these. I can't focus on the words because this is the first time other people have vocalised my childhood.

From a young age I was told inappropriate family secrets and was used as my mother's therapist. I begged her to get counselling for years and years, but she always refused. She would tell me the same awful stories again and again. She had a bad story about everyone too. I've had a little therapy myself but was never able to fully get as deep as I would have liked.

I am in my 40s and am only starting to see the damage that it has done to me. I put boundaries in place 20 years ago and she didn't like it, but I had to do it. Our relationship has been based on emmashment, codependence (if she's OK, I'm ok) and very poor individuation on my part.

It got to the point that being in her company made me feel physically sick or I would have diarrhoea. Sometimes when she would talk at me, it felt so intense that I would wince. She would tell me things about her past that would make me cry and then ask 'what are you crying about, it didn't happen to you!'. I would replay every horrible detail in my head for decades.

Things took on a new, awful depth shortly after I got married. My husband and I were struggling financially and decided not to have children right away. I told my mum and she went to bed for three days. My cousin got pregnant and I wasn't allowed to tell her in case it upset her. I realised that her expectation for me to be like a literal part of her was sick. It was then that I realised just how Dysfunctional our relationship was.

With my kids, I never tell them my problems unless they are trivial and I go out of my way to let them know that their role in life is not to make me happy but to be free. My kothers happiness or lack of, has been like a ball and chain around neck my entire life.

@Everthenever this is also my first experience of seeing people vocalise my childhood. Mine was so similar to yours. I really was just an extension of her, a receptacle in which to shove all her thoughts.

She told me horrible stories about anyone I cared about. Even people I didn’t care about. Everyone was gunning for us according to my mum. I was very close to my paternal gran growing up, but my mum said she’d been horrible and looked down her nose at us, so I felt disloyal to my mum for loving her and spending time with her. Apparently my dad was horrible too, and made her life a misery, took her away from her family (we moved a 45 min drive away to be closer to my dad’s work so he hardly took her away) and had been violent with her. I loved my dad. Unlike my mum, he was very responsible and sensible and actually looked after me. But I felt loving him was disloyal, so I tried my best to hate him. Time after time I’d have to listen to her drunken monologues of the same stories about him and I’d ask her over and over why we couldn’t leave and move away. Then the next day they’d be laughing together and she’d tell me off for something. The world was so confusing. I had a mental breakdown when I was 12 and had to be hospitalised.

I don’t know if my dad actually did all the things she talked about. I asked her straight out as an adult and gathered there were a couple of episodes of violence years before I was born. Which is horrible and wrong, but it wasn’t any of my business. It wasn’t my responsibility. I was a seven year old. She was a grown adult who could have left, there was family she was close to and could have stayed with.

I’ll never forgive her for encouraging me to hate my dad who died when I was relatively young. I now live with horrible complex grief, partly because I’ve never felt able to sob wholeheartedly for my poor dad without feeling like a bad person.

My mother did this to me, from a very early age. A lot of the things she dumped on me were sexual and even at 50 I don't need to be told about my father's erectile problems, or the intimate details of her vagina. Much less the grisly details of their sex lives! I was also told about her depression and the meds she was taking for it, but forced to promise to never tell my father. I feel abused by her.

These days, I'm not NC with her, but I do actively avoid speaking to her. So far, it's been two years. I send cards if I remember for birthdays etc, but that's mostly so they don't get a chance to send the priest/police to do a welfare check (they absolutely would, they have form for this sort of behaviour whenever one of their children wants a little distance). I'm grateful that they moved far enough away for them to not be arsed to visit.

Yes! This! A bad story about everyone. At 15 i took an overdose and didnt know why and also had a complete breakdown aged 19. I'm sorry you went through this too. How else do you feel it has affected you?

I'm so sorry about your dad too.

Yes. I can relate with so many of the comments here.

Oh wow not mum but my elder sister does this to me and ignores every single piece of advice l give her.

Sorry for you op it is draining.

I've been following this thread after posting myself earlier. I recognise so much of my relationship with my DM in what other posters have written. I veer between feeling angry and feeling very sad. To say it's blighted my life is an understatement, Ive had depression since I was about 14, sometimes its not so bad, sometimes its awful but its never not there. I don't think I'll ever be free of the FOG - sometimes that makes me think that carrying all this stuff takes so much effort & energy that there's actually no point carrying on. I'm having Compassion Focused Therapy but it doesn't seem to be helping me very much.

