Over the years there have been many individuals I have helped who initially had fears of upsetting others, passivity, guilt and an extreme eagerness to please.

The source of such blocks to the full expression of self lie in childhood experiences, not least the unwritten rule that exists in many families: "for peace sake don't upset your mother".

(The prohibition, "for peace sake don't upset your father", I will talk about next week).

How does it come about that the vulnerability of one parent can control all the other members of the family?

The mother who does not cope with upsetting events may exhibit all sorts of distressing reactions when the rule is broken. Possibilities are withdrawal, inconsolable crying, fainting, histrionic responses ("you'll be the death of me"; "what have I done to deserve this").

The mother is often the parent who does everything for her offspring and spouse, but there is a string attached and that is you have to go along with the way she sees the world. Even when the children are adults and may even be married with their own children, there are frequent, if not weekly get-togethers of the entire family plus son and daughters-in-law.

Nobody dare say "no" to these invitations. Christmas and New Year celebrations are also held in the family-of-origin home.

Anybody - blood or in-law - who dares to not meet these obligations is firmly and acidly ostracised.

The problem is not seen as the rigidity of the mother, but the ungrateful behaviour of the person who rebels.

Only good news must be brought to this mother, and all sorts of secrets and "hush hush" litter the history of this family.

By conforming to the mother's vulnerability, everyone loses out. The children tend to learn their lessons well from their father, who colludes with his wife's vulnerability.

Children have no model within the family to break the taboo and the situation that existed for them as children tends to be repeated when they marry and have children. There is a strong delusion here that "my parents were such wonderful parents and it would be ungrateful of me to say anything even bordering on criticism".

The fact is that your parents are wonderful persons, but that does not mean they were effective at parenting.

Parenting is a difficult and complex profession, but there are few parents who enter the profession without some emotional, social, sexual, physical, occupational and spiritual baggage.

Whether parent or spouse or lover or colleague or manager or entrepreneur, each adult has a responsibility to resolve (or at least be in the process of resolving) their immature beliefs and behaviours.

There is no intention here to blame the mother who cannot be upset, or indeed the father who yields to such a limitation. There are sound reasons why each parent adopts such protective roles, but the consequences are dire for their own as well as their children's progress in life.

The "martyr" parent may well have learned as a child to keep conflict between her parents at bay or keep a vulnerable parent happy by pleasing him or her all the time.

The problem is that the child never learns to deal with conflict and to see conflict as being necessary and creative to the deepening and maturing of relationships.

How can a mother ever get to know her children when they have learned to "bottle up" their hurts, anger, fears, ambitions, disappointment, disasters and losses?

A full mature relationship between a parent and a child and between parent and parent requires the freedom to be spontaneous, open and give expression to all feelings and needs.

When a parent finds difficulty with either the expression or the receptivity to certain feelings and events,

it is important for her own as well as the family's development to seek the reasons and find the support and means to resolve these serious emotional, social and behavioural blocks.

It is also incumbent on the other parent or other adult who witnesses these restrictive practices to confront positively and firmly the mother who is blocked.

Confrontation is an act of love and belief that the person who is vulnerable has the need and the capacity to free herself from her emotional imprisonment.

It is my experience and belief that no parent ever wants to deliberately block her children's progress, or indeed her own.

However, for those parents who cannot be upset, considerable support is required for them to touch into and express their unlimited power

to cope with the stresses and upsets of life. Any hint of criticism or judgment convinces them of how unsafe the world is and - rightly so - they will retreat into their "don't upset me" mode.

Dr Tony Humphreys is a consultant clinical psychologist and author of The Power of Negative Thinking