NPD Enmeshed Mother-In-Law: tips and tricks?
So my mother-in-law is a narcissist and has enmeshment issues with her two sons since her husband died tragically over a decade ago. One of things that is most annoying is she refuses to be interrupted, and tries to tell the same stories over and over, bragging about her younger years, about her travels and how much better the people are in X and Y places than where we are - she also loves to complain about almost everyone in her life, rousing conversation! We have learned to just leave the room after a certain point. If we try to engage in the conversation, she will often get very irritable and complain about being interrupted. My husband says at this point it is not worth fighting her on these things and basically tunes out. She will often also have conversations in which she only refers to him, and tries to act like only they are having a conversation when I am just sitting here.
She is apparently a lot worse than she used to be, and I am starting to think she also has some kind of early on-set dementia (she is in her 70s). A recent confrontation we had was her getting really mad that we thought a digital photo was altered that she believed was not (she was patently wrong). She started screaming at us that "she can see with her own eyes, and it looked like that!" I love my husband so much, but he has coped by just ignoring her. He tells me I should as well, and to not embody her. I seem to threaten her, perhaps because I take attention away from her in terms of my husband. She not so subtly will say things to undercut me like, "you're so lucky my son is so in love with you so that he can see you as someone who is pretty." I try to have patience and continue to be kind to her, but am hitting my breaking point. Advice on how to better handle someone like this?