Is anybody else finding it hard to cope with the simplest things? Exhausting just to run an errand? There are days that I feel like I just can't face being out in the world. I feel like all of my mental energy is being used to deal with my mother & I's relationship and I have nothing left for anything else.

Anybody else finding it hard to find friends who can handle what you are going through? I had one friend who I supported through bad boyfriends and such; she could call me in tears and I'd be there for her, yet she would get this deer-in-the-headlights look on her face the minute I mentioned my mother and she wouldn't say anything. It ruined our friendship. I so want to be able to call a friend and say "I'm having a bad day" but there's no one left to call. I've driven them all away with the never-ending fallout from my mother.

Last year I thought I was strong enough to be able to handle a visit with my mother (I hadn't seen her in 2 years although we've stayed in touch by phone and letter) and she was nagging about it and using her undiagnosed cancer (she was afraid to go to the doctor because she believed that the doctor would force her to get treated or tell the government and they would come and take her away to be treated) as a lure - "I don't know if I'll ever see you again" and so I gave in and agreed to a visit. Well, leading up to the visit I was having anxiety attacks, was crying at work, not sleeping and when I did sleep I'd have nightmares. It was bad. My current therapist has explained that I have a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from all these years of dealing with my mother's craziness. So even if I have a harmless telephone conversation with her, let alone anticipating a visit, it can still trigger a reaction in me. Does anybody else deal with this?

Thank goodness for chocolate!

I understand what you mean by coping with others. I remember once, I tried to tell a friend of mine about my own mother (not even details or anything) and she had some look of blank horror on her face. That was pretty much our end of friendship, too--because afterwards, she treated me differently, like a disease or something.

However, my relationship with my mother is non-existent. She chose to walk out of my life, and those are a different set of issues for me all together--along with a lot of memories I try to lock away inside my vaulted secret life. But I understand, because of my stepmother. I have been like "her" mother, actually, in many ways. Although when she went through an episode, she thought I was the devil, or 'out to get her' and threated to kill me, etc...but that might be the least of her worst moments. When they first married, she hated me completely...and was 'insanely' jealous for even petty reasons. Only when I reached about 14 or so, did she mellow out (mostly because she was forced to be on medication). I had to bear the agony of having cops come to our house, hold her down, and drive her away to a mental asylum more times than I would like to count. Now, she depends on me, and asks me all the time for advice, and throws it into my face, "I raised you, and you weren't mine!" whenever I tell her no about anything. It's very hard.

What disorder does your mother have?

Hi S,

Thanks for replying. I’m sorry to hear about your situation. Cousins of mine went through a similar situation with a step-mother. I am so sorry you had to go through that.

My mother has never been diagnosed, or if she has, she's never shared it with me. Through my many years in therapy, from events both I and my family have recalled about her, my therapists have diagnosed her from a distance. She probably has borderline personality disorder and is narcissistic, paranoid and has had the occasional grandiose thought. On top of that, she has PTSD from the horrible abuse she endured as a child.

She was basically a good mother in the beginning - loving, supportive, wanting the best for me. I knew about her childhood abuse from the time I was very young, and I always felt responsible for her happiness. But when I was about 12 or 13, she started behaving erratically, doing immoral things she would never have done before and disregarding the law, and eventually she left my father and I when I was 14, moved 3,000 miles away and started a new life. She never abused me physically, but she certainly neglected me, used me, walked all over me and never seemed to stop telling me all the things that were wrong with me. (Birthday and Christmas gifts were self-help books designed to help me with my “problems”).

For many years, I believed that I had done something wrong to make her move away in the first place and that her unusual behavior was my fault and that if I could somehow do things right, she would become the mother I had had again, not this stranger who, when I would visit her on school vacations if we were around her new boyfriend's friends, I had to pretend she was my aunt. One time I slipped up and accidentally called her “Mom” around them and she flipped out on me.

