My Mom Drives Me Nuts

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person, real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. My mom drives me nuts. She is the textbook example of what a neurotic person can become after decades of not addressing the negative foundational issues that get in the way of her having healthy relationships with other people. She had a lot of issues from her childhood. And she never talked to anyone about them. She never consumed any kind of self-help advice, and she never stopped to say, you know, this isn't good. And now, in her mid-70s, anyone who comes into contact with her quickly pays the price for her lack of self-work. You leave exhausted, saying, Jesus, this woman's a mess. But first of all, when I say neurotic, what do I mean? Well, neuroticism is a personality trait. Specifically, you can refer to it as the propensity for negative thought. Yes, let's get this out of the way. Those who rank highest in neuroticism tend to be women. And no, that doesn't mean that all women are insane or bitchy. It just is what it is. Us men have plenty of negative personality traits and tendencies ourselves. A good way of looking at neuroticism that I often give is the example of winning the lottery and giving a big chunk of money to two different friends. One friend who's low in neuroticism and one who's high in neuroticism. Low neuroticism friend just hugs you and thanks you for changing their life forever. The high neuroticism friend goes on and on about the annoyance of having so much money. How are they gonna take it to the bank? What about the taxes? What if her family members try to mooch off of them? Is this even legal? And what did they do to deserve this? And on and on. The end result of such an encounter is always the same. You really don't want to hang out with the high neuroticism person anymore, let alone gift them anything. They just look at the negative side of life and they end up making you feel worse. The more carefree, low neuroticism friend makes you feel good, or at least not completely stressed out just by being in their presence. But back to my mom. I had to drive her to the airport the other day. She was going to visit her family in Europe for the next 4 months, and it just so happens that we were leaving on 2 different flights at the same time. So, free ride for Mom and a true test of my love and patience for me. The negativity began immediately. She complained about the traffic, the way people drive, the fact that she's not comfortable enough to make the drive to the airport by herself. It bothers her that everyone else seems to be comfortable driving, but not her. And her arthritis is getting worse. She has problems with her eyes. She's not drinking enough water. She has a headache. She's not sleeping well at all. People are really stupid with their money. She's thirsty, but she doesn't want to get something to drink at the airport. That just means carrying around a bottle with her. She hates carrying things. People dress horribly at the airport. That old man with his pants falling down, He must not be that much older than her, and it sucks getting old. She'll probably end up just like him, and she doesn't want to be a burden to everybody. Life can be so cruel. She's worried about not making her connection in Miami. She asked the ticket counter guy how big the Miami airport is and if she has a good chance of making her flight. The guy assures her that they'll have a cart there for her when she arrives at the airport at the gate to take her to her next flight. She walks away and she says she doesn't believe him. Nobody does anything right anymore. Nobody seems to care about doing a good job. And will people think she's crazy if she puts her mask on in the airplane? People are still getting sick from COVID you know. Her friend is not the same 2 years later. That same friend talks too much about money, by the way. This is just a fraction of what I had to hear during the 3 hours we hung out with each other. I was absolutely exhausted. I'm already in a semi-exhausted state naturally. Thanks to kids, work, the house, travel, et cetera. But hanging out with my mom just feels like the heaviest blanket imaginable. I literally feel physically drained when I get on my plane for my flight. I'm irritable, I'm impatient, I just wanna be left alone. Some of you may be saying, yeah dude, she's getting old. They tend to get cantankerous at that age. No, this has been my mom for the past 40+ years. She's always been a mess. I was a very anxious kid growing up. When I look back at my childhood, I can honestly say that my anxiety at times reached levels that would send many people running for pills or therapy, and I had neither. I just dealt with it. My mom was too wrapped up in her own anxiety and neuroticism to really notice. If I told her now that I was an anxious kid, she'd probably say something like, Well, I mean, you did seem to worry about your hair a lot, which is true, ironically, amongst about 1,000 other things. My anxiety dropped a great deal at one crucial point in my life: when I moved out of the house. When I went