I struggle with this too. I finally decided it my kids before her. She gets older and started taking some really cruel shots at me, one day it was my kids and that was enough. Much as we love our parents we realize they are incapable of giving us what we need and what they demand has always been one sided and unfair. I don't know about counseling except that it helped me vent a bit. I ultimately had to realize it wasn't my job to parent my parent and she has to go have her tantrums by herself. I'm sorry about that but nobody asked us if we wanted to sign up for the big weird ride.

I understand this problem very well. My mother was diagnosed with Bi-Polar when I was six years . I am currently 33. I am unable to give an oppion that doesn't agree with her . At this time , she is taking prozac and activan . However, I believe that she is self medicating her self . My mother is extremely munlpitave . When I went away to college for the first time, she called me every day for the fours years and cried at every phone call . Once I finally graduated and got a job , I was told the money was not enough to support US both and that I need to move back home and find something else . I heard this every day . So I moved back home and that was the worst mistake of my life . She has gulited , munulpiated and riducled me infront of friends, family and co workers . This does not inclued the abuse that I was went through as a kid. At this time , I have finally started my life . Although it does come with consequences . See my mom pushed her entire family away including my father . Now she has even pushed my brother away because he has started his life with his own family . I am at my wits end . No matter what I do is not good enough including giving up on my own life and dreams . I dont want my niece or my future children to see this behavior . Does anyone have any advice ???

If you feel she is a danger to herself or others you could have her court committed. It will also offer a family counseling session.
You also should seek counsel on your own, whether or not she gets help. Medication ALONE is NOT the solution and what is right for one set of people is complete different for what is correct for another set.
Whatever you decide, Good luck! May God bless you.

Wow, I can totally relate to everything everyone is saying here. Dani, my heart went out to you when you talked about your feelings seeing other people's relationships with their parents. I always go into a depression when I have to buy my mother a birthday card. The sentiments just remind me of what I lost out on and I practically have panic attacks right there in the store trying to find one with sentiments that would be acceptable to her but aren't an outright lie on my part.

Therapists are sworn to professional confidence, so unless you ran in to your mother in the waiting room (and the therapist should not book you on the same day anyway!), she would never find out. Don't use that fear as an excuse not to get help and support. I've been in traditional therapy for nearly all of my adult life, but I found that Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) really helped my self-confidence - helped me cut through my negative thoughts and beliefs and tap into my core and gain strength from it so that I could set strong boundaries with my mother. The techniques may sound kind of New Age-y at first, but it does work!

Best of luck!

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Replying to:

Hi.

I really enjoyed reading everyone's posts. I'm so glad I was able to find this place! I really needed it today.

I'm 37, married, and a mom of 2 elementary school kids. My mother was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder when I was about 12 years old. She was put on Prozac at that point, and things got much better. Before that, she was slapping me, blaming me for her bad day, and lying about why I was upset after to my dad, so he wouldn't know anything was wrong. That ended when my dad came home early and overheard my mom screaming at me. From that point on, he demanded that she get help.

It did help, really. She was a career woman, and threw herself into her work, so I think that helped a lot. We had the normal teenage stuff going on, but we did have a good relationship for a while. She did, as I mentioned in another post, take a lot of things i had bought with my own money away, including my first car. I was not allowed my own bathroom when I was younger, either. I had to share it with her, even though my parents had a master bath off of their room.

You probably can see why it might have been hard on me to break away from her. I went to college, and things got much better. Only when I returned from school for the holidays did it get really bad. I was blamed by much of my family for the tension.

Things got much worse when my dad died. I was newly engaged, and my Mom controlled the wedding, the parties, and everything but our honeymoon. It was her way or no way. I thought getting married would give me distance from her, but it didn't last. When my first child was born, my mom became a bit too attached to her. I couldn't do anything right, and she knew how to do everything. She went from insisting that I didn't spend enough time with my daughter when I was working to demanding that I go back to work, because I wasn't doing my part to earn money for our family. She also went through suicidal thoughts and one attempt at this time. When my second child was born, she scared the heck out of me by saying that she felt sorry for him because he would have to live so long, and wouldn't it be nice if he died early? Needless to say, we didn't see much of her for a while after that.

