Narc mom post

[saraha]

Ok, so my moms trick this week…

Over a month ago, my mom called ds23 and offered him some stuff from her house she was getting rid of. He accepted some things, but since he doesn’t drive and she won’t drive to him, it fell to me to arrange to get them. Fine. After a month of her calling wanting to know when we could meet her and then calling asking when could she see dd22 and dd20 and hear about their trips. Fine, meet at a restaurant with an arcade for younger two, visit goes well for once. 
It takes me a couple of weeks before I get stuff to ds23. She starts calling wanting to know if he got it. (Imports note, she never called him to see if he got it) I let most messages go to voicemail and answer maybe 1 in 3 calls. Finally I get the stuff to him and let her know. Ds23 had thanked her on the phone when she offered the things to him so knowing him, he assumed that was sufficient. It apparently was not. 

Sunday morning I guess she called ds23 and left a message asking if he got the stuff, knowing full well he did because I told her he did and he liked it. Ds23 had a very full day that ended at a party with coworkers we were going to pick him up from and bring him to our house to spend the night. 
Let me preface this with saying that three days earlier, I told the kids they could start answering calls from grandma on the house phone because she had been doing very good. (She saves stupid for me and my cell phone) I worked all day Sunday, then left early evening to pick up ds23.

Late Sunday morning, mom calls and ds13 answers. She asks if ds23 was there. No, but he’s coming later. Do you know where he is now? No. We’ll I called him but he didn’t call me back. I don’t know grandma, he must be busy. We’ll if you talk to him, tell him to call me.

Sunday afternoon, mom calls dd16 answers. Is ds23 there? No, but he will be later. We’ll do you know where he is? No. We’ll I called him but he didn’t call me back. We’ll, maybe he’s at work or something. Exasperated sigh, we’ll will you tell him to call me? Sure. thanks.

Early Sunday evening, mom finally calls my cell phone but I don’t answer because I am driving and have not talked to the kids to find out she has been calling repeatedly. 

Sunday about 8, she calls the house again, dd20 says don’t answer it. She’s a little more savvy about my mom. Dh and I have left to go pick up ds23. She leaves a voicemail. Later when I listen to the voicemail it is super weird about how she doesn’t know what’s going on with ds23, if he’s sick or something and no one will tell her what is going on and someone had better call her and tell her what is going on. Then immediately calls my cell phone but I don’t answer because once again I’m driving. I have literally not had time to call her back from earlier call. She leaves a raving voicemail about how she doesn’t know what’s going on but someone better give her a damn call and tell her what is going on. If someone doesn’t call her soon she is going to call the police and more raving about not knowing what is going on with ds23 and how we are scaring her etc. I hear this message after I get home. I call her immediately and ask her what is her major malfunction. She is “scared” because ds23 didn’t return her call after a couple of hours, I wouldn’t answer my phone (work and driving) and ds13 and dd16 didn’t know where he was. (He has had his own apartment for over 2 years, of course we all don’t know where he is at any given moment!) and is telling me she was going to call the police (and tell them what?) She has called the police twice on me over the years because I didn’t return a phone call when she expected me to. I told her it was unreasonable to expect someone to return a phone call within two hours, especially when she doesn’t know anything about that persons schedule and talks ti them on the phone maybe once every 6 months etc. she loses her shit. Ds23 (my aspie) says mom, let me talk to her. He gets in the phone and she turns sweet as sugar and tells him she was worried not having heard from him. He says to her grandma, you called me this morning and I didn’t have time to call you back. I was going to call you tomorrow. Thank you for the stuff, bye and hangs up the phone.

It’s important to note that with all of those phone calls going to my house and cell, she only called ds23 the ONE time when she left the original message!

Grandma is back on do not answer, I’ll handle it. She calls the house phone Monday (even though she has dd20’s phone number) and leaves her a message saying good luck going back to college, be safe, don’t go out at night, etc. Message does not sound like it needs a call back, but I tell dd20 about it.
She proceeds to call my cell phone Monday evening, just wanted to know if dd20 got my message. Yup, that was nice of you, she appreciated it. Tuesday while I’m at work, call on my cell phone, message saying did you tell dd20 about my message? Tuesday morning, calls the house phone, just making sure dd20 got my message. Wednesday, calls my cell phone, I answer. Did you give dd20 my message? YES mom, I told you I did. She appreciated it. We’ll she didn’t call to thank me.
I asked dd20 to please call grandma this evening, she apparently needs to to be thanked for leaving a message…

My mom wanted a thank you call for leaving a message…

I think she has figured out I am gatekeeping and she is trying to figure how to get around it. Also, I think she doesn’t call the kids repeatedly (thank goodness) because she is afraid of their reaction. I promise she does NOT have dementia. Both of these incidents involved a lot of calls to me but only one call each to the actual kid involved.

