TLDR: Mom avoids her feelings about my dad's dead and refuses to go to therapy. She vents a lot to me and I am getting tired and drained, I do not know what to do to convince her that therapy is her best option.
My (23F) mom (52) is avoiding therapy as much as possible. My dad died on early 2021, so it is still recent; he got covid and died within a week, so it was quite sudden.
My parents hated each other. They were together for 30 years though, but I grew up with them being toxic with each other. They would sabotage themselves and talk behind their backs a lot... sure, they had still some affection but I think they kept being together just because they were used to the relationship.
That said, my mother still cried a lot when dad died. She blames herself for his dead too, just because she did not force him to get hospitalized (he did not want to, was scared of hospitals). I tell her that she thought it was best for him and he died in his house, next to his wife.
Months passed and as today, she is much better. She admitted that after dad died, she has been much less stressed and has realized how abusive they were to each other over the years. However, she does not want to go to therapy... she is a workaholic and avoids her feelings with work. She still blames herself for my dad's dead and still holds a grudge against him after everything he did to her.
Mom vents a lot to me. I am her youngest daughter, and she often says that I am her favorite. I do not mind listening to her, but it has become tiring and is everything she talks about. She does not care much about my personal life as well, if I try to change de subject, she will turn it and talk about her and what happened with my dad again. I had told her that this makes me uncomfortable because I do not know what to reply and I also do not like her talking bad about my dad (she mentions all the bad things he did to her during their relationship). She says that she will stop but it has yet to happen.
If I try to bring therapy to the conversation, she says that she is too busy working. I tell her that a therapist is best suited to listen to her and navigate her feelings, but she still refuses. She says that she is afraid of her feelings and she cannot have a breakdown now because it will distract her from working. Our family is well-off and just her taking a few days off would not affect us, since she is the owner of her business.
It is not like my mother does not believe in therapy. She paid for mine without hesitation and saw how much I changed after it... but she still does not want to. Mom has told me that it makes her angry to keep bringing it up, because it makes her feel that I am forcing her to do it. I do not know what to do, I want her to actually reflect on what happened instead of just venting.
She does not have much friends due to her working a lot, so she does not have anyone else to talk about it. Sometimes I feel she is manipulating me to listen to her because whenever I tell her that I am uncomfortable she says "You are the only one I trust with this! Your sisters do not understand and your aunts just judge me".
Is there a way to solve this little by little? I think if she is able to digest her feelings more, she will be willing to go to therapy. I am thinking of singing her to some dancing classes or any kind of hobby, so she will spend less time working.
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* This article was originally published here
