Hi imaginethat. I'm sorry your mother has such a negative hurtful trait. I have to agree with what fern46 wrote.

My mother and father were not critical types, but my maternal grandmother was to an abusive point. She strongly favored my maternal uncle over my mother for no good reason whatsoever. That abusive criticism she hurt my mother with extended to my father and my siblings and me. Everything we did was bad, and everything my maternal uncle, his wife, and adopted son did was good. There are countless examples of the abuse she showed towards us, but the worst was extremely bad. One example was the second to last day my mother was home before being taken to the ICU, where she died seven days later. That day my maternal grandmother came to my parents' house and saw my mother sitting, very ill, in a chair in the living room. My grandmother literally called my mother a "pig" because my mom was obese at that time, and her stomach was even bigger because her liver was five times the normal size (a fact that wasn't known that day). As for my siblings and me, that grandmother beat us many times for things we didn't deserve them for. She once told me that she wished that her neighbor's granddaughter was hers, instead of me. I recall telling her that I wished that was so, too. I was maybe 12 or 13 years old at the time.

Obviously, my mother passed away before my maternal grandmother. I never heard/saw any sign of grief from my grandmother. Certainly no support or empathy was shown towards my father, my siblings or me. Years later, when my maternal grandmother died, my siblings and I found that we were disinherited. My grandmother left everything to my uncle, his wife, and son. I assure you that my mother, siblings, and I did nothing to deserve such treatment. Nothing. That uncle soon after moved far away to Maine without even telling any of us. My siblings and I assume that he did so out of guilt, and yet such guilt was not strong enough to overpower his greed. There had been many times in their lives that my mother was grossly short-changed compared to that uncle.

I will never be 100% sure why my maternal grandmother abused my mother so much, and not my uncle. One theory is that she held it against my mother that she (my mother) fell, as a teenager, and developed serious epilepsy with tonic clonic seizures (grand mal seizures), that she dealt with her entire life. This wouldn't be that different than a mother holding it against a young or adult child that they developed bipolar disorder. But regardless of this, my maternal grandmother had verbally and physically abused my mother even before that horrible fall. To my knowledge, neither my uncle nor cousin were hardly ever, if ever, criticized or beaten. My mother spent her whole life trying to be a good daughter and get approval (and of course love) from her mother. It rarely, if ever, happened. A fruitless effort.

I am not a grudge holder, but confess that I have harbored great anger towards that grandmother. Her calling my mother "a pig" during the last week of her life has made it difficult to forgive. However, in the meantime, I have reflected on such behavior and concluded that my grandmother had her own severe unaddressed psychological issues. We do know that she had had a "nervous breakdown" during the period of my uncle's birth. What that "nervous breakdown" was is unsure.

If you have a therapist, I hope you will spend a lot of time discussing your mother's behavior towards you. Perhaps your therapist will have good suggestions for how to influence your mother in a positive way. Unfortunately, I have no suggestions. I wish I did.