Saffron – Please, feel free to be presumptious any time, because you hit the nail on the head. I understand that I fit a fairly classic pattern, but it’s still spooky when you wrote a nice summary of my life in your first paragraph! 
And, yeah, from the get-go I was responsible for my mother’s bad feelings about herself. A bi-polar, narcissistic, and *drunk* single mom does not make for the most caring and compassionate of parents. She had her own version of those parents, too, mind you. As you know, this stuff doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s oh-so-carefully taught and learned, generation by generation. Hence, my decision to never have kids. It had to stop somewhere.
I, obviously, “married” my mother when I invited my boyfriend to move in with me. I have been aware of that for quite some years now. I have advanced far enough in personal growth to recognize when someone was blaming me for their own bad feelings, but I haven’t advanced far enough to live consistently as a “normal” person would, in order to take care of myself in every respect. . . and to have been able to end this relationship a long time ago. I have had. . . let me count. . . maybe eight jobs in eight years? And somewhere between 18 and 24 months of that time I was unemployed. Not a very good track record for depending on oneself to make the mortgage. 
I couldn’t agree with you more on Baby Steps. My current problem has been not even being able to conceive of any to take. You and jeneticallymodified have helped me immensely on that today. I am adding, “Call temp agencies” to my list for tomorrow, even if it’s for just the very tiny Baby Step of finding out how best to arrange my lack-luster resume so that the agency can farm me out successfully. (I don’t dare contemplate that the call will lead to a gig, however short-term & “insignificant” it might be. That idea, and all it would entail, is big enough to scare me off the whole venture before I even start!). My mantra will be, “Micro. . . micro. . . micro. . . ”
I have been terrified of contacting potential employers because the software sales community isn’t all that big, and I’m afraid of ruining myself with several companies, and having word get around. I’m also afraid of ending up doing the same thing again, with the same results I’ve had over the past 15 years in Sales: Fabulous start, “lots of potential”, and then quitting before I can be fired. . . or actually being fired for just having so many freaking absences. A temp gig, on which *nothing* of any importance hangs, is so much easier to digest. So much easier to reach for.
And I have have this damned “disease” long enough to know that reaching one goal, even one so small that it’s not noticeable to anyone but me, makes it easier – and possible – to reach the next one, and the next one, and eventually leave the pit behind (until the next time it swallows me, anyway; but that’s a whole different conversation!). In the past six months I have just not even had that one tiny goal to reach for. Until now. And now I have several. All very doable. All independent of one another; failure in one doesn’t effect my efforts or results in another, leaving me [emotionally] safe to continue pursuing them.
Have I said Thank You? 