RE: Let's talk about phobias. From a personal approach
Hello Carlos, I am a social worker with a systemic integrative background. I work a lot with different people, young and old. Your story about your mother ... hmm...
It is honourable that you want to take responsibility. But to recommend therapy to parents is very thin ice.
Are there other family members or friends besides you who live nearby if your mother lived alone? How good is your mother at organizing support - on a scale of 1-10 (1 = very bad, 10 = very good)? How big is her circle of friends and acquaintances? Are you embedded in a social environment? Is your mother healthy and has no physical difficulties? At 55 she is still quite young.
Your mother works as an engineer and seems to be able to do her job, even without modern telephone communication. That's good. As long as at work she does it well and nobody complains, she has no serious reason except for a worried son :)
Who is most worried that your mother will stay alone?
How great is your own fear that if you go away, she will feel alone or will not be able to cope? On a scale of 1-10 (1 = very small, 10 = very large). Who else is worried?
As your mum is able to calculate, read and write, she will also be able to do her banking. If nobody would help any more, she would have to learn to do things in a new way. Often people are lazy and only make a change when there is no other way. Your mother's refusal to make friends with modern technology may have other reasons, unconscious reasons or reasons she doesn't want to discuss with you.
My own mother could never drive a car, use a computer and only calculate, read and write at fourth-grade level. She couldn't do banking later and couldn't take care of written and official matters when she got older. However, she lived embedded in a community and it was my brothers and sisters nearby who took care of everything, including neighbours, but by then she was already over 80. She had otherwise taken care of herself quite well.
As far as your mother sleeps well, eats well, has a social life and a job, your mother seems to me to lead a life that is not so unusual.
She doesn't need to leave her usual way of communicating. I think you can respect that. Some people feel too harassed to have to use the technology. If she just doesn't want you to show her this one thing - online banking - you should let go of the matter and just help her as long as you're available. Then your mother will have to get along and maybe you should trust her.
From what I assume or sense is that you may be worried for how you yourself feel about your leaving plans and the sense of security you might lack therefore. ...
Greetings from Germany
My mother is independent, capable, intelligent, but she has limitations in that sense. She can't drive a cell phone or a computer, she really panics.
I worry that I won't be able to communicate with her often. I'm well aware that this problem is not a limiting factor in her daily tasks and it's not bad, but being away and not being able to communicate with her can be difficult for both of us.
Also, when she needs to do something with the computer she comes to us "her kids" and if we can't help her right now she tends to get angry, to be aggressive and even because I can't help her she stops talking to me for weeks (it's happened to me several times).
It is not easy to fathom the complex backgrounds of behaviour in relationships between parents and children. It can be an unconscious strategy of your mother to be "helpless" so that there are reasons why her children should visit her. Some parents have a strategy of making themselves indispensable throughout their lives so that their children still come to them in adulthood to solve a problem. Others bind their children to themselves because, conversely, they want to claim their help. Often, it's a mixture of both.
Everything is just a means to keep the connection going. Which means is preferred is a personal matter. It may be that your mother does not agree with the fact that her children do not live near her (or a part of her does not want this, while another part understands it). She'll learn and accept it over time when you do not worry so much.
Since your mother lives otherwise her life very well, her defense against technology is not a pathological matter, if you ask me. She behaves like many other people with anger when something is denied her. She punishes you with ignorance when you have not given her what she wanted.
Does it work? Are you angry too and have a guilty conscience?
If it is effective, your mother has no reason to change her strategy. When her punishment produces you trying to connect with her, you prove her right.
This is how it presents itself to me: The more you want to bring her to something that she herself rejects so strongly, the more it intensifies a relationship between you. Your - and your mother's - emotional participation ensures that no one forgets the other. It may hurt if she doesn't talk to you for weeks, but she can be sure that you will come back sometime and be full of worry.
If "worry" is the strongest thing that always brings you closer to her, she would be "unwise" to give up this means. So it may be that she would let go of her helplessness if she would recognize or get the certainty from you that you think of her or are lovingly connected to her even when she is well.
People mistakenly think that when they are well, no one cares about them anymore. They interpret missing contact with indifference. So it also depends on you: Are you relieved when she gets along alone? Then you might signal to her that you are only fulfilling a duty when she needs your help. If, however, you are happy for her that she is independent and that she can feel this, you give her your trust. Conversely, you need her trust if she has to imagine that you will soon go further away and get along well.
As I see it, you are both in a process of detachment that is not complete yet. She can let you go in peace and you can let her be in peace.
Show her and assure her that you will do the things she asks you to do when you are available. Don't build any inner resistance to this, it just makes it worse. If you fully agree to help her whenever she asks you, something will change between you.
Just think of yourself: When you ask someone to be of service to you and he get's all worried or anxious, how does it feel? Don't you just want something to be done and not discuss it in length and width?
My brother once had a similar problem with my mother. She was always in his ears with things she wanted done. When he came home, she was already waiting to intercept him. Every day he was annoyed by it. I said to him: "Agree inwardly and give her your full attention in the first ten minutes of your coming home. Respond to her wishes. Then she will let you go and be satisfied." He did it this way and it brought about a much more harmonious relationship between them.
I wish you all the best.
I had not seen it that way, I think everything you say is very logical, the truth makes sense to me! Our relationship is good, maybe his way of seeing the technology and the behavior he has towards me when he doesn't get what he wants is the product of something that happened in the past "but I don't remember very well, I think I should sit down and think about bit and try to remember something. " But it can also be a way of self-defense to separate from your children. Mmmmmm I don't know!
In the same way, I will consider his words and I hope that in this new stage of our lives things can go well.
Thank you very much for your wonderful words...@erh.germany
:)