There have been lots of lies and secrets. For example, my mother and her boyfriend (who I liked and got along with) got married, but she didn’t tell me they had gotten married until 3 years later when my half-sister was born. I was then forbidden to tell anyone that she was married or had another child.

She had huge mood swings a lot and would turn to me by phone for support when she was depressed; 2 and 3 hour telephone calls with her crying and desperate that put a huge responsibility on my young shoulders - I constantly worried she would commit suicide and that because she lived so far away, I couldn't be there to stop her.

However, not living with my mother probably protected me from a lot worse stuff. She went on to mentally abuse my half-sister; not allowing her to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, threatening her with really nasty, malicious things that she would do to her in her sleep the next night if she did have to go to the bathroom. My mother even called the cops on her, saying she had beaten my mother up. When, pretending sympathy, I asked my mother exactly what my half-sister had done, she described what amounted to my half-sister as having pushed my mother’s hand off a door knob. Luckily my half-sister is now old enough to live on her own.

This is getting rather long, so I shall just mention one recent development. I found out just a few years ago that my mother had had a lump in her breast for 10 years but had told no one. It apparently began to change and grow and my mother used this to manipulate my now ex-step-father into not selling the house they’d bought together by dropping the comment “Can’t you just let me stay here a few more years. I don’t know how much longer I’ve got.” When he questioned her as to what the heck she meant, she told him about the lumps and he, of course, was horrified and asked her if she’d told my half-sister, which she hadn’t. So he told my half-sister, who then asked my mother if she’d told me and of course she hadn’t, so my half-sister threatened to tell me if my mother didn’t. My mother was furious and couldn’t understand all of our reactions and saw it all as she was the one being manipulated and poor her, she had this dreadful disease and got no sympathy; instead everyone was angry with her for some reason. She did not get the lumps diagnosed; refused to go to a doctor because she was afraid they’d force her to get treatment. She literally was convinced that the government would step in and take her away and force her to get treatment for the “cancer”. It has now been 5 years since we all found out about the “cancer”. She’s been doing fine, but now this Fall she’s started claiming that she’s found more lumps and has started to whine about dying again and how she doesn’t know if she’ll ever see me again, so I need to come visit her. I just change the subject as soon as she starts in on it.

Dani - I just saw you'd posted as I was writing this and I was so long-winded that I'll have to reply to your post later. But I wanted to at least say thank you for replying to me. I'm glad you have some friends who you can turn to. More later...

Thanks for your kind words. I am sorry I had to go through it, too---and that you did also.

But it made me the person I am today. If not for the circumstances in my life, I might not have ever been spiritually awakened---or have become compassionate and strong. I don't know what I would have been.

That is sad that your mother had PTSD. And that you have it...I believe most certainly I've experienced and do still experience sympthoms of it myself, but because I have opened myself to truth and allowed myself to love others, it has healed a lot...but the memory is always there, and I cannot say I was not affected. I was. I suppose there are goods and bads involved.

One more thing about you is I respect your openness. It's amazing, even annoymously, I can't be open fully. What's wrong with me? I guess it's because I have a whole closet full of skeletons, but they're all different and I wouldn't know where to start. I probably should have been a serial killer or something with what I have seen and experienced...

I read your email to Dani. I understand you so well about what you said about your 'friends'...but I feel my life story is too horrific to share with anyone, so I can't ever be 'real' and I'm stuck. I have a best friend thousands of miles away from me, and she does know much more than I ever told anyone, and I love her, and would die for her...but she is so far away now, she has been for years. She cannot be 'here' with me, and that's hard. If I told a friend, anyone at all, they wouldn't know what to say-when it was through, to the end. Even people here, I don't know if they would know what to say either, maybe some. I am so lonely sometimes.

I am glad for you about your art career teaching. Good luck--anyone who stands in the way of your dreams is not a friend.

