Caring for VERY depressed mother, history of alcoholism and extreme dysfunctional relationships, and now dementia. Advice?
Hello everyone! I found this forum yesterday and I'm glad to be here, it is nice to see that I'm not alone in this.
I am 49 and I live with my husband and nine year old son. My mom is 86 and living alone in an apartment nearby. Both my parents were alcoholics, my dad died from alcoholism in 1984 when I was 19. My mom quit drinking a year later (for which I give her tremendous credit!) but she has been severely depressed her entire life. My parents had a horrible relationship and my childhood was filled with screaming, fights, and suicide threats. Mom attempted suicide when I was 13, and has threatened it many, many times ever since.
My mom is very passive aggressive and demands lots of attention. She has the emotional maturity level of a four year old. Her parents were cold and uncaring, and she has never gotten over this, nor has she even tried (despite years of counseling). She put me in the parental role very early in my life, and it remains this way today. She even calls me "mommy" at times.
Mom cannot maintain a relationship with anyone, she's totally closed off. She will make a new friend, and within three weeks she finds a flaw with that person and ends the relationship. In the case where she doesn't end the friendship, her selfish demeanor turns the person off and it ends anyway. Then she turns back to me and tells me how lonely she is and how she wants to die. She makes this kind of comment in front of my nine year old.
Mom is in good physical health but recently she has developed dementia. We hired a caregiver for her, someone to come to her house twice per week to help with tasks and keep her company. As usual, after about three weeks mom was tired of having this person come in and asked us to cancel the service. The very next day, she again called me to say how lonely and depressed she was, and asked to come over. When she comes over here, she only talks about her depressing childhood. Often she will bring photos. She typically doesn't even ask about anyone else, including her grandson, my nine year old.
When mom comes in the house, her negativity is like an enormous, smothering black cloud. I count my heartbeats until she leaves. After she leaves, I feel tremendous guilt and sadness. There is nothing I can do to improve her mood, yet the childish part of me still hopes somehow I can do something. It is up to her to find a shred of happiness, but she refuses, and now that she is getting dementia, I fear she can never have that "aha" moment. This leaves me so terribly sad and if affects my family too.
Mom is on Paxil and Klonopin, and just got Buspar too (after insisting to the doctor that she is STILL depressed/anxious). She can't keep these medicines straight and often takes too many or just lets them run out over the weekend when she can't get a refill quickly. Then she makes one of her crazy visits or phone calls to my house.
I quite literally cannot stand her anymore. I'm engulfed with guilt and sadness but I can't stand the sight of her or bear the sound of her voice. She won't let us do anything for her (hire help). Yet she insists on continuing to vomit negativity over us all. Ironically, despite the suicide threats and spoken desire to die, she still asserts that she wants to live to be 100, and she is careful about what she buys in the grocery store, making sure the ingredients are healthy.
She is a walking conundrum and I am a mess. Advice? Thanks so much if you've read this far! I'm glad to have found this forum.
Get to a 12 step ACOA meeting and work the steps.
Your mother is locked in her own hell and deserves help, too. Please get her to therapy ASAP.
Please do not turn your back on her - there is a chance for peace through compassion and family recovery. It did not get this way overnight and takes time to heal.
Chimp. Do we have the same mother? Palm?
My animals are so important to me now. We live on a ranch and the children, stair stepped from 29 down, four of them, say we love our pets more than them!
I remember as a child, saving food and helping my little mixed breed in the window when it was cold or raining. She never deserved to be treated the way my mom treated her.
My mother has a cat now, we stupidly thought it would help with the isolation. Every time I went to the house, the cat would throw itself at my feet and beg me to kill it or take it home. After three years of living with my mother... it's angry. Now it pins its ears and takes a swipe! What has she done to that poor cat?
But the memories are the worst. She writes hot checks and in comes a memory! We lose another caregiver and I'm hit with another memory. The worst is when you realize that, yes, they have been that way for a long time. Only now it's times ten on crack!
It's funny, I realized too that her mood is her own and it is never altered by anyone else's mood, and never has been. When she's down, nothing cheers her up. It occurred to me last night that while she was in a good mood, nothing would have brought her down. I suppose that is part of narcissism, not being able to be affected by anyone else's mood but her own. I'm really learning now, and I feel so much more empowered by all of this.
But yeah, I'm putting myself and my husband and son first, absolutely. I do have a couple of books on personality disorders, I purchased them from time to time over the past few years, trying to figure all of this out. I'm reading them again now, and having new insights.
