Resentment towards mom. Strategy for independent work from a psychologist

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Family psychologist Maria Samotsvetova tells where resentment toward mom comes from, how to deal with it (and whether it should be done).

People who come to therapy can be divided into two types: those who think that “mom has nothing to do with it,” and those who think that “it’s all mother’s fault.” I don’t know who is right, but I know that sooner or later psychotherapeutic work “descends” to the level of relationships with parents, to childhood experience; sooner or later we come to mom.

Why does the resentment not go away?

As a rule, feelings “get stuck”, repeat themselves, go in a vicious circle when they do not find expression.

How it works? Any feeling is a reaction to some event in the external world. It is given to us as a hint, that is, the feeling helps determine how we feel about this event and how we should react to it.

Imagine your friend telling you: “This new jacket suits you very well!” Most likely, you will feel joy, pleasure, and gratitude to your friend. These feelings will make you smile and say thank you.

Or a neighbor's boy hit your window with a ball - then you will get angry and go to deal with his parents - demand an apology and compensation for the damage.

The same thing happens in relationships with parents. When your mother says or shows you through her actions: “You are my biggest mistake in life!” – you also have a variety of feelings. Most likely, great bitterness or intense anger, even rage.

But here's the difference. Often, no matter how great the intensity of feelings for your mother is, you are so overwhelmed by them that it is very difficult to digest them, analyze the situation, and respond adequately.

After all, on the one hand, it’s hard not to love your mother. On the other hand, at this moment I want to kill her. The combination of anger and love is precisely the feeling of resentment. I hate you, but I love you - and therefore I cannot hate you.

Late entry into adulthood

A bad relationship with mom can begin when a person begins adulthood. Sometimes it is impossible to do without the need to defend one’s own beliefs and plans, the choice of comrades and partners. Quite often, a mother’s vision of the future differs from the plans of a grown child, and expressing her own (different from her) opinion evokes a negative reaction, from grins to harsh criticism. A parent can suffocate with reproaches, for example, that she is given too little attention. The result is a whole set of problems:

The mother begins to be perceived as the most important and main person, other people fade into the background.
A person is frankly afraid of becoming autonomous; he cannot live without control.
A feeling of loneliness develops when the parent is not around.
There are no serious relationships, no family and no children.
Feeling guilty for one's own needs, desires and aspirations.
Regular self-punishment, lack of self-realization.
Addiction to risk and danger, alcoholism, overeating, drug addiction.
Frequent quarrels with mother, expectation of punishment.
Attempts to achieve maternal love at any cost.
Comparison of wife and mother.
Marriage with subsequent claims to the spouse that he does not pay enough attention.

Other consequences can be added to this series. The point, however, is not in specific examples, but in the main reason - the constant desire to find maternal love, which does not stop even after the death of the parent.

What to do with old grudges

Your task is to restore the interrupted cycle “emotion – desire – action”. To do this, you need to figure out what exactly interrupted him.

For example, you love your mother so much that it is impossible to express your feelings to her. It seems that if you honestly tell her about how hurt and offended you are, your mother will immediately treat you differently and begin to love you less.

I think your fears may be partly correct and adequate. Mom, especially if she is old and has always been hot-tempered and touchy, can easily take offense at your claims. But any complaints can always be formulated in an inoffensive manner.

Compare: “Mom, I want to tell you honestly: you ruined my whole life and I hate you!” and “Mom, I have heavy feelings in my soul. Will you listen to what I say? When you told me that you didn’t want me, I felt completely unnecessary to you. I was very hurt. It would help me a lot if you said that you really don’t think so and that you are important.”

Of course, not every mother will be affected by such words. Some mothers may even say something even more offensive in response. If it seems to you that this will be the case with your mother, then I completely trust your feeling. There is another way in this case.

Why is this approach important?

