Does your loved one exhibit different personalities with different people?

Quite honestly I think we are ALL different people with different people and that for all of our adult lives.
Think about yourself with your boss at work.
Think about yourself with your co-worker.
Think about yourself with your best friend.
Think about yourself with a stranger at the door.
Thing about yourself with your child.
Think about yourself with your parent.
I think we have different personalities for everyone. I once told a therapist many years ago "I am so many different people to spouse, parent, sibling, child, patient that I no longer know who I am" and she replied "You are all of them."

People with personality disorders, people with dementia, people with various kinds of mental illness will lash out at the person closest to them because they know it's safe to do so.

It may be the sort of thing where your mom has a fear of abandonment and she reassures herself by treating you badly (see, she doesn't leave even thought I treat her like dirt).

This is all about her and nothing to do with you

I would not be providing myself as a punching bag for someone like this, but I've not had this experience with a parent, so I guess it's easy for me to say "walk away" or "Tell her to speak nicely".

People treat you the way you allow them to. Your mother puts her nice happy mask on for others & reserves the ugly one for YOU b/c you allow it. My mother did the same thing until I told her NO MORE MA. And I'd leave her presence or end the phone call when the ugly ma came out to play, which was quite often until her dementia got very advanced to the point where she forgot to BE ugly, which was good in a sad kind of way.

My mother would still get sarcastic and foul with me, even after I put my foot down, but she kept it civilized b/c she knew I'd leave or hang up if she went TOO far with me. We're not whipping posts, after all, and while a little bit of anger and frustration is understandable with sick elders, too much of it is not acceptable. If they can be nice to others, then they can CHOOSE to be nice to US also!!!!

So you have met my mother? Yes, that is her, I advised her if she doesn't respect me and treat my accordingly, I will leave, and I do. Grab my stuff and leave, don't answer her calls for a few days.

She is ok for awhile and then the cycle starts all over again. I stick to my boundaries.

Oh, yes. I can relate to your situation. Hugs.

That's a big yes from me. My mother has been that way all of my life. I remember as a child she would put on her sweet, chirpy, smiley, funny self around other people and at home she would scream at me until her face turned red.

Most other people just love her. She still does it. When her physical therapist comes in she sits up and adjusts herself and acts like she's got the world by the tail. And of course her therapist comments on how funny and sweet and cute she is. I usually just nod.

The only time that she will lose her cool in front of someone else and start yelling is when I am trying to have a conversation with the therapist or one of her sitters or a nurse (she has home care) and she isn't included. She has to be the center of attention at all times.

During one visit, her palliative nurse heard the way she speaks to me and was taken aback.

When no one is here, she yells my name like I'm a dog and waves her hand at me and says "come here".

At 95 I'm not going to change her so I try not to get triggered.

Countrymouse, go to howtotypeanythingcom and it will show you how on your operating system.

I don't think I know anyone who doesn't adapt their communication style and content to context and audience. With the possible exception of individuals on the autistic spectrum.

Clients sometimes tell me things that they don't feel safe telling to co-workers who are very young, or male, or who ask different questions in a different way, or who don't ask at all. Several co-workers have said at handover that client B isn't sleeping well because she falls asleep in her chair and goes to bed too late; but it wasn't until my last visit to her (of about seven) that we got round to discussing hemorrhoids, how they are part and parcel of having babies, and how the little monsters (the piles, not the babies, or not sixty years later anyway) can wake you up at four in the morning and are literally a pain in the bum. She has run out of cream and hasn't liked to ask her doctor for a px or her family to get her some from the pharmacy.

One client, on my very first greeting him, immediately asked me to modulate my voice - I don't think I've ever shut up so fast in my life. But the point is that he had suffered a brain injury and was not only sensitive to higher pitched and loud noises, which caused him physical pain, but also disinhibited socially and thereby *able* to tell me my voice hurt him. Other clients with more intact filters wouldn't tell me they couldn't stand my voice, but they might say to somebody else that they didn't like me and perhaps not even understand the cause themselves.

With some people we feel restrained, in various ways. We use different forms of address, tones of voice, vocabulary; we do or don't discuss particular issues; we are open about our feelings or not.

You are part of your mother's inner circle. The caregivers are not (yet. If they're worth their salt they will become so). You, in her mind, are allowed access to what she really thinks, feels, wants. They are not. She knows you, she doesn't know them. The result - and the downside - is that you get the warts-and-all version, and they get the facade.

I have (subtly but intentionally) stood in a bathroom doorway to prevent a daughter from answering her mother's call for help with personal care, because that was my job, and an essential part of my particular job (in reablement) is helping clients become accustomed to accepting support from trained caregivers and to lessen their dependence on family care providers. I knew I would be able to reassure the client and put her at ease, but if I hadn't felt confident about doing that then the daughter would have rushed in and taken over and the burden would have remained on her, and, worse, it would have confirmed the daughter's belief that her mother wouldn't let anyone else help her.

Is it what your mother is asking for that's the problem? - is it with tasks or routines that somebody else should be helping with? Or it it more *how* she is asking that upsets you? Are the complaints about anything that needs referring, or is it just background "woe is me" stuff?

I know it's a back-handed compliment, but what it comes down to is that you have your mother's trust. You are safe and familiar. Oh goody, right? But see if you can't delegate at least some of the demands to more appropriate personnel.

Ahh.. yes… all my moms caregivers except one loved her.. me , I’m thinking , what the heck… but good for everyone else.. !

I have observed the same behavior with my husband who is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. In the old days, we called this "Jekyll and Hide" personality, but I've heard it referred to here as "Showtime."

Some things just need to be accepted and one must learn to keep the peace by not engaging. As tantrums erupt, I disappear: must be difficult for my husband to realize he is all alone in his bad behavior. I refuse to be anyone's punching bag.