Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I am glad I searched for this.
My mom has bipolar disorder. She was formally diagnosed way before I was born, but has been on and off her medication so many times that the severity of her disorder is off the charts. I am 24 years old and have been struggling with handling her illness.
I have a BA in psychology, and I am fully aware that her illness does not define her and she can not be fully to blame for her actions, especially those that occurred during my childhood. While I do forgive her to some extent, I have lost my ability to respect her... a trait she desperately wants from me.
I am now married with a beautiful 16 month old boy who my mom adores. It actually helped rekindle my relationship with my mom and she has been a wonderful and loving grandma do my child. However, I recently had to deny her the right to watch him overnight because she was deeply manic. My husband and I have agreed that our son's safety is more important that hurting her feelings and so as nicely as I could, I explained to her I simply cannot allow her to watch him unsupervised while manic.
This sent her over the edge. She sent my husband and me a detailed text message at 3 in the morning chewing us out for our lack of respect and trust and that because we made it clear we do not want her in our lives, she is kicking us out of hers. She was horrible in her word choice and made it clear to never speak to her again.
My family has told me to wait until she calls me but it has been over a week. As angry as I am at her for acting the way she did (I won't go into detail, but it consisted of her being totally inappropriate in public and making crude, hurtful, and flat out crazy statements to me and my husband while we were out to dinner with her and my dad), I don't want to cut her out of my life. More importantly, I don't want to cut her out of my son's life.
I know she will never consistently take her medication. She takes it for 5 weeks tops and then dumps it. Because I know this, I know she will never be completely stable. She is a LOT better than what she was when I was a child... but she has her cycles. She goes to an incompetent and out of touch psychiatrist who I have been at odds with for years, but he allows her to go on and off her meds as if it is nothing. So she stays with him. My dad, being the unconditional lover to my mom, comes to her defense as well as her "therapist" every time. It tears me apart.
Should I just cut my losses and realize my little family is better of without her? I know my husband is more than sick of her and is ready to cut that cord. The patience he has given her is quite amazing. I want to do what is best for me, my husband, and my son. Am I guilty of having a hopeless dream that things will ever get better when I know my mom's history and inability to stay on her medication? If I tell her she has to stay on it in order to see my son, she will just lie to me and tell me she is on it when she really isn't. I know this because she has done it before. I just... I just hate this so much. My husband's mom passed away 4 years ago from cancer. I had such a loving and deep relationship with my grandma that I want my son to have a loving and deep relationship with his only grandma. I just don't know if it is possible or not.
I am glad I searched for this.
My mom has bipolar disorder. She was formally diagnosed way before I was born, but has been on and off her medication so many times that the severity of her disorder is off the charts. I am 24 years old and have been struggling with handling her illness.
I have a BA in psychology, and I am fully aware that her illness does not define her and she can not be fully to blame for her actions, especially those that occurred during my childhood. While I do forgive her to some extent, I have lost my ability to respect her... a trait she desperately wants from me.
I am now married with a beautiful 16 month old boy who my mom adores. It actually helped rekindle my relationship with my mom and she has been a wonderful and loving grandma do my child. However, I recently had to deny her the right to watch him overnight because she was deeply manic. My husband and I have agreed that our son's safety is more important that hurting her feelings and so as nicely as I could, I explained to her I simply cannot allow her to watch him unsupervised while manic.
This sent her over the edge. She sent my husband and me a detailed text message at 3 in the morning chewing us out for our lack of respect and trust and that because we made it clear we do not want her in our lives, she is kicking us out of hers. She was horrible in her word choice and made it clear to never speak to her again.
My family has told me to wait until she calls me but it has been over a week. As angry as I am at her for acting the way she did (I won't go into detail, but it consisted of her being totally inappropriate in public and making crude, hurtful, and flat out crazy statements to me and my husband while we were out to dinner with her and my dad), I don't want to cut her out of my life. More importantly, I don't want to cut her out of my son's life.
I know she will never consistently take her medication. She takes it for 5 weeks tops and then dumps it. Because I know this, I know she will never be completely stable. She is a LOT better than what she was when I was a child... but she has her cycles. She goes to an incompetent and out of touch psychiatrist who I have been at odds with for years, but he allows her to go on and off her meds as if it is nothing. So she stays with him. My dad, being the unconditional lover to my mom, comes to her defense as well as her "therapist" every time. It tears me apart.
