I am not sure where this should go, someone suggested it go here for now. Earlier I was booking hotels for my trip across the country. Mom came down and started to make a lot of noise and be very distracting. Like I would ask Dad a question about which city I should look in, and before dad answered mom would ask a new question or tell a story about that city that didn't have anything to do with our trip or about hotel booking. You don't need to tell us about what your trip to Mount Rushmore was like in detail, about how miffed you were about how boring it was and about the gift shop, in order to tell us "there is not a lot to do there so you don't need to set aside a lot of time for it". I am not even sure if she was trying to tell us that on purpose or was accidentally helpful? It's not illegal to ask an off topic question but I am trying to get something DONE here, and I need to talk to dad to do that, can you not distract him? I put my hands on my face and sighed at some point and dad asked me if I was feeling stressed. I said yes. Mom (she was not being addressed) said, "I am feeling stressed because my being present stresses people out, so I am going to leave soon." I wanted to shout YES PLEASE LEAVE THIS IS HARD ENOUGH WITHOUT YOU BEING DISTRACTING but I didn't because that wouldn't make things any better. She never did end up leaving, though, and that was disappointing. I tried to ignore her for a while longer but she kept muttering to herself and talking to the TV (the prices on antiques roadshow are not that interesting seriously) and I felt myself getting really really anxious and I wanted to cry. I thought about going to the bathroom to cry for a minute to see if that would help but I didn't think it would. I went to my purse and got my headphones so I could drown her out with music. While I was fiddling with them, before I turned the music on, I heard her say "haha Kary has to put her headphones on". I didn't say anything and I put on some loudish music in another language because that drowns out other people's voices without making me have to focus on a new person talking. It helped me calm down a lot and I was able to work on booking things more. I feel bad thinking how annoying and obnoxious my mother is because I've been trained (by her) to think JEEZ she can't HELP IT it's MEAN to ask her to be quiet don't you know that's HURTINg HER FEELINGS in her house when she was growing up people ALWAYS talked to the TV and sang at random and besides dad always has the TV up way loud it's not fair to say SHE can't be loud this is just a YOU GUYS PROBLEM and nothing she does is EVER WRONG and being mad at her is the WORST HURTFUL THING but also why don't I TELL her when I'm mad at her don't I know it's awful to WORRY someone MIGHTT BE MAd aT YOU? I AM PURPOSEFULLY TORTURING HER BY NOT CONSTANTLY REASSURING HER IM NOT MAD AT HER That's more dramatic than what she actually talks like but she's gotten damn close sometimes. Like one time when my anxiety was first being treated I was trying to do something about things that made me anxious. I had a really bad reaction to voices, they put me on edge and I felt like I could hear everything and I couldn't stop hearing everything. At the time my mom would hum A LOT (like, I have not heard people hum and mutter like she does unless they're doing an impression of a crazy person), and once before I had asked if she could hum quieter because I could hear her upstairs with the door shut and she said okay. So what happened was one weekend dad was gone golfing. Mom was doing something in the front room and she was humming a lot. It was really hot and I couldn't be in my room to get away from the noise so I asked her if she could stop. She told me that no, she was gonna hum and sing all she wanted that weekend because dad was out and dad never let her do that (untrue, she did it all the time, but dad would complain because it was fucking annoying), and basically that I would just have to suck it up because it wasn't fair of me to ask her not to express herself. After that I never asked her to stop humming again even though that caused some of my worse reactions to anxiety. I'm just. I'm so fucking done. I guess thanks for making it easy to resolve to NEVER TALK TO YOU AGAIN once I'm out of here? Well okay, I'm coming home for the holidays so I can see my cat, I guess I'll have to interact with her then. Whatever.
