Hi there, d.o.a. A lot of people seem to have some issues with their mothers. I moved away from mine around 10 years ago. I cannot say anything bad about her - she raised me alone, she worked hard, she was always trying to keep me satisfied when I was a child. Nevertheless, we seemed to work on "different frequencies" and would fight very often. Now I find it extremely challenging to stay at hers for more than two days and the last time she came to visit me for more than a week we ended up in a huge fight where crying was involved.
I am almost 30 now and I am still trying to figure out what exactly is going wrong between us, given that neither of us is a bad mean person on our own. And yes, at times I feel that it is my fault that she is not living her life in its fullest extent. I tried to help her with some things, but it would either make her angry (because my right way of doing things is not her right way of doing things) or she would reject the offer.
Quote:
|
I think she's given up. She's not going after what she wants anymore. But that cannot rule my life, right?
|
Right. Have you thought of giving her some space? She might get bored eventually and start looking for things she can do. My mother was concentrating on me a lot in the past (I didn't like that), but now she is going to a language class and she is very much into it.
What I learned from my own experience:
1. You cannot make somebody truly happy. You can cheer them up, you can brighten their day, you can help them deal with their bad emotions at this specific moment. But you _cannot_ make them happy. This applies to both, you and your mother. You cannot make your mother happy, she has to figure it herself. And you _should_ be happy, because everybody has the right to be happiness regardless of their environment.
2. Physically moving away from your mother helps. I don't know about my situation, whether you two live together not, but once I moved away from my mother I gained this personal breathing space. I was alone and my life was my life, my happiness was my happiness. It took me around 6 months to adapt to living alone: it felt awfully wrong in the first weeks.
3. Gaining financial independence helps a lot. When I got my first part time job that paid enough to pay my bills - changed things. I was no longer dependent on my mother and it helped me to become mentally independent. I saw you wrote
Quote:
|
I saw a therapist for three years before I had to give up my job due to physical illness.
|
Is there any job you can do? Maybe you can get a job that you can do from home?
Quote:
|
As a child and growing up, I did everything to try to keep my mum from losing it. When she was unhappy about something, she'd fly into these terrifying fits of rage. I did everything to try to keep that from happening. I feel I lost myself in the process, or never found myself at all as she was so controlling.
|
I am really sorry to hear that, it must have been really hard.
Quote:
|
I'm almost 30 now and still scared out of my mind of admitting, even just to myself, when I like something. It's like, happiness isn't for me - because mum might get mad..
|
Again, it's not her task to decide whether you should be happy or not. If you think you can be happy, don't let anything or anyone inhibit it.
I hope that at least some of this was helpful. Take care!