Poor relationships with mothers among adult daughters are not uncommon. The desire to stay away from your mother and communicate as little as possible usually causes condemnation from others: you must, she is your mother. “No, it shouldn’t,” says the author of the book “The Unloved Daughter.” If you were not loved as a child, you carry so many destructive patterns of behavior into adulthood that you must first deal with your psychological state.
Special relationship
Some idealize their mother, while others admit that they hate her and cannot find a common language with her.
Why is this such a special relationship, why does it hurt us so much and cause such different reactions? A mother is not just an important character in a child's life. According to psychoanalysis, almost the entire human psyche is formed in the early relationship with the mother. They are not comparable to any others.
For a child, the mother, according to psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, is actually the environment in which his formation takes place. And when relationships do not develop in a way that would be beneficial for a given child, his development is distorted.
In practice, the relationship with the mother determines everything in a person’s life. This places great responsibility on the woman, because the mother never becomes for her adult child a person with whom he can build an equal, trusting relationship. The mother remains an incomparable figure in his life with nothing and no one.
Excessive sensitivity, “thin skin”
Sometimes someone’s innocent joke or comparison brings them to tears, because these words, so easy for others, fall like an unbearable weight into their soul, awakening a whole layer of memories. “When I overreact to someone's words, I specifically remind myself that this is my specialty. The person, perhaps, did not want to offend me.” It is also difficult for such daughters, who were unloved in childhood, to cope with their emotions, because they have not had the experience of unconditionally accepting their value, which allows them to stand firmly on their feet.
What does a healthy mother-adult daughter relationship look like?
This is a relationship in which adult women can communicate and negotiate with each other, live separate lives - each with their own. They can be angry with each other and disagree on something, dissatisfied, but at the same time aggression does not destroy love and respect and no one takes away their children and grandchildren.
But the relationship between a daughter and her mother is the most complex of the four possible combinations (father-son, father-daughter, mother-son and mother-daughter). The fact is that a mother is the primary object of affection for a daughter. But then, at the age of 3–5 years, she needs to transfer her libidinal feelings to her father, and she begins to fantasize: “When I grow up, I will marry my dad.”
This is the same Oedipus complex that Freud discovered, and it is strange that no one did this before him, because the attraction of a child to a parent of the opposite sex has been noticeable at all times.
And it is very difficult for a girl to go through this mandatory stage of development. After all, when you start to love dad, mom becomes a rival, and you both somehow need to share dad’s love. It is very difficult for a girl to compete with her mother, who is still loved and important to her. And the mother, in turn, is often jealous of her husband’s daughter.
But this is only one line. There is also a second one. For a little girl, the mother is the object of affection, but then she needs to identify with the mother in order to grow and become a woman.
There is some contradiction here: the girl has to simultaneously love her mother, fight with her for her father’s attention, and identify with her. And here a new difficulty arises. The point is that mother and daughter are very similar and it is very easy for them to identify with each other. It’s easy for a girl to mix her own and her mother’s, and it’s easy for a mother to see her continuation in her daughter.
Many women really have a hard time distinguishing between themselves and their daughters. It's like psychosis. If you ask them directly, they will object and say that they distinguish everything perfectly and do everything for the benefit of their daughters. But at some deep level this boundary is blurred.
Dislike and hatred towards mother
Hello! I really want to understand myself and get rid of the painful relationship with my parents, especially my mother.
I am 37 years old, married for 5 years, and have two children.
Before marriage, I lived with my parents, then we lived with my husband’s parents and rented, and now we are temporarily living again with my parents while our future apartment is being renovated and it is very difficult to get along.
We always had a prosperous family, our parents were educated people, atheists, my mother was a programmer, my father was a physicist, we didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t swear, lived on our salaries, raised my brother and me.
There have never been tender and close relationships; my mother is thick-skinned and rude by nature. She is a good housewife, she spent all her time and energy on everyday life. As a child, I was sick a lot, my mother had to go on sick leave, and because of this she was irritated with me. My brother is 7 years older than me, we always fought. I remember I was probably somewhere from three to five years old and I spat at my brother, in case of unequal forces it was my weapon) So my mother saw this and punished me by twisting me and forcibly opening my mouth and spitting in it, I almost vomited , many years have passed, but I remember and cannot forgive. I don’t remember any praise or kind words addressed to me; in the first grade, the teacher said that I was sent to school too early, there was no perseverance, even though I was quite developed and smart. My mother criticized me always and everywhere, and once I heard her telling a friend on the phone that I was mentally underdeveloped because I was a late child. As a child, it was very difficult for me because of my lack of self-confidence, I hated myself both for being a fool and for being fat (I thought so because my brother teased me, although in fact I was not fat), but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t change, and then I stopped trying.
