Some mothers, and occasionally fathers, feel abandoned by their child’s developing independence and use guilt or the threat of abandonment to undermine it. Their discouragement or obstruction may be overt or covert, but either way, it takes the form of disapproval, derision, or implied threats. When parents align themselves against the child’s appropriate expressions of autonomy and independence, the child comes to experience these impulses as dangerous. As the child grows older, obtaining love from the parents becomes linked to pleasing them, so that love is associated with duty, burden, and bondage. For many with this survival style, obtaining love becomes inextricably tied with the necessity to please, often at the expense of their own integrity and autonomy.
— Laurence Heller PhD, Aline Lapierre PsyD. Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship
