Mother And Daughter. Life-long Controversial Dialogue

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

“Every woman stretches back to her mother and forward to her daughter … her life extends over generations, which carries with it a sense of immortality” (CG Jung).

"I woke up in the morning, I'm lying, waiting for my mother to cook breakfast, and then I remembered that my mother is me!"

(found on the web)

Freedom "from" most often begins with freedom from one's parents. As Karl Whitaker accurately noted, in order to start your own family, you first need to divorce your parents

In turn, "divorcing" your own mother turns out to be extremely difficult. Sometimes, physically, the mother lives nearby, in the same apartment, getting sick every time her daughter wants to go on a trip or go on a date. Sometimes being thousands of kilometers away, but constantly making herself felt in the form of her daughter's strong beliefs about herself, who she is, “who needs” and “who does not”, “where does her hands grow from” and “what is it all for will lead to "…

The relationship between mother and daughter, often full of contradictions, is not easy. First, mom is the whole world, good or evil, then - an example to follow, then - an object of criticism and rethinking … But if inside the family, and even more so in our inner world, the mother is changing, different and ambiguous, then, in the plane of stereotypes, mother - always kind, loving, caring and beloved. Sadovka matinees sound like poems about mom, school drawings smile with her bright portraits. Aphorisms about mothers are replete with ideas like: "Mom is a person who can replace everyone, but no one can ever replace her!" Society teaches us unconditional love and respect for mothers and at the level of the production of beliefs how it should be quite successful, but what really happens between mother and daughter? What's behind the curtain?

“What can a mother want for her daughter when she brings her into this world, if not all the best - beauty, health, a clear mind, wealth, etc.? These are the very wishes expressed by the good fairies invited to the cradle of The Sleeping Beauty. But the old witch (evil fairy) also prowls around, languishing with anger because she was not invited to the holiday, it is she who imposes a spell: a mysterious prediction about a finger pricked with a spindle, when the daughter grows up and prepares for a drop of marriage blood that will appear on the body of a young virgin a deep sleep that can last so long that there will be no one left who could be present at the triumphant awakening of her femininity.

Good fairies, evil fairies. Good mothers, evil mothers. In fairy tales, all these fairies represent absent mothers, or those who cannot be named directly.

Aren't the fairies who surrounded the cradle symbolize the opposite incarnations of a mother who has lost her head from love and is completely focused on the little girl she just gave birth to?

Completely or almost completely, because in the most secluded corner of her loving mother's heart there may be hidden a small nasty desire - so that the other, even if she is her flesh, would still be only her and the same as she (Elyacheff, Einish, 2008).

The authors describe two main ways of a daughter's behavior in response to a dominant, domineering mother (at the same time, domineering can also manifest itself in a very mild "obsessive maternal service"):

The first is merging with the mother (conscious or unconscious identification, obedience, dependence on her attitudes and expectations, even in adulthood), the second is opposition (the struggle for one's autonomy and protest against the mother, hostility to her). But in both the first and second cases, the daughter remains addicted ("I will do the opposite, to spite you" is also a form of addiction).

The fact that the relationship of all daughters and mothers is difficult is of course not true. There are enough examples when a mother is for a girl, a girl, and after an adult woman, a close, loving, supportive person. A person to whom you can always turn for help, who will understand, help, will be there for both difficulties and joys. But such relationships are really rare, despite the existing stereotype of unconditional love between mother and daughter.

The stereotype, social belief in a "good mother" often carries a prohibition against negative feelings towards mothers. So girls (both small and grown up), feeling anger at their mother, experience shame and guilt for this.

Moreover, many mothers begin to manipulate their feelings of guilt. "How dare you talk to your mom like that?", "I gave birth to you, I raised you, and you …", "I gave you the last, as you can …" will ask for forgiveness … "," If I die, it will be your fault. " Feelings of anger, resentment, hostility, irritation towards the mother ultimately become an obstacle to love for her.

Thus, the attitude towards the mother is contradictory: on the one hand, love and affection, on the other, the mother can act as an offender, an encroach on the internal boundaries of her daughter, an accuser. Rapprochement and distance, resentment and feelings of love, fatigue and hopelessness. There is a wide range of feelings in the relationship between mother and daughter.

