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I need to write this a whole lot more than you need to read it.
About 15 months ago I wrote a blog about this topic, so I don't know how much I'll repeat myself, I don't want to read it, right now I'm shaking in front of my screen because of what just happened. To put it simply, the situation has evolved, and not for the better. My previous blog on this topic was about my grandpa's passing, which was an extremely arduous process which took a toll on my mother at the time. Ever since, the pressure on her has been increasing and there seems to be no way out.
The days, my mother has a lot on her shoulders. And over the last few weeks, the pressure has been creeping up, up until today when she snapped and part of me is glad I was home to take away some of the pressure.
First, she owns a small business, which she did back then, but it's getting increasingly difficult to manage. She has 4 employees, 3 of whom challenge her and disrespect her on a daily basis, one of which is her boyfriend-type-person who's a complete asshole. Let's call him Dan. She works insane hours, and while she likes her job, she spends a lot of time getting shit on by them. And getting competent employees is extremely difficult.
Second, my grandma has Alzheimer's. She requires a lot of time and help. It's draining on a person.
Third, my brother who still lives at home also happens to be an asshole. And I love my brother, I do, but he just is an asshole. If he wasn't my brother, I'd never get along with this piece of shit. He's insanely racist, impulsive to the point of seeming dangerous, he actively uses bad language around my mother to rile her up and to worry her, he openly talks about his drug use to her just to make her anxious. He's an asshole to the point where we're constantly tiptoeing around him because if he's in a bad mood and we say something he'll get pissed off and it makes drama. He's toxic.
Fourth, my "step-dad" type guy also is an asshole. They've worked together for decades, he constantly degrades her, he constantly shits on her work, and basically blames her for the workplace's historic difficulties (workplace which worked fine for decades before they lost a few key employees whose qualities were never replaced).
All of this leads to an insanely stressful life, which is compounded by the fact that... well... I have a hard time really getting an understanding of quite how much this plays a role... but she is sometimes a bit overbearing, or I don't know what word I should use, but she's under so much stress that she doesn't quite get a grasp of how much she can smother us with her anxieties and her stress. She "whines" a lot and complains a lot... if not constantly. And to an extent, she has cause to.
To put it simply, everything is toxic. She's toxic, her work is toxic, her family is toxic... I like to think that I'm the exception, but even then I've snapped at her a few times.
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Let me explain. Here's what happened today. All day she wrestles with problems. Her employees talk on the phone, they do bad work that needs to be redone, sometimes rookie mistakes by senior employees who don't give a fuck, she points out a mistake to her employee and they blame it on her, or they say she's wrong. One of them, at the end of her work day which btw spans from like 6 AM to 5 PM, drops a super sassy comment in front of everyone to discredit her, even though she's right.
That's I get home for dinner, and she, with a smile on her face, asks my brother how he's been doing, referring to how he stopped smoking today. He responds aggressively, as he naturally does whenever he's not super excited about a topic of discussion. This caused some tension, because she was already pretty angry with her day of work and the repeated (real or imagined) instances of disrespect toward her during her day of work. So that piled on. And then, after dinner, she went back to her office (which is in the house) and talked with Dan, who basically told her that she was doing her job wrong... And she fucking snapped, big time.
I have no way to know if it's true that he was as mean to her as she's since told me he was, because she sometimes reacts very explosively to mild criticism. Was this that? Or was he really an asshole? It could be one or the other very easily. But I kind of believe her.
She started throwing completed work around, breaking stuff, some of it may be irreparable, I don't know yet, and if it is she might lose some clients. When she started breaking stuff, Dan restrained her, my brother and I heard the noise and we went there... still pissed at my brother, she yelled at him to leave, Dan kind of let her go, but she reached for more stuff to break and so I got ahold of her to prevent her from breaking more stuff. Dan started apologizing for being rude because he could tell escalating was not going to help. My brother was calling her crazy and just generally not helping until I told him to shut the fuck up. That's while I'm restraining my mother so that she doesn't break more of the office's work, which would, needless to say, add complexity to her life.
Basically, this is my perspective: a lot of people are assholes to her. I get the sense that she's sometimes an asshole back without really noticing. She sometimes gets really mad about small things and overly dramatic.
