You may seek out a partner who psychologically resembles your mother and found that you have walked right back into a difficult relationship. Perhapse you chose to be close to someone who turns out to...
A single outburst does not produce a difficult relational environment. It is only when a parent [or anyone] repeatedly and regularly uses anger to close conversations, in the broadest sense of 'conver...
Yet being in the spotlight is also dangerous because a child's success may be construed by a narcissistic mother as competition. In self-defense, a son or daughter may insist that any achievement is a...
When a mother quarrels with a daughter, she has a double dose of unhappiness hers from the conflict, and empathy with her daughter's from the conflict with her. Throughout her life a mother retains th...
Adolescence is society's permission slip for combining physical maturity with psychological irresponsibility.
Trying to make sense of other people's responses to us is a basic human activity. Accepting a mother's [or anyone's] anger by concluding that i is justified is a way of making sense of a difficult rel...
As Freud noted: A thing which has not been understood inevitably reappears; like an unlaid ghost, it cannot rest until the mystery has been resolved and the spell broken. . . . in ambivalent attachmen...
One of the main tasks of adolescence is to achieve an identity—not necessarily a knowledge of who we are, but a clarification of the range of what we might become, a set of self-references by which we...
Robert reflects:I go weak at the knees when she turns against me. I forget what it's like to feel courage. I try to remind myself that the worst of it will pass, that she won't be like that forever. S...
You may find that yes, your partner tends to shout easily, but the shouting contains no malice and passes quickly. Perhaps your partner's short fuse does not prevent them from being loving and support...