Will the pain ever end dealing with an elderly mother with a personality disorder

Hi @Asaddaughter and welcome to the forums.

I'm glad you've reached out; I'm hoping these forums can act as a source of support for you, and give you the opportunity to share what you're going through, and feel heard.

I can see from your post that you've got a great deal of strength and courage in the face of a difficult situation. It's good to hear that you're engaging with some professional support; what sorts of ways does your counsellor support you?

Take care,
Bookworm

Hi @Asaddaughter,

I just wanted to reach out in compassion for you. I have no words or platitudes that can change your situation but wanted you to know that I get it. I completely understand what it feels like to have parents that break you.

Both of my parents broke me. In different ways. But they did break me.

Until you experience the depths of desperation and despair that being their only life line, life source, and ultimately responsible for all the pain they have endured, for me, you end up having very short conversations with people. You tell them 'little bits and pieces', simply because, one, a lot of people probably wouldn't believe you, and two, until you live feeling like you are under house arrest, its hard to describe that anxiety and fear.

Your Mum is a very unwell person. It sounds like all the losses and being grief stricken has made her sick. My father exhibited similar, but a little different symptoms. His became obvious from a much younger age, his siblings say quite young. And he was very aggressive to say the least.

We were children, so very vulnerable, and being exposed to a daily barrage of insults, guilt trips, mind games, lies, deceit, controlling behaviour......was simple too much.

Our home was his stage to thrash out all his bitterness for his 'lot in life' and everyone who had ever hurt him. Real and imagined, becuase he did have qualities of delusion. His lies were so extreme, I classify them as delusional. And yet he was also lucid to the fact they were lies becuase if you dared to challenge them, all hell broke loose. My sister in a moment of brazen, fed-up-ness confronted him about his biggest, most ridiculous and unbelievable lie, and he lunged at her very aggressively with a kitchen implement. She's traumtised as you can imagine.

She was reminding me recently of her earliest childhood memory. For me, other memories trumped this one, so I had forgotten. I remember him coming home from work one day to find that our Nana had bought my sisters and I Barbie dolls. He was so furious, so full of rage that we had 'received', because our only purpose on this planet was to give to him, and to give to him only, and fully, that he went into a furious rage and smashed up the whole house. And I mean smash the whole house!!

He was so intent on making it be known that we were undeserving and not our own people. The most grotesque act he ever did to display this was when my eldest sibling was about 15, like a lot of us around that age, we start making out with the sex we are attracted to. He came downstairs and found my sister kissing her first boyfriend and went ballistic. Rage, to the point they ran to the train station in fear of their lives. He made Mum and I be part of his 'search party' that had to drive around the suburbs so he could punish them once and for all. The next day he got the drill and tools out of the garage and put a padlock on the outside my sisters bedroom door, and he had the key. He locked her in her bedroom at night!

These are some of the more dramatic moments.......but it was such a long, hard, draining, traumatic experience, being that man's daughter, that like you, I also had a major breakdown some years after my Dad committed suicide. And yes, he left a very cruel letter to my mother.

I still care for my mother as much as I can. She has major mental illness and has been very unwell since a teenager. I love her and have deep compassion for her.......but some days I hate her because of the child abuse/neglect, evangelising my father stuff. Not because she's sick. That is not her fault, and she did not ask for it..but.....she has also broken me. I have very little left to give because my own mental health needs attention.

My psychiatrist said, Corny this is the breakdown you had to have. But what a lot of doctor's don't realise, is that there are breakdowns and being broken.

I think you are feeling like you are broken.

Realistically, all you and your husand can do is tread water. And wait for the scenery to change. You are both grief stricken, worn down, stressed beyond belief, and traumatised.

It will be a long journey.

I totally get the desire to walk away and the complicated, fraught emotions that you feel.

Take care, and post again if you feel like it. But there is no pressure. Put yourself first.

Corny

Thank you for responding Bookworm.

The counsellor helps by listening, and is pretty much the only person beside my husband I have to talk to, as it is a difficult subject to broach with the few friends I have. I don’t want them to just know me as a whinger always complaining about my mother.

She gave me a book to read ‘Walking on Eggshells’ which was useful, as it helped to know so many other people are dealing with this issue. I do try to manage the situation using some of the strategies in the book, but have to confess it is hard.

As stated in my original post, it has only just become knowledge to me that there is an actual disorder known as Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The day I found that out was a revelation, as I had carried the guilt of our difficult relationship myself for my whole life, because my mum kept telling me it was. I could not believe a parent could be so mean to a child unless they deserved it.

