A man told me about how his wife devoted her life to taking care of his dying mother. His mother treated her terribly. I know this is a common story but I wonder if someone with firsthand experience in a situation like this can explain it.
His wife was horribly hurt. He was hurt watching his mother treat her so badly.
Apparently the mother raved about how wonderful the wife was to other people…to appear grateful?
What makes a person act like this? What’s the astrology?
Punishing others for the good they do unfortunately happens often. Maybe out of a combination of fear and pride. Treating her d.i.l. badly because of her own helplessness and fear of death. At the same time raving about her d.i.l. to others: Look, I’m taken care of so well. Obviously I’m worth it. This behaviour must have been there before, although (partly) hidden. Saturn/Venus – Saturn/Mars –
PLuto/Moon?
Thank you. That makes a lot of sense. This man was wincing, talking about this. His mother passed but the pain lingers, which is also er…remarkable, in an ugly way. 🙁
Pisces in any shape or form can be treated to their faces by others as if they don’t exist. Pisces gives up of themselves in order to help others. Pisces takes abuse, feels bad and quietly works from their own reasonings. Chances are Pisces/Neptune is involved in this event. The mother sounds like an ignorant, controlling, domineering, selfish type who never changed up to her dying day. If the son still feels hurt, maybe he feels guilt. Having a mother/Moon like that could mess a person up. Perhaps he needs/Moon some counseling.
Not this Pisces Sun, WinterMoon. I don’t take shit from anyone. I learned the hard way in youth though. Anyone who feels like I’m a fluffy victim, sooner or later gets a bat to their head. And the bat has spikes too. I give, and only to people who I believe deserve it. No sociopaths in my house, please.
I’m going through this as pluto is crossing my descendent it’s getting worse as it exacts .. Barring that there’s nothing really that astrology can relate to a carer that much dealing with elderly with narcisstic personality disorder I haven’t checked their narcissus against mine though don’t need to
OMG! I’ve been wondering about this too. I’m going thru same thing, via a roommate situation. Totally played on my sympathy, until I figured out his sick game. My Pisces stellium oppose Asc is my sore spot. It is deep genuine care for everything, but that light attracts pests like this who take advantage. Defending myself with Aries fire led to retaliation on his part. Obviously these people are mentally ill, sociopaths, or have dementia. No caregiver deserves this abuse, subjected to living in the tornado of someone else’s mind. I wonder if there are Astrological red flags?
This hits really close to home. She raves about me to everyone else but shreds me in private. I am in her role in life and the one person that said anything that made sense told me she is jealous and angry. Angry she screwed things up so badly that she doesn’t get the rewards she wanted and jealous that I’m actually really good at cleaning up the mess, not perfect but pulling some small to medium miracles.
I can see hints of her attitude towards her husband. She takes him for granted and says he did nothing to support the family and was a good for nothing she paid all the bills etc. Etc. Ignoring that he worked his regular job and then came home and worked in her business.
It is a painful situation to be in. Everytime I transcend and work hard to focus on the positive and focus on being closer to a solution that will allow me to move home to my husband i run into another mess caused by her not wanting to deal with something negative or deal with something that requires research, asking hard questions and maybe changing something in the business…. so i am here that much longer, exposed to her that much longer and she projects on me like nothing.
It seems harder because i never had my own mother rip me about my weight, or my looks. My own mother focused on grades, kindness, politeness, etc. The stuff i get from my mil is… not something i ever got from a female in my life so it not just is difficult but also shocking.
I agree with kate that fear and death in the horizon do not help. Also agree that some version of it was there before, hints.
Mudlikesubstance: You described it right on. I too have heard person on the phone praising me, but ripping me to shreds in private. I also never met anyone in my life who treated me this way, and it is frightening. I assumed this man just hated ME. Over time I realized he hates his life, he hates himself. And the caretaker, the one who is there daily, gets the waves of abuse. It is very hard to stay strong and put up a wall against their venom, because is does poison our well being. At least thats what it feels like to me.
Elsa: Thank you for posting this topic. Me – having Chiron return. This is a healing lesson for me? I was diagnosed with PTSD from this abuse. I just want to tell this person to go to Hell. He is Libra, Moon/Mars in Capricorn, Venus oppose Saturn. Elderly, dying (Pluto’s coming to Moon) and still complains about how mean his Mother was…
This is exactly what happened with my grandmother and her mother in law, my grandfather’s mother.
She was this tiny Italian lady, a Scorpio, with a sassy tongue who cooked as good as she gave it. My grandfather the Sagittarius with Aries Moon was her baby boy, and you know how Italian moms are with their sons. So my great-grandmother, the Scorpio, got Alzheimers and eventually dementia. It was my grandmother, the Aries with Leo Moon/Neptune conjunct, who took care of her for the remaining years of her life.
You want to know how that went? Let’s just put it this way; when my grandmother, Aries with Leo Moon/Neptune died, they found my Scorpio great-grandmother’s ashes on top of my grandmother’s toilet.
What you may be describing here is someone with NPD – Narcissistic Personality Disorder (the mother-in-law). Those afflicted with NPD must be the centre of attention at all times. They are masters of manipulation, completely lacking in empathy. They are pathological liars and highly exploitative. They like to ‘parentify’, shedding responsibilities onto others, whilst at the same time
denying their victims of any opportunity for independence.
NPD people are toxic in the extreme, and can present a real and significant danger to the stability of the mental and emotional well being of those around them.
