Hate being around my mother but have to be - how to deal?

Post date: 2018-09-13 22:49:08

I'm really struggling with how to have a relationship with my mother/family when my mother is emotionally immature and prone to anger/belittlement/abuse. I've had to put up a friendly/nice facade of having no feelings in order to continue being around her but this is proving increasingly difficult and she is becoming exasperated at not being able to connect with me. Meanwhile, she relies on me as one of her only (or perhaps her only) real source of emotional support. Finding this very difficult at the moment, with the result of provoking more exasperation/disappointment/anger from her.

Some background:

- My mother has a very short temper and unresolved issues relating to her own childhood trauma. As a result, she has been verbally and (only twice) physically abusive towards me at various times through my teens. She still exhibits this kind of behaviour now, but much more rarely, and it'll be smaller stuff like shouting at me, calling me selfish etc, saying I don't care about her etc.

- Because of the above, I do not feel comfortable speaking to her or being around her. I moved away to a different city 3 years ago, but continued visiting for months at a time both because she said she really missed me and because I was helping her with some family issues.

- I have a brother who is 7, who I love very deeply. I want to see him as much as possible and also protect him in the future from similar behaviour towards him.

- Last year I told my mother how I felt about our relationship and her previous behaviour towards me. This caused a huge fight during which she said that she only acted that way because I was very cold/closed-off as a teenager and she didn't know what to do. We had a very long conversation and she said she was ultimately glad I told her and that she hoped we could be closer.

- Following this, her behaviour has been a bit more subdued. She still gets angry at me for small things (for example, if I ring back a few hours after she calls rather than immediately she'll say I don't care about her). Last time I visited I told her I'd rather visit my grandparents together with her rather than by myself. They live overseas and have a lot of issues including a hoarded up apartment that I'd have to clean out by myself while fighting my granddad (who has hoarding issues) if I visited alone, plus it would be over New Years' and I'd be staying with distant family that I don't know well. I spent a lot of time with them this year helping grandma after a stroke and because of my own mental health issues and the difficulties associated with helping them I couldn't face going alone. I told her this and she said I was 'black-hearted' and was closing myself off to the world, which would ruin my life in the future. She ignored me when I spoke to her for the rest of the day and later in the evening I heard her telling my step-dad that she's sick of me and my lies and that I care less about her than I do about my partner. A few days ago she sent me a story which contained the line 'A child should forgive their parents - indeed, it is the child who must beg for forgiveness from their parents.' This seems fairly indicative of her attitude towards our relationship.

Currently my way of dealing with all this is just putting on as neutral and nice a façade as I can around my family. When she makes me upset I pretend that I don't feel anything and continue acting like nothing happened. However, the difficult part is that my mum has a lot of issues with her marriage and self-esteem in general and relies on me a lot for emotional support. I've spoken to her about her issues and at the start of the year gave her the contact details of nearby therapists, while sharing my own experiences with therapy to make her feel more comfortable with going and talking her through the financial aspect of it. She hasn't gone to see anyone so far. It's very difficult for me to be her emotional support when I'm still experiencing the kind of things I've described above and when I've never felt like I could rely on her for emotional support. To be blunt, I don't want to be her parent when I barely feel like I have a parent myself.

Every time I have to call her or go home to see her I push my emotions down and do my best exist only as someone who makes her and my family feel good, because I feel that it's my duty to make her less stressed so that she doesn't take things out on my little brother. I've been fairly successful at doing this, but I can tell that my mother knows I'm putting up a façade, and being around her is anxiety-inducing as a result. I can see that she's trying to connect with me, but the real me is too afraid of being hurt by her and too accustomed to putting up defences. She then ends up upset at me because of the failure to connect. It takes a lot of effort just to make myself call or her or plan a visit.

My actual question is - I know that what I'm doing now isn't sustainable. How can I change my perspective or behaviour to make it easier both on my mother and myself? Honestly ideally I'd just like to speak to her as little as possible, but I really want to maintain a close relationship with my little brother and be there for him. I also do have compassion for her because I recognize her behaviour as a result of intergenerational trauma. I've been getting some therapy, and am committed to continuing with the inner child work that I've already done. I would really really appreciate any words from someone who's experienced similar things - anything from suggested therapy approaches to pure sharing your experience would be amazing. I just feel really alone in this and need to find a way to feel that I'm strong enough to cope.

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