In my teens, for some reason my mother said that I was “sexually anxious,” I asked why? She replied that it was visible from the outside. It was very disappointing and embarrassing.
I always wanted my mother’s approval, praise, acceptance, but this was not there and it always seemed to me that she disliked me. Dad.
Dad is a rather closed person, there was never any friendship or any kind of relationship, they lived like strangers in the same apartment.
When, at high school age, I asked to enroll me in paid English courses, my dad told me that I would give them up anyway and there was no point in spending money on me, that there was a self-instruction manual, if I wanted to study, I could learn from it.
We also have a household name in our family - my dad’s sister Raya, whom he doesn’t like and she is the standard of stupidity, bad taste and everything bad. So, all my life I have been told that I am a copy of this Paradise, both externally and internally, although I do not see any similarity, but my dad does.
My adolescence was difficult, I got involved with bad company, looked for meaning in life, but never found it, tried to kill myself twice, and at the age of 16 I studied medicine. school and heard somewhere that an easy death - introducing air into a vein - did not work. At the age of 18, I drank a glass of alcohol and water and a pack of 100 tablets of Phenazepam, then I hid the empty bottle poorly, my mother found it, woke me up and washed my stomach.
I decided for myself that since I can’t die, I’ll live for now; if I don’t find meaning in this absurdity, then I can always die.
Then I somehow lived by inertia, didn’t strive for anything, categorically didn’t want to get married or have children, lived in such filth that it’s not worth talking about or remembering.
Then I came to faith, already 14 years in the Church.
So about relationships with parents.
I understand that everyone is responsible for themselves, for their lives and mistakes, but I have a great resentment towards them. I always wanted their praise and approval, but alas. There was no way to please and become “good”. Although my mother says that I am making all this up, and they always loved me, did everything for me, fed me, and gave me shoes, but I don’t appreciate it.
Now I have such problems, I react very painfully to any criticism, but especially from my parents.
Once upon a time, after joining the church, I helped my mother cut cabbage in the kitchen, she didn’t like the way I did it and she called me a “reptile.” I lost control of myself, slashed my hand with a knife, then cried and went to the emergency room to get stitches.
Now we live together, and my mother constantly nags me for something, I am silent, but I hate her, sometimes I want to strangle her, in my thoughts I call her names, and I dream that when she dies, it seems to me that then I will stop living under the pressure of criticism and will be free from feelings of guilt.
Dad is also dissatisfied all the time and despises me, this is of course unpleasant for me, but somehow it’s not as “touching” as my mother’s attitude.
I also react painfully to my husband’s criticism, I see reproaches where there are none and I experience a constant feeling of guilt.
In quarrels he is often very rude, and I react very inadequately and cannot control myself, I throw myself at him with my fists, or I want to cause some harm to myself and cannot restrain myself in front of the children.
I understand that it seems like it’s all about humility, but maybe a psychologist can also be shown to me?
Is taking care of your daughter also taking care of yourself?
Through her daughter, the mother wants to realize what she has not realized in life. Or something that she herself loves very much. She sincerely believes that her daughter should love what she loves, that she will enjoy doing what she does. Moreover, the mother simply does not distinguish between her and her needs, desires, and feelings.
Do you know jokes like “put on a hat, I’m cold”? She really feels for her daughter. I remember an interview with artist Yuri Kuklachev, who was asked: “How did you raise your children?” He says: “And this is the same as with cats.
A cat cannot be taught any tricks. I can only notice what she is inclined to do, what she likes. One is jumping, the other is playing with a ball. And I am developing this inclination. Same with children. I just watched what they were like, what came naturally to them. And then I developed them in this direction.”
This is the reasonable approach when a child is looked at as a separate being with his own personal characteristics.
And how many mothers do we know who seem to show care: they take their children to clubs, exhibitions, classical music concerts, because, according to their deep feeling, this is exactly what the child needs. And then they blackmail them with phrases like: “I’ve put my whole life on you,” which evoke a colossal sense of guilt in adult children. Again, this looks like psychosis.
In essence, psychosis is the inability to distinguish between what is happening inside you and what is outside. The mother is outside the daughter. And the daughter is outside of her. But when a mother believes that her daughter likes the same things as she does, she begins to lose this boundary between the inner and outer world. And the same thing happens to my daughter.
They are the same gender, they really are very similar. This is where the theme of shared madness arises, a kind of mutual psychosis that only extends to their relationship. If you do not observe them together, you may not notice any violations at all. Their communication with other people will be quite normal. Although some distortions are possible. For example, this daughter has relationships with women of the maternal type - with female bosses and female teachers.
