The Psychology of your 20s - 198. The psychology of ‘mommy issues’ and mother wounds

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

Our mother wounds represent the unprocessed trauma and insecurities we pick up from the dynamic we each have with the women who raise us and shape us. In today's episode we break down the psychology of our mother wounds including their origin, their impact and their manifestation, from our body confidence to our competition with other women, our ability to trust and connect, our fear of disapproval and chronic people pleasing.  We also explore ways to heal this wound, both in collaboration with our mother and on our own. Listen now for more!  Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast     See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down,

and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the Outer. My Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor it? It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, Listen to learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice in selling, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian, Michael Ranjini. My mind was blown.

I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange model.

and worry. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO.% on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we break down the psychology of our 20s. The relationship that we have with our mother,

both as children and as we become adults, is one that we don't necessarily speak about enough. but it undoubtedly shapes the people that we become, not just in our 20s, not just in our 30s, but in our 40s, when or if we decide to have children, how we date, how we relate to others, how we relate to ourselves and our bodies. I think it is a tailor's oldest time that each of us takes something from our childhood and from our parents, some of which is good and some of which is less than good, isn't helpful, some of which we come. only really begin to come to terms with the older we get, whether that is, you know, our quirks, our insecurities, our coping mechanisms, the ways that we self-sabotage, I think the more mature we get, the more separation we get from our parents, the more we begin to realize that so much about who we are stems back to how they chose to raise us. And when it comes to our parents, the relationship and the dynamic that we have with our mother and with our father differs

greatly. And so it's going to create its own unique pattern of so-called wounds. And that is exactly what we are going to be talking about today. We're going to examine the psychology of mother wounds and how our unique relationship with this caregiver, this person who raised us, who shaped us, can actually cause some damage and some hidden elements of who we are that we might not necessarily like. Even if you think this topic doesn't apply to you or you think that the idea of a wound is a bit dramatic, I'm just going to tell you there is something each of us is going to be able to relate to in this discussion, even if you don't think it now, because the bond that we have with our mothers is so primal and so strong and so important that it leaves a mark on each of us, a mark that we

eventually come to terms with. It's not that our mothers are to blame for everything that is wrong with our lives. It's not that every problem stems back to them. Just that when we explore this dynamic a little bit more, we begin to, I think, make visible some things about ourselves that are normally hidden. And that is exactly what we're going to do today. We are going to discuss the origins of mother wounds, how they differ from our father wounds in two critical ways. Five of the most common kind of types of wounds or inherited patterns of behavior that you might recognize yourself in and how to kind of break the generational cycle, how to heal, what to do, what to read, what to investigate, what to explore about yourself. There is so much to talk about when it comes

to our mother dynamic and our quote unquote mummy issues. So without further ado, let's get into it. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs, when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers,

and other health and fitness experts, and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.

Listen to 2%. That's TWO percent on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking What the hell does George Bush gotta do a little count Well you can find out On the Look Back at it podcast

I'm Sam Jett And I'm Alex English Each episode We pick it here unpack what went down And try to make sense of how we survived it Including a recent episode

With Mark Lamont Hill Waxing all about crack In the 80s To be clear 84 is big to me Not just because of crack I'm down to talk about crack On day

But yeah yeah Literally But just so you all know I mean at this point Mark this is the second episode where we've discussed correct. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now.

Thank you finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hardway with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark.

Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing and we're still chasing it and we don't know when we've done enough because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross,

you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth? Or are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Keir Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast,

learn the hard way. Open your free, our heart radio app. Search, learn the hard way, and listen now. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself, at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a

years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in someone's, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected.

They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. I guess the lesbian and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your The mother-child relationship is a profoundly important one. It is almost spiritual, in a sense. It's our first example of love. It is the first time we experience safety and protection and self-esteem. There is this beautiful quote that says, our mothers are our first homes. We are always trying to return to them. But I think that doesn't mean that there is unprocessed trauma in that. In that relationship that isn't passed down without our knowledge, that there isn't things that

every parent, I think, does wrong that influence our relationship with ourselves, as well as those around us on a very physical, social, mental, and emotional level. I think we all know that how we were raised impacts our adult personality and our self-expression from very core concepts like attachment style to our interpersonal skills, our personality, our way of relating to others, our values. There is a whole library and litany of ways in which our childhood environment ends up replicating itself in our adult behaviours. But it kind of begins so much earlier than our memories can recall. It begins all the way back in the womb. There have been more and more studies revealing to us that our adult behavior is being formed before we even open our eyes,

