My family is mentally unwell - part 1: the mother

Now that I have been working and am away from my family most of the day and with the counselling I have been getting and the reading I have been doing, I can see them with more objective eyes.

It's even more apparent that my mother and brother are mentally unwell.

While I am not a psychiatrist or even psychologist, I am quite smart and have been around them for a long time, so know my family and their behaviours really well, so I am in a good position to pinpoint their symptoms and try to work out what is wrong with them. Of course they would never concede to any diagnosis, but at least I will know.

The mother has OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) to a mild extent. She tends to check and re-check everything, even coming back home when she thinks she has left the door open. My mother also has bipolar disorder. She is so moody and can snap at you about anything.

The mother yells a lot, is very angry and upset one moment and the next, she's all happy and relaxed. Something can upset her one day and the next it doesn't. If she wants something from me, she's very manipulative. If I don't give her what she wants, she yells at me and tells me she wont give me xyz next time I ask.

The other day the cat came in with another cats' claw in his upper paw and I asked the mother to get it out while I held the cat (actually it was her suggestion). She couldn't get it out and the cat became very agitated and upset. Finally I calmed the cat and the mother told me to hold it down so she could try again (she was trying to pull out the other cat's talon with tweezers, but all she seemed to be pulling, was the cat's skin and upsetting him). I told her no, that we should just leave the cat for now, as her technique wasn't working and was only upsetting the cat. The mother didn't like that, told me that I just wanted everything my way and that I was so stubborn.

I took the cat to the family room, where he hid under the couch, because he was obviously upset and didn't want any put rough handling.

I had some cold chicken in the fridge, so I cut off a tiny bit and took it to him, putting my hand (with the chicken on it) under the couch to let him smell it and eat it. To try to cajole him out. He did eat it without swiping me. I went back to the kitchen to get some more meat, to try to use it to cajole the cat out from under the couch. The mother started yelling at me, telling me to stop putting meat under the couch (I wasn't doing that, the meat was on my hand and from there it went into the cat's mouth) and that what I was doing wouldn't work, that the cat wouldn't come out from the couch, that I was stupid and stubborn for doing it. So unnecessary and so wrong. The next thing I see, is the cat right next to me, waiting for the chicken I was going to feed him. He is a smart cat. The mother on the other hand, is such a bitch. She wants to force the cat to do what she wants and calls me stubborn for telling her to stop that and to let the cat come out of his own accord (or cajole him with food).

I just shake my head when I think about her and her comments. She always puts me down and says derogatory things about me, for no reason other than to make me feel bad. She just cannot stop putting me down. According to her, everything I do is totally wrong, I cant do anything right. Yet, that is not true. She just tries to make me feel that way with the mean and nasty things she says to me, so needlessly.

The mother tends to hide her nasty behaviours or be on her best behaviour when she is around other people she doesn't know well, or when she is around people she thinks she needs to impress. But, when she behaves as obnoxiously to people as she does to me (these are people she thinks she doesn't need to impress and doesn't care about), they do not like her one bit and tell me how sorry they feel for me that I have a mother like that. Yeah, don't I know it!

I think my brother has some mental health issues

I definitely think my mother and brother have mental illnesses.

My brother LayZ boy has admitted that he has OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), although he will deny it vehemently if you question him about it another time. He's very weird in that way. He'll tell you the truth about something in a very small window of opportunity for the truth that he opens up every so often, but if you ask him about it later, he'll slam you and tell you that you are sick in the head for suggesting such a thing! As if he never said such a thing to you in the first place. I am not sure what that is about, but it sure is not normal behaviour.

LayZ boy is also very manic. He often gets all excited and starts doing all these manic things, like running up and down the hallway, banging on the walls, talking to himself (very loudly), talking to the cat (also very loudly) and very obnoxiously. During this manic phase, he starts talking fast, loudly and incoherently. In addition, there are so many times when he does all sorts of things around here, starts measuring for his "home stereo" locale and talks very loudly and rather incoherently to me about things that make no sense whatsoever, answering questions I have never even asked him and then telling me what a fool I am because I don't know of his plans. Yeah, sure, LayZ boy, you are not sick in the head!

Then LayZ boy has his down times, where he functions very slowly and acts like a sloth. He just sits in his bedroom and watches DVDs all day without eating properly or doing anything else but smoke his cigarettes and behaves like he is very depressed.

I am beginning to think LayZ boy has bipolar disorder, which is very consistent with the up and down and very inconsistent and extremely exaggerated ways he behaves.

LayZ boy also has very big problems with his anger - he has no impulse control, he gets angry very quickly and cant control it. I think that's because he has no ability to use rational and logical thinking - all of his thinking is very exaggerated and irrational, based probably on fear.

Then LayZ boy takes sleeping pills almost every night, to lull him into an artificial slumber and as these medications are very addictive and can produce depression and anger symptoms, then no wonder he behaves the way he does. Additionally, LayZ boy takes a very strong opioid medication (Oxycontin) which is akin to heroin for his "pain" and as that medication is addiction-causing and can cause depression, anger and a whole host of other negative emotions (due to the way it works on the neurotransmitters), no wonder LayZ behaves the way he does.  These medications just make worse the worst of his personality and cause his mental illness issues to get much much worse.

I used to always think my mother must have dropped him on his head really hard when he was a child and that is why he behaved the way he did. She probably did. Neither my mother nor LayZ boy will admit he has huge problems.