My mother has never really been a mother figure more friend. I have alot of resentment toward her for things that happened to me as a child. I have tried to get over it because she is my mother and I do love her. She is a good person at heart, but she is so unhappy and negative I've said something about the program and it just seems like she makes fun of me. I realized doing this course I have to do something about it. My husband said to distance myself from her, but I don't want to do that she is my mother and I do have children. Also she has no patient with my kids she yells and uses bad laugage in front of them.(She has really bad road rage) This really upsets me. I have a 2year old who is a mocking bird. So what I'm getting at is do I confront my mom about everything? And how do I do this without hurting feelings and causing a fight! Please Help!

Vivian,
Probably not!!,, If she laughs about this program, screams at your kids, uses foul language, why would you want to be around her, or have your children around her.
If she wants to change, she has to make that effort herself. If you want to talk to her about how feel about the way she talks in front of your kids,, thats up to you, but be ready for a fight!!
Maybe distancing yourself for awhile till you get stronger might help you....

What I always suggest is writing a letter. To try and talk about it makes it hard to get everything out---

Write her and tell her what you are going through and how you feel about it and what you need from her. Maybe wouldn't hurt to see if she would go to counseling with you!

Best of luck!

Hi Vivian, My mother is the same. She is negative and I'm 52 years old and she has had the same effect on me my whole life. The best thing to do is let your mother know that you love her and you disagree with her at times. During the times you disagree, just let her know in short what you disagree about then go on with your normal activities. It is very hard to disconnect with a difficult person like mom. She is bold, forthright and seems to be controlling. She however is a good person to share time with but not on a negative note. I completely understand and have been struggling for years with this myself. I have a poor self-esteem because of my mom. This you need to nip in the but right away before it controls your life. I doubt you can get out of it without conflict somehow. Let me know how you make out with this. Take Care. Sharon.

quote:

Originally posted by Vivian the Great:
My mother has never really been a mother figure more friend. I have alot of resentment toward her for things that happened to me as a child. I have tried to get over it because she is my mother and I do love her. She is a good person at heart, but she is so unhappy and negative I've said something about the program and it just seems like she makes fun of me. I realized doing this course I have to do something about it. My husband said to distance myself from her, but I don't want to do that she is my mother and I do have children. Also she has no patient with my kids she yells and uses bad laugage in front of them.(She has really bad road rage) This really upsets me. I have a 2year old who is a mocking bird. So what I'm getting at is do I confront my mom about everything? And how do I do this without hurting feelings and causing a fight! Please Help!

I think a little distance right now until you get stronger in the program. Not break away but just distance yourself from it for awhile.
It is not easy. And won't be.
But you have to take care of you. You won't be good for the others in your life until you began to take care of you.
Hope it works out for you.
Best wishes!
MaryJane

Frustrating. I just posted a long post and don't feel like going thru all that again. So I'm 57 and still battling w/mom. She's only here summers tg but we can still battle over the phone. I've decided life is too short and we've stopped talking too many times over STUPID stuff. I now do what a psychologist told me many, many yrs. ago. Do fun stuff. Out to eat, SHORT shopping trips. Always leave a door open by saying I've only got maybe an hour. If it's fun, you can stay together longer, if not I gotta make another call (when you're on the phone) or be somewhere, do this, that, whatever. Same when you're out with her. I would make it clear about how she speaks to the grandkids and if she can't shape up in that area maybe she won't see them for a while. ALWAYS tell her you love her. Someone on this sight said we need to honor our father and mother whether they deserve it or not. "Whether they deserve it or not" has helped me. Hope this helps you.

By the way, why is this in the humor section?? Does it mean our mothers are a joke??

My mom is my negative center too. Ive tried to distance myself from her and for a few months it works but then I go back to her and try to get her to talk to me and be apart of my life. Everytime I try it ends with a big fight and I feel a lot of anxiety all over again. My husband feels that I should shut her out of my life but its so hard to do because she is my mother after all. So maybe I do need to just get away from her and leave her be and not have her in my life anymore. Anything I need to do to get better, and if not having my mother there is whats going to get me better then I'm going to do it.

Molly K

Don't should on yourself, and don't should on any one else. You want you Mom to accept you for who you are, and you must do the same for her, she was once a child also, her life was formed, by the world, she grew up in, and she probably has baggage as well. We all do. You are working to rid yourself from your baggage, to free yourself from it all and just be you.

I know from my experience, my mom has passed down to me the curse of being a people pleaser, and now that I recognize it I am reaching down the tree to my daughter, for I passed it to here, and I am reaching up the tree to help my mom, recognize it and set her free from the users that personality trate draws in to our lives.

At your age you must accept & respect each other, as women you must work to become friends, drop the mother, daughter stuff. Ofcouse she is negative, wear do you think you learned it from. but she isn't taking the course so you can't expect her to be where you are in this new evolution of you. Believe me, she will notice, she will see the change in you and she will want to change too. We teach others how to treat us, and now they need to learn to how to treat the new and improved freeer, happyer you! Cut them some slack it is new to them, and I know my husband wasn't sure how to react to the new me. but he is getting it, now a year later, and it is better now than ever. she is you mom, but she is also a friend in your life worth keeping. never give up and never give in. but be patient, and stay as Positive as you can possibly be around her, show her the way.