We had a good little run there for a while.

[Catwoman]

I’m so sorry. 😞 

I wish I had some great advice for you, but I know that over the years you have already tried anything and everything I could ever possibly think of. 

Sending lots of hugs.

[Rosie_0801]

Let her call the police. They get paid to deal with such things.

[YaelAldrich]

Oh golly.  This sounds so familiar.  My MIL....

 

[saraha]

6 minutes ago, Catwoman said:

I’m so sorry. 😞 

I wish I had some great advice for you, but I know that over the years you have already tried anything and everything I could ever possibly think of. 

Sending lots of hugs.

Thanks. She literally has nothing better to do. She leaves the house everyday to drive around town and walk through Walmart or gordmans. She won’t volunteer (why would I work for free?!?) She has run off every friend she ever had and the only person she talks to regularly is her sister, who is an invalid now and is just glad to have any company. 
I think it’s very telling that she didn’t call the kids involved more than one time, but calls me over and over. That’s what makes me think in the first place she wasn’t really scared 🙄 and in the second place she knew that her call didn’t really warrant a thank you call.

I regret asking dd20 to call her this evening. She acted fine dd said, but I feel like I fell down on the line, she got what she wanted, she wanted me to coerce one fo the kids to do what she wanted 🙄just like she did to my sister and me growing up. It’s messed up, but I am so at my limit I just needed the calls to stop.

[saraha]

10 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

Let her call the police. They get paid to deal with such things.

Consider this liked.

I don’t care if she calls the police, she doesn’t actually know where he lives so it wouldn’t come to anything. She freaked out when she didn’t get what she wanted and calling the police is the ultimate threat I guess?

[Katy]

"Go ahead mom, call the police.  They may take you to the hospital for a neurological exam.  It seems like you might need one."

[prairiewindmomma]

Give serious thought as to whether you want to accept something from her ever again. This is a pattern she has—she offers a physical thing (towels, guitar, icecream) and then uses that “favor” to emotionally abuse you. 

[kathyl]

Good grief, that's a lot of phone calls.  I'd be tempted to just block her.  

Yeah, I wouldn't be taking anything from her.  It's the bait.

You must be so exhausted dealing with her.  

 

[saraha]

18 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Give serious thought as to whether you want to accept something from her ever again. This is a pattern she has—she offers a physical thing (towels, guitar, icecream) and then uses that “favor” to emotionally abuse you. 

I know, the ones living in my house know not to accept anything. But I can’t control calls between her and ds23. Dh said give it a while and then tell ds23 not to accept anything that involves involving me somehow. Which might actually work because we all know she won’t send anything through the mail. She doesn’t trust the post office… because they somehow didn’t get her late payments where they needed to go before they were due…
But I don’t know how to mitigate her leaving a message and then expecting someone to thank her for leaving a message.

Edited August 24, 2023 by saraha

[prairiewindmomma]

“Mom, is there a reason you are stirring up trouble?”

[Rosie_0801]

7 minutes ago, saraha said:

But I don’t know how to mitigate her leaving a message and then expecting someone to thank her for leaving a message.

You can't manage her expectations, so be like your kids and don't care.

[saraha]

Just now, prairiewindmomma said:

“Mom, is there a reason you are stirring up trouble?”

A few weeks ago she called me 6 times in three days to talk about “end of my life since life expectancy in my family is 72” and it finally stopped when I asked if I needed to be in contact with her doctor because it sounds like there is something I need to know since her parents and her sisters all lived into there 80s, not 72, and while she was at it, could I have the number of her lawyer to make sure her end of life plans were actually actionable. 😆

[saraha]

2 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

You can't manage her expectations, so be like your kids and don't care.

But if I ignore her, she just keeps freaking calling. It sounds weird, but at the end of the day, she is my mother, and I do feel some sort of obligation and I want to shield my kids from her worst 

[easypeasy]

We gatekeep for our kids too. They get a heads up from us when it's "safe" to answer a grandma call. It's exhausting. I commiserate with you.

[Rosie_0801]

2 hours ago, saraha said:

But if I ignore her, she just keeps freaking calling. It sounds weird, but at the end of the day, she is my mother, and I do feel some sort of obligation and I want to shield my kids from her worst 

They know how to deal with her, don't they?

