“and she doesn’t want to leave her home for complicated reasons”
I can guess what those complicated reasons are because that’s why I never left my home. Life became manageable after a while, but it wasn’t worth it. She should get out. Whatever the issues are, she stands only to lose by staying with an abusive parent.
I know how the process goes. I lived with it for 16 years. They have a fight, her mother says some very hurtful things, or does something that leaves your friend emotionally hurt in some way. Then, after an hour, a day, a week…whatever, her mother finds some way of making it up to her. She buys her something nice, takes her to a restaurant, tells her that its nit her fault…she just has a mental illness…and the whole cycle starts again. I used to do all that. It would escalate in a 3 year cycle eventually culminating in my mother’s hospitalization. She would come home and we would start again.
2 weeks after she would come home she would hurt me in some way, and then a week later she would make up for it. Then again. And again with increasing frequency until her next hospitalization. A truly vicious cycle. One that cannot be broken. Trust me on that.
I gritted my teeth and bore it because I had no choice at the time, but at 16 I had had enough. I severed all ties with her. I haven’t spoken a word to her since around September 3 years ago.
I’m not going to advocate that course of action for your friend because I don’t know enough details about her specific situation, but she MUST distance herself from her mother in some way. They cannot maintain their current relationship. She will only keep getting hurt like this. Like I said in the article, her mother isn’t the only one affected by her mental illness. Your friend can develop problems of her own. I know, because I developed some personality problems as a result of the abuse to which I was subjected.
Her mother clearly has no desire to get better because she refuses to acknowledge that she has a problem in the first place. It is a waste of time staying with such a person, or maintaining a close emotional bond. I’m not broadly condemning the mentally ill to a life of loneliness devoid of love. There are plenty of people with mental illnesses who have very happy marriages and wonderful families, but that is because they acknowledge they have a disorder, the accept it, and they get help. I have a friend who is mentally ill. I have to deal with this friend’s cycles often, but i don’t mine because this particular friend is aware of the disorder, has accepted it, and is willing to treat it. Unless the patient is willing to be treated, and acknowledges their problem, they cannot be helped. Mental illness cannot be forcibly cured. All those asylums where people sent their crazy uncles are proof positive.
As for her being too passive, I was the same way. I used to love my mother, so I took all her garbage in stride, never saying a word to protest. Until one day, she gave me 20 dollars for a cab. I didn’t take the 20 dollars. I threw it on the floor at my door. 20 minutes later she walks into my room and starts yelling madly that I should give the 20 dollars back. This was after I had stopped talking to her. She’s standing a foot away from it and she doesn’t see it. So she runs over to my bed, where I was lying, and starts punching me in the face and choking me. So I crawled under my covers and waited for her to stop.
5 minutes later it was over. But this had set a precedent, and it happened twice more in that month. By time number four I had had enough. So I kept a belt near my bed, and the next time she walked in and started punching me, I reached for the belt and whacked her as hard as I could on the back and in the face. She didn’t touch me for 6 months. Then one day she walks into my room and starts unplugging my computer and taking it. So I shoved her, as gently as I could, out of my room. She started punching me in the face again. So I shoved her, as hard as I could out of my room. She clipped a doorpost on the way out. She never touched me again.
To those of you who are reading this, I don’t care if you judge me, because as far as I was concerned it was pikuach nefesh, and makeh av v’em is not yehareg v’al yaavor.
DISCLAIMER: I am in no way advocating the use of violence against a parent. The above anecdote was recounted simply to make a point.
Back on point. The reason she felt it was OK to punch me in the face and choke me is because she was physically stronger than me, and I had never fought back before when she physically abused me. As soon as her image of her strength was shattered, she never touched me again. From what you said, your friend’s mother only emotionally abuses her. The reason why she does it is because your friend takes it. If your friend fought back (not physically) then her mother would realize that she is NOT an emotional pincushion, that your friend can dish it as well as she can take it, and she will back off. Obviously any kind of close relationship with her mother will be out of the question at that point, but trust me. A close relationship with an abusive parent can never work. She should phase her mother out of her life as much as possible. There is no other alternative. It can only get worse.