Why Do Some Mothers Hurt Their Daughters?
Mother’s Day is coming up in just over a couple of weeks and while we may have differences in how we feel about the day and what the relationship with our mom looks like in our life presently, one thing we all share is that at one point in time, we have come from a mother. In my experience working with women over the years it never ceases to amaze me how formative and powerful the relationships we have with our mothers are.
The love, guidance, protection and nurturance daughters receive from mothers influence nearly every aspect of our lives- from our self esteem to our relationships with food, career choice, who we choose as partners and everything in between. This also means a lack of those things influence our lives just as much too.
Many adult women experience complicated, strained rrelationships with their aging mothers. I’ll hear their feelings described like “conceptually I love her because she's my mom but everything she does bothers me/hurts me/leads to a fight so I don't really want to be around her - and I feel guilty.”
l belive there is still a rather painful taboo around these types of mother daughter dynamics- especially on holidays and Mother's Day. These daughters often endure an ongoing, low level hum of pain that never fully gets resolved while living in a culture that perpetuates the myth that mothers are selfless, giving and warm all the time. And no matter what, a daughter should be grateful to and for her mother. So, why would a mom be abusive to her daughter?
Your mother's inner child has entered the chat.
Your Mom’s Unhealed Trauma
Most of us don’t realize until we’re well into adulthood, or we become moms ourselves, how much of our mother’s upbringing and trauma directly impacted us a child. Depending on what she experienced, her family of origin, and if she ever had any healing, her unhealed inner child has a big influence over how she treats and behaves toward you and it’s been this way since the start.
She likely just didn’t know it.
The relationship with your mom is actually a triangle; it includes you, her and her inner child.
Here are just a few reasons why it’s so important to understand how your mom’s inner child plays a role in your relationship:
You can see her as a human first, one who likely has faced challenges and trauma of her own.
It helps to empower you to set boundaries that will keep her in your life in the way that works for you.
Now that you’re an adult it helps you to not take her behavior so personally or see it as your responsibility to fix.
It helps to be more particular in choosing how to interact with her from an empowered, autonomous place.
The Cycle of Her Trauma Passed to Her Daughter
Many of us have seen or heard our mothers endure some measure of hardship and difficulty in their lives. They’ve experienced emotional neglect, trauma, depression just to name a few…..all things that weren’t nearly as openly talked about as they are now and our moms were forced to largely suffer in silence.
If your mom is of the Baby Boomer generation the idea that she could reach out and ask for help was unheard of. Like us, our moms also dealt with things like post-partum depression and anxiety, emotionally immature parents, realizing too late they didn’t know what they were getting into when they said “I do” or being neurodivergent and not knowing what that meant. But back then the shame was so deep for reaching out and asking for help, most never bothered.
Here’s the thing:
Our mothers could only be nurturing, engaged, present, protective, loving, and reliable to the degree that they felt loved, safe, and valued by their own family of origin. If your mom was the daughter in her family who was the lost child, or the one who bore the brunt of family secrets, abuses, and neglect, she had a very wounded inner child which was alive and well when she brought you into the world.
Unresolved Trauma = Stunted Emotional Development
Because older generations of women had to sweep so much under the rug and pretend the bad things they experienced didn’t happen, many of our mothers experienced trauma that went unacknowledged which stunted their emotional growth resulting in them becoming emotionally immature adults.
With unresolved trauma impacting what she can offer daughter, this kind of mom can have her personality and disposition toward herself, life, and those around her influenced without even knowing it.
Why Moms Turn on Their Daughters
When trauma goes unhealed, particularly for decades, it’s not uncommon for our inner child to blend with our adult self, or show up in the present day. This commonly happens when we’re stressed or in moments that feel new or challenging (like becoming a young mom for example).
Mothers who have unhealed inner child wounds project the rage, aggression and injustice about how she was deprived of so much growing up onto her daughter. She may take out her feelings of hurt and betrayal toward her mother onto her daughter because it’s the first time she’s felt emotionally safe enough to do so.
For the daughter, this is confusing and conflicting behavior from the one person who is their source of nurture and care and it creates a chaotic and disorganized relationship. One moment you might get the version of your mom who is loving and warm and the next you might get a version who is jealous of you because you’re thinner than her. She may belittle you because you made a mistake or accuse you of abandoning her because you’re going out with your friends. She may see you as her competition instead of her child who she is tasked with loving and protecting.
This creates an impossible situation for the daughter because the mother, as the adult, always has the power and controls the narrative of what happens. This chaos creates a massive wedge between the mother and daughter and breaks trust from a very early age.
In coming newsletters I’m going to talk about signs of toxic relationships, how to set boundaries, what breaking these generational patterns looks like and how to heal and grieve.
Let me know if this resonates with you and what questions you have.
Melissa
This resonates a lot. My mom is not abusive by any means but she vacillates between supportive/caring and highly critical/competitive, and I avoid interaction since I don't know which I'm going to get. It makes a lot of sense that sometines its her own unhealed wounds talking.