Dear Namaste87,

I am sorry that you grew up in a dysfunctional family, witnessing your mother attempting suicide at the tender age of 4, and then being her emotional care-taker, listening to her complaints, trying to console her…

It seems to me you’ve come a long way in healing yourself and understanding what happened to you, and what you need to do to preserve your mental health and your peace of mind. As you say, the proof of your progress is your decision to have a child, after having resisted it in the past, fearing that you may hurt them. You don’t have those fears and nightmares any more – congratulations on a healing work well done!

I often find myself exhausted listening to them over and over again . Most of the times I listen to my mother sympathetically, sometimes I urge her to separate from my father if past memories still haunt her and some mornings like today – I remind her that she is repeating the same stories over the years. She is not someone who will go for therapy either.

You have been listening to your mother’s complaints your whole life, and it drains you emotionally. You cannot help her, because she’s stubborn and sees herself as a victim, and thus, doesn’t want to help herself. I know how it feels, my mother is the same: she feels like a victim, others are to blame, and she doesn’t want to seek counseling.

You’d need to understand that no matter what you say or do, you can’t help her and cannot make her feel better – because her pain comes from within, from her own wounds, not from the outside. It’s true that your father was abusive, but as you say, your mother could have done something over the years to remove herself from the situation. But she hasn’t, and now they are co-dependent. She is living in the past, recycling the old stories and the old pain – reliving the old trauma – without a desire to heal it. She isn’t taking responsibility for herself and her well-being, but is dumping her problems on to you, robbing you of your energy.

So first, you’d need to understand you can’t help her because she doesn’t want to help herself. And second, you’d need to stop feeling guilty for not being able to help her. You’d need to allow her to be in her own pain – since that’s something she is consciously choosing.

You tried giving her advice, you tried helping her financially.. but nothing helps. She says she needs someone to listen to her – well, you listened to her your entire life, and she’s repeating the same old stories, in which she is the victim. There’s no point in listening some more, because it will only make you feel worse: emotionally drained, feeling helpless because you can’t help her and she’s in pain. That’s what makes you feel like crying…

You’d need to separate yourself emotionally from her and not take on her pain, not feel responsible for her pain. You are allowed to be happy even if your mother is in pain. You can have compassion for her and help her when you see the need, but not allow that she uses you for dumping her emotional “garbage”. That’s how I believe you can create boundaries with her.

Let me know how this sounds to you…

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Tee.