Dear Tatjana:

It is okay with me that you reply whenever you are able and willing, or not.

I re-read my last post to you. There I wrote: “As a child, ready to be formed, we are not in the position to accept or reject our parents’ input. We accept it without question and perpetuate it… (you can get far away from your parents, as an adult, but) you can never get far from your own brain that perpetuates mistreatment”.

The perpetuation of your parents’ mistreatment, I believe, is what is fueling the “depression, and self-destruction” you suffer from.

You asked for more of my thoughts, in general, regarding the harm a mother causes her child to whom she is too attached, and how that harm can be greater than an indifferent (very little input into the child’s life) parent: when a parent, a mother, is too attached to the child, it means that she needs something from the child, and desperately. She needs from the child, and so she takes what the child cannot afford to give. Let’s say, she needs the child to listen to her day, every day, to her every feeling, so the child, naturally, complies best she can and she listens, for hours. When that happens, the child is not voicing her feelings, and her life becomes about her mother. No one listens to her.

A competent psychotherapist can listen and listen to a client because she can afford to do that. First, there is a time limit that the therapist controls. Second, the therapist is an adult and does not need the client for emotional nurturing. Third, the therapist has acquired tools through education and practice so to not be overwhelmed by the client’s emotions, to separate her feelings and her experiences from the client’s.

In my example, a child has no control and will not dare to enforce a time limit; a child has very strong, valid needs from the parent to be emotionally nurtured (needs neglected by this role reversal), and has no education or training. The child is unable to separate her feelings from her mother’s.

An indifferent parent who says very little and simply ignores the child, no interactions, is harmful as well. Thing is, such indifference or absence makes the child more vulnerable to the too-attached parent.

anita