Should I just cut my losses and realize my little family is better of without her? I know my husband is more than sick of her and is ready to cut that cord. The patience he has given her is quite amazing. I want to do what is best for me, my husband, and my son. Am I guilty of having a hopeless dream that things will ever get better when I know my mom's history and inability to stay on her medication? If I tell her she has to stay on it in order to see my son, she will just lie to me and tell me she is on it when she really isn't. I know this because she has done it before. I just... I just hate this so much. My husband's mom passed away 4 years ago from cancer. I had such a loving and deep relationship with my grandma that I want my son to have a loving and deep relationship with his only grandma. I just don't know if it is possible or not.
I don't think you should cut her out of your life, but you KNOW that you have to have boundaries, in order to protect your own family. She's sick. She won't stay on her meds. She is predictably unpredictable. You know this. Because of her disorder, she is spontaneous and dramatic. I'd still call her, let her know you love her and that you want her to be a part of your's and your son's life, but that you know how difficult it can be at times for her to make appropriate choices. That said, you would be being a terribly irresponsible, negligent parent to leave your son in her care. Is she going to like it? Of course not. That....is not YOUR problem.
I am glad I searched for this.
My mom has bipolar disorder. She was formally diagnosed way before I was born, but has been on and off her medication so many times that the severity of her disorder is off the charts. I am 24 years old and have been struggling with handling her illness.
I have a BA in psychology, and I am fully aware that her illness does not define her and she can not be fully to blame for her actions, especially those that occurred during my childhood. While I do forgive her to some extent, I have lost my ability to respect her... a trait she desperately wants from me.
I am now married with a beautiful 16 month old boy who my mom adores. It actually helped rekindle my relationship with my mom and she has been a wonderful and loving grandma do my child. However, I recently had to deny her the right to watch him overnight because she was deeply manic. My husband and I have agreed that our son's safety is more important that hurting her feelings and so as nicely as I could, I explained to her I simply cannot allow her to watch him unsupervised while manic.
This sent her over the edge. She sent my husband and me a detailed text message at 3 in the morning chewing us out for our lack of respect and trust and that because we made it clear we do not want her in our lives, she is kicking us out of hers. She was horrible in her word choice and made it clear to never speak to her again.
My family has told me to wait until she calls me but it has been over a week. As angry as I am at her for acting the way she did (I won't go into detail, but it consisted of her being totally inappropriate in public and making crude, hurtful, and flat out crazy statements to me and my husband while we were out to dinner with her and my dad), I don't want to cut her out of my life. More importantly, I don't want to cut her out of my son's life.
I know she will never consistently take her medication. She takes it for 5 weeks tops and then dumps it. Because I know this, I know she will never be completely stable. She is a LOT better than what she was when I was a child... but she has her cycles. She goes to an incompetent and out of touch psychiatrist who I have been at odds with for years, but he allows her to go on and off her meds as if it is nothing. So she stays with him. My dad, being the unconditional lover to my mom, comes to her defense as well as her "therapist" every time. It tears me apart.
Should I just cut my losses and realize my little family is better of without her? I know my husband is more than sick of her and is ready to cut that cord. The patience he has given her is quite amazing. I want to do what is best for me, my husband, and my son. Am I guilty of having a hopeless dream that things will ever get better when I know my mom's history and inability to stay on her medication? If I tell her she has to stay on it in order to see my son, she will just lie to me and tell me she is on it when she really isn't. I know this because she has done it before. I just... I just hate this so much. My husband's mom passed away 4 years ago from cancer. I had such a loving and deep relationship with my grandma that I want my son to have a loving and deep relationship with his only grandma. I just don't know if it is possible or not.
This is an older thread with many posts, you may get more responses posting new.
Realistically, shes on a roller coaster with her meds and never stable long enough to be trusted unsupervised. You'll have to stick to your decision in his best interest.
The psychiatrist can't monitor your mother and force medications unless shes hospitalized. If her grandson isn't important enough for her to take her medication, its on her.
The connection is possible, but there will always be challenges. Maybe you can talk privately with you dad, about the medication concerns. He may come to her defense out of fear of her. He has to live with the disorder, its ups and downs everyday.
