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10-26-2009, 02:12 PM

# 12 (permalink)

dothi

Member

Join Date: Sep 2008

Location: Anywhere but the mainstream.

Posts: 402

Quote:

Originally Posted by reverse

So here's the deal. She insists now on taking a bus, and a taxi from the bus station (even though she doesn't own a cell phone, has never rode a bus, hasn't even looked into any bus routes, and just the other day was trying to swindle every relative possible into driving her 4 hours to come and visit me. She doesn't even know what the bus routes are like to my apartment. On top of that, my co-dependent and alcoholic step-father would have to go out of his way to drop her off at the bus stop which is 30 min of driving there and 30 min. back. On top of that, once she is done visiting us (which she claims she wanted to visit for 2 days here and 1 day at my sister's), she is going to have to get a taxi to go to my sister's house and then a taxi from my sister's house to the bus station which would be at least a 25 mile drive. So taking a taxi for a total of at least 50 miles, then taking a bus for over 2 hours (by car from her house is only a 2 hour drive...by bus it's almost always twice as long b/c of all the stops--I know b/c I've had to use a bus for transportation for a year when I didn't have a car). By the time she got here, her entire day would be shot, she'd spend way more $$ for a taxi and a bus than she would if she would just drive a car and travel independently. On top of that, I've begged her to get her driver's license since I was 13 and she has never been able to tell me exactly what she needs to do in order to get her driver's license back. She claims she has to take a driver's class, take the driving test, and all this other stuff---she can never keep her story straight and she never looks into it. She doesn't even try. She says it's literally impossible for her to get her license b/c she works 6 days a week.

Hi reverse, just wanted to pipe in: the crazy-making is habit forming. So like a bad habit, we have to both un-learn it and re-learn new healthier habits.

This whole paragraph speaks of habitual thoughts where you are struggling with taking responsibility for what your mom would need to do. Your mom replies right on par, reinforcing that you should be taking responsibility for her choices by listing every little choice for you to approve - so you can correct her if she's done something wrong, right? She's throwing out her hooks that bait your inner child (that part of you waiting for her to act like an adult so that YOU can grow up). She wants you to respond as you would when you were too young to know any better.

Before the anxiety can lift, you need to catch yourself when you go into this mental rant. Since you were a child you were trained to launch into worry mode because more often than not you learned that if you did not do this thinking, you would have to reconcile the consequences of your parent's actions. That was not fair or appropriate responsibility for a child to have to bear.

The good news is this strategy got you to adulthood. But the bad news is you're still stuck with this bad habit. Acceptance that your mother's choices are truly her choices and her responsibility will really help you when you start worrying. Then you can ask yourself is this really your responsibility to worry about and do all this thinking? What will actually be accomplished by the worry?