Anxiety over yearly family beach trip.

Maybe avoid being on your own with her, then sit in the back seat?

Good luck!

"Mom, do you ever notice that I listen to everything you have to say, but you don't bother to ask about me? Do you ever think maybe I would appreciate that you listen to what I care about or if you would ask about me?"

I have taught my mom a lot over time by pointing out how she does certain passive aggressive things. And instead of being passive aggressive, now she directly tells me when I'm difficult, which I completely appreciate. We've come a long way, and while it's been exhausting and caused conflict at times, things never would have improved if I didn't take steps to point out stuff to her.

H Alice....I think it is wonderful that your mom has been open to your teaching.  If I said the above to my mom...she will point out how many YEARS/DECADES she had to deal with my “selfish” behavior.  That will open a horrible floodgate of her pointing out all the times that I pushed her limits, acted socially unacceptable, and how my brothers did not get enough attention because of all the attention on me.  And it won’t change anything because my mom isn’t open to change.

One thing I think I should share.  I asked my mom about her childhood....she has 1 sister (Who was considered the smart one while my mom was considered the pretty one...a designation she really has resented since her dad and mom were both doctors and her sister became a doctor as well) and 2 brothers and she said that growing up....they were treated like peas in a pod....meaning, her parents treated them as if they were all the same.  I truly believe my mom has been trying to be “seen” as an autonomous individual for decades....so, her boundaries are extremely tight and she is hyper vigilant to anyone trying to define her or tell her she is wrong.  Both men she has married haven’t really seen her either...she has married insecure men who also have a strong need to be seen themselves.  My dad had narcissistic tendencies and cheated on my mom.  My step father gets extremely defensive when questioned about his beliefs and they ( my mom and him) are politically opposite  it just isn’t an overall happy situation and I try to navigate things the best I can.  Since I know I cannot change my mom...I am trying to use this as an opportunity to improve my own internal boundaries and not take everything she says “in”.  I figure there has to be a way to make this work without expecting her to change.

I understand. Well, you know your mom well enough to make that determination, but what has happened with my mom has taken 15 or so years of arguments and fighting with me calling her out constantly on her crap. She also had a sibling that was the favorite of her parents. Her parents were a real piece of work, let me tell you. So I do give her some empathy for this. She is hard DA though and yes has very hard boundaries. Whenever I would call her out, she would bring up one of three times in my life she did something nice for me. Finally, I started saying to her, "hey so when you fed us as kids, and we wanted food a week later, would you point out the three times you fed us in the past year?" She started to get my point. That doing something nice once every five years really doesn't cut it in a relationship. 

Anyway, it's still a lot of work for me, and I find that when I put myself in a position with her where she has some form of control (usually a flight to visit her with no car), I am miserable. She reverts back to when I was a kid and kind of lords the control over me. Last year when it happened, I swore I just would never put myself in that position again. On the flip side, in the past year, these words came out of her mouth "I'm sorry, I'll try to do better." And my jaw was dropped. I think she has apologized maybe 2-3 times to me ever. It has been a lot of work, and if I hadn't done any of this, I would just never spend time with her.