Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with sanity

Parent Filter: What can I do about this parent/child role reversal that is poisoning my mind and my life and how can I let this parent know that even though I love them dearly I will not continue to let them manipulate me and dump all of their responsibilities on to my plate???

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:36:49 -0800

Parent Filter: What can I do about this parent/child role reversal that is poisoning my mind and my life and how can I let this parent know that even though I love them dearly I will not continue to let them manipulate me and dump all of their responsibilities on to my plate??? Long story short, my widowed mother (who is young by definition - late sixties) let her life go to hell in a hand basket. My DH and I moved her in with us so that we could give her care and keep her from living the horrible existence that she was (dirty house, unable to take care of the pets she had, not eating right - living off of crap - and not managing her severe diabetes). When we moved her in with us, my DH and I were both 27 years old and had only been married for 5 months. That was over 3 years ago.

She doesn't give a damn about her health and always has a convenient excuse to justify what she feels like doing or not doing. She almost put herself in a diabetic coma once because she didn't manage her diabetes even though the doctor had clearly ordered her to do so. Obviously it is perfectly fine to eat a huge tin of peppermint bark that you had hidden in your room and then try to balance it out with insulin injections.... Right! And she has so many health conditions (osteoarthritis, obesity, fibromyalgia, SEVERE diabetes and the many complications that are resulting from the diabetes) not to mention her appalling lack of self-maintenance and personal hygiene... Two months ago, she fell and broke her leg. She wound up in the hospital and had to have surgery to repair the break. This has left her as non-weight bearing for 3 months. She is obese and cannot walk without a walker when she has two legs to walk on. So she has had to go to a nursing home until she can rehabilitate but has been very unhappy about that reality and has tried to get out of the rehab requirement on more than one occasion. She actually told my husband and I that she would be fine if she would just sit at home in her recliner while we went to work and if we made her some PBJ sandwiches and a glass of water so she could make it through the day until we got home. This is crazy... We told her no and I don't think she gets it.....

She has alienated my other siblings through her master manipulator bullshit and as a result I have lost one of my siblings (no longer speaks to my mother or myself) and the other is only helping out/sticking around because they love me and want to support me/not leave me hanging. My mother has nothing to do all day long but sit around and read trashy novels, but somehow she can't seem to manage making her own doctor appointments (even though I set up a HIGHLY convenient calender which has everyone's schedule on it - hence eliminating the excuse of 'I can't make appointments since I don't know what your schedules are and someone has to take me to the doctor). Did I forget to mention that she quit driving for no particular reason?

My husband and I have REPEATEDLY sat down with her and told her that her current situation and methodology in handling it has been unacceptable. Take a shower, change your clothes, wash your hair, eat right, exercise wherever and however you can, and for the love of god, start acting like a member of the living human race!!! Now last time I checked, she was not declared mentally incompetent and I was not appointed as her guardian. In my mind, this means that my family and I do what we need to do in order to make her life at home comfortable within reason. This does not mean that I am supposed to be her personal assistant/secretary and that she can just sit back and be the Queen of Sheba with no responsibilities what so ever. It also does not mean that she can just sit there and let herself be filthy and stink just because it takes so much effort to take a shower. And god forbid she does take that shower and clean herself up! Then she can't do anything for the rest of the day because it "took so much out of" her...

Yes, I am at fault for allowing this behavior to go on for as long as I have. But I have had my awakening and I also have a infant son who needs his mother since he is in fact a baby and cannot take care of himself. Therefore here are the questions that I have at hand:

# 1 - How can I convey that I am done catering to her, that she is an adult and needs to be responsible for herself and that I am invoking the protective shield of self-preservation immediately?

#2 - Once I have established the bare minimum requirements for her, how do enforce them? I know that one thing I can use is "if you don't/can't meet these expectations then we aren't equipped to take care of you anymore". The only problem with that is that it will become an empty threat if used too much. What other repercussions can I use?

# 3 - How can I break free of her manipulation of me through guilt? I need to rid myself of those shackles in order to be strong and not allow further mind games by the master manipulator.