Parents occupy a central place in our lives. They are sources of energy, the proper use of which allows one to achieve success in life, especially expressed in contacts with representatives of the opposite sex. Parental denial is destructive in nature, spreading to all areas of life. Does a woman not accept her mother? There is a high probability of difficulties conceiving a baby, problems during pregnancy and other negative consequences. It's hardly worth paying such a high price.

If you can't talk to your mom

This method consists of two parts and is suitable for independent work. They use it when the mother is no longer there or frankly, calm communication with her is impossible for some reason.

You remember the importance of not blocking the feelings you are experiencing, but finding an appropriate way to express them.

If expression directly is not possible, then expression through fantasy will do.

The instructions for the first part of the exercise are as follows:

Place your mother's photo on the table. Imagine your mother - at the age at which your resentment was strongest.
Tell “mom” about your grievance. Say whatever comes to mind, without choosing any expressions. This technique is good because you can express yourself as fully as possible without holding back. If you feel like screaming, scream. You can even throw the photo off the table or tear it into small pieces.
Stop the moment you feel enough is enough. You can feel this physically - most likely, during the exercise your body will move, tense, maybe you will clench your fists. When it's time to finish, you'll feel more relaxed.

When the first stage is completed, evaluate your condition. Have you been able to tone down your emotions a little? Do you feel like you've spoken out? How much easier has it become for you if you rate your condition on a scale from 1 to 10 (10 was your offense before the exercise)?

If your score has become noticeably lower, you can move on to the second part of the exercise. This part is done “with a cool head.”

Attention: everything written below is not suitable for working with traumatic experiences that were the result of delinquent behavior of the mother (this includes everything that the law defines as a crime: violence, bullying, leaving in danger, etc.)

What we are silent about: a psychologist tells how to understand that your mother has traumatized you

We are not only mothers and fathers, but also daughters and sons. And when we have our own children, the ghosts of relationships with loved ones - grievances, fears, behavior patterns - make themselves felt. They force us to use familiar parenting scenarios that are not really close to us. We tell our children those phrases that we ourselves hated as children and behave in ways that we would not like at all.

Irina Parfenova is a practicing psychologist with ten years of experience, a gestalt therapist, a specialist in the field of crises and trauma, and an expert in the course “What We Are Silent About With My Mother,” which starts on August 24. The course will talk about how to work through maternal trauma and free yourself from the ghosts of the past.

We asked Irina to explain how to understand if you have maternal trauma and how it affects the life of the parent and children.

What is the “inner mother”?

Our relationship with our mother as children affects our entire adult lives and our relationships with our own children.

Mother is the person with whom we form our first attachment. With her we go through the period of gestation and birth. Her condition during pregnancy, the difficulty of childbirth, her character and style of interaction with the child - all this plays an important role in his subsequent life.

There is such a thing as “inner mother”. This is a set of behavior patterns that we inherit from our relationship with our real mother. We can copy mother's patterns, or we can create new ones in response to mother's behavior.

The way our mother treats us gradually becomes our attitude towards ourselves.

English psychiatrist John Bowlby said: “Each of us is inclined to do to others as we have previously done to him.” Thus, gradually the real mother becomes internal.

The inner mother image can be reliable and supportive, or it can be destructive. Depends on the conditions in which the child developed. Toxic events that happen in early childhood are the source from which the destructive inner mother is born.

Interesting on the topic

“A daughter who needs her mother often sacrifices herself.” What is maternal trauma and how does it occur?

Reliable and destructive "inner mother"

Imagine a child who is just learning to walk and constantly falls. Children whose parents react calmly and console, without focusing on falls, get up, continue on their way and calm down faster. Children who are scolded react more sharply to falls.

In adulthood, this can be observed in situations where a person makes mistakes. The reliable inner mother is upset, but draws conclusions, consoles and leads further (“It’s a shame, but you’re great! You did everything you could. Next time we’ll do it differently”).

The destructive inner mother scolds (“What are you, you bungler! You’re wrong again!”). This affects not only self-esteem, but also the ability to draw conclusions and learn from experience.

Interesting on the topic

What is parental verbal aggression and why do we even resort to it?

