My Relationship With My Mother

[primrose]

I write a lot about my mother, so I think I should have a place just for that rather than fill up the daily thread.

My mother came to stay this week, it was just for two days. She came down on the day I saw my consultant and had to discuss a care package with him about me going into hospital for the rest of my pregnancy and booking a c-section as my little girl has Vasa Praevia.

Obviously, my mother was and is very stressed about all of that. I'm her daughter, her grandchildren might be at risk, it's scary for me and it is for my mother too.

Probably it would have been best for me just to spend the time with my husband and reflect on what's happening, but my mother was here and so she was part of it all.

My mother is a Bach practitioner and is completely obsessed with Bach. She talks about it a lot usually. This visit though she talked about nothing else, it was like having a zealot in the house, she just went on and on about it and brought it into every single conversation. It was unnerving. I am not really very interested in it at all. It bores me. It would be like someone talking to me all day about reflexology. I might be interested for half an hour, max.

She also couldn't stop talking, it was a wall of words this visit and she couldn't listen at all. She is not always like that, sometimes she can really listen and be very thoughtful and we can have a really nice time.

I think she just hit so much terror this visit that her old coping strategies came to the surface with renewed vigour. What I was seeing was her desperately holding onto a lifeline she uses because I am having a difficult time and she just simply can not deal with it.

The house sort of rattled with her anxiety and constant talking, and to reassure herself she kept saying how wonderful everything is about me going into hospital, how great it is that I saw the consultant so quickly, how reassured she is, how fantastic, how brilliant, excellent, great, good etc etc. Isn't it wonderful, isn't it so good? On and on and on.

It is not great. The reality of the situation is that my little girl is at risk and she has something that is very dangerous, but it's been diagnosed and that gives us the very best chance of making sure that she's completely safe. It is not brilliant and wonderful, and frankly being with someone for 2 days who kept saying that while actually she was palpitating with fear really irritated the hell out of me.

I just wanted calm so I could come to terms with what was going on, rather than have this bird like creature full of terror swooping around the house banging its head against the glass every five minutes and saying how marvelous everything was.

Eventually I had had enough and did talk to her about my feelings. She told me I must allow her to be in Lala land, funny that she used that expression! That really if I have a problem with her being in Lala land, then it's my problem. I agreed with her, she's right. She's spent her life dealing with fear or pain or anything negative really by putting a happy spin on things and ignoring reality. And that truly is her choice.

She has the classic fantasy addicts way of dealing with problems, she just doesn't deal with them and she's been doing that since she was a little girl. The way she describes her childhood is that she can't really remember anything about it because she was in a dream all of the time, and that was how she kept herself happy.

I agree with my mother completely that how she choses to be is her choice and it's none of my business, but we did discuss something quite useful for me this time. I said to her, that's fine adult to adult and I agree with you, but actually there is another more powerful historical dynamic going on that is to do with her as my mother forcing me as a child to join in her Lala way of being.

As a little girl she rejected me and punished me if I didn't play along with her fantasy. She is used to telling me how life is, she's done it all my life and it's inbuilt for her.

I didn't meet her adult to adult the last couple of days and think to myself "hmm, this woman is very anxious and a bit crazed, poor thing, well I'll just let her be who she is and not let it bother me". I met her as a daughter meets her very frightened mother. I KNOW her anxieties and fears and that she is terrified and my pattern as a child was to want to soothe her fears by pretending with her that my father hadn't been an ugly drunk the night before and yes of course we'll all be happy and have a lovely day together and be a happy family for daddy so he wouldn't go out drinking again. La La La.

I met her having just seen a consultant about how my own daughter would die if I didn't have a c-section. So I met my mother feeling very emotionally depleted and needing really to take care of my own feelings and not have to have this terrified person who used me as a child as her favourite emotional prop.

A friend of mine who recently had a baby spoke to me after the birth about how she didn't think she'd ever be able to change the dynamic between her and her mother, she felt that she'd always try and appease her mother's anxiety. After my friend had given birth and was needing stitches, my friend's mother came into the room looking terrified and my friend said she couldn't help herself, she just had to make conversation with her mother to make her feel better, and there she was blood everywhere, having stitches. She said to me "If it's like that at that moment of my life, then I don't think I'll ever be able to put myself first and not on some level want to help my mother with her fear".

