Mother of a problem...

i cannot relate to this with my mom, but i can with my sister.
she has always been nasty to me, and always will be, 25 years later. i have a nephew who i never see and he has no idea who i am. she once attempted to make ammends and appologize, but quickly went back to how she was treating me.
you don't deserve that, and if your mom isn't putting forth the effort, and has always treated you like that and resents you, then you need to just cut the cord and move on with your life. it may hurt, but don't feel guilty. you deserve to be treated better than that, and if your own mother can't love you then she doesn't deserve to have someone awesome like you in her life. also, talk therapy may benefit you for dealing with this, it did for me.
good luck and don't let anyone ever define you.

I cannot relate to this with my mom as her and I have a really great relationship but my dad on the other hand we were really close until I turned 16 and then he started treating me really really poorly.

I had to eventually cut him out of my life, I tried to limit our time together but it never helped I did everything I possibly could to make it work but in the end I had to put myself first. It has been 11 years since I cut him out of my life, and in the beginning it hurt a lot and it really sucked, now its just a fact of life. My dad is a *kitten* and thats the end.

I am really very sorry you have to go through this. I do suggest finding a good therapist to talk to and to help you work through the issues that this has or is going to pose for you.

I can relate in many ways and while i won't get into the story here, you can certainly PM me if you'd like to chat. I left home early (before a legal age) and have never gone back to live. Most of my adult life, i visited as little as i could and contacted my parents as little as i could get away with. My Mom was a very mixed up person, i believe. Maybe due to abuses she suffered as a child, i really don't know. Suffice it to say that i know what living in a cold and manipulative environment is like. I know what it's like to never be good enough and to feel unloved by your mother.

I also worried about regretting my lack of contact later. My mother had metastatic stage 4 breast cancer for 12 years and while i tried to be kind, i still didn't visit much. I tried calling more, but honestly, her situation never humbled her or made her more compassionate or loving. Therefore, i didn't increase my contact much. I tried to be a kind and loving person, but i still had to do what felt right to me. And being around mean people didn't feel right.

I went through much therapy and much inner searching. My mother passed away 2 years ago. I have learned much. While here and there i did struggle with "could i have changed the relationship?" or "was i a bad daughter", i have also learned that there was a reason i stayed away and those reasons were valid. I have learned that certain people can really only be in your life for a certain "percentage" before it is unhealthy FOR YOU. With my parents, i could visit for two days once or twice a year. After that things went to hell in a handbasket very quickly. I considered them my "5%"...meaning that i could share about 5% of my life and time with them without feeling hurt, abused, put down, etc....once i realized that and kept with my short visits and phone calls, it was okay. I can tell you that I am now able to realistically look back on life and see that i did the best i could with what i had. I also believe that they did "the best they could" with what they had (perhaps their capacity was truly limited, i do not believe they were malicious, i think they thought they were doing right, even when it was abusive). It was one of the biggest epiphanys i had ever had....that i was not "obligated" to be what my parents wanted me to be or to be what society might deem as "a good daughter" by doing all the right actions, even if i hated every minute of it. i did what was healthy for me and I was an honest and true person. I personally feel that is better than going through the motions and pretending to like it, etc.

I do not regret not visiting more, not being the better daughter. I wish our relationshiop was different, i really do. I missed out on a lot that i saw other girls have with their mothers. Lunches out for fun, or shopping together, or just enjoying each others company. But in my situation, it was not healthy for me to be around my mother or my parents. They weren't healthy people. Period. Looking back, I don't regret my limiting contact at all.

From your description, it seems that your mother acts uncaring and in fact is even belittling. How is that healthy for you? How much are you feeding her behaviors by continuing to visit? Do you psychologically "need" to be a good daughter for some reason? Is it perhaps because you are guilted by your mother when you are not? Sit and think about what the real reason is that you feel you can't disconnect from someone that is treating you that badly. Would you keep a spouse like that? Would you allow your children to treat you or another person like that? I know it's easier said than done, but you must think deeply about this and try to understand your own personal reasons for putting up with it.

The hard part is that our parents are at the very core, the people we are supposed to feel safe with and loved by. If they don't love us, who will? I yearned for love from my mother for 45 years (i still do, even though she passed away). The three year old in me still cries for a momma i did not have when things are tough. That part, i think, will never go away. Simply because it was my parent...and feeling unloved by a parent makes many of us feel unloved overall. We often spend our years trying to please them, get them to love us, even when we don't realize that is what we are doing. I think all does not feel right with the world when you feel unloved by a parent. The one person who is supposed to love you unconditionally.

You must realize that some people are not capable of that kind of love and it has nothing to do with you. You may never understand your mother's behavior or why she is that way. But in the end, it doesn't matter, what matters is that you get healthy and happy and that your life and feelings do not depend on how you are treated by your mother.

I urge you to get some therapy....you don't have to think of it as counseling, think of it as brainstorming with someone who has seen family dynamics a million times and has experiences and thoughts to bounce off you. I recommend to start working on accepting your mother's faults and forgiving her (which has nothing to do with seeing her, by the way). I would also recommend to limit your visits with her to the point at which they are tolerable to you and you don't walk away feeling like less of a person. The fact that you are thinking of it so much, means you won't take these actions lightly, and to me that means you will not regret those decisions later. What you might regret is spending so much of your life energy and time trying to fix something that wasn't yours to fix.

Here are a few quotes that i found inspiring during my journey (forgive the lack of sources, many are from Pinterest, if they didn't list the source, i don't have it):

"Forgiveness doesn't excuse their behavior, forgiveness prevents their behavior from destroying your heart."

"New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings." ~Lao Tzu

"Stop letting people who do so little for you, control so much of your mind, feelings and emotions."

"Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you or makes you happy."

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

My grandmother treats my mother the same way. It took WAY too long for my mom to finally write her off. My mom did go to therapy for a year.

I agree that you should seek a counselor, for sure, but then also visit www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com and get some advice from her too. Get the weekly emails. Take, and use, her advice. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you have this happening to you. As someone who suffers with a mother of similar traits, I can tell you that it's hard to cut her out of your life...but you have to set up boundaries. For your safety, for your sanity, and if you have a family eventually, for their safety and sanity too. Trust me. I am 33 years old and it wasn't until a few years ago that I figured this out. This will not come easily, and it is continuous work. Continuous. But I would tell you that having sisters makes this FAR easier than if you were alone, like I am.

Good luck.

No normal person deliberately sets out to hurt another person. You have so much going for you, don't try to compensate for your mother's failings. Get on with your own life.