before we are even sentient beings. And it's being formed by our mother's experiences and our mother's stress and our mother's memories. So this is a phenomena known as fetal programming, whereby our mother's emotional state can actually impact how our brains develop when we are still in the womb. And I think a lot of these studies go to show how deeply linked we are to this person, to our mother, the person who birthed us, who grew us for nine months on quite a biological level, what she experiences is passed through to us. And this is also supported by evidence that traumatic

experiences, even generations before, can be passed down epigenetically, meaning that our mother, our grandmother, her mother, they leave an almost chemical mark on our genes and how they are expressed that lasts generations. So the way that they discovered this was through a few different avenues or through different means, a few different situations. So firstly, way back in the 1800s after the US Civil War, researchers began to notice worse life outcomes for the offspring of prisoners of war during that situation and the children of these offspring in ways that didn't really

line up with what we thought about reproduction, which is that when children are born, they are a blank slate. It wasn't just about the kind of economic conditions that these, you know, war veterans found themselves in. It wasn't just around what these children were being taught. It seemed that on a very genetic, basic, biological level, these children were inheriting certain stress responses, certain fears, certain behavioral problems that stemmed back to their parents' experiences. Again, after World War II and the Holocaust, researchers in 2015 found that children and grandchildren of those who had survived this

horrific experience had epigenetic changes that increased how they responded to fear and how they coped with stress and their predisposition to certain mental illnesses. And this was a human study, but it replicated an animal study that was conducted probably like three years before that that was kind of going on at the same time. that found that essentially when we had rats in this environment where they were conditioned to associate the smell of something in particular like cherry blossom with pain, even generations later, their offspring was still reacting negatively and disproportionately to that smell. Even though the children of these mice had never experienced the pain themselves,

even when they were separated from their like mice parents, there was something going on in our DNA that was adapting to the environment of our mother and the environment of our father. It kind of reminds me of this quote that trauma is an echo that only our descendants can hear. That is pretty profound and it seems that science confirms it. Our mother's experiences, even before we arrive, are going to impact us greatly through our development and therefore our reality after we're born. And those experiences won't just impact us genetically or on a DNA developmental level, but also in terms of how she chooses to parent us, what she impresses on us,

her perception of our relationship, her insecurities, her fears about the world and where we, as her child, sit within that space. That is perhaps the biggest distinction between the importance of mother wounds and father wounds. There is this additional layer of connection between us. and our mother, this kind of flesh and blood bond. And it's not to say that that means we're always going to be closer with our moms and that they're always going to be our favorite parent. Our fathers have like no role, no responsibility at all. It all comes back to mom. Absolutely not. It's just that it's different. If you want to hear more about the impact of father wounds,

we did do like a whole episode on that, a few months back episode. I think it's 181. The psychology of father wounds. equally important, but something I say in that episode that I think is important in this context as well, and in distinguishing where your, you know, childhood wounds are coming from is that each of us kind of has this voice in our head, right? It's the same voice that criticizes us, the same voice that judges us, that scolds us, and it's going to sound more like your mother or more like your father. And I think that is a really great way to identify where your parental wounds are stemming from and not who is responsible, but who they're really in connection with. The other distinction is that father wounds are typically more grounded in problems with authority

and independence and approval, whereas mother wounds are just naturally more emotive and concern self-esteem, self-worth, boundary issues, codependency, a fear of rejection, even excessive of people pleasing. We learn a lot from our mothers, perhaps the majority from our mothers, about how to relate to others on an emotional level. As stereotyped as that may be, it is just the case that normally our mothers are conditioned to take on that role as emotional provider and teacher because that's what they learn from their mothers. It's a whole generational, historical, traditional thing. And for women in particular, our mothers also teach us how to operate in a patriarchal society. That is the second big factor that distinguishes mother wounds and father wounds.

