Hi all,
Been a long time since I was last here, but here I am, asking for help again...I wish I'd been able to be a support here too. Sorry, but I'm going to ramble here, as I don't know where to start or finish.
I'm a carer for my Mum who's 75. I'm 36 now, and an only child and she is single and Canadian, so no other family. Due to how she is, she also has no friends either - I am the only person left that will go anywhere near her, despite being the one she attacks the most. I am also a single mother myself to an 8 year old. I pushed really hard to get help for her, and finally got a diagnosis of Addisons disease in September (needs steroids), also getting her two visits from Care UK a day rather than once a week as it was. Thanks for all the help and advice I got here back then.
But that is only the beginning of the problems. Mum and I have always had a 'difficult' relationship, and since the age of 6, I've felt responsible for her - she's alcoholic and did get diagnosed 'personality disorder' a couple of years back, which has been named as something along the lines of bipolar, but is not treated. Recently her endocrinologist mentioned this disorder, and said her steroids would/could trigger some form of mania, if she were officially 'bipolar'. But I don't know where to go with that. I want to talk to her GP, but he's already talking of taking away her sleeping pills, which would be terrible for her, as she has awful insomnia.
Things have been getting worse and worse. Before the Addisons, I took her to the GP to 'test' her for dementia - a laughable and very embarrassing process, which of course she sailed through - but I KNOW she's 'going' in her mind - she gets names wrong, forgets important things, dates wrong, can't use the computer anymore (computers fault of course!). She completely denies she's behaving abnormally.
She's always been brutal emotionally towards me, but over this last year culminating this Christmas, she's been like a demon in her attacks - bitter criticisms, demands (holding hand out and shouting 'pepper!'), cutting down anything I believe in, love, enjoy... Of course, she's my mother, so treatment like this has always been somewhat 'normal', for which I've depended on the love of my Dad and friends and son to counter in my life.
Becoming her carer, in hindsight, was the worst thing I could've done. She now orders me about at everything, shouts at me continuously, puts me down, while all the time saying how I hate her and never spend time with her - quality time, as she calls it. Thing is, I don't want to! She's so horrible to me now, that I just want to do what I have to do to help her and go, or go somewhere else in the house.
But I know it's her illness - the combination of the Addisons, the steroids, the pain she's in, her deteriorating mind, and this personality thing. And I DO still want to help, but feel helpless. I feel in my bones that this bipolar thing is what needs to be treated, but I don't know enough about it to know what to do. And the thing that makes me think I'm wrong about it, is that she can just about control her behaviour in other company, especially my sons - she adores him. But her irritability is now beginning to come out at him now too - she yelled at him over xmas dinner that I'd slaved over all day, that he was 'ruining christmas' by not eating his food... he ended up in tears, and I decided enough was enough. Her behaviour is now intolerable, she is tyrannical and intensely scathing, and it is so very hurtful, and will be now affecting my son, which I won't have.
I hate to say it, but I lost my cool. I snapped. I took my son, his father and myself back to my home (two doors away) and left her to seethe, I couldn't have cared one bit if she had fallen or was even dead at that point. I was furious. But I know I'm the one who's always been the grown up in this relationship, and I should never have let it get out of hand like that.
But I can't carry on like this. I'm 36, some would say 'early middle age' even, and I've done nothing with my life. I've hidden behind my Mum's illnesses and fixing her trail of disasters all my life, and I don't think I can do it any more. I'm still extremely angry and can't seem to help reacting like a hurt daughter rather than a reasonable, calm, caring human. She cannot stop verbally attacking me. She's very intelligent, and uses this to also try to confuse me as to others that I love - last night insinuated that my father abused me!! He did no such thing, and I'm again furious with her - she's always been terribly jealous of my very loving relationship with my Dad. It's got to the point that I jump first and think later - I'm terrified of her.
Her worst fear, and mine for her, is to be left alone - she's like a child and feels loneliness terribly - but I feel this is the only way I can deal with this. I will have to bear the guilt of abandoning her to her worst fear if I leave, but I don't know what else to do! She needs some sort of reassessment of her mental health, but I don't know where to start!! When I say 'leave', I mean as a carer, not as a daughter, but at least then when she asks something of me, I have the CHOICE to do it or not. I started a PhD three years ago, which has been on hold as she has deteriorated, and I can go back to that and also get a part time job hopefully to pay for living while I study. There is a life waiting for me out there.
I'm really sorry for this rant, but if there is ANY advice that can help me either stay as her carer, or to leave smoothly, getting her some help in the process, I would so appreciate it. I'm determined to gain strength from this experience, eventually, but right now I'm just so angry and helpless. I'm sure, karma or no karma, I don't feel like I deserve this. And I don't want, or rather, I won't have, my son seeing me treated like this, and thinking this is 'normal'. It turns out her own mother was abused as a child, which explains her own issues with her own mother, and her lifelong behaviour issues, but I don't want this generational scarring to continue onto my own son. The Buck has to stop somewhere and I will not allow him to carry this on, if there's anything I can personally do as a Mother myself, it's that.
Has anyone got any advice about bipolar or dementia, or even just the mother/daughter strained relationship difficulties??
Wow, I have blurted, haven't I? I'd better stop, or I'll be here all night - being a touch typist doesn't help lol!
Thanks for listening/reading, I just feel bloody desperate.
