Enmeshment

I am an adult female. I love my family very much. Childhood was rough because my father was an addict and adulterer. My mother would share too much information about their marriage and details about money. I can recall feeling stressed and helpless as a child.

Now that I am an adult I can feel some resentment about my childhood. I am very disturbed about many of the things I know. My mother still likes to share a great deal of personal information with me. I have started to call less in order to become independent. I was finding myself stressed out about issues in her life which left little time for my own life.

Unfortunately I feel guilty for doing this. I think it will make me feel less stressed. What are your thoughts about becoming more disengaged?

Sorry to hear this. Unfortunately some parents without clear boundaries and a sort of non-spouse resort to leaning on their kids as a pseudo-partner. It's a horrible situation in that kids are the kids, not the adults and they are not equipped to handle complex adult issues.

The only way to change this dynamic is for you to change it because she won't change. Calling less, setting limits, changing the subject, suggesting to unpack her stuff at therapy, etc. The guilt is the residual influence of victim-mentality parents who, ironically, victimize their children with their emotion dumping.

My mother still likes to share a great deal of personal information with me. I have started to call less in order to become independent. I was finding myself stressed out about issues in her life which left little time for my own life.

Don't feel guilty. My mom overshared as well. I love my mom very dearly. I do talk to my mom a lot. Just distract with another topic if they go to overshare or say you have to go and talk later if they persist.

I went through something like this too as a child and an adult. You need to disengage from your mom to some degree, yes. A simple, "Mom, I love you, but I don't want to hear about X, Y or Z" will draw some boundaries. And yes, you need to distance yourself if she can't stop doing that.

I ended up knowing way more about my parents infidelities and addiction struggles than I ever wanted to. And when I started to get into my own life, sort of stopped staying in touch as heavily, it gave me enough breathing room to see things from a different perspective eventually. In time I forgave them both, talked about it with each of them, cleared the air. And in later years I was able to form a better bond with them after talking to them both and telling them there were just things they didn't need to know about me and things I didn't need to know about them. And they agreed.

But those conversations came later down the line after I'd calmed down about it all. My mother now lives with me, she has Alzheimer's and doesn't remember a lot of those times. And I have come to realize she and my dad were just people after all, like anyone else, with faults and flaws, but also a whole lot of good to them. So I focus on the good and try to shed the bad and that's what will help you too.

For now though, yes. It's time to pull back. If you can have an honest conversation and establish boundaries that would be great, but give yourself and your mom time to do that if you need it. It's okay.

I had minimal contact with my family for a couple of years when I was in my late 20's; I needed to do this for my own sanity, to form healthy boundaries myself. My mother in particular was very put out when I wouldn't allow her to pry into my affairs and tell me what to do, but it did change our relationship for the better.

When you have very clear boundaries, and stick to them, it helps others to define themselves too.

As we mature, we recognize our parents as flawed human beings. We can either opt to upset ourselves about their limitations while raising us 'wrong,' or we can accept the adult mantel in our relationship and finish raising ourselves in a better way.

This requires adopting compassion for all involved and modelling for our parents the kind of new relationship we want to have. We change the dynamic by releasing ourselves from our ingrained child role as we assume more adult responsibilities, even as our parents regress and become more childish.

This is a natural shift, and we can resist it and make ourselves miserable where our parents left off, or we can outgrow the provinciality and limits of our parents and drive the shift responsibly.

So in your case, you've done a great job of identifying a problem. No need to continue playing the child role when you can be proactive instead. When Mom complains, kindly ask her what she would like to do to resolve it--and how you can help. This switches her from a whining role and assigns her the role of problem solver and director. If she says that the problem can't be solved, say, "Well, then it makes no sense to discuss it any more, but if you decide that you'd like to take some steps to curb it or solve it, we can talk about those. Also, if you come up with something I can do to help, you can let me know."

This isn't a magical change that works the very first time, it's a switch to a new dynamic where you remain consistent. You 'push back' every instance of complaining with a request for positive ideas about resolving the problem. She's forced to switch from emotional complaining to rational thinking. If she refuses to go there, table the discussion for when she has ideas about resolving her problems, and meanwhile, change the subject.

You'll find that this same technique can be used on ourselves to curb whining. We switch into problem solving mode, and we become proactive about making the changes we want to see. When we get good at this in our own lives, it gets easier to model it for our parents--and our own kids. That's how we break the generational cycle and ensure that we won't make the same child rearing mistakes our parents made, even while we ensure that our parents will use better judgment while interacting with our kids.