As in the title, this is just major league venting. No need to respond or read at all or to the end. I have had it.
Cannot deal with nutcase mom anymore. My dad died of ALZ earlier in the year and he was the easy one. My mom has always been OCD/high anxiety and my brothers and I sometimes joke, but then are serious, that my dad did not have Alzheimers but just had his psycho/neuro system fried out after over 60 years with my mom . She has gotten worse as she gets older and losing my dad has understandably been hard on her and I think now in addition to (as one doctor put it, anther of my dads docs referred to her anxiety as "through the roof" ) off the charts anxiety, but clinical depression too. Yet she refuses to do anything to help herself like see a therapist or psychological help of any time. She gets angry at the very suggestion as that makes her feel she is nuts (which she is). My dad dealt with it by just ignoring her, but he should have confronted her about it as in the process, she hosed up him and my two brothers and me.
Her own primary MD, a female, has called me almost in tears as she (the MD) doesn't know what to do anymore. My mom comes to an appointment at about a 15 on a 1 to 10 anxiety scale and the doctor cannot do any examination. Her doctor, and one of my dads doctors though perhaps she too is getting dementia problems but it is masked by her anxiety. Her dr. has tried to run her through one of those screening tests buy my mom gets into a temper tantrum like a little girl and will not do it. She takes her anxiety meds intermittently if at all, claiming they make her sick.
Instead, she badgers me everyday with the same phone calls, questions, worries. As someone else said they did, I will answer the same question a different way sometimes at which time she will ask why I answered differently the time before. So she remembers, just a constant need for reassurance like OCD people do.
Over they years, she and my dad had gone to Myrtle Beach for a few weeks in the winter where they met many friends (and my brothers family lives nearby in Wilmington, NC, so they could see them). Last winter, they could not go as my dad was going downhill, but my mom would like to go for at least a week this year to see her friends again. She wants me to go with as she is afraid to fly alone, but I HONESTLY could not put up with her for one week solid. Normally I would like her to be able to do something that makes her happy, but she drives me nuts from 15 miles away, how could I be with her for week solid? My brother in NC has offered to pick her up at an airport where she can go non stop, drive her to Myrtle Beach for a weekend then pick her up the following weekend but she is afraid to fly alone and wants me to go with. I do feel bad for her having lost her husband, but I cannot do it all. She is driving me nuts. I lost my dad too, but to her, its all about her, her grief, her anxiety, and she will not do anything to help herself. Too proud to take the shared senior ride service and wants me to drive her around all the time. Yet always complains how I do not do enough and how other friends and relatives of hers have kids that do so much more than I do. Yet those same aunts have scolded her for saying I don't do much, as they see how much I do, and its just me, as opposed to aunts who have several kids in the area. So the demandingness and lack of appreciation bothers me more than the work itself. And the work itself is mild compared to just being with someone that high strung all the time.
We are also afraid if she does go to Myrtle Beach for week without me, she would be dependent on her friends there for rides,, etc, and drive them crazy. They have confided in me in the past they really like my mom in shorter doses, but cannot deal with her for longer periods of time. Yet putting up with her for long periods of time is what I have to do.
Wishing you the best of luck here, my friend.
And it feels good to write out a rant and hit "post" and KNOW that there are a bunch of people in cyberspace who GET IT. I do not like to share private feelings like my bad relationship with my mother with friends. They didn't see her, as I did , growing up.
Just blowing up now and then is OK. Just don't get stuck in the wallow. (I know firsthand not to--but I still do).
You do what you can and let the rest go. Your poor dr--when you have one who truly cares--that's amazing. Keep in touch with her. Maybe she can prescribe something for the anxiety that you can "sneak" into her food and when she's calmed a little--a trip to the dr. That may be against anything "appropriate" but I do remember when my daughter had PPD, and was handing me her baby and telling me to take her to a fire station, they'd take care of her---uh, no I'm not doing that.
Her hubby (who is a DOCTOR) and I talked and I suggested we "drug her" and get her to calm down before we just hauled off to the ER. 1 mg of Klonipin in hot chocolate and some back rubbing--in 30 minutes she was calm as a summer's morn. She said "Oh, mom, I guess I just needed you!"
Normally I wouldn't drug someone against their will--but sometimes you gotta do what ya gotta do.
(We didn't tell my daughter about this until she was going through with her 2nd baby---she laughed it off (after she took a Klonipin).
Keep boundaries as best you can. That will keep YOU sane. Which is VERY important. If you go "crazy" that's not helping mom at all.
Are you in therapy? Have you learned to say "no" to her and mean it?
Did you grow up with the notion that you needed to walk on eggshells and not upset mama because then she'd make you all nut?s
You are allowed to have healthy adult boundaries with your parents. If mother chooses not to address her mental illness with appropriate treatment, that is HER choice and HER behavior.
You can't change her behavior. But you can change yours. You can choose not to answer your phone. You can say "no, I can't possibly do that". You can stop taking on the burden of her "friends" who can only take her in small doses.
Folks with mental illness need forbearance and patience. But we do NOT owe them our lives or mental health.
I saw her this Christmas and man has she deteriated. Her whole
dysfunctional family remind me of that old show "Married with Children" As much as I love her I've given up. She won't accept help and all I can do is pray for her.
I suggest you free yourself from this mess otherwise she will drag you down with her. Some people enjoy chaos and are getting some kind of payoff for their behavior otherwise they would not continue with it. Sounds to me you've done all you can.
I suffered for many years from OCD, anxiety and depression and struggled to earn a living, etc. I was not a nutcase, but my neurochemistry was messed up. When a medication was developed I started taking it and it was like day and night! So many advances in treatment since mom was young. A whole different world and more and more in "mental illness", scientists are finding that body chemistry is involved, a physical issue rather than a strictly mental one. I don't know if mom is capable of understanding this, at this point, but maybe she would not be so adverse to medication if she saw it as medicine for the body, rather than for the mind.