Dear  anonymous03:

I want to elaborate on what I wrote above: when your mother screams at you, she temporarily feels better, but she doesn’t feel better long term. Screaming is not helping her mental health; it makes her mental health worse. So if you stand up for yourself every time she screams at you,  you will not only be helping yourself, but you will possibly help her by taking away her .. addiction-to-screaming, which keeps her, and you, stuck.

When she talks to you in the depressive manner that she does, if you try to say things to make her feel better, it also keeps her stuck in her addiction-to-complaining to you in that depressive manner. When she complains, say nothing. That way, she may figure out a different way to deal with her depression.

It will be good not only for you, but for her, if you no longer respond in the same ways to her abusive and depressing  behaviors.

* But what is best for you, by far, no doubt, is to live far, far away from your mother.

anita

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by .