Wow, Tanuevial, you've struck a chord with me on this one.

I'm 56 -- my mom is in her 80s -- I love her & she loves me, but there is still friction, and lots of stuff I don't tell my mom. Why? It will only upset her.

My mom (my brother, possibly my whole birth family) cannot understand depression as a mental illness; they see it as personal weakness, being a "drama queen," lots negative judgments.

Last year, my life fell apart, and I quite literally lost eveything -- my health, my job, my beloved of 15 years, who then forced me to sell our house, which required that I give up my beloved dogs to homes where they could be cared for. I am still without a permanent address or income. As I fell apart, my mom started calling all the time.

She meant well, she was doing her best to offer support. But her idea of support is to say things like, "You're not doing anything to help yourself" because to her, taking a mental health leave of absence, being in therapy, trying a roster of anti-depressants, and getting out of the bed in the morning, because that's ALL I can manage, is "not doing anything."

Even in middle age, I almost never "talk back" to family elders; it's the way I was raised. But I had to put my foot down. So, with my therapist's coaching, I calmly told her that what she was saying wasn't helpful. She got real insulted and said, "So I guess that means you don't want me to call you."

(Of course, she had to turn it into an all-or-nothing situation.)

"Not if all you can do is criticize me." Wow, I can't tell you the courage it took to say that to my mother!

"I don't criticize you."

So I calmly told her a few things she had said that were hurtful.

She didn't call for a while. But when she did call, she started making honest efforts to say things like, "I love you. You know we all support you."

My therapist advised me to give her lots of praise when she changed her behavior, so I made it a point to say how much it meant to me to hear things like that.

So now our conversations are more pleasant, and we have both learned a more positive way of communicating with each other.

It's never gonna be a TV sit-com perfect family relationship, but it's better. Perhaps you therapist can offer helpful stick-and-carrot ways of training your mom to behave more helpfully.

Just a thought.