How to deal with an elderly, pushy, controlling mother who means well?
My mother has a "difficult personality", which, among many other things, means that she is agitated, stubborn and 100% immune to feedback. If she wants to "help" you, she will force her ideas on you no matter what: you can beg, you can scream, she will just move on with her plan. She can manipulate, emotionally blackmail, distort reality and so on, and all that "for your own good".
It sounds as if she were a horrible person, but I don't think she is evil, narcissistic, etc. I really do believe her intentions are good. Unfortunately, due to some psychological or neurological issues, she is simply unbearable.
I only started to regain some peace and sanity many years after I left and started living on my own, a 3-hour drive from home. Since then, my contact with my mother has mostly consisted of weekly phone calls, plus me visiting her once every 2 or 3 months.
She is almost 70 years old and will retire in a few months. A few months ago, my daughter was born, and my mother got this horrifying idea of coming over to our home to "help us with the baby". I told her multiple times, extremely clearly, that we don't want her to come, but recently she called my wife's parents, almost sobbing that she is very sad and lonely, that I don't talk to her anymore, and that she "just wants to help". She also shared her plan to rent an apartment near us!
She's always been pushy and never listened, but now it's clearly reaching insane levels.
I don't know how to handle this whole situation. For sure, I don't want her to come here. That is completely horrifying. When I visit her, the only semi-positive emotion I feel is relief that I've fulfilled my obligation and now I'll have some time before I have to visit her again. Our former weekly calls made me feel sick for hours. Given all that, the best approach would be no contact at all, but I doubt that it's realistic in my case, as I don't think I'm strong enough to cope with the guilt and pressure from other family members.
So the only realistic way of coping seems to be to maintain some form of contact, as limited and infrequent as possible. In order to do that, I would have to reduce my emotional reactivity to her, as currently, after each contact, I feel this boiling inner rage and sadness.
Any advice?