Mother-Daughter Allergies
January 9, 2020 12:50 AM Subscribe
I find it extremely difficult to spend any time with my mother and suffer from strong irritation and the sort of almost-allergic reactions I associate with teenagers. Help!
Of course, I only go through all this internally and rarely express my feelings, because they are so unkind! The triggers are things like volume of speech, speaking about me to the people we meet, over-effusive and forced social behaviour, and her manner of asking (too many) questions and making comments.
I'm not embarrassed when she's interacting with other people at a certain distance from me; it's only when I am confronted with her at close quarters.
She's a good person and I do love her, so I beat myself up for feeling this way. She might move to my town and I worry about whether I'll be able to spend any time with her at all.
I'm looking for your advice, theories that explain this, or books about it.
Of course, I only go through all this internally and rarely express my feelings, because they are so unkind! The triggers are things like volume of speech, speaking about me to the people we meet, over-effusive and forced social behaviour, and her manner of asking (too many) questions and making comments.
I'm not embarrassed when she's interacting with other people at a certain distance from me; it's only when I am confronted with her at close quarters.
She's a good person and I do love her, so I beat myself up for feeling this way. She might move to my town and I worry about whether I'll be able to spend any time with her at all.
I'm looking for your advice, theories that explain this, or books about it.
Is there a space where you can express these feelings, safely, away from your mother's presence? Some of this intense discomfort might be from the pressure of not being able to express yourself, and knowing you have a "safety valve" where you can rant away to your therapist or a friend could give you enough capacity to cope better with the feelings your mother brings up in you.
I find that my embarrassment and hyper-criticality with my family often arises because their closeness to me makes me feel like whatever embarrassing thing they're doing reflects on me personally. It's helpful to remind myself that I'm a separate human being and don't have to feel so tied up in how my family moves through the world. Remembering “the things we dislike most in others are the characteristics we like least in ourselves" also helps me feel compassionate towards people I find irritating and repulsive. Overall for someone you want to maintain a relationship with and have very little chance of changing the behaviour of, finding strategies to accept and cope with your feelings is the only thing you can really do.
That said, it's reasonable to ask your mother not to talk about you in your presence, and remind her gently that it makes you feel less like spending time with her when she does it.
posted by Balthamos at 3:34 AM on January 9, 2020 [8 favorites]
I find that my embarrassment and hyper-criticality with my family often arises because their closeness to me makes me feel like whatever embarrassing thing they're doing reflects on me personally. It's helpful to remind myself that I'm a separate human being and don't have to feel so tied up in how my family moves through the world. Remembering “the things we dislike most in others are the characteristics we like least in ourselves" also helps me feel compassionate towards people I find irritating and repulsive. Overall for someone you want to maintain a relationship with and have very little chance of changing the behaviour of, finding strategies to accept and cope with your feelings is the only thing you can really do.
That said, it's reasonable to ask your mother not to talk about you in your presence, and remind her gently that it makes you feel less like spending time with her when she does it.
posted by Balthamos at 3:34 AM on January 9, 2020 [8 favorites]
The New York Times recently had an article on how to deal with mother annoyance. Since yours is moving to your town, you may want to think about ways to help her integrate into the community so that she develops her own circle of friends. As far as your own face time with her, see if you can find a regular activity to do together that is less intense than sitting in a room during a visit--taking regular walks through her new neighborhood or yours; going to a flea market to help furnish her new place; cooking a meal together; or going to a movie. Do think about boundaries you will want to set if she's too intrusive, though give her a break in the short run. Be both firm and gentle in setting limits.
posted by Elsie at 4:49 AM on January 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Elsie at 4:49 AM on January 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
I like the general principle that all anger/irritation comes at base from fear, and I agree with Balthamos that part of the fear here is probably some threat to your own ego/sense of self: possibly that your mom's behavior reflects something you dislike about yourself, or that you your mom's view of you defines who you actually are (this would fit especially with your hating it when she talks about you), or that your inner "you" is otherwise somehow not comfortably distinct from her, in a way that makes you feel you need to anxiously reject her when she behaves in certain ways. (That is roughly what actual allergies also are, btw: an overengagement of natural defense mechanisms in response to a confusion between what's self and not-self.)
