One less helpful person trying to be helpful

Cripes my mother is a b***breaker. Her idea of helping me is lecturing me. "What you don't understand is......." and "you'll never get better if you don't......" Last night, I had to listen to a lecture about all the things I need to do with my life (big and small) to make things just perfect for everyone......because of course I'm an embarrassment to the family. I didn't turn out as expected.

The thing with people like my mother is they don't offer solutions, just critique and a "re-steering" of my thoughts in a less than friendly manner. My mother has never been an empathetic person or someone who speaks from experience. She just knows everything and has since Day 1. Her idea of fixing something is to attack it and be sure her opinion is superior to everyone else's.

Yes I'm the 50 year old male still raving on about his mother. I'm sure many of you can relate or perhaps even believe that you inherited much of your bi-polar from your mother. She grew up in an era when mental illness was taboo and no one got treated. They just sort of drank and smoked their way through and by the time they reached 75 or so, heck what's the point now right?

Anyway, hooray for everything. And Happy Friday, don't forget it! Rock on.

Ah, Row....gotta love that kind of help, right?! And, it's really awesome when it comes from your kid......

Happy Friday!

((((Row Jimmy))) that sucks!

I have "people that mean well" - but do more damage, to me, personally, in my own life.

It's a hard one to shake but hang in there - we're all here for you.

Ahhhh Yeah Many people struggle with parental units that just are not helpful and just increase the stress..

Is there a way for you to politely walk away when she starts yapping? Or do you have to just sit there and wait it out?

(((hugs)))

Yep...I lived with one of those for 56 years. She was never part of the solution, she was part of the problem. I had to get past the anger I had for the way she tore me down for 4 decades so I could recover a positive sense of being for the rest of my days. And I had to own what it must have been like to deal with a kid that was off the rails from 15 on too.

The family of Italians I was raised in was short on patience but long on expectations...you never ever reached out for help...never. But yeah, being in the 1960's with a mental disorder wasn't exactly utopia, there was no Dr Phil to raise awareness. Leave It To Beaver was perpetrating the nonsense that everything that looks ok...is ok.

A buddy I grew up with here in the neighborhood stopped by 3yrs ago. I'm living in the house I grew up in. I gave him a hug, introduced him to my wife...and we sat down. He jumped right back up and walked over to the wall, feeling it with his fingers. I said, Jim...what the hell you looking at? He said one day we were standing here, and your mom threw a scissor at you and it hit the wall...I was just seeing if the nick was still there. It was.

10's of thousands of words of hate and disdain were spewed at me up until 3 days before mom died. She passed away in the back bedroom with her mouth open, just as it had been for 93 years spewing her black-hearted hate.

Friend, foe, father, mother or sibling...I learned the hard way if they are toxic to you, the quicker you pull the trigger on them and erase them from your life...the better.

Perfectionist with a total lack of emotional support,, my last T helped me see if I was BP or not I should be pretty screwed up.... I am... and I am passing it right along to my boys... not even counting what my poor wife has suffered through.... I believe she was BP, never dxed or treated... she had pushed everyone away when they got big enough to leave...

"Yapping" is a good way to describe it.....always an unsolicited opinion that has no other purpose beyond trying to show everyone how superior she is. Walking away is another thing altogether. That makes matters worse because she can be very unstable sometimes.

Chickenkicker, thanks for the reply. First of all, great name. It says "funny" without all the potential violence involved with actually kicking chickens......assuming we can catch them.

My upbringing sounds a lot like yours - an upbringing that was short on patience but long on expectations......more from my mom than my dad. He was a traditionalist but not a mean person. My mom, on the other hand, wanted everyone to think we were the greatest family in the neighborhood - "dress-up-Sunday-and-go-to-church" type stuff.

My situation right now is sort of complex. Long story short - my dad is still around and he's the normal one in the family - stable background, normal parents. My mom married my dad in part as an escape from an abusive household (one she refuses to discuss with anyone). My dad is an engineer and mathematician - very happy and successful, a gentle guy with a brilliant mind. He helped build the Apollo navigation systems (I like telling people that ) as a twenty-something. He was a catch - an All American hockey player too (I like telling people that ). I am proud of him very much. My mom doesn't have a college degree and wanted out of her situation asap. From what we all know, her mom and dad were alcoholics who would argue every night.....beer bottles off the kitchen wall arguing. I know and remember all of my grandparents (last one died a few days before my wedding) and most of it makes sense to me.

So my dad is the cornerstone of the family and he's still alive and doing well. My mom is the one who tears the family apart and *always* adds or added to the chaos. It was never my dad. Cutting her out is impossible right now but I will admit I have one sister who refuses to talk to her. She has the advantage of living 1,000 miles away. The others just tolerate her and yes her to death. I keep the peace for the sake of my dad.

