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My mom won't shut her mouth · Head Shrink Inc.

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, this is Doc David with Hedge Drink Inc., and we are here for another episode.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to answer a question today about a daughter who can't get her mom to be quiet when they're in public.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Listen in.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, it's Doug David with Head Shrink Inc.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thanks for tuning in today.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: I guess you're not tuning in, you're downloading this podcast and listening in, so I appreciate that.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Or you're live streaming it.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually live right now.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: So if uh you are listening live and you have a question, feel free to um chime in.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's a little, I've never used it before.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of interesting.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's a little chat area that if you're listening live, you can uh start chatting.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea how it works.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where you would uh do the chatting at.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: So um if you find out where the chatting is, feel free to chat and I will say something or chat back with you.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: So um we are like in two weeks away, and we will have a new president.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And this political season has been so depressing.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh for me personally, it's been depressing.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's made me crazy, it's made me angry, it's got me upset, it's depressing, sad, all or all sorts of crazy emotions that our um society has picked these two people to represent us.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, wherever you are in the political spectrum, um I I think that I I would imagine you're not too happy about either political person.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I think the the biggest thing, this is not a political podcast, by the way.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just kind of going off on a tangent.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um one of the biggest things that's been frustrating for me is simply because people have an R or a D behind their name, they're willing to support corruption or they're willing to support uh degradation.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I I guess my encouragement to people is don't let a D or an R define who you are.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's okay to be to stand up for morals and ethics and things like that.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm back off my tangent.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so today I um want to talk about an email I got from a Connie, a listener named Connie, and she sent me an email about her drama-filled mother.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna read the email and then um I'll give my response to Connie.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um hi, Dr.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: David.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I am almost 30 years old.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: My siblings and I have been raised by her mom, who is a single parent.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: I love my mom so, and that's all in caps with uh nine O's in it.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: So she really loves her mom so much, and would just be crushed crushed if anything happened to her.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: But she is very tough to deal with.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: My siblings have distanced themselves from our mother way sooner than I did.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: I used to talk to my mom every day, see her every weekend, and have the occasional lunch-dinner meetup.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, for me, it's been deduced to or whoops, that's a typo.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: For me, it's been reduced to maybe once a month I go visit her and no public outings because I often get embarrassed by her.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: She calls attention to herself by being loud, raising voice.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: She'll ask perfect strangers, uh, very personal questions.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: She raises her hand as if she's in class and yells across the room.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: If I ask her to please stop something, she disregards and does what she wants, anyways, because she's mom and we should accept her as is.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: So here is Connie's dilemma.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: She's just kind of giving me some background on her, but here is her dilemma.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this year will be a third annual weekend mountain getaway for her birthday.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the first year, the mom was invited and made part of the trips pretty unpleasant and uncomfortable.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so she gives an example.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: My family and I were at a fishing pond, two little girls were there, threw their fishing line out, and my mom yelled at them, You're too close to us, your fishing line is going to get caught on ours.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Which, I mean, that's reasonable.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now, how you do it could be a little it could be said tactfully, I suppose.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's when uh Connie decided they grabbed their poles and left.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: She can't, and Connie puts in the acronym STFU, and hopefully you know what that is.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe you're of a clean mind and you don't know what that is, but so the second year um she simply wasn't invited.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: The rest of the family went up there without telling her and had a fun, drama-free time.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um so she hates leaving her mom out of events because she enjoys it, but she acts awful and I can't handle it.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to leave my mom this year, but my mom asked when we're going back up to the mountains.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Little does she know I was planning the trip without her again.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: My sister absolutely didn't want our mom to go last year and doesn't want our mom to come this year either.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: In a sense, I don't want my mom to come either because of the drama she brings, but I start to feel guilty.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: I would invite my mom out of guilt, but my sister would be furious.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Although my sister took time off of work for the trip, she would uninvite herself because mom is coming.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what to tell my mom, and I don't know what to tell my sister.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Help, please.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Connie.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I I actually don't think you're stuck.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think you've made yourself stuck because your unwillingness to communicate um directly with your mom.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think what's happened probably over the years is that um I'm imagining if mom has not changed, that this was happening during your teen years, and then eventually you left the house and you didn't really have to deal with it, and then as you um got older and started interacting with your mom more of on a friend basis, it started to bother you again.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I I think the problem with your mom is that she's immature.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's obvious, it's fairly obvious that she's immature because I you do it you give a good description, and I picture I have pictured adults that do that, like they have no personal space or they know have no kind of boundaries about things, and so they just think it's perfectly okay to interact in these outrageous, crazy ways.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, some people do that and they actually get paid because they're comedians or they're professional pranksters, and so they get paid to do that.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: But people that do it in public just kind of as their personality are pretty annoying, and so I can understand, Connie, why it could be something that's pretty bothersome to you.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um so there's a couple things that I would I I would suggest with you.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: I and I'm I'm making a guess that out of all your sisters, you possibly are the baby of the family.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's that makes things a little bit more challenging, I think, because maybe you want to usually it's like a middle child's peacemaker, but I think baby of the family, you're the last one to leave the nest, and so maybe you saw your mom in a different light, and maybe you have a little bit more compassion towards her than your other sisters do, and or maybe your other sisters have had more experiences in their lives um where they just saw more of mom's outrageousness and they you know didn't want to tolerate it as long as you did.