Ack! I don't want to go home anymore!

So, as some of you know, my parents are moving. Well, timing did not work out in my favor, and I will be getting home a few days before move-out (likely around the 15th or so).

SO, I was e-mailing back and forth w/ my step-father today about gifts for my mom and recieve this...

Necklace sounds good.
Talk to Laura when you get up and we'll pick out something.
If stays in the mode she is in, it will be easy. I will just go to Ace Hardware and buy some rope and make it into a necklace. Of course one end of the rope will be over a limb of a tree.

My mother cannot handle change. Even if it's good, she stresses out and takes it out big time on everyone around her. Now, I am going to help, don't get me wrong, but even when I do help, if I do something slightly different than what she wanted, she'll flip. She gets very difficult to sympatize with.

So, basically, does anyone have any advice on how to keep her calm, and to not loose my cool when she's being unreasonable. I know it's just going to get worse as the moving date approaches.

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Posted by DebsNY

So, as some of you know, my parents are moving. Well, timing did not work out in my favor, and I will be getting home a few days before move-out (likely around the 15th or so).

SO, I was e-mailing back and forth w/ my step-father today about gifts for my mom and recieve this...

Necklace sounds good.
Talk to Laura when you get up and we'll pick out something.
If stays in the mode she is in, it will be easy. I will just go to Ace Hardware and buy some rope and make it into a necklace. Of course one end of the rope will be over a limb of a tree.

My mother cannot handle change. Even if it's good, she stresses out and takes it out big time on everyone around her. Now, I am going to help, don't get me wrong, but even when I do help, if I do something slightly different than what she wanted, she'll flip. She gets very difficult to sympatize with.

So, basically, does anyone have any advice on how to keep her calm, and to not loose my cool when she's being unreasonable. I know it's just going to get worse as the moving date approaches.

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ETA: My step-father is joking. This is his sense of humor.... I hope

This is the motto I live by concerning such...

'If I need help, then I have to accept that other's might do things differently. What's more important, that they do it my way or that the job gets done'

This is probably why I do too much...LOL.

I saw something like that on Oprah or another talk show. Two spouses were fighting about the way 'he cleans' and then she just has to re-clean it and feels overwhelmed and then gets more angry... and the therapist said something like the above. If your mother genuinely needs help then she must give up some control or she is just criticizing and no one will help her. Maybe if you calmly tell her how it makes you feel and then ask her is the same was happening to her would she want to help? Of course, you have to pick a calm moment.

i honestly don't know what to say. when my parents sold their house a few years ago my mom was a wreck. two nights before we closed on the house i was leaving to go to a friends house and she flipped on me and was just like 'if you leave this house you're never coming back' honestly, it was the dumbest threat she ever made and i couldn't help but laugh, which kind of put her in a better mood cause she realized how silly she was being.

just try your hardest to be there for her. when she gets crazy, excuse yourself from the room for a few minutes, regroup, and come on back. talk about good things. talk about the future.

the worst part for my mom was going thru memories in the old house. she spent the last night there crying in my closet, cause she never realized that me and my best friend growing up had been writing on the walls in there for years, and wrote messages to the new owners of the house. even know 3.5 years later when we mention the closet she gets teary-eyed.

shes going to be emotional. shes probably going to be a little crazy. and if you're anything like my family, no matter what you do there will be tension and yelling. just gotta try to make the best of it.

thanks... See, I've talked to her about it before. She asks why I don't help, and I say because I usually get yelled at for not doing it right.

For example, 2 years ago I tried to decorate for Christmas, I got out a bunch of the decorations, put them out, made it look nice, went out, came back and found everything redone.

It was like, why should I waste my time? Hopefully there's a calm moment to talk to her - she doesn't take criticism well