The desire to separate and at the same time feel the support of the mother is what the daughter is trying to combine and keep. The position of the mother can be different. There may be concern and attention, but there may be cold alienation, indifference, or, on the contrary, imperiousness, hyper control, violation of the daughter's boundaries.

“The process of the rapprochement and distance between mother and daughter could unfold like a dance, but more often there is a fierce struggle for similarities and differences, from which both sides suffer. And often many conflicts between mother and daughter are passed down from generation to generation "(Karin Bell)

But in this topic, as in any other, I am more concerned with the question of non-causality, formulated as "Why?" or the favorite "Who is to blame?", but the question of choice and action: "How to deal with this?", "What to do?" How to build a relationship with your mother, how to maintain balance, respecting each other's boundaries, but showing kindness, despite difficult memories, despite grievances, understanding the falsity of parental messages, scripts and much more about which hundreds of books and thousands of publications have been written. Indeed, often, what we learn about narcissistic mothers, the roots of our own cockroaches in our heads and other "gifts" does not make us stronger, but contributes to additional accusations, where parents are monsters, and we are poor lambs.

I have no answer to the question: is it possible to survive feelings and experiences from childhood to the end, you can really remove all the "skeletons in the closet", leave the past to the past. But it is quite possible to change your attitude, to become “your own mother,” thereby “relieving” your own usually elderly mother from expectations and reproaches.

From a conversation with a client:

“I'm 43. It’s time to stop looking at your mother, to be offended, afraid of her or blame her. I try to see her clearly, without the trail of the past. And here in front of me is an elderly, tired, vulnerable woman. She's not an angel, but she's not a monster either. She is just a woman, not very educated, rather categorical, harsh, she had a lot of pain in her life, and alas, she could not survive much, forgive. Can I change it? No. It is pointless to find out or prove anything. She has the right to live how she wants. Be happy. Or be unhappy. Yes, perhaps the most difficult thing for me is to give her the right to her own misfortune. That is why I still cannot really separate from her, I constantly get involved, trying to help her, and then I sob with disappointment."

Until the very end of their lives, women can make claims to their mother and shift responsibility for their own shortcomings onto her. One psychotherapist asked her patient to repeat: "I will not change, Mom, until your treatment of me changes when I was ten years old!" In essence, he was asking her to reflect on her refusal (and not her ability) to change. She was presented with the absurdity of her situation, as well as her "tragic and fruitless bringing her life to the altar of rancor" (Yalom, 2014, p. 261).

It is important to accept your mother, to come to terms with her. Accept and move on

By rejecting your mother, whether she is near or not, is alive or has already passed away, you are rejecting a certain part of yourself. You cannot fully accept yourself, your own femininity, without accepting your mother. This does not mean that you need to adore her, admire her, but to understand and accept the way she is or was in life is really important. It's hard to be free in your own motherhood, looking around and flinching at the notes of your voice that remind you of your mother. It is difficult to change everything at once, but gradually, in the course of independent work, counseling or therapy, an understanding of the fate of one's own mother and one's own, individual develops, a certain respect for the continuity of women's experiences is developed, the realization that she did not behave this way because of the malicious intent of the mother, and due to the absence of another model of behavior, an understanding of one's own adulthood and the possibility of being free comes: from reproaches, from expectations, from the hurting image of the mother, which already has so little to do with reality, from a constant return to the past …

References:

Bell K. (1998) Mother and daughter - a difficult balance. -

Whitaker K. (2004) Midnight Reflections of a Family Therapist / Translated from English. M. I. Zavalova. - M.: "Class". - 208 p.

Elyacheff K., Einish N. (2008) Mothers and Daughters: 3rd Extra? - M.: Institute of General Humanitarian Research. - 448 p.

Jung K. G. (1997) Soul and Myth: Six Archetypes. - Kiev; M.

Yalom I. (2014) Existential psychotherapy. - M. "Class". - 576 p.

foto by JULIA FULLERTON-BATTEN