My mom is a very sweet, giving woman but has been through quite a few traumatic events in her life: alcoholic father/chaotic household while growing up, her own verbally abusive marriage and divorce, suicide of her sister, dealing with her son/my brother's life of medical and behavioral issues and worst of all his death in her house when he was 29. Understandably this has all taken a real mental toll on her.I’m not worried that she herself is a suicide risk or anything; having known the loss of her sister that way she says she would never inflict that kind of pain on anyone else. That being said, she is very clearly depressed but also reluctant to seek any kind of therapy. She’ll own up to this while also insisting she’s fine but I can tell she’s not.Her house has always been cluttered and she's never been much for housework but its getting more and more grimy the few times I've actually been allowed over there recently. Any time I bring this up or offer to help she pushes back that she's not a hoarder, that I'm just giving her a hard time about her lifestyle and I need to mind my own business. Same scenario for any of her other habits. When it comes to eating, lots of carb-y junk food, very few veg. Physical activity, not if she can avoid it and I'm seeing a clear, steady decrease in mobility (she couldn’t make it to the other end of the block the other day). How much time she spends on social media is also worrisome and she has the news on constantly these days which seems to just stress her out more but she apparently can’t help it (at least she hasn’t gotten sucked in to any extremist viewpoints).She is smart and still has her wits about her but is absolutely so stubborn and defensive if I breach any of these topics. She will insist that I'm out of line, that she knows she's depressed but she's dealing with it, etc. I hate bringing these things up because I don't like upsetting her but we've definitely had some very long discussions about these issues. It also just hurts my feelings that she doesn't listen to me/take me seriously and I’ve brought this up with her as well.I can see how the depression affecting her health and I want to help but after years of going around in circles, I am feeling so frustrated at this point. I absolutely understand that it is her life, I cannot make another person do anything, that technically I don't have to go out of my way at all to help her if I don’t want to, and in some ways I would very much save my own mental health by not doing so. I also absolutely understand that depression can make it very, very tough to get anything done/see basic self care as a priority. I want to be clear I'm at no point telling her 'just snap out of it' or anything as ignorant as that.Unfortunately I also know that there will come a day that her problems will become my problems when she’s no longer able to take care of herself, as well as cleaning out her house after she passes (which God willing is many years from now). I would just love to head this off at the pass and start working on things before they get any worse, something I’ve honestly been trying to do for years to no avail.We some family in town, her other sister for example but its tough to figure out any kind of course of action at this point since I know it would feel like such a betrayal of confidence if I brought anyone else in on this to talk to her (like I’ve talked to them privately about these issues and they are sympathetic, but if we both approached her together she’d likely just close herself off even more).But I just want to know if anyone else out there has dealt with similar situations? What did you end up doing? Any advice about how to maybe get through to her? Do I just let sleeping dogs lie or keep trying to help my mom have a better quality of life?Thank you for reading this and thank you in advance for any responses via /r/relationship_advice https://ift.tt/33lqBQ7
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