I feel like my worry is not just that she doesn't know how she comes across to me, but that she doesn't exactly care. Not that she doesn't care about me, but...well, she likes to abuse the line "no one can make you feel anything" to mean that she isn't responsible for what she says. She seems to have the idea that, if I'm hurt or frustrated by what she says, the problem is that I'm too sensitive or feeling guilty over my behavior (that she dislikes) or something, and that I'm trying to avoid it by "controlling her."

My other problem is that, as far as I can tell, anything that's not the response that she wants causes her to flip out. I don't mean just a brief thing...I mean hours-long lectures, constantly coming up and asking me what I was thinking, responding to any refusal to engage by yelling about how dare I treat her that way and she's just trying to help and I won't even deal with her.

My impression of her is that some of this is just how she operates. She treats my father the same way she treats me. If life's a play, she's convinced that she's the main character. Everything is about her somehow. See for example, her big lecture about my clothes last Christmas...for some reason she'd gotten it into her head that my dark clothes were making me depressed, I have self-esteem issues making me wear all that makeup, and above all I'm doing it out of rebellion against her and doing it to try to hurt her. She talked at me for maybe 30-40min about this (yes, talked at is the right term, as at this point I was thoroughly ignoring her).

None of this is new behavior. She's been like this as far back as I remember...especially the anger at getting any response that's not the one she wanted. I honestly don't expect a whole lot to change right now, but I want to give her one decent chance before I start limiting visits, out of respect for her being my mother.. I expect she'll need to see consequences enforced before she changes anything.