Re: Rose bushes

Hi Sofia

This seems like control, total smothering, total attention, all or nothing. This is selfish - childish and somewhat easy "when mum is around" - but dislikes any competition. An individual who may have had an "unsatisfactory" relationship with mother before the next sibling arrived. Control but not love.

The best way to know someone is to know how they behave when things go wrong, the second best way is to find how their parents behaved when things go wrong. An example a colleague of mine - when things got very busy would hide in order to avoid possible conflict. One day he related a tale, of which he was very proud, as to how his father (a submarine commander) used to hide in the rose bushes in order to avoid unwanted company (not on board a vessel)this was viewed as acceptable behaviour and replicated.

Furthermore as a child I hated my brother and indeed anyone who my mother gave attention too. I recognise that my separation from mother was far from complete (although not realizing the source of my hatred for many years) and later unsurprisingly mother was replaced (emotionally) by a wife, and when she gave attention to others exactly the same sort of emotions were aroused.

Possible solution: rework the mother issues, learning to let go and to emotionally move on, in otherwords for him to love his inner child.