I only realised recently how much a lifetime of being my mothers emotional crutch has affected me. My dad left when I was a child, and for 3 decades I was my mothers counselor, confidant, scapegoat and decision-maker. She suffered bouts of depression and has never been actually "happy". Everything is negative, she trusts nobody and her only friends are my sister and I, despite ALL our efforts to get her to socialise, be more confident or see things in a positive light. She refuses all attempts at advise.Her behaviour can be quite damaging: she hates all our partners and even our friends and tries to stir up conflict in the hope that she will be needed and that we will return home. Luckily for me I moved away and live some distance from my mother. I am learning to deal with her by basically keeping her at a distance, emotionally and physically. The problem is I can see my younger sister (who is 21) going through the same things. The means are different: this time, I realised, my mother is spoiling her, giving her money and controlling her life. At first I blamed by sister for this but I recently had a conversation with her that made me realise that our mother is very, very dependent on her as a "best friend" and this puts emotional pressure on her, who, like me, now feels guilty if she leaves home for any length of time. When our mother is left on her own she phones us up to 10 times a day complaining of being lonely. She has said she feels like ending her own life. She refuses all suggestions in terms of seeing a doctor, meditation, yoga, getting out more, trying to meet people, online dating, mindfulness or anything else. All she seems to want to do now is control my sisters life, now that she can't control mine. She micro-manages every aspect of her life. How can we deal with this? We have no other family, our fathers are not in the picture, and my mum has no friends. We have both told her how we feel but she just gets upset and starts crying and nothing changes.