S.,

It is of course your choice, but you could say anything on here and maybe some people would surprise you and respond. If people couldn't handle it, they wouldn't have to read further, but at least you wouldn't have to see that look on their face!(and you would've gotten some stuff off your chest.) I've been to other support forums and read some pretty nightmarish stuff - particularly on the PTSD support forums - that people have been through, so perhaps if you found a forum like that, you'd be more comfortable opening up. I'm glad you at least have one best friend, even though she's far away.

I don't know if you sometimes feel this way, but I know that my worst times, when I get really, really, really depressed - "The Pit of Despair" I call it - is when I feel like the badness in my mother and my grandmother is in me and therefore I'm bad, too. I haven't ever harmed myself, but I know sometimes I feel like I have something evil in me and that I need to cut it out somehow. Given the horrific things you say you've seen and experienced, I wonder if perhaps you feel that way too, sometimes. If you do, you have my sympathy - it is such an awful feeling.

Our senses of self become so muddled up in what we've been through and what toxic people tell us. I did a guided visualization with a therapist once where I imagined when I was born, and from that got the sense that I was a separate entity from my mother from the beginning and that I came into the world innocent and good and that part of me was still at my core even after everything I've been through. What a wonderful feeling that was! It gave me hope.

Not to sound hokey or anything, but I wish you peace - with yourself, with your past and with your future. Hang in there.

I know what you're talking about--seeing the evil within yourself. I've seen it, but I can almost forgive my mentally ill parents for it...and I have, for the most part, but I am sane---and I have this potential, this knowledge of Dark in me. I know how to manipulate, and see through people, even their weakest points, and how to survive and how people think. But I never use this to harm anyone, I have never done that...but my thought life can be twisted. But I believe in the soul, that can counteract the mind.

I mean, others have had it far worse, and will continue to. But living with it for years and years, mot just as a small child, but even into adolescence, you have so many memories, all on top of each other. It's hard when you have been scared of your parents, living that way for years and years.

I will be okay though. I'm strong---and fortunately have a very strong mind. I do have this Light/Dark entity in me, that is hard to be one extreme or the other, and fights against saneness of Light and the insanity of Dark. But I believe the Light will win...it has so far.

When I've been around my mother for more than an hour, I feel as though all of my energy has been completely sucked out of me. I get what I am starting to think are mild anxiety attacks when I know I will be in a situation where she and other family members are there. These are the times where she can say the rudest, ugliest things to me, then turn around and act like she's not said anything. If I get upset, everyone starts treating me like I'm crazy, because they didn't hear it, or maybe if they did, they see her manners after and forget it. Holidays of any kind are very hard for me. This year she was unable to hide her behavior from everyone (we had 16 people at a restaurant, and she spoke rather loudly), so at least the other members of my family were nice to me about it. I got a huge amount of emails from those present after the dinner, asking if my mom was ok. I wanted to say "25 years too late in asking!" but I was really nice about it. Weirdly, once I explained her behavior, i didn't get any replies to my emails. I wonder if they are trying to drop it or they don't believe me. So, I understand about the coping. It takes a lot of concentration and preparation to be near someone that you know will hurt you.

As for friends, I have had some of my friends for decades, and with them, I can see them bracing themselves before they ask, so I know the question's coming "How is your mom?" They are understanding enough to know that it's not my disease, and that I don't have many people to talk to about it, so I haven't had anyone ever stop talking to me because of her. My newer friends are equally understanding, but I get a little defensive about it when they talk about her. I think they want to make me feel better by recounting instances where they've seen her acting crazy, but that brings out a weird defensiveness in me. I don't know why I should worry about defending her. I guess it's because I don't say nasty things about their parents, so why should they do that to me?

One friend I have has a grandmother that is very much like my mother. She gives me the viewpoint of my daughter in 15 years. She is very defensive of her mother when her grandmother starts to rage at her, and has been forced to grow up way too early (she had to listen to her grandmother berate her mom for most of her life), and assume the role of protector for her mom. I don't want my kids to have to do that! I hadn't ever thought that generations from now, my mother's insanity would still be affecting my kids. We've had some very interesting discussions, and I think it's helped me separate from my own mother much easier.