Mother wounds involve understanding that mothers and daughters, especially, are situated in and influenced by a patriarchal society that is oppressive to women. The mother wound is normally a cultural trauma that is carried by our mother. A long-wound. with the dysfunctional coping mechanisms that she has used to process the pain and adapt to the environment in which she was raised in that she wants us to be capable of surviving as well. And so we inherit her way of managing some of the burdens that society unduly places on women. So I think that we can see this patriarchal influence in some of the most common and prevalent types of mother wounds, such as poor body confidence and self-esteem, jealousy, competition

with other women, perfectionism, trust issues, fearing disapproval. I think that this facet around patriarchal influence, though, is most noticeable when it comes to how you and I see our bodies and how we see other women. So let's explore that for a second. So I had a friend who once said to me, I hate my body because my mother hated hers. And it flawed me because I think that this encapsulates what we're speaking about perfectly. Our mothers significantly impact the relationship that we have with appearance and with beauty

through verbal messages, through role modelling, through comments on not just our own bodies, but the bodies of other people that we see out in public, in magazines, on the street. They influence us through their own experiences with diet culture and how this almost seeps into our impression and perspective on our own bodies. The words that they speak about themselves in particular truly do get absorbed into our own internal dialogue. If we spend our childhood continuously hearing our mothers talking about how much they hate and despise their thighs and their shoulders and their wrinkles, and their eye color and their hair color. As we grow up, we inherit those very features that they hated. And how is it that we are meant to love that part of us

that our mother didn't even like about herself? If, as well, they spend our childhood, you know, switching between different yo-yo diets, going keto and then vegan and then doing juice farses, or, you know, throwing all the processed sugar out in the house, which is something that my mom did all the time. ultimately they are going to bring us along with them because they control our environment as well. And so we internalize this behavior as normal.

And we believe that our bodies, our size deserves to be controlled and in some ways punished. It's where like the concept of an almond mom came from, you know, a mother who unintentionally gives incredibly unhelpful and unhealthy dieting advice that is projecting her own. securities onto her children, right? It has nothing to do with us and everything that she decides to place worth in and to place value in, such as beauty and thinness. As one doctor put it in this article I read, this phenomenon of almond mums, it's been going on for a long time. Therefore, it's generational, but it's also rooted in diet culture. It's rooted in internalized biases, fat phobia, a projection of fear and this pursuit of thin privilege rather than health. All these behaviours implicitly influence our body image, our self-esteem, and the younger that

we're exposed, the more deeply ingrained it can become. That is a mother wound that is not spoken about enough, the inheritance of not body positivity, but body negativity. And, you know, speaking with my own friends and the people around me, I think that There are very few of us who are not left unscathed by this in a way. Another wound that really seems to derive from that influence of misogyny and patriarchy on parenting is the tendency to almost feel a little bit competitive with other women. Now, I was discussing this with a friend recently in regards to job hunting and then also like

dating, especially like dating in our 20s. And she said something really, really interesting. She said, I'll kind of like paraphrase here, but she explained how our mothers and our grandmothers were some of the very first generations to have even like a smidge of increased freedom to choose a career, to date freely, to appreciate kind of some of the benefits of that sexual and female liberation movement of the 60s. But in that experience, they also were pitted against each other in a lot of circumstances because the opportunities were so, you know, like unequal, like there were just not many of them. So there was always this sense of competition, especially with other women. I read this explanation that a lot of women in that generation realized that the opportunities for them were still quite slim and they were also still very much based on male approval. And so they saw that as something to fight over, which they then passed

on to their daughters, right? It's like viewing other women as competition is very much derived from the fact that a lot of us still appreciate, and our mothers in particular appreciate that women are still the less dominant sex in society. And so there is this need to be more aggressive when it comes to asking for opportunities, this need to be more cutthroat, to work harder, but to also be more polite, and to see other women as something that could jeopardize that for you, whether that is when it comes to jobs, when it comes to careers, when it comes to finding a partner.

Honestly, if you read into this, if you read some of the articles around this, it is so enlightening to be like, wow, like they may not have even, you know, explicitly understood what they were doing, but there was always this sense of like women as competitors rather than women as friends. So those are two ways I think a lot of us can relate to

when it comes to mother wounds of a cultural and a patriarchal origin, especially if you're also a woman. and a daughter. But I also want to move on to discussing some of the more general, emotive, psychological wounds that surround forming stable relationships, fearing disapproval, and also the chronic people pleasing that I think a lot of us find ourselves trapped in. So all of that and more after this short break. 2%.

That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more, to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world,

are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side, a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWA% on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross

double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush to do a little kill. Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack all day, but just so you all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence.

Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade.

of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking. Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it.

And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross. Because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth. Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro.

Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Keer Gaines, is we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free, Our Heart Radio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now.

In 2023, former Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so much, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected.

