Some of them have a special gift: by pressing the most sore spot, they make children blame themselves for all conceivable sins. Psychologist Ekaterina Mikhailova tells how, having not offended anyone, to free herself from the influence of his mother, to move away in relations on a safe distance.
The daughter says to his mother: “We bought a lot of products, I hope you don’t have to go to the store in the next few days”. She replies: „I knew that I would see you no earlier than in a couple of weeks“. Some mothers instinctively touch us for the most vulnerable places and do it regardless of how old we are. Their words instantly turn any of us into a bad son or a bad daughter. How to change the situation?
Admit that you are manipulated
“If we are very attached to the mother, it is not easy to understand that she is manipulating us, but we are actually not to blame for anything,” says Ekaterina Mikhailova. – It is not easy to admit this, because over many years we have deeply absorbed (intoxicated) this type of relationship with it. And, having become adults, we still feel the fear of being rejected if we stop complying with mom’s requirements „.
To free oneself from the imposed feeling of guilt, you will need to protect herself from her desires, to overcome the prohibitions that she established. Perhaps you should change the work or prefer another matter if you are engaged in them at the insistence of your mother.
Or maybe partner to part, whose candidacy she has so carefully selected for you. All this will help to understand: contrary to her forecasts, the world did not collapse when you took up your own plans.
Do not catch bait
“In the case of emotional blackmail – and this is how you can call the imposition of guilt to another person – you need to remember that you are unlikely to change your mother’s behavior, only your attitude to the situation can change,” emphasizes Ekaterina Mikhailov. – gain the strength to admit that your behavior helps her to continue to play her favorite games. „. Try to change the angle of view and see in the mother not an all-powerful demon, but just a person who does not know how to build a relationship differently. “It is possible that it is not easy to ask for something of you, an adult, and she does it in such a strange way,” Ekaterina Mikhailova notes. – But why are you angry, instead of just saying: „I’m not ready to discuss it now …“?»Constructive dialogue can be built only by controlling your behavior without accusations.
Parents who do not have their lives, their own interests often resort to emotional blackmail
It is also useful
to figure out if there is something in your relationship with your mother something that you are really to blame. “If you have anything to seriously reproach yourself, left alone with your mother, ask her forgiveness – sincerely and thoughtfully,” advisers Ekaterina Mikhailov. There is a high probability that the tension in your relationship will begin to gradually subside.
Switch attention
Parents who do not have their lives, their own interests often resort to emotional blackmail. Because of this, they seem to pull children closer and try to live their lives, completely not noticing that they are literally suffocating from such proximity. “Look at your mother detached and think about what“ this woman ”could do,” Ekaterina Mikhailova suggests. – Maybe in her youth she was fond of painting? Invite her to do the drawing again, buy what is needed for this, find a place where she can draw for her pleasure. Perhaps with your help she will find her hobby „. But even time to interfere in your life, she will have much less.
Make a schedule
Each time, leaving her mother, Marianne is late on the bus: at the moment when she is going to leave, her mother begins to complain that her daughter spent little time with her, and she, proved the opposite, forgets about everything. “Clear borders are needed in the relationship,” said Ekaterina Mikhailova, “but it takes time to establish them. So, one of my clients for six (!for years, I taught my mother to start a telephone conversation not with a complaint about poor health, the requirements urgently do something, but with the question of whether the daughter has the opportunity to say now „.