Changing the relationship dynamics with my mother

Hello dear coach,

Initial warning: this message has many layers to it 🙂

I have been living out of my family home since I went to college at the age of 18 (I’m 30 years old now) and I am living in Europe for the last 8 years. I outgrown the culture I was raised in and my family longggg time ago. This was one of the reasons I moved to Europe. My family is a good loving bunch who wants the best for me (their best for me might not match the best I want for myself tho). Particularly my mother has really dedictaed herself to her kids and worked a crazy busy job, and also canalized all her resources (financial and emotional) to our education and well-being which I’m very grateful for. I would not have done the same, that’s a different story.

I have my mother visiting me here in Europe for the past 2 weeks and let’s say we both learned a lot. I’m in a busy period of my life right now which I’m quite enjoying because I’m setting the base for some good tings to come later, but I know that I might not have another summer with my mom and it was very important to her to see where I’m livng, bits of my life etc. so I’m glad she came to visit. (perhaps shorter visit next time and not sharing a room with her.)

This was the first time I set clear boundaries and enforced them properly. I am also someone who lives and works in a very structured way and saw a tremendous impact of living this way to my health, general well-being, and work performance. I visit my family home from time to time but everytime I stayed there I was annoyed and pissed because of their sleep hours, making noise and mom wanting things always her way. My mother does not speak English properly and does not have much of abroad exeprience so she was very dependent on me which I was more okay with before. But now, I honestly didnt want to babysit her, I was expecting her to a bit more independent while she was here but I underestimated how much her self-trust decreased in the last couple of years (or mine increased, idk). She’s showing signs of aging and possibly Alzheimers etc. I’m also working towards multiple goals at the moment and after long time in my life I’m feeling the flow and enjoying working a lot. I was taking days of from my actual job (phd) but working some hours for my side job (health coacing) while her visit which I communicated to her.

After some time I realized that my explanation of how much we will be spending was not clear to her. Moreover, my mom became a teenager who is distracted by her phone all the time and plays with her phone till midnight and makes noice in my flatshare despite me explainig to her that thuis a common living situation so we should be careful. She was not very careful let’s say. That’s how she lives in her own home too but she lives by herself so it’s somehow okay then.

My initial thought on how my mother is living is “she is such a distracted, hot mess who does not take care of herself and honestly lost respect little bit. She’s such a smart women who achieved so much but since she got retired I have a feeling she kinda gave up. She’s still doing a lot to improve heself compared to people around her but compared to me I feel like she is stagnating. Perhaps I’m seeing myself 2 years ago because i was such a hot mess when moved to this new country. I was distracted, didnt take care of herself well and had many thought erros, didnt know how to manage my own mind and as a result of these, I got diagnosed with an autoimmune condition shortly after I moved here. That diagnosis have played a big transformational role in my life and started what my healing journey which I’m very grateful for.

Recently I am doing a lot of work on doing less but excellently and I have caught bits of it before but this time I realized that I learned being a perfectionist, control freak and over-achiever from my mother. and some of my biggest struggles were because of these tendencies (burning out multiple times, stressing myself and people around me). I also realize that these characteristics are the things that my boyfriend gets annoyed by me and in the past 9 months caused us some challenges in our relationship. I found myself acting like my bf when he is annoyed with me and he coaches me on some of these mannars and I also coached her multiple times on what to do with a friend thay parted etc, and she took my advice whole-heartedly and I’m very happy that those are helpful for her. but to me the way is so simple that I’m a bit shocked that she cannot figure these things out herself. She was the one who could coach me on these manner when I was younger so now it feels weird that the roles are reversed and im thinking to myself “you should have known these things by now!!!’.
It’s not all that bad bc I have a chance to break some of the thougth erros, fear that my family has which were passed down to me so helping all of us to heal, but I also get annoyed being in more of “the parent” role.

I love my mother very deeply, but I sometimes get triggered and angry because she is confused and super detail-oriented and keeps bringing up some silly stuff I explicitly said i dont want to talk about. I know that this was the first time I clearly enforced the boundaries and boundaries, plus the way I’m living, plus being in a country whose languages she does nto speak was a lot for her, so we had some minor argument. Now we found our peace after I explained to her, why and on what I’m working on so hard rn, what my vision for the future is and reasons of the things I’m doing.

The things that I would like to be coached on are:
Should I simply let mom be and not spend much time anymore because I feel like I’m stagnating when I’m around here and I’m a person who is very aware of we become who we surround ourselves with and I wanna keep growing cuz it’s so much fun!
How much coaching should I do to her? It’s good for her and for me to some extent to change some of the thinking patterns in my family but I realize that I’m getting very annoyed with her slowness and keep bringing up same topics sometimes.
What thought should I be more thinking of instead of “I’m the perfectionist tendencied little over-achiever bc of her, meaning that I suffered so much bc of her”? I am also aware being an over-achiever and detail-oriented person helped me in some aspects of my life and also be an excellent student, get a prestigious scholarship that allowed me to move to Europe etc, but in the last couple of years these tendencies are doing more harm than good.
I’m working as a health coach with autoimmune folks and told my mom that I can coach her for 6 months but she cannot really pay much, I think I want to help her or I like the idea that she lives better but at the same time I want to spend my little time dedicated to coaching on paying clients to set up biz better. I told her that I can coach her but now I don’t think I wanna do that, how do I tell her?

Thanks for untangling my allerted brain’s manners 🙂

Answer:

It sounds like you have made some important changes for you in your life, and that you are looking for ways to keep the changes coming in an impactful and meaningful way. The most notable feeling I saw mentioned in your post was annoyed. Of course you’re feeling annoyed with your mother when you think “She’s a distracted hot mess who does not take care of herself.” It makes a lot of sense.

Let’s talk about unconditional love think of it as loving someone no matter what they do. But, unconditional love means that we get to choose to feel love whenever we want to because feelings are created by our thoughts. And since we get to choose our thoughts, we get to choose our feelings – even with their annoying tendencies, even if we think they need coaching, even if they taught us some of our most challenging character flaws, even if we feel stagnant when we’re around them. What’s more is that we can choose to feel love for ourselves too. That is how we set boundaries well – when we come from a place of love for ourselves, not from a place of wanting to discipline or push someone or something out. What if you chose to feel love as you asked and searched for the answers to the questions you asked? What thoughts would generate a feeling of love inside of you?

C: My mom

T:

F: Love

A:

R:

C: Thought: “Maybe I should not spend much time with my mom anymore”

T:

F: Love

A:

R:

C: Coaching my mother

T:

F: Love

A:

R:

C: Thought: “I suffered so much bc of her”

T:

F: Love

A:

R:

Love is always available to you. It’s just a thought away.