Hi Seren,,
It could be ACoA and it could be generational. All of my grandparents were impacted by the depression and WW2. Both of my grandmothers dealt with alcoholism. Both of my Grandmothers behaved like borderlines when I was younger. My parents were constantly whipsawing to their machinations. My paternal grandfather lost his mother as a young child and never showed emotion as an adult. My parents passed on a lot of ACoA to me and my sister. They’d often cryptically say, ‘you are lucky we aren’t alcoholics.’ No one in my family understood that how we buried emotions and dealt with problems with stoic silence were signs of a multigenerational impact of addiction/maybe mental illness.
Do you remember when the term codependent was a newer cultural awareness and a lot of people were dissing it and joking about its and arguing against the concept? I think was the 1990’s? Well now the newer thing to deride is snowflakes and triggers and safe spaces.
I think our culture is shifting to more emotional honesty about who one really is; however, there is a lot of backlash. People who don’t want to work on themselves seem the hardest at pushing back. Have you looked into Brene Brown’s work on vulnerability, shame and perfection? It might help you with your mom. Brown has a TED talk & a website with a very accessible review of her scholarly work.