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: But you're at that point where you're making the decision to not tolerate it anymore, which is understandable.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: So firstly, what I would do is I'd have a pretty direct conversation with your sisters about if you haven't, but I'd have a pretty direct conversation with your sisters and and say, hey, you know, this is what I'm thinking about, mom.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm feeling stuck.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And get for sure what would happen if you decided to invite her.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um because right now what you're saying, at least from this email that you sent, is that you're uncertain what they would do, but you're pretty sure they would uninvite themselves.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And if that's the I I would want to know what my siblings were gonna do for certain if I was going to take certain actions.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's the first thing that I would very specifically do with your sisters to kind of understand what they will specifically do if mom comes.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you might be surprised, maybe they will think, eh, it won't be that big of a deal.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so then maybe you won't actually be stuck in between a rock and a hard place.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: But that's what I do first.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing, um, you know, in life in general, boundaries are important.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I have a feeling that your mom um has not found boundaries to be useful in her life.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it'd be interesting to know.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if we could have a conversation, it'd be interesting to know how many close friends your mom has.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because if she's like this in general in life, um there's probably a lot of people that she's pushed away that don't want to have anything to do with her simply because it's annoying to be people like that that are out that have to be outrageous and have no tact um in their interactions with strangers.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that your mom definitely is lacking in boundaries, and I think that the fact that you're emailing me and the fact that your sisters have put up boundaries is is a good thing, and I think what you're suggesting on doing is a good thing because boundaries are great things to have.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, keeping boundaries is also a great thing to have, but it is a bit more difficult.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so that's where I think you're really needing the help is what do you do?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's this boundary you want to uphold, but you recognize that upholding the boundary is going to potentially hurt feelings.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now, here's what I suggest with your mom.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think that your mom's a big girl.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: She's raised kids, and I don't know if she's currently working, but she's a big girl, so she's handled, been able to handle challenging things in her life.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that you need to sit down and have a pretty direct conversation with her and point out to her that her behavior is what uh is keeping her from these good relationships with her kids, um, and and have a couple examples of that, and then point out, you know what, I want you to be involved in my life.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to um have interactions with if you have kids, your kids, your grandkids, your nieces, nephews, whoever.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: I want, mom, I want you to have interaction with these people, but there has to be some conditions.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: I can't have you being outrageous, embarrassing me, embarrassing your grandkids, embarrassing your sibl your um your kids, your grown daughters or grown sons in public.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And this is how you do that.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Can you even see, mom, that this is something that you do?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, here's if mom uh pushes it off and thinks that she doesn't do any of this and that you're outrageous and off base, that's gonna be a pretty clear answer that you're not gonna probably want to invite her to this getaway.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because if she's not if she's not self-aware of it, even though you have I'm assuming that you've tried kindly to let her know that she should be self-aware to point out these things to her, if she's completely self-aware, uh uh completely not aware that she's doing these things, um, I would not and I would not invite her on this trip because it it you can be pretty certain that she's gonna continue to um do these outrageous boundary busting things.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: But if she say if she has a conversation with you where she says, Yeah, I recognize that I do get a little bit or I do get outrageous and I want to try to change that, um, I think that's a great place to start from because then sh and it may not be on this trip, but then I think, okay, mom wants to do things differently.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so then you guys come up with a plan.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, how can I let you know that you're gonna r in a way that you're going to respect, that you need to tone it down, mom?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so then because you both are grown adults, you can figure out a way to to help mom have a way to recognize, oh, I'm being a little bit outrageous and I need to stop.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if she completely refuses to acknowledge any of her behavior, I think again, that's going to be a good indication that you don't invite her on this trip.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as as far as you feeling guilty into it or feeling hurt that you might hurt or feeling that you might hurt your mom's feelings, that goes along with any relationship.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And relationships are hard.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Good relationships and deep relationships can get hard because you have to talk about difficult things sometimes.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you love your mom so much, like you say, then you should be willing to talk about difficult things with her.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And this is going to be a difficult thing to talk about, and point out, hey, mom, we had this trip with you, and you acted outrageous, and none of your kids want you to go on this trip anymore.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that maybe there's something there that you need to address?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully, mom will be willing to address it.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're the right person to have that rational, reasoned conversation with her about it.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because I have a feeling your siblings wouldn't be able to have a rational, reasoned conversation.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: So good for you that you could be reasonable in that conversation with her, and I would encourage you to try it.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not about hurting her feelings, um, it's about letting her know, it's about giving her information, it's about saying, hey, this kind of behavior goes on, and I don't like this kind of behavior.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so if this kind of behavior continues to go on, this is what I'm going to do about this kind of behavior, so I can avoid it.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so then your mom has a choice to make.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: She can either continue on in that kind of behavior, or she can recognize, wow, what I do affects my kids, and I want to try to do something different.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully, um, she will realize that what she does affects you, and she'll try to do something different.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, don't be surprised if she um gets all upset and thinks it's outrageous that you guys are trying to control her, because that that's a very real possibility.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it don't make any threats, just give her the information, and then she has to determine what she's going to do with the information.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times where this goes wrong is that people make threats.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Mom, if you do this thing, then I'm going to do this.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they say it in a threatening way, and it puts people on the defensive.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And what I'm suggesting is that you just say, hey, mom, when this happens, it gets really hard to deal with and it hurts me and it's embarrassing.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm wondering if it's something that you can change.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully, mom would be willing to change it.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, hopefully that helps, Connie.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: If you have any other questions, you know, feel free to email me at headshrinkinc at gmail.com.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Check out my Facebook page at docdavid.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's D-O-C space d A V I D.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have any questions that you want answers about relationships and or as a couple, as an individual, as a family, feel free to email me and I will read it, respond, and maybe even talk about it in a podcast.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Take care of the city.