Thus, you may find the fear/ allergic irritation calms down if you can get some safe psychological distance from these behaviors of hers specifically within your own head. Have you tried intellectualizing/psychologizing them? That is, have you tried thinking through your mom as a woman separate from you, maybe starting with her as a child, with her own parental upbringing, desires, fears, struggles, past traumas, and working out how at least some of the annoying behaviors make sense within that quite separate world of her own psychological experience?
Then, when she is (e.g.) over-effusive and forced in social situations, maybe instead of "AAAGH MOOOOOM!" you can think "This is a woman who's anxious the interaction won't go well, she's been trained to do a lot of emotional labor to try to please the other person, hmm it's not really working AND she gets blamed for it, so unfair that women are put in this position." Or if she talks about you, in front of you, you might think "This is a young woman who was literally hormonally reprogrammed to accept a gross baby as an organic part of her own self, and then that baby changed into an adult and left, that is some horrorshow shit, ugh what must it do to a person's sense of identity??" Given that you say your mom's a good person, just annoying, then cultivating a bit of detached sympathy for her may help to reinforce your own separate identity in ways that'd make the interactions less allergy-inducing.
posted by Bardolph at 5:27 AM on January 9, 2020 [18 favorites]
Thus, you may find the fear/ allergic irritation calms down if you can get some safe psychological distance from these behaviors of hers specifically within your own head. Have you tried intellectualizing/psychologizing them? That is, have you tried thinking through your mom as a woman separate from you, maybe starting with her as a child, with her own parental upbringing, desires, fears, struggles, past traumas, and working out how at least some of the annoying behaviors make sense within that quite separate world of her own psychological experience?
Then, when she is (e.g.) over-effusive and forced in social situations, maybe instead of "AAAGH MOOOOOM!" you can think "This is a woman who's anxious the interaction won't go well, she's been trained to do a lot of emotional labor to try to please the other person, hmm it's not really working AND she gets blamed for it, so unfair that women are put in this position." Or if she talks about you, in front of you, you might think "This is a young woman who was literally hormonally reprogrammed to accept a gross baby as an organic part of her own self, and then that baby changed into an adult and left, that is some horrorshow shit, ugh what must it do to a person's sense of identity??" Given that you say your mom's a good person, just annoying, then cultivating a bit of detached sympathy for her may help to reinforce your own separate identity in ways that'd make the interactions less allergy-inducing.
posted by Bardolph at 5:27 AM on January 9, 2020 [18 favorites]
Sounds like your mother is somehow triggering your own social anxiety. There's some kind of contact embarrassment going on, where she is in a social situation and you are judging harshly and cringing, the same way people do when they lie awake hating themselves for not agreeing that espresso is the best form of coffee, or wiped their nose with their fingers after sneezing (It was dry! Really there was no snot! Oh God, why didn't I run out of the room first and find a tissue!)
You might want to do the cognitive exercise of examining what is going through your head when you get set off this way. Do you desperately want people to like her? Are you afraid that people will judge you and you will be laughed at? Do you want to control her to make her into someone else?
It's also worth getting feedback from other people, as to if they also find her behaviour off. They might say, "It's amazing you have such crappy social skills when your mother is such a darling!" or they might say, "Huh?" or they might say, "Oh nooo, she's not annoying at all. Lots of people babble. It's normal. It's perfectly forgivable! Why I'm babbling right now!" Check with a few close friends if they get the impression your mother is nervous, or they understood her, or if her comments seemed intrusive.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:06 AM on January 9, 2020
You might want to do the cognitive exercise of examining what is going through your head when you get set off this way. Do you desperately want people to like her? Are you afraid that people will judge you and you will be laughed at? Do you want to control her to make her into someone else?