I took an overdose as well, when I was 14. It all just got too much carrying it around, didn't it?

How else has it affected me... how long have you got?

I've struggled with depression all my life. I've tried to kill myself quite a few times since. I think it started very early... even as a young child I remember feeling everything was grey and bleak and frightening. Instead of being allowed a carefree childhood, I carried around my mother's biases and the weight of her problems on my shoulders, and viewed everything through her depressing tainted lens. I thought things for children were silly and pointless because I had much bigger, more grown-up things on my mind, so struggled with friendships at school.

It gave me this feeling of isolation and of being different from everybody else. I didn't fit in and didn't feel like I could relate to other people. Not because I'm autistic or anything like that (I wondered for a while), but because my childhood experiences were just so different from anyone else's that I knew. I felt like there was something terribly wrong with me but there was no one I could confide in. I remember wanting to tell someone about the sorts of things my mum would say to me but holding back because it would be a betrayal of her confidence. My default in life is, "I have to go this alone", and struggle along.

I also grew up with a really warped view of sex because of having to listen to details of my mum's sex life, or just sex in general. I remember her flipping through a porn magazine from the 1970s with me when I was about 9. It made me feel dirty and ashamed, so in adulthood I struggled with this sense of sex being dirty and shameful.

I've felt throughout my life that I'm responsible for other people's feelings. So I've ended up in several abusive relationships because I kept feeling sorry for them, they can't help it, they don't mean it etc, and after all, what am I here for if not to soothe other people?

I've had a lot of therapy, which has really helped. Plus I didn't see my mum for nearly 20 years. Thankfully I've always had a very silly sense of humour and a sense of childlike wonder about certain things which I try to indulge in as much as possible, because I'll be damned if I'm getting out of here without some kind of childhood!

It's so revelatory to talk about this to people who understand. How else do you feel it's affected you?

People often don't want advice (because that would often mean they'd have to do something they might not be comfortable with to sort the problem), they just want to offload.

Yes, it is draining, especially when it's a recurring theme.

I know this feeling well. The effort and the energy, the fog. I'm really sorry you've had this too. It was so unfair and we didn't deserve it. The therapy that made the biggest difference to me (I could write a book on all the varieties of therapy I've had!) was Cognitive Analytical Therapy which I had with a clinical psychologist.

I can really relate to this . My mum has no friends , she dumps every single woe at my door and I have completely run out of empathy to the point her presence now irritates me . It doesn't help that she's a narcissist and her woes with people are of her own doing

Well this thread makes me feel less alone!

Agree with previous posters regarding parentification, my mum, when I was a child, was quite open about childhood abuse she'd gone through, how she'd been raped in her teen years and explicit detail of extreme sexual abuse at the hands of my father - this traumatised me most because I now believe I must be the product of rape as no way could she have willingly slept with my father.
I was expected to comfort her through all of these issues (plus the endless relationships/cheating/another violent marriage and so much more) when I was just a child. It was so normal to me that I was completely thrown when a therapist told me that what my mother did (does) is abuse!

She's just the same now and if I don't listen to her drone on about the same issue 30 times a week then I'm a shit daughter, she gets upset and makes herself out to be a victim so it's not worth bringing anything up with her. It's exhausting and I often get off the phone with her feeling so drained I need a nap.

I'm so sorry so many of you are experiencing the same. I often see people saying about going "no contact" with toxic family but I find it so difficult, I know I would be badmouthed to the entire town and no one would ever understand the extent of what she's put me through. I've always been the one to try and paper over the cracks and just get on with it all.

I was an only child and rather than my mother off loading to me , and it wasn't until after she passed I realised she was the person I used to moan too , share my relationship woes etc.
I now realise , too late , that this is not healthy , nor fair to the person.
Could you tell her you sympathise but do not want to feel burdened by her problems or to be her confidant ?

I rather suspect that people posting on this thread have been placed in the position of mum's emotional garbage can for most of their lives and their mum is the last person they would go to to discuss a problem because they would end up listening to mum's endless tales of woe instead of getting support.