There's literally nothing I can do to help. Telling her about how she's sometimes overbearing is instantly taken as an affront, us admitting to weighed down by her constant barrage of complaints about everything that she's struggling will anger her, and my brother as well as Dan will continue to be assholes to her, same with her employees. And she can't change her employees easily, not at all. Training a new one when she already works insane hours at almost 60 would be an additional charge of work as well as a gamble because many of them will get 2 months of training and leave... And she refuses to seek medical help.
To be clear, I'm not asking for advice. If a recourse exists I've thought of it and know it wouldn't work or I've tried and it doesn't. I don't know if she needs medical help, either way she refuses. So... fuck. And so now I'm worried. And I don't know what to do, because there's probably nothing I can do, except take what I can off her shoulders. I do what I can but it's not much, basically.
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I'm sorry to hear about your family's situation  I hope your venting was even the slightest bit therapeutic for you <3
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bring a mirror to them and hope they look
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I reccommend reading up on Stoicism. Not the modern use of the word but the actual philosophy. I come from a similar situation and it helped a lot.
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life is short, dont spend it doing things you hate, with people who dont care for you
this isnt advice but wtvr
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I have no way to know if it's true that he was as mean to her as she's since told me he was, because she sometimes reacts very explosively to mild criticism. Was this that? Or was he really an asshole? It could be one or the other very easily. But I kind of believe her.
To be clear, I'm not asking for advice. If a recourse exists I've thought of it and know it wouldn't work or I've tried and it doesn't. I don't know if she needs medical help, either way she refuses...
It's likely not who you are at this point in your life, but just giving your loved ones the benefit of the doubt and believing in them does more for someone than most can realize. There are people like your mother who try incredibly hard but feel like they're missing some facet in their life that secures and helps normalize their negative feelings.
Believing someone--similar to existentialism--is as simple as me taking in everything you've typed out and believing what you say about there being no solution you haven't thought of, though that statement isn't normally ever true.
Would you screw over a professor, lie, or cheat hard in class when they're constantly chill and trying to help you out? No, not likely.
Most people are able to normalize and teeter back down on their own, yet your mother suffers from years of stress and abuse. They do it through hobbies, pastimes, and taking care of their family. From wait you've said, I'd say that mother has barely anything left in the tank to shelter her own emotions.
Have you ever heard of the self-fulfillment prophecy? Her peers, her family, and her entire life is shouting at her and saying that she's bad on a constant basis. Her reaction to all of this isn't so much important as how people are still able to do this stuff to your mother whom they're supposed to love and support.
Perhaps it's not your mother you need to fix, but the people around her currently. As you've said, people don't and won't change. That's untrue. The moment someone is placed in a compromising situation, or something they think they won't survive, you'd be surprised how the body is able to adapt and level it out somehow, some way. Everyone working with her is doing what they're doing because they're comfortable in their positions, and they need to go.
When my uncle was a big entrepreneur across the other side of the world and something tipped him and his businesses over the edge of extinction through the economic crisis, he needed to pay off all of his trusted employees and come back home to Canada to look for work. At this point I'm doing quite well in my career as well, but now our guest room is occupied by my uncle who is close to 60 at the time. His entire career was in that business in a very different part of the world. and there was no way for him to start from scratch. He worked all the way through, did not have the support of his family (wife left, daughter doesn't want to recognize him), and bucked up to clean toilets and drive buses. We both attended government assistance programs, and I quit work to guinea pig myself. What I discovered was that there was a lot of good out there and that I lacked a lot of basic personality which was supposed to carry me through my work. I gained a lot out of taking a 9 month break to rediscover what it's like to be out there in the work force.
Eventually, he travelled back to his hometown hearing news from his friends about work. He did not want to stay at our place anymore and live with us even if it was totally alright for that to happen. He took multiple jobs and eventually passed away on his own because of the poor work conditions and close to zero healthcare availability.
