Toxic Elderly Parents

Thanks for this article–very helpful. I had two parents who were severe withholders. The verbal abuse was there, the physical neglect, malignant narcissism, but the withholding was profound. I felt invisible.

My father died 2 years ago. I have been there for my mum and helped her in every possible way that I can. She is a drinker but not a drunk. Last week she was trying to goad me into an argument. I resisted but then she started to have a go about my daughter. I did retaliate but not shout or swear. She came at me with her fists, hatred in her eyes, swearing at me then threatened to grow boiling water at me. Since then she has made up a lie about a text that she says I… Read more »

Now that you are an adult … Do your parents still treat you like a child? Do you have intense emotional or physical reactions after spending time with your parents? Do your parents control you with threats or guilt trips? Do you feel like no matter what you do, it’s never good enough for your parents? Yes! this is what I deal with on a daily basis. The sad thing is I live with my mother and do not have the funds at this time to move….I will however, make this my primary focus for the first part of this… Read more »

I am 43 and I slowly but surely start to believe that my 67 years old mother is Narcissistic. I only saw her toxicity recently. It took me that long to realised?! She pulled me down in my life and criticised me countlessly of times. Burned my leg and arm with the hot iron while she was ironing my school uniform for a bad behaviour of shortening the hem of my skirt. It didn’t help that my father walked out on us when I was 6years old. I was the only child she had and she controlled all aspects of… Read more »

I would love the opportunity to talk to someone about the situation I am living with right now. It’s unbearable.

Wow, I didn’t realize how many people have these issues in common. I am back here because I saw a reply to my post here months ago. I’d forgotten I’d even posted it. Sadly, nothing has changed about my father. He’s had no contact with me even though my husband, as we speak, is in a nursing home dying of cancer. Could sure use my Dad’s love and care right now, but he doesn’t have it for me anymore. He’s only interested in his women friends. That’s fine. He just might end up dying alone and penniless. He need not… Read more »

I’ll save you the gory parental details. What I can say to anyone in dealing with toxic elderly parents is that spending some time figuring out how you can name and then defend certain non negotiable boundaries for yourself, spouse, kids, etc is the first step in surviving this nonsense with your self respect and integrity intact.

I was born with ADHD which was not diagnosed until I was an adult and, because of it as well as my poor coordination and clumsiness, suffered peer rejection, verbal and emotional abuse, bullying and teasing from kids and society. I now have (untreated) ADHD, AvPD, along with some bipolar and OCD. Unfortunately my parents also played a negative role in my childhood. My mother would constantly yell at me, call me names, accuse me, and often embarrassed me publicly. Mother has always been in denial of what she has done, and fits the bills of “controller” and “verbal abuser.”… Read more »

I have a 64 year old father who indirectly killed my mother. Years of abuse and terror, my mother developed a fatal illness and passed a way last year. Leaving my father. He is an alcoholic, abuses drugs and is sexually deranged. He lives a life that we as his children cannot be apart of. Its dangerous and unhealthy, yet even now at 64 he doesn’t show any signs of changing/calming down. My mother divorced him a couple of month before she passed and left explicit directions that her house was to be sold with the strict priority my father… Read more »