Feeling anxious about nParents visit over Easter

[SaintBlackSheep]

My nMom and enDad are visiting over Easter weekend.    And I'm feeling anxious about it. Last year, my mother waited until we were all outside before she hid easter candy in our underwear drawers then tried to make us go hunting for it. I shared this story before, but my teen and I both felt our privacy had been violated, and my younger kid felt frustrated because the candy wasn't even hidden in her bedroom like nMom said, it was hidden elsewhere. nMom took no accountability, even when teen and I directly told her it was an invasion of our privacy. nMom would never have done that, pre-dementia. She would have done other privacy invading tone deaf things, but not that.

 I'm having a hard time because, while this behavior IS demented, is it from dementia? It feels rather calculating, from the waiting for us to go outside, to going up and down stairs hiding 3 things in 3 different places, to the crazy lies that the drawers were NOT our underwear drawers, as if she is a better authority on where we keep our underwear than we are?! 

Anyway, parents are coming Thursday and leaving Monday morning, so roughly 3 days to deal with them. Editing to add: they stay in a hotel during their visits, and they don't like to drive at night, so they leave after dinner most days. yay!
My youngest was invited to her best friend's birthday party, which will be all day at an amusement park followed by a sleepover Friday night. nMom was really angry about this, but too bad. My daughter will have much more fun with her friends than she would with her grandparents, and if they don't like that, then tough. But they're already irritated ahead of their arrival, and that's not helping my mental state!!

I guess, given their behavior last Easter AND the fact that they're already irritated about the sleepover, I'm seeking advice on how to prevent letting them impact my mental and physical health. The big wake up that I needed to reduce contact with them was that I have experienced scary heart problems that have required medical attention at the end of every one of their visits for the past year and a half. The heart stuff started when I realized nothing I say matters to them, so I decided to just ignore them and their insanity as much as possible. Only, my BODY can't ignore it apparently. The thing is, as I'm sure many of you here know, confronting them, calling their bs out, trying to talk about it does no good and never has! But maybe it was doing my heart good to stick up for myself? Should I go back to telling them off when they step out of line, not because I think it'll change their behavior, but because maybe it'll get those bad feelings out of my body? It was really freeing to realize I did not have to react to every single thing they say and do to get under my skin! I am bummed that my body is unable to get the memo that I am not responsible for their behavior or happiness. How can I continue ignoring them AND not let it cause heart arrhythmia? Is that even realistic? Is that a bad example to my kids--they have heard me call out BS many times, both to my parents and others. I am not a pushover by any means, and my kids are also very assertive in general, so I'm not worried about setting an example of being a doormat, more like I just pick my battles, and my PD parents are not worth the trouble. But how do I avoid the physical ramifications? We see them a couple of days maybe 3x a year, and they're my kids's only grandparents. I feel like I just need to survive this, which sounds like a low enough bar, until my heart starts going crazy.

[lkdrymom]

That so reminds me of my grandmother's visits when I was a kid.  She would spend the week  and heaven forbid I wanted to play with the neighbor kid while she was there.  Every waking moment was supposed to be spent with her!

Call out their BS might not change them but it will make you feel better about yourself for standing up for yourself.  No on ever stood up to my grandmother except me so she got away with horrible behavior.  She wasn't as bad to me because I would call her out.

[moglow]

SaintlyOne, I know this isn't easy for us to manage within ourselves, but you/we truly aren't responsible for their happiness, their anger, frustration, etc. The kids have plans and mommie dearest is angry? Well okay, but the teen still has plans already. we understand her time with the grands is limited but she'll still see them. The older is of an age where her friends are and will be her priority for a while. Grandma will have to adapt just like everyone else.

I'm not sure ignoring is an option, but I did get a little inner chuckle by translating mother's frustrated and insulting ramblings to the "wah wah wah" speech of the adults in Charlie Brown comics [you know how we never heard what the adults were saying? That]. Maybe employ lots of gray rock comments of Hmmm, Well, I'd not heard that, Who knew, You don't say, etc, helped me. Remember too, it's not likely any of her stuff is actually personal and directed at you the person. You're the one(s) who's handy - In a few more hours it'll be someone else.

And breathe - deep, cleansing, healing breaths. When I breathe shallow I amp myself up. I have had to stop myself, remove to another room or outside and just breathe. You can do this - and we've got you.

[j.banquo]

As someone currently living with an uPD elderly mother, I've been feeling a lot of emotions about things she has done, past and present, it has been consuming me recently, and causing me to spend lots of time researching how to protect myself from emotional abuse.

My advice? A strategic mix of standing up for yourself and letting things slide, picking your battles as you say. You're in a power dynamic where it's safe to stand your ground at times. Also, exercise. Lifting weights vastly improved my mental state today.

[Defiantdaughter1]

You could tell them you're having heart problems or health problems and cannot have company at this time. It's not worth sacrificing your health.

