If It Is Unbearable To Communicate With Mom. Part 4. And Which Of Us Is A Mother?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

In this part I will talk about the phenomenon confusion of roles, when in the family system children periodically perform the functions and duties of parents, and parents from time to time fall into childhood. In such a relationship, it is not clear whether minor the child can rely on the parents and get support, or he must sympathize and support parents and has no right to refuse - otherwise he will receive condemnation. It is also not clear who is responsible for what, who has the right to what and from whom to ask if something went wrong.

I will give examples of situations where role confusion is most visible. minors children and parents:

• The daughter calms her mother after a quarrel with her father.
• The son protects his mother from aggressive attacks from his father and relatives.
• The child is responsible for keeping the house tidy and preparing food.
• The older child takes care of, plays and brings up the younger children to a greater extent than the parents.
• The daughter listens to the mother's complaints about her father, how “he ruined her all her life” sympathizes that her family or professional life did not work out.
• The son hears from his father how "this fool, your mother drank all the juices out of me."
• The daughter covers her mother if she is caught cheating on her father.
• The son makes sure that the parents do not abuse alcohol.

What does this relationship lead to? To blur the psychological boundaries of all family members, to the impossibility of directly clarifying relationships, talking about their needs, and satisfying them. Tension and dissatisfaction are growing, and there are no legal direct ways to resolve the situation. The roles are shifted:

• the mother expresses her claims not directly to the father, but to the child;
• the child is terribly afraid of the parents' fight, but cannot ask them for protection - and he himself stands up for the protection of the parent, who is more vulnerable at that time;
• the child himself is not yet very good at managing his emotions and desires, but he feels that the parents are even less in control of themselves, since they go into binges; and begins to control his parents in order to cope with his fear in this way;

Another feature that confuses the child is that, as it were, the obligations of an adult are imposed on him, and, accordingly, he can claim the rights of an adult, but in fact more often it turns out that he does not receive rights, “because he hasn’t smelled gunpowder yet, You don’t know life and nobody is interested in your opinion”.

If these are one-time events in the family, then it is unlikely that it will somehow greatly traumatize the child and affect his adult life. And if the pattern, then a person is formed with certain familiar forms of behavior and reactions.

1. Such people difficult to separate yourself from others, to determine what they feel and want, and what is imposed by society and other people, because psychological boundaries are blurred.
2. Due to blurred boundaries social and family roles remain fragile … From the role of a child, a person can wish and expect softness, love, sympathy from the mother, but as soon as the mother discards the role of a strong and domineering woman, shows her vulnerability, an adult child picks up the mask discarded by her mother, begins to criticize, condemn, push her opinion, defend her correctness. Because from childhood I got used to the constant mirror-like reversal of roles. Because it's terribly scary when a mother, an adult, is unable to cope with her emotions and addictions. What can we say then about the child.
3. They have complex relationship with commitments … As children, they performed duties that were sometimes unbearable for a child of their age, which formed a persistent negative attitude towards such matters and caused severe fatigue. So everyday household cooking, conflict resolution, parenting, empathy for parents - become incredibly difficult and cause a lot of negative emotions, fatigue and a feeling of violence against oneself.
4. The feeling that there is no place in life for rest, relaxation, including your own house. Constant tension and fatigue, constant readiness to defend or attack in this dangerous and unfriendly world.
5. There is no skill and ability to directly ask and negotiate something with others. To get what you want, manipulations are used, and the usual way of communication is double bills, when verbally one thing is said in words, but something completely different is meant.
6. It is difficult to wish and want something for yourself. The habitual way to live is to be useful and important to others. This can be satisfying, but it often leads to the feeling that you are simply being used as a kind of function, that you yourself are not particularly needed by anyone. If you try to live for yourself, then guilt becomes an inevitable companion.
7. The downside is also possible - a person lives only for himselfby ignoring the wants and needs of others. In this way, trying to overcompensate for himself what he lost in childhood - attention and respect for himself, his desires. Since the parents did not give what was needed, only I myself can satisfy my needs, it makes no sense to ask someone for something. But I won't give anything to others either.

8. There are a lot of grievances, claims and anger towards parents., often unaware that they did not support, did not give support, did not sympathize with what they left with their experiences, dumped their parental obligations on the child, did not let them play enough - "deprived of childhood." This does not let go of the illusion that it is still possible to gain support, sympathy, support from the parents, from the mother - all that was not enough in childhood. Does not allow you to feel pain and sadness from the fact that you will have to go through life with what you have, with a feeling of lack of parental support and support. It does not allow to come to the understanding that again you need to take on the role of an adult, but now by right, accepting not only responsibility, but also rights. Because now you are actually an adult who has the strength and ability to cope with what you really could not cope with as a child.

   All this together makes it difficult to complete the separation process, to see the real, and not the imperfect, parent, to understand and forgive his imperfection. Let go of the past and start investing energy in the present, your present.

When I was writing this article, I wanted to quit several times, felt powerless from the immensity of the topic and the severity of the experiences in them. It seems that this is exactly what a person feels when they find themselves in a similar situation. It seemed that this part turned out to be darker and more blurry than the previous articles from the series about mom. Perhaps the topic of confused roles, blurred boundaries and strong grievances obliges.

If somewhere in it you saw yourself, then I want to tell you: you can experience the feeling of being deprived of something important in childhood - and live happily in adulthood … You couldn't make a big impact on your life as a child, but now, as an adult, it is already in your power. Yes, it will not be easy, you will have to put in effort and patience, but the results are worth it.

To be continued…