I have been spending quite a bit of time with my mother lately (for me). I have seen her several times in the past week. You have to remember that she and her husband of 2 years have 3 houses between them (none of which they are willing to give up) so they circle the state each month "visiting" each house. So I might have seen her several times this week but might not see her again for a month.
My daughter is extremely emotionally dysregulated --- she was in a Romanian orphanage til she was 14 months old, and she came to us with emotional problems that have never gone away. Without giving you more excruciating details, when she gets angry with me she can dish out the silent treatment for DAYS. (She is 15 now).
I told my mom that my daughter was giving me the silent treatment, and that I think that is one of the most vicious and hurtful things a person can do. My mother did not respond to my feelings about being mistreated like that, but instead said, "Well can't you just ignore that?" Which (as always when I try to share feelings) made me feel like I am too stupid to figure out how to respond to the situation, and like she was discounting the terribleness of how I was being treated.
Well, I didn't let her turn it around. I said yes, basically that is what I do when she acts like that, but it STILL DOESN'T STOP MY FEELINGS FROM BEING HURT. And that I wasn't really asking how to deal with it, I was just stating that it is a terrible thing to do and is evidence that my daughter has extreme emotional problems.
I feel proud of myself because I recognized that my mother's response to what I said was inappropriate and that she didn't even address what I was getting at. And I did not get mad at her (at least outwardly) but turned the focus back to what I was saying in the first place: The cruelty of how I was being treated, and how it made me feel. There was a time when I would lose my temper when she would patronize me like that, and not really understand consciously why what she said was so infuriating.
Yes, I know you can't get blood from a turnip, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, all the other cliches that fit in this situation. It's dumb to expect empathy out of somebody who has already proven for 47 years that she is incapable of it (at least in a consistent, predictable way). Part of the problem is that intermittently she can have some empathy. But you can never predict when her empathy stores will run dry (they are very small). The other part of the problem is that I get lulled into thinking she is normal and that I can just tell her things without getting slapped upside the head for it.
But I feel so victorious because I could detach enough NOT to snap angrily at her (which would have put her into the aggrieved poor-little-me-you-are-so-out-of-control mode), and also because I didn't let her lose the point of what I was saying --- MY DAUGHTER'S BEHAVIOR IS HURTFUL and although I might be dealing effectively and appropriately with her, my FEELINGS ARE STILL HURT.
By the way, suddenly last night the daughter wanted something from me so she dropped the silent treatment with no explanation (in fact, the night before that I had confronted her and she denied engaging in ST but she was definitely doing it). So far I have not been bounding back like a puppy just because she's speaking to me again. Not the silent treatment but not all warm and fuzzy either. My feelings are still hurting.