If the mother is caring, supportive, protective, helping to believe in oneself and correct one’s actions when necessary, then the person grows up and:

has good self-esteem;

perceives himself and others positively;

builds emotionally close and trusting relationships with other people;

manages his emotions, is able to calm down on his own after experiencing peak experiences;

reacts flexibly and quickly adapts to different life situations;

copes with life's difficulties and problems, including asking for help from other people;

knows what he wants, sets goals, plans his time/life/future.

If the mother constantly criticizes and finds fault, including criticizing the personality itself (“you’re bad”), says that “again nothing will work out, you’re nobody, you can’t do anything normally,” palms off other people’s guidelines, values that are accepted in society, but this particular person does not need it (“that’s how it is”), then the person grows up:

incapable of self-support and positive self-esteem;

seeking satisfaction of their needs in other people;

prone to scolding oneself, devaluing, controlling, blaming;

very demanding of oneself;

with an overly strong voice of the “inner critic”;

with a high risk of developing psychosomatic symptoms and diseases.

Exercise

Check which of the listed qualities you notice in yourself most often? This will help you understand what patterns of behavior you experienced as a child and explain some of your reactions in your relationships with your own children.

Why does a destructive “inner mother” appear?

A woman’s past may be filled with various circumstances that have become an obstacle to her maturity: she may have a difficult relationship with her own parents, she could have been sick a lot in childhood, or experienced the loss of a significant adult.

All situations in which the mother did not have enough resources to cope will continue to affect both her own condition and her relationship with the child.

Interesting on the topic

How to be a good parent if you had a bad childhood

Is it possible to become an ideal mother who will not “spoil” her children?

It is important to understand: no matter how good a mother is, she is a person with her own advantages and disadvantages.

We can't be perfect at everything, but we can be "good enough."

A “good enough mother,” according to British child psychologist Winnicott, is not ideal, but consistent. She hears the child's needs and helps him, thanks to which an emotional connection appears between them. She also has the strength, the internal resource, to withstand the child’s emotions in stressful times.

What is maternal trauma?

How can we tell if we have maternal trauma?

In psychotherapy, maternal trauma is an emotional trauma received in a relationship with the mother, that is, harm caused to the child’s mental health as a result of intense exposure to adverse factors and stress.

Not all negative events lead to injury. A child has a fairly flexible psyche: what would be a tragedy for an adult, a child can survive. In addition, children often do not realize that something abnormal is happening, since they do not yet understand how everything works.

Trauma can occur when a child experiences:

unbearable pain (for example, as a result of physical punishment);

fear (for example, when something threatens his health or the health of his loved ones):

strong emotional experience (divorce of parents, death of a pet, moving to another city).

A traumatic event is often repressed from memory, leaving behind only the consequences.

Trauma can make itself felt in similar situations: a person suddenly experiences inexplicable fear, an extreme degree of rejection of something.

Symptoms of maternal trauma

Reactions out of proportion to events

For example, as an adult, your partner is late at work without warning. Your anxiety level increases, you are unable to think about anything other than this situation, you are scared and physically ill.

A nervous breakdown may occur, accompanied by prolonged bouts of sobbing. And even after everything gets better, you have nightmares or have obsessive fears.

What could be behind this: a traumatic experience of abandonment or rejection. Perhaps in the first years of her life, the mother fell ill and was forced to go to the hospital. The separation was unbearable for the child. Or the mother systematically threatened separation. The fear of losing a mother at an early age is like death for a child, since his life largely depends on his mother.

Interesting on the topic

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Lack of personal relationships

You are not interested in relationships in principle or all your relationships do not go beyond a certain stage. In your head you understand that you want intimacy, since the need remains unsatisfied. And you even try to do everything to make this relationship happen (you register on a dating site, agree to dates), but you unconsciously do everything so that it doesn’t end in anything.

Another possibility is that you prefer a sex-only relationship. This form of relationship satisfies safe needs and excludes those that may bring up trauma from the past.

