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How can I handle my critical mother?

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Question - (28 August 2011) 3 Answers - (Newest, 30 August 2011)
A female United States age 30-35, anonymous writes:

For the past years, I have lived with the criticisms my mother threw at me, but it seems I can't deal with it anymore. So I really need advice from you today.

Today, my mother started to complain about me when I had just woken up! I woke up from a good dream to my mom insulting me in the face. She yelled at me "I don't want you here!" "You've got it easy." And she would mockingly say, "You're living like a princess." She said a lot more hurtful things, but I tend to shut my ears to them. It seems she wants me to leave the house, so I can suffer like she did when she was my age. At my age she got pregnant with me and was kicked out of the house...

She also never congratulate me on ANY accomplishments I have achieved with strenuous hard work. Like my full scholarship with my dream college, award best in art, awarded for an art contest. Anything! She would just look at me and simply say "That's good" and walk away!

And when I asked her boyfriend why she acts that way, he told me she was jealous. And I thought mothers were supposed to give their children the best possible future so they can live better than them. And last night, she cussed at me! She said the "f" word at me...

Anyway, thanks for reading this, I really hope someone can give me advice as to how to get through this...

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A female reader, chocoholicforever United States +, writes (30 August 2011):

your mom is verbally and emotionally abusive. You should simply remove yourself from the situation, limit your contact with her. Do not engage with her when she's like this. Do not fight back, don't argue back, don't defend yourself against her criticisms, don't try to reason with her, don't try to appease her. Just simply disengage by leaving the room.

By doing so you're doing two things: first is you're protecting your own personal boundaries from her assaults. there's nothing wrong with that. In fact if you don't protect yourself this way, her verbal abuse will take its toll and start to erode your self esteem or at the very least it would put you on constant edginess which overloads your immune system and makes you tired, edgy with other people as well, and a host of other negative side effects. Abuse really messes up people and it does so in very insiduous ways where it happens so gradually you're barely aware of it. Only other people may eventually notice when they interact with you that you've become a negative, jumpy, oversensitive, anxious person. So you need to protect yourself from her verbal and emotional abuse by simply removing yourself from it.

second. If you remove yourself from her presence whenever she does this, it's sending her a consistent clear message that her behavior is unacceptable. Because it really is. what she chooses to do with that information is up to her. She may eventually be motivated to change herself and become a more pleasant and self-controlled person and if so, then that's great, it means the mother-daughter relationship would be improved. If she never changes, well, at least you won't be making her even worse than she is now. Because the reason she does this is because she has her own personal issues that she's acting out and you're the victim or target. If you engage with her, it doesn't solve her issues or make them go away, it just reinforces them so she'll get even worse over time.

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A male reader, HelpyMcHelperson United Kingdom +, writes (29 August 2011):

It sounds like your mother has made your home a place that you can't really live in.

I think you should stand up to her but that may be difficult while you still have to live with her.

Do you have anyone else that you can stay with? If so ask if you can stay with them for a few days and while you are out of the chance meet your mother at a neutral location and tell how you feel.

If she still doesn't change make the move permanent, there is no need to put yourself through that by staying.

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A female reader, rile962 United States +, writes (29 August 2011):

http://www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/ Check out this website and see if anything seems familiar. And read all of this, too: http://parrishmiller.com/narcissists.html. If this seems to describe your mother, please seek help because you do NOT have to suffer this type of abuse. Best wishes to you!

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