Mothers And Daughters

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

Mother's love is the only one aimed at letting go of the object of attachment, as opposed to love for a partner, where we seek to keep the other. The chick flies out of the nest for two reasons: it cannot help but fly, and the parent gives it the opportunity to fly out.

For a person, it often happens differently - the mother does not let her daughter go, not allowing her to grow up and become an equal woman, a mother. Of course unconsciously, of course out of love, and nevertheless. Why she does it and how I tell in this article.

Relatively speaking, I would single out two main tendencies that unfold in the mother-daughter relationship, which do not contribute to healthy and timely separation. Moreover, one can easily be replaced by another, thereby keeping the daughter close to her mother even more.

The first strategy of mother's behavior is infantile. When the mother demonstrates her weakness, powerlessness, inability to solve life problems, resentment. “Do it yourself, you know how better than me,” she says to her daughter, or “I’m scared myself, I’m nervous, come on,” or “I knew that you didn’t care about your mother,” or “call me every day, and then I'm worried."

Such mothers literally live the life of a daughter, they look at the world through her eyes, demanding something new every day, like a new series of the series. At the same time, the mother and daughter seem to change roles. The daughter becomes a guardian parent, and the mother becomes a capricious child. In this scheme, the daughter will always remain with a feeling of guilt, heaviness, use, and the mother will never be satisfied and consoled, she is always not enough.

The price is the daughter's life - her success, her relationship with her husband, her own motherhood. This is what the daughter sacrifices while remaining in union with her mother. It does not fly out of the nest, because "if I fly away, my mother will not be able to stand it" or "my mother gave me so much, how can I leave her." And then the daughter stays and lives her life for her mother, together with her mother, but not her own.

Such female daughters can be quite socially arranged (home, husband, work), but they live inside with a feeling of longing for their mother. “Mom is there, but she does not see me,” they say, sometimes with sadness, sometimes with anger. And at the level of the soul, they will be as if tied by an invisible thread to their mother, all the time they will hurt about her words, all the time they will wait for the approval of "mother, notice me." And they will be mentally turned to the place where it hurts for mom, for that mom with whom the meeting never happened.

What I propose to think about here, what questions to ask yourself:

How is my mom holding me back?

What behavior or words of hers make me feel guilty and parent to her?

How does mom use me to fill her life?

Second strategy: patronage of an already grown-up daughter. When the mother continues to interfere in her daughter's family affairs, she gives advice, tries to find out the secrets of her intimate life. In quarrels, he takes the side of his daughter, famously destroying his son-in-law, throwing feelings from his own married life there.

Competing with her daughter for motherhood from the series "I am a better mother than you", belittling the daughter's status in front of the children, not fulfilling the daughter's requests / orders regarding the children. She can even call her grandchildren "son" or "daughter". And he can even speak directly: "give birth to a child and give it to me, I will raise it."

Gives advice on how and where to get a job, where to study, who to be friends with, how to dress. With which relatives to communicate, and which ones not to be allowed on the doorstep. Often such mothers live next to their daughters or insist on living together, and if the daughter moves, then they follow.

They emphasize in every possible way how the daughter is not independent, they say: “you can't cope, let me do it myself”, or “yes, good, but here is the daughter of aunt Natasha …”. In front of others, they may complain that the daughter still has to be controlled, they expect sympathy, but are not ready to notice their responsibility. Any independent decisions of his daughter either does not notice, or demonstratively devalues, or gets angry up to "you are not my daughter anymore."

And the daughter, however, is afraid of falling into disgrace, because she has never really been apart from her mother, does not know what she wants, does not know how to make a choice, often doubts her strength, beauty, abilities, little self-respect. In her heart she believes that she is not without her mother.

In such overprotection under the sauce "all for you beloved" love, in fact, is not at all. There is only a maternal projection of what a daughter should be in order for her (mother) to be really good or even perfect. A child is a project for her, her property, an indicator of her success, and her daughter's life also belongs to her.

I suggest asking yourself:

How does mom hold me?

What kind of a good girl does she want me to be?

How do I see myself now with my mother's eyes?

What do I have mine? Achievements, successes, things you bought yourself?

It is important to understand that such mothers themselves once wounded daughters in childhood. They did not have enough parental love, and then they decided to become ideal in their motherhood, to correct parental mistakes. And a child for them is the only thing through which they feel alive, than hope to be saved, and to let the child into his adult life, roughly speaking, is not in their interests.

Their daughters, coming to me for consultation, often say: "I so want my mother to have her own personal life, so that she leaves me." Alas, we have to admit that mom will never give up her lifebuoy. And the daughter will have to move into adulthood on her own.

Crawling through guilt, through the fear of the unknown, the anxiety of separateness - all with their own feet. Agreeing that mom will probably never bless, will not recognize, will not notice, will not reconcile. By agreeing to fly your adult flight at that price.

The movement towards growth, towards growing up, is an unconscious movement of our psyche, our soul. But we often hesitate between resistance to this process and agreement. Resistance costs us life, health, harmony - anxiety and pain, because growth always comes through pain. What do you choose? I propose to think about it.

Let me remind you that now I am leading a therapeutic group "Daughters", dedicated to the topic of difficult relationships with my mother. The new set will open in November. Applications can be submitted now. And also I am waiting for you at individual consultations.