[notrightinthehead]

As you are concerned about your own physical response to a stressful situation, I would use strategies to soothe and reduce physical manifestations of stress. Mindfulness meditations, you find many on YouTube, breathing exercises, self compassion meditations, if you want to calm yourself down or vigorous daily exercise, energetic walks, boxing, weeding, whatever works for you.
Maybe you need to do both. Several 20 minutes relaxation/meditations per day and one vigorous exercise.

[NarcKiddo]

I remember that story from last year! Ugh.

I, too, have physical reactions to visits with my FOO. Not as strongly as you, but also my heart. Palpitations, HRV suppressed.

You are the only person who can judge what behaviour on your part will give you the best chance of keeping your health sound. This may (or may not) be refusing to see them. It may be calling them out. It may be keeping quiet. It may be a combination.

What has helped me the most in dealing with my FOO is the "observe, don't absorb" approach. If you are not familiar with it I am sure there is info on this site. Or you can Google. Basically, you think to yourself in advance what their typical behaviours and reactions are and you make a mental note of them. You then imagine yourself as a scientist doing a research project for the duration of the visit. You can even have an imaginary clipboard with the list of their behaviours. While you conduct your visit outwardly normally, inwardly you are looking out for every instance of their expected behaviours. Each time they do something awful you inwardly congratulate yourself for correctly anticipating the behaviour and tick it off your imaginary list. It becomes so absorbing to look out for these things, and so perversely satisfying when they do/say something awful, that I find it takes much of the heat off the actual behaviours.

Good luck with however you decide to deal with this.

[SaintBlackSheep]

Thanks everyone! I am still feeling that pit of dread in my stomach, but it's always so so helpful just to know I'm not alone. I love all the suggestions for self-care, too. I suck at self-care. I bet many children of narcs do! How dare we have needs, right?!
I was not familiar with the "observe, don't absorb" technique. That is probably much healthier than my "stuffing it down until I have heart failure" technique! Here I thought I'd come a looooong way because I've been able to "ignore" their insanity for the past 3 years instead of reacting to it, only to discover I am not ignoring it as well as I had thought.
Today, I was running errands with my 10 year old, and ALLL she could talk about was how excited she is about her friend's amusement park birthday sleepover coming up! Not one mention of being excited about my parents visiting :/ My teen has also found herself a sleepover for one of the nights of my parents' visit. I'm feeling like *I* need to find a sleepover too lol! I'm thinking of inviting my close friend and fellow narc mother survivor for Easter dinner with her husband and kiddo, just to offer a distraction for my mother, who might be inclined to behave and perform her "acting normal" routine that she does in front of strangers.
Does anyone else's elderly narcissist seem to really amp up the insanity the night before the visit ends? This has been a trend with my mom for years. Even during the pre-dementia "good-ish" times, we'd have a decent visit for a few days, and then the day before the visit's end, she'd start picking fights and acting belligerent. My enabling father always simpered that "oh, she's just so sad you'll be leaving tomorrow. It's because she loves you so much that it's so hard." 

[Rebel13]

Love the "observe, don't absorb" approach.  I once had a difficult coworker and I made a bingo card of all of the irritating, annoying, arrogant, self-pitying behaviors he exhibited.  Playing bingo during remote meetings made things much easier to take.  Google "narcissist bingo" for examples you can tailor to your specific person!

[Braveheart]

I can totally relate! I wish I knew the answers too. Every time my mom leaves after a 3 day visit, there is a funky energy in our house for several days. It is exhausting. My mom visited over a month ago and we are still trying to shake off that experience. I set limits with her and she didn't like my boundary, so she broke down crying at a restaurant like she was a victim. Ruined my son's birthday dinner. I wish I could just not let it bother me, but I can't. This is part of why I get anxious prior to each visit. I get you though girl!

[SaintBlackSheep]

Ugh it's taken me some time to process their visit. I think I need to return to therapy because I have so much rage about my PD parents!
Aside from 50% of their conversation devolving into really angry rants about politics, they were relatively decent overall during their short 3 day visit. Thankfully their political views are miraculously in line with mine, so it wasn't as horrible as it could have been, but I was pretty shocked by how angry they'd get. We could be talking about the weather, and one of them would just go completely off about some dumb politician's denial of climate change. And dad can't hear about half of what we'd say, and he's a blowhard, so he'd insert himself into conversations, forcefully remarking on what he THOUGHT we were talking about, but he was so totally off the mark that my kids couldn't help but giggle.

A lot of the ok-est parts of their visit were because I front loaded the labor of putting up with them and scheduled lots of distractions. One of my kids went to her aforementioned birthday party/sleepover, we got some new baby farm animals on Good Friday that provided lots of entertainment, we had a couple of movies picked out that the kids claimed they "just had to watch" My parents have always enjoyed watching movies too, so these were great diversions! I put off a lot of the holiday baking/cooking food from scratch until their visit so we'd be busy in the kitchen. nMom struggles with following recipes, so she would try to help and then fizzle out and go sit down. They also stay in a hotel, so I strategically planned late afternoon outings that were closer to their hotel so that they'd decide it was easier just to go back to their room rather than coming all the way back to our house afterwords in the evenings.