I remember when I was a kid, she would hit me and my siblings with the closest object possible, usually a kitchen utensil like a wooden spoon or spatula. But I always remember how angry her eyes would look and how she would purse her lips, like some sort of masochist.

My family has been through a bunch of trauma in the last few years - a divorce with one sister, another sister lost a child to leukemia - and my mom always makes it about her. I remember at my niece's funeral, she was parading around telling everyone how much she did to help my sister and how sad she was. She always spins the story back to her. Whatever she says, it often ends with "I don't know how much more I can take" or "all of this is pushing me to the edge". She believes that everyone should listen to her because if we did, she'd be so much better off.

Like your mom, mine has longevity on her side - 92 and 90 for her parents. So I have approximately 15 more years of this. Hey, super.

Wow, man...the similarities between our families are striking! My Dad too was the calm, funny, easy-going type that started a successful excavating business from scratch in the 40's. I truly believe my mom was a narcissist, because it was always about her. She would brag how -we- built this business and -we- worked so hard, but in reality she didn't do shite but have 8 of her friends over for bridge club every week. She had a housekeeper (that she charged the business for), and never worked a job during my lifetime anyway. My present wife met her for the first time when my Dad was in hospice. After 5min she walked out of the room and Wifey said 'that woman has a black heart.' If she only knew....

I was raised as an only adopted child...thank goodness nobody else had to suffer her. I thought my last name was 'Don't' until I was 18. I played classical piano from age 5-15 when the bipolar started gaining steam, and after I quit playing to take hallucinogenics, drink beer and search for vaginas to penetrate she -hated- me. She had been living vicariously through me so she could spout off to her friends about my National Piano Guild certificates and performances at Stars Of Tomorrow. I wore a target on my back she shot her hate at for the next 41yrs. I felt if I had ever won $100million in the lotto...she would chew my azz for spending the $1 for the ticket. I couldn't do a n y t h i n g right.

When I was little, she threw whatever was at hand: scissors, Corningware 'Cornflower' bowls or loaves of bread. But her fav were shoes. Visual: hopping mad as a wet hen redhead on one leg trying to get the shoe off the other foot to hurl at me. She missed her calling...most teams in the majors could use some pitching. She was toxic so I bailed out to get away from her to the SF Bay Area, and spoke to her as little as possible during the 20yrs I lived there. Because it was a fight...each and every time it was a fight.

Of course there were crickets coming from friends and family...until she died...THEN people started telling me screwy stuff she had done...very selfish things. And always the martyr. I'm just glad its been over now for 5yrs. Wifey and my lifelong friends just laugh about it now, because there was some pretty funny stuff take place around her. They asked me if I would cry when she passed away...and I answered I would...but only because of what the relationship never was.

I had to own my part in all this dysfunction after she passed, though. I can't honestly pin all this on her because she was just reacting (incorrectly) to a crazy man even though I didn't ask for this disorder nor did I deserve it...it was what it was. I was a perfect combination of the Tasmanian Devil and Yosemite Sam. Really. But we keep on moving forward!

Thanks so much - as part of my goals, I'm trying not to rant (a big problem for me, my mouth gets me in trouble a lot) but this is a good place to let 'er rip.

My mom doesn't always mean well - she can be spiteful. I don't dislike her but she suffers from something and refuses help. I lived a while with the same sort of anger (not sure why, like most of us) but I went to get help and I'd like to think I'm getting better.

My family goes to her for affirmation of our lives and it's never good enough. Time and again, we find ourselves disappointed. She grew up being told she was never good enough and then just passed it along to us. In many ways, that was her generation - post war babies that grew up with fathers who fought in the war and subsequently drank themselves into oblivion. My grandfather was a good provider but spent a lot of time alone in his cabin hunting or down at the VFW boozing it up.

My sisters have an interesting theory - she doesn't really have a full capacity to love. And, as Chickenkicker said, every discussion we have, no matter the topic, degenerates into some sort of argument. It's so tiring. I refuse to let her push me around like her parents did to her. My sister cracked up this AM when I told her "every time I talk to mom, my BP gets worse". That's why they haven't spoken in a long time. My mom refuses to get help and refuses to acknowledge that she's the problem.

OK enough about my mother. Let's talk about how awesome hash browns are with any breakfast.

You have my deepest empathy. My mom finally admitted she doesn't know what to do or say. She won't go to get help and told me I can't rely on her for support.

Oddly enough, this seems to have improved our relationship. Can you make your illness a taboo topic?

Lefty, that's a powerful story. Thank you for sharing. It's "nice" to a degree that we can come here and discuss these things. It is part of the healing and growth process, for sure.

My mom sounds a bit like yours. She probably has an undiagnosed mental illness, perhaps PTSD of some sort from her childhood which she refuses to share and one she refuses to acknowledge. She has passed on much of her madness to me and she has become a trigger for me. She has limited sympathy for anyone inside her family.