What may be behind this: experience of emotional, sexualized or physical violence. Not getting into a relationship is the body’s way of protecting itself from the excitement generated by a constant sense of threat.

Apathy, chronic fatigue or very low physical energy. Another option is poor memory, forgetfulness, confusion, inattentiveness

The body spends energy on invisible processes. The person is hypervigilant in order to prevent a repetition of the traumatic experience, and experiences constant background fear, powerlessness, and anxiety.

What could be behind this: A situation where the mother systematically used the child for her own purposes. In this case, a person as an adult can constantly look closely at the actions of other people: are they now trying to manipulate him, use him.

Addiction to alcohol, drugs or medications

With the help of various substances, a person can try to dull the pain, forget, or stabilize his condition.

What could be behind this: a controlling and/or emotionally cold mother, next to whom it is impossible to relax. A person gets used to tension. Or an experience where relaxation was too expensive and the person concluded that relaxation is dangerous.

Since the body has limited resources, the body still requires rest. Alcohol may be the only “safe” way to relax. All unpleasant consequences and responsibility for them can subsequently be attributed to the action of the substance.

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Psychosomatic diseases

When no other cause for physical illness is found, stress and trauma are the most suitable candidates.

“Trauma can leave a person blind, mute or deaf. It can cause paralysis of the legs, arms, or both. It can cause chronic neck and back pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, bronchitis, asthma, gastrointestinal problems, severe premenstrual syndrome, migraines and a host of so-called psychosomatic disorders. Any physical system capable of binding undischarged excitation caused by trauma operates according to clear rules. Blocked energy will use whatever aspect of our physiology is available to it,” says exercise scientist Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger, which I highly recommend.

Feelings of separation, alienation and isolation - “living dead”

What could be behind this: strong unbearable feelings. As a result, a person makes an unconscious conclusion that feelings are bad, and tries not to face difficult experiences. However, it is impossible to repress all the negativity and leave only the positive. As a result of this approach, pleasant experiences are also isolated. The result is a feeling of emptiness.

It is important to understand that feelings are signals that indicate something.

Behind every feeling there is some kind of need. If a person stops reading his feelings, he also has no access to his desires. The result is a feeling of dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and meaninglessness.

What situations can trigger injury?

Bethany Webster, author of Finding Your Inner Mother, identifies situations in your relationship with your mother that can lead to trauma:

The mother uses her daughter as a sedative and a container to drain her unprocessed emotions.

The mother is satisfied only when her daughter agrees and does not contradict her views and attitudes. The mother rejects her daughter if she shows independence.

The mother uses her daughter as a narcissistic extension, appropriating all the attention and praise her daughter receives.

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The daughter feels that her mother makes unreasonable demands on her, and spends an inadequate amount of strength and energy, worrying about her mother’s problems and searching for ways to solve them.

The mother feels that she has the right to intervene in and control the main areas of her daughter’s life.

The mother criticizes her daughter out of fear of appearing to be a bad mother and perceives the child's normal expressions of negative emotions as a threat to her control and a sign of her parental failure.

How to help yourself

Working through maternal trauma does not mean blaming the mother for everything. Your mother may have done everything possible for you. Perhaps she had to endure incredible suffering and hardship in life. But your feelings matter too.

The essence of working through maternal trauma is to take personal responsibility for your life. Accept yourself and your qualities without shame and take a healthier path in raising your children.

Three questions about your mother

So, if the hurricane of your emotions has subsided, but resentment and bitterness towards your mother remain, try to answer the following questions for yourself:

What was your mother's childhood like? Was she happy with him?
In your opinion, on a “cool” head, is there anything to feel sorry for your mother for? How difficult was it for her to raise you due to objective circumstances - wealth, living conditions, the situation in the country and in the world?
What did your mother do good for you? What are you grateful to her for?

By answering these questions, you will recreate a more objective picture of the reality of your childhood. Often, resentment towards parents is due to the fact that we are twisted into an emotional knot and it is difficult for us to get out of it. It’s like a snow storm: we walk and it’s as if there’s nothing around.

