I'm a senior in college who's spending the rest of my semester at home due to COVID-19. I'm used to living on my own -- I lived in dorms for 2 years, with roommates in an apartment for 1, and have been living in a studio on my own for the last year. I've kept my apartment fairly neat and cook a well-rounded diet. I'm also an engineering student with multiple extracurriculars. While I can't say that my life is always together, I am self-sufficient while at college and generally able to function as an adult.
When I'm home, however, that independence is gone. My mother does not respect my boundaries over very basic things, which led to our relationship getting seriously damaged in high school (and only got repaired once I lived on my own in college). She is a fairly intense person who does the vast majority of the chores around the house because she wants it done her way. She tends to burst into my room without knocking, because she wants to vacuum, give me laundry, or tell me to manage my room (clean, make my bed, open my blinds or windows, etc.) or study -- things that I do not need reminders for, are not necessary, and/or do not affect her. I have asked her to knock before entering, to let me do chores in my own room, to not tell me to do things I already know to do. Whenever I ask her to stop, she either ignores what I've said or expects me to get up and do the thing she wanted to do immediately, and if I don't do it fast enough she'll do it herself.
For example, today she stripped my bed and washed my sheets while I went outside to enjoy some fresh air. I was a little peeved by this because I felt like my space wasn't being respected, but I hadn't explicitly asked her not to and I know it was well-intentioned, so I did my best to look at it in a positive light -- a non-issue. Once the laundry was finished, I asked her not to make my bed because I didn't want the disruption of her doing it and could/wanted to do it myself -- but I was in the middle of writing an essay for school and didn't want to break my flow, so I wanted to do it in my own time. (It's a bed! It doesn't need to be made immediately! Nobody needs to look at it except me because my room is in a far corner of the house!) Because I was still working on my essay, I didn't make the bed before dinnertime (about 30 minutes), which she asked about immediately as I joined for dinner.
I was honest in saying I hadn't yet put my sheets on the bed, and she told me that I needed to keep my room clean and make my bed. I told her that I knew how to keep my space reasonable after living on my own for 4 years, that I don't want her controlling my space because my space affects me (as the person living/studying there), and that she could avoid it if it bothered her so much she didn't need to come in to clean or do anything. She said, "if I don't do it [clean], then who will?" ...Me, the fully grown adult who knows how to make a bed and use a vacuum?? Despite this conversation, where I explicitly asked her not to interfere with my space, she went to my room while I was chatting with my dad after dinner and made my bed herself. It is obviously not just about helping me, because I've asked her explicitly not to do it.
This on its own -- my mother making my bed -- is laughably trivial in the grand scheme of things, and I know it sounds kind of ridiculous to be stressed about it. I'm not stressed about this one incident -- rather, it's indicative of a larger pattern of her ignoring my boundaries. I had really terrible anxiety and stress in high school largely as a result of this, and it resulted in physical health issues that went away once I went to college -- so it definitely has the potential to have a big effect on me. I really don’t need this on top of COVID stress, the big change in environment in the middle of my semester, the sudden switch to virtual school, and general academic stress (which is obviously harder than high school). I'm really worried that I'm going to develop mental and physical health issues again in this environment.
I don't think she fully understands what boundaries are, to be honest. She has a very intense, demanding job at a big company. She works ridiculous hours (from home) and has no work life balance and very little time. I also think her need for everything to be clean and done her way, despite the fact that this puts more work on her (because she rarely accepts others' help as good enough), has to do with needing to feel in control when her job is so stressful, which is a coping mechanism she's had my whole life but got exacerbated in the last 10 years.
Recently, she has gotten to the point where she realizes that she needs a better work life balance (because she got into a serious car accident last summer as a result of being too exhausted from long work hours -- she's lucky to be alive), but she still hasn't applied that realization and doesn't fully realize the ways it's shaped the way she reacts to life. I feel like I have to parent her when we have conversations about life, because she's only now making realizations about things that I have to help explain to her, because I had to work through things like an unhealthy relationship to work on my own. I think she needs therapy, but she doesn't think she has time for it because of her job. Though I am happy to help where I can, I don't have the energy to try guiding her through all these conversations, especially when they're impromptu because she's just crossed a boundary that's seriously thrown me off.
My question from all this... how on earth can I successfully establish boundaries? My mother is kind of wily and determined to get things done her way, doing things behind my back, so I just feel steamrolled and like she pushes past my boundaries -- it takes so much effort to keep them up. How can I get her to listen to me? Honestly anything helps -- if there are any books/websites/resources that I should read, that would be great too.
TL;DR: I, a functioning adult, now studying remotely at home; my mother does not respect my boundaries and treats me like a child. How do I establish boundaries?
Submitted April 02, 2020 at 09:51PM by apolling https://ift.tt/3e0u9KW
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