Does anyone have codependent parents?

Yeah, my Mom's like that. She has me prepare meals while she's at work and I offered to clean house, since I'm 31 and have been a Mom, so wanted to feel more like an adult since no one hired me for jobs, so I can live on my own. But now I wonder whether she would lift a finger anymore if I stopped. She also borrows money from my savings and pays me back, and says I could live in the basement if I were working and could pay rent. I learned in Al-Anon that this is codependency and enabling and I know it's not healthy, so I'm trying to get on my own again with school. We'll see what happens.

 

I don't know if this counts, I still live with my moms and while they are dependent on me financially I am dependent on them in other ways. I'm the only one in the house with a car and a license, a bank account, and a full time job. My mom can't drive anyway she's losing her eyesight and depends on her girlfriend for everything. I've tried talking about how they can pay the bills on their own and get their own account, car, etc so that I can finally live on my own but it always turns into an argument or how now is not a good time. I kinda feel trapped and like she doesn't want me to leave her.

 

Growing up my mother would try to take as much emotional energy and focus as she could as often as she could from everyone around her and would rage or sulk if she didn't get it. I remember as an infant having to console my mother like a parent would console a child (parentifcation.) Both of them would take every opportunity to bring down my confidence/self esteem. My mother is middle aged now but I don't think she got past about 13 mentally. If they had been emotionally supportive of me as a child/teen I probably would have had the fortitude to move out by now. They basically broke my will to live. They now speak to me as if I'm a child or someone with severe special needs (infantilisation.) I am a capable adult.

 

This describes my mother quite well. Its all about her - her needs, her convenience, her opinions. We no longer have family meals but we did growing up and every conversation that she had an opinion on would get turned into an arguement because her opinion absolutely had to be right. She expected us to be miniatures of her with no opinion, perspective, or will of our own, really. I'm a cashier at the moment and seeing kids with their mothers is both heartwarming and painful, because what would i have given to have a normal mother that didn't breathe down my neck over everything. I accompanied her to the store as a kid all the time and i hated it. I was always doing something wrong. Walking too closely or too far behind, not putting things on the belt fast enough, not stacking stuff on the belt properly, etc.

She's also always held me, simultaneously, in a friend role. She didn't have friends and even when she 'befriended' the youngest's friend's moms it was always a surface friendship. Instead of developing real friendships and valuing them she vented to me and i was just a kid, a teen, and yet she was venting to me about financial and marriage issues. She never wanted advice either it would always be shot down with some half assed reason or another, she just wanted a sounding board. She would also refuse to admit to doing anything bad afterwards to the point of acting upset that i would ever suggest she had done that.

As a child i thought it was all me. Literally, until i got my first job i never had a single good thing to say about myself because i never got complimented or told i did a good job at anything. It was all criticism. My only explanation is that instead of seeking the therapy she needed, she threw herself into the mother role that came to her as a surprise. Like her whole identity and worth came from being the best mother out there better than all the rest, and like she got her emotional worth, wellbeing, support from her children. She expected us to be all smiles and thanks and obedient and quick as she was just because of all the effort she put into and money she spent being a parent.

Whenever everything isn't going her way she goes into a tantrum - yelling, ranting/raging, cursing, etc. Picture the most stereotypical walmart or mcdonalds angry customer and that's my mom pretty much. Like literally she still tells this story of when i must've been like 3 cause i dont remember it. But supposedly i was misbehaving in the library and she threatened to spank me. Idk the details, i guess i must've asked her not to hit me or something. She's always vague on that part tbh, skipping to the part where she goes "I've never hit you!" and i go "yes you do". I can only assume my toddler mind did not understand the difference between a spanking and a hit nor the implications this would have in the middle of the library. But mom of course assumed and still does that i understood it perfectly, i was just mad at her. There's another time she literally made mishearing "Its adorable" as "Its horrible" over my sibling's baby monitor into a fight and grounded me cause she insisted i was lying. She ungrounded me when she finally figured it out tho. I was like 8. I swear look up Narcissistic or Borderline Personality Disorder cause either one suit my mom just fine.

I can empathize with the breaking of the will part. I got the worst of it cause my mom was going through a lot when she was pregnant with me on until when i started school. Family stuff and bad financial issues. I think if i had had a normal mother i would have turned out a lot happier. A lot more well rounded, and confident and stuff. I'd be moved out on my own with a career probably. Sometimes i honestly wonder if she would have been happier never having me. I mean knowing her even if she got her dream degree, job, house, husband, and kids she'd still find shit to complain endlessly about. But still. Cause of me she had to quit college and marry a man she only complains endlessly about now (he's not perfect but he's a great dad) and stuck doing a job she doesn't wanna do for the rest of her life. I feel like she blames the world for how her life turned out. She wont' even make friends either, she's always got a half dozen complaints about her so called friends and the whole time they're trying to chat it up with her i can tell she's got the 'i am being polite but i really just want you to leave so i can do what i planned to do or was already doing' look on her face. She'll say as much the moment they leave and go on complaining about lost time and listing their faults as mothers.

 

My dad is mentally a sulky child. My whole life my siblings and I would be teased belittled and called names by him. His idea of a joke is to tell me I was born because the chemist was closed. He makes sure to tell me how useless I am and delights in tormenting my dog. He makes weird noises like Donald Duck even when alone in the room. He's going deaf and asks what until you have to shout to be heard and then says don't shout at me. He's also jealous of me. We live up a mountain and if I want to go to a certain shop and you mother agrees to take me my dad goes oh whatever SHE wants. I wish he would grow up and be less dependent on my mother.

 

I still have a codependency issue with my mum, both financial and emotional, and I'm really ashamed of it. Especially because I'm 31 and I would like to be completely independent from anyone. I'm pretty sure that this ruining my life and the perception of myself and I cannot stand to feel like this anymore. We've always been very close since I was born and we've developed this strong bond between each other that now is becoming very unhealthy for me.
I hate the fact that I'm completely dependent on her emotions, if she's happy I'm happy too but if she seems disappointed or angry I start feeling guilty and unworthy and this change my mood for the all day at least. It has always been like this but now I'm really tired of it, just I don't know what to do.

I've never talked about this with anyone and to be honest I don't even know if there is a way to address this situation and how.

 

I feel the Exact same way! Ivm still to attached to my mother emotionally. While for the most part, she's been a good mother, or at least tried her best, the things that irk me, etc, push my buttons way too much because I am very dependant on her, which I hate. She's been using more aggressive wordings and phrasing of things (alot different than before) to keep me like a 12 year old, she talks to me with the literal tone a typical mother tells her 12 year old what chores need to be done, orders me not to casually curse (which never bothered her before, she really seems to be finding new things to be able yo use this matriarchal tone of voice and wording.) And my last therapist wasn't helping at all because she was biased moreso towards understanding my mother more than me (and was oblivious that she was being biased), and I gathered that from many things throughout my time working with her, not just this situation. But to get back on track again, whenever I start showing signs that I'm becoming more independent, she literally, one right after another, shoots out all these criticisms of me like spitfire, tells me to do things(and ivm not just talking friendly advice or suggestions, I mean she's ordering to do things), and I don't live with her anymore or anything. And I haven't lived with her for years, I can understand her having empty nest syndrome right after I move out, but this is ridiculous and does take a big toll on me mentally.

 

DirectionNorth, have you ever tried to talk to her about your needs? It seems that she needs the therapist much more than you..
Actually I don't live with mine anymore too but financially I'm still depending on her and for me is unbearable. I think that she wants me to be more independent but at the same time she knows that if I'll be more independent I might decide to stay in this country and don't come back home for a long time. And honestly I don't want to come back home because I know that I will be completely overwhelmed by her emotions and behaviour (considering also that in my country is very difficult to find a job to support myself properly).
It's complicated because I don't want to hurt her but apparently we need to go through this stage to balance out our relationship.

 

And btw, sorry for all my typos, I'm typing on my phone..

I try to, but her first defense is always denying it and various other ways of getting defensive, even though I always make sure yo word things very carefully around her. A perfect example would be, when I was younger, instead of just reminding me I had a math test the next day and to finish my homework for it (and I was planning to do it anyway, I wasn't procrastinating), she words it like "so I guess you're quitting school" with a full blown accusing, harsh tone. Not in a joking way or anything, that was just her wording for "you have math homework tonight". Usually when I would bring it up to her, asking her nicely if she could word it differently, that way upsets me, if she wouldn't say her usual "I never said that", she would just say she doesn't know how else to remind me, even though I had just literally just said anything like "you have homework tonight" would suffice. And alot of our, what turn into, arguments have that standard blueprint. And I didn't mean or say it in a way to offend her by asking (by recommendation of the therapist at that time on setting boundaries and being more assertive, in a nice way, about how I wish to be spoken to, since I usually just bottle it in and don't say anything when anyone speaks to me in ways that upset me or don't seem right) and was careful about my tone and wording when bringing that up to her. She takes almost everything as an attack or challenge. Another thing that she shed more light on her mentality was, she was stressed from her work recently, and I understood that, but when on the phone, right from the start before I even said anything, she goes into that spitfire of criticisms and complaints about me, one thing after another, and I never said anything either in email, text, or call that could've provoked that. And I asked her, as nicely as I could, why she was talking to me like that, why off the bat she was doing this, and she said "you're such a dictator, I can't be human, I always have to censor myself." While, other times, if i'm very stressed and and she just senses that, even though i'm talking to her normally and not really saying anything, not raising my voice or having an attitude, she'll blurt out "don't yell at me!" I maybe sighed a little because i'm tired or annoyed at my day, otherwise speaking normally. I'm a dictator when I try to assert (again, politely and diplomatically) my boundaries the way a bunch of different therapists have said to do, but when I literally sighed slightly, not even directed at anything or obnoxiously, she pounces on that and yells at me for yelling at her. I wish I was exaggerating that! That situation has happened a few times.

And, i'm still having trouble understanding our dynamic and what exactly is happening, because, while everyone has flaws of course, I remember reading up on narcissistic mothers, and even though (not only because of these examples, but other things as well), there were some things that were accurate, they were low-grade. And because she's not Mommie Dearest-level bad, I never thought she could say mean things or have personality flaws. Especially since she always put it on me saying i'm getting things wrong, or i'm being an abusive dictator when I stand up for myself the way all of the therapists she sent me to told me to, so I believed I was wrong or doing things wrong. I even asked a couple therapists if I was showing any abusive tendencies, because I never want to be that abusive husband/boyfriend type and would want help immediately to change that, and both were upset and sad I even had that worry in the first place(they knew the whole situation and had even done therapy with both of us and her alone, so it wasn't only my side they were hearing), and went through the whole situation to prove to me that was in no way the case and were explaining their impressions of my mom. That's how much she convinced me I was like that.

I am sorry for this long rant(and likely alot of spelling errors), I hadn't really ever talked about that to others besides therapists, and just needed to vent. And again, I still can't wrap my head around what this dynamic is, because she does have alot of good things about her, she's done alot for me, and she does care. That's what makes things like this so confusing to me. Especially when I was a kid when I certainly wouldn't have been able to wrap my head around as much as I can now. All of which make it harder to write out clearer and less sporadically here.

 

The dynamics of your relationship with your mother remind me a lot of mine, especially for what concern her being too defensive sometimes and accusing me to be "too aggressive" (when I'm not at all). I think it's just their way to defend themselves, I mean..for instance, I know that my mum feels guilty about some decisions she made in the past about me, so when there's a topic that may trigger these feelings from her side she gets angry all of a sudden and sometimes I truly struggle to understand what I did/said wrong. I don't know, maybe you can relate to this somehow.. Anyway, it's hard to talk about this stuff, there's (at least for me) a sense of shame attached to it, even if sometimes it's something that doesn't depend completely from us

 

Signs You were raised By a Narcissist by Magnetic Mama video on Youtube.
5 Lies Narcissistic Parents Tell by Magnetic Mama YT video.
Emotional Abuse Is Far Worse Than You Think by Seeker YT video.

" It's difficult and you also feel inferior, right? You think, you're not allowed to act selfish.
Because it's you own family, you feel that you have to live up to the expectation.
I think that is not right.
More because it's the family, you have to stand up to you own feelings.
Even if it means to enforce you own intention.
Otherwise everything get stuck on the surface and the distance grow larger.
If it's you family you have to let it crash sometime." -M.T.

I won't be able to understand how you peoples parent can act like you wrote. :bang:

 

I'll definitely look into that, although, at least I think, if she is doing that, it must be a subconscious something going on. But I'll look into those.