I understand that. I know I am bit by bit separating from my mother emotionally and that I am honest with her about things, but for sure I still feel that pull to agree with her and make her feel better in her denial. And for sure she still uses every trick in the book to make me do that. She looks at me pleadingly and used very leading hypnotic language "Don't you agree? Don't you see that.. Isn't that right? Dont you think?" She speaks to me as if I am part of her. Interestingly, she was speaking about her mother and she said to me "well I finish all her sentences and tell her how things are and it really annoys me when she doesn't agree with me, I mean it's only little silly things, who can't she just say yes rather than be so stubborn and always disagree with me?" Haha! That is classic. That is my mother perfectly. She wants to say how it is and for people to agree and it just irritates her when they don't, so silly of them!

I know of course that she was in extreme distress this visit, but I'm over it I think. I'm over her saying things like "It's worse for grandparants, you don't have to worry so much as a parent" Yes, hello, I've just been in hospital discussing how to protect my daughter from dying. I'm not even sure how I should take something like that! probably I should just accept that she was behaving quite insanely and understand that she has years and years of unprocessed grief about her own mother dying and being abandoned. She is probably the very worst person to be around when I'm dealing with what I'm dealing with, it just so happens that she's also my mother.

Pfff. So much stuff. Part of me really does respect her right to go into Lala land and try and talk herself out of her fear. That's her thing, let her do it. Part of me is furious that I spent my childhood hiding my own fear and not being able to get support because I had such a neurotic fearful woman as a parent. I can only grieve that and let it work itself out of me. Part of me feels like I'd like to help this tragic woman who is so distressed. Part of me knows I need to protect myself and my children and not give a stuff about the needs of others.

I wouldn't feel any of this about any other person on the planet. And perhaps I wouldn't feel it about my mother if it weren't for the fact that I'm currently having to deal with protecting my daughter the best way I can. Protecting her triggers how unprotected I was and it just so happened that my mother who was the person responsible for that, was here when all that was going on.

Probably it's really an opportunity to work out some of these old blocks and process some grief. I am a mother now, I am not a child who needs her mother and doesn't have her, and I'm not a child who feels crushed by her mother's fears, I'm an adult, so when those feelings come up, I can deal with them. Sometimes though, I'd just really rather not have to. It's all very well knowing things are opportunities for growth, but there are times where I'd rather just relax instead. I'll make sure I do that this weekend.

[knowlove]

I SO relate to everything you have said here! I have spent (probably) 40+ years trying to appease her and make her happy. My Ic told me this most likely started as young as age 2 and that we fall into a pattern from a very young age. I would say in the last 2 years or so I have done much better and started learning to not put her first all the time nor allow her to manipulate me and have me do things for her that SHE wants or needs. My mother has always been an extremely selfish self ceontered woman. Whenever I have told counselors what she did as a mother they are incredulous. No, she never physically abused me but she did emotionally. As I have aged, gotten help with therapy, I too, like you, see a very scared, insecure, sick woman. She has so many issues a psychiatriast would have a field day with her. My MC said she is a classic narc. I am not surprised although I never really thought of her this way.
When you describe your mother as always talking about herself and her feelings it makes me think of my mother too. if someone is sick it is always about how it affects HER. When in my mother's company she has to talk non stop. Al she does is contstantly tell the same stories from childhood she has told a million times. Mostly they are stories of how bad my sister and I were. The world has always revolved around her. She has OCD and anxiety and her dermatologist told her she needs to see a psychologist because she picks her skin to wher eit bleeds. She says it is due to skin peeling. No, it isnt. She had an appointment and then canceled. My sister and I believe she did it because she doesn't want to hear it isnt due to peeling skin. She doesnt want to hear she has something wrong with her.
My mother, over the eyars, has said some very hurtful things to me. Once she had taken pictures at a family reunion and called to tell me she got the pictures back. She said "you look really fat." I had gained weight and was a size 10. Not fat by any means! I was livid but back then never said much. All I said was I did not want to see the picture. She wanted to keep discussing it and i finally said sternly 'I DONT WANT TO SEE IT!" Do you know a year later, my mother was giving my sister and I pictures she wanted to get rid of and in my pile was that picture? Oh, there is NO doubt she did this on purpose because it was a picture of her entire family, cousin, etc. I knew she was watchinf for my reaction so I looked quickly and put it behind the others and went on. I did not give her the reaction she wanted. I was hurt and furious. Who does that? One other time it was Christmas eve and I was in the refrigerator bending over to get something when she walked in and she said"whose fat ass is that in the refrigerator?" I got up so fast and just gave her a dirty look. She came over gave me a kiss while laughing. I said nothing. When I joined them in my family room later after getting the appetizers out, she said she was only kidding. The damage was done. So, while I love my mother and do care, I also harbor very hurt feelings and anger at times for things she has said and done. I think she is jealous of my sister and I. My mother has her lifeline as well. it consists of putting us down, talking non stop telling stories of how awful we were and also talking bad about my grandparents whom she knows my sister and I loved deeply. I know it comes from extreme insecurity but it doesnt mean I have to accept it. I have worked very hard at standing up for myself and no longer allowing her to treat me with disrespect or talk meanly to me. I now put her in her place. Like you, Prim, I can talk to her calmy and tell her how I feel. if I spend too much time around her I am frazzled and need a break. Hope you dont mind my commenting here.

