How can I avoid family members who stress me out?

It is understandable that it's very hard for you to hear daily complaints from your mother regarding the caregiving of your niece. You cannot change your mother's feelings and responsibilities, which could create feelings of frustration and helplessness. It must be equally hard for your mother to assume full responsibility for your niece at a time where your sister cannot take care of her. This type of responsibility usually produces an enormous amount of stress and pressure because your mother and niece would both need to adapt to this new relationship, living situation, and the feeling of being "abandoned." 

Not knowing the history of your relationship with your mother and how you respond to each other in times of need, it may be difficult to fight the right recommendation on how to deal with this situation. Nonetheless, it is not easy to have to face daily complaints and you may have to set a healthy balance between empathy and boundary setting with your mother and some personal boundaries for yourself. 

It is likely that your mother's "complaints" may be her desperate cry for help because she does not know how to cope with stress or how to ask for the right kind of support. In this case, you could calmly and respectfully tell her the next time you hear her complain, "This must be very difficult for you because I hear the stress in your voice almost everyday. It's very hard for me to hear you feeling so overwhelmed. I feel helpless in this situation and would like to suggest that it might be helpful for you to seek some professional help and support to deal with such a big matter of importance." When empathy and understanding is communicated, recipients are usually more open because they hear and feel the caring behind it and are more likely to seek additional help.

After sharing this message of empathy and encouragement to seek help, the next step is to protect yourself by explaining to your mother where your limits are so that she understands what she can expect from you. This means that you can decide the kind of support or help you are willing to give your mother and/or niece that is within your ability to provide without feeling overwhelmed. This could involve inviting them to dinner occasionally, taking them out to see a movie or inviting your niece over to give your mother respite. You could then say to her if she complains again, "I cannot change the way you feel in this situation and I encourage you to seek professional advice about that but what I could do is .........(explain what you could do to help)."

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Then one day when life between you and mom feels calm, tell your mom that you aren't able to listen to her complaints about your sister.

The truth exists whether or not it is acknowledged.   Bu acknowledging what feels real and necessary in your life, you are helping your mom see what she may not like to see and what nevertheless is right in front of her.

There is no good reason or good to come of hiding your own truth about not wishing to continue listening to your mom complain.

This sounds stressful.

You mentioned that you want to learn how to avoid them. I'm not sure whether you want to avoid them overall or if you would like to ask your mom to maybe only talk to you about it for a few minutes about your niece in each conversation that you have.

Maybe you can connect your mom with some support. It sounds as if she has lost part of herself and/or is very stressed out and in talking with you about it because she trusts you enough for you to be someone she can speak openly, you are becoming stressed because of things that you cannot directly change. This is the presumptive based on the amount of information that you posted, but it sounds like there is a bit of a circle of stress here.

I also wonder who you could talk with when you are stressed.

It may be helpful to see a local mental health professional to help redefine some boundaries so you can have the type of relationship with your mother that you want without necessarily feeling stressed out by it every day.

This sounds very stressful.  Setting boundaries is important to maintaining a peace of mind.  If you have not communicated your feelings to your family member, that would be a good first step.  Communicate with the intent of simply expressing your feelings and your expectations going forward.  Do not blame or shame because that will blur your intent.  Going forward, consistently stick to your new boundaries.  That may mean not picking up your phone for each call.  Soon enough the message will be clear.  Good luck.

It is difficult to implement healthy boundaries when the person is a parent or family member. I would encourage you to identify how it makes you feel after talking with your mother. Work on establishing healthy boundaries where you do not feel obligated to engage the complaining daily. Maybe setting a time limit to talk with your mother and practicing how to be assertive and not disrespect or aggressive. Helping your mother understand how you feel using  "I" statements  i.e  ( I feel _____ when you call to talk about my sister). Maybe asking your mom how can you be supportive of her during this time other than listening to her vent. It may also be helpful for your mother to get connected with support groups to help her cope with this life change. 

Buy the book "Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin." Read it. Apply it.

Seriously, I'm not joking. You're not wrong to "not want to hear it anymore" but if you don't maintain healthy boundaries, you will allow your family to make you feel guilty for "not wanting to hear it anymore". That's not fair to you.

Give a copy to your mom, too. No, I didn't write the book nor do I have any affiliation with it - I simply recommend it because it's a wonderful book and it helped me out a lot. I recommend it to a lot of people. It should be required reading!

This sounds like a possible boundary issue. Boundaries are important in relationships. They are invisible lines that we will or will not cross. It is up to us to create and hold them. We have the ability to rethink them and change them as needed. It sounds like you have thought it through and would like to makes changes in the relationship between your mother and you. In the main question, you want to avoid the family member, however in the following comment, it sounds like you may just want the avoid that conversation, not so much your mother. 

