She has dominated her childrens' lives with little concern for anyones' feeling but her own. She is now in a wonderful assisted living and her dementia (I think) has illuminated her personality into a person who I can no longer bear to be around. She has again managed to alienate everyone around her with her insults and insensitivity. She is nasty and uncooperative with the aids (who are wonderful) And complains, complains, complains about everyone, everything and blames my sister and myself for the air she breathes. I am sick of her and I don't want to visit her anymore and don't feel that my adult children need to be manipulated like I was and be around her negative attitude anymore. I hate feeling obligated to have her at my house as I have every holiday of our lives and force my children to "tolerate" her for my sake. The guilt is unbearable but I feel that now being 60 years old I would like to feel that this person does not dominate my whole life. I would like to have a happy holiday for a change and have my children WANT to come home (without Grandma always there)
There has never been any pleasing her before and now she sends me into bouts of depression that I have a hard time shaking. Am I alone? I feel like a selfish person but I don't like her now and never did before. The guilt is killing me.
hug!
“I told her my heart can't take all the negativity and yelling. She told me I was a "wimp" yesterday.”
awful.
what she’s doing is, psychological warfare.
she’s waging war against you. hence you can never fully relax. and then she’ll wage another war, and another, and again.
Good for you refusing to play your mother's abusive games.
The games stop when the players stop.
You are the absolute opposite of a "wimp". A wimp will quietly go along with mommy's abuse and obey her every command. You're not doing that and good for you.
part of the problem with a toxic/abusive/narc parent, is that it never stops. and while you’re busy healing from the most recent insult/scream/etc., you get insulted again. you never get a chance to really heal.
what to do while being abused?
sometimes earplugs might work - but there’ll always be a moment, where you must communicate with your abusive parent (unless you totally cut contact), and that’s when you’ll be abused — forever until they die.
i think, sometimes ignoring insults is a good idea. but i don’t think it’s a good idea all the time. sometimes you must stand up against the insults. correct the facts, defend yourself.
it’s damaging to your mind to hear constant insults, and just stay silent.
it would be nice if there’s a great technique against verbal abuse - but in the end, the fact is, all this abuse damages you.
most likely you’ll notice it on your body/face. most likely putting on weight, comfort eating in the middle of this psychological war against you, by your parent.
maybe it helps to understand what’s going on:
it’s a war. they’re psychologically waging war against you.
——
it’s also some sort of competition. the abusive parent is competing against you. very often it’s mother against daughter; and the mother is trying to say that she’s better than her daughter. every insult is an attempt at destroying the daughter’s self-esteem.
——
since it is a war against you, it means there’s a “winner” and “loser”.
if you’re unhappy, all worked up (justifiably) by the insults, angry, getting fat…
your abuser feels like they’re “winning”.
That was my experience, If you can achieve detachment with compassion, the harm is lessened. To continue, I needed much distance - emotional and geographical - for healing, and to remove myself from the abuse asap when I was, by necessity, closer. Hence staying in hotels and visiting infrequently. There was a point when I didn't answer any phone calls as all of them were very abusive. Mother was being well cared for by others and if there had been an emergency I trusted the staff to contact me. Many of her "crises" were self induced.
Healing is coming now as mother passed a few years ago (age 106) and I cut contact with my sister (similar to mother and they worked the abuse together) once the estate business, totally handed by mother's lawyer by my direction as executrix, was finished. I am 85 now and finally free from the toxicity. I have questioned myself if it was wise and kind to me to stay in contact, be POA and executrix. It wasn't. The overriding factor for me was that my sister would have taken over mother's care if I had removed myself, and I would not have wanted my worst enemy to have that experience. She had clearly demonstrated that she was interested in mother's money, not her welfare. I didn't care about the money but I did care for mother as another human being, if nothing else.
Lifetime relationships with abusive people cause much harm. Healing takes work, support, and time in a safe environment.
hug!!! i totally understand you.
i wish you to totally heal — i wish us all to totally heal. we deserve it.
you’re very kind - and of course because you’re very kind, you never abandoned your mother (even though she was abusive).
many years of abuse/toxicity by both your mother (106!!) and sister.
——
i only realized in 2020 (after my brother said something to me), that he’s identical to my abusive mother. (i thought he was a bit better).
i have 3 brothers: all toxic/abusive.
