Dear Isabelle:

When a child witnesses her mother sad, the child feels intensely sad, and is desperate to make her mother happy. When she succeeds, she gets the sense of competency, capability, feeling a sense of power in being able to make her mother happy. That good feeling of power feels healing.

But if the mother’s happy moments are short lived and she is repeatedly sad and troubled, the child will keep trying, getting hooked on that good feeling. Fast forward, the adult child will invest so much of her time and resources on making her mother happy, with very poor return on her investment (the mother is still unhappy, still critical, still unloving, and the adult child is exhausted, distressed and troubled).

Your sister, she invests in her mother a lot, trying to make her mother happy. What is her return on investment?

Emotional healing is about learning the nature of reality and making choices that are congruent with reality, choices that lead to a good return on investment.

anita