off to college, I really blossomed as an individual. I wasn't completely anxiety-free, but it went from a 9.5 to a 3 on the anxiety scale. I worked my butt off. I was in great physical shape and I made new friends. Things really clicked for me in college. At the time, I didn't really put two and two together. Getting away from Mom, a source of uber neuroticism, made me feel a lot better. Now, as an adult, I recognize just what a toxic source of negativity my mom has been. But note that none of my mom's negativity has ever been pointed directly at me. In fact, to her credit, my mom has always been my biggest cheerleader. She has instilled in me the belief that I can literally do whatever the hell I want to do in life. She's always pointed out my talents and my skills and whatever else in her mind makes me a very gifted or special kid. Yet her cheerleading will always be tainted by her neuroticism. Yes, I think that starting your own business sounds good, but I worry that you will fail and go bankrupt and lose everything, you know, 'People do that. I just worry about you.' It was a weird push and pull throughout my childhood. I can be whatever I want as long as I play it super safe and never take chances that may hurt me, because people get hurt a lot. How has this experience with my mom colored my behavior and outlook on life as an adult? Well, it has made me become very intolerant of what I consider to be unnecessary drama from others. A person can have a completely normal and healthy emotional response to something, and my immediate knee-jerk response is to think, "Jesus, just stop. Get over yourself." Or to just leave the situation completely. Basically, I've had enough negativity and drama in my life already. My tank is full and I can't take on anymore. And you know what? That's not a good thing. There's a happy medium here. Having boundaries is good. But having patience and empathy for others is also important. As a dude, especially a dude that is involved in this relationship-oriented space on the internet, a big part of me wants to sit my mom down and just fix what's going on with her, or at least point her in the right direction. I have, to be honest, tried in the past in a variety of ways, and my mom has always been very resistant and shuts down completely when called out on her unhealthy mindset. In short, this is who she is. Everyone just needs to be patient with her and recognize that's just how she's wired and how she always will be. Unfortunately for people like my mom, they find out that the world is just not that tolerant of her anxieties and negativity. She seems to scare away the confident and healthy people in her circle, and she attracts those who are toxic and narcissistic in nature. She latches on to friends who boss her around and make her feel worse about herself, and it's very sad to watch. I remember years ago, shortly after my dad died, my mom eventually moved into a new condo. It was still an hour away from where my family and I lived, but it was a big improvement over the 4-hour distance that we had prior to that. My mom is Spanish, so meeting other Spanish-speaking ladies her age in Middle America is always a treat for her. She had a neighbor who was a bit younger than her from Cuba, a beautiful older woman who lived with her daughter, who happened to be a model. I met them and they seemed perfectly nice, normal, outgoing, positive, and confident, and definitely not my mom's normal friend group. My mom would talk about them from time to time, along with stories of other ladies in the neighborhood. My mom started hanging out more with a very toxic woman named Linda. Linda was obviously a very broken woman who had my mom running around town doing errands for her. My mom enjoyed telling me stories about how Linda would take advantage of her good nature and mistreat her. I would confront my mom about why she puts up with such treatment. She would say, "She doesn't have anybody else in her life to help her," and it always drove me nuts. One day I asked my mom, "Hey, whatever happened to that Cuban lady? You don't talk about her anymore. She was nice." My mom said something that has always stuck with me. Oh, I don't know, I haven't really gone over to say hi. I don't know why somebody like that would want to be friends with me. You see, the root of my mom's anxieties and subsequent neurotic behavior is her feeling of low self-worth. My mom is just not a fan of herself. She unconsciously deserves the unfair treatment of those around her. She is not deserving of positivity, joy, or a confident friend group. That makes her feel very uneasy. How many of you can relate to this? How many of you are chasing away positive, good people in your life? How many of you are attracting only negative and toxic people to you simply because deep down you don't feel you are worthy of anything better? If you keep it up, you're going to chase away people that you need most. Soon your own flesh and blood will avoid you. They will make up excuses to not see you for weeks at a time, and they will act like their life depends on being apart from you, probably because it does.