Ah now that is interesting. I said to my family last night that there was a woman I got stuck with outside the court who was JUST like talking to Claire, my MIL 15 years ago. The repeating of a story over and over, the feeling hard done by, the "i hate this and that person". MIL lives in Canada and we eventually had to change our house telephone number and give her a dedicated mobile number as she would leave extremely long offensive messages. The mobile we could turn off and my husband used software to turn speech messages to text so that it would not be so hard on him to read. She had paranoias and fantasies (mafia/police/people who had done wrong to her) and many conflicts with neighbours, gradually losing all friends. We are in the UK so not able to keep an eye. She got sectioned a couple of times and elderly social care involved before she was finally hospitalised after a stroke so no longer able to walk and is now in a secure home in her town. She has no family other than us and she will live for years in her dementia affected mind with no visitors as we have no money to visit her. My husband says there is no point even if we had the money as she doesn't know us anymore (he went over a couple of years ago when she first moved into the care home, was telephoning weekly for a while but cannot do that, she has no idea who she is (possibly hearing affected too?)). It is horrific really and although I obviously feel sorry for her neighbours and people she is upsetting I think I can see her future. Maybe she does too. One of the most upsetting phone calls my husband took from his mum was that she was scared. I think she knew she was losing it.
Not excusing behaviour but trying to understand made it easier for us.
