[luvmymom]

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.

My question is how do I get her help

Her feelings aside there is nothing you can do to force her into treatment or convince her to get treatment. She is an adult and unless she is deemed in court to be mentally incompetant she is in charge of her own physical and mental health decisions. unless she is a danger to herself and or others there is nothing you can do.

In the event that she does become a danger to herself and others you can transport her DURING the dangerious situation by yourself or by police escort to the local ER where she will be evaluated by two staff psychiatrists for possible inpatient involluntary commitment to the local mental health unit for 72 hours. At the end of the 72 hours she will again be evaluated and released or held involuntarily on the unit for 14 days. At the end of that time she will again be evaluated and either released or transported to a more secure and long term mental health facility.

She is an adult and by law that saws she is the one in control of her own mental and physical treatment plans. You can talk all you want, you can plead you can bribe but the ultimate decision is hers and as long as she FEELS she is ok no amount of talking pleading bribing and so on is going to work. FEELINGS just are. Someone can tell me that THEY feel I need help but if I don't feel I need help its not going to happen even if I enter therapy just to please that other person.

My advise leave your mother alone. Enjoy what time you have with her. You are her daughter not her mother. so be the daughter and leave the care taking up to her and her husband and if she really does have a mental problem then at some point she herself will reach out to get the treatment she needs. Sometimes older people talk other peoples ears off so to speack because they are loney and just want to be a part of their childrens lives.

[Taipans]

Myself made some good points, no matter how crappy the answer you got felt. My Grandmother was Manic and my mother dealt with her ups and downs all the time. She until the day she died thought nothing was wrong with her. And she was on Lithium, but even then would not take it as instructed and would drink. She would call my mom in the middle of the night and tell her how horrible of a child she was, and bring up how she wore certain shoes when she was 5 and wasnt suppose to, and was a bad child for that and so on. Other days she was high as a kite and would go down to the local restraunt and dance on the tables. I kid you not, she was almost 70 at the time. She died a few years later, going through all this turmoil, missing all the holidays and gatherings. And nothing could be said or done to make her change, or stick to her treatment. I wish I could give you some positive instruction on how to handle this? But as Myself pointed out, the only thing you can do at this time is be her daughter, and hopefully someday she will finally see that something is wrong. At that point you can step in and be her support. Of course maybe a doctor would tell you different, this is just from personal experience. I wish you all the best!

[Jane999]

I would listen to Myself's points and I would take that one step further. Don't have anything to do with her, in fact get away from her as soon as possible and don't look back.

You can not win against delusional people. You can't.
You can not argue with them, reason with them, use logic or tough love. They will always trump you with misdirection, fabrication, evasion, delusions, guilt trips, false accusations and overeactions. They may turn on you with no warning or remorse during their greatest time of need.

When you interact with delusional people you partake of their delusional state and you will be probably be abused by them, mentally, emotionally and even physically, sooner or later.. It can make you go lose your sanity and emotional stability to interact with or live with other people who have mental illness. You become a victim to their illness, a hostage to their episodes, an unwilling participant in their histrionics and there is no reason to allow that if you value your own mental and physical health and you have any choice in the matter.

My advice is to get out and save yourself.

"And I alone am escaped to tell thee"

[polkadotpixie]

Have you thought about talking to your step-dad about the situation?

I suppose that might make your Mum angrier if she found out but maybe if you both worked together you could find a way to help someone you both care about?

I don't know, maybe its an idea though

Hope you get things sorted okay

[nothemama8]

Look into a NAMI group for yourself, so you can better understand what your mom is goig through. they can give you the support you need
Best of luck

[zombiette]

hun i can feel ur pain. my mother is also bipolar but has never been officially diagnosed simply b/c she will not get help. sometimes i think its b/c she does not believe how sick she is, sometimes i think it's b/c she does not believe she can be helped. it had a huge impact on me...i was a very angry child b/c even back then i realize i didn't have a mother like everyone elses and i was ashamed. i developped depression and b/c of my parents refusal that anything could possibly be wrong in their "perfect" (haha) family, i never got medication or adequate therapy until about a year ago, and by then it had become what they clinically term "chronic"...also developped anorexia at the age of 18, and could have died from it. once again, no therapy, everyone's attitude was just to make me eat something! so i know what u mean about the stigma, my mother is in her 50's also.

at the moment ur mother may not be hurt from ur actions, but u probably are. furthermore, with someone that sick, it's practically impossible not to hurt them in some way, everything is amplified into such a big deal for them...my mother used to cry over someone saying that there was a bone in their fish (that she had cooked)! u could try to encourage her to get help, but if she is anything like mine she will not listen to a word u say and just accuse u of being rude and ungrateful. eventually i had to cut mine off for the most part...she was just too stressful and difficult to be around and if i was frightened of what i would do to myself if i continued in this relationship. i moved cities, stopped answering the phone when she called (which was just about everyday) and basically only have the absolute bare minimum to do with her, in order to keep the peace with other members of the family. if u cannot convince her to get help, i would walk away, for ur sake. it is painful, and there was a lot of grief for me. but in the end, it is her own responsibility to seek help. u can't make her, as hard as it may be...others can help her along the way, but she is the only person who can make her better.

u may want to consider seeing a T urself, there is a lot of stress on the children of mentally ill parents and it's smthn i don't think is talked about enuf. pm me if u wanna talk

[maureen]

I have BP1; my mom and grandmother as well with pychosis.
I feel that my mom suffered from Borderline Persoality Disorder as well because her mom was institutionilized for 40 years at Central Aislip Hospital. My mom was 5 and her 3 younger brothers were 4,2 and 1 month. They lived throughout the 5 bouroughs of New York in orphanages and foster homes paid for helped by the Catholic Diocese and the New York State.
Being hypochondric and delusional are more characteristic of BPD; although BP's in a highly manic stage can be delusional and sometimes when they are depressed.
Borderline Personality Disorder is caused from trauma or abandonment in childhild. Bi-polar is genetic.
Maureen