“To continue, I needed much distance - emotional and geographical - for healing, and to remove myself from the abuse asap when I was, by necessity, closer.”
i totally understand. in fact, i normally live somewhere else (not on purpose; not to get away; but because that’s where i live). i’m currently visiting, helping - out of necessity. i can do many things from a distance, but certain problems really must be done with me physically here.
“I am 85 now and finally free from the toxicity.”
THANK GOODNESS you’re free. awful you were forced to wait many years, till liberation.
you know, the more i think about it, the more it REALLY is liberation. what these abusive mothers are doing to us is WAR.
psychological war. and just like in war, you (golden), experienced LIBERATION.
that also means that i’m still in the middle of being attacked, by my mother waging war against me.
“Lifetime relationships with abusive people cause much harm. Healing takes work, support, and time in a safe environment.”
totally agree, and as we’re both saying, one hurt/abuse gets piled onto the last hurt/abuse. when can one heal?
i wish us to heal.
one thing i should do, is have a clear image in my mind of what a healed-me looks like. then i know if i’m approaching the goal.
some of us don’t even realize how damaged we are by years of abuse: we know of course, that it’s affected us. but we might not realize the full extent.
i wish us all to achieve FULL healing, asap. time is of the essence.
please don’t listen to all the brain-washing from the psychological warfare. you’re/we’re the opposite of what they say/said.
hug!!
bundle of joy (normally i really am)
so…
dear abused daughters,
please don’t listen to all the garbage, lies, brainwashing, psychological warfare against you. you’re the opposite of what they say/said to you.
U.S. Child Abuse Statistics
Child abuse statistics on the approximately 1.8 million reports of child abuse investigated by Child Protective Services in fiscal year 2010 include:
436,321 child abuse reports were substantiated
24,976 child abuse reports were likely true but could not be proven under the law (indicated)
1,262,188 child abuse reports were found to be unsubstantiated (not provable under the law)
Approximately 60% of the child abuse reports were made by professionals, while 9% were reported anonymously and parents reported only 6.8%.
Child Abuse Facts: Who Was Abused
Children of all ages and backgrounds are abused in the United States every year.
Approximately 9.2 children out of 1000 were found to be abused in fiscal year 2010 (some of those children being abused more than once within that year).
Other child abuse statistics include:
Victims less than one year old had the greatest rate of child abuse with more than 2% of children being victims of child abuse
Girls were victimized slightly more often than boys at 51.2%
88% of victims were of ethnicity:
African-America – 21.9%
Hispanic – 21.4%
White – 44.8%
It is a jaw-dropping child abuse fact that approximately 1560 children died of abuse or neglect in the United States that year.
As in previous years, most children suffered from neglect. Statistics on the type of child abuse include:
Approximately 78% of child abuse victims suffered child neglect
Approximately 18% of child abuse victims suffered childhood physical abuse
Approximately 9% of child abuse victims suffered childhood sexual abuse
Child Abuse Statistics on Child Abusers
Child abuse statistics show that there were 510,824 child abuse perpetrators in fiscal year 2010 and a significant number of them committed more than one act of child abuse. Statistics on perpetrators of child abuse include:
Parents were responsible for more than 80% of child abuse and neglect cases
Other family members were responsible for 6.1% of the child abuse
Women are the perpetrators of child abuse more frequently than men at 53.6%
36.3% of perpetrators of child abuse were between the ages of 20 and 29
More than 80% of perpetrators of child abuse were between the ages of 20 and 49
APA Reference
Tracy, N. (2021, December 17). Child Abuse Statistics and Facts, HealthyPlace. Retrieved on 2022, September 19 from www dot healthyplace.com/abuse/child-abuse-information/child-abuse-statistics-and-facts.
The unknown is the real number of male victims of abuse since that tends to be greatly under-reported and often not believed to be true.
”99.999999% of abused adult children are female”
The comment isn’t about who was abused as a child. The comment is about current abuse by the elderly parent.
The fact is that out of those adult children caring for their elderly parent - the ones who are abused by their elderly parent - are definitely mostly daughters.
Sons are sometimes abused by their elderly parent, but it’s rare. For example, much more commonly the mother is very grateful for her son’s help; on the contrary, the mother uses her helping daughter as a whipping post, lashing out her frustrations on her daughter.
