Dear Milda,

Wow, insight about first developing inner boundaries before setting the external ones cought me.

Glad it was helpful. It was actually something I’ve heard in one of Jerry Wise’s videos. I really suggest you watch it too, because it talks about exactly the problem you’re facing: too much caring, and how that’s actually enabling, not true caring.

There are actually 2 videos with the topic of internal boundaries, both on Jerry Wise’s youtube channel:

“Narcissistic family: One Thing You Must Do to Set Boundaries with Them”

“Narcissistic Family: The Secret to Having Solid Boundaries with Them”

He talks about codependent caring, which is actually enabling and emotional enmeshment. It stems from compulsion (because we’re expected to do it), rather than from our free will and the goodness of our heart.

He says that codependent people care too much, and so they have to become more “selfish”, which simply means start taking care of their own needs more. For an empath, becoming more selfish is actually a move in the right direction.

Narcissistic parents will of course tell us that thinking about ourselves and our needs is selfish, but that’s not true: it’s simply self-compassion and self-care, to which we’re all entitled to.

Jerry Wise says that the cure for lack of internal boundaries is self-love. We need to start loving ourselves unconditionally – which will break the pattern of conditional love, that we’ve received from our parents.

We need to start loving ourselves even if we don’t feel like meeting our parents’ needs. We need to start telling ourselves that we’re a good person, worthy of love and respect – even if we refuse the role of the emotional caretaker and the “family empath”, which they’ve imposed on us. We need to start loving ourselves unconditionally, in order to overwrite the false family programming.

When you say:

Parents are projecting on me their decision about when I al a good daughter, when I am a bad one, which behavior is acceptable and approved, which is not.

That’s conditional love. That’s them encoding in you a false definition of what a good, lovable, worthy person is.

But those projections are all that I know. If they believe I am bad, because I did not soothe their emotional problems and did not solve their issues, how then I should find facts for myself, that in MY REALITY, I am not?

By giving yourself unconditional love. That will help you redefine that false definition of what a good, caring, loving person means.

Self-love and self-care. Those are 2 categories you’ve never received in your childhood (or beyond): neither true love, nor care. You were only “loved” when you’ve abandoned yourself. And you’ve never actually received care, except in form of physical nurturance, if I understood well.

So your inner child is starving for love and care. We can’t thrive without that. It’s like a flower without water and sunshine. You need to start giving yourself water and sunshine. You need to start giving yourself care: both for your body and your soul.

Imagine you’re in a spa. You need to start pampering yourself. What is something that makes you feel good, in which your senses enjoy? Give yourself that.

Do what feels good – not because your parents think it’s good, but because you feel it’s good and feeds your soul.

What do you say?

Dear Milda:

I will soon be away from the computer for the rest of this Friday and I’m expecting a very busy weekend away from the computer. I wanted to add to my previous post that I know- from my own in-real-life experience with my mother- how difficult it is to separate oneself from a dominating or domineering (through a pattern of shaming and guilt-tripping) mother.

Separating from my mother, redefining the definitions she drilled into me (including that of “a good mother” and “a good daughter”) took forever for me, but it can take way less time for you, and I hope it does.

My story with my mother is not identical to your story with your mother. Our mothers are not identical, and we daughters, aren’t either. This is why it’s very important that your thoughts and understanding about your story are heard above anyone else’s interpretation. Your story= your interpretation.

I am here to help you best I can- not as someone who knows better- but as a fellow traveler in the same journey: reclaiming my individual, independent voice.

You wrote 24 hours ago: “I want what’s best, most peaceful for me.”- I like it very much that you want what’s best, what’s most peaceful for you.

What has proven best and most peaceful for me is to reclaim my own voice, to interpret my own story and to no longer doubt my own interpretation 🙂

🌿 🤍 Anita

Dear Milda: I will read and reply at the end of the day, take care!

Dear Milda:

“Deep down I feel the worst daughter, because I decided to step away from parents and do not communicate with them/visit them for a while… I would really appreciate your thoughts on that feeling. How can I navigate through it in a healthy way. This is a very complicated state of mind, state of being actually.”-

A child needs the parent’s approval, and when the parent is repeatedly rejecting, shaming and/ or guilt-tripping the child, that natural need for approval becomes a desperate need. It takes center stage and everything else is put off for another time in the future when approval is finally given. This has been my experience. I put my life on hold for decades, waiting for my mother’s approval, not even knowing that I was still waiting and waiting.

I am no longer waiting for her approval.. and (it feels miraculous), she is no longer center stage in my life, I am. Finally!

