How do I deal with my emotionally distant mother?
I am 22 (F). I am the middle child, and we are three sisters.
My mother’s behavior is quite erratic. She is not a bad woman or a bad mother — she has always supported us, taken care of us, sent us to the best schools, and allowed us to do whatever we wanted. But she is always annoyed and irritated, never shows affection, and says a lot of negative things. On the contrary, she is super nice to my cousins so kind and loving and she always compares them to us and label us as bad and them as good.
Just now, I was keen to cook a new recipe, but from the very beginning she was screaming at me, saying I wouldn’t be able to cook it properly and that I don’t know anything, even though I am an adult now. It got so annoying that I had an emotional breakdown and ran out of the kitchen.
How do I deal with this? My father is a typical Indian man who is extremely emotionally distant, and now I can’t even speak to my mother because I fear she will scream at me.
We also live with my grandmother, who is an extremely difficult mother-in-law. She doesn’t let us sleep, is always asking us to do things, and constantly taunts my mother. My father always asks us to “adjust.”
I feel extremely heartbroken, sometimes I feel like running away from this house.
Posted Feb 19, 2026, 3:38 PM UTC