The mother daughter connection and bond is such a profound part of the young girl’s emotional development. Our mother is essentially our first love and our lifeline to security. We learn about ourselves and how to engage with the world through her. As children, we seek her physical and emotional reassurance. How she responds…the facial expression and tone of her voice received, has a huge impact on our self image and belief of whether we are lovable, valued, and good enough.
Yet not every mother has the capacity to love in a healthy manner. A narcissistic mother struggles to empathize and see her daughter as an individual. Boundaries usually don’t exist, leaving a child confused and unsure of what to expect. A narcissistic mother can see her daughter as a threat. It’s likely that she may try to direct her daughter through criticism to become a better version of who she wished she could be. She can project unwanted aspects of herself such as self- centeredness, selfishness and callousness onto her daughter.
This environment of shame and control wreaks havoc on a young girl’s sense of security. She begins to feel that she can’t trust her own feelings or decisions, and internalizes that it’s her fault. She usually also recognizes that her mother is unhappy with her and she begins a hustle to be seen and validated by her mother. Since a young daughter doesn’t learn to protect or stand up for herself, she continues her quest for validation into her adult life. This leaves her feeling disappointment and rejection.
So how does an adult daughter begin to recover from the trauma of continuous rejection and shame? It starts by learning how to recognize that the shame messages instilled by mother are false. Once we begin to separate what’s ours and what’s moms, we can start to change our behavior. As we begin to lean into courage and find our voice, we become empowered to set boundaries. Still the damage from these false messages might be strong and require the expertise of a trained therapist in EMDR or DBT in order to decrease the strength of the negative belief and start to replace it with more adaptive positive beliefs.
In order to have a healthier relationship with your mother in adult life, it’s important that you not only learn the skills mentioned above, but that you find a place in your heart to recognize that mom is “doing the best she can.” While that might be hard to believe, it’s important to have some empathy for mom’s own wounded self. In her book Rising Strong, Brené Brown states that in order to assume she is doing the best she can, we also have to grieve who we need her to be. In other words, when we set boundaries, live in our values, and make the most generous assumptions of our mother, knowing she can’t give what she doesn’t have, we can soften our heart enough to embrace the relationship she is able to provide.
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