What to do?

[cleofet]

Mother 88 in nursing home with Alzheimer's and horrible delusions a good deal of the time. Mother has always be a narcissist and I (58) am the only family around and the only one left that talks to her. I HATE going to see her at the NH and feel so guilty about that. I haven't been in about a week and a half.

I was trying to go at least once a week but I causes me such great stress. She does not yell at me or belittle me anymore but there is nothing you can talk to her about without getting her upset and screaming. She is in a wheelchair and although she does seem to know who I am most of the time she doesn't know where she is only that she wants me to get her out!!!

I need someone to tell me it is ok NOT TO GO or someone to tell me how to get past this hate of going to see her. I stuck by her all these years when other family members didn't because I always had the hope that she would change if I did things just right but now there really isn't any hope of that love ever coming to me so now I just don't want to be bothered.

I know how it sounds and even more how it feels. I need HELP! I can't afford to see my therapist anymore and now my insurance doesn't even pay part of her fee. I can't afford to see anyone else and really don't want to start that all over again.

I feel like I am going to fall off the side of the world and no one will even notice. My meds (Lexapro and Welbutrin) are not cutting it anymore and all I want to do is sleep.

I wish I could get a hold of this problem.

:facepalm:

 

[heatherly]

I know how you feel. I used to call my mother once a week out of guilt, just to have her abuse me. I wish now that I had never called. I kept waiting for her to change how she felt about me; she never did. When she died I thought, Now I don't have to be abused anymore, but my sisters took up where she left off.

My older brother walked away from her years before, so why couldn't I? Was it because I was female and more conditioned to care?

I can't tell you how to get past this hate of going. But I can tell you that it would be good to learn to take care of yourself, to give compassion to yourself. And if giving yourself compassion means not going, then don't go.

It seems that many of us have been taught that we have to do certain things in life, take care of our parents, for example, and if we don't there is that guilt.

What about stopping to see her less and less?