It's also worth getting feedback from other people, as to if they also find her behaviour off. They might say, "It's amazing you have such crappy social skills when your mother is such a darling!" or they might say, "Huh?" or they might say, "Oh nooo, she's not annoying at all. Lots of people babble. It's normal. It's perfectly forgivable! Why I'm babbling right now!" Check with a few close friends if they get the impression your mother is nervous, or they understood her, or if her comments seemed intrusive.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:06 AM on January 9, 2020
As a rule the behaviors that bother us in others — the things that really get to us — are things that we hate about ourselves. Our parents obviously share a lot of our behaviors, so watching them in action can be torture.
That said, of the binary gender combinations (Father-Son, Father-Daughter, Mother-Son, Mother-Daughter) is widely viewed as the most complex. I hope you find a simple answer, but I wouldn’t count on it.
dancestoblue wrote...
Absolutely resolute about telling the truth. It was brutal [...]
"Honesty without compassion is cruelty."
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:34 AM on January 9, 2020 [4 favorites]
That said, of the binary gender combinations (Father-Son, Father-Daughter, Mother-Son, Mother-Daughter) is widely viewed as the most complex. I hope you find a simple answer, but I wouldn’t count on it.
dancestoblue wrote...
Absolutely resolute about telling the truth. It was brutal [...]
"Honesty without compassion is cruelty."
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:34 AM on January 9, 2020 [4 favorites]
In my experience, having her move to your town might actually be better. Exposure lessens the allergic reaction; and being able to see her under much shorter, low-stress situations as opposed to travel will reduce the stressors. When I travel to see relatives that I am allergic to, or host them, it's MUCH worse due to the traveling stress and the length of time and close quarters. Just popping in for coffee or brunch once a week in your own town is actually much, much less stressful. Making it a routine where you see her more frequently may also paradoxically make it less stressful, because it's part of your routine and not a huge change.
posted by schwinggg! at 2:50 PM on January 9, 2020
posted by schwinggg! at 2:50 PM on January 9, 2020
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I hope you can get at least some of this on the table before your mother moves to your town.
Our parents not only know where every one of our buttons are at, they installed them, most of them anyways.
I think that it is easier to get the whole thing started with a letter. (Not an email -- a letter. And plenty of stamps for follow-up, too.) Have a couple of trusted friends (and maybe a therapist) have some people whose wisdom you trust proof-read it, not only to make sure you're standing tall for what you really need but also to keep any ego hooks out of it. I have written Important Letters and was positive that I'd not left any hooks in them, but upon showing them to my friends Alison, Bob, and Tina -- wow. Any letter that made it through their proof-reading was damn sure clean.
Also have these same friends read any responses from your mother, which, unless they are proofed before she sends them to you, they'll be almost certain to be full of ego hooks. Write back, kindly, tell her "No, Mom, I didn't write that I hope you die in a car fire. I am just asking for you to be aware of us when we are together, plus also to not call me a hemorrhoid when we're chatting with my friends."
One woman I dated was absolutely resolute about telling her truth. It was brutal at the first but I came to really appreciate it. She wouldn't dream of holding still if I bought her a gift she didn't like, or said something that she didn't like, and it didn't bother her even a second if I told her "Hey, that sweater you gave me, it really blows -- were you on drugs when you bought it?" or pinned her to the wall behind some comment she made to me. We told the truth, talked things through, then on our way. She kept reciets for everything, and I learned to do so with her.
The next few women I dated after her, I had to learn to tone it down some. Still, it's a great tool to have in the tool-box -- I promise you, if you tromp on my just-shined boots, and it appears to me that you're happy about it, We Are Going To Talk.
So anyways. There is truth and there is brutality, but there maybe is no such thing as brutal honestly. I don't want to strangle anyone with The TruthTM, I just want to live clean, when I can find the wisdom (this is where my friends come in), and when I can summon the courage to stand for myself.
She loves you. You love her. Families are *hard*, but if you can get to The Goods, it's the best.
Good luck.
posted by dancestoblue at 2:04 AM on January 9, 2020 [8 favorites]