Should I banish my toxic, selfish mum?

DEAR BEL, I’M AN only child; my dad is wonderful, but my selfish mother is toxic. She’s always used emotional blackmail to get me to bend to her whim and now — having started my own family with a loving husband, living peacefully with our kids — I’ve hit breaking point over our relationship.

She wants to be in contact every day; to see me and the kids all the time; doesn’t understand I need space; is unbearably critical. If I ever get upset at her judgments on my life, she labels me a spoilt brat. Her critical voice rings in my ears.

For years I’ve tried to set boundaries, talk to her calmly, try to improve things, but she won’t listen. I have no energy or desire to see her. Estrangement seems the only way forward. But losing her would mean losing my dad, too. He admits he should have been stronger and stood up for me over the years. But he says it’s easier not to try to override her.

My husband has been ready to talk to her on my behalf, but I’ve always stopped him. Isolating me with emotional blackmail, her venomous verbal outbursts have left me hopeless. I didn’t even move out for uni (despite wanting to). With heavy guilt inflicted on me, I chose a quiet life.

Now, in my 30s, I feel I can’t go on like this. How can I bring my damaging relationship with my mother to an end?

PIPPA

An AMERICAN therapist might advise you to run for the hills, and many readers tell me there is nothing to be done but cut off all contact with toxic parents — like amputating a limb. such advice is brutally clean, but I can’t necessarily agree with it here. You acknowledge that cutting your mother out of your life would necessitate banishing your ‘wonderful’ father, too.

You don’t want that, so it seems there’s no choice but to deal with the situation.

Of course it will be immensely hard — but perhaps this is your key challenge for 2019. You can’t change your mother, so the other option is to change yourself.

readers sometimes take issue with my more cautious replies, instructing me that ‘of course’ or ‘obviously’ so-and- so is suffering from ‘ depression’ (or another condition) and why didn’t I see that? I reply that it seems wrong for me to make a diagnosis on the basis of one letter.

But here I’m unavoidably reminded of checklists for those with a strong vein of narcissism in their personality — because your description (your original letter was much longer) contains many elements that fit. My first piece of advice is to do some reading. You are habitually cowed by your mother, so I’d like you to step back by putting her under the microscope. I recommend you get hold of All About Me, by simon Crompton.

This is a fascinating book about what it’s like to love a narcissist, and although we are talking about your mother, not a partner, I think you’ll find much to shed light on your problem.

Do you know much about your mother’s upbringing? What turned her into this demanding, critical bully who cows both husband and daughter?

You describe yourself as always having been her victim since you were eight years old — allowing her to keep you at home even when you were a student. But why? Wouldn’t it help you to have some counselling to understand this and give you the strength to stand up to her?

You should discuss it with your husband without delay — and stop resisting his offers to be an intermediary. You say she ‘isolated’ you when you were young; why are you still accepting that? Blessed with a loving husband, you must seek his help.

since both you and your father went for the easy option, accepted victimhood and thus colluded in her personality defects, it’s time for somebody else to step in.

If standing up to her means she cuts off contact, that is her choice, not yours. I doubt it will last — she needs you far more than you need her. show courage now, or your children may learn from her venom.