Six steps, and one of them is doing the damage

Here is the shape it takes, from the outside.

A demand or a criticism arrives. It is framed as concern, or as something you owe, or as religion.

Obligation activates. This part is real. You do owe your parents something, and you feel it, and it is reinforced from the pulpit and from the kitchen. That is exactly why the ordinary advice about boundaries does not work on people like us, and it is why lesson three exists.

You explain, justify, defend. You are trying to be understood.

The explanation is not accepted. It is used, or it is dismissed, or it becomes evidence of something else about you.

Guilt. Usually with help from a sibling or an aunt.

You comply, or you rupture. Then it starts again, from a worse position than last time.