Being penniless is different than being unable to retain your morals, and I believe your mother needs to be taught a lesson about valuing her life and her work. That is, if her employees aren't even showing basic respect, they go do office work for someone else in this tough economy. Then, you can help her re-hire or start up a different segment in her life that is much more positive and befitting of someone who lives in a peaceful country with plenty of opportunities
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There are two ways to help people who do not want to be helped.
1: Change their minds, so that they want the help
2: Force it upon them.
Sometimes, neither option is possible. In that case, you can't win.
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People lashing out when stuff gets too rotten inside is not necessarily a bad thing, if it leads to improvement from then on, it will then be remembered/used as a stepping stone towards a better part of a needed change process.
Lives are filled with stuff.. but the objectively same "stuff" is felt quite differently by seemingly close people.
Reconciling/understanding who we are with who people think we are is a life time goal, not a reality anyone ever achieves. We are born without purpose, to then be trained at life (trained not taught) to thrive or survive.
What happens to us when we "integrate" stuff as our own is not something we have easy access to. People being introspective is usually disruptive or destructive before any improvement can be achieved past said burst of pain.
Many people thrive, so those who don't are often resentful for the lack of light at the end of the tunnel.
When you see, or have ever seen that light.. that beacon some call hope or transcendence .. feel your luck, revel in it.
Not everyone sees happiness as an actually achievable goal. Once you understand that other people are "other", you can start to understand who you are, and then who others are, which leads me to the end of my post:
"good luck, have fun" : show others that there is fun somewhere for them too and that this fun is worth it,
show them that all the pain is meant to reach the fun.. not just thrive to oxygenate a machine day after day, ..
..pain needs an outlet.
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sorry man that sucks, but venting helps at times. Hope it gets better
in my experience, you can't help them until they want to, and generally that doesn't happen until they fall flat on their face. That could mean this, it could mean the business closing etc,.
i don't want to comment too much since I obviously don't know the inner workings, but if every single person in that place is giving her an attitude, and has issues with her at work, and there's constantly problems, I am very sure on some level she is feeding that cycle. usually when it's gone on as long as this seems to have gone on, there's almost always more than one person at fault.
Until she wants to acknowledge that and change her own role first without worrying about who was wrong/at fault nothing changes.
Most people are content to wallow in their own shit, justifying their own behavior due to others rather than worrying about the one person they can control. That's 100x more important if it's her business (and having known a whole lot of small business owners, a ton fall into this trap)
Ever work at a job with a toxic work environment like that with long hours and a boss who thinks it is at any time okay to throw shit around? I'd be willing to wager that's not the first time some shit like that went down, and shit rolls down from management. not ok under any circumstances.
I mean step 1 is if these people are shit employees is to actually do something about that. initiate the process in finding, hiring, and training the correct employees if need be. working 6am to 5pm is your mom's fault and no one elses'. get better at time management, hire extra help if needed, etc.
I guess the best you can do if she's willing to listen is to try and frame it like that
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how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?
one, but the light bulb has to want to change. 
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yeah, i agree with that sentiment.
please update us in the future, glad to listen and hope it goes well~
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Thanks for the kind words, people.
To clarify a few things, she didn't throw a fit in front of her employees, this was after hours around like 7pm when I was just about to leave, so it was only in front of Dan.
As for the work situation, working to 6am to 5pm is her fault to an extent in that she could choose not to do it, but it would most likely result in the business closing down because the work wouldn't meet deadlines and her clients would go elsewhere, at which point it wouldn't be profitable. This would be a whole new problem, and on top of that Dan would be unemployed. Right now, part of the problem is that one of her employees is on maternity leave and if she hired an extra employee, then she'd end up with an extra employee once the other one returned from leave. And the last 5-6 employees she picked up turned out badly. One of them even stole from us. Another one was a pathological liar... The rest either couldn't learn at all, or left after they got the training.
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Hopefully things work out. It sounded pretty bad reading it. I'd say to you need to be the assertive one here but also listen really well.
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Love it, change it or leave it.
Sounds like a change situation to me.
Apparently a lot of stuff is not going the way it is supposed to be.
You can point out to the employess that what they are doing is only making matters worse and not helping.
You can help your mother with her business. You can tell her boyfriend type of person who seems to be capable of reason in extreme cases how you see the situation is and do some butter by the fishes talk with him.