Wow. That is ... really kind of awful behaviour on your mom's part. I mean, the coming downs and chattering over people I can see as maybe just a way for an emotionally needy person to get some attention. I know a toddler who does that because he's not getting enough attention from his (sick, exhausted) parents, and he doesn't know any better. But this: is not just "emotionally needy". Isn't she saying, essentially, that her happiness depends on her being allowed to do whatever she wants whenever she wants without anyone having a problem with it? Or in other words, she's saying that you're responsible for her emotional well-being. And you really aren't, and also you really shouldn't be. ...I don't have any advice, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to find her annoying and obnoxious your reaction is actually pretty mild and understanding considering how inappropriate and harmful her actions sound. If I had a hat on I would tip it to you.
Mildly? Doesn't sound that mild. Not the worst case, but that's going pretty well down Narcissism Street.
(hi hello I am on a road trip, coming to you Live from South Dakota, this is the trip I was booking hotels for) Is there a word/phrase for when you try to think about a thing that bothers you (to hopefully get it to stop bothering you), except you're so used to being afraid of thinking about it, your mind won't let you? That happens to me an annoying amount. There's a lot of stuff with my mom like that. I know we had to do certain things certain ways, or else Mom Would Be Upset, but if we did them right, then Mom Would Be Happy, even if it was always a hollow kind of happy, except I try to think about it and all I get is "something to do with groceries? shopping...?" And it wasn't in a "normal" way, I don't think. I wish I could say better so I could stop wondering if I'm making things up because I'm angry. Even if I was just making things up because I was angry, at least that's something I can work with! Also I want really badly to defend my mom, because (sometimes) she's just so nice, you know? Like if I could just stop being the bad one* and tell her how I feel when she does these things, then she would Know and she would Stop. Except that's dumb because I have TRIED that and it doesn't work. (See above example.) And I am really used to covering for her, it was like second nature until a few years ago. And, re: narcissism, aren't children really narcissistic? I feel like I have read that. My mom makes me think of a child a lot of the time... God I just remembered something. Maybe three years ago, my mom was doing something obnoxious (don't remember what) and I told her as much and also to knock it off. She got indignant and said I used to do (behavior) all the time!! I asked her how old I was when I did that (a child, definitely less than 15), and how old she was right now (in her 60s). I don't remember what exactly happened, but it didn't deter her from (behavior), and I think she told me to just let her have fun because it wasn't hurting anyone. (Because it's totally normal to be an Embarrassing TV Parent 24/7/365, and displeased children are just being moody teenagers about it even if they're in their 20s.) Anyway, my question is: is she a narcissist and that's reminding me of a child, or is she somehow childlike and part of that is a childlike narcissism? *I don't know exactly why I feel like I'm always the one who's fault it is/the one who gets blamed/the one who could have done something but didn't. I was the youngest, it's completely unreasonable for adults to expect me to perfectly fix things like a hyper-competent adult, but I expected that of myself. I mean, I used to, at least, and there's some of it still around but I fight it a lot. I would think, if only I could do better (like I could be), if only I could be perfect (like I should be), if only I could find the absolute right words to explain everything to everyone (access to fucking literal magic words), then all the bad stuff would stop. But even though I should have been able to do all that, I couldn't because I sucked and was awful, and everything was my fault forever. I did eventually learn that there's no such thing as magic words, and that's been my mantra for avoiding blaming myself for things I can't fix. EDIT; oh also I read that Toxic Parents book once, and there was a Codependency Checklist. When I thought about growing up with mom, I checked most of them, and the ones I didn't check mostly had to do with romantic relationships or things I wasn't capable of because I wasn't an adult. So that's a thing.
I dont know how to distinguish between "narcissistic and therefore a bit childlike" or "childlike and therefore a bit narcissistic". the distinction might help you figure out how you feel about her but both give a good ground and starting point to evaluate her behavior to you as not appropriate which might help you debug those feelings of being a Bad Child. Going by "my mom has double standards regarding her versus our behavior in a hypocritical and immature way" might be more helpful in avoiding a value judgement which you seem to be uncomfortable with but still give you the space to recognize it is wrong of her and that you shouldn't have to deal with that and that it has deeply affected you. I don't know if that is helpful!
