Hi there
I'm new to all this and we just need a bit of advice regarding my 85 year old mother in law who still lives on her own with the support of carers (who she insists she doesn't need).
My hubby is an only child and my MIL, who has little if any contact with the rest of her family and has no friends, is becoming EXTREMELY clingy towards my hubby and increasingly me.
We do our best to keep her informed of our activities but it's not always possible and she's now forgetting to write down our movements so we can tell her we'll be out for half an hour and get back to 7 (increasingly hysterical) messages demanding to know why we are not at home. This is normally followed by a half hour conversation trying to calm her down and promising not to go out again.
She panics when we go out, she panics if we don't answer the phone within a couple of rings (she recently called 999 because we were in the garden and couldn't get to it quick enough), she'll ring us 15 times in an evening just to make sure we're in, she'll ring us at 2.30 in the morning.
She is starting to move from a reasonably manageable anxious/panic response to one of unmanageable hysterical, explosive anger towards us both for not being immediately available to her 24/7(although she has yet to become aggressive when we are actually in her company).
We're at a complete loss as to how to deal with this, we're both in our 40s and have less freedom of movement than 5 year old and although we're generally able to intellectualize the extremes of her behavour, recently in our frustration we are starting to respond angrily back. We know this is completely pointless and unhelpful but are struggling.
We'd be grateful for any advice or suggestions that you might have. Thanks for getting this far!
scruffy
I'm new to all this and we just need a bit of advice regarding my 85 year old mother in law who still lives on her own with the support of carers (who she insists she doesn't need).
My hubby is an only child and my MIL, who has little if any contact with the rest of her family and has no friends, is becoming EXTREMELY clingy towards my hubby and increasingly me.
We do our best to keep her informed of our activities but it's not always possible and she's now forgetting to write down our movements so we can tell her we'll be out for half an hour and get back to 7 (increasingly hysterical) messages demanding to know why we are not at home. This is normally followed by a half hour conversation trying to calm her down and promising not to go out again.
She panics when we go out, she panics if we don't answer the phone within a couple of rings (she recently called 999 because we were in the garden and couldn't get to it quick enough), she'll ring us 15 times in an evening just to make sure we're in, she'll ring us at 2.30 in the morning.
She is starting to move from a reasonably manageable anxious/panic response to one of unmanageable hysterical, explosive anger towards us both for not being immediately available to her 24/7(although she has yet to become aggressive when we are actually in her company).
We're at a complete loss as to how to deal with this, we're both in our 40s and have less freedom of movement than 5 year old and although we're generally able to intellectualize the extremes of her behavour, recently in our frustration we are starting to respond angrily back. We know this is completely pointless and unhelpful but are struggling.
We'd be grateful for any advice or suggestions that you might have. Thanks for getting this far!
scruffy