I'm tired of cooking/preparing 3 meals a day. It's just the two of us but boy oh boy can that woman eat!! She stays slimish, I get fattish. It's bad enough I do everything here much less start making her one thing and me the other. At times I feel guilty when I buy her fast food cuz of the nutritional value....not to mention I eat it too.
We are experiencing same here, then ran out of paper.
But I have my flyer printed up early.
I usually console myself with the phrase:
"What can be done with paperwork can be undone by more paperwork."
The printer was given to us instead of throwing it away. My dH is in charge of keeping it running.
I was woken up by Amazon delivery at 5:09 am this morning.
Yesterday was a busy day with R tackling all sorts of accident-related paper work. Forms, forms and more forms - police, insurance. medical...The printer was going like crazy and was misbehaving, which is not unusual, It's an old one. And I am the one do the printing and to resuscitate it, which sometimes takes a bit of work. After clearing the print queue many times, rebooting the computer and the printer, clearing the paper path, and finally finding that the connecting USB cable was failing and the ink was low, I ordered both from Amazon.
In the rush I neglected to tick the right box.
So I was woken up from a dead sleep at crazy o'clock in the morning by a call to buzz in the person delivering the ink. Aaaargh!!!
Thankfully, I went back to sleep.💤💤💤
Apparently this is not gooo]d for you or for her. She needs to become far more independent and she won't do that as long as you are catering to her.
What do you do?
1) You don't nag her. She knows by now what isn't good for her and what she needs to do to help herself. You nagging her is not helping you or her.
2) you stop doing those thing that are enabling her so if she wants food or anything else she can get up and get it herself,
3) when she expresses unhappiness about these change, walk away, Don't engage in any conversation and don't listen to her complaints (abuse?)
4) You don't have to explain or justify yourself. You can make a statement that you will not be doing x,y z anymore and then let it be.
You are the one who has to change to make this tolerable for you. At some point you may want to look into assisted living arrangements for your mother. Her health will not get better. With an older husband you need to be enjoying your time together now.
All the best going forward i a healthier direction!
geaton, EMDR does work to reduce trauma around specific memories according to what I have read and first hand experience of a therapist. I wouldn't know where to start with the traumatic memories. There are too many. But over time and with counselling they do not carry the same weight in my emotional life. And there is more to recovery than dealing with trauma. It's also a matter or relearning how to deal with your emotions, how to deal with people, communication skills , repairing self esteem and more. However, it can be done. People are resilient.
way - I'm not so sure it is a generational thing. I have known delightful people from my mother's generation. My grandmothers and grandfather were good sane people, All of my aunts and uncles were lovely caring people. My friend's mothers were kind and caring and normal. However, these days therapy is more openly accepted which it wasn't in those days. My dd asked me once why didn't our family go for counselling. I said there wasn't any. Even if there had been mother would not have gone. In her mind she was OK, it was everyone else who was the problem.
It explains all the people with guilt here.
Guilt trips obviously were a common way of parenting back then .
Then when a parent needs you they rely back on their parenting ways .
As way says - if you haven't been there you really have no idea what people who are living it are facing.
I’ve tried to steer new posters away from the ‘everything’ thread to ask their own question. Also urge them to complete a profile. Perhaps we should not run with everything that comes from ‘newbies’. It turns the general threads into a one-off complaints session, not really what was intended. My 'whine moment today' is starting to seem like something we should all go 'gray rock' on! Like the other general complaints.
I agree . The families with the pleasant elderly person who agrees to hire help to come in the house or go to assisted living when they need help are not needing to come here for the same type of issues as those with a narc parent . It’s difficult to understand what that is like unless you’ve lived it .
Those of us who come from dysfunctional/abusive families face additional difficulties when caregiving.the people who abused us. Relationship problems are the biggest part of it for us and are a very legitimate issue.
So, cw, I disagree with you. I don't think there are an excess amount of relationship threads here. I think there are the number of threads that reflect the needs of the members of this forum. If we were not caregiving mentally ill and abusive people, we would not need this kind of support.
way - I understand being between a rock and a hard place as regards caring for a narc parent. It is a very difficult spot to be in.
geaton - yes!!! Thank you.
I bought better filters for the furnace and a small but good air purifier for the bedroom. It's been raining a bit and I hope it rains more to clean the air, 🌧⛈🌦
nacy - road construction is a pain everywhere. It's all over the place in Edmonton.
The improvement in the baby grandson is some really good news!
Thanking God for answered prayers!
And thank you Cwillie for updating us.
Even so, there will be continued prayers for this little one.
I needed this good news!
So happy for all involved.
Good luck with your follow up visit.
Ask Mom who else can she call if she did have an emergency?
Plus who would she call if you didn't come home on time.. (anyone can trip in the street, car breaks down etc)
Can she use the phone? Or does she have a personal emergency button?
I went and got mine and my mom's dinner at our country club the 1st full day without my phone and she had a panic attack while I was gone. Maybe it's a good thing she didn't have me during the 70s or even 80s. Overprotective parents of my generation wouldn't have lasted long the moment their kids left for college 40, 50 yrs ago.
I was gonna go to an event earlier today across town for literally a few minutes, but she pleaded with me not to go because I didn't have a phone. We initially considered having a friend come and watch her, but the friend was gonna go to the NH to help feed her 95 yr old mother at the time I was gonna leave the house. I brought up a couple of other friends of hers that could keep her company, but she wouldn't entertain it any further.
She got emotional and talked about how I didn't understand things from her perspective and pulled the "I got you this/that" card regarding the new phone, which is my birthday gift, and dinner every week from our country club. The phone is more out of necessity than desire and as far as the weekly country club dinner, it's always her preference, not mine. She's the one that gets that ball rolling regarding that dinner decision, not me. She has gotten me a phone and weekly club dinner, but she won't give me things like respected wishes, seriousness, and extra help, let alone give me my life back. Several months back, she talked about how various relatives have had at least one son and that I can mark it down when it comes to having a boy. She doesn't grasp my perspective and that if caregiving continues on, I'll be marking down being unmarried and childless instead.
She then talked about how she was "making strides" in her recovery prior to my dad's passing. We all know that was a complete lie and she had long started to be up and around the house on a less frequent basis by that point. She was also resisting calls by my dad to start PT and she would chew out her "best friend" in response to the PT suggestions. She was unmotivated before my dad passed, as well as paranoid over Covid.
Btw, the 6th anniversary of her becoming immobile was a few days ago and when I made note of it, she said it was water under the bridge. Her still being immobile and stuck in the den of our house say otherwise.