They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian, and Michael Marincini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When people kind of talk about mummy issues, which is essentially just a very colloquial way of describing mother wounds, what they're normally referring to is a difficulty in dating, informing relationships, maintaining healthy, stable adult relationships because that original bond that we had with our mother was unhealthy during childhood. You have to remember that for most of us, our first existence, of what it meant to be cherished and loved and cared for, what it meant to trust and what it meant to

feel safe was our mother and that connection that we had with her. And there are so many ways that that can actually go quite wrong, especially when it comes to our attachment to them. It might include circumstances of emotional neglect, of enmeshment and parenthification or controlling behaviors initiated by our mothers. They don't let us go and make our own mistakes. They don't let us be our own people or even narcissistic abuse. And normally when we are in that environment where the relationship that we have with our mother and childhood and adolescents wasn't allowed to form naturally and normally, two things end up happening that fall under the umbrella of mummy issues. The first is that we form a really unhealthy closeness to our mothers, normally because they

depend on us for some kind of emotional need, right? Or they do everything for us. They enmesh themselves in our lives. They don't allow us to separate. That often happens in men. And it often, you know, results in them looking for someone to fulfill that same role. They don't understand that that relationship and that dynamic is not appropriate, that there isn't somebody who is going to be their mother, who is going to do everything for them, who is going to serve them. Or the second thing that happens is that we push back

against any kind of relationship that replicates or mimics the closeness and dependency that we have with our mother, because we understand what it means to be that emotionally tied to somebody and then perhaps hurt. So we get and we become quite cynical when it comes to love. We find it hard to trust. This might result from perhaps your parents getting a divorce and your mom maybe didn't handle it well. She kind of separated for a little while.

She, you know, took a step back. Maybe you didn't see her. You felt abandoned or even narcissistic abuse whereby your mother really saw herself as the center of her own universe. She had children to fulfill her own needs and her own wants, which meant that you were kind of always a bit of a puppet. And you both, as children, we have this natural inclination to want to be close to our mother, regardless of how she's treating us, but then also resenting her for those negative emotions that we would be feeling in response to mistreatment, neglect, maltreatment. When somebody comes along that makes us feel a similar way, a sense of, you know, a similar

sense of safety, even if it's misplaced, we automatically associate that with, you know, the other foot coming down, the other shoe dropping, which is one of control, which is one of perhaps being let down. So I want to kind of illustrate two examples of this because I feel like that's quite like a broad strokes approach. For example, if your mother parentified you, that's a big instance in which we see mummy issues or mother wounds. In parenthification, what essentially happens is that the role of the parent and the child have been reversed. And so, you, served as her confident. You had to regulate her emotions. There was a level of guilt maybe that she used to get you to do what she wanted. You felt like you had to take care of her. When you reach

your early 20s or adolescence and you naturally start seeking out emotional independence, firstly, your mother might really push back against that and guilt you into believing that you're abandoning her, that you don't love her anymore, you don't see her enough. And you might also, find yourself becoming quite emotionally unavailable. You are scared that you're going to repeat that same bond with somebody else and find yourself increasingly engulfed or enmeshed in their life. Another example that I heard from a listener the other day that she kindly agreed to let me share was her observing how her mother had gotten really caught up in a nasty marriage, in an abusive relationship. She spent a lot of her childhood really constantly wishing that she would leave,

that her mother would leave, and eventually just kind of realized that she couldn't control what she decided to do. That kind of resulted in her spending a lot of her early 20s resenting her mother for the situation and the environment that she was put through, but also really fearing that she would repeat the example that her mother had set, that there was this generational curse that she was going to see this behaviour as normal and tolerate it herself or accept it herself and end up in the same position. So when she started dating, she was on high alert. She couldn't trust anybody around her because she had seen this example of how her mother, somebody so similar to herself in blood and genetics and relationship had gotten caught up

in this terrible situation that had resulted in her getting hurt. So I think these situations they go to show yet again how much we take on from our mothers. And the kind of invisible influence, they will inevitably have over our adult choices and experiences, especially when it comes to love. I think whilst the love that we share with our mother may be familiar, once again, I will say it again, it is our first example of what to expect. And so depending on the love your mother showed you or the love that your mother exposed you to in other environments, how maybe you.