There are chronic conditions that your parent could have that would be easier to deal with because they are defined. BPD and narcissism are sneaky. They hide in the guise of "functional." There are no cures, there is only behavior modification -- a little for the BPD, a lot needed for the caregiver/family member.
Documentation helps, I saw that in another post -- yes! Talk to specialists in the geriatric field. Speak candidly. Repression of feelings is not good for you.
Hugs!
This afternoon my husband and I visited my mom together. We never know what to expect, and I was hesitant, but I felt supported by being with him. Mom surprised us today, her new medications must be working, because she was the closest to pleasant that I've seen in a long while. She was lucid, friendly, even jovial, and spoke of normal things instead of her childhood woes. She said she would gladly sign her newly-updated will and other paperwork. She even said, without a hint of malice, that she is willing to look into moving into an assisted living facility, and she asked us if we wouldn't mind looking into it. Who is this woman?
Gosh if she were like this more often, I'd do backflips to help her and visit her every day. Tomorrow she could be clingy and suicidal again, who knows? But for this evening, my heart is light for the first time in quite awhile. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts!
{{{huge group hug}}} to all of us here. In just a few days you have all become so dear to me!
There are several things you CAN do. Tell mom, she needs to have help because you can't help her ALL the time. You can remind her that the help is not coming 7 days a week because she does not like it, but at least whatever you decide, she needs it. This is balancing between her resistance and your need for respite from the situation. It might be 2 days let's say 2 hours now and you might have to increase it, that is why I am saying 'whatever you decide'. If you are providing care, you should be able to choose how much you do it yourself and how much you hire help to get some relief. So you have some control over the situation.
It would be very difficult for Mom to change due to many factors. Expecting her to change is only going to be frustrating for you. Try to shift the focus on you. No matter what, Mom can not dampen your spirits. prepare yourself emotionally so you come in with your 'shield'. Remind yourself you are taking care of your mom who needs your help. You are choosing to help, even though it is not easy. You have a supportive husband. Choose what works for you, to calm yourself - like yoga, walk, meditate to get emotionally stronger. counseling is definitely a good idea.
Setting boundaries is challenging but it can be done. start slowly, with time outs when you can jump when Mom wants you to. Be firm and compassionate when you talk to her afterwards. Try to remind mom that you need your 'time' and live your life. You do not have get into explanations. If mom has dementia, you need to put some things in place, including her medications. If she does not take her meds right, too much or too little would make things worse. Any way a neighbor or village nurse can monitor it daily, at least do not leave too much with her.
Emotions can make things more challenging, at the same time if we did not care, we would not do all the things we do. When emotions start hurting you, you need to channel it in the right direction and ground yourself, take time out until you are balanced. I know all of this may sound too much, take only one step at a time. You will see how things shift, it is very powerful when you are able to understand, let go, forgive. Hope this helps.
Daxa
And all of my poor pets were outdoors, no vet care and barely enough food. Terrible.
You will be very angry for a long time. Talk, read and research the problems narcissistic ( and I am sure your mother is) people cause their relatives. I fought with mom for a few years, nothing changed. I read tons of books and things began to change. I put up boundaries and that has really helped. Time has taught me to let go of something I never had. I truly don't care as much any longer and will not miss her when she is gone.
So, all this talking, thinking, typing, and research into personality disorders is bringing out some memories. Mom has never had empathy for another person or even for animals. I am reminded of how she has treated some of the animals we had as I was growing up. She would get a dog, and not having a clue how to deal with one, relegate that dog to outdoors, forever. We had a sweet little pug who lived outside until she drowned in the pool one night when she was quite old. She came home one day with a St. Bernard puppy that she had no idea how to care for, and she too lived outside unattended, rain or shine. Cats came and went from our home, they were indoor/outdoor so never required a litter box. A few years ago, my husband and I had taken in a stray small dog and nursed him back to health. Mom came for a visit and said she'd like to take him (to cure her loneliness), and we stupidly agreed. I don't know why I thought she suddenly had a clue about how to care for a dog... she convinced me she could. She took him home a few days later on the plane. The very next day, I called to see how her trip was and how the dog was doing. She explained, calmly like it was no big deal, that she felt he was "not a good dog" and was too much to deal with, so she took him to the vet that morning and had him put to sleep. I didn't speak to her for three weeks, funny how you can somehow heal from these awful things and continue the sick relationship.