I’m a man. I care for my uncle. He’s a nice man. I’m lucky to never be abused.
I have many female friends who are treated horribly by their elderly mothers, or MILs. My female friends are getting abused by the same people they so kindly help. It is almost always the mother against her helping daughter.
i never dwelled on my mothers relentless bullying of us all because it never seemed to have any value. I left home as soon as i could but she made it very hard to.
After my dad died, i assumed my mother at least understood that we needed to stick together and comfort each other. .. that its a life-changing moment for people when their parent dies .. but no .. if anything she doubled down! she got angry and even made fun of me if i tried to do anything to help me or to help her (she's never done anything for herself so it not like i'm messing anything up).
I was very shocked and subsequently got some sort of ptsd from my mother doing anything she could to hurt me as i tried to grieve.
i never believed evil was a thing until i realised how obsessed with abusing me my mother is. demonic is the only word i can give for her behaviour.
no child wants to believe their parent doesn't love them, and parents very easily get away with appalling abusive behaviour for decades without consequence.
i still can't understand how my mother is SO horrible .. i dont understand why anyone would want to be so horrible for their entire adult life.
society has a very important role to play in making plain what emotional child abuse is. There is a persistent minority of parents across all backgrounds who aren't caring for their children
The mental health and competence of parents are not a personal matter i'm afraid .. just like the mental health and competence of a teacher or a doctor needs to be assessed and reviewed regularly.
hug!!
you said:
…“demonic”
…“i never believed evil was a thing until i realised how obsessed with abusing me my mother is”
…“i dont understand why anyone would want to be so horrible for their entire adult life.”
——
unfortunately, i understand you. unfortunately = because it means i also have an abusive elderly LO.
“but no .. if anything she doubled down!”
terrible. some people indeed behave even worse when the spouse dies.
“i still can't understand how my mother is SO horrible”
i empathize. i’m shocked too, by how i’m treated.
remember:
they feel good when you feel bad.
indeed, the more destroyed your life is, the happier they are.
my mother is jealous. i bet your mother is jealous of you too.
imagine a life free from abuse. then reach that goal. somehow. otherwise it’ll be another year of abuse, and another, and…
There are places which I call "the gates of hell on earth." These are found in unlikely places and likely places.
The challenge is to seek freedom, damm the torpedo's and take no prisoners on your way out. It's not as easy as slip out the back Jack, but it can be done and is done, more often than not with help.
You wrote: "Well did you ever consider there's something wrong with you?"
Abusers always blame the victim.
You won’t get empathy from the abuser. You’ll get empathy from friends.
“And now as I try to protect myself from continuing abuse, I realize that I may never get past the scars that have never, and will probably never heal.”
You’ll heal. Do everything you can, to heal.
The next time your mother calls you a b*****d or starts up with any verbal abuse or insitgating please tell her the following:
'Shut the hell up. If you want me to help you, then you damn well better learn how to control your mouth, or I will abandon you and the state will take over. Good luck in the crappy nursing home they dump you in'.
I'm pretty sure this will shut her up. If it doesn't stop doing for her.
Then walk away. Ignore her. Don't take her calls and don't help her. Let her fend for herself. There's nothing wrong with you. Your mother like mine is a master at gaslighting and that is abuse.
The paperwork you did for her should have been torn up in pieces then thrown in her face then you walk away. That's what she'd get from me. Believe me, she'll learn to curb her abuse because she can't manage without your help.
Ignore her though. She wants attention and a fight. Don't engage with her and don't give her the attention she craves. In fact, don't give her any attention at all.
My mother pulls crap like this all the time. There was a reason why I didn't speak to her for six years and did not have her at my wedding when I married my second husband. She did try to make some genuine amends and I gave her a chance, but old habits die hard.
Your mother's half-baked excuse of 'I was angry' is unacceptable. It is not an apology and you should not treat it as one. She will never apologize. Abusers never do, but they can learn to keep their abuse in check. You will never be able to discuss any ways that she's hurt you because all abusers live in denial. Either they believe they are the one being abused, or the person they abuse has it coming because they drive them to it. There's no reasoning with that, so don't even try.