It is important here not to close your eyes to the grievances that you have, and to look at your mother through rose-colored glasses instead of black ones. And to see the three-dimensional picture - yes, in some ways my mother was a bad mother for me. This is true. And this part of history cannot be rewritten. But in some ways she was good. Like all people. Just like ourselves.

What you have learned in this exercise can be used as a self-support technique in the future. If you again feel offended by your mother, remember this principle - to paint a three-dimensional picture. Sometimes it takes several approaches to relieve feelings of resentment.

Overprotective mother

Serious problem. Maximum attention, care, 100% control of the child’s behavior and actions. The reason is fear, worries about children. The world around them is perceived as a permanent threat to their lives, and a desire for restrictions appears.

Limitations lead to the fact that the child does not develop a range of knowledge about the world, he does not receive sufficient experience necessary for social interaction and making his own decisions. Such people are often called “infantile,” but the roots of infantilism are sometimes often associated with parental behavior. Violation of boundaries and excessive guardianship do not fit in with the freedom of choice and responsibility of the individual to others.

As a rule, the roots go to the parent complexes. Low self-esteem, a feeling of anxiety, a tendency towards idealism, a lack of satisfaction from one’s status and life achievements - all this can lead to overprotection.

When you need specialist help

If you are overwhelmed with emotions, if self-support techniques that you read on the Internet do not work, if resentment towards your mother ruins your life, communication with relatives has become very difficult, you can turn to a psychologist for help.
A specialist will help you get out of the emotional hole. Not everyone can cope with this on their own - and there is no shame in asking for help. We don’t endure toothache forever. There is no reason to endure mental pain either. Healthy? Join my group on VKontakte: You can also find me on FB, LiveJournal and Telegram:

What are the dangers of resenting your mother or father?

As children, when we were offended by someone, we simply pouted and crossed our arms in front of us. But in adulthood, old grievances can cause quite unpleasant disorders.

Most often, the resentment of adult children is transferred into their lives and affects the following areas:

Mental health status.
Physical state.
Relationships in your own family.
Relationships with your children.
Self-esteem.
Communication with people.

A person who carries a grudge in his soul all his life cannot be mentally and physically healthy. His mental state is disturbed and entails the occurrence of psychosomatic diseases. He transfers his condition and negativity onto his wife (husband), children and everyone around him, and thus destroys his life. As mentioned earlier, a person may not even realize that everything that happens to him is a consequence of his tense relationship with his mother or father.

To get rid of grievances, you need to do a lot of work and listen to yourself

Ways to warm up to your imperfect mother

As adults, some unloved children interrupt or minimize contact with their mother; some communicate with her out of a sense of duty.
Both are faced with difficult feelings and experiences. How can you help yourself? First of all, do not turn a blind eye to your anger and resentment. Anyone who suppresses or ignores their unpleasant feelings feels exhausted after contact with their mother. “Because he doesn’t want to ruin the relationship or hurt his elderly mother, who is in poor health, with an offensive word, he has to be very restrained, and this takes a lot of mental strength,”

– emphasizes the psychologist.

m.minval.info

Strong anger towards the mother occurs in people who are dissatisfied with their life in the present moment. “If an unloved child has grown up and was able to create a warm, affectionate relationship - he has a loved one, children, friends, and this brings him satisfaction, gives him a feeling of fullness in life - then the internal pain is muffled,”

– says Anna Khidiryan. The unbearable desire to take out your grievances on your mother, to take revenge, to make her suffer for the pain she has caused disappears.

