Does this resonate with you? “The reason why I want to save my mother is because I am afraid of losing my own safety if I lose her.” If so, then this exercise may be valuable to you.
The below is a possible flow of thoughts, emotions, and associations that come up in the mind when doing self-observation on this thought. It is meant to help you go deeper into this thought and stimulate you. By no means it is implied that it is the only flow or it is the same for everyone.
(If you are new to the concept of self-observation or looking for some practical guidance then maybe read this article: How Self-Observation Works)
Self-Observation on why I always want to rescue my mother
- I realize that this is one central theme in my life.
- I heard what it means in essence: I want to be rescued.
- When my mother is acting weak it immediately triggers me. Now I have awareness of it. I mean: When she is acting weak, I start to feel fear and anxiety.
- I feel shame when I get angry and do not want to do it. And then I go back and do it.
- I am afraid that if I stopped doing this then she would not be able to cope.
- This is keeping me back from living my life the way I would really like. After all, I feel as if this is my job. I know it is weird but this is how I feel.
- I know that my mother would not want me to live a ‘muted’ life because of this feeling I have.
- I dream of a life where we don’t play this sick game and constant struggle with my mother. But rather a relationship where we can be honest and still have a loving relationship.
Chain of thoughts coming when I am able to go deeper
- I don’t think that my mother does this consciously. I now think that she probably brought this with herself from her own family of origin.
- I realize that it is how our relationship is ‘set up’ in a way. She is the ‘weak one’ and I am the ‘strong one’.
- Her, acting weak and I, acting strong (but anxious in the background) is the thing that keeps this thing going.
- Maybe a good idea is if I talk this over with her. Maybe she will understand and then we can change this part of our relationship together. If she does not, then at least I know.
- Let’s face it: After all, it is my decision and it is my life that I need to take care of anyways.
- What helps me is that I know that I love her.
- What also helps is that I realize that I cannot just blame my mother, I am also responsible for this. I let the game go on too and I want something out of it too.
- My mother feels my fear in the background certainly. Maybe if I could let this fear go then this wicked game would stop automatically.
- I have to work more on this: If I stop ‘playing’ this, it doesn’t mean that I don’t love her.
- Ok, here is the core of the problem as I understand it now: It is my fear of losing my safety that keeps this dynamic going: ‘If I don’t help her, something terrible will happen and she will not be there to save me. So I’d better save her.’ This has nothing to do with the love I feel for my mother.
- I do this almost everywhere in my life. Though I don’t recognize it usually. And it comes in all shapes and forms from anger to people pleasing, to feeling weak and inferior, and so on.
Notes
- If you are new to the practice of self-observation then here are some ideas that can help: It is very powerful if you write down your thoughts (like with an old-school diary). It is also very powerful if you phrase your thoughts and emotions in a short and basic way.
- Self Chatter is a self-development tool and one of its major goals is to help with self-observation as a major tool to raise your consciousness. Thus you will find these types of self-observations on Self Chatter.
(None of the articles on Self Chatter are generated by AI.)
