7 Injuries To The Daughter Of An Unloving Mother

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

As a child, the girl first learns who she is - in the mirror, which for her is her mother's face. She understands that she is loved, and this feeling - that she is worthy of love and attention, that she is seen and heard - gives her the strength to grow and become an independent person.

The daughter of an unloving mother - emotionally detached, or fickle, or too critical and cruel - learns other lessons from life very early on. She does not know what will happen the next moment, what kind of mother will be with her tomorrow - good or bad, she is looking for her love, but she is afraid what reaction will follow this time, and does not know how to deserve it. Ambivalent attachment to such a mother teaches the girl that relationships with people are generally unreliable and cannot be trusted, avoidant attachment creates in her soul a terrible conflict between her childhood need for love and protection and the emotional and physical abuse she receives in return.

Most importantly, the daughter's need for maternal love does not disappear even after she realizes that this is impossible. This need continues to live in her heart, along with the terrible realization of the fact that the only person who should love her unconditionally, simply because she is in the world, does not. It sometimes takes a lifetime to deal with this feeling.

Daughters who grow up with the knowledge that they are not loved are left with emotional wounds that largely determine their future relationships and how they build their lives. The saddest thing is that sometimes they do not know the reason and believe that they themselves are to blame for all the problems.

1. Lack of self-confidence

Unloved daughters of unloving mothers do not know that they are worthy of attention, they do not have the feeling that they are loved at all. The girl could grow up, getting used day after day only to the fact that she was not heard, ignored, or, even worse, she was closely watched and criticized at every step.

Even if she has clear talents and accomplishments, they don't give her confidence. Even if she has a soft and docile character, her mother's voice continues to sound in her head, which she perceives as her own - she is a bad daughter, ungrateful, she does everything out of spite, “into whom she grew up, others have children like children” …

Many already in adulthood say that they have the feeling that they are “deceiving people” and that their talents and character are fraught with some kind of flaw.

2. Lack of trust in people

"I always thought it strange why someone wants to be friends with me, I started to think if there was some benefit behind it." Such sensations arise from the general feeling of the unreliability of the world, which the girl experiences, whose mother sometimes brings her closer to herself, then repels her.

She will continue to require constant confirmation that feelings and relationships can be trusted, that the next day she will not be pushed away. “Do you really love me? Why are you silent? Won't you leave me?"

But at the same time, unfortunately, the girls themselves reproduce in all their relationships only the type of attachment that they had in childhood. And as adults, they crave emotional storms, ups and downs, breaks and sweet reconciliations. True love for them is an obsession, an all-consuming passion, witchcraft, jealousy and tears. Calm trusting relationships seem to them either unreal (they simply cannot believe that this happens) or boring. A simple, non-"demonic" man, most likely, will not attract their attention.

3. Difficulties in defending their own boundaries

Many of those who grew up in an environment of cold indifference or constant criticism and unpredictability say that they constantly felt the need for mother's affection, but at the same time realized that they did not know any way to get it. What caused a favorable smile today may be rejected tomorrow with irritation.

And already becoming adults, they continue to look for a way to appease, please their partners or friends, to avoid repeating that motherly coldness at any cost. They cannot feel the border between "cold and hot", then approaching too close, looking for such interpenetrating relationships that the partner is forced to retreat himself under their pressure, then, on the contrary, afraid to approach the person for fear that they will be pushed away.

In addition to the difficulty of establishing healthy boundaries with the opposite sex, daughters of unloving mothers often have problems with friendships. "How do I know that she is really my friend?" "She's my friend, it's hard for me to refuse her, and in the end they just start wiping their feet about me again."

In romantic relationships, such girls show avoidant affection: they avoid intimacy, although they are looking for intimate relationships, they are very vulnerable and dependent. “The light came together like a wedge” - this is their vocabulary. “They cast cowardly glances, hiding behind a book,” - also about them. Or, as an extreme degree of manifestation of a defensive position - "not right away" to any offer, invitation or request from a man. The fear is too great that the relationship will bring them the same pain that they experienced in childhood, when they were looking for mother's love and did not find it.

4. Low self-esteem, inability to recognize their merits

As one of these unloved daughters said during therapy: “As a child, I was raised, mainly struggling with shortcomings, they did not talk about the merits - so as not to frighten me off. Now, wherever I work, I am told that I do not show enough initiative and do not strive to advance."

Many say that it was a real surprise for them that they were able to achieve something in life. Many people delay the moment to the last in terms of new acquaintances, looking for a better job, in order to avoid disappointment. Failure in this case will mean complete rejection for them, remind them of the despair they experienced in childhood when they were rejected by their mother.

Only in adulthood, the unloved daughter manages to believe that she had a normal appearance, and not "three hairs", "not in our breed" and "who will take you like that?" “I accidentally stumbled upon my old photograph, when I already had my own children, and saw on it a pretty girl, not thin and not fat. It was as if I looked at her with someone else's eyes, I didn't even immediately realize that it was me, my mother's "felt boot".

5. Avoidance as a defensive reaction and as a life strategy

Do you know what happens when it's time to seek your love? Instead of “I want to be loved”, the girl, who felt maternal dislike in childhood, somewhere deep down in her soul feels fear: “I don’t want to be offended again.” For her, the world consists of potentially dangerous men, among whom, in some unknown way, you need to find your own.

6. Excessive sensitivity, "thin skin"

Sometimes someone's innocent joke or comparison makes them cry, because these words, so easy for others, fall unbearably heavy into their souls, awaken a whole layer of memories. “When I overreact to someone’s words, I specifically remind myself that this is my peculiarity. The man, perhaps, did not want to offend me. It is also difficult for daughters so unloved in childhood to cope with their emotions, because they did not have the experience of unconditional acceptance of their value, which allows them to stand firmly on their feet.

7. Search for maternal relationships in relationships with men

We are attached to what is familiar to us, what is part of our childhood, whatever it may be. “It was only years later that I realized that my husband treated me the same way as my mother, and I chose him myself. Even the first words that he said to me to get to know each other were: “You yourself came up with this way to knit this scarf? Take it off. "Then it seemed to me very funny and original."

Why are we talking about this now, when we have already grown up? Not to throw in despair those 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 test, but many people have experienced the same and were able to overcome it.