You can tell your brother that his very existence is at stake if he keeps getting his mother so mad she destroys firm property = no moneyz for him.
You can stand up to him and become a beacon of light in that void that seems to be your family as you describe it.
You can stand up to them, stay firm in your believes and force a change. Take control of your life. Don't be pushed around as your mother apparently is being (which is partly faulty society and obviously her).
You can tell her to do more sports (in case she doesnt) good stress reliever. I personally love fricking Tai Chi.
You can actively try to make your mother (and everyone else) feel better by DOING stuff for them.
You can do a lot of things. You can also do nothing. Choose.
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Trying to help someone who doesn't do anything for themselves can be extremely emotionally draining and can leave you depressed afterward for a long time. What to do is a tough call. I would always advocate that being loyal to family and that sacrificing time and love to people who are struggling are worthy causes, but the grey area is when you start going "Is this hurting me emotionally to the point where I can't deal with it?" and there's no exact answer or magic number to that. Some people are very logic-oriented and will just go "If they're a lost cause, let them go and never look back." but some people, myself included, might be willing to sacrifice some of our own sanity if there is even a sliver of hope for someone.
Anyhow, I know that really doesn't answer anything, but that's my thought on the matter. I hope the best for you, no matter how things turn out.
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On December 11 2015 01:48 NoSoldier wrote:
Love it, change it or leave it.
Sounds like a change situation to me.
Apparently a lot of stuff is not going the way it is supposed to be.
1- You can point out to the employess that what they are doing is only making matters worse and not helping.
2- You can help your mother with her business. You can tell her boyfriend type of person who seems to be capable of reason in extreme cases how you see the situation is and do some butter by the fishes talk with him.
3- You can tell your brother that his very existence is at stake if he keeps getting his mother so mad she destroys firm property = no moneyz for him.
4- You can stand up to him and become a beacon of light in that void that seems to be your family as you describe it.
5- You can stand up to them, stay firm in your believes and force a change. Take control of your life. Don't be pushed around as your mother apparently is being (which is partly faulty society and obviously her).
6- You can tell her to do more sports (in case she doesnt) good stress reliever. I personally love fricking Tai Chi.
7- You can actively try to make your mother (and everyone else) feel better by DOING stuff for them.
You can do a lot of things. You can also do nothing. Choose.
I have a life of my own so I can't be around that much to micro manage these things, but to address some of your points.
1- It's not my place to discuss these things with the employees, these are not people I know, they're not people who would take me seriously. And they probably feel like they're the victims, even though they show absolutely no remorse when she points out their mistakes. Recently one of them wasted $500 of equipment, plus his time, by reading an order wrong.
2- I help with the business but I can't always be here. I'm a student and I have my own job at the uni. Also Dan's incapable of seeing beyond "she's crazy". Talking to him leads to nothing.
3- My little brother lives with my parents but he's not financially dependent on them. He pays rent and buys his own food.
4- I stand up to him when he's there. A lot of the time it's better to let him be his toxic self. It's hard to explain but basically my brother is an impulsive shit. I believe I said we tiptoe around him. We know he's going to be an asshole, we know he's going to snap if we stand up to him. To avoid conflicts, we kind of just let him be an asshole. I'll stand up to him when he goes beyond a certain point, but then it systematically degenerates into a shouting match. If I stood up every time, and he gives me a reason to just about every time we talk for any length of time longer than 15 minutes, we'd pick a fight every time. Literally if he shows up and my mother's there I just have to cross my fingers that he doesn't act like an asshole. And he really should leave the house, he's 23 and doesn't get along with anyone, but she refuses to kick him out. And he says he's going to leave, but he spends all his money ($45-40,000 a year) on booze, drugs, restaurant 3 times a day, taxis back home when he's drunk. Basically he's spent about $150,000 on useless crap over the last 4 years. And she won't kick him out.
5- My life is fine. I have my own stable thing going. Much like my mother goes and helps out her mother who has alzheimers, a little problematic microcosm. I go to my mother's sometimes basically to keep in touch specifically with her, I do what I can when I'm here.