To reclaim center stage in your life, go back and take the hand of Milda-the-child who is still stuck waiting for that approval and bring her home. Give her a safe place in your heart, to be and to become more and more of who she already is.

“Throw away old dictionary and start a new one about what is a good daughter, a bad one, what is a good mother, a bad one. This will be my homework. I think this exercise would help me in a road of unconditional love to myself.”- I would love to read your homework if you share it, when you do.

“My interpretations and gut feeling was silenced by me, silenced by scared, small me, because I had to survive and listening to those interpretations would not help me survive, so I silenced them. The bloody work now is to give a voice for those interpretations, they still scare me a lot, I still do not know what to do with them..”-

I think that it’s the child’s desperate need for the parent’s approval that puts off everything for a later time, including one own thinking, interpreting and feeling.

You know that as an adult, if you are practically able to survive without your parents, their approval is not necessary. It’s just that the child within you doesn’t know it yet..?

🌿 🤍 Anita

How are you, Milda?

Dear Milda:

Rereading your thread this morning is fascinating. Your clarity of thought, your insight are amazing!

Here are quotes from what you wrote in your original post on Oct 24, 2023: “I’m always there for people, listening to their problems, giving advice, questioning everything, focused much more on the outside world than on my own life. I feel that this absorption in… other peoples’ lives just really is draining”

On my first reply to you on the same day, I wrote: “Is it that growing up, you had to always be there for your mother (or father) because she was very unhappy and so, you tried to solve her problems/ make her happy?”.

You answered on the same day: “– exactly, I had a very chaotic childhood, my father had serious drinking problem, so mother was always thinking about the next step, most of the time tired, scared or just with thoughts floating somewhere else… so the coping mechanism formed that I always have to scan others’ emotions to know (if) I can ask for help/ talk about my problems/ what scares me etc. or if I shouldn’t because my mother/father is at the moment busy with their problems. I had a need inside to always solve their problems, so that maybe then I can live in a happy, stable and calm family with happy parents.”

Three days later, on Oct 27, 2023, you wrote: “I was text messaging with my mother… when I asked mother what her plans for weekend are, she replied: well, father is again not talking to me… After reading this message, I physically felt a stress reaction: my heart was racing, head spinning, felt nervous, scared and had an immediate thoughts of “I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING, I HAVE TO SOLVE IT, HOW CAN I COMFORT MY MOTHER, HOW TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM FOR HER, WHY IS FATHER NOT TALKING, I HAVE TO MAKE THEIR RELATIONSHIP RIGHT, I HAVE TO KNOW THE DETAILS, MAYBE KNOWING THE DETAILS WILL HELP ME SOLVE IT”. It was a true reaction of stress, tension, fear. But I paused… I just put my phone away. Tried to challenge those thoughts… But then I started facing new thoughts, which were: ‘How dare you not helping her, comforting her, she is lonely… you are not taking care of your mother, which is your duty… DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO HELP HER AND MAKE HER HAPPY!!’…A huge guilt inside of me”

On that day, I wrote to you: “Evident here is Role Reversal which started in your childhood: the child-daughter feeling that it is her duty to take care (to parent) her adult mother… Of course, it is mission impossible for a child to be an adult… she doesn’t have the emotional (or other) resources to parent her parents, but she is driven to do it anyway…

“If your mother really was a child and you really were her mother, you would have had the opportunity to make her a happy child because she would be in her Formative Years when under your care, her brain developing-… with your input, your care in it. As a child, you unknowingly took on an impossible task: to change a sad brain that is already formed into a happy brain. Mission impossible.

After almost 2 years break, you returned to your thread on Sept 24, 2025. You shared on Sept 24-25 the following: “I read books ‘Codependent no more’, ‘Unhealthy helping’, ‘Too Much: A Guide to Breaking the Cycle of High-Functioning Co-dependency’ and something clicked…

“I have paused communication with parents for a while… It’s a relief that patterns and reality are now fully understood, but I do not feel brave enough to start making changes… I feel so stressful, scared and alone in this journey of change… I am lost in all of the insights, and I truly have no idea what the next step should be…

“I read a very good quote that ‘When you do not feel lovable, you settle with being useful’. I do not think that I can be loved just because I am, without giving, doing, over functioning for others. There is no self-worth… When it comes to thinking about what to do in the free time, what could be my hobby, I have no idea. I also have no friends, because all of my friendships were ingenuine, I was performing and people wanted to be with me only because of that.”

