I have similar troubles with my mom. Much worse as she's gotten older. In her case there seems to be an underlying belief that she's learned all she needs to in life, and should be the one talking all the time, when in reality I just think she's let herself get out of practice with absorbing complex information. I end up having to call her out on it quite a bit, in order to assist her in achieving the result of having an actual two-way conversation with me, instead of one long continuation of her train of thought, in which I am only submitting occasional half-sentences for no purpose but her amusement.

It's quite exhausting. I know how much I can handle. Three hours in person is the absolute max. Phone calls no longer than a half hour, because without visual cues it's difficult to interrupt her monologue, and becomes too mind-numbing.

But regarding your mom; you don't mention if this is a situation that's developed suddenly, or over time, or if she's always been this way. if you've been in close contact throughout, or are spending more time with her now after a period of greater separation.. but your reaction does sound like it could be the result of previous trauma, and reminds me of how when my mom says and does the things she did when I was suffering as a child, it sends me right back, to a set of feelings that have nothing to do with what's going on in the present moment.

It's weird, because they've watched us change so much. But our parents have been adults the whole time we've known them, sometimes changing very little if at all. Yet they still look at us as how we were, and we wonder why they can't evolve more, like we have.

My mom does the exaggerative thing too by the way. Bigtime. I know she's just trying to make everything more meaningful with her intensity, but I have to be careful she doesn't give me a heart attack. She has the exact same intonation in her voice about a shoe sale that she does about someone dying, and I'm an easily triggered trauma survivor, so it's not the best combination! A lot of our conversations involve me doing triage, calmly interviewing her for data points, assessing the possible existence of an emergency (that's certainly rare), while she's screaming for unknown reasons. I'm basically her personal 9-1-1 operator.

I would suggest, if the speech patterns you describe your mom as having have come on fairly suddenly, you might want to make sure she talks about it with a doctor, to make sure it's not the result of something more serious.