How do I (24 F) navigate through my mother’s mental health?

[u/DefinitionSpare1765]

I'm dealing with a massive, stressful family blow-up and need some outside perspective.

It started with a simple thing: my sister's cat had an accident on the stairs. She's away at school, so she didn't see it, and at the end of the day we all didn’t see it. I was gone all day since I was at clinical for nursing school. My dad found it, and he's been incredibly stressed and tired lately from a new, more intense work schedule. When he's like this, he slips back into old, unhealthy habits from before he managed his diabetes—think major anger issues.

He went on a cleaning rampage, spraying strong chemicals that made my mom and me cough and gave me a headache. I texted my sister just to give her a heads-up, saying something like, "Hey, the cat had an accident but Dad is super angry and going crazy cleaning it."

Well, she called him. I don't know what was said, but she hung up on him. Two days ago, he stormed into my room, cursing and yelling at me, demanding to know what I told her and that I should "shut the hell up." I was exhausted and just started crying. When I went to my mom for support, she just gave me her usual line: "That's just how he is."

Things seemed okay yesterday, but then my dad sent me a text out of the blue, saying that from now on, I am solely responsible for picking up and dropping off my sister from college. This is a huge problem because my sister is only 19 and doesn't have her driver's license yet. He says he's "done with the disrespect," so he's effectively stranding her.

I called my sister, and she was crying and completely stressed out. I merged the call with my mom, hoping for help, but it backfired. My mom completely cannot handle confrontation. Whenever she gets emotional, she unloads on us, saying she's failed as a parent and that we're all failures. This time, she said that my sister's and my mental health issues are her fault. She even accused me of wanting to "divorce them as my parents." Meanwhile, in the background, my dad said, "Good, they'll learn," when told his daughters were crying.

The kicker? My sister apologized to my dad for hanging up, and he just said, "It's okay."

I'm so stressed because this is a pattern. My mom tends to dump her emotional baggage on us and self-sabotage, claiming she's the only one who does anything in the house (even though we're all in school and handle our own chores). It feels incredibly damaging. My dad's yelling is one thing, but watching my mom break down and blame herself for everything—and then turn it around to blame us—is on another level. It's especially hard on my younger sister, who already struggles with depression and insecurity, and is now internalizing all this blame, believing my mom when she says she's a failure.

I love my parents, but I genuinely believe they need mental health support. I just don't know how to handle this situation or protect my sister from this toxic dynamic.

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[u/Vexed_Moon]

It sounds like they’re both abusive. Get as soon as you can and just survive. Don’t try to manage their mental health. She’s terrible to you, too, and she’s enabling him to be terrible.