This is how you choose to construct or frame it, not how it necessarily is. When someone says, "this is what I'd like to see you be able to do," say like a swim coach, "I'd like to be able to see you swim across the pool without touching the bottom," I hear it as the functional equivalent of "I think it would be helpful for you if you could swim across the pool, rather than stopping in fear and interrupting your progress." It doesn't mean you have to do it or you have to want it, but it's certainly different than where you are now. There's no command or demand or desire for you to be a certain person. Being able to do something, like talk openly with your mother, may be something good to work towards even if you ultimately choose never to address some of the past with her. It's the ability to do something, which allows you to freely choose whether to do that thing or not, that I think is the goal. Whether you want to stay in the shallow end even though you can swim in the deep end is okay. But having the skills to be able to go across the pool if you choose to, to expand your horizons if and when you are ready, I think that's the whole point. Right now, you're sidelined in the shallow end. It limits your choices and ultimately limits who you are. So when you say, Mom tried to confine me into being a certain kind of person, you could ask the question, and who's limiting you now?