[Shoeless]

4 hours ago, saraha said:

But if I ignore her, she just keeps freaking calling. It sounds weird, but at the end of the day, she is my mother, and I do feel some sort of obligation and I want to shield my kids from her worst 

Have you heard the phrase "extinction burst"? 

If you ignore her, she'll ramp up the calls, maybe show up at your home, call the cops, and generally escalate the drama until she either gets a response from you OR she exhausts herself and finds a new person to hassle. 

If you hold the line, narcs will usually go away but they will raise all hell on the way out the door. 

[Mrs Tiggywinkle Again]

My grandmother is not a narcissist, but she has displayed similar behavior in the past.  In her case she’s almost certainly on the autism spectrum and has spent her life perseverating over things.  She would absolutely get stuck in a phone call loop because someone didn’t return a message and her mind needed that to break the perseveration over whatever it is she wanted to talk to the person about. Unfortunately this did cost her friendships over the years and I see it now in my own ASD child.

Frankly, I just wouldn’t pick up more than once a day and let it go to voicemail. And when I did pick up, it would be in the morning and I would stress that I was going to have yet another very busy day like all of my days and if she called again it would go to VM.  If it helped in this particular case, I’d also say, I will be available tomorrow morning from 9-9:15 to return any phone calls. 
 

I don’t know enough about narcissistic behavior so completely ignore my advice if that makes it worse. Unfortunately I know a great deal about perseveration.

[Danae]

I think you might benefit from doing some more work on disengaging your emotions from her issues.  I get that that’s hard, because she’s your mom and she’s had a lifetime to train you that what she does and says is a big deal that requires action from you, but really it’s not.

You’re all in a flutter here because . . . someone made a bunch of phone calls.  
 

This is not worth the emotional energy you’re giving it.  Shrug it off, let the calls go to voice mail, and practice not giving a sh— that she’s upset.

[Indigo Blue]

Saraha, my mom has a history of going through me to get messages/calls made to other people. Once she was upset that my grown son did not hug her when he left, and she waited until we were a few miles away before texting ME to tell me about it. I asked her why didn’t she try to hug HIM when she saw that he was just going to walk past. She said well, he’s supposed to hug ME. Okay. Well, I thought, now I am supposed to do something about that? 
 

Lots of times she hasn’t been able to get one of us on the phone, and will call other people, upset, because she thinks something is wrong and no one called her. 
 

She will call my husband at work if I don’t answer my phone. She’ll say, “Why doesn’t anybody answer their phone?” Or “I can’t get (my name) to answer her phone!🤬”

 

On the other hand, if I can’t get through to her, a lot of times it has turned out to be because she was on the phone with someone else. Or even standing out in her yard talking to a neighbor but not answering if I call. She sees me calling but chooses to ignore it. That’s fine, I guess, but it’s just that she expects different from me. Personally, if one of my sons call, they take precedence over anyone. I will end any call (unless it’s an emergency) to take their call. My mom often makes me feel like our conversations are just not as important as whomever she is talking to.  She will drop my call like a hot potato if anyone else calls while we are talking, but will be annoyed that I don’t answer when she calls. 
 

She doesn’t do things like your mom where she gives things away and goes crazy waiting for a follow up thank you phone call, but there are some similarities there. 
 

 

Edited August 24, 2023 by Indigo Blue

[happi duck]

I had a loved one who would get stuck.  I told them they were welcome to fill up my answering machine but I would not pick up during the day.  I'd call back in the evening.  Another person*never* took their calls and immediately threw out letters unopened.

You can't keep thinking that it's better and you can ease up.  Imo, ime, pick a lane and stick to it.

With this same person I said no to everything they wanted to give me.  Another person in their life chose to say yes to everything and immediately stop at the dumpster or thrift store depending on condition.

My person was very concerned with getting everything to the "right" person or place.  They would get very focused/obsessed.  One person saying "oh, that's neat" or "wow!  I can have this?" would cement that they needed to handle stuff perfectly and it caused great anxiety and seemed to become the MOST IMPORTANT THING

(hugs)

[Ginevra]

I know your mom has a long history of narcissistic behavior, so I’m not discounting that, but I feel what you’re demonstrating is paranoia. It makes me wonder if your mom has a neurological component to her bonkers behavior.  I wonder if that lens might be more helpful for you than the other. 
 

Im sorry you’re being run ragged by craziness.