Update on mom in assisted living. I had a hard time convincing my mom to go to assisted living. She was diagnosed with dementia 2 years ago and she couldn't stay alone anymore. I work, have a family she kept wanting them to leave. In March, she went to assisted living. I go twice a week and at first called her every night. I now only call three times a week because she is so negative I cannot take it anymore. When I go to do her hair, she constantly complains. She complains how I do her hair, about the place, about the people, about everything. She keeps asking me "could you live here?" Actually yes. It is brand new, wonderful people and great food. I worn out with the negativity. I have explained to her about her complaints, but she says I am "fussing" at her. Not true, just need some peace. Is it normal for a dementia patient be so negative? I do not want to go visit or call her. It would be so easy to just stop. I am an only child and feel obligated to help her. I feel so much better knowing she is safe and well cared for. She will not bathe or change her pajamas. She doesn't want to get her clothes on. She just wants to complain. She tells me she doesn't eat there, but they tell me different. Her memory isn;t so much the issue, it is her personality change, her inability to care for herself, and her reasoning skills are gone. Oh my, you cannot reason with her at all. When she truly believes something..well, she will say.."well, you are always right and want to argue with me." I want to walk away and enjoy my life without her in it, but I feel guilty for even thinking such a thing. Is all this normal?
Start here. "I don't have to go." How does that idea feel to you?
....and I know I DON"T have to. Yes, here comes the but--she is in my head, you don't care about me, why do you treat me this way, leave me up here and never come back, what kind of daughter does that?--she won't be quiet in my head. It is like a tv show or a movie where they keep replaying what someone says over and over. She hasn't called--to no surprise. Which I am glad, because I wasn't going to answer anyway.
I want what you are having if it gives me a bigger backbone. :)
I am no longer my mother's puppy dog. I don't come when called, nor wag my tail just for her selfish eyes. I give what I choose and it is hard to turn off the MommaTrauma Channel but it's a skill that can be learned. Practice makes perfect. The more I can respect myself and have control over me, the more I can choose to give and to respond appropriately when attacked. I don't lash back I just state a case in one short sentence, if that, and then turn my attention to someone or something else.
Mom keeps trying to push my buttons, and drop guilt bombs. I answer with,
"uh-huh, oh that's nice, too bad, right." I don't give her anyway to sink her nails in.
Try it for a day and see how it feels. you get better at it and it lessens HER power over you more and more. It's hard to get free of this brainwashing. We've been brought up with this stuff all mixed in with a normal child's needs for love, support, recognition, and so on. Many of us have had very little of this from our mothers with mental issues. No wonder we struggle! But we don't have to be attached to this familiar situation anymore.
Now I want a cheeseburger and fries! Advertising is a powerful thing!
BurnedOUt: YES, it is very possible to have PTSD. I can feel depression starting to settle in and I am fighting it so hard. I have been depressed once in my life over a situation and it didn't last long after a friend came and pulled me off the couch, opened my blinds, and told me to get my butt up and snap out of it. I NEVER want to go back there and feel that way again. I didn't even know what was happening, but this time I can feel what is happening. I am usually relatively strong and happy. I encourage you as well to hang in there.
CM, juddah, looloo: I have been silent and she has said, "speak a**, your mouth won't"... I swear she has said these things. No one could make that crap up. It almost makes me laugh to think how stupid she sounds. I guess I get so annoyed at how she wants to hurt me so much. When I ask her, why?, she always turns it around and repeats me, "why you want to hurt ME so much?" --not mocking me, but truly asking me the same question. It is a no win situation.
I have a lot to do tomorrow, I am HAVE to go to work first and foremost, then I need to call the director of AL, call the beautician, call the eye doctor, call a therapist and set up an appointment, and scan and email some financial aid papers to my daughter's college. The day will be over before I can say: Thursday.
I don't always have a lot to say. But the time spent always proves to be useful and worthwhile.
