CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE

What is Circle Of Influence ?

The circle of influence shows how an individual is influenced by others intellectually, emotionally or physically during childhood and adolescence. During one’s life span, one can be easily influenced by the father, mother, grandparents, brother, sister, friends or even a dog.

Case Study – A Controlling Mother

There is the case of this mother who loves to check with mediums to divine or predict the future. Due to her insecurities, she strongly influences her children’s lives. She always thinks people are trying to control her but in actual fact she is a control freak. Her son is very badly affected by her, so much so that he had to go through many relationships with the approval of her mother. 

Like one of her girlfriend, the mother would condemn the girl for being spendthrift and that’s for spending her own money. She would criticize her lifestyle as a bad influence that would lead her son astray. Eventually, she influenced her son to part with the girl. The same goes for the next girlfriend but this time around, the girl is condemned as a bad housewife for her standard of cooking is not up to par. The mother again influenced her son to leave the girl but in this case, the struggle between his girlfriend and his mother made him very depressed with lots of anger sparking him to harbour thoughts of seeking religion to escape his pain. He decided that he didn’t want to enter into another relationship again.

It’s no different for the latest girlfriend as the clash of personality left the mother feeling uncomfortable with her. The mother found the girl not only too talkative, very bossy and at times controlling. At times, the girl would bluntly put down her son in front of others, causing him to lose face. But because the mother initiated their relationship and due to the persistent attitude of the girlfriend, the mother approached her friend to guide her son to drop this girl as her persistence prevented him from dumping her easily.  Her friend refused to get involved because it is considered to be very bad karma to help breakup a couple in the Chinese belief.

If I’m not wrong, this mother is desperately seeking for attention and very power hungry. The son’s circle of influence involves very strongly the mother. But her selfishness is messing up with the lives of her children, disempower  them especially her son. This proves that she never love her children, as the way she exerts controls and dominance over her children, they are to the mother, part of her property. 

The mother even tried to extend her influence over to other people’s children to part from their families by implying that their own family is too controlling. She even went so far to demonstrate to those around her that she is a good religious person but she is only trying to camouflage her hidden and dark nature.Yet, she always claims that she is innocent and she's the victim.