When an adult receives from others what his mother could not give him and is satisfied with his life in the present, he can begin to remember warm moments in communication. For example, how a mother, usually cold and distant, once protected a teacher from attacks, how she worried and cared when he was seriously ill, how she baked a cake for his birthday according to a special recipe... “People who are dissatisfied with their lives begin to look for problems in the past. They see their mother only as “bad” – rejecting, neglecting. The temptation is great to consider it the cause of all misfortunes,”

– explains the psychologist. And then one careless word is enough for the accumulated rage to fall on the mother, who may not even be aware of her “crimes.” The mother may react aggressively (“Oh, you ungrateful creature, I worked for you all my life!”) or feel very guilty, start crying, clutch her heart - in both cases the “accuser” will not feel satisfied.

spiritualmediablog.com

According to the psychologist, an adult can feel whether parents are ready to discuss the topic of their real or fictitious dislike for him. If anger has accumulated since childhood, turning into rage, then dialogue was impossible. The likelihood that it will take place after claims are presented is negligible: the parties will not hear each other. Therefore, it is better to solve such problems in psychotherapy. After working through grievances and anger, after grieving for a “good” mother, whom a person seemed to “not receive,” he can say: “Yes, I was wounded, I felt bad and hurt. I know that my childhood cannot be returned or changed.” For many, behind this anger and sadness, the good things that were associated with their mother are suddenly revealed.

eurofarma.com.br

There are often cases when unloved sons and daughters, having become parents themselves, warm up to their imperfect mother. Assessing their childhood from an adult perspective, they begin to take into account certain objective circumstances of that time. For example, a mother spent little time with her child and was nervous because she had to work three jobs. Or she didn’t go to the hospital with him, because such rules were in force in Soviet times. Or she forced him to drink fish oil and go to the hated sports section because she cared about his health.

reflectionsintheword.org

A re-evaluation of the past and a softening of feelings occurs after realizing the main reason why the mother was not able to give full-fledged love: “Most likely, as a child she also did not happen to live in a warm, reliable, generous world. People love as best they can

“They can only give what they themselves once received.”

Everything you hate about your parents

Since we are taking on an emotional charge, why not tune ourselves to the most charged material. And what could be more powerful than hatred?

Don't hold back and write everything as it is. Write why you hate your parents. Let everything pour out of you, everything that you can remember.

In general, there is so much hatred in people that you might be surprised. Tears may even flow as you realize how much you hate your parents. The people you are supposed to love the most and who have given you so much...

If you feel guilty because you have so much hatred for your parents, write that out too. In the previous paragraph, I mentioned the feeling of guilt as something that will only interfere with the path of getting rid of resentment. Therefore, be sure to lay out everything without reserve.

It will be brutal, but very useful!

Your expectations from your parents

So, you are emotionally dependent on your parents. Against this background, you continue to carry within yourself your expectations that have been going on since childhood. Just like when you were a child, you expect a lot from your parents, and you don’t want to throw away your expectations.

From year to year, you hope, even if subconsciously, that in the end, your parents will justify them. You want them to take responsibility for their sins. You want them to apologize to you.

You want them to beg you for forgiveness.

For your parents to hug you and tell you what a good child you were...

You want them to admit that they loved your brother or sister (if they have one) more than you...

And so that they take back their offensive comments...

And they praised you...

To forgive your parents, clarify your expectations.

All these are unconscious expectations that you continue to carry within yourself. Naturally, if you tell all this to your parents, it will sound stupid, which you understand. Actually, that’s why you need offense - otherwise how will you justify all these expectations, given that no matter who you voice them to, everyone will say that these expectations are utter nonsense.

By the way, all these expectations feed your victim mentality. After all, what are these expectations if not the personification of your shifting responsibility for your own emotional well-being to your parents. Would a person who is responsible for his emotions say that someone owes him something? Does he really need something to finally find inner harmony?

Therefore, the third piece of advice is to write down all your expectations from your parents. Even the stupidest and most incredible ones, which, perhaps, still live in you. Add there all the ideas about what your parents should be like, now or someday.

If it seems to you that you have no expectations, it means that you simply do not realize them yet. In this case, pretend that you have them and write down any expectations at all.

For example, take the expectation “I expect my parents to apologize.” Pretend that you have it and write out how you will behave if you expect it. Add to it also how you will become resentful if this expectation is not met.