Recently I've tried again, not least because I worry about the effect family dynamics could have on my children if/when they get round to sprogging. Also, the good old NHS is under strict governmental orders to take mental health seriously (yeah right) and offer us all a whole raft of therapies. If the population wasn't depressed before it sure is now - how much is this costing?!!! And then you know how it is, you fill in these assessment questionnaires about anxiety and depression and end up screwing it into a ball, lobbing it at the bin and yelling "what part of this is not normal???" I feel anxious about the future never/rarely/sometimes/all the time. I have had thoughts about suicide never/rarely/sometimes/all the time. And then you get the therapies unit calling you up and there's this anxious little voice on the end of the phone saying "your assessment shows that you have quite high levels of anxiety" - you DON'T say. Stone me. Is that right. These people never seem to know how to take deadpan irony, tsk.
As far as I can tell, the mistake many therapists make is reacting. How can you be open if the person you're talking to is going to get all sniffly and sad about it? On the other hand, the get your butt up and snap out of it approach is perhaps not entirely addressing the heart of the matter, Jewel???
The other thing is, depending on what species of therapist you're seeing of course, I find it very hard to define, even loosely, what I expect to achieve, and even harder to get a therapist to tell me what the aim of exercise is. Having said that, if you need to achieve a given objective, oo I don't know, like say "I want not to ruin every Sunday and most of the week before it with literal and metaphorical guilt trips" - hem hem, mentioning no names - then I'd have thought CBT would get you started. Short, focused and effective, if not necessarily very profound.
Well. Depending on what one's family is like, of course! :)
I am ready for a short, let's solve this problem approach. Get it done. The moments from visiting doctor after doctor for a year trying to figure out the problem to hospice to now has been one big roller coaster ride. I almost feel like I am climbing that hill again. I am ready for this ride to be over.
I pray for each of you and your situations and I am so glad you have found some peace and ways to get through it, I promise, I am not far behind.
Whenever there's a lull in my day, I often am wondering what it could be that I'm forgetting -- because there MUST be something. It can't just be a slow moment, with nothing in particular to do, haha!
Like you with the water bill, I remembered all of a sudden to pay my credit card bill yesterday. And today is more of the same, trying to get a letter re-my mother's dementia drafted so I can give it to her banker. I've been working on this for a good week now, and it's been nothing but back-and-forth, phone tag. So in another hour or so, I'll call them again. The sooner they give me an answer, the sooner I can stop bugging them. Don't they realize that?
Bittersweet: I almost moved my mom in with me, OH how I am so grateful I didn't. I struggled at first by encouraging AL, but that has been the greatest blessing. I struggle with the guilt from her, but if she lived in my home, I believe I would go to AL. :-) I can only imagine your pain. They are never happy no matter where they are. My aunt moved my 90 year old grandmother in with her, and my grandmother begrudged that and pouted most of her 18 months living with my aunt. She fell last october, broke her hip and passed away after a week in ICU. At least my aunt only had 18 months of the grumbling in her own home, but I don't think I could take a day of it. Three times a week and one day in person is way too much for me. I moved my mom closer to me because she was an hour away and I was traveling 3 times a week back and forth and trying to get my son where he needed to be (he was 12 when all this started). Moving her closer only sounded logical to me, easier in the sense I wouldn't be on the road so much. I am sure you moved your mom in for the same reason. She would be close and you could be home. WRONG ANSWER for both of us. I now realize I could have just traveled less and told her I couldn't come and someone else could have taken care of her. Now she is close and I feel obligated. GRR. If I could move her back, I would!!
Now, back to my list. I only have one thing done and that was for my daughter. Dreading to deal with my mom even though it is for my benefit. Can I just pretend she doesn't exist?--oh yea, I will need to move her out of my head. It is kind of like the musinex commercial where those awful green goblins move in, that is my mom to me.--just had that imagine.
Check, Check!!
I told my social worker that I cannot open up to a man. So, she got a female therapist. I was going crazy trying to figure out what we were going to discuss each visit. Most times, whatever homework she gave me, I understood it wrong and did all that homework - wrong. However, I was very comfortable with her that I was able to discuss my childhood - something I never told outside of immediate family. I always thought we had a normal dysfunctional family. (Even though my siblings' spouses thought it was an exaggeration.) But to have my therapist have this look of horror - made me realize how really bad our childhood was. She was amazed that I came out of it normal - not addicted to drugs, alcohol or in prison. This therapist was more into helping us handle our thoughts and reactions to the ones we were caregiving and to our family. But, yes, Jessie, it was such a struggle for each visit - on what to discuss. I didn't last long. I don't think I'm ready for therapy.