RE: Let's talk about phobias. From a personal approach
Are there other family members or friends besides you who live nearby if your mother lived alone? How good is your mother at organizing support - on a scale of 1-10 (1 = very bad, 10 = very good)? How big is her circle of friends and acquaintances? Are you embedded in a social environment? Is your mother healthy and has no physical difficulties? At 55 she is still quite young.
- If I have several relatives close to her, I don't have to worry about that part, I know they will be looking after her. In the same way my mother is young and independent. Her circle of friends is big, she is very extrovert and as a teacher she knows a lot of people.
Your mother works as an engineer and seems to be able to do her job, even without modern telephone communication. That's good. As long as at work she does it well and nobody complains, she has no serious reason except for a worried son :)
- I think I'm worrying too much even more than usual... jejeje :P
Who is most worried that your mother will stay alone?
- Also my sisters are worried.
How great is your own fear that if you go away, she will feel alone or will not be able to cope? On a scale of 1-10 (1 = very small, 10 = very large). Who else is worried?
- The problem is that today we need a lot of these tools to solve certain problems and my mother only trusts my sisters and me, so not being able to use the technology could be frustrated and stressed a lot.
My mother is independent, capable, intelligent, but she has limitations in that sense. She can't drive a cell phone or a computer, she really panics.
I worry that I won't be able to communicate with her often. I'm well aware that this problem is not a limiting factor in her daily tasks and it's not bad, but being away and not being able to communicate with her can be difficult for both of us.
Also, when she needs to do something with the computer she comes to us "her kids" and if we can't help her right now she tends to get angry, to be aggressive and even because I can't help her she stops talking to me for weeks (it's happened to me several times).
It is not easy to fathom the complex backgrounds of behaviour in relationships between parents and children. It can be an unconscious strategy of your mother to be "helpless" so that there are reasons why her children should visit her. Some parents have a strategy of making themselves indispensable throughout their lives so that their children still come to them in adulthood to solve a problem. Others bind their children to themselves because, conversely, they want to claim their help. Often, it's a mixture of both.
Everything is just a means to keep the connection going. Which means is preferred is a personal matter. It may be that your mother does not agree with the fact that her children do not live near her (or a part of her does not want this, while another part understands it). She'll learn and accept it over time when you do not worry so much.
Since your mother lives otherwise her life very well, her defense against technology is not a pathological matter, if you ask me. She behaves like many other people with anger when something is denied her. She punishes you with ignorance when you have not given her what she wanted.
Does it work? Are you angry too and have a guilty conscience?
If it is effective, your mother has no reason to change her strategy. When her punishment produces you trying to connect with her, you prove her right.
This is how it presents itself to me: The more you want to bring her to something that she herself rejects so strongly, the more it intensifies a relationship between you. Your - and your mother's - emotional participation ensures that no one forgets the other. It may hurt if she doesn't talk to you for weeks, but she can be sure that you will come back sometime and be full of worry.
If "worry" is the strongest thing that always brings you closer to her, she would be "unwise" to give up this means. So it may be that she would let go of her helplessness if she would recognize or get the certainty from you that you think of her or are lovingly connected to her even when she is well.
People mistakenly think that when they are well, no one cares about them anymore. They interpret missing contact with indifference. So it also depends on you: Are you relieved when she gets along alone? Then you might signal to her that you are only fulfilling a duty when she needs your help. If, however, you are happy for her that she is independent and that she can feel this, you give her your trust. Conversely, you need her trust if she has to imagine that you will soon go further away and get along well.
As I see it, you are both in a process of detachment that is not complete yet. She can let you go in peace and you can let her be in peace.
Show her and assure her that you will do the things she asks you to do when you are available. Don't build any inner resistance to this, it just makes it worse. If you fully agree to help her whenever she asks you, something will change between you.
Just think of yourself: When you ask someone to be of service to you and he get's all worried or anxious, how does it feel? Don't you just want something to be done and not discuss it in length and width?
My brother once had a similar problem with my mother. She was always in his ears with things she wanted done. When he came home, she was already waiting to intercept him. Every day he was annoyed by it. I said to him: "Agree inwardly and give her your full attention in the first ten minutes of your coming home. Respond to her wishes. Then she will let you go and be satisfied." He did it this way and it brought about a much more harmonious relationship between them.
I wish you all the best.
I had not seen it that way, I think everything you say is very logical, the truth makes sense to me! Our relationship is good, maybe his way of seeing the technology and the behavior he has towards me when he doesn't get what he wants is the product of something that happened in the past "but I don't remember very well, I think I should sit down and think about bit and try to remember something. " But it can also be a way of self-defense to separate from your children. Mmmmmm I don't know!
In the same way, I will consider his words and I hope that in this new stage of our lives things can go well.
Thank you very much for your wonderful words...@erh.germany
:)