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Dreamedeeri:

--- Quote from: Hopalong on March 24, 2013, 04:40:00 PM ---Wow.
I never quite got there with my Nmother. My inner Cinderella hung
in until the end but I'm going to the ball anyway. Years later.

It's just a very small ball. And you don't have to dress up.

Hops

--- End quote ---

Heh. I don't know if I'm quite ready for the ball yet, but at least I've escaped the wicked N-Mom.

The last straw with my mom after years of trying to help her with her house, before I realized she didn't want and couldn't accept help (there was nothing wrong, you see), was when she basically ordered me to drop what I was doing (I work full time, and need approval to get the day off) and come help her get things out of her condemned house. I did come, on a day that worked for me, which happened to be the very last day she was allowed to get her things out.

Again, long story, but I'm a very capable person and at this 11th hour rescue operation, I expected to at least be given some targeted missions to get the most important things out, like an antique table, some silver coins, things like that. Note that the house and garage at this point were like a giant indoor landfill (6 feet deep) and cat box (she fed a pack of feral cats as well) so it was really hard to breathe and I had to take lots of breaks so I would not lose it. My brother totally had my back and would drive me away when I couldn't take it anymore.

Since I did not jump when she said jump as far as the chores she did want me to do (wrap up stupid cat figurines, sort through scraps of smelly ruined paper one piece at a time) she reduced me to feeling 5 years old again, to the point where I was meekly saying "I'm sorry" and doing her bidding...up to a point. I left her sitting on her steps trying to sort through a garbage bag of smelly papers and my last words to her were "Good luck, Mom."

I wouldn't fault anybody for "hanging in there until the end" but it was at that moment with great clarity that I realized that I didn't matter to her at all. All my hopes and illusions were shattered at that point. I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

Hopalong:
That is heartrending.
What a hideous mental illness it is.

I am so sorry you went through that moment (and those years). I cannot imagine. Like watching someone develop Alzheimer's, but in a way, worse. Because it would seem as though they have a choice, and they make it over and over and over...it's the clutter and stuff, that matters. (I am not sure they DO have a choice, because it seems to take over the brain just as severely as something like epilepsy or schizophenia would.O

It really sounds as though you've experienced exactly the anguish they show on the TLC show about hoarding, over and over. The faces of the adult kids who have given up, as they've seen the obsession fill up all the space in their sick parent until there literally is no love left for their own children. Or no ability to fight through their own sickness to express any. It's just smothered.

I am really sorry, Kathleen. I'm so glad you're here again to talk about it.

love
Hops

Dreamedeeri:
Thanks Hops.

Yes, it's awful. I don't think I could ever watch one of those shows, I think I saw about 5 minutes of some TV medical drama that had a hoarding character and I couldn't take it. It sounds like they are showing the reality though, and not just the "Mom is a lovely person but she shops too much and doesn't clean and now this expert has done an intervention and viola! we live happily ever after.". I think most hoarders really can't be cured.

It is important for me to be here with people who get it and to be able to talk about it, not specifically hoarding but who know that mothers don't always have their children's best interests at heart. I'm going to start shopping for a new therapist soon. A psychiatrist I saw mostly for medication management (AD/HD) dismissed my issues with my mother as "poor parental fit" or something like that. I know I tend to minimize the whole story until I feel I can trust a new therapist, but come on! It makes me feel like I was just whining because my mother and I have different personalities. That's sitcom fodder. I guess I need to just give it to them with both barrels at the first session and see what they come up with. I want at therapist who gets it at least to some degree the way those of us who have lived it get it.

Twoapenny:

--- Quote from: Kathleen on April 01, 2013, 10:13:01 PM ---Thanks Hops.

Yes, it's awful. I don't think I could ever watch one of those shows, I think I saw about 5 minutes of some TV medical drama that had a hoarding character and I couldn't take it. It sounds like they are showing the reality though, and not just the "Mom is a lovely person but she shops too much and doesn't clean and now this expert has done an intervention and viola! we live happily ever after.". I think most hoarders really can't be cured.

It is important for me to be here with people who get it and to be able to talk about it, not specifically hoarding but who know that mothers don't always have their children's best interests at heart. I'm going to start shopping for a new therapist soon. A psychiatrist I saw mostly for medication management (AD/HD) dismissed my issues with my mother as "poor parental fit" or something like that. I know I tend to minimize the whole story until I feel I can trust a new therapist, but come on! It makes me feel like I was just whining because my mother and I have different personalities. That's sitcom fodder. I guess I need to just give it to them with both barrels at the first session and see what they come up with. I want at therapist who gets it at least to some degree the way those of us who have lived it get it.

--- End quote ---

I think you're absolutely right, Kathleen, it was a therapist who opened my eyes to what was going on, I was so used to it I didn't see what was happening as abusive, I blamed myself and used to go into my sessions talking about everything I'd done wrong and how I was going to put it all right by working even harder and being even more perfect and caring and considerate.  I feel so lucky now to look back and know I happened across that therapist by chance and that she saw what was going on in my life and knew how to pull the lid off veeeeery slowly and veeeery gently.  Eventually she retired and again I was lucky with the next one who taught me how to feel - I was so used to being numb that I didn't even realise I was.  Again she took baby steps, knew when to push and when to back off.  I remember one session - and I think I've mentioned this on the board before - where she asked me to imagine a situation where I'd walked into a party and of the ten people there, seven liked me and three didn't.  She asked me how I'd feel.  I was so mortified at the thought of three people not liking me that I thought she'd gone a bit mad, the very idea of me not being able to mould myself into what someone else wanted or expected in order to make them like me was just unimagineable to me.  That was a really big turning point, seeing how little of myself there was and how I saw myself completely through other people's eyes.  So yes, I'm waffling now, but I do think a good T can do incredible things and it is very frustrating when you meet someone who thinks you just don't 'get along'.  Good luck with finding someone.

sKePTiKal:
Kathleen:

Hiya! I can definitely relate to the: things are more important than people; and people are just things... and not mattering to my mom. (And she is some variation on a hoarder, for sure). I've had my hubs watch the show with me, so that he would finally understand my continuing issues with clutter. It did help.

I've been quiet here for awhile... under my old moniker "PR"... and am back with a brand-new rodeo, with a different family member. Oh the joy! LOL...

Just wanted to share something I'm working "on" or "with" or "through"... however one thinks of it. These people that have hurt us, are not "normal people". Part of the difficulty, is that our expectations of these people are based on "normal". So, we go through the motions of our own reactions to outrageousness... as if it we were hoping to reach out with that reaction, to a normal person... who'd then respond: OH - I'm sorry!! Did I do that? How can I make it right??  (Like Hops has tried so many times with her D.)

The not-normal people don't even notice we had the reaction, OK? That's how not-normal they are.

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