Please feel free to e-mail me with any questions that you might have or any suggestions you can offer. I've set up a throw-away email address at: preserving.my.sanity@gmail.com

My cats are ruining my life!

icarus — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:56:47 -0800

I can't take it anymore. My cats are plotting my death. Please help me keep my sanity, my cats, and my apartment. I've had my two cats, since they were kittens, for the last two years. They are the friendliest and best behaved cats as far as people-cats interactions go.

What they both fail at is furniture-cats and life-cats interaction.

They are both indoor cats, and they are suffocating me. They have pretty much taken over the living room, I am afraid to be in it, because I start losing my mind every time I see another kitty-made fluffy dust bunny.

1. They shed. They shed no matter how much I brush them. They shed everywhere, on everything. What can I do? Anything at all?

2. They are not vertically challenged. They have no fear and they jump on every cabinet, on every counter top, on top of the oven, on top of whatever they please. My kitchen and livingroom are one and the same. I don't want to think about how much cat hair I must've ingested. Lately, one of the cats thinks it's awesome to jump on top of the fridge and stare at me while I'm washing the dishes. Is there anything I can do to keep them from jumping on top of every surface?

3. One of them cries for me every night. I don't let him in the bedroom because he sheds. And he lays down in front of the closed door and cries, and cries, and cries. He's been to the vet, there is absolutely nothing wrong with him except he's needy, spoiled, and doesn't want me to get any sleep.

When they were kittens I used to spray them with water and that seemed to work well as far as disciplining them. But that requires me to be there when they do something "bad" and they will just try doing whatever it is later, when I am not around. Plus, I feel pretty silly chasing them around with a spray bottle and trying to say "No!" without laughing at the same time.

Please help me, I really don't want to have to choose between my sanity and my cats.

Being a team player on the short bus ... or how to tell your boss, "NO, I won't keep teaching these inept morons you keep hiring"

jkl345 — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 15:27:32 -0800

Professional/career/office politics filter: How can I once and for all tell my boss that I don't want to keep teaching the unqualified workers he hires ...without getting fired for insubordination or seeing like I’m not a team player? I’m a pretty highly-skilled multimedia/creative producer in a very, very antiquated business.

And I kinda work with a bunch of morons. Most people on my team are totally unqualified to do their jobs. They don't know how to do the essence of what they were hired for. They lied on their resumes or dropped a few buzzwords and somehow landed on my team. For instance, we just hired an editor to work on our website who has never touched HTML ... We hired another multimedia editor who has no skills at producing multimedia other than taking and editing still images.

My managers are just as inept. They don’t have technical skills (which they don’t necessarily all need, but they should be able to weed out the fakers and stop sticking me with morons).

Over the past year, I've offered 11 training sessions to try and get the rest of our staff’s skillset up to speed so I don't have to do the menial work and can focus on larger, more complex projects, but in offering those I'm now basically the organization’s corporate trainer and tech support. I rarely get to learn anything, I very rarely get to improve my skills or do any portfolio-worthy work and I’m miserable.

I’ve tried to explain this problem to my boss and his boss, and they listen and kind of nod in approval but then the next day will ask me to teach another inept co-worker how to do something they should have known when they walked out of school. And they keep using my reason to help training people against me saying, “Hey, if we just get Bob trained in this, you’ll never have to do this and you can focus on doing cooler projects.”

I used to love teaching others, now it’s a noose around my neck because my bosses figure they can hire any moron off the street for little money and make me train them into a decent worker. I’ve seriously considered drastic things like ‘slipping’ in the bathroom and saying that I have brain damage and can’t remember how to do stuff. Seriously. (I’m not really good at confrontation.)

--> How can I once and for all tell my boss I can’t teach the unqualified workers he hires anymore without getting fired for insubordination or seeing like I’m not a team player?

BTW: For those who are going to say "Just quit!" I’m working on that -- and currently shopping for jobs but I don’t want to totally burn the bridge at this organization for future references and definitely don't want to jump blindly into another organization like this one.