Enmeshed with mom -- thoughts or advice?

“I’m 26 years old and stuck in a very enmeshed relationship with my toxic mother. I’m miserable but I am afraid it is largely my own fault. I’m struggling to make sense of everything and feel very conflicted and confused. I am a 26-year-old female, but I live with my mother as an adult, due to screwing up and being immature and lazy in the past. I’m trying to make up for my failure at life by being more responsible. At the same time, I’m also hurt and conflicted. After taking two “medical leaves of absence” from a prestigious university and repeatedly failing several classes (while excelling and winning awards in others), and eventually being hospitalized for depression, I was finally kicked out of my college. I moved back in with my mother, who coincidentally did not have a home of her own during this time, and was staying (rent free) with her best friend and their family until eventually SHE was kicked out after two years of not paying rent. We spent the past few years, until recently, when we started renting a small house, moving between states and staying with various friends and family, as well as in a commercial store front that my mom had bought to keep her things in. Anyway, now we are renting a house, well she is, and I pay a share of my (part time) salary toward financing that store front I mentioned earlier (about 500 dollars a month). I have taken several classes over the past several years since dropping out, trying to finish out my degree, or get enough credits to be accepted back by my university (which they said they would do), but it’s slow and expensive and I’m struggling to stay motivated. I feel like a failure. Anyway, my relationship with my mom has always been complicated. She has bouts of mean behavior punctuated by being fun, attentive, warm, and loving. When asked to think of upsetting events in my past in therapy I recently told my therapist about an incident when I was first going through puberty where my mom asked me if I had pubic hair (I didn’t share this specific detail just said “my development”) yet and I was embarrassed so I said “no” and then she said to show her and I said I really didn’t want to and begged her not to have to, but she yelled and yelled and forced me to undress in front of her and then lay on the bed. I actually did have pubic hair and she was furious and screaming. Afterwards, she forced me to get in the shower and washed me while yelling that I was dirty and couldn’t even wash myself, and that I was a liar. I am worried when I share that that you will have an incorrect perception or overly negative perception of my mom. That was one of her worst moments, but it didn’t happen again and she wasn’t like that most of the time by any means. When I share things to explain how my mom can be, I worry I’m only telling some things and maybe I’m not seeing the whole story and maybe that’s why people sometimes tell me she is not good for me, but they aren’t seeing the full pic or all the irresponsible stupid things I do, including lie, steal, etc. A few weeks ago, my mom got really mad and started kind of hitting and kicking me and told me I ruined her life and I disgust her and that I was “demonic” and on and on. It happened in between sessions so I told my therapist about it. I honestly did something awful to deserve it though (I lied repeatedly and elaborately about being in school when I wasn’t). When I was younger, in early high school (i’m embarrassed to admit I was so old), my mother used to make me say things to my dad when they fought. She used to text my dad from my phone pretending to be me and say things like “I hate you! Why are you so cruel to mommy? why can’t you just love her?” But this was during a very stressful time for her. When I was in college she secretly lived in my dorm room for a semester which was awful and humiliating. She said she was sacrificing for me but really, I think, she was homeless (kicked out of her long term arrangement with her best friend) and wanted to be with me/get free rent/companionship, etc. It wasn’t ideal for either of us, I hated my life so much during it, but what hurts more is her using this time when she is yelling at me nowadays as an example of how much she sacrifices to me and how ungrateful I am. It’s so confusing. For over ten years until a few months ago she did not work and was living entirely off money from my dad even though they both date other people and have been living apart many years. My mom is nice to me too and has done so much for me. She cares a lot about me. But she is also very controlling and doesn’t really let me do anything but I can’t complain because I’m living with her and I’ve messed up my life so I can’t complain. She seems to resent me and be very disappointed in me not reaching milestones she expected of me but also depends on me for a lot (I do her laundry often, grocery shopping, her homework for a college class, stuff for her work). I also used the remainder of my inheritance from my late grandfather to pay for her college class. But I thought it was the least I could do after failing college and messing things up and lying repeatedly about it, etc. Like I mentioned, she recently got a part-time primarily work- from-home job as an administrative assistant for a local nonprofit. It’s more work and hours than she expected and she hasn’t worked in a long time, so it’s been hard. I was helping her in the beginning but ended up doing a lot of the big tasks myself and she is busy herself and is also dating this guy who loves doing stuff and she is always very busy with him even though she tells me she doesn’t want to and is exhausted but feels she has to hang out with him. Truth is, I end up doing hours of work for her a week, making spreadsheets, etc. And helping her do all sorts of things on the computer. I write emails, schedule meetings, run reports and create mass mailings and all sorts of documents and spreadsheets. The past two days I was off from work and I worked 6-8 hours on mailings/reports/spreadsheets for her job. I’m not getting paid. Id rather be paid but I feel like I can’t just stop or tell her no. And I feel good about myself for helping my mom. My therapist seems to think she is not good for me but I am worried he is overreacting or over sensitive due to his line of work or the way I’m portraying her because she often hurts/bothers me. But there are two sides to every story and I am very irresponsible. When I’m independent enough and responsible enough I do plan to move out. She would never let me move out now. What complicates things is that I have a really distant and uncomfortable relationship with my father. He has always been kind and supportive and tried to protect me from my mother but for some reason I have always felt a million times more attached to my mother. I feel tremendous guilt about what I did to him and that I refuse to see him despite him being kind to me. I feel very awkward around my father and uncomfortable. Just talking to him is so hard and uncomfortable. Part of it is that I remember when I was very little he used to french kiss me though he denies it and I believe my memory might be distorted so I’m not sure. Please help me. “

Hi LocalGirl, Starting with your mother: First-off: you're too young to be considered a failure. You're supposed to still be exploring your world to find your particular place in it. So let's get rid of that thought-virus immediately. I seriously doubt it was yours, originally, anyway. Questions: I'm not American, but - 500 Dollars a month for storage? Isn't that incredibly pricey? And why would she still need storage if she's renting a house now? Do you pay it direct or to your mother? And why does she keep paying it; if it's a massive 6k Dollars per year? I presume if she's renting a whole house, that means she has a full-time job now? I'm just wondering if there's a connection here, with this: "SHE was kicked out after two years of not paying rent." She doesn't exactñu sound honest, does she. And this account of yours includes what sounds like the "Sweet & Mean" cycle, aka, "Jekyll & Hyde". Correct? Or would you go further and say she oscillates between Heavenly Mum and Hellish Mum? Is the difference that stark, whereby you feel she is TWO people in the one body? Also - can you tell when she's about to switch? Does anything you've tried doing, worked, to stop or delay the switch? Have you looked into Narcissism/Narcissistic Mothers? Or are you just driving her to distraction, too much of the time? Go into detail about lying and stealing, please? No judgement. However, you might be acting-out. Because this is the thing: Narcissists aren't horrid ALL the time. Just half the time or more. That's one of the main hooks as make leaving them and emotionally disconnecting from them so hard. "due to screwing up and being immature and lazy in the past." Just because it bears repeating: those don't apply unless you're over 30. You're in the stage where you're supposed to be daring, take reasonable risks, try and fail, try and fail (learning as you go...mistakes/failures being 'the paviours to success' and all that)...finding out for yourself where your particular place in the world is. It's called Teenagedom and Your Twneties. So no more of that beating-yourself-up, please, thank-you, because it's a victim symptom and always-always untrue or put out of context (tick! - of your young age/stage). Thoughts?

PS: Also: do her bad moods lasts for hours/days? Or does she lose her temper too-explosively for the situation then recover almost as instantly and act like nothing happened?