Yes, it's very draining. My parents are going through some marital problems and my mum calls me frequently to discuss. I've had to put a stop to it. Even yesterday, I called when I got back from a holiday and said, "How are you and Dad?", expecting a "same old, same old" response, and she goes into a rant about how he'll never sleep in her bed again. It's got to the point where I sometimes just don't pick up.

I have three kids and while I will always, always listen and advise/counsel them whenever they want it, I don't have the expectation or desire for them to fulfill that role for me. I'm the parent, not them. I feel the same way when people describe their kids as their "best friends" - boundaries, people!

Yes. My mother likes to share her troubles with me (since age 10) and it's a one way street. She's the last person I've ever been to with a problem (since age 10). We are not close. As I've got older I've found the ovaries to say "why do you always phone me when you're in a state - what do you expect me to do?". Her reply usually goes along the lines of "but I feel so much better now I've told you about it darling". Yeah right. We are not, and have never been close.

I compare it to my own relationship with my adult children and it smacks me in the face how different it is.

It's wildly inappropriate to be told about the details of their sex lives and from such a young age @Ifeelsuchflutterings

100% this! If I'm tired, she's more tired. If I'm struggling as a single mum to one, well she was a single mum to two and she managed (by being fucking negligent but okay), if I'm having a bad day hers is always worse, I very, very, very rarely vent to her.

Also when I do vent or offload I have my half sister, my ex, two very close friends etc so it's spread around a bit (if that makes sense?) whereas I am all my mum has so I get ALL of it! That aside they are the parents, I will listen to my DS woes all day long but I would never expect the same from him especially when it's quite personal (sexual, abuse).

@IDriveMySupernova that's so terrible about the porn magazine. What an absolute breach of trust. Aside from that, I identify with everything including the feeling that our family was different. The utter burden of wanting to share what I knew but not being able to. When I was 19 I had a horrible experience and went off the rails. I then one night blurted some of the stuff out to my friend. The next day wad the worst day of my life...I'd finally done it. Betrayed the family secret. I went into a complete spiral of despair. I ended up on antidepressants and was suicidal. The only way I could get any peace was to imagine myself in a coffin. I had nightmares that I was going to Hell and in the end I remember finding a priest in the middle of the day and begging him to give me Confession. It took me years and years to get over the shame of what I did and I still carry it around, even though I trust the person I told and she is still a close friend 20 years later. I carried so much anger around that I had been put in that position in the first place! I spent years in relationships with men I had no feelings for because i didnt know what my own feelings were. I could never stand up for myself to bullies as I always felt like I had to apologise for feeling hurt about anything. Me having anger was a no-no. I felt like I had one purpose; the therapist.

I know my mum loves me in her own way. She cares about me in her own way too. That's definitely true.

However, I can't be in her company for too long without feeling stifled and poisoned. I had to stay in her house for a few days last week as I had a work even near where she lives and it made sense to stay with her. I was there for 3 nights and by the end I almost felt unwell. She wasn't dumping anything on me but the atmosphere was heavy. Sometimes when she looked at me a certain way or said something in a certain tone, it triggered a visceral response of pure disgust; nausea, churning stomach, sometimes feeling g faint, sometimes a screeching feeling of rage inside of me when she spoke a certain way. All the while, I was putting on an act and trying to be calm and not bothered.

After a while in her company I feel so tired and drained. I told my husband it's like when there are loads of apps in the background draining your phone battery. There are so many deep psychological mechanisms spinning in the background to keep me safe, that my battery ends up in tatters. The emotional dumping has stopped but some kind of residue remains. Some kind of sense of immense combination of shame, embarrasment, disgust and anxiety. I've no idea what it's all about but I know it's because I was parentified and berated for complaining about it.

And to echo some PPs, I would only turn to my mum for emotional support if there was literally nobody else. She prides herself on being an incredibly emotionally intelligent, empathetic and compassionate person but her responses to anything I've ever shared with her are either 'Don't you think that (insert reason why I've brought it all on myself) or 'I've never been in that position so can't advise'. Any 'advice' feels like judgement and makes me feel embarrassed. It always feels like it's coming from an 'I told you so!' point of view and it always feels like there is some kind of a dig attached to it. I dont tell her anything.

Get your teenager to phone with an emergency. Then you can leave straight away.

Yes, mine. She thinks the purpose of a conversation is to moan, she can’t do anything else.

My dad does.