Dear Dandan,

perhaps there was a misunderstanding. It’s clear that you love your mother very much and believe she was loving and caring towards you and your siblings. Perhaps she intended to, but as you said, she had many issues, like inferiority complex, and feeling sad a lot of of the times, and this affects a child a lot.

My mother e.g. believed she was a martyr, and she criticized me a lot and was strict with me. But she did everything for me, she took care of me physically very well, got up at 4am in the morning to cook lunch for me before she went to work, etc. She was a martyr mother, provided for all of my material needs, but not my emotional needs. And that caused a lot of psychological problems for me as I grew up.

What I am trying to say that our parents might have good intentions and might care for us physically, but due to their own limitations, they fail to meet our emotional needs, which are as important as our physical needs. So e.g. if your mother had low self-esteem, she would allow her children and her husband to yell at her:

Every single day in the morning before leaving to school, they used to shout at mom for every single thing like if they don’t like the breakfast, if the uniform was not ironed well and for various reasons.

She has faced a lot of abuse from my sisters as well as dad.

Perhaps that weakened her further, and she was suffering a lot, always being a little sad and depressed. She believed she cannot help herself, or even that she deserves it (you said she had inferiority complex, being born in a village, having no college education). So if your dad and sisters were abusive to her, perhaps you were the only one who understood her and had pity for her. You didn’t treat her like that, you only shouted at her a few times. You were kind to her most of the times and tried to console her and make her happy. She could talk to you, perhaps complain about your father and sisters, and you would listen. Was that what was going on?

It doesn’t make your mother a bad person,  it’s just that she didn’t have the capacity to take care of herself, or stand up for herself. She was weak and had low self-esteem, and as a result, she didn’t have the capacity to give you proper emotional care either. I can say with certainty that when a parent has emotional/psychological deficiencies, it always reflects on the children.

My mother was also encouraging me to study well and go abroad to places like Germany, but at the same time she was critical of me and didn’t have trust in me. Your mother seems like she didn’t criticize you, but she was emotionally dependent on you, and it was a burden for you, whether you’re aware of it or not. A child cannot give emotional support to a parent. Rather, a child needs emotional support from the parent. If the roles are reversed, a child cannot grow up to be a healthy, independent individual with needs and wants of their own. They will always remain attached to the parent, trying to make them happy, and making their happiness depend on their parent’s happiness.

So I believe you should be looking at your role as emotional care-taker to your mother, not in the sense of emotional incest, but simply as you seeing your mother suffer and be sad, and trying to make her happy and comfort her, when she couldn’t do that on her own.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Tee.