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[MBTI General] ESTP/INFJ, mothers and daughters

comicsgurl

New member
Joined
Jun 20, 2008
Messages
56
MBTI Type
INFJ
First, let me paraphrase by saying I love my mother, I really do. She's funny, she's dynamic, she's a fantastic public speaker, and she's one of the best teachers I've ever had the opportunity to meet. She is an amazing artist and she creates, on average, five to ten beautiful/large paintings a month. She's also been a teacher (K-through 12), an alchol/drug/rehab counselor, and for many years she was a teen runaway counselor.

But she can drive me nuts.

The hardest part in our relationship now, I think, is the superficiality of it. I care dearly for her but I don't feel like she "knows" or "gets" me - and I guess I feel the same about her. It's been nearly 40 years, and I can count on one hand the number of deep conversations we've had.

This is my question for you SP'ers out there: How can I deepen my relationship with my mother? How can I share my feelings with her before she overloads me with all the surface things going on in her life and our family's lives? How can I get her to open up to me, and tell me what's going on in *her* life?

Here's the kicker, though: Because she's been a counselor, if I want to "talk deep" she assumes I'm looking for answers to a problem. She jumps to the conclusion that I'm looking for a quick fix, when all I want to do is find out how she's feeling.

Anyway, here are a few of my concerns right now: She's getting older (65 in June) and she hates doctors. She hasn't gone in over 30 years unless it's been an emergency, and I think she has some kind of tumor in her stomach. Sometimes she starves herself and uses herbal medicine "cures" to take care of her health, but I'm afraid to breach the doctor subject with her because A)No insurance (she's semi-retired and works as a substitute teacher) and B)"Doctors don't know what they're doing."

Does anyone have any solutions for me?

Thanks for your help - I know this is a lot, but I'm worried that she's dancing around some major issues, and I don't want a simple solution to become a major issue later down the line. :(
 

Jeffster

veteran attention whore
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
6,743
MBTI Type
ESFP
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7w6
Instinctual Variant
sx
Maybe show/tell her an example of someone else she knows who might have the same conditions, so it will have an impact on her? I don't really have a solution for you, that's just what popped into my head. I can totally relate to the not wanting to see doctors thing. If I hadn't had such painful toenail infections, I probably wouldn't have gone to the doctor for 10 years or more. It took me awhile to finally go and see one about my high blood pressure, but I finally did. I still haven't gone to a dentist in a loooong time, and I don't know what would finally make me go, other than just coming down with some intense tooth pain. But then that happened I think when my wisdom teeth came in and I still didn't go. Is that a common SP thing to be stubborn about stuff like that? I have no idea, I know I've always been that way though. But I put things off in general if it isn't what immediately seems right to me.

I hope things go right with your mom, sorry I'm not more help. :blush:
 

comicsgurl

New member
Joined
Jun 20, 2008
Messages
56
MBTI Type
INFJ
Aww, that's ok Jeffster - it helps to have a small perspective, or even any at all...if I could be personal for a second or two, why don't you like doctors? What is it about them that you avoid? I'm hoping your answer might help me with my mother.
 

Jeffster

veteran attention whore
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
6,743
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Aww, that's ok Jeffster - it helps to have a small perspective, or even any at all...if I could be personal for a second or two, why don't you like doctors? What is it about them that you avoid? I'm hoping your answer might help me with my mother.

That's a really good question. First of all, doctor's offices usually seem like very cold environments to me. You wait forever to then be weighed and measured and poked and prodded and then placed in a room to wait some more. Then you get poked and prodded some more and asked questions by a nurse who doesn't really care about you, she's just filling out a form. Then when you finally do see the doctor, he/she doesn't smile, seems to act like you're wasting his time, pokes you some more, scribbles some things down and then rushes out as quickly as he rushes in. Now, I have recently found a doctor that is much friendlier and seems very caring, so I actually don't feel as bad about going to him, and I'm really glad about that because I had to go back several times and try out several different combinations of medicines for my high blood pressure and high heart rate before we found the combo that worked.

Throughout my high school and young adult years I went to several foot doctors who operated on my severe ingrown toenail infections and every time they would tell me that this would be a permanent fix to the problem and it never was. To this day, my toenails still don't grow right and they still get infected occasionally, just not nearly as bad as they did before. But I had NINE separate operations just to get to that point.

So, basically, for the most part doctors seem cold, scary, rude, abrupt, and worst of all I'm not sure they know what they're doing a lot of the time. That combination makes for Jeffster no like go doctor. Like I said, my current general doctor is an exception (also the eye doctor I saw in Galveston was great) but most of the time I have had bad experiences with doctors. Not just with myself but with my son too. I have had them tell me they don't know what's wrong with him because his symptoms aren't consistent enough. :huh: We saw pediatricians that acted like they had no idea how to talk to or handle kids! I mean, just some really amateur-seeming stuff that scares me if these are supposed to be the experts. When i took my wife to the ER early in her pregnancy, because she was having bad abdominal pain, the woman who checked us in said "it could be an ectopic pregnancy, it's a simple procedure, but you do lose the baby."!! This was the first possibility she mentions! To a scared and in pain woman pregnant for the first time! Not to mention some really stupid EMTs I have come across.

So, yeah, a combination of my own personal irrational fears with real life bad experiences makes me resistant to doctors. But don't read this post to your mom. ;)
 

comicsgurl

New member
Joined
Jun 20, 2008
Messages
56
MBTI Type
INFJ
Wow...I'm sorry you've had such problems with medical people, Jeffster. That sounds awful. :( I think some of your fears mimic Mom's fears, tho' I don't think she's had as many problems with doctors. She doesn't trust them, and she doesn't have the money. And I think she secretly doesn't want to end up in the hospital for a long stay when she goes in for some routine thing.

I definitely won't show her your note, though. In fact if she knew I were doing this at all (asking for advice and making her business public) she'd go ballistic. :p

But thank you for your insights. They actually do help me, a little bit.
 
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