There are friends out there who will understand. I have recently discovered a friend from high school who has lived with a bipolar (or borderline - she's been diagnosed with both) mom for years, and didn't have anyone to talk to about it, so we're helping each other out now. We just have to set a timer, so we stop at some point and talk about normal things! Sometimes, we will meet just to talk about our moms, and other times, we'll have a mom-free lunch. Being open about that kind of thing is probably the main reason it works. I don't know. I hope this helps you.

Hi Dani,

My mother exhausts me, too. I have panic attacks before going to see her and usually I get sick after visiting her - like my body can't take all the stress. Luckily she lives very far away, so visits are few and far between. We only talk on the phone every 4 to 6 weeks because the phone calls drag on for so long, I can't take much more than that. I used to try to call her every week or every two weeks to keep her feeling calm and to try to keep the phone calls shorter, since we were talking more often. Well, the phone calls still went on for 2 and 3 hours at a time, (I say "Mom, I gotta go now" repeatedly, but she keeps on talking) and it seemed like it took me all week to recover so I started making more time between calls. She fusses and worries about how long it has been each time, but I just can't handle more than that. I've even tried writing in between to keep her calm, but even if I write the most cheery letter, she still thinks I'm angry at her because it has been so long between phone calls and she cries and fusses about it when I do talk to her. It is crazy - I haven't lived with the woman in 28 years since she moved 3,000 miles away and yet she's still so dependent on me and I still feel smothered, like she's got tentacles that can come through the phone lines. (It's like she doesn't have to follow the rules of what a mother should be, but I still have to treat her as if we have a loving mother/child relationship and I am sick of it!!!)

I am glad that your family finally witnessed your mom being crazy, but I'm sorry that they weren't supportive for very long. Family can be so tricky. For example my half-sister, to whom my mother was much crueler to, has a weird co-dependent love/hate relationship with my mother and so I have to be careful of what I say to her about my mother, even though she was the one who had it worse than I did. She has always been welcome to talk to me about what's happening, call me when things are bad, but if I start critisizing my mother to her, she get very protective. It is beginning to affect my relationship with her.

I've given up on close friends for now. All the friends I've had who understood what I was going through have dumped me for one reason or another. It seems like they tend to dump me when I'm making positive strides in my life. One of my best friends dumped me when I fulfilled a dream and started teaching at a museum on the weekends. We had always spent many weeknights hanging out after work together and I asked her that week when she wanted to get together and she said she couldn't because she really needed to start spending more time with her family. Not 5 minutes later, another co-worker walked in the room and asked her if she wanted to get together after work and she eagerly accepted the offer RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. Then we did make plans two other times and she stood me up both times, so I didn't return her phone calls after that. My best friend of 28 years dumped me last year after my first art show opening. She complained I didn't have time for her anymore, even though I had just finished supporting her through a big turmoil with her crazy dad. So now I just have casual friends for social stuff who know nothing about my private life and that's it. I'm sick of the getting close to someone, thinking you can trust them and rely on them and then having them burn you in the end. But secretly, I am incredibly lonely and hope to someday have a close friend again. Maybe I will be better at judging people's characters and making healthier friend choices by then.

Hi! I am new here and I just wanted to tell you that we seem to have very similar circumstances. I have felt very alone for a long time on this issue. I also have a friend that I have helped through hundreds of bad relationships, but when I mention my issues with my mother she instantly invalidates me by telling me in other words that she thinks I need to just let it go. (She is a type of person who lets people walk all over her, and use her) I guess I shouldn't expect her to understand me. So, it is really hard when a lot of people do not understand what you are going through. I start wondering sometimes if perhaps I am the one who's nuts!(Sorry!) Any ways, I get anxiety just thinking about listening to a voice mail from my mother. I avoid my mother as much as possible, but I am always made to feel guilty. The worst part is that my family is in on it to! Invalidation is the worst thing anyone can do. In my family, it goes hand in hand with manipulation. I am glad to have met you, hope your days get better.