Dear Pam:

Your description of your relationship with your daughter has an emotional incestuous element to it and it reads like a romantic relationship, not a mother-daughter relationship. In your inappropriate, an indeed co-dependent relationship with your daughter, you are the traditionally feminine person, the feeling, sensitive, needy, dependent one, the one needing to be told that she is loved (“I am an empath and highly sensitive… I’ve always ‘needed/wanted’ from her an affirmation of her love and support), and your daughter is the masculine person in the relationship: the thinking, independent, strong one, one of actions- not words (“My daughter has a stronger personality, not one to get her feelings hurt, more of a ‘thinking’ personality than a ‘feeling’ one… she does a lot for me“).

The way you describe your closeness with her while you were sick is similar to how a woman describes a romantic reunion with a romantic partner: “she was completely everything I’ve ever needed and wanted from her. We were very close, communicated constantly and she wanted to be with me all the time…it was almost like a co-parenting situation. I felt needed and appreciated. She told me all the time how sorry she was…”

After you got better (I hope that you are now cancer free), she is still very much in your life but not always like before. Your reaction is similar to a devastated, co-dependent romantic partner who is no longer attended to like before: “I was very hurt and confused and tried to talk to her about it. She explained to me that she needed space, that the tighter I held to her, the more she felt she needed to pull away. That she thinks I have co-dependency issues…I miss her almost constant company. I don’t feel the closeness and comfortableness with her that we used to have; it seems awkward when we’re together and I cry all the time”

And then, she’s been spending time with another mother, and you are jealous… as if she is your husband, let’s say, who is spending time with another woman: “she spends a lot of her time with … the mom. I am aware that I have jealous feelings regarding this and don’t understand why she needs a mother-figure when she has me“.

“I need a paradigm shift… a change in how I’m thinking about this…  to help me have a healthy relationship with my daughter (which we both want) and to help me move forward. I guess that’s what I’m asking for“- I think that for the benefit or your daughter, her children and for your own benefit, it is necessary that you attend quality individual psychotherapy where you will experience the paradigm shift/ change in thinking that you are asking for. With such shift and change, you will be able, I hope, to move forward toward an appropriate, healthy mother-daughter relationship with your daughter.

anita

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