As a child, did you have an anxious, stressed out or angry mum?

[Muminthewest]

What was her behaviour and how did this affect you?
Was there a turning point when things got better and if so, what brought about the change, and what age were you when the change took place?
How is your relationship with your mum now?

I am worried I am this mum, I’m triggered all the time.
My children won’t be able to articulate the effect my stress might be having on them. I want to know I can turn things around and see how others have done this. I also want to know it’s not too late. My children are 8 and 5.

My mum wasn't like this but I would seek help from your gp if I were you.

I had an angry mum , if she had to take me anywhere (eg shops or brownies ) she would get angry to be honest I was scared of her and she doesn’t speak to me any more . Try not to be angry I think if they can see you are stressed and you can explain things or explain it’s not their fault that is much better then getting angry. I used to think if I had known what mine was angry about I could have helped (suspect it was nothing to do with her children) xx

No idea but same tbh. I have to take many, many deep breaths.

It became almost like water off a duck's back in a way, but I also basically felt like I didn't have a mum. Not in the way that you're supposed to have. I chose not to live with her when I was old enough. I think it has affected my ability to make friends, as I expect women not to like me, but also made me very self-sufficient (or maybe more dependent on male approval as a substitute). I am also very sensitive to shouting and sudden noise, kind of a nervous disposition. I have a cordial relationship with her now, but we're not in frequent contact.

My mother never took responsibility for our relationship, never accepted that she was the adult in this. At least you have some self-awareness - that is a great start.

The fact that you're concerned about this speaks volumes.

My mum was very mercurial (I'm now sure she is bipolar) and her emotions were often very big, very intense, and very obvious to me. But it was the subtleties, too – I learned to read her face and her energy when I was very young, and most of my childhood was defined by trying to level her out – being funny and cheerful to stop her from being sad, or walking on eggshells to stop her exploding.

Children are naturally very ego-centric, in that they assume their main caregiver's emotions are because of them, so I internalised a lot and grew up thinking it was my fault she was so upset all the time. It's only recently, through a lot of therapy, that I'm starting to understand that I'm not a bad person, and be able to separate my sense of self from hers.

I now don't have a relationship with her – partly because of this, but for a whole host of other reasons, too.

Looking back now, with an adult's mind, I wish she had sought out help for the things she was dealing with, for her sake as well as for mine. I have huge compassion for all she was going through – it must have been so hard for her – and I wish she had cared enough about herself to address what she was experiencing.

And I wish she had been able to work on the 'repair' side of things.

So much of a healthy relationship isn't about everything going smoothly all the time – it's being able to have difficult moments and then come back to do the 'repair work' of apologising, acknowledging responsibility, and doing better next time. My mother was incapable of that – and still is – and it would have made the world of difference.

I walked on egg shells my entire childhood, please don't be this mother. She was stressed, anxious, angry and above all disappointed in her life. She had a long running affair and made me complicit in them when i was very young up to my early teens. Both parents angry and depressed and both discussed suicide in front of me. The shouting was awful, the strained silences even worse. At least you are aware of it.

I had an angry dad and a passive disconnected mum.

I have been angry in my life towards my kids but I don’t blame them or make them feel responsible for me. They aren’t afraid of me. I have had a lot of stress and didn’t deal with it well as I didn’t have the right tools or support. I have tried to make it up to them by learning patience and managing my stress by myself and sorting it out. You have to seek help. You have to learn to walk away from triggers not expect your kids to learn not to piss you off. I mean things that are obviously annoying like fighting are going to wind any parent up but you can work on your reactions.

