🍋 I can't stand my elderly mother always repeating the same thing: where does my irritation come from?

When you can't stand your aging parent rambling on anymore, what irritates you is not what irritates someone else: it is yours. And that is where you take back control, because your patience is yours to work on, and you are the one with the power to do it.

Your parent, 75 or older, shows signs of confusion and tells you the same stories over and over. You already know what they are going to say. You listen anyway.

Whether you live with them, in the same town, or more than a thousand kilometers away with the phone between the two of you, the scene is the same: the story comes back, and you recognize it from the first words.

At that moment, the problem is what you tell yourself. Either you feel like correcting them. Or you lose patience.

Or you feel pity. Or you are embarrassed for them. Or you feel you are wasting your time.

Or you tell yourself “what's the point of going on, since they'll forget.” That is what people tell themselves. And what people tell themselves is not the same for everyone.

You may have thought all of them, at different times. They do not say that you are a bad son or a bad daughter: they say what is going on inside you, and that is what this guide is about.

Because your parent keeps repeating the same stories, the same things. Each time, it asks for your attention and takes concentration.

Listening to a story you already know still takes attention: you have to follow along, and respond at the right spot. A story being short does not make listening to it light: it is the tenth time that weighs, not the first.

The tiredness is real. I am not going to tell you it does not exist, or that it will pass.

But tiredness does not explain everything. Two people equally tired do not tell themselves the same thing when they start again.

Because the list above is not a list of symptoms, it is a list of people. The one who wants to correct and the one who feels pity are not irritated by the same thing.

The one who tells themselves “what's the point, since they'll forget” and the one who feels they are wasting their time do not have the same sentence in their head. It is not the same thing that irritates them, even if the parent is the same and the story too.

Reread the list. You probably do not recognize yourself in all six. You recognize yourself in one, maybe two, and that one is yours.

That is what I want you to notice: what irritates you is not what irritates someone else in front of the same parent. It is yours. And what is yours, you can understand.

That is also why advice that works for someone else may do nothing for you. It answered their irritation, not yours.

You. Not your parent, not the story, not the number of times they tell it. By understanding what irritates you, you take back control.

Taking back control does not mean stopping them from telling it. It means knowing what is going on inside you while they tell it, and no longer enduring it.

You may tell yourself that they will forget, and that nothing you do will change that. Let's grant that. What remains in your hands is your patience: you are the one with the power to work on it.

It is not necessarily pleasant to hear: if the power is with you, it is with nobody else. But it is also the only thing, in this scene, over which you truly have a grip.

I am not asking you to be patient. I am telling you that patience can be worked on, that nobody can work on it in your place, and that you can start with the next story.

You have the right to be irritated. This guide does not blame you for it. It suggests you make something of it.

It does not tell you what to answer your parent when they start again, or how to get them to change the subject. That is not the topic here: the topic is you.

It does not promise you that you will be less tired tomorrow, or that the irritation will go away. I promise no effect of that kind.

It does not say what your parent gains from it. What I suggest takes place in you; what they receive from it, I do not measure here.

And it does not replace what you are already doing. If you have found a way to hold on, it remains yours.

Here is my answer, and it is a bit long: if I want to get this message across, I have to explain it clearly, with no shortcut and no summary.

Every case is different. Everyone can live and feel different things, and even what you feel today, you will feel differently in six months, possibly.

Well, take advantage of it to see your parent as a personal coach, a personal Tony Robbins who is there to let you improve.

Every time your parent brings out unpleasant emotions in you, take advantage of it to observe them and discover what is hiding behind them.

Is it anxiety? Is it anger? Is it disappointment?

Because behind that emotion hides a wound you carry. That is what I address in 👉 Help! Who's Going to Take Care of My Parents?.

You tell yourself no, it is simply tiredness? In that case, did you ever complain when your child, a few weeks or months old, filled their diaper several times a day? Did you tell yourself “I've had enough”?

No, and yet that situation was not comfortable. So why do you tell yourself “I've had enough” with your parent?

That is where everything changes: when you become aware that behind these unpleasant emotions hide much deeper wounds. That is why your parent could be your coach.

You can ask that question around you, of someone living the same scene with their own parent: why “I've had enough” with them, and not with a baby? It fits in one sentence, and it makes you think longer than it takes to say.

Concretely, the next time they start again and “I've had enough” rises in you, you can stop for a second and name what it is: anxiety, anger, disappointment. You are not trying to silence it: you are looking for what it hides.

And you, what irritates you when your parent rambles? The urge to correct, pity, time passing, or something else I have not listed? And what do you do, at that moment, that helps you?

Your solution may help someone for whom this guide was not enough, and I do not claim it will be enough for everyone. You can write it to me at contact@help-editions.ca, for the attention of 👉 Yvan Keyna.

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Sources used (2)

#	Fact cited	Link
1	The author's book, where he addresses the wound behind the emotion	👉 Help! Who's Going to Take Care of My Parents?
2	The author of the guide	👉 Yvan Keyna