Sometimes, it may take a push from a loved one to recognize the need to manage stress levels. But what if it is your mother that you’re trying to help, and she won’t heed your advice? Here’s the full story.
He Lives With His Mom
The Original Poster (OP) is a 27-year-old who is living with his 62-year-old mother.
He gets along great with his mother, and they rarely have arguments.
His mother has been employed at her current job for almost 15 years, and her stress level has significantly risen over the past five years.
She Is Stressed at Work
His mother has been looking for a new job for the past three years but has been unsuccessful for a number of reasons OP’s not willing to share.
OP says that her current job doesn’t truly make her happy as she has a terrible supervisor.
The supervisor has very high expectations and is quite demanding and is the kind of manager that believes in setting lofty targets and worrying his workers even if he is aware that those targets are unrealistic expectations.
Plus, the supervisor regularly demands the employees, including OP’s mother, explain back to him what he wants to be done and sometimes indirectly threatens to fire them.
A Demanding Boss
However, OP says that his mother loves to start conversations and discusses thousands of aspects and is not a person who ends with the short “okay.”
OP goes on to mention that his mother feels insecure at times, and she speaks about everything else rather than the genuine problem and gets angry very quickly.
And as a result, OP thinks she is the one who starts arguments with her supervisor regarding various topics.
Later, OP’s mother discusses her day and complains about them.
He Gives Her Advice
Usually, OP listens to her complaints and makes an effort to help her, but since that doesn’t really work, he has made several attempts to convince her that cutting down on her arguments with her boss would help her feel less stressed.
OP said he thinks she is “doing a lot of this to herself” and needs to learn better stress management techniques.
Although he didn’t mention this out loud, he did mention to her that she could get some stress management skills to “handle stress better” because finding a new job is not an option and that while this is not the answer to all of her problems, it might at least be able to help her.
She Wouldn’t Listen to Him
However, his mother refused to hear any of it and dismissed the advice saying that OP was wrong and doesn’t understand her problems.
It’s understandable why OP’s mother may have felt upset or offended by the suggestion.
His mother is already stressed out and may feel like OP is trivializing her problems.
OP is worried about his mother’s stress levels, as he feels that it may lead to burnout. The idea of seeing his mother ill has caused OP to think about what he said.
He Could Have Handled It Better
Redditors commented on their thoughts, saying that both were not wrong.
One Reddit user pointed out that OP’s mom was fused in her emotion and stressed, so she is not fully wrong, and OP intended to help, so he was too not fully wrong. But the choice of words saying “handle stress better” did have a triggering effect on his mom.
The comment read, “What I would like to offer though is you’re right to try to want to help, but this only works if you get a mandate to do so. And from parents to the kids, that’s not an easy mandate to give.
If you try to help without a mandate, it breeds reluctance, resistance, and maybe even a conflictual reaction. Telling people what to do, generally, isn’t a great way to elicit profound change, since you have to account for a mandate, state, phrasing, etc… modeling a helpful behavior or putting people in a growth mindset first tends to be necessary.”
What do you think? Was he wrong to say what he said?
The post His Mother Won’t Take His Advice, How Can He Get His Mother to Listen to Him? first appeared on Wealthy Living
Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock / fizkes. The people shown in the images are for illustrative purposes only, not the actual people featured in the story.
Source: Reddit