Dear Cali Chica:

Looking at your example, you are in your room studying. She enters your room with a worried look on her face and you say: what is going on? – it is you acting as the parent to that child entering her mother’s room with a sad, worried face. The child (your mother) says: nothing. The mother, you, encourages the sullen child do speak: I know something is wrong… tell me.

You are studying, doing your job as a student. And then, you have this other job, parenting your infantile mother. Fast forward to the present: your husband has an exam next week and you interrupt him with a nervous talk about something distressing. In your interpretation of this behavior you are suggesting that you are doing what your mother did.

I don’t think you have the same motivation when interrupting your husband as your mother did interrupting you. I don’t think she felt guilty at those times (“Then she would be over-ridden with guilt”). You felt guilty when she became sullen following your irritation with her(for ..not being the patient role-reversed mother to her). She didn’t.

Remember the one mental unit I mentioned to you recently? You felt guilty and you think she did. Because there was no separation and separation is currently in progress, you still confuse her and you. In the context of your relationship with her you were the good child, she was the bad adult. Not the other way around. You felt guilty, she didn’t.

anita