Ah Moms. You can't live with them, and you can't be conceived without 'em.

My Mom loves to say wonderful supportive things, and then out of the blue say the cruelest and most critical cutting barb that ever existed this side of Hades. Knocks my socks off she does, relentlessly negative about my life choice (I help out people in REALLY bad situations in Third World countries)

I've thought about divorcing her, but she'd probably outfox me.

Keep smiling friends

Patrick in Fresno :-)

Patrick,
I think its wonderful the life choice you have made!! Congrats! Im a mom to, and im hope im not the negative person in my kids life.. I support dreaming dreams for lifes choices.
Your an adult, who has the right to choose!
By the way, I love your picture, lol Nelly

I just want to put in a quick note here about mothers. (Yes, I looked at this thread for humor, but stayed anyway.) I can't begin to add to the incredibly insightful comments and suggestions many of you made earlier on, but I do want to agree that "my mother is my negative center."

I am a 56-year old happily married man with a now-feeble 90-year old mother in a nursing home. I battled with her from childhood through my twenties, and by all accounts she was just bat-crazy neurotic her whole life. In my teens I fervently believed that either she was crazy or I was evil, and only time would tell. When I went away to college, I found out that I wasn't evil and nobody else's mothers were nearly as srange as she was. I swore to myself, literally, that "I won't become Norman Bates." That may seem crazy, but in retrospect it was me staying healthy.

I battled for my own self, I visited her and my mild-mannered dad, often with screaming arguments and long walks, and I lived my own life. Now my life-long anxiety and depression have gotten me into this program (fortunately), and I visit my mom regularly and take part in her care. Despite her reduced faculties she smiles at me with tears in her eyes, and it is worth the years of fighting to keep a connection.

In my personal, biased and uneducated opinion, you have to keep up a connection. As you get older, so do they, and at some point you have to take charge. They fear your leaving them, and you can use that fear to negotiate visitation terms. After all, you have your own life now and theirs is waning, so they need you more than you need them. At least on a short-term basis.

Years ago my wife asked me in anguish, "How do they know how to press all the buttons?" I said, "Because they put them there!"

Oh yes they did. And so here I am. But I'm driving 350 miles to see her this weekend, even if she forgets I was there the next day. It's another small deposit in the karma bank, and I know it.

I did the eulogy at my dad's funeral 20 years ago. My sister will probably ask me to do the same for our mom, and I have no idea what to say. Her life was a bit hard, and much strange, but still...

Not quite the "quick note" that I promised. Gee, I still can't wrap it up in a postcard! I'd better do Week 4 again before going back to Week 3 -- again.

We all come from "nuclear" families. Good luck to us all!

My mother is an alcoholic/drug addict. She had a horrible childhood full of abuse and chaos. As for me, well i saw so many things that a child shouldn't see. Drinking, drugs domestic violence you name it. And that was after my parents decided that my grandparents didn't need to care for me anymore, they could do it.

I still feel like I am a little girl feeling abandoned and neglected by my parents, mom mostly. My dad has come through for me a lot, so I think I've forgiven him.

My mom on the other hand. Well she was always critical and negative. Nothing was ever good enough for her. I could always have done better. And yet at 32 years old, I am still waiting for her to say that she loves me and that I am ok. i don't have contact with her because it's too painful. She still drinks and criticizes so whats the point? But sometimes i start to feel bad and miss her, but I think what I am missing is the fact that I really never had a bond with her. I had my grandparents and they were great, but there was or is that feeling that something is missing.

I know that if I stay feeling sorry for myself about the past that I cannot change, it will make it hard to move foward. I always have a hard time letting go. i hold on to painful memories or spats with people like I need a reminder to not get too close to people because people hurt me.

Well the victim thing isn't working. I need to come to terms with the fact that I can't change the past. I can however be a good parent to myself by accepting myself and taking care of myself, two things I never really learned to do, but I am trying. It feel weird though. And it's scary uncharted territory at times.

My mother is my worst enemy and yet she's helped me for years financially since I've become sick with Lupus.She is cruel, hurtful and would more then likely never talk to me unless she needed something. I know that she does love me, but has no idea how to be a caring, loving, supportive mom. I have resented her for years, yet feel guilty at times because she does help me now that I can't work any longer. I want so badly to be more loving to her, but can't get past the hurt that she has caused me and my children through th years. I give credit to the person I read about taking her mom to do fun things for an hour or so, I can't stay with her for more then ten minutes. She can talk to my cousins for hours, yet can even say good morning to me. The only time she really seems to talk is when she needs something. I can't even share this program that I've started because she couldn't care less and would use it against me somewhere down the line. Anybody have any ideas on how to stop this so i can get less anxiety from it.

Wow, the pain I see in these relatonships. It mirrors the intense pain I had with my Mom.

My pain became so bad at one point that I had to stop all contact for several years, to prevent my life, and that of my family from becoming the same way. She was so much the victim that she never had any personal identity aside from the pain she had suffered. I was 52 years old when I finally in disperation went to her and told her--look, you have been divorced from my father for 30 years, and he has been dead for 10. Isn't it time to let all this go? I was literally going out of my mind. "your Father" was guaranteed to send a cold chill down my spine. No one had "suffered" the way she had.

Mom is gone now. i did not grieve much when she died. It was just such a relief not to deal with her anymore.