I am 40 years of age and my father is schizophrenic. In fact, he has two sisters that suffer with mental illness. My father has lived on the streets off and on for the last 28 years. I recently went to talk to him and he actually decided to come with me to my house. There were times he would totally ignore me when I have tried to help him. It's very hard to see my dad like this because he was a great dad. I hear him in the room holding a full conversation and it's hard. I thank God for the small things but I want to truly help him. I feel he has wasted his entire life to this disease. He self medicates with cigarettes and beer. He finally says he wants a place to live. It's not like he doesn't have money he has money in the bank. Yet he chose to live like a bum. I just feel so sorry for him because he was a great person. I just want want my dad back and I don't want to betray him and force him into the hospital.
The funny thing is, when you have crazy parents, you KNOW, at a very young age, your parents are not normal. I knew by age 5. You distance yourself from their drama, as much as you can, and just try to stay quiet, because you never know what will set them off. You don't get a lot of guidance or opportunity for self development, you just try to survive, and stay under the radar.
I left both of my crazy parents when I was ten. My Dad could never get his life together after Vietnam. My Mom, she was Borderline PD, OCD, I suspect she was abused. She can't maintain a relationship with anyone, or even hold down a job for very long. She is highly educated, just messed up. I lived with my Grandparents, and just tried to not bother anyone. I worked full time when I was 15, so I would never be home. Work or school.
I still have to deal with my crazy Mom. She is not normal. I just keep hoping she will be. Wrong. Not gonna happen.
My dad has been diagnosed bipolar and schizophrenic. Not good times. I've had to deal with his breakdowns from a young age and when he has them he becomes so incredibly dangerous. When I was 9, I remember being woken up in the middle of the night with him screaming how he's gonna burn in hell and how we all are going to burn in hell. That was the first time I had seen him go to the hospital. His last breakdown he pulled knives on people. He is mentally and physically abusive even when he isn't having a breakdown. I was forced to have to deal with him as a child, because, well I was a child. Now as an adult I don't have much contact with him at all. I pretty much washed my hands of him. I know it sounds selfish but I have a lot on my plate and don't have time to deal with his crazy. I have no clue what will happen to him when he gets older. All I know is that I'm not taking care of him.
My mom, who died at 66, was schizophrenic, with paranoia and delusions of grandeur. The whole package. My childhood was a nightmare with being shuffled around whenever she was hospitalized. Even in her last days, she had no relief - selfishly I always thought maybe once we could sit down and have a real conversation but I never did. She spent her life going from one med to another, and when she started feeling better, going off the meds, then the roller coaster of withdrawal, hospitalization, moving, etc. It pretty well sucked. So I was born in the 60's and back then everyone thought that drugs couldn't pass the barrier from mother to baby. I know she must have been medicated when pregnant with me and wonder what that did to my brain. Imagine, everything talks about crack babies and some of us were probably the equivalent - with psychotropic drugs. I have problems with anxiety and depression. But meds that the doctor prescribes for the depression don't work for long, I go up on the dosage till I max out and then we try a new one until I max out on that. I can take amounts of medications that put other people in bed and incapable of movement. So, that's all pretty blunt but I'm wondering if any other people my age or younger have had problems with depression, anxiety, I should add social skills too, and if their mom was medicated while pregnant and what experiences like this they have had. I'd hate for anyone to deal with this, but I suspect it is probably a buried secret of the mental health system.
I have...and I need to tell this story in the hopes that someone who understands this disease will tell me its ok to divorce your parents...
My Grandmother was and my mother is bipolar. She wasn't officially diagnosed until she was in her 60's, when she shot her third husband. I've known from my earliest memory that there was "something" wrong with both of them. My birth father and my Grandfather both handled it by drinking. I grew up believing that I couldn't have an opinion of my own...only they had the right answers. They wouldn't let me choose who I could play with and when I did have friends I was told that the only reason I had them is because of how wonderful my Mother was and being a Camp Fire Girl Leader to all my friends and It was the only reason they were friends with me. When I was 13 my Mother finally kicked my Father out of the house...their marriage was insane...and being the oldest I was the one who saw everything and broke up fights between them on a regular basis from the time I was about six years old. I felt relief when he left. But then it was game time for Mom...different men, leaving my little sister (five years younger than me) and I alone to fend for ourselves...at least I had my Grandpa up the street that I could count of most of the time...