Once we review the issue and decide what we need (create the boundary), I suggest opening talking with the person when everyone is calm (not in the middle of a stressful moment when we often are unable to focus and hear the other person). Always understanding that we had time to think about this issue and the other person has not (catching them off guard). State clearly your need. Such as "I am not comfortable with hearing about my sister. It stresses me out. I would appreciate it if you would not bring it up anymore. If you do, I will not respond and I will change the subject " It is important to use "I" statements. I feel" this way". I will "do this". We only have power over our actions. Also when we use "you " comments, the other person can become defensive and unable to hear what we are saying. 

Once we let ourselves know what we need, then let the other people know our new boundary, then it is up to us to follow through. We will make mistakes. Not follow through every time with our boundary. That is okay. Start again. It gets easier with practice. It is also appropriate to reconsider and change your boundary as needed. Just let the others know when you need to change it. Remember, they can not read our minds. 

I wish you much strength and hope the best for you and your family.

www.parishhealthandwellness.com

Set firm boundaries. Either you can say she can complain for X number of minutes and no more, you change the subject or let her go to voicemail, she can leave as many as she wants and you don’t have to listen, you can delete them.  The boundary could be that you do not hear her complaining at all. Boundaries are hard to set harder to enforce but worth the effort of setting them and sticking by them!  This video on Boundaries could be beneficial. 

It sounds as though there is a need to establish some healthy boundaries with your mother. Simply put, a boundary is a line or space between you and another person. It is also a way of defining what behavior is acceptable and unacceptable. When working with clients, I teach them that there are 4 Rules to Setting Healthy Boundaries. First, the boundary must be clear and definable. Think of a boundary like lines on a football field. The other person needs to know when they are "in bounds" or if they have stepped "out of bounds." Second, the other person must be told about the boundary. It's not fair for me to enforce a consequence if I've never told you about the boundary. Third, there must be a consequence for violating the boundary. This is often the place where people struggle. It's important to identify a consequence that is appropriate and proportionate to the violation. Finally, the fourth (and most important) rule is "If you are not willing to follow rule #3, don't bother with any of this. The reason the fourth rule is so important is that if someone violates my boundary and I refuse to enforce the consequence, I've basically told them that my boundaries mean nothing. 

You are well within your rights to establish a boundary with your mother. You are not her therapist. Remember to communicate your boundary to her in a way that is clear and unambiguous. Also, make sure that you enforce the consequence in the event that she doesn't adhere to your boundaries. 

Heard of Voice Mail?  Or Blocking a Number.  Email.  Stay busy ...  be kind but text instead,,,

Learning how to set healthy boundaries can be life changing! Assertiveness training will help you in all facets of your life. A therapist can help you figure out how much interaction is too much, how to say no and set healthy boundaries, and how to prioritize your needs so you don't become resentful or burned out.

It can really be difficult to listen to someone constantly complain and it can take a lot of emotional energy to be the listening ear to someone struggling. Perhaps having a conversation with your mother about making the communication more productive in nature. It seems like your mother is obviously having some difficulties and she is stuck, therefore making you stuck listening to complaints on repeat. Explain to her the impact it has on you to listen to the complaining and not working towards changing things or coming to a level of acceptance or even making the conversation mutual, such as her being there for you. This may or may not help her to come around, but at least it can open up the conversation and be an effort towards initiating a change.

These are common challenges that involve setting healthy boundaries with family, as well as friends and co-workers.  Therapy can help you to define, establish and enforce boundaries between self and others by being assertive.  This involves determining what things make you uncomfortable and how to communicate that with assertive, not passive, not aggressive, actions and language. 

It is important to set boundaries with those that stress you out. I encourage people to validate the other persons feelings by saying "I am sorry you are going through this." Then, to set the boundary bye stating what you need from them or what you are trying to do with your life to destress and that you can't be a listening ear right now. This will need to be a repeated conversation, but over time you will notice less stress.

Sounds like it is time to set some boundaries with your mom.  You can do this by letting her know that you understand how she is feeling and you understand that she is under a tremendous amount of stress.  Validate her feelings and words.  After you do that, tell her how hearing about it daily is affecting you let.  Let her know that it is hard for you to hear how stressed she is, how hard it is you to have these daily calls.  Let her know that you are feeling stressed about her own well being.  You can then suggest that she find a therapist to speak to about how she is feeling and what she is going through.  I suggest writing out what you want to say, before you say it.  Practice saying it a few times so that it flows naturally when you do have the conversation with her.

Also, when you start setting boundaries with people they don't usually like it.  They give some sort of push back either by expressing disappointment or anger towards you.  This has nothing to do with you.  This is them having a hard time hearing and accepting the boundary you are setting.  The other thing people tend to do when you set a boundary is to test it.  In this situation it might look like your mom calling you the next day as if the two of you never had the conversation.  In this situation it falls on you to set the boundary again, by having the same conversation again with her.  Over time she will accept the boundary and she will be OK with it.

I just want to understand before I answer. Who exactly is complaining?