r/Anxiety•
valentinetaq

I feel like my mom doesn't care about what causes me to be anxious

I was out today and my mom did something that drew a lot of attention to us (or, as my brain interpreted it, people were staring mainly at me). I see a therapist for general anxiety, but a lot of what I deal with is social anxiety. Certain situations really can set off my anxiety, but my mom is a very carefree person and she doesn't care about people staring at her, thinking she's weird, etc. so she doesn't understand what I go through a lot of the time. I told her afterwards that what she did really bothered me and asked her not to do it because it really made me anxious. She disregarded what I said and turned around and started complaining about something that I had done that she didn't like.

I'm not trying to imply that I don't care about how my actions affect other people, because I try to be mindful of that (and, having anxiety, I tend to be a bit too mindful of that sometimes). But I get discouraged because I'll try and talk to her about what can set off my anxiety and she'll either try and one-up me or tell me something along the lines of "in the real world, you need to learn how to deal with that" as if I'm not trying at all. I keep telling her in those situations that I'm working on it with my counselor but it's hard for me right now, but she keeps acting as if I'm incompetent and I just need to learn to suck it up because that's how the "real world" works. Oddly enough, I expect her to be the one that would understand me the most because she also has dealt with and seen a counselor for anxiety (though hers manifests in a much different way than mine does). Everyone in my family knows that she has a way of making things all about her and how things make her feel, but other peoples' feelings come second to hers. I guess we're all like that to some extent, but her self-centeredness can be very pronounced and it often feels like she doesn't care about how what she does affects my anxiety levels.

Every, every time I try and bring it up with her, she always flips it back on me. Nothing is ever her fault, in her eyes, or her problems are always bigger than mine.

What can I do?

Posted May 22, 2019, 11:34 PM UTC

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