After all that, I was exhausted after they left, and had to return to work all week.
This past Monday was the solar eclipse, and mom kept texting me throughout the day these really weird messages acting like the eclipse was my personal sacred event or something--like the kinds of texts a narc would send to someone close to them on their wedding day if they couldn't attend. "Have a momentous day, sweetums!" and stuff like that. My workplace had a huge eclipse event that both my kids' schools attended, and it was utter chaos all day so it was easy to ignore mom's dozen or so text messages. It'd been over a week since their visit at that point, and we hadn't talked since, which is my main objective. Then she called me after work. I had about an hour to come home and eat with my family before I had to leave for a very rare social outing for a charity that I am involved in, so I tried to do a short 10 minute FaceTime call with my kids there, and show mom the baby animals because they'd grown so much in just 10 days since we got them. Well, that 10 minutes turned into the entire hour I was home. nMom kept trying to bait me into answering her question "I did better on that visit, didn't I?" She uses this contrite baby voice when she sloooowly asks this, and repeats herself over and over. It's really triggering to me and I haven't had to deal with this kind of statement since before her dementia started. I know it sounds so innocuous, but she repeats it and tries to get me to give her a play by play of her behavior for the sole purpose of refuting it. And also get me to do the emotional labor and puppet her through acting like a decent human being by telling her exactly what to/not to say/do. BIG NOPE!!
So I refuse to answer that question. Instead, I asked her what her criteria for "better" was, like, how did she determine that she "did better." Better than what?
Here's the thing that really got me: All the things she named that she DIDN'T do this time are all the horrible things she's done in the past year that she's claimed not to remember or said they never happened!! "Well, THIS TIME, I didn't go in anybody's underwear drawer! I didn't badger Teen into a panic attack. I didn't yell at 10 year old over game rules and make her cry..." and on and on. I said "Oh, so you DO remember doing all those things before? Interesting." 
Right when I said that, Dad shows up on the screen, dangling a hearing aid in front of the camera. He angrily huffs "LOOK AT THIS! $3000 and I don't even need them!" He was angry, close to yelling. My own kids would call it yelling (because they live with sane adults who use normal styles of communication. However, I know this is my dad trying to seem normal, not his full-on yell.) I said "Dad, what do you mean?" he said "All this GD money spent and I don't even need them! They don't even work!" I said "just because these particular ones don't work for you yet does not mean you don't need them! The audiologist wouldn't have given them to you if you didn't need them!" Well, you can imagine how excited he was to hear that! lol! I didn't even know he got hearing aids--every time it came up, he'd deny needing them. I had no reason to assume he'd gotten them and just wasn't using them.
This devolved the conversation into both my parents not-quite-yelling at me about how I'm the problem, that they "do so much for me" (such as what, I have no idea) and I'm just "never happy." 
I said "Well, that's a weird way to thank me for hosting you for Easter, cooking umpteen gourmet meals for you, and entertaining you! YOU'RE WELCOME, and it was a LOVELY CHAT, but I GOTTA GO!" and hung up.
Now nMom is feebly attempting to love bomb me. Her birthday is Tuesday and it's such a struggle to get her anything because she never likes anything, she has a deep commitment to being perpetually dissatisfied with anything anyone does for her birthday (which I know won't surprise you all!!) so I just sent her a print of a family photo we took over Easter. She received it and wants to, idk, talk to me about it? I have no idea. I just wish I had normal parents! 
I should start a greeting card company for people like us. Those sappy birthday cards that say "Mom, if I'm half the woman you are, I'll be a success!" or "To my beloved mother on her birthday, you mean the world to me! I couldn't be the woman I am without your steadfast love" just do not hit the mark. We need cards that say "Mom, thinking of you on your birthday." or "I hope you find happiness on your birthday" (because we all know how unlikely it is that they will ever really be happy!)

[Rebel13]

mom kept texting me throughout the day these really weird messages acting like the eclipse was my personal sacred event or something--like the kinds of texts a narc would send to someone close to them on their wedding day if they couldn't attend. "Have a momentous day, sweetums!" and stuff like that.

OMG my mom used to do this too, send me weird "happy" messages about events that were non-events for me, and I never could figure it out! Things that did actually matter to me would pass without comment, because she had no clue what I liked or cared about.

We need cards that say "Mom, thinking of you on your birthday." or "I hope you find happiness on your birthday" (because we all know how unlikely it is that they will ever really be happy!)

Blank cards for the win!!!! You can write whatever you want inside. Have been doing that for years.

SaintBlackSheep, it sounds like you did a great job strategizing for the visit to go smoothly, and especially getting off of the video call when they started to go sideways! I hope you can take in and credit yourself for how well you coped and store away some of the lessons for next time.

[walking on broken glass]

@SaintBlackSheep your post made me chuckle many times. You have a very funny and engaging way of writing!

I am sorry the visit was so demanding but it looks like you handled it like a pro. The technique of clutching at straws to find a way to get in touch is so familiar. Even things that have to do with you, they manage to make them about themselves and use them to try to interact with you. Or they come up with ridiculous excuses like the family photo. Like, what are you going to discuss? Resolution? Poses?  Who is the most photogenic?