even that connection was manipulated in some respects, it can create some wounds. I want to give you two final examples of kind of mother wounds that we see quite often, even if we don't have a label for it, that don't typically fall into like the mummy issues in a dating sense. Like they're a bit more broad and therefore perhaps don't receive as much recognition. The first is around fearing disapproval. And we see that, this a lot in people whose mothers were quite overbearing or who were perfectionists themselves. If our mothers were highly critical of us, maybe it was that they were kind of projecting their own desire for success and admiration and achievement onto us. They were looking to us as a proxy

for them to fulfill all of their wishes for having a successful career, for being brilliant, for being praised. And so they see us as an example of her choices and as an example of her morals and her greatness for other people to observe rather than seeing us as independent people who are, you know, growing up on our own and who want to do our own thing and who want to become our own person and be happy in our own achievements. We were kind of an extension of her. And that's where her need to really bear down on us and control our behavior came from. That's where her need to be involved in everything came from. I think when we are raised in that environment and we have a mother of that nature who is kind of being compelled to treat us that way, we begin to conflate a lot of our

achievements and material accolades with our self-worth. And so as we get older, when we don't have that external validation or that external pressure from our parents, from our mother to succeed when we don't have our mother keeping us on track, keeping us disciplined. We end up kind of declining in performance. We end up having to question who we actually are without her around, without her pushing us. And we also, in a way, lack confidence in our own decisions. We question our own choices because our mother always had control over them. We never really got a say and so we never really began to build that independent muscle, that independent skill set. I think this kind of disapproving, impossible to please mother figure also makes us crave validation

or constantly seek out ways to impress her or another maternal authoritative figure. The way that we could never impress our mother as a child, we start looking for ways to impress, you know, strong females and strong women in our lives as an adult. So finally we have chronic people pleasing. I'm thinking about this now. We probably should have talked about this when we were discussing the links between mother wounds, mother-daughter dynamics and patriarchy. But that time has passed.

We're going to talk about it now. Something we know as a fact is that women are more likely to be people-pleases because of our conditioned role as caretakers, managing the emotions of others, suppressing our needs for those around us, keeping the pace, maintaining like the harmony, especially as women, its daughters, who do we learn that from? Normally, our mothers, through observational learning, to seeing how they adapt and respond to what others require of them and how they sacrifice themselves, their emotions, their boundaries, their rest for other people.

and we see how they behave. We watch them for all those years and we kind of take that as a lesson on how we should act and who we should be as women, as caregivers, as providers. It is known as the people pleasing or the pushover wound. Sometimes that can also manifest in resentment, right? Feeling like our mother never taught us how to stand up for ourselves, never showed us that we could be brave, we could be more courageous, we could be better at setting boundaries.

And because she didn't do that, we have ended up as somebody who was always living for others. I think it's okay to feel angry about that, but still love your mother at the same time and still understand why she did what she did to think about what you would have done differently in that circumstance if you were raising yourself all over again, but also knowing that as simple as it sounds, she was doing the best she could. I do genuinely believe that our parents very much operate. at the ceiling of what they believe they are capable of giving us. With each generation though, that ceiling is going to get higher.

And our emotional intelligence, our resources hopefully expand. We learn from their mistakes. And so if we one day decide to raise our own children, we take everything that we saw them perhaps do wrong, their missteps, and we ensure that we don't do the same thing. I think speaking of our own children, speaking of generations, the wounds that we do carry from our mothers, I think, influence our perspective on wanting to be mothers ourselves and wanting to have children someday and whether we'll be any good at it.

This is not something that we speak about very much, especially in our early or mid-20s, having children, how we should raise them. It feels like a very far-off reality, a far-off fantasy for a lot of people, myself included. Perhaps it's not something that you're interested in at all, which is also super fair. But the older we get, I think the more aware we do become, whether you want children or not, of how our unresolved or unhealed wounds will be passed down and will impact those around us. Mother and father wounds are, in a sense, inherited, but they are also contagious. And not contagious in like the viral, bacterial sense of the world.