I’m like this too. And I hate it. I do have some real life pressures which put a lot of stress in me that I can’t change.
I am very shouty and I hate it. I don’t hold a grudge though and I’m never ‘in a mood’. It’s purely reaction to them not listening a billions times or doing something unsafe etc . Then I’ll happily chat and engage again.
But I still know it’s not good. And I desperately want to stop but can’t seem to.
So if anyone has any tips I’d be delighted. It got much worse when I was So, so, sleep deprived with my youngest and then covid and home schooling with a 1 year old in tow and trying to work and having an extremely unwell husband for a year. I was on the point of exploding all the time. Wasn’t allowed any help because of covid. And now I can’t seem to break the habit.

one thing I always do though, is apologise for shouting. Tell them why I’m stressed and try really hard not to gas light them whilst doing this. Also explain to the older one that actually if you deliberately misbehaved or push someone’s buttons repeatedly you will eventually get a negative reaction.
Always at bedtime I spend 121 time with them and make sure they know I’m there for them. I’m sure it doesn’t undo the harm of ‘being a shouty mum’ but hopefully they’ll forgive me when they are older and understand a little. In the meantime I try and try to be more patient and keep failing.

Any strategies anyone?

Mine was a bit of a martyr, and small-minded. I used to wish that she'd get herself a job, in the hope that it would make her a nicer, more normal person.....

Mu mum would catastrophize, so I had to unlearn all that fear that something would go wrong or that someone would die if I ventured beyond my comfort zone. It’s a hard thing to shake off though.

My memories of my mum growing up are her leaving early and getting home late, snapping if we didn’t follow what she wanted or had to ask her to repeat herself, sighing and saying “what??” if we interrupted one of her programs, and stomping around complaining that she is the only one doing anything in this house and she’s fed up etc.

She was a single parent for a long time, has a lot of past trauma, and had a very intense and stressful job. But obviously I didn’t understand that as a child. It really made me sad, especially as I have a stepmum who is very much a “mummy” mum - my step siblings had a very different life to me and that hurt when I was little.

However - now my mum and I are very close because I understand what she was going through, and she had that self-reflection and was mature enough to ask for forgiveness and explain why she acted the way she did. I think that really is key - I mean obviously try not to be too angry around your kids but you’re only human and sometimes mistakes happen.

I also have a lot of anxiety and anger - I’m in therapy for it and sometimes it does spill out in front of the kids but I make sure to apologise immediately afterwards and make sure they know they are so valued and loved. They seem to be doing okay - better than I was as a child anyway!

We just have to be the best parents we can be and accept we can’t get it right all of the time :)

I am very like this too. I am nice a lot of the time, but I do snap and shout when they misbehave or are rude - and they arent actually THAT bad. I say sorry if I over-react. I need to work harder on alternative strategies to getting angry. It's disproportionate. I'd hate it if someone spoke to me like that .

Yes, I had an anxious mother with poor coping skills.

It damaged our relationship permanently. She has never changed and we aren't close. She couldn't cope with my emotional ups and downs so I hid them from her completely. I still struggle to form close relationships because I learned as a child that the only person I could rely on emotionally was myself.

I can remember my DF telling me to look after her from the time I was about 10.

yes constantly eye-rolling, sighing, just being joyless. Really gave off the vibe of how little she liked our company, and how resentful she was of us disturbing her need to be alone.

she definitely liked her children “silent, asleep, somewhere else”

How did it impact- well I married someone who reacted the same way to me in the hope I could get that love from another source, and in doing so subjected my children to another generation of it, with a man’s anger added. At least I could divorce him, and recognize his brokenness.

I thought all mothers were like that, and it was a revelation to see that other families had fun- weren’t on edge, constantly scanning for the next line of attack. I remember someone saying the word home with such warmth and longing. It still makes me cry to thing of how she said it. The truth is we lived in a house, but we didn’t live in a home.

She is frail and elderly now, and obviously we can’t actually talk about it, the truth is I’ve never really had a conversation with my mother- because she is scanning for anything that might be embarrassing/ cringe/the wrong thing to say/any other of a million ways in which the content can be avoided. So we keep it at the banalities- she can only cope with that level, everything else is rubbished because that’s her coping mechanism.

The damage was certainly in place by the time I was five- the thought there might be play-dates or inviting people home was completely laughable even by the time I started school. By 8 I was well trained to see her poorly contained resentment as a sign of my own worthless.

so yes, deep seated fucked up-ness.

Is it fixable: that’s up to you.

I had this mum. Don't get me wrong she was an amazing mum, always trying to create magical memories for us and giving us the best times but she was easily triggered. She never hit us but she would should. I was a very difficult high energy child and would provoke her.

