Guilt

My mother has gotten worse and worse about using guilt and manipulation to try and control me as she has aged. When I grew up, it was always control issues having to do with me being fat or not loving her enough. As I have gotten older and gotten out on my own, she has continued to focus primarily on these same topics, with my lack of visiting her thrown in for good measure.

She is always telling me stories of how fat people die and get sick. I am overweight and have been most of my life, so these stories really hurt my feelings. I have asked her not to do this, but she continues to talk on the phone about it, mail me articles about being fat in the mail, etc. She has always been thin, so she does not even try to understand my food addiction. She just tells me that I lack discipline and need to just loose the weight or I am going to die.

Her biggest thing of late has been to guilt trip me over not coming home often enough. I do not visit her because I have three sick cats that require pills three times a day and I can not afford to board them or have a sitter come three times a day. She recently told me that she thought I loved my cats more than her and she has suggested that maybe my cats need euthanized.