6- She has extremely little free time, but does what she can.
7- I can't live for other people but I help. I help clean her place, I cook for them when I get a chance but I can't babysit another household.
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Give her a perfect day (or evening or experience or whatever)
Remember the first time you were to arrange a date with a girl, and wanted everything to be perfect and planned?
Do that for your mom. Find a time, once a week, once every two weeks, and find something you can do together; even if it is tending your grandma. Then make those hours happy and meaningful for her. You could be the shining star in her dark tunnel that she can look forward to. Sometimes just being there is a better option than trying to forcibly help.
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I have a life of my own so I can't be around that much to micro manage these things, but to address some of your points.
1- It's not my place to discuss these things with the employees, these are not people I know, they're not people who would take me seriously. And they probably feel like they're the victims, even though they show absolutely no remorse when she points out their mistakes. Recently one of them wasted $500 of equipment, plus his time, by reading an order wrong.
2- I help with the business but I can't always be here. I'm a student and I have my own job at the uni. Also Dan's incapable of seeing beyond "she's crazy". Talking to him leads to nothing.
3- My little brother lives with my parents but he's not financially dependent on them. He pays rent and buys his own food.
4- I stand up to him when he's there. A lot of the time it's better to let him be his toxic self. It's hard to explain but basically my brother is an impulsive shit. I believe I said we tiptoe around him. We know he's going to be an asshole, we know he's going to snap if we stand up to him. To avoid conflicts, we kind of just let him be an asshole. I'll stand up to him when he goes beyond a certain point, but then it systematically degenerates into a shouting match. If I stood up every time, and he gives me a reason to just about every time we talk for any length of time longer than 15 minutes, we'd pick a fight every time. Literally if he shows up and my mother's there I just have to cross my fingers that he doesn't act like an asshole. And he really should leave the house, he's 23 and doesn't get along with anyone, but she refuses to kick him out. And he says he's going to leave, but he spends all his money ($45-40,000 a year) on booze, drugs, restaurant 3 times a day, taxis back home when he's drunk. Basically he's spent about $150,000 on useless crap over the last 4 years. And she won't kick him out.
5- My life is fine. I have my own stable thing going. Much like my mother goes and helps out her mother who has alzheimers, a little problematic microcosm. I go to my mother's sometimes basically to keep in touch specifically with her, I do what I can when I'm here.
6- She has extremely little free time, but does what she can.
7- I can't live for other people but I help. I help clean her place, I cook for them when I get a chance but I can't babysit another household.
It is not my place to put thoughts into your head, because i believe that it is likely to hurt more and deeper to dwell on the reasons, when you can just go through with the solution.
A lot of what you wrote there is completely opinion based, which is fine in your own head to justify things. But from a factual point of view you are a person. Persons can interact with one another. And yes from any person to any person.
I stay with what i said earlier, trying to convey that i read and understood what you said though.
1. Don't dwell on it and live with it (love it). 2. Do something about it.
You wrote a significant amount of characters in a decently formatted text. What is important to you? What is it, that you want? Who would you like to be? What do you need to do to be that person... and so on.
In case im not making any sense.... well.... live with it.
Edit: btw from what i gather in that text you chose option 1: Do nothing.
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Then you haven't read adequately... I do plenty. I might be ablee to do more but to say I do nothing just shows that I was right to say I wasn't asking for advice. You don't know how much time and effort I put into this and it's draining
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Your mother's employees should respect her and your brother should respect her.
Bitch-slaps both physical and verbal seem to be required.
I mean how does she tolerate any of her employees to shit talk her and then still pay them?
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It appears you need me to spell it out for you. I can only yell at you what i reflect back from what you say, if you dont want to listen that is fine and dandy.
I wish you the best of luck in the future.
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On December 12 2015 03:17 NoSoldier wrote:It appears you need me to spell it out for you. I can only yell at you what i reflect back from what you say, if you dont want to listen that is fine and dandy. I wish you the best of luck in the future.
I specifically said I was not asking for advice for that reason. I can't give you an exhaustive explanation of the dynamics at play. That being said, thank you.
On December 12 2015 02:34 B.I.G. wrote:
Your mother's employees should respect her and your brother should respect her.