The relationship has been challenging since I was a small child, and as there was no father there to oversee things, life was extremely difficult. Now I have more of an understanding of the situation I am just very sad for me and for my mum, but just don’t know how much longer I can handle it.

Thank you for providing the chance to get this out.

Thank you for responding Corny. Yes, how can you share these stories with people who have no experience of a parent who can hurt so much? I am so envious of ladies who can go shopping with their mum, and enjoy their company. I have never been able to do that.

The most hurtful thing my mum has done is to blame me for my son’s disability, not once but twice. Many years ago she blamed my diet for his problems - we have always eaten Asian stir fries, lots of veggies and rice. This past weekend she blamed the ‘dirty’ house we moved to when I fell pregnant, that we spent a lot of time cleaning up. The fact that the cane field just outside the kitchen window was subjected to aerial spraying was probably more the problem, but that a mother could even bring the subject up when we are struggling to deal with our son’s death just leaves me in shock.

I am trying to see the person, not the illness but really struggle with that. She knows no boundaries, and we are both so tired of trying and getting abused in subtle or outright ways every time we go to her house.

In fact it is our house, and she is living there rent free. She was in an over 50s village but wanted to get out because she hated it. She had 250 enemies after causing trouble with everyone to the point where the owner was going to evict her. We put her in a house we own and asked that she cover the rates and insurance. She tells everyone her daughter makes her pay rent. That is so hurtful as we worked two jobs last year to try to make up the income we lost, to the point where we nearly killed ourselves. It was a very physical job.

I feel like I am caught in a trap. I want out, but I have to live with myself at the same time.

Bookworm, I did respond to you kind post, it is below. Thanks.

@Former-Member, thank you for your honest response.

@Cornythank you for sharing your story. I know you can understand how a lifetime of this sort of treatment can damage you completely. Like your dad, my mum was seen by everyone as having issues as a young person. I have communicated with a few people who knew her in her early 20s and the story is much as it is now, but probably not as extreme as it has become. Your father was a very challenging person to you and your sisters, clearly, and don't think I would have coped with his behaviour at all. My mum only hit me once as a teenager, so there was not so much of the physical abuse, just emotional blackmail, and control, control, control.

I hope you and I both make it through this difficult experience with no further damage. As my husband and I approach our later years, all we want is a quiet, happy life after all the upsetting and traumatic events we have endured together. I am sure the same applies to yourself, and your siblings. Best wishes to you.

Thanks @Asaddaughter for your best wishes, and big hugs.

That is just the most awful accusation that your mother made. That you were somehow responsible for your sons disability. Your mother is a very unwell person. Our society views the psychotic illnesses as the most severe, but when I compare my mothers psychotic illness to my fathers mental illness......he trumps her, hands down as the most severe and relationally and socially bewildering and untreatable.

He would of told you otherwise. In his mind, she was the problem, the weakness and family shame......he was just stressed. That was part of his delusional grandiose sense of his own suffering, and a clever psychological tact to justify his aggression. He would argue with doctors and nurses. He was hospitalised for months when I was in year 11 & 12 and the psychiatrist threw up his arms and said. "I cannot help this man". So he was sent home with Mum and us kids!

The reality is, that you and your husband are probably going to pass through the next few years of life in a dream-like state.

You have too much to contend with, and can only be expected to get through the day. Only make small goals for yourself, if any at all. Reality always hits, and when it does, with a past like yours, it can sometimes be with a 'thump'. You also lost a father, a sibling and a son. That is a lot of grief. When we have a person that is so incredibly domineering, and has convinced you for years that their pain is worse than anyone elses, it is very easy to be hard on ourselves, to minimise our own predicament and over state theirs.

That said, in years down the track you will feel compassion for your Mum. It is a terrible condition that she has......but there are so many casualties right now, and there is not shame to be in self-protective mode. I often ask myself, would I have ever had my breakdown if I didn't move home after Dad died. It broke me. I was so isolated and alone.

I have been in therapy for years. I shudder to think how much money I have spent on it. In some ways it has decreased my suffering, and in some ways it has shone a light on it and only given my reality more of a sting.

Until your Mum passes, and is no longer suffering from this mental health condition that has resulted in her being very unwell and causing a lot of trauma and pain, you can only tread water and wait for the scenery to change unfortunately.

The reality is that you are a beautiful daughter.

And it is clear to me that you take the mother-child loyalty very seriously....but you are drowning.

Take Care. And I hope that at the very least you and your husband can have lots of cuddles together. I am so glad you found your soul mate.

Corny.