but in the sense that the more exposure you have to unheeled wounds, the more likely that the behavior of that person will inevitably influence your own behavior as well. And your unheeled wounds may be doing that to those around you. And I think this is where the devotion to healing and the necessity of healing really comes from. If it was just you who was suffering, honestly, that would be bad enough. would be hard enough. You deserve more. You deserve to really know yourself outside and within this space and to understand how you are the way that you are. But it's also this sense that eventually, you know, the person that you have become because of how you were raised and your quirks,

your insecurities, these small coping mechanisms, these big, perhaps maladaptive coping mechanisms that you have adopted may end up sabotaging what you want from life. They may end up sabotaging your romantic relationships, your friendships, and eventually, again, if you decide to have children, the relationship that you eventually have with your own kids. So I think my biggest advice I have is to process early, but not all at once. It's super amazing that we're considering this in our 20s, right? Honestly, at whatever age, it's important. But I think when we first become aware of these wounds that we might be carrying, it's almost like starting a marathon. It's almost like looking at this massive set of kilometers, this massive task in front of us

and wanting to just jump right in and repair the relationship and fix everything straight away, reverse all the generational trauma straight away. But there are some things that I think we have to do before that. And firstly, that is to really think about what you need. What are the wounds that you feel you need to work through? What is it that you're looking to heal from? What is the impact that you are saying? seeing in your life? What is your emotional experience and where is the origin? What is it coming down

to? What part of your mother's behavior? What part of her reactions to the world? What part of her own upbringing? Are they kind of reflecting? I think you need to be clear on where you see the link and the origin and the root coming from before you can come to the table and say, hey, this was my experience and I want to speak about it. Right. If you say, well, I hate my body. but I don't really know how you were involved. It's kind of like, you know, it might not be your mother. It might be something else, and it's kind of hard to work through that experience and to work through this very current reality for yourself.

If you're still kind of ambiguous around where this may have actually come from, it also, I think, is very easy to feel anger before any other emotion because it is such a simple, one-sided emotion. It is so one-track-minded. But anger is not necessarily helpful in these circumstances. It's not necessarily helpful to go in all guns blazing, looking to find someone to blame, looking to find someone to hurt, to scream at, to discuss with.

Yes, those conversations will eventually need to happen and are important. But I also think that the second component, and the second thing we need to understand before we go about addressing our mother wounds is addressing how we think our mother is, addressing how we think our mother is going to respond. Think about whether she will be able to accept that responsibility, or is it something that you just have to acknowledge that she is the way she is, she did the best she could, and kind of process it on your own.

Sometimes I find, and this is, of course, my own perspective, that our problems and anger can become more entrenched when we look for closure in our parents, because half the time they don't even realize what they did. and half the time they probably don't want to take responsibility out of a human need to protect their ego, one that we all have. No one is going to enjoy being told that they were a bad parent. No one likes taking on blame for the way that we are, especially somebody who feels so personally involved in our development. This isn't to say that a discussion might not one day take place

and I actually think it's really important, just that you need to be clear on what you actually need out of that conversation, how your emotional experiences and reality relates to your mother wounds, and what you can expect from your parent, what you can expect from your mother. I think the hardest situations are when you go in, you have all this courage to say, hey, like, I feel like you have created an unhealthy pattern in me

around attention seeking, around validation seeking, around love. And I want to talk about it. I want to understand why you raised me the way you did. And she turns around and goes, well, no, that's not my experience. I'm not that kind of mother. Are you saying that I'm a terrible mother? And suddenly you're shut down. And I think it's something to be prepared for.

You probably know her quite well. What do you think that you're going to get out of that conversation and be realistic with yourself about it and about the closure that you might be available to you before you enter. There are a lot of things that we can do for ourselves when our mother is perhaps not involved, not up for discussing,

not willing to take accountability. I think first is coming to terms with what you are okay with and what you are not in this day and age. The good thing about growing up and maturing, about getting older and finding independence beyond the family unit, is that you kind of get to control your physical and emotional environment from now on. and that means that you have the capacity to say what is no longer okay with you and put in that distance.

For example, comments about your body, about your choices, about what you eat, what you wear, who you date, you can put those things off limits. Maybe that is by saying to your mother, you know, hey, I'm not open to talking about this. I'm not in the mood. Let's talk about something else. Maybe it's that first step of being like, that's actually quite hurtful and, you know, this is what the emotional experience it creates for me. I feel anxious when you say comments about my body. I feel uncomfortable and I don't want that to define our relationship. So maybe that's off limits from now on.