Then she met the man who became my stepdad. He had the ability to keep her somewhat stable but the two of them decided that they wanted to move to Canada. I came home from camp that summer, excited about going to high school as a freshman with all my girlfriends, and our house that I lived in my entire life was boxed up with "Canada or bust" written on the boxes. My entire life with all my supports of friends and other family were gone. I told her I wasn't going and she slapped me until I stopped crying...(this was her way of dealing with me) and I went numb. They took my sister and I over the boarder with forged documents. They changed my name, told me I couldn't tell anyone where I was from and that I couldn't have any contacts with my friends that I had known since playschool. My mother kept telling my sister and I that nobody in the US ever liked us anyway and why would I want to go back there? I didn't see my birth father again until I was thirty-two years old. I stayed numb for over 30 years....married the boy they liked, had two girls who I sheltered from their Grandma as best I could...I would never let her babysit, or spend any time with them alone...I married an alcoholic "jack mormon" that my step-father loved. When I finally got brave enough and my children were grown up and gone I finally left him. I was married to him for almost 30 years. I supported my mother through my step-fathers cancer and his death, I supported her when, once he was gone, she went manic again an married and gay man that she "turned into a straight guy" and ended up shooting him. She was charged with Attempted Murder and because of her superb acting skills and a very expensive lawyer, dropped the charges to misuse of a firearm. The first thing she said to me after the shooting was, "Well, Honey, I missed. I was aiming for his head and I got I the shoulder with a 4/10 shotgun." Then, she answered an ad in the newspaper and got herself, according to her "the perfect man". He's 10 years younger than her, deaf and legally blind....not to mention an IQ of about 80...she went back to school to become a registered social worker! That was my profession for many years...she has always been very competative with me. With men, with careers, with mothering, everything...To this day , she feels that there is really nothing wrong with her...and she has the degree to prove it now! To the outside world this woman presents herself as a very smart, well-read person, but to those of us who really know, its a nightmare!
Now I have a life of my own and she hates it. She told my daughter that she liked me much better when I was with my first husband and she hates the man I am going to marry in August. When my daughter told me this I was stunned, but not really surprised...she has no control over me and she doesn't like that...I told her it was best if we just didn't talk for a while....she has told me she never wanted to talk to me again if I was going to marry that man... (he's a Psych nurse) I told her it was her choice, and of course she said it was my choice not hers...
My sister hasn't talked to her in over 14 years so there is no help there...she is now 75 years old and I believe on top of the bipolar, that she may have some Alzheimers symptoms as well. In order for me to finally have a life of my own, (what's left of it) I need to disconnect in order to survive...I'm 57 years old! I've been in therapy and thought I got through most of this crap...but last night I found myself crying for that poor little girl who was taken away from family and friends all because of my Mother's illness. I was strong enough to tell her I couldn't talk to her anymore but I"m still feeling the dread that comes over me when I've done something wrong...Have I? I want to be able to feel good about divorcing her...she was horribly abusive my whole life and still continues to manipulate me, and yet I feel guilty about telling her my feelings...and my decision to not talk to her anymore...HELP!!!
My mother has paranoid schizophrenia. It can be exhausting in dealing with her at times. I was lucky enough to be raised by my father and he had shielded me from the worst of her illness. Throughout most of my life she was a caring mother and was stable although I can remember one really bad fight between them when my mom had to go to the hospital. My father passed away very suddenly of a stroke last year and it's just been myself and my stepmom. My mother was evicted from her apartment and is homeless and not taking her medication. I do love my mom and worry about her a lot. I miss the person she used to be. I don't know if I can cut ties with her completely seeing as she's the only blood family that I have left. We communicate through email and she gets an SSI check and bounces from hotel room to hotel room. Sometimes I feel really alone and depressed. I'm only twenty one and I feel like there is no one I can turn too.
My Father was diagnosed as an OCD Paranoid Schezophrenic with a severe manic depressive disorder when I was 12. I am now in my late thirties. His illness ultimate lead to my parents divorce and the destruction of our original family. Since my mother had become emotionally exhausted with dealing with His illness, I became his ally at age 12 and was his primary source of family love through all these years. There are NO words that can describe how I managed to to cope.. My only answer is that if God gives life long trials like these, he also gives the grace and strength to endure them. So very difficult to deal with and Iv always felt I was all alone in this trial. Now I am an adult and my dad is still a mess.... I have kids of my own and the hardest part is limited my kids from visiting their grandfather and keeping a healthy boundary from the drama
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