Bitch-slaps both physical and verbal seem to be required.
I mean how does she tolerate any of her employees to shit talk her and then still pay them?
I agree. It's simple from my perspective because I would not tolerate it, but she to an extent depends on them. As much as the situation is intolerable, she needs them to keep her business afloat. And I've told her that she should raise hell when they disrespect her but she doesn't seem to be able to.
Might seem weird that a business owner has trouble with discipline but she apparently hasnt needed it that much for over 30 years. But she recently fired a guy over it.
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wow I thought my life was bad. Seems like some people are living in hell every day, or it sounds like it. I really wish you luck, you seem like the only sane one there!
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Let her "sell" the company and look for a job with less stress. Tell her to dedicate extra time to her mother (if she wants to) and to enjoy life some more.
You can't stay sane in an increasingly toxic environment
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I edited my post to this: life is a kick in the pants. Take care your own business and do what you can, but know you can't compel people to do anything.
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Having too many day to day stressors and problems tends to cause a decrease in effective long term planning. just putting it out there as a note to be mindful of.
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On December 12 2015 15:35 radscorpion9 wrote:
wow I thought my life was bad. Seems like some people are living in hell every day, or it sounds like it. I really wish you luck, you seem like the only sane one there!
Thank you. I'm sure they all have different versions of what happened, I'm not convinced that I'm particularly sane.
To write a quick update:
Due to how badly the situation blew up, I was under the impression that it was going to leave permanent "scars" so to speak on the family. Even thought that my mother was going to end her relationship with Dan, which would have been good and bad since I believe that he's "emotionally abusive". However, all seems to be back to normal. They get along now, and it looks like nothing of value was lost in her quick rampage. Seems like miraculously none of their work was broken beyond repair, and all deadlines were met.
On December 13 2015 02:26 B-royal wrote:
Let her "sell" the company and look for a job with less stress. Tell her to dedicate extra time to her mother (if she wants to) and to enjoy life some more.
You can't stay sane in an increasingly toxic environment
I wish she would sell it. Unfortunately there are very few people interested in buying this. They basically make the hardware for orthodontics, and those who have the skills generally start their own business, and the biggest asset of this business is its loyal customers, but building a base of customers/big clients is apparently relatively easy. Essentially this is a domain which has a fairly high barrier to entry, basically it's artisanal/technical work that needs to be done very well, but once you're there and you're willing to put in the work and you can do some networking, you're pretty much guaranteed to make a buck. Before in this thread I wrote about how hard it is to hire new employees, part of the reason is that some of them work for a few years and go on to start their own business. They even "steal" clients sometimes, even though there are some kind of deontological rules against it.
On December 13 2015 04:40 MountainDewJunkie wrote:
I edited my post to this: life is a kick in the pants. Take care your own business and do what you can, but know you can't compel people to do anything.
Hopefully it gets better there. What I described before feels more like a ceasefire to me than peace...
On December 13 2015 05:15 zlefin wrote:
Having too many day to day stressors and problems tends to cause a decrease in effective long term planning. just putting it out there as a note to be mindful of.
Yeah, and we're worried for her health too. =_=
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Set boundaries. Don't enable the behaviors.
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On December 13 2015 22:08 MarlieChurphy wrote:
Set boundaries. Don't enable the behaviors.
How do you suggest that I set boundaries for 3 adults that I don't live with?
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On December 14 2015 20:30 MarlieChurphy wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2015 04:55 Djzapz wrote:On December 13 2015 22:08 MarlieChurphy wrote:
Set boundaries. Don't enable the behaviors. How do you suggest that I set boundaries for 3 adults that I don't live with? That doesn't mean physical boundaries https://duckduckgo.com/?q=boundaries in psychology
I understand that, but how can I remotely enforce "psychological boundaries" from where I live? There's a limit to how much I can influence other people in changing their behavior, especially since much of it stems from powerful emotions.
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More nature.
Watch animals. Ducks are popular. You could even watch pigeons. Don't just look. Watch.
Listen to the trees blowing in the wind.
If you find help in this, invite your mom next time you go.
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EPT
