u/rebeccaleer

I grew up in a christian household. my moms side of the family is extremely religious and always have been. My entire childhood emotions were always set aside and we were always taught to be grateful for our blessings and to just ignore the bad because "satan" was attacking us and he wanted us to feel negative emotions. I was taught by allowing myself to feel those emotions i was letting Satan win and giving him power.

I am now 31 years old and have 2 children of my own. I still am christian and believe in god but I feel I have steered away from the extremism... in particular the way of thinking that I mentioned above. I grew up never feeling heard, never being taught how to handle those emotions and I was taught to suppress them. I knew it wasnt right and I never want my children to feel that way.

The past 2 years have been some of the hardest times in my life. I had a pregnancy loss followed by another very high risk pregnancy where we almost lost my son and i suffered severe complications that put my life at risk, we suffered massive income loss and severe financial distress, I lost my grandparents within 9 months of eachother and now I have been having some pretty serious and severe health issues that are effecting my mental and physical health and my mobility. Its been a lot. ​

I have tried going to my mother for emotional support and I always leave the conversation feeling defeated. Instead of providing real tangible support, showing any empathy, or providing any comfort im always met with the same response. "Give it to god, Satan is attacking you and you need to keep praying and believe that god will fix it and cure you" when i tell her I have prayed im told to pray harder and to believe in my heart he will heal me. She tells me I need to tell Satan I rebuke everything hes doing to me. She prays over the pgone and yells at satan. There is no addressing my feelings, no addressing the problem. Just dismissing and praying.

This feels like such an emotionally neglectful response. Emotions need to be heard, acknowledged, addressed and felt. I have brought that up to her and she is incapable of seeing it that way. I feel i carry a lot of trauma by not ever being taught emotional intelligence, emotional maturity and how to sit with my own emotions. I feel i carry a lot of emotional pain from never having that empathy and support from my own mother growing up and to this day.

Aside from everything else motherhood is hard and comes with a lot of challenges. My oldest is autistic and my experience of motherhood hasnt been all sunshine and rainbows. I really could have used my mom during this time but I have felt completely neglected by her and dismissed. I feel telling someone you are praying for them and not providing any other type of support is a cop out so you dont have to actually address someone's emotions.

Anyone else go through something similar? What have you done?

First off, i want to say that i am very grateful that she is helping us out by driving my son to and from preschool. I have a medical condition that prevents me from being able to drive and my husband works long hours so he is gone with our only vehicle for the majority of the time. I know shes doing us a huge favour and i do acknowledge and appreciate that. It makes it difficult to complain but it is becoming increasingly frustrating to my husband and I.

My mother in law keeps having us take out the kids car seats. Im not saying its a huge deal but her van has 3 rows. She has the 2 front seats, the 2 captains seats and then the back row. Both of my kids car seats are on the captains seats. In the back of her van she is storing a small foldable mattress for camping and a couple other smaller things. Nothing heavy. Because of this she has her 3rd row flipped down to accommodate the size of the mattress. She doesnt camp frequently and hasnt gone since last summer so we arent sure why she isnsits on it being in her van at all times and is unwilling to remove it. We have brought up the idea of just removing the mattress and she said she doesnt want to. I would understand if it was heavy or difficult to remove or if she wasnt physically able to do it but thats not the case. I have had to remove it before to help her move furniture between her offices and The mattress is actually quite light as its a foam mattress that folds up.  I think its her being stubborn if im being honest.

Tonight shes taking my nieces for ice-cream and instead of removing the couple of items from the back of her van and flipping up the seat, she called my husband to come over and uninstall our kids car seats. She doesnt know how to uninstall them and reinstall them herself so my husband does it. He offered to teach her how to uninstall them but she doesnt want to learn. Its becoming annoying because this is like the 3rd or 4th time in the span of a couple of weeks where we are uninstalling and reinstalling them.

If there wasnt an easier solution I wouldnt be complaining. I understand she's going to need her car for things and thats not the problem. Its just not always easy to get over there and do it and it feels like we have no choice since shes doing us a huge favour and shes unwilling to learn how to do it herself. We also feel like we cant bring it up to her because she is helping us out.

Am I out of line for being annoyed by this? How would you handle it?