My mother is unable to grasp that I am my own entity, my own separate person. She does not fight boundaries or protest them - she‘s lacking the ability to even imagine them. I don‘t exist as a real, touchable person for her; her entire picture of me is made up by her projections. If I show an expression of neediness or vulnerability, she will create a reality where my expression did not happen and my feeling does not exist. It‘s not like she fights my expression, actively ignores it or answers in any way to it. There is no answer. She creates an alternate reality on the spot where none of my feelings occurred. You can see it in her face and hear it in her voice. As the person experiencing this, this feels borderline psychotic. You don‘t exist, although you just expressed something. I think for my mom, it was like this: I was her. I was her feelings, her needs, her hopes and her thoughts. I think it was the only way she felt safe. She had never grown enough internally to acknowledge that she is her own person with needs and boundaries, and that I‘m a different person with different needs and boundaries than her. I was her little substitute soul when she was too scared and too lonely to bear it any longer.

It helps me understand many things about myself and about my life.