Why I Refuse To Be My Mother’s Caregiver

I refuse to be my mother’s caregiver.

There, I’ve said it.

It might be a shocking idea, as we’re taught to love and honor our parents. There’s also this assumption that we will step up and be caregivers. Who else is going to do it? For that matter, I’m a Christian woman and I love my mother dearly. Those aspects also suggest I should be a caregiver.

Yet, I’m not going to.

My mother also wasn’t abusive. Not in the conventional sense. She also did her best for me every step of the way, and I believe she truly cares for me.

But, I still won’t be her caregiver. Not in big ways. Not even in little ones.

To explain why I need to tell you some of our story.

Growing Up in an Unwinnable Setup

I used to imagine that there were rules. Irrational ones, perhaps, but some set of guidelines that I could follow and make her happy.

For as long as I can remember, I looked for patterns. For hints.

I tried to work out the common factors in what made her upset, so that I could avoid the trigger points in the future.

It wasn’t enough to do what she said she wanted and not what she said she didn’t.

That would never have worked. I was meant to be able to do more than that.

She found it insulting, really, that I didn’t know what she wanted and needed. How could I not know? It was obvious. Should be obvious, because everything she felt and wanted was normal.

She was the same as everyone else. I was the one who didn’t get it.

I remember so much stress and fear when she came home from work each day. What was I meant to do? Engage or not engage? Should I help with dinner or should I give her space? Should I busy around and help with everything I could think of, hide in my room so she has quiet, or somewhere in between?

The answers were different every time.

It was the same in other parts of our life.

I was certain there had to be a pattern. Some way for me to know what was wanted.

After all, she thought I should know. She was the adult and I was the child. I had to be the one who was getting it wrong. Right?

I believed that story for a long time.

How could I not? We learn our reality from our parents. They teach us how to interpret the world around us.

My mother unintentionally groomed me to distrust myself and to trust other people, even when what they do and say makes no sense at all.

Here’s the thing though.

There never was a set of rules. It took me decades to understand that, but it’s true.

I don’t think I’ll ever truly understand her. Nor do I need to.

What I’ve learned has given me ways forward and enough insight to know when to engage and when not to.

So, what I know is this…

Her Relationship with Emotions

She doesn’t do well with emotions, particularly those of other people.

I read a series of books on emotionally immature parents. Much of what was said in those books fit her extremely well. So too did the counterbalancing reactions in myself.

It’s like she finds emotions confusing.

She doesn’t know what to do when other people are struggling and doesn’t seem to think she should have to help at all. Most of the time, she’ll shut emotional conversations down. She’ll say nothing or change the topic if she doesn’t like how a conversation makes her feel.

I suspect she also strongly identifies with whatever she’s feeling in the moment.

So, those emotions and the stories they tell are true to her, even if they’re very different than what was true yesterday.

That was incredibly confusing as a kid.

It’s still hurtful as an adult. I have to regularly remind myself not to go to her for emotional support. I forget sometimes though, which can feel like a punch in the gut when I’m struggling.  

She Emotionally Externalizes

Some people externalize practically, where they see the problems they face as being someone else’s fault. This often means they also see the solution as out of their hands. My mother tends to be pragmatic about problems (something I learned from her). She looks for solutions and has little doubt that things can be solved.

Emotionally though, she seems to externalize in a big way.

This is a big point of difference between us.

She tends to see her emotions as being caused by other people – i.e. you made me feel sad. You made me angry. 

So, if she had an extreme emotional reaction to something I did, she wouldn’t stop to wonder at why she felt that way, she’d immediately jump to being angry at me.

I think that happened a lot when I was a kid.

Externalizing emotions also means that she looks to others to fix what she feels.

That’s tough for everyone involved, as we all only have control over our own emotional state.

I know she is aware of this area to some degree and has been working on it. I had to go through similar work myself, although it was probably easier for me, as I did so in my early 30s, while she’s approaching the work later in life.

Mind Blindness

The other aspect is some form of mind blindness. Essentially, she has a difficult time understanding and accepting that other people can think differently and can have different values.

Even when she recognizes that this is the case, she maintains a strong mental construct of how things should be, of what’s right and what’s wrong, with very little room for flexibility.

It’s a little like having a set in stone view that sex should only ever be between a married couple – and judging anyone who does things differently. Except… that she has similar strong beliefs for countless things, including many that are completely trivial or irrelevant to her (like whether someone reads or watches TV, how they dress, how they move, the amount of noise they make).

She’s learned to not vocalize what she feels so often.

I’m grateful for that.

She no longer feels the need to tell people we’re sitting with that their rotting their brains out by enjoying reality television or get mad at me because I’m working indoors when it’s sunny outside.

I suspect the judgments are still there though.

Sometimes, I see evidence of that in her body language or in what others tell me.  