Honestly, if I were you I'd take a step back. Stop helping her for a while. Don't bring her anything and don't do anything for her other than the basics. Don't even do that if you can get a hired caregiver to come and do it. If she decides to get "stubborn" and not accept the hired help, tell her she can starve then. Good luck to you.
huggg.
i wish you to be happy.
happyandfound
not sadandseeking
——
i quote you:
“And the sad thing is, I don't think she even realizes she is doing it.”
nooo.
your mother knows exactly what she’s doing, and she can turn it off/on whenever she likes. she chose you as her target.
why?
because it feels good for her.
it doesn’t matter how many wonderful things you do — she will CRITICIZE you.
she’ll never stop.
she knows very well it makes you feel bad. that’s her goal.
you feeling bad = her feeling good.
it’s reverse empathy.
——
she will continue to try to destroy you + your peace of mind.
——
why?
again:
because it makes her feel good.
it makes her feel good that you:
—suffer because she doesn’t ask how you are
—suffer because she doesn’t encourage you
—suffer because she ALWAYS CRITICIZES AND ATTACKS YOU.
—etc.
please break free.
read about narcissistic mothers.
read about mothers who are jealous of their daughter.
you have several sisters.
you’re the sweetest, kindest, most accomplished.
she targets you.
you’re good.
abuse is evil.
it’s evil trying to destroy good.
evil against good.
if you had been a nasty person, she wouldn’t bother attacking you.
there’s kindness, goodness in you. hence, she wants you to suffer.
break free.
IT WILL NEVER STOP.
I was also abused by a crazy alcoholic mother. Unfortunately, most Al-Anon meetings in my area are currently online because of the pandemic and never fully resumed in person meetings. The ones in my area are long gone.
I remember lying awake in my bed at night listening to the rantings and ravings of a spiritually tortured woman who eventually turned on me. I spent the majority of my youth scared out of my wits. I suffered from dizzy spells, stomach trouble, IBS, depression, and you name it. I had a severely disabled younger sister. One thing about evil and dependent personalities is that they stifle the life out everyone around them and make hostages out of the scapegoated children.
Mom died eventually and never got any type of help for her issues. Instead she took her nasty behavior on her husband and kids. When dad got to the point he couldn't take it anymore, he left. I was the one sacrificed to finish up everything after mom died. I got my younger sister placed in a group home. She finally had some semblance of life before she passed in 2015. She got to take trips, got baptized in church, go to school and have a life in a beautiful group home setting. I finally left home and managed to get my own place.
I got the you are not good enough treatment as well. I still get triggered by clients when they act overly entitled and treat me like a fourth class citizen. I don't know how to stop attracting these types of people around me.
So sorry that your brother is in the hospital . I hope and pray he will be alright .
Many of us scapegoats end up as caregivers and/or working in healthcare, social work , or other service industries . We are groomed for it.
We attract bullies , somehow they sense our sensitivities . I don’t have advice on how to not attract these people. (((hugs)))
and had no filter on her mouth. She has no shame in anything she says or does !! She had 2 daughters and 6 sons. She treated me and my sister horribly. Yet gave praise to her boys and they saw nothing wrong with the way she treated my sister and I. My sister left home at the age of 14. She was pregnant and my dad ( a wonderful loving man ) signed for her to marry the babies daddy. My sister never spoke or had anything to do with our mother after leaving.
I do not blame her at all. My dad left my mom shortly after my sister left he could no longer tolerate her hateful and pathetic attitude and her physical abuse. So needless to say that left me to endure all her verbal and physical abuse. And she managed to make me feel sorry for her and think it was all my dads fault that she acted the way she did. She never worked a day in her life and drew welfare check that barely gave us a place to sleep. So at the age of 15 I went to work to help with a place to stay while her boys stayed in jails or prison. She would rake and scrape money up to send to them not caring about me having to walk to work and school and most days Hungry if my aunts didn’t feed me on that day. I managed to finish a college course and went to work at the hospital as a nurse at the age of 20 I felt obligated to make a living for her The boys all in their 30’s ended up getting married and straightening up and had happy lives and family of their own except the youngest one he still lived with my mother and I. Me the only one working struggling to keep a place to live and neither one of them cared. She continued with her manipulation and guilt tripping and evil , hateful attitude. And I continued to feel sorry for her. She has done some most horrible ungodly things to me through out my life I had every reason I should have hated her and left and never looked back but again I felt bad about her being homeless if I left.