I do look at my friends' relationships with thier parents and wish that I had something like that. I also get in trouble with thinking that she can be reasonable, because trying to explain how I feel when she isn't reasonable only ends up with me being blamed for being unkind, rude, and needing professional help.

There are times that she is very reasonable, but there are times when she is screaming and crying and lying on the front yard when I come over expecting to have a nice lunch. She's been yelling at my kids, and they don't want to see her anymore. Her docs (yes, plural - one psychiatrist, one therapist) seem to think that she's doing WELL.

I can't help her anymore. I've come to this realization today, after being hung up on three times and told I was rude and selfish to not include her in a family trip. I took the brunt of this instead of telling her that the kids didn't want her there.

So I need help. I'm worried about going to a local therapist, because she has been to so many of them, she might find out. How do I remain myself, and like myself when she is so good at making me feel horrible? If you have any insight or encouragement, I'd appreciate it.

Hi. My mom is also bipolar, diagnosed in the last few years but refuses to take medication b/c she "likes the manic." She has become increasingly unstable in the last few years. She treated my sister, who just had her first baby at 39, cruelly at Thanksgiving, I let her know that she would not be seeing me and my children anymore. I have 3 kids in elementary school. Things have rapidly worsened. After I had an argument with her over the phone where I refused to discuss anything that had happened, she came over to my house, blocked my driveway, came in the house when I told her to leave and my husband and I had to physically drag her out of our house. Our kids were scared and I sent them upstairs to their rooms. My husband tried to reason with her outside while I called 911. She finally left and the police did pull her over not far from our home and told her she could not go back to our house.
My sister and I have spent our lives waiting for our mom to change and be "normal." She was physically and emotionally abusive to me all of my life but I always just accepted it and went on until my best friend was diagnosed with cancer five and a half years ago. I started having panic attacks and they would get worse when I knew I was going to see my mother. After lots of therapy and anxiety medications, etc., I was able to confront the issues with my mom and establish the necessary boundaries.
My kids also do not want to see my mother. They think she is crazy.
It is very hard to talk about these things with people who have healthy loving parents. They just do not understand. I truly believe (I am also bipolar. I am a Christian, happy wife and mom) that a mental illness does not justify immoral behavior. I was told this all my life. My dad is also bipolar and was a horrible husband and dad but it was the mental illness, not really him.
After reading "The People of the Lie," I believe my mother is truly evil. She tries to do emotional harm to the people she should be loving and protecting. The book described my mother perfectly. This book was what let me finally feel it was okay to cut my mother out of my life and my children's life permanently. As the Bible says, we are to turn from evil and the Jabez Prayer asks for God to keep me from evil, so that I may do no harm. God does not want or expect me to continue to be abused my mother. I finally feel that I can truly become the person I was meant to be without her in my life. I do not feel sad about this. It is a HUGE relief and I have never felt happier. It is hard to accept that your own mother is someone that should never be allowed to be in your life, but that is just what happens sometimes. I told Ian, my 11 year old, that just because someone is your family doesn't make them a nice person.
It is great to find this site and talk to other people who have experienced the same things I have.
I would love to hear back from you.
Stephanie

I'm 21 years old, and was brought up by a mentally ill mother - I was physically and emotionally abused.. all the posts sound EXACTLY like my mother's behaviour.. she accuses me of being abusive, starts fights with everyone in the family, ruins every holiday.. she used to call my friends parents and tell them I was a delinquent child.. she cannot hold a job or a relationship, cannot support herself, and constantly borrows money and uses other people. She is incredibly manipulative - when I was 11, my uncle called social services on her because of the abuse - she is so charming that the social worker left without asking me a single question.

When I was 15 I had finally had enough of the abuse and ran away to live with my grandparents.. we went to court so they could have custody of me. My mom thinks everyone else is crazy and out to abuse her.. she does not think anything is wrong with her and blames everyone else for mistakes she has made. She has not acknowledged that she was extremely abusive to me..

I keep a distance from her these days as I am living on my own, but she still causes my grandparents and I a lot of grief.. we cannot turn away from her because she will cry and act suicidal... I don't know what to do.. she needs help, I am so desperate to not have to deal with this anymore.. how do you get someone to get diagnosed with an illness when they can trick almost anyone with "manic" side and act COMPLETELY normal...

I would be so thankful for some advice.