Is this emotional abuse from my mom?

For context, I am a 22F, and am in grad school but live with my parents (and mom) at home. I just want to know if anyone else has had similar experiences with parents (especially mothers).

1. My mom dealt with her anger at me with destructive behaviors. When my mom was mad at me when I was younger (ages 10-14), she would go into my room and break or knock over the things she knew were most valuable to me. There were multiple times when I would come home from school and see that all of my dance trophies (I was a competitive dancer all my life) were knocked off their shelf onto the floor (sometimes broken).

2. My mom is consistently manipulative. Whenever she needs to win an argument, she pulls the "how can you be so ungrateful after everything I've done for you. I gave up so much of my life for you" card. She did do a lot for me but she consistently uses this as a crutch to guilt me into doing what she wants. She also constantly says "If you loved me, you would do this or do that"

3. My mom is extremely passive aggressive. She never tells me exactly what's wrong but instead, she always makes little jabs at me to make me feel bad. For example, I will come after a night out with my boyfriend to a note on my desk that says "go live with your boyfriend if you like spending so much time with him" and all I did was spend a Saturday night at his place. She will say things like "You clearly don't care about me if you're spending your time with other people so get out of this house and go live with them" and that anytime I leave the house to have fun with friends that I am "abandoning the family".

4. My mom consistently invalidates my emotions. My feelings are invalid in comparison to hers. If I am crying in my room, my mom will come in to tell me to "stop crying, you have nothing to cry about. Look at how many problems I have" and leave.

5. My mom has always tried to and still does try to make decisions for me by convincing me that she is right and I'm wrong. Most of the time, she says that is if for me own good or that she knows what's best for me. She implies that I can't be trusted to exercise good judgement and that I would fail without her help.

6. I have a 14 year old brother and my mom disregards his age and treats my brother like a peer. We have many illnesses in the family which cause a lot of stress and she talks to him as if he is an adult friend about things like DNRs, cancer, life and death, and lays all of her emotional needs on him. He is 14 and is expected to console her and act like an adult. I feel extremely bad for him. She then takes pride in saying "he is so mature so I can tell him all this" when in reality, I can see that he is often troubled by all of these conversations and she doesn't see it.

7. My mom thinks I have no standards and that I'm incapable of making smart choices. She has told me "you are always the one being picked by guys, and never the other way around" implying that I settle for everyone that has ever looked at me.

8. My mom is extremely judgmental and thinks she knows everything there is to know about someone without ever meeting them. My mom has never liked any of my boyfriends simply because they are older, or of a different race or culture and constantly belittles me for choosing "wrong".

9. My mom rarely ever asks me about my life (classes, friends, dance etc). There has always been some kind of bigger issue in her own life that took priority. She almost never tells me she loves me or she is proud of me.

Has anyone else dealt with similar things? What should I do?

Sorry you are going through this. It sounds like your mother has strong narcissistic tendencies. She sees the world in terms of herself and how it affects her. to the exclusion of all else. She doesn't balance her own needs/wants/thoughts against those of others around her. Living with someone like that can be very challenging, as you've discovered.

There is a lot of information about this on-line, you are definitely not alone. One of the strategies is to restrict your interactions with her to be as factual as possible, sticking to the objective and not participating in the subjective. She will try to make things subjective because she believes her own opinion to be always right. So you can state the factual reasons for what you want to think/say/do, listen to and consider any facts she may offer in dissent, then walk away if she launches into her subjective opinion of why you are wrong. You can never win that argument and there is nothing you can learn from it, it will only drive your spirit down. So don't give her that power over you.

Remember that while you are trying to be reasonable and reach some form of compromise, she is not, her goal is only to establish that she is right. There is a chance that she will learn that you will only engage with her when she is being fair and agreeable and rational.

Also you probably have already figured out that eventually leaving will help, as you won't be so constantly in conflict with her. Distance can be a good thing, sometimes. So as you complete grad school, you can and should be grateful to her for all her help and support, but you can also look forward to freedom from that stress.

Yes, it is emotional abuse.

Sounds just like my mom. I'm 44 and finally have her out of my life. I sympathize and empathize with you and everything you share. Don't fall for any guilt in how you see things. Gut feelings are there for a reason. Wishing you the best.