When I had my son a few years later, she came to visit and "help out" for two weeks. She acted like a bigger baby than my newborn, was envious because she was convinced that I preferred my inlaws to her, and she threatened to go home. I told her she should at that point. She stayed... but continued to make me baby her as well as my son, telling her that yes I loved and needed her. She did nothing to help me.
Yep, some nice memories are surfacing! Whoo, boy. I won't be visiting her anymore without my husband present. Hopefully between the two of us, we can convince her that these legal documents are there for everyone's benefit, including (and especially) my brother, who has almost zero to do with her but definitely would like to have half her money someday.
This was quite a rant, thanks for reading it, and again, thanks so much for this support, my healing is beginning in earnest. It's going to be painful at times, but forward it shall go.
The result for me was that I no longer wanted to be around my father under any circumstances. I had been manipulated and used and even though I had allowed it to happen, I still thought it was my responsibility to try to protect him from financial disaster because that's simply what you do for an aging parent who is being exploited. So I gave myself a week to get my feet back under me and then went to see my father. I very calmly but firmly explained that I was going to have to distance myself from him for my own well being and would not be available any longer to drive him, bring him things, advocate for him, etc. I told him I felt that under the circumstances it would be best that he not call me with requests but rather start depending on my brother. I was not verbally abusive but completely honest and felt that having that conversation with him instead of just not responding to him any longer was like giving myself permission to detach and move myself away from some very unhealthy dynamics. He wrote me out of his will, revoked my secondary POA and HCPOA and even began to lend money to my brother in addition to what my brother was helping himself to. He refused to listen to his attorney.
Today, I am much healthier emotionally after disconnecting and I will always know that despite what he may choose to say about me to anyone who will listen, I did the right thing and was honest with him about why I simply had to stay away. There are times when we have no choice to draw some very clear boundaries without allowing ourselves to feel guilty or uncaring.
Like someone said, we will never be friends. She's either furious with me or wants something. It will never change. I try to be very business like with her, just to protect myself from harm.
I spent a long time freaking out about where to even begin on this planning, and I'm a professional project manager by trade! So many unknowns!
Get a big plastic file box at the office store, a giant box of folders, and lots of posty notes. You're going to need it. This is where the research and plan is born. I had a binder, which looked sad and pitiful by the time I was done collecting paperwork, titles, deeds, bills, wills, directives, policies, and the like. Be very organized because it pays. Every single thing there is about mom and her affairs is in that box.
Get your hands on every piece of important paper you can and file it. Make placeholders for stuff you don't have yet, so you can fill in the gaps as you go.
Since my mom was totally the passive victim and refused to help plan her future, I had to come up with different options on my own. One plan was to hogtie her, hit her with a hippo sedative, throw her and a brown paper bag of underwear in the car and floor it for 3 days straight to get back here. Another plan involved a state to state moving company, a trash removal guy, boxes, bubble wrap, tape, and time. I was prepared to go in either direction. Some days I wish I'd gone with hippo sedative and brown paper bag. I never considered in-home care for her because she's quite racist, very paranoid, and those people don't deserve what they would have to put up with from my mother. I also didn't opt to put her into assisted living where she was for all the same reasons. There were too many unknowns for my comfort level. I wanted to see the place in person.
Your money does NOT come into play here, whether it's an assisted living place or in-home care. Your mom's finances are all that count. Get durable power of attorney so the bank (and everybody else) will work with you. Prices for senior housing and in-home care vary wildly depending on where you live. Go tour some places nearby. Call around to interview home-health agencies. You have choices. Contact your state's agency on aging to get resources. Take your time to find your choices, so you can evaluate them.
Then be ready to actually execute the plan. I see a lot of people on here who have a decent plan but are stuck at the point of actually doing any of it. Especially if they have other family second guessing & undermining them. Denial is not just a river in Egypt, as they say. I am not one to wait around for a problem to go gangrene before dealing with it. Other people will.
Do the thing that will let you be content with yourself. Not what you think others expect to see, or what that imaginary mom voice says. Do what you can. Don't over commit yourself. Preserve your mom-free safe space at your own home and don't forget to decompress every single day. It's harder to do than it sounds.
When it becomes necessary for mom to move to a facility she will have to spend down her principal to self pay. When that is nearly gone a Medicaid application needs to be prepared. Look for a good elder law attorney to help you with all of this. The website AVVO will allow you to ask attorneys in your area questions, and receive responses at no charge. The site also include client and peer reviews. I found it very helpful in my situation.
Good Luck you are dealing with a lot, that many of us have also gone through. This is a great site for learning and support!