It seems to me that emotional convergence can be especially catching in families where the environment for contagion is lush.
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There are several factors that determine the rate and extent of emotional convergence in a group. Some of these are: membership stability, mood-regulation norms, task interdependence and social interdependence. Besides these event-structure properties, there are personal properties of the group's members, such as openness to receive and transmit feelings, demographic characteristics and dispositional affect that influence the intensity of emotional contagion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion
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My own mother is both without a sense of boundaries and is deeply in conflict with herself as a result of a number of unaddressed disorders, and the truth is that just the number of miles which separate her from me on a given day still affect me deeply. While her influence hasn't on its own caused me a major depressive episode, it has been an extremely strong factor which may indeed have been what tipped me over the edge on at least one occasion that I know of.
She's currently on a 10-day vacation at sea, and although I don't live with her, it's a vacation for me knowing there's zero chance of her knocking on my door. It's not entirely logical, but even all these years later it is clear to me how much the effects are still in play.
What I've found I have to do to keep our relationship within the bounds of sanity, is to always be the one to set up limits, and to do so diligently. When she wants to spend inordinate amounts of time with me either in person or on the phone, I just tell her that I've observed that we both seem to gain the most emotional health from the relationship with specific, lessened amounts of time. She can't and doesn't disagree. But I will forever still have to be the one setting up the guardrails, every single time, so that I don't get emotionally drained and sidelined. It's not a job I asked for, but it's one I need to do, for as long as I choose to stay in contact with her. Which I have. Your mileage may vary.