[primrose]

I don't mind you commenting at all. I'm so sorry you've been so hurt by your mother. It is really a hard thing to come to terms with and work through and also manage to have a relationship with that person in the present. It takes so much energy to set boundaries and be the adult and look after ourselves when the person who hurt us just carries on behaving the way they always did. I think you can be proud of yourself for dealing with all of those issues so well and balancing your own needs with being kind to her and dealing with the feelings from the past. It really takes a lot to be able to do that.

[primrose]

Being in hospital and seeing and hearing the newborn babies is an amazing thing. It is good practice for what to expect, although I haven't seen anyone with twins. You never know I might get the chance.

It makes me think a lot about being a tiny child myself and how difficult it must have been for my mother. I'm going to a few hospital classes about babies and I'm in with women between the ages of 20 and 45. What a difference it makes to be old! I'm sure the 20 year olds will be very loving mothers, but I see with the older women how confident they are and how able they are to take advice or just not bother about it. I guess women who've been in the world of work for 20 or so years have built up a lot of self esteem.

I know how shy and nervous my mother was at 20 and it makes me realise how lonely and difficult it must have been for her to assert herself. She really was bullied by my grandmother and got no help from her when I was born. V touching to see all the new mums with the proud grandmothers. My mother and I didn't have any of that.

[primrose]

I've found a workbook that helps women work through their feelings about having a c-section. It's so helpful. It's mostly for women who've had a bad experience and want their second pregnancy to go well, but there's still a lot in it I can use. Interestingly, there is a real focus on resolving feelings about your mother before you give birth, and also focusing on your own birth. That's the direction I've found myself going in during my pregnancy. It makes sense to me to really grieve what I didn't have from my mother and try and clear any difficult feelings about my own birth before I become a mother myself.

I've felt doing that would help, so it's reassuring to see that other women have mapped out that journey already. It seems I'm not alone in feeling the need to completely pull apart my relationship with my mother and grieve it all again. I'm glad my unconscious knows what it's doing. It gives me some trust in what could seem like a random process.

[primrose]

I'm just in more of the same for now. So much stuff about my mother not being there emotionally. It goes on and on. I'm also watching mothers with daughters every day as I'm on a ward where women are in the first stages of labour or about to have a c-section. So I see families dealing with a daughter about to give birth and each day the families change but it's the same situation. My mother is going to visit when I am due to give birth and I feel such a mix of things about that. It feels right and it feels wrong at the same time. I feel so triggered by things at this time. It's like going into a primal swamp of emotion. Everything is there, great love, great hatred. Everything moves, everything changes, nothing is firm underfoot. I can feel my brain disintegrating. It's like an ice age ending. I'm not afraid of that because I always do trust that I am mentally well and intact at core so the overwhelm can come and be processed and I'll be fine, but it is still very overwhelming. Of course this kind of thing is hardly surprising given my early relationship with my mother. I just need to let everything out so the new can come in.