Reasons for resentment towards parents
Resentment is a negative feeling that arises in response to an undeserved insult, humiliation, violation of personal boundaries, hurting the Ego. We get offended when it seems to us that someone is treating us unfairly or badly. Resentment is a complex of emotions. However, its main component is suppressed aggression. We are angry at the one who attacks, but if for some reason we cannot express this anger, then it transforms into resentment.
In the case of childhood grievances, the following reasons can be named (situations of transformation of anger into resentment):
- child abuse (beatings, punishment);
- failure to fulfill parental responsibilities;
- emotional, psychological or physical abuse;
- living in poverty or poverty (even if the parents behave well and love the child);
- criticism and inflated demands, expectations;
- negative comparisons with other children;
- emotional coldness and detachment of parents;
- love for one child and hatred for another;
- shifting parental responsibilities onto the child (childhood was taken away);
- addictions and antisocial lifestyle of parents;
- overprotection and manipulation like “Don’t you feel sorry for me?”, “Your antics make me feel bad.”
And it happens that a person hardly remembers his mother or father, but he is offended by the fact that he was abandoned. And we are talking not only about those cases when children are abandoned or taken away from the family. Sometimes resentment arises in response to the death of a loved one.
Important! You can name hundreds of options for the development of childhood grievances and their types, but they are all connected with one thing: an unsatisfied need for love. A child becomes offended when he does not feel loved, valuable, significant, and also when he does not have a sense of stability and security. A person may be 20, 30 or 50 years old, but until this problem is solved, psychologically he remains an offended child.
What is the reason for this psychosis?
Here it is necessary to recall the father figure. One of his functions in the family is to come between mother and daughter at some point. This is how a triangle appears, in which there is a relationship between a daughter and her mother, and a daughter with her father, and a mother with her father.
But very often the mother tries to arrange it so that her daughter’s communication with her father goes through her. The triangle is destroyed.
I have met families where this model is reproduced over several generations: there are only mothers and daughters, and fathers are removed, or they are divorced, or they never existed, or they are alcoholics and have no weight in the family. In this case, who will destroy their closeness and fusion? Who will help them separate and look somewhere other than at each other and “mirror” their madness?
By the way, did you know that in almost all cases of Alzheimer’s or some other types of senile dementia, mothers call their daughters “moms”? In fact, in such a symbiotic relationship there is no distinction as to who is related to whom. Everything merges.
How to work through a grudge against parents
How to work through and let go of resentment towards parents? To work through childhood grievances, it is better to consult a psychologist. This is a very complex and painful process that your subconscious will resist. However, there are some things you can do on your own to heal and let go of parental trauma:
- Realize that your inner child is offended. Adults and self-sufficient people are not offended.
- Take back your position as an adult. Your inner child needs treatment, care, love. Your inner adult can give him this. To regain your position as an adult, write down on paper all those qualities and areas of life that reflect him. Refer to these qualities as often as possible. For example, the determination and determination of an adult will help you quit your unloved job and find the activity you dreamed of as a child. The restraint and rationality of an adult will allow you to comfort your inner child. With their help, you will stop blaming and scolding yourself for every little thing, you will begin to understand everything in detail, etc.
- Compensate for what was missing in childhood. Make your list of grievances and unmet needs and desires and begin compensation. Become your own caring parent. Try to express your thoughts as specifically as possible. For example, instead of the abstract “There wasn’t enough love,” write what you mean by this, what manifestations of love you need.
- Let your parents go. You can be offended by them, angry, not accepting, but you must stop expecting compensation from them. Consciously or unconsciously (usually the latter), they have already made their choice. The time has come for you to make a choice: leave your resentment here and now.
If you understand that for your happiness and health you need to stop communicating with your parents, then do it. You are not obliged to plunge again and again into the hell that you have already experienced, to fight again and again with insults, humiliation, and violation of personal boundaries. You don't owe your parents anything. Your birth is their choice. Taking care of you (“raised, fed, put on shoes, dressed”) is their direct responsibility.
Seeking maternal relationships when interacting with men
We are attached to what is familiar to us, what is part of our childhood, no matter what it was. “Only years later did I realize that my husband treated me the same way as my mother, and I chose him myself. Even the first words he said to me to get acquainted were: “Did you come up with the idea of tying this scarf like that? Take it off." At the time I thought it was very funny and original.”
Why are we talking about this now, when we are already grown up? Not to throw away in despair the cards that fate has dealt us. Everyone has their own. And in order to understand how we act and why. It is very difficult to grow up without love, you have had this difficult experience, but many people have experienced the same thing and were able to overcome it.