What This Means In Practice

How mom is has taken many forms throughout my life. She has gradually improved in many of these areas, but traces of the challenges still remain.

The most notable are these:

She’s always right

When I was a child, I suspect she took this one literally.

I think she truly believed that she was right in every situation.

She says this often, even now, but I don’t think she believes it in the same way. She’s more willing to admit her errors these days and to backtrack. She’s even willing to grow and learn.

Some of our conversations have involved her wanting to see the other side of a situation.

It seems like she still struggles to understand other perspectives (perhaps even more than she’s letting on), but at least she’s interested. That’s a start.

There’s always something

I realized some years ago that pleasing my mother is literally impossible.

For one thing, her satisfaction is based on her emotional state, not what I do.

I think when I was younger, there was a type of a need to find problems as well. Something about creating drama may have made her feel better. Perhaps doing so gave her a sense of control over her own emotions and situation.

Thankfully, this one has got much better over the years.

I really don’t understand it.

Perhaps I don’t need to either.

She struggles with me

Finally, she seems to find me difficult.

When I was a child, she was much more critical of me than of my brother, a perspective that other people have confirmed. My best guess is that I remind her of herself or of some other woman – and her reactions are based on that person, not me.

This isn’t an uncommon pattern anyway.

Many adult children find that as well, where one sibling was essentially the golden child, while another could do nothing right. Interestingly, it’s often the sibling that tries the hardest that is liked the least.

Adult me is hard for her in different ways.

In the last five years or so, I’ve stopped trying to live up to the version of me she wanted. That has included changing how I dress, my hobbies, and many other things.

It must be challenging and confusing for her. I know she loves me, yet some of who I am and what I love may feel ‘wrong’ to her.

She’s trying to be supportive.

She doesn’t really succeed, but has succeeded in not being overtly judgmental. And, honestly, that’s a pretty big deal in itself.

This is what I need to remember and need to come back to. She does the best she can. She can learn and she can grow in some areas, but doing so isn’t always straightforward.

The Good Bits

Don’t get me wrong.

There are many good things with my mother too.

Sometimes, especially these days, I even forget the challenging bits for a while (at least, until emotional stuff comes up). We talk well, have some of the same interests, and meet regularly.

I do care for her, deeply.

It’s Not Her Fault

I suspect my mother has a mental health condition. Perhaps Asperger’s (which is now considered a form of autism spectrum disorder) or perhaps something else.

I don’t think she is narcissistic.

The traits are similar at times, but from my life and our conversations, I truly believe that my mother loves me and does her best to support me.

Sometimes she’s just not very good at it.

I don’t blame her.

I’ve been through a huge journey with that one, starting with blaming myself, then her, then no one.

It’s not her fault though. She can’t help the way her mind works or how she was raised. I’m guessing that she was never supported emotionally either and never learned how to work with emotions.

This happens in families.

The struggles with one generation pass down to the next and the next.

Our Current Relationship

Her and I do better these days.

We’re both working on it.

I’ve learned to accept the limitations of what she’s able to do and understand, along with what she can’t.

She’s learned how, and when, to hold her tongue with me – and rarely criticizes me.

We’ve talked about some of the past, but only at the surface level. I haven’t broached the idea of mind blindness with her yet, and I may never do so.

I know she still disapproves of me and criticizes aspects of my behavior and decisions behind my back. I don’t think she does it often or with many people. Perhaps she has the need to get that disapproval out there, in some form or another.

Why I Refuse To Be My Mother’s Caregiver

Let’s return to the original point – I won’t ever be my mother’s caregiver. My mother loves me. She did the best she could for me and continues to do so.

But, being her caregiver would destroy us both and our relationship.

She’s still not good with emotions. She still has the tendency to expect other people to fix how she feels and to judge quickly.

She manages fine with me in short bursts, but it wouldn’t be sustainable if we lived together – or even if I saw her for an hour each day. It would quickly get back to the dynamic of nothing I do being good enough.

That’s what happened last time we lived together, briefly, when I was in my late 20s.

It will happen again.

We avoid it now because we’re both doing our best and because we meet when we’re doing well. Living together is an entirely different story.

Then there’s aging.

Personality difficulties often get worse with age, as people are scared and their whole world has changing. I can imagine this happening with mom, especially as she likes to have control. If aging takes away control over aspects of her body and her life, she might look for this control in other ways.

I refuse to be idealistic and say that it will all turn out well.

Many caregivers struggle with their aging parents, finding that their lives have become a living nightmare. I know myself and my mother well enough to see the writing on the wall.

So, I’m making this decision now.

We’re not obliged to be our parents’ caregivers anyway. There’s a social expectation, true, but there are plenty of reasons and situations where doing so isn’t the right move.

This doesn’t mean I’ll leave my mother to the wolves. If she truly struggles later in life, I’ll find ways to help her, ways to make sure she has what she needs. But, I won’t live with her and I won’t provide hands on care.