So, uh, hey. I kinda need some help communicating with my mom and thought that bothering seebs was maybe rude, so the forums seemed like a good idea? Idk Basically, between the ages of 12-18, I was convinced my mother didn’t love me/had never wanted me, something that was reinforced by the fact that my mother knew and never actually disputed it? Literally until I went to college, my mother would just shrug. Additionally, I was majorly depressed on and off during those ages, and was suicidal when I was 16 (to the point where I made an attempt on my life), and my mother’s way of handling this was telling me that I was lazy/didn’t want things enough/wanted a diagnosis to justify being lazy and it just really all around sucked. Our relationship is pretty shitty and while I don’t think it’s her fault I was suicidal or depressed, I think her refusal to acknowledge that my problems were/are real (or even address the fact that I didn’t think she loved me) made things way worse. And I’m angry about it, especially because whenever we try to talk, she dominates the conversation and still doesn’t address anything I brought up and she also acts like me being angry is completely unwarranted and that I’m just “playing the victim.” At the beginning of the summer, we started off really poorly, because before I left for college I told her I hated her and when I graduate college, I would rather be homeless or dead then move back in. Which I do feel bad about because I don't hate her (though I'm not moving back in. ever. this is the last summer I'm spending here), I was angry and didn't have any better way of expressing it. I have a better way of expressing it now, after going to therapy and talking through why I was angry, but I didn't then, when all I reliably knew was that I was hurt and the person hurting me was my mom. That said, every time we've tried to talk this summer, it's just gone ... really terribly. As an example, the last time we tried to have an emotional heart to heart, I told my mother, “I’m hurt because I thought you didn’t love me or want me,” and she replied by saying, “I’m sorry I let you be friends with B when you were children.” I swear, that is word for word how the exchange happened. And then she went on a rant about how B is going nowhere and is “a crab in a bucket” and she’s “so scared for [me]” because I have shitty, irresponsible friends. We don’t even seem to be having the same conversations and I don’t know how to reach out to her. I’ve already thought over just cutting off contact, but 1) she’s my mother and apparently does love me, whatever she thinks that means, so I’d like to try and 2) if I cut off contact, I lose my younger siblings who are all about a decade or more younger than me (I’m 19). I’d really just like some help approaching this.
This is a hard situation, and I'm always the one encouraging going no contact, but I know that isn't what's right for everyone. Especially because you have siblings you do want contact with. At this point, it isn't probable that she will change unless she recognises what she is doing, how it hurts, and why it is wrong. It doesn't seem even remotely like she's at that stage, and it's impossible (at least from outside) to say whether she will be any time soon, if ever. Perhaps, if you decide you do want to interact with her, an option would be to keep it low-contact, setting and enforcing boundaries if necessary, and present as a grey stone - Polite, but disengaged, to avoid the pit of denial she seems to live in. And maybe, at the same time, you can take the younger siblings on outings and interact with them away from her, once you are no longer living in her house? When they get a little older, might electronic communication with them exclusively not be an option? But if it gets too much, there is no shame in no contact, mother or not. I wish you only the best of luck. I know it must be a difficult situation.
Thank you. Low contact is sorta what I'm working towards right now. I'm trying to sort my life out so that I can be completely moved out and have my parents no longer helping pay my tuition, which I hope will help because they both keep insisting I'm not a real adult while I rely on them for any kind of support. Talking to my mom is sorta like talking at a brick wall, so "polite, but disengaged" really is the only way to go now. I was kinda hoping that it was maybe just me being young and having no real conflict-resolution skills, and that there was something else I could do that I wasn't thinking of. :/ Honestly, while I desperately don't want to lose contact with my younger siblings, I'm more or less resigned to the possibility. My mother cries "all the time" now when I'm not home, and they've been told it's "because [I'm] being mean." I feel like she's just setting the whole family up to be against me, even though I know it probably isn't entirely intentional. (I am reasonably sure she actually loves me at this point, and is just shit at showing it, and is genuinely hurt by what I said last year.)
I'm sort of dealing with a similar situation with my Mom, and I'm working through it in therapy. I think my therapist has given me some good insights. Mostly what she's said is that sometimes, in order to keep in contact with people (and even to keep yourself sane), you have to accept them as they are. And that might mean that you have to put up with shitty/weird behavior (like randomly bringing up your friend while you were talking to her). It might be a good idea to try and find at least one neutral topic that you can milk for more than five minutes at a time. I know for me, my mother likes to garden. Honestly, I don't know much about gardening, but I pretend to understand what she's talking about and ask questions that seem interested (for instance, if she tells me that she put in some new flowers, I might ask 'oh, what side of the house did you plant them on? Oh, really? I'm sure they'd look nice over there'). If you and your mother have a hobby in common, even if it's something that one of you isn't SUPER super invested in, maybe you could talk about that? That way you stay on civil terms, you're not cut off from the rest of the family, and you're not tearing your hair out in frustration.
I've tried and we do have conversations that are perfectly normal, but then my sister comes and tells me our mom is always crying and it's all my fault and I just :/ I thought maybe if we could talk about our problems, that would help fix it, but all she wants to do is soapbox about how terrible my friends are ("you only have any mental illnesses because you hang around with mentally ill people!") and how clearly the best thing for me is to stop going to therapy and go off my meds (which. no. I quite like not being depressed or suicidal and actually would like to not try to kill myself again, thank you very much). Idk I feel like I'm not wholly responsible for my mom's emotional distress, but no one else in my family agrees.
