Is my mom being overly emotional?

After the tirade you should have answered “in that case, the answer is yes”.

Yes; she was emotional . She doesn’t want you to know who called her selfish and why they did it. Add that to a possible bad day of hers and you have emotionality. Can happen to anyone if the circumstances are right.

My mother and her mother are almost identical. It’s scary. My sister is following in their tract. But try to find your own way. It’s not easy but it is a good way to go.

Does your mom always react irrationally like that?

I am sure you love your mom, and you should.
But I don’t get along with people like that.

@Dutchess_III Growing I spent a lot of time with my grandmother. She was a very strong lady. I’m so glad I got that. My mother crumples under pressure. She leans on me all the time.

Yes, no question. She shouldn’t have asked you something like that without realizing that it would, naturally, make you curious.

@Aster @stanleybmanly @Adirondackwannabe @Dutchess_III @josie @DrasticDreamer

She gets angry at the drop of a hat. And thinks a lot of herself. Its really hard to have a conversation with her on any level. I know for certain that no one has told her she is selfish. In fact, she is always saying that she is glad that she is not. Even saying she is glad she is not like her mother. She is however very controlling. I am in my thirties, and she does not respect me. To me, she got some of her mother’s traits. She gets really offensive if anyone tells her that.

Shew. My mom was like that. She was very self centered. I wouldn’t exactly call her selfish, but she didn’t really think about how she was hurting other people. She also talked a lot about how much she does for others.

@Dutchess_III YEP! And mine always alluding that me and the rest of our family are selfish. And how she can’t live just for herself, just as the rest of us. She judges us a lot. And forcing us to believe it.

Well, she can’t force you to believe it. She can try though.
But…it’s the only Mom you have, so try to overlook it if you can. I wish I could call my Mom whenever I wanted to, still. Even if she did make me mad and piss me off and also make me mad sometimes.

@Heather13 Or just realize you’re going to be the adult here and humor her. I learned long ago someone can’t make me feel something. It’s me letting them be in control of what I feel. If I take control of what I feel they can’t bother me.

I see that you are in your thirties so, I think, old enough to have a rational discussion with her, if she is up to it. If I were you and she said that to me, I would have come back at her with a defense, for example “Why are you yelling?” or “You asked me that out of the blue and I had no idea what you were talking about” or something like that.

If she’s anything like my mom, she will never be up to rational discussion. The discussion would necessitate some sort of criticism of her behavior. My mom would never tolerate that. She’d come emotionally unglued.

Also, @jca, she did ask her Mom why she asked that question. It just caused more trouble.

I still say just make the best of it.

Better to talk to your Mom and find out from her if something is wrong. Open communication usually can help. We have no idea why she does what she does.

@jca I did. It doesn’t matter with her.

From the OP’s detail: My mom asked me out of the blue, if I thought she was selfish. I told her “No. Why? Did something happen?” She suddenly got angry and said “that’s not what I asked you!” “You don’t try to find out what’s the motive for their question! Nevermind! Go back to what you were doing!””

There is no reasoning with an irrational person.

Once the kids and I went to visit Mom. We were talking when she suddenly jumped up and said, “Do you guys want something to eat?” As she’s rushing into the kitchen I said, “No, we ate just before we came over.”
She started digging around in the freezer.
She pops her head out of the freezer and holds up a frozen pizza.
“Do you want this?”
“No.” I repeated. “We just ate, but thank you.”
Back into the freezer she goes and comes up with frozen burritos.
“How about some of these?”
I said “NO!” a little louder, and I repeated that we had just eaten.
At that point Mom slammed the freezer shut and yelled, “Well when you do get hungry don’t expect me to feed you!” She was mad for an hour.

Still not sure if she had hearing issues (I don’t think she did) or processing issues (I think she did.) She’d get so intent in herself that she shut everything else out.

There’s no reasoning with an irrational person, correct, but sometimes when someone is unnecessarily nasty, and you “give it back to them,” they step back a bit. In the case the OP presented, I would have “given it back to her” and see if that works. Something along the lines of “stop being so nasty! I had no idea what you were talking about!”

If they’re normally rational and they are just having a moment of emotion, then sure. Most rational people will back down, think about it, and apologize.