If you think you may know someone like this, I highly recommend reading an excellent web page on the subject entitled ‘Characteristics of Narcissistic Mothers’ which details the ingenious and at times purely evil mind games the NPD parent, partner or boss can inflict on others. There are degrees of NPD, from moderate to extreme.
Sadly, my own mother is an example of extreme NPD. She has been ill for some time and is cared for by my brother in circumstances similar to those described above. She has Sun Pisces 28.55 conjunct Uranus 29.21 in the 12th. Natal Moon in Libra opposes Venus in Aries and trines Mars. Pluto in Cancer in the 4th Squares the Mars Ascendant.
The destruction she has wrought on our family has been terrible.
Thank you for raising this subject Elsa.
I have been on the receiving end of this NPD as referenced by Elenor.That explains a great deal. They are also lazy, arrogant, incompetent, jealous but afraid to let others see their weakness, so they live life as a LIE to get what they want & need. Cancers with lots of Gemini planets as well as children rejected by either parent have shown up in my life with this trait.
If you have a “friend” at present who always takes….just ask them to “give” and that will FLUSH them out of your life completely. Papa Saturn in Scorpio helped me see the light after many years. Understanding will help the abused person to forgive and therefore HEAL.
My grandma is verbally abusive to everyone around her, most family members are accustomed to it and accept it as a normal part of life. Its hard for me since her Cancer Pluto is smack dab on my my Venus 10th house, that trines my Scorpio Moon/Saturn. She talks crap about me to all other family members over the phone affecting my overall reputation in the family. She has damaged almost 100% of my self esteem and sense of self worth with intense smothering. She has gone through much trauma in her life, burying at least two of her children (one son died in his sleep at age 2 and one daughter drowned to death at age 2) and burying her husband who died of pneumonia. I can’t imagine all that pain to live through but that doesn’t give anyone the right to treat others bad. I feel sad I’ve sacrificed most of my childhood and social life to be home and care for her but there’s so much a person can do and so much abuse a person can take and I’ve abandoned her. It’s sad I’m not the type to abandon others but I can’t continue being around a person that is just verbally nasty, ungrateful and disrespectful to you. I’ve stopped speaking with her and stopped any form of relationship. I’ve moved back in with my parents and grandma after my divorce recently and dealing with such disrespect all over again. I’ve set my boundaries and just come home after work to eat and sleep, no further interaction with her. My family makes me feel guilty that I don’t spend more time with her since she’s in her 90’s and really old but I’m not going to tolerate any disrespect and that’s that. I overcompensated almost everything in my life for her to be happy and she will never be happy or respectful to those that care and love her. I don’t know what else to do than to do what I do which is no relationship at all.
((((((cuspy))))))
I can relate. My mother, and grandmother, were both mean and venomous um…..jerks.
My dad took care of his elderly parents & got cut out of their will. (I was a kid when they died so I don’t know the details but when my dad married my non-Catholic mom he kind of got disowned… but he took care of them anyway.)
I don’t understand the thinking process at all. “I’m almost dead and will be facing God soon so I’m going to be a mean bitch”.
That’s assuming they have a soul. Sad, really. Especially for those around them. I feel bad for kids with narcissistic parents, or a parent. I wonder how narcissism works. Are they missing a part of their brain, or something?
She’s old. She’s dying. She’s miserable. She has lost all her independence. She has pent up energy she can no longer physically express. And if the person is suffering some dimentia or worse, they may not be able to control their emotional stuff anymore. It is very very common. If you can’t take that kind of heat, taking care of the dying is not for you. That’s my experience anyway.
And there is no shame in getting in some outside help.
Notch you are right on. Makes me wonder if the caregiver is just an object in the conscious or other mind of the ill person… the object to take all the burden. It might not be reality based BUT seriously ill, dying, often highly medicated people are in the process of letting go. 12th house stuff. Non family can often deal better with the emotional spiraling that can come with that.
Yes, the dying are in the process of letting go. Between two worlds. That’s the fun part. Not to mention the uncanny intuition of some of the elderly I have known well. To allow myself to go to where they are. It is a trip. We tend to focus on the hardship of the caretaking, but oh the parting gifts they grace us with. But that’s me. Not everyone can take that trip and stay sane.
Interesting perspective, notch.
some people need something or someone to vent to.
get all that pent up energy out, all the nastiness inside of them purged. some people dont need to “purge” that way though, so they purge in other ways. Maybe getting into something spiritual and religious will help them. It seems to be the only route to purge cankterous folks. Although, some folks will be cankterous due to the energy of the other person not meshing well? Maybe that is it. There are some people that just irks a person and they dont understand it. Could be the squares in their chart, or confusion of opposites; going cray and rubbing the wrong way. While a person will act sweet and nice to one person, they turn around and feel agitated by another who did absolutely nothing. It’s all a mystery.
I went through this when my late father became terminally ill. Except that he was quite vocal to his new health care team (all strangers to him, because he’d moved in with me in a city sixty miles away from the town where he’d lived and where I grew up) about my failings as a caregiver. He also made my life a living hell from then until his death.
I’ll second (third? fourth?) the NPD idea. It wasn’t until years after my father died that an online article — written by an attorney who has dealt with people with NPD as well as their family members and friends — got me into researching the disorder. Learning about it put my father’s actions and words into context and gave me explanations as to why someone could behave so perversely.