Maybe we don't discuss it. Not even maybe. That is off limits from now on. We won't be discussing that. Boundaries are spoken about a lot, right? But they are so important in healing these wounds. I think it's equally important to review the other relationships that you have in your life. And whether, you know, that original relationship you have with your mother is

influencing how you're, the behaviour that you're accepting from these people, like friends, like partners, like colleagues, are there boundaries that need to be set with them as well that you previously didn't because of this people pleasing wound, because of this kind of self-sabotaging wound, this self-abandonment wound that has directly come from, you know, your mother being overbearing or being absent or training you to be very passive and a bit of a people-pleasing. my final tip is that it's also valuable to address your inner critic that voice we talked about in your head that sounds like your mother or your father if you can recognize that it's your mother's critical voice notice when that speaks up notice where you are feeling it when that voice comes

into play what it is about what is it directed towards do you hear that critical voice when you are perhaps you know not feeling as productive as you usually are are you usually are you hearing that inner voice when, I don't know, you don't fit into the genes that you used to fit into, or when you feel like you've let somebody down, or when you're not pushing yourself hard enough at work, it's really important to identify your inner critic and what it speaks up in response to, because that is normally where the wound is located. Secondly, replace that inner critic with your own voice, one that builds you up, one that is not going to scold you, one that is not going to tear you down for simple, small mistakes

or parts of your reality that you like and that you accept. It's also important, I think, that when you feel angry, when you get frustrated, or you're feeling misunderstood, or, you know, you're taking on the criticisms, the anxiety, the thoughts of your mother, to separate yourself from that feeling by grounding yourself, doing a repetitive doodle, listening to your favorite album, going for a quick walk, taking a warm shower, detach from the emotions that you have implicitly absorbed from her through your experiences. That doesn't mean that you need to suppress all your negative emotions, more so that you make them manageable so that when, you know,

you can kind of take a step back and really identify why you're feeling the way that you are, where that is coming from, and how you can process that without having that kind of cloud of confusion over you, without just being compelled by anger. So finally, there are some books that I would really recommend from people who have spent a lot more time with this subject matter than me. The first one is titled It Didn't Start With You by Mark Wallin. This book is phenomenal and I honestly think that it's a better version of the classic

The Body Keeps the Score. It's much more modern. It's much more thorough. He essentially discusses how trauma is essentially hereditary, we know and how the legacy of those memories is passed down to us by way of emotional inheritance, usually from our mothers and their mothers and theirs. And it's super accessible. I would really recommend it. The other one is what my mother and I don't talk about. That is a collection of 15 essays by 15 different writers. And it's very, very revealing and very honest and really examines

how complicated our relationship with our matriarch and our maternal creator can kind of be. So the reason that this series of essays came to be was that the person who essentially contacted all these women to contribute and who edited the entire anthology, Michelle Philgate, she wrote this essay a while back that went super viral about her coming to terms with her stepfather abusing her. But it actually really turned into like an exploration of how. how that changed her relationship with her mother. And she spoke to 14 other women around what that experience or, you know,

a different experience was like for them that kind of changed their perspective towards their mom. So 10 out of 10, I would really recommend it. And as a, you know, a concluding reminder, a concluding affirmation, it's okay to have mixed feelings about your mother as you come to term with the wounds that she may have unintentionally left, right? Like she is kind of and may still be the center of your universe. You may want her attention and love her as much as you have ever loved anybody else and still feel angry and still feel hurt for her not being able to fulfill your maybe emotional needs as a child or for getting it wrong.

You can feel both things at once. That is like the complexity and the nuance of human relationships that we hold multiple feelings for somebody at one time. it doesn't necessarily mean that like this relationship is over that your mother was a terrible person that she meant to hurt you. I think a lot of healing when it comes to healing our mother wounds stems from a place of forgiveness and empathy and realizing why this reality was the one that you had to endure and that you experienced where that came from for your mother and stopping the ball there, making sure that if you choose to have children, it doesn't get passed down or it doesn't get spread

around, that you don't end up kind of contaminating your relationships with the unhealthy patterns that you've learned from her. So I really do hope that you've enjoyed this episode. I hope you got something out of it. I hope you learned something new. I hope that you, this has helped you heal. If you have any like further questions, further contributions, further experiences that you want to talk about. Please feel free to message me at That Psychology podcast on Instagram. Make sure that you're following us over there so you can vote on future episodes so you know what's kind of coming out and that you're following us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you are listening right now, leave us a five-star review or subscribe if you would like and make sure

that you're taking care of yourself, be kind to yourself, be gentle to yourself. the fact that you have, you know, sought out this information is wonderful and I think kind of proves that you're on a great journey. So I'm super proud of you. And until next week, be kind, be gentle. And we will talk soon. On the Look Back at it podcast.

1979, that was a big moment for me. 84's big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians,

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