Things got better as we got older and could control and articulate our emotions to her. Now we're closer than ever! It's never too late OP xx

I relate to what Whiskerson wrote.

I also expect women to dislike me, am friends more with men. I am pretty damn desperate for validation.

Mine is very old now, but has become more manipulative as she has aged. Once I was adult, I called her out on some of the (continuing) worst aspects of her behaviour. I'll never forget looking her in the eye pretty much for the first time and being properly angry.

"Go on," she said, "hit me then."

There are some things that you can't prepare yourself for. (I could no more hit her than walk on water). It was the fact that that is what she expected of me that got me.

Now I am the unsympathetic daughter who still calls her out when she is putting on an act. I've grown into it, because I have done the work on my self esteem (and have had some help from some pretty awesome friends) to protect my sanity.

Jeez, sorry, rant and derail.

Yes, apologise to the kids if you think that you have blown up without proper reason. They'll love you pretty much whatever, but more so for being fair!

Yep and I really resent my mother for this

Sometimes she'd blow up over nothing and be like, "Why can't I have a normal family?"😭😭😭😭😭 but most of the time she was just there.

Gosh very similar experience here. I assume everyone dislikes me and I'm very unwilling to ask people for help (I think because my mum would be so angry if I needed her help with anything - basic or emotional needs).

You arent like my mum because she has never demonstrated any self awareness . But please seek help. It's not happy or safe for children to constantly feel they are angering someone , esp their parent.

Yes, very similar to what CambrianCamel said, and others.
In fact she always insisted we went to bed early , so we would be out of the way silent and asleep (although lay awake for ages as wasn't tired).
Had a big row in my teens and really I've had a no tolerance policy since then.

When we do meet up tends to be very mundane conversations, safe subjects. I do feel she's rewritten history and in her mind we always got on fine!

I had a very anxious stressy mum.

I became a very anxious adult, was scared of lots of things, was often on edge around people to not make them stressed or set them off. I became a bit of a doormat.

12 years of counselling helped. Maybe I should invoice my mum for the counselling costs 😂

What are you 'triggered' by?

I had an angry mum and it still affects me to this day. I'm 50.

My mum was stressed out, unpredictable and emotionally immature. Her mood dictated the whole household's mood. We were walking on eggshells the whole of our childhoods and actually into our adulthoods.

Once I had my own children, I had a huge revelation about how damaging it was growing up like this.

I distanced myself from her and we have a strained relationship now. I am still hyper vigilant to her moods although therapy has given me strategies to help with this.

I'm not a perfect parent by any stretch of the imagination and I'm sure there's many things I've done or said that my children will have an issue with. I hope that they are able to talk to me about this as they get older and I will listen and apologise if I need to. I could never have these sorts of conversations with my mum. It's an impossible idea.

I remember when I was about 14 I made a Victoria sponge whilst she was at work, thinking it would be nice for her to come home to.

I had the flour out, a whisk with cake mix on the side, bowls in the sink. I was in the middle of baking and just pouring my mixture in the tins.

She came home, hit the fucking roof, bellowing about how she doesn’t want to come home to mess, that I’m selfish, I’m lazy and sent me to my room. Then I heard her angrily cleaning it all.

A bit later she sheepishly asked if I wanted to ice my cake (she had finished them) but never apologised. She was never in the wrong. There were lots more incidents like that (even when I was younger) where she would just have a disproportionate, nuclear response to a complete minor annoyance.

I love my mum a lot and we have a ‘good’ relationship- but I’m still cross for little me and teenage me. I am very careful what I tell her now.

Very pleased to be a ’messy’ happy mum to my DC.

My mum was very stressed. She had 3 kids under 3, was a young mum, we were quite poor for a long time. Then she went off to college when I was about 9, then off to uni, where she would have to do placements and nights shifts. Lots of stress. Lots of snapping.

She was also very loving, clearly adored us and still made a lovely childhood for us all. We are extremely close now - all of us are close with her. She is the best mum and has a tricky time, but that didn’t define her.