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

When you can't stand your ageing parent repeating themselves any more, what irritates you is not what irritates someone else: it is yours. And that is where you take back control, because your patience is something you have the power to work on.

Your parent, aged 75 or over, 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 kilometres away with a telephone between the two of you, the scene is the same: the story comes back, and you recognise 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 feel embarrassed for them. Or you have the impression of wasting your time.

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

You have perhaps thought all of them, at different moments. They do not say that you are a bad son or 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. Every time, it asks for your attention and takes concentration.

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

The tiredness is real. I am not going to tell you that 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 it starts again.

Because the list above is not a list of symptoms, it is a list of people. Someone who feels like correcting and someone who feels pity are not irritated by the same thing.

Someone who tells themselves “what's the point, since they will forget” and someone who has the impression of 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.

Read the list again. You probably do not recognise yourself in all six. You recognise yourself in one, perhaps two, and that is the one that is yours.

That is what I want you to notice: what irritates you is not what irritates someone else faced with 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 was answering 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 the story. It means knowing what is going on inside you while they tell it, and no longer putting up with it.

You perhaps tell yourself that they will forget, and that nothing you do will change anything about it. Let's accept that. What remains in your hands is your patience: you have 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 really have a hand.

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 do something with 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 point here: the point is you.

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

It does not say what your parent gains from it. What I suggest takes place inside you; what they get out of it, I do not measure here.

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

Here is my answer, and it is a little long: if I want to get this message across, I have to explain it clearly, without any shortcut or summary.

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

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

Each time your parent brings out unpleasant emotions in you, take the opportunity to observe them and find out what is hiding behind them.

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

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

You tell yourself that no, it is simply tiredness? In that case, did you ever complain when your child of a few weeks or a few months filled their nappy 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 realise that behind these unpleasant emotions lie much deeper wounds. That is why your parent could be your coach.

You can ask that question of people around you, someone who is 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 for 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 is it that irritates you when your parent repeats themselves? The urge to correct, the pity, the time going by, or something else that 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.co.uk, 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