My mother has never been professionally diagnosed and she never will because she believes that the rest of the world is 'sick'. I did't realize how bad it was until a few weeks ago.
She called me and told me that her and my stepdad were moving. No reason. She just wants a bigger house. It's just her and my sdad and they live in a 4 bedroom single family with a big yard. For the next 3 weeks she called me multiple times during the day and never stopped talking. She would talk 45 minutes straight without pausing to breath let alone listen. The same thing over and over again. During this time I had just brought my new baby home from the hospital, the other kids started school, one of my kids broke her ankle, I went back to work, and she never asked about any of it. If I brought any of these things up she'd get irritated and say that I don't care about her. I would put the phone down and let her keep talking and she never noticed. She talked to realtors and the bank. She wanted a house NOW. It started falling apart when my sdad told her they had to get the house inspected before they could sell it and they had to get an inspection on any house they buy. She thought he was just stalling and trying to ruin things. They needed an extra 10k in cash for the house she wanted and she wanted him to either borrow money from his dad or cash in his IRA. Then she immediately started talking about all the repairs and remodeling they'll do when they move in. She finally realized that it wasn't gonna happen when the realtors stopped returning her calls. She blames it all on my sdad. She called me and told me they were getting a divorce. But she couldn't explain why beyond that he took her out for a nice afternoon and looked at another woman's legs in a coffee shop. I told her it didn't sound so bad and she got mad at me said she's just not explaining it right, I always take his side, and the name calling begins. She started calling me several times a day to tell me how awful my sdad is. Not that he did anything specific. She was sure he was sleeping with all the women at work and all of hiscustomers (no evidence). She was calling me and my grandmom almost non stop to rage over this. And it's rage. She's on the phone yelling and screaming and cursing without a break in the conversation. Then she started calling old friends who she hadn't talked to in years to tell them how awful my stepdad is. Meanwhile she follows him around the house yelling at him, poking him, smacking him, and throwing things at him.
This whole thing lasted about 2 months. She's sounding better but she still finds a way to connect any topic of conversation back to how awful my sdad is. She says he's sick and needs help. He offered to go to a therapist with her but she won't go because she doesn't need the help.

Anyway.......
This is not the first time. It's just that things came into focus for me now. Now I can see the pattern of her rages and her depressions.
My question is how do I get her help without her feeling like I'm attacking her. I don't want to present her with stories of my childhood as evidence because that would just bring up a lot of hurt and that's not what I want. It would be counterproductive. She can't change what she did to me and I know it's because she has an illness. I want her to get help so that maybe I can have my mom again. There is a part of her underneath the rage that is so warm, so caring and it is her greatest strength. But she thinks her rages are her strength and that that's when she shows us that she won't be f'd with.
How do I approach her so that she knows I care about her? How do I keep her from thinking I'm being mean or ganging up on her? And I don't want her turning it around on me saying that I am sick, that I need help, that I'm.....you name it.
Her generation (she's 56) and her family put a high stigma on mental illness so I was thinking of suggesting that she talk to her regular doctor about her diet, that maybe something she's doing foodwise is giving her mood swings. She's always on some odd diet and she monitors her vitals (cholesteral, blood sugar, etc) looking for any deviation. She's a hypocondriac (very hereditary-my grandmom claimed to have parkinsons for the past 30years-she doesn't, my great grandmom decided she had cancer one day and went to bed to die. she stayed in that bed for 15 years until she died at age 90 with no cancer).
How do I make her see that things could be better? She's missed out on so much, my childhood, her grandkids, her first marriage, holidays, seasonal fun stuff, her moods get the best of her and she never gets to enjoy anything.
I love my mom, I just want what's best for her.