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The original was posted on /r/relationships by /u/wellthatssurprising on 2024-01-21 18:05:31+00:00.
My mom has been having a hard time lately. She doesn't make much money and has been on sick leave for about a year now from burnout bc of bullying and health problems from work, so she makes even less now. I (21f) have a job (20 hours a week, saved quite a bit of money), study at a university and my sister still goes to school. My mom and my dad are divorced and not on good terms .
One situation was about a week ago - my dad started paying less alimonies because the credit for the house we live in got higher and they substract the price from there (they both still pay for it, even though my dad moved out and lives with his parents). I was there when my dad called to tell her and she just screamed at him and hung up the phone instantly. She told my sister and me and we didn't quite know what to say. When we didn't say anything she got annoyed and started questioning us a bit. I don't work well under pressure (still working on that) and started tearing up a bit, so she got offended and started screaming about how my dad is petty because it's such a small amount he's paying less and how he doesn't even pay pocket money for my sister. We then got into an argument about how my sister and I don't know how to react to her telling us and how it sometimes feels that we're just symbols for their own argument about money. I then wrote a letter for both of them detailing how my sister and I always have to stand between them and play mediator for them and also telling my dad that my sister doesn't get pocket money from him. He then said he understands and will talk to her about it (he still hasn't done that though). It feels like my mom didn't understand what I wanted to tell her with the letter, and just let the situation blow over after I told her that she has to write my dad because I won't to it.
My sister has a lot of trouble in school, sometimes not going there for one week because of her own mental health and my mom is at home the whole time. Now she's going to a psychotherapist + a place where they are supposed to help her orient herself new jobwise. Everyone told her it would be good to go to physical rehabilitation to get help for her health problems. She never let anything shine through about not wanting to go there and now suddenly she's almost crying, telling me how she feels pressured to go there and how she doesn't want to be touched by strangers. I don't know how to react in such a situation - I can't give her a solution, I don't know what she wants to hear from me and then she's full on desperately telling me how she's such a bad mom because she can never tell us about the bad stuff and should just always talk about something trivial. I tried telling her that that's not true, but that I also don't know what to do as her daughter, but she just blocks everything and I can't get through to her. She never seems to understand what I want to tell her. And when this hopefully blows over I just wait for the next problem.
Those situations have been getting more and more the last few months and I just don't know what to do anymore. I feel like I can't tell my dad because he (even in my opinion) is petty as hell everything concerning my mom and she asked us not to tell him about the whole situation -> so we've been trying to keep it under wraps. I don't really have a lot of friends I can tell so I just have my sister.
I finally felt, after completing school with my own fair share of mental health issues, that I could start new. I love my job, I enjoy studying most of the time and it felt like things were looking up. And then this whole situation just drags me down completely. My mom wants advice regarding my sister, she apparently wants me to offer solutions regarding her own situation and about our financial problems and I just feel overwhelmed.
Should I prioritise my own mental health, and if yes, how? Should I prioritise my mom's and my sister's mental health and just try to find solutions for her/them? And how would I even find those solutions?
tl;dr: Mom wants my advice regarding her mental health/finances. We always get into fights because I don't know how to offer her real solutions and I feel like I can't talk to anyone about it.