My Mum is obsessed with me having her illness

[diabetesobsession]

Can anyone help me unpick this? My mother has type 2 diabetes and is severely affected, more than usual cases.

The weird thing is that she is seemingly obsessed with the idea that I have it, too. I mean really, really obsessed.

I have regular blood tests due to severe anaemia and they include HBA1C at my request so I have been well aware of my status ever since her diagnosis.

Nevertheless she insists on attributing my anaemia symptoms to diabetes. I almost feel as though she is wishing it on me. It is absolutely infuriating and also kind of sickening. It makes me feel really disturbed, actually, especially when I have solid diagnoses already.
It's so noticeable that my sister has commented on this, too.

I even ended up at the doctor's asking about it and she scoffed at the idea, actually laughed and said "no, I don't think so".

I am low contact with her already but can anyone shed any light on what the motivation could be here? Why won't she drop the idea?

Sternly tell her to stop it.

Sometimes you just gotta be firm with people and show them you're not putting up with any nonsense.

I would stop discussing my health would her as she sounds highly anxious. If you're overweight she might be worried you might be prediabetic or something. She just sounds concerned and caring, there must be a reason why she is targeting you more hence why I wonder if it's because your weight or because you complain a lot about your anaemia. She probably feels a lot of guilt and anxiety for her diagnosis and fears she might have passed bad habits or genetic vulnerability to it, for example certain ethnicities are more vulnerable to developing diabetes and so need to be more vigilant with diet, stay on the lower end of a normal BMI range ...etc.

I weigh 57 kilos, though.

Yes, maybe anxiety does come into it but there's no concern or caring for my actual diagnosed conditions.

How old is she? Sometimes the first sign of dementia that people notice is obsessive/repetitative behaviour

Have you ever told your mum off OP?

Now and again I have to give my mum a telling off. When you live alone for a long time you don't have anyone to tell you your behaviour is inappropriate

I would stop discussing any of your health information with her as she’s so weird about it.

Can’t really think of a rational explanation about why she would do this… can you have munchausen by proxy in adults?

That’s very odd indeed!

Has she always been into you both being alike as two peas in a pod and all that malarkey?

I can’t imagine wanting my daughters to get anything negative I have had to put up with. It’s the opposite isn’t it?!

Munchausens by proxy?

I'm afraid I've already sent a harsh message about it this morning, what happens is it gets repeatedly mentioned and then I lose my temper pretty easily due to the repetition.

Oh dear, perhaps there is an element of dementia, I hadn't considered that at all 😕

I have got my own illnesses, I don't need people heaping other ones onto me!

I don't understand other people at all at times.

If this is being said by messenger then surely you can just ignore the message?

I feel she wants the drama of me being diagnosed with diabetes and that she would be proven right. Or it's some kind of extreme stubbornness. That it doesn't matter how many times I say it, it won't be accepted that I don't have it.

A lot of people with type 2 feel that they're being blamed for having it, either directly or indirectly, eg due to factors such as lifestyle, diet and weight.
Kind part of my thinks she's struggling with symptoms and wants to be sure you'd get diagnosed earlier if it was relevant.

Cynical part of me wonders if she's secretly hoping you'll have it so it's 'proof' she didn't cause it herself, because by the sounds of it, you're in better shape.

My dad did similar when he was diagnosed with cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes. He was sure it was a sign it ran in the family. I got tested, everything was fine, funnily enough when my dad started watching his portions and became more active his symptoms drastically reduced and he no longer has all those diagnoses...

NB I'm not underestimating how hard it is for some people due to barriers they have. My dad wasn't one of those though, he was retired and with a good income, he could afford good food and had time to exercise he just liked rich food and too much of it!

@Bridgertonned So sorry to say your reply made me laugh out loud, just because it's the conviction that everyone else must have it, too, that's so familiar. A least I'm not the only person ever to have experienced something like this!

The way these things strike can be very unfair but I haven't got away with anything, I have two recent diagnoses and they're also considering Coeliac disease.

Yes in my case my dad was convinced that the doctors had uncovered some sort of genetic flaw that must affect all of us because there could be no way he'd have it otherwise... He badgered us all to get tested, and even questioned whether the tests we'd had were accurate when none of us had any issues.
He went quiet on it once he magically reversed his diabetes by losing a few stone!

I appreciate you've got your own health issues but it sounds like you look after your health and perhaps your mum is struggling with a realisation that she doesn't and you do and that could be a factor in the difference between you?

Actually she does look after her health, she was one of the unlucky 10% or so of type 2s who were not overweight when diagnosed.

My Mum has a tendency to do this too, anytime I cough she tells me that I have asthma. I don't, I have quite severe hay fever, one year it was so severe that my GP prescribed an inhaler, but it's not asthma. I think that she sees my symptoms and they are the same as she had before she was diagnosed with asthma so she makes an assumption that it's the same cause as her symptoms. What's doubly annoying is that I'm usually coughing too much to be able to speak to shut her comments down.

Fortunately I am now on a really good prescription anti-histamine so the coughing fits are much reduced. She's also a bit less active as she has got older so more likely to show off her garden through a window rather than dragging me outside for 30 minutes underneath all the trees.

That would piss me off. My dear MIL who was actually a very sweet lady had bad hay fever. She was convinced every time anyone caught a cold it was 'an allergy to tree pollen'. Even when I was hospitalised with pneumonia she told me it was probably due to silverbirch pollen

Fair enough, although it's entirely possible medical staff will have led her to feel responsible - it's certainly a common belief that it's a 'lifestyle disease' which may be true in some cases but certainly not all

I think there is probably something here about projecting her worries and anxieties onto you. If you are this way too, it normalises it a bit for her.

It's not quite the same, but my mum was a bit hung up at times on her ideas of me 'not coping' with being a parent. As in, constantly remarking that we 'shouldn't have another, how would we manage?!' when we were managing just fine having one. Or when I told her I was pregnant with my eldest, her immediate response wasn't excitement or congratulations, but 'are you okay? was this planned?' I was literally a 30 something happily married woman with a good career and in excellent physical and emotional health, but you would have thought I was a 15 year old telling my mother that I was knocked up by some boy I'd known 2 months.

But I think it stemmed from the fact that she struggled as a parent, couldn't cope with it, even when I was an adult (we are NC now), so she felt overwhelmed and anxious because she projected all of that onto me, when actually I was doing perfectly fine.

I agree.

Tell her plainly, also that her harping on about it severely annoys you. My mother could be a bit like that though not so much with me as with others; with me, if I every displayed symptoms of anything she said I was making it up! You can't win.

I am sorry about your anaemia. I have had low B12 and folate which caused something akin to pernicious anaemia but with regular supplements I soon improved and am OK. It's good that you are having regular bloods and I'm sorry about your mother's type ll diabetes, that's rough; my late husband had it.

You take care.

We should send the lot of them down to A&E where they can set the doctors straight!

Just repeat the same answer each time, word for word: “No, mum, my HbA1C is normal. The doctor confirmed and don’t have diabetes and that I’m not at immediate risk of it”. If she asks again, just repeat that, maybe just the first bit.

If she persists, then you’re going to have to be blunt: “I’ve already told you I don’t have diabetes. If you keep asking me the same question or contradicting the doctor, I’ll have to leave/ask you to leave/whatever”.