Lina xxx
Been a long time since I was last here, but here I am, asking for help again...I wish I'd been able to be a support here too. Sorry, but I'm going to ramble here, as I don't know where to start or finish.
I'm a carer for my Mum who's 75. I'm 36 now, and an only child and she is single and Canadian, so no other family. Due to how she is, she also has no friends either - I am the only person left that will go anywhere near her, despite being the one she attacks the most. I am also a single mother myself to an 8 year old. I pushed really hard to get help for her, and finally got a diagnosis of Addisons disease in September (needs steroids), also getting her two visits from Care UK a day rather than once a week as it was. Thanks for all the help and advice I got here back then.
But that is only the beginning of the problems. Mum and I have always had a 'difficult' relationship, and since the age of 6, I've felt responsible for her - she's alcoholic and did get diagnosed 'personality disorder' a couple of years back, which has been named as something along the lines of bipolar, but is not treated. Recently her endocrinologist mentioned this disorder, and said her steroids would/could trigger some form of mania, if she were officially 'bipolar'. But I don't know where to go with that. I want to talk to her GP, but he's already talking of taking away her sleeping pills, which would be terrible for her, as she has awful insomnia.
Things have been getting worse and worse. Before the Addisons, I took her to the GP to 'test' her for dementia - a laughable and very embarrassing process, which of course she sailed through - but I KNOW she's 'going' in her mind - she gets names wrong, forgets important things, dates wrong, can't use the computer anymore (computers fault of course!). She completely denies she's behaving abnormally.
She's always been brutal emotionally towards me, but over this last year culminating this Christmas, she's been like a demon in her attacks - bitter criticisms, demands (holding hand out and shouting 'pepper!'), cutting down anything I believe in, love, enjoy... Of course, she's my mother, so treatment like this has always been somewhat 'normal', for which I've depended on the love of my Dad and friends and son to counter in my life.
Becoming her carer, in hindsight, was the worst thing I could've done. She now orders me about at everything, shouts at me continuously, puts me down, while all the time saying how I hate her and never spend time with her - quality time, as she calls it. Thing is, I don't want to! She's so horrible to me now, that I just want to do what I have to do to help her and go, or go somewhere else in the house.
But I know it's her illness - the combination of the Addisons, the steroids, the pain she's in, her deteriorating mind, and this personality thing. And I DO still want to help, but feel helpless. I feel in my bones that this bipolar thing is what needs to be treated, but I don't know enough about it to know what to do. And the thing that makes me think I'm wrong about it, is that she can just about control her behaviour in other company, especially my sons - she adores him. But her irritability is now beginning to come out at him now too - she yelled at him over xmas dinner that I'd slaved over all day, that he was 'ruining christmas' by not eating his food... he ended up in tears, and I decided enough was enough. Her behaviour is now intolerable, she is tyrannical and intensely scathing, and it is so very hurtful, and will be now affecting my son, which I won't have.
I hate to say it, but I lost my cool. I snapped. I took my son, his father and myself back to my home (two doors away) and left her to seethe, I couldn't have cared one bit if she had fallen or was even dead at that point. I was furious. But I know I'm the one who's always been the grown up in this relationship, and I should never have let it get out of hand like that.
But I can't carry on like this. I'm 36, some would say 'early middle age' even, and I've done nothing with my life. I've hidden behind my Mum's illnesses and fixing her trail of disasters all my life, and I don't think I can do it any more. I'm still extremely angry and can't seem to help reacting like a hurt daughter rather than a reasonable, calm, caring human. She cannot stop verbally attacking me. She's very intelligent, and uses this to also try to confuse me as to others that I love - last night insinuated that my father abused me!! He did no such thing, and I'm again furious with her - she's always been terribly jealous of my very loving relationship with my Dad. It's got to the point that I jump first and think later - I'm terrified of her.
Her worst fear, and mine for her, is to be left alone - she's like a child and feels loneliness terribly - but I feel this is the only way I can deal with this. I will have to bear the guilt of abandoning her to her worst fear if I leave, but I don't know what else to do! She needs some sort of reassessment of her mental health, but I don't know where to start!! When I say 'leave', I mean as a carer, not as a daughter, but at least then when she asks something of me, I have the CHOICE to do it or not. I started a PhD three years ago, which has been on hold as she has deteriorated, and I can go back to that and also get a part time job hopefully to pay for living while I study. There is a life waiting for me out there.
I'm really sorry for this rant, but if there is ANY advice that can help me either stay as her carer, or to leave smoothly, getting her some help in the process, I would so appreciate it. I'm determined to gain strength from this experience, eventually, but right now I'm just so angry and helpless. I'm sure, karma or no karma, I don't feel like I deserve this. And I don't want, or rather, I won't have, my son seeing me treated like this, and thinking this is 'normal'. It turns out her own mother was abused as a child, which explains her own issues with her own mother, and her lifelong behaviour issues, but I don't want this generational scarring to continue onto my own son. The Buck has to stop somewhere and I will not allow him to carry this on, if there's anything I can personally do as a Mother myself, it's that.
Has anyone got any advice about bipolar or dementia, or even just the mother/daughter strained relationship difficulties??
Wow, I have blurted, haven't I? I'd better stop, or I'll be here all night - being a touch typist doesn't help lol!
Thanks for listening/reading, I just feel bloody desperate.
Lina xxx