How do you help someone who doesn’t see the need?
Dad was hospitalized, then placed in a nursing home a year and 1/2 ago. She depended upon him for almost everything, and couldn't maintain their huge home. Then she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer, on top of Emphysema, COPD, RLS, Spinal Stenosis, and more. She also has some serious cognitive disorders, which prevent clear understanding of her situation. Like many of you, she has turned against the ones trying to help her. No matter what we try to do to help, or how we try to be a blessing, she dwells on the negative. She is critical and complaining, paranoid and manipulative.
Mom lives to socialize and spend money, and detests any restrictions on her freedoms to do exactly as she pleases, with no thought to personal safety, or common sense budget restrictions. Any attempt to moderate her activity with healthy boundaries, is met with utter comtempt. I am very conservative, and she is way over the edge extreme, so we do not agree. This has put considerable stress on an already strained relationship, and is at a breaking point - my breaking heart. I feel we've done all we can for mom, and cannot save her from her poor choices. She is bent on having her way, even lying to get it. Others do not see this, and work against our efforts to set boundaries. I feel as though we're fighting, not just Mom, but all her "allies," as well. Don't they see how unhealthy all this is? My heart hurts to see enablers make her problems worse!
We are running out of options, and hope our Attorney can help. He has offered some type of hope, and I am eager to speak with him next week. I am literally praying for a miracle.
If she's a shopaholic, then that's her life's activity now, fulfilling wants, filling the emptiness. Just as my sisters have a legal right to be deadbeats, your mother has a legal right to whack out, to be her individual crazy self, just as long as she is not a danger to herself and others, the old 51/50 (in terms of being committed mentally).
Of course, YOU have set a very low bar, wild spending, for her "danger," where the law would start "danger" at pummeling fists and flying knives. The PG's office is set up to stop this sort of financial self-abuse, just as it is set up to protect the little old lady who donates to every cause that comes her way, just as it is set up to stop family financial abuse.
If she can't think of anything to do with her life except spend money indulgently, perhaps related activities would help her. Some people are addicted to shopping, then RETURNING. As your mother seems to want, then NOT want, that might be a way for her to channel her energy.
If you are free of the legal obligations of her finances, and free of the effective reach of her nagging, then you can do "random acts of kindness." Send unsigned card every week with a $10 bill in it. Perhaps she'll see this as her Mad Money. When you do see her, bring her a "I thought you'd like this" present, like stuffed animal or rocky road ice cream.
Your mother has her entire identity set by now, and short of a magic elixir (Rx) or a transformative miracle, seems like she's going to ride her war horse into the sunset. She doesn't admit it doesn't work. Hey try Dr. Phil's line: "Gee, how's that working for you so far?" (She'll probably take that as a clue to increase her vindictiveness until it DOES work! ;-)
Perhaps for your self, make a list of upcoming events that will take the responsibility off you. Some are coming legally, but add a few of your own. Chop chop. Cut this cord, then that cord. Give yourself a whole two days where you do not even look at her papers, bills. Turn off volume on answering machine. Go out of town.
As this is the Christmas season, a time to reflect on love and generosity, take her to see Dicken's A Christmas Carol. I wonder how many souls that classic has saved in real life. How many people see their greedy selves in old Scrooge?
If you get her DVD hooked up, then buy her Andre Rieu's DVD of their concert at Rockefeller Center in NYC. Mom and I have watched it a dozen times, and it is charming. Rieu being always generous and gracious with his praise and humor. Perhaps it will rub off a bit.
sometimes you just can't do anymore.... I'm at that point myself but in a different arena in dealing with an estate my mother will be receiving and sharing with her "dear baby brother". GAG....
Anyway... sometimes all you can do is go to the carpet and put the rest in God's hands. It sucks plain and simple. I hate seeing someone fleeced and done wrong. I mean I literally can feel my blood boil, but our God is bigger than the law, but he gave human beings one thing.... free will.
I'm sure He is looking at those destroying themselves and just crying. If you see our pain, can you imagine His? Hang in there and do your best for God. All else is out of our hands.
Let someone else have a go. Let go and focus on something else in your life that is positive.
God bless you for all of the energy you have put into this. It is in the courts and the Lords hands.
So looks like you have to choose your battles at this point, which is to make sure your father gets half the proceeds of the sale of the family home. He too depends on this for his upkeep in the nursing home.
Also, there is a certain calm to being assured that you do not have to like what is going on. You can no longer change it to what is fair and just. You have been unjustly accused, and the system is running over you. You do not have to swallow your outrage and say "well, maybe it's for the best." (Actually it might be the best for YOU to not have to deal with your mother so much.)
You got one of those raw deals, rotten mothers. My deadbeat sisters have been replaced by four parakeets, three cats, and a more than decent set of next door neighbors. Two grown nieces have stepped up to fill the gaps of loving family.
Hope you know what the off ramp for YOU in this situation. Probably making sure that your father's interests are protected.
With a narcissistic mother, they "appear" to outsiders as perfectly rationale, but to those who are close and surround them, not even in the ballpark of rationale.
We can pray, but God also requires us to do our part. Letting go something that is so "vested" is human of us. I know for my own situation, there are times I literally have to verbally talk out loud to get myself to relax and that its in God's hands.
The one thing that I consider an absolute blessing in all of my issues with a narcissistic mother.... is that it has taught me how to endure. Nothing else I encounter is worse. Nothing. Everything else is a cake walk. I don't get easily offended, I can multi-task to an umpteenth power, I can enjoy life more fully, and I've been given wisdom to deal daily.
Once we get over their behavior, we can enjoy what we have been given with more peace.
God bless everyone.... caregiving... not an easy road, but one we can definitely learn from.
It runs into such a fine line from appearing controlling. Basically what being a guardian is all about is typically being a gate keeper to keep a person from harm. That takes a new level of love.
A lot of people mistake being a gatekeeper/guardian with being controlling when that is furthest from the truth. I'm not defending any one side, but I think its important to realize that there are things that go beyond a dysfunction (although the relationship becomes just that). But once you recognize the "disease" (for lack of a better term), you can then love them enough to protect them.
Sometimes it just doesn't happen and in the case of Secret.... it "appears" to be the last final surge to do that. None of us are in a position to judge that.
Also I want to define insanity for you according to the site dictionary (dot com) for a reference. I'm sure you can look it up in any dictionary.
And I quote...
insanity Show IPA
Use insanity in a Sentence
–noun, plural -ties.
1. the condition of being insane; a derangement of the mind.
2. Law. such unsoundness of mind as affects legal responsibility or capacity.
3. Psychiatry. (formerly) psychosis.
4. extreme folly; senselessness; foolhardiness.
In your previous post, you may be referring to co-dependency, but that also runs a thin line with being a gatekeeper/guardian.
I'm as fierce as a pit bull when I see someone who cannot help themselves being mistreated. Not only for just my own mother and father, but for anyone. I pick and choose my battles to protect a person because I do not want to get in a cycle of co-dependency, but please be careful when throwing terms around. Insanity is pure foolhardiness in a variety of forms. Protecting a loved one for years, doesn't mean insane, it means there's a tougher love and a higher standard of when to walk away.
God bless and Merry Christmas!
She is doing her very best, we are not walking in her shoes and none of us would really want to.
Why not just pray for her??
Secretsister, when I read your posts it reminds me so much of my mom.
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