On Sept 28-29, you shared: “During my whole life, when I had situations where I said ‘no’, and my parents guilt tripped me for that, said something shameful, insulting, I always felt (and still feel) this high rush in my body, indicating stress, scariness, unsafety, a mix of enormously unpleasant feelings, as if I am doing something majorly wrong.

“I always received such feelings as a signal: do something so they are not angry with you. I believe this is the biggest issue- that I feel scared, I feel a bad daughter (by my parents’ terms) and I immediately stop what I wanted to do- I stop setting boundaries, I stop saying what I believe, what are my needs…

“To hear my parents’ insulting, hurtful words, to hear mother’s ‘How dare you think about yourself when there are other people, you are not the centre of the word’… Their words hit me like a bullet. Mom’s sadness hits me like the hardest weight. Father’s skepticism and narcissism is like a punch in the face.

“No matter how many books I read, their one sentence gets me into guilt and old behavior… It’s like I was born with a tag ‘Born for everyone, use (her) for your needs, parents do not protect this child from usage’”.

On Oct 1-2, you shared: “My emotional needs were never met. I was emotionally neglected, dealt with my problems alone, couldn’t share them, because I knew that reactions would be either no interest or blaming that I’m too sensitive/should not be scared etc. But when it came to parents- I always searched for ways to meet their emotional needs UNCONDITIONALLY. But meeting my needs by them was always conditional. Always. And conditions were not on my side, so I was left alone with my problems and my need for safety, acceptance and love…

“Just feeling unseen. Feeling as being born for service, for making others happy, fulfilled and comforted. Absorbing everyone’s bad mood, problems and converting them into soothing…

“It’s even not that my feelings are not important. It’s as if they do not exist at all. Everyone is human except for me, that’s the feeling…

“Regarding parents’ reactions to my problems (as much as I can remember), my mother would be preoccupied with her problems and did not show interest in trying to soothe me or make me feel better, and my father is the ‘stone’ one, he used to say be strong, do not be sensitive, there are bigger problems in world etc…

“I have to start gaining self-esteem from other sources instead of caring, comforting, enabling and fixing. How does a person gain that through healthy behaviors?”

On Oct 3, I wrote to you: “Self-erasure is a high price to pay for being a ‘good daughter’, isn’t it? And isn’t it a bad mother who demands such a price?… I think redefining things is a good start, to throw away the old dictionary and start a new one.

“I mean there are plenty of advice out there in regard to how to gain self-esteem, books are written on it, I am sure, as well as online videos that you can access. Thing is, for as long as the core belief within me was ‘I am a bad daughter’, I couldn’t or wouldn’t love myself because, it doesn’t feel right to love a bad person, does it, Milda?”

You replied on Oct 5: “Deep down I feel the worst daughter, because I decided to step away from parents and do not communicate with them/ visit them for a while. I feel the worst that I do not listen to their problems, issues and do not soothe them.

“I feel the worst, because I stopped keeping them the centre of MY life and started TO BE the center of MY life. Even though such decision is helping me to stay more at peace and calm, at the same time it is burning at low heat anxiety inside of me and I do not feel at peace at all. I feel as if I murdered somebody but took very good care of hiding the body and evidence… I would really appreciate your thoughts on that feeling. How can I navigate through it in a healthy way. This is a very complicated state of mind, state of being actually…

“I did not have even one person to support me and say that Milda, such parent behavior is not ok, and they are actually manipulating you… I think the biggest change internally started to happen, because by reading book ‘Codependent no more’ interpretations… My (personal) interpretations and gut feeling was silenced by me, silenced by scared, small me, because I had to survive, and listening to those interpretations would not help me survive, so I silenced them. The bloody work now is to give a voice for those interpretations, they still scare me a lot, I still do not know what to do with them…

I replied on Oct 6, 2025: “A child needs the parent’s approval, and when the parent is repeatedly rejecting, shaming and/ or guilt-tripping the child, that natural need for approval becomes a desperate need. It takes center stage, and everything else is put off for another time in the future when approval is finally given. This has been my experience. I put my life on hold for decades, waiting for my mother’s approval, not even knowing that I was still waiting and waiting…

“To reclaim center stage in your life, go back and take the hand of Milda-the-child who is still stuck waiting for that approval and bring her home. Give her a safe place in your heart, to be and to become more and more of who she already is…

“I think that it’s the child’s desperate need for the parent’s approval that puts off everything for a later time, including one own thinking, interpreting and feeling. You know that as an adult, if you are practically able to survive without your parents, their approval is not necessary. It’s just that the child within you doesn’t know it yet..?”

You didn’t answer that questioned and didn’t post again since Oct 5, 2025.

I will continue in the next post.

🤍 Anita