I am now 63 and still providing for her and my brother. I have managed to marry a great man and have a beautiful daughter granddaughter
He does not like my mother because of the way she does me and him. But he tolerates her. She has had a stroke and now Alzheimer’s on top of that and her mean Hatefulness and ungrateful attitude is out of this world. She thinks it’s my obligation to do for her I owe her because she is the mother. She doesn’t appreciate anything. I am to the point to where the sound of her voice is nauseating to me and sends chills through out my body to hear her. I hate waking up knowing I will get up and walk into the living room and she will be the first thing I see and I hate facing the day with her.
she thinks I am to wait on her hand and foot and she is to sit and cuss me all day for not doing enough for her. I am growing to have hatred in my heart for her and wondering how much longer God is going to allow me to endure her evil Hateful and uncaring self. She is 90 y/o and still going strong. She does anything and everything to hurt and humiliate me on a daily basis. She doesn’t want anyone to have anything to do with me at all !! If I have friends over she will make sure she hurts their feelings to where they never want to come back. She makes sure I have no spare time for my husband. I have to hire someone to stay at my house 6 days out of a year (during Thanksgiving) so My husband and I can visit his mother who lives 21 hours away from us. And then she burns my phone up the whole time I am away. I have just recently got to the point of blocking calls from her when I am gone. I am literally mentally , emotionally and physically exhausted. I do not want to be around her anymore at all. I feel like she has always known what she was doing and that was to destroy everything in life for me she made sure I had no happiness in my life at all.
When my dad was in the hospital (on his death bed) she waited 5 days to tell me.Then told the nursing staff how I was selfish and ungrateful because I didn't come visit often. When I finally got the news, I drove the 5 hours to see him, only to have the nurse scorn me for not being there sooner. My husband ripped into her, she then reported that to my mother who called my house before I could get back home and left a message on my voice mail saying that she no longer had 2 daughters, she only had 1 and "that's NOT you!" My 15 year old (he'snow 33)son heard the message and wants nothing more to do with her. (He hasn't seen or spoken to her since.) She blames me for this, saying I poisoned him against her.
She has stated to me that since I am married and have children and my sister is alone (divorced) that she doesn't need to focus on me. When my sister and I are visiting her at the same time, she does on my sister and pretty much ignores me. She guilt me into coming down to celebrate my sister's birthday (mom bakes a special cake and takes her out to dinner (I pay) yet does not even text me to say happy birthday. In fact, on my birthday this year she texted me to ask when my D-I-Ls birthday is.
My mom was diagnosed with cancerous tumors about 10 yrs (she has them removed via surgery) and she over-exagerates what the Dr says or just makes things up to make it sound worse. (My aunt goes with her to Dr appts so that we get accurate reports) Mom now claims cancer is in her bones which my aunt reports the Dr did not say.
I really do not feel like dealing with moms over dramatic, often over-exaggerated problems. Am I being an ungrateful "child" for not wanting to respond to her "woe is me" texts?
Going back and examining how difficult living in that house frequently was back then, I constantly go back to why I put up with this and continued to live at home. I was 21, engaged and my husband and I bought a house before we were married. I could have moved out and chose not to. I don't understand the person I was back then. I could have had a better life if I left when I started working.
Maybe it is sort of like Stockholm Syndrome. I don't know. I was so damn afraid of her. But it is bothering me more now than it ever did that I didn't move out when I could have.
“But it is bothering me more now than it ever did that I didn't move out when I could have.”
There were advantages to staying in the house. Our minds are always automatically calculating advantages/disadvantages (cost-benefit-analysis), then we make a decision.
We hardly ever make random decisions. Just toss a coin and let the coin decide. There were some benefits for you to stay in that house, that’s why you stayed and that’s OK.
Hindsight vision is different: looking back we KNOW the cost/benefit to a decision. We know if the costs outweighed the benefits.
Anyway, you never know: maybe if you had moved out sooner, something much worse would have happened. We just don’t know.
You made the best decision then, with what you knew.
🐻🐻🐻
The fact is:
Your mom should never have abused you. Many mothers abuse their daughters. So extremely jealous of their daughters. They’ll never admit it. They might have to admit it to God one day.