“Rachael, Nathan has learned that he can manipulate you because you are so concerned with how he feels about you. As long as his loving you is more important to you than taking loving care of yourself, he will be able to manipulate you. This is not good for him or for you. It is too big a burden on him to have responsibility of defining your worth. As long as your worth is attached to being a good mother, Nathan will be able to manipulate you.”

“I can see that. Amalia is like David. If she has work to do, she just expects Nathan to play by himself, and he does. She loves him, but she is firm about what she needs to do. I can see that I give in all time because I don’t want him to be upset with me. What can I do now to change this?”

“First of all, you need to consciously detach your worth from being a good mother. You need to do some inner work on defining your worth separately from being a mother. Your sense of worth needs to be attached to who you are – your kindness, compassion, empathy, warmth, aliveness. You need to take responsibility for defining your own worth rather than making Nathan, David, or anyone else responsible.

“Second, you need to care about taking care of yourself as much as you care about taking care of Nathan. Nathan is a brat with you because you don’t care about yourself when you are with him, so he has learned to not care about you. You are teaching him not to care about you when you do not care about yourself.”

“Okay, I think I get this. I’m really going to try to do it differently.”

Next week when we spoke in our phone session, Rachael reported that things had already dramatically changed. Nathan was listening to her, going right to sleep when she put him down, and seemed happier in general. His tantrums had not yet completely stopped, but they were far fewer. Rachael, too, felt happier because she was finally taking care of herself and her own needs. For first time since giving birth to Nathan, she was having some time to herself.