Oh man, no, I know for certain that I didn't ask if she was okay with any caring in my voice. I was annoyed, honestly. It had been day 11 at that point and I was just over it. I probably made her feel more self-conscious and embarrassed.

it's like another piece of me, one that is pure emotion and need, takes over my physical body for some time, instead of the rational part that keeps up appearances

This sounds to me (without being able to confirm it with my mom) very much like what she must be experiencing. For example, she struggles greatly with social norms and tends to look down on people who do things the "normal way". Because of this, my parents' house is very unconventional; they sleep in the living room, they don't eat at home, etc. Well, my house has matching towels (nothing fancy, just boring ole gray towels), we have matching cups and dinnerware, we cook most meals at home, so on. This is a big issue for my mom and it causes her to never be fully comfortable in our home. Now, I think that's silly because we're not fancy; in fact, we're pretty average. But now I'm thinking that she wants to be able to let down that "keeping up appearances" part that she holds up in public when she's with us. And we're becoming less and less like her as we're setting up our home, raising our baby, so on, so maybe she's struggling to find her place in all this? Who really knows if this is at all correct and I could certainly never get her to admit it, but perhaps this is a source of some of her outbursts.

Yes, I wish she could feel comfortable going to a therapist and working out some of her demons. She and all of her siblings have similar traits (which I think stem from some bad childhood memories) but none of them would ever step foot in a therapist's office. I think they see it as a sign of weakness, which is really a shame.

This is what a combination of healthy boundaries and compassion looks like.

Thank you so, so much for this. I'm going to stand my ground with her and use the tactics that so many have given me in this threat, but I do hope that I can do it in a compassionate way. I'm not setting out to make her feel stupid but we do need her to acknowledge what happened without trying to justify it and for her to apologize. I don't know how I could have faith that she won't do this over and over if she can't even acknowledge that cursing out her SIL (who she wasn't even mad at, at the time) on Christmas is wrong. So hopefully our phone call/setting the boundaries talk goes well, if not immediately then sometime in the future.

Thank you again. I truly appreciate you opening up to me about such a personal thing for the sake of helping me through a difficult time. That's really amazing of you.