| Subject: |
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How to get mom to back off |
| Name: |
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Lisa |
| Date Posted: |
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Dec 3, 07 - 8:18 AM |
| Email: |
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rathernotsay@nospam.com |
| Message: |
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Hi there,
I don't think my mom has MBP, but her behavior is somewhere in the same neighborhood. When my sisters and I were growing up she could constantly "diagnose" us with whatever she had read about the day before. At first she would take us to the doctors, but they would never confirm her diagnoses. It didn't take long for her to be convinced that doctors were too stodgy to see what was obvious to her. She never tried to hurt us, she never sought unneccessary surgery, but generally used this as a means of getting attention and boosting her authority in the family since she would be the only one who had heard of the diagnosis du jour. Predictably, her authority in the family is pretty much nill when it comes to health issues.
For the most part, she's latched onto allergies. They run in the family and my oldest sister does have them, but Mom has decided that we all must have Celiac's Disease because she does. How does she know she does? Because it fits her symptoms (which she had never complained about before she read about Celiac's). When she tested negative she, once again, had a great rationalization about how the test was wrong. Frankly, I think it's entirely possible that she has a wheat allergy of some form, but I'm sick of her insisting that the entire family has Celiac's disease. She backed off for a while, but I just had another conversation with her insisting that I must have it (because I have no symptoms and it can be asymptomatic, natch) and I had to become increasingly rude and hostile to get her to back off.
I don't enjoy being rude and hositle to my mom, but I don't know how else to get her off her Celiac's kick. I've tried humoring her (I'm happy to cook GF meals for her), but I'm not going to be "sick" to make her happy. She's already twisted her memories to convince herself that I was a sickly child when I continue to be one of the least illness-prone people I know. Since she feels free to re-write history to conform to the reality she needs, arguing with her doesn't really serve any point and just leaves us annoyed at each other.
Ironically, when there are genuine and serious health issues in the family, she can't be bothered to pay attention or tries to "explain" it all as a byproduct of Celiac's.
So... how do you handle someone who uses illness to get attention? |
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