3 untruths to leave behind in 2023 and 3 questions to bring with you into 2024
[This is a long one...take your time]
Untruth #1: "I'm a bad daughter."
Despite millennia of conditioning that makes it feel true, it is not true. It has never been true.
You do not need to be monitored or checked in this way, as if you don't have any inherent or intrinsic motivation to embody kindness, dignity, and compassion (note, I am not saying selfless martyrdom here).
Being fierce, silly, ambitious, or any of the myriad things you may have been scolded for, doesn't make you bad either.
Your mother not liking your behavior doesn't make you bad. Ever. Full stop.
Practice this instead: I am neither good nor bad and I am done with harmful, shame-laden binaries that keep me stuck in patterns that don't serve me.
This frees you up to explore what you value and what it means to live in integrity with yourself, which is the foundation for healthy boundaries.
"Compassion without boundaries is self-destruction." ~ anon
Question: If it weren't about being good or bad, what choices would I make in regards to the relationship I have with my mother?
~~~
Untruth #2: "I'm too sensitive/weak/reactive."
Your body's wisdom (aka your nervous system) is never wrong or shameful. Being triggered is not a sign of weakness, it a sign of your humanity. Work with it rather than against it.
Practice this instead: I have expanded my understanding of – and my ability to recognize – dysfunction, abuse, and harm. I choose to understand myself and my triggers from a place of curiosity and wisdom rather than shame. This is maturity, not weakness, reactivity, or naiveté.
This frees you up to define what growth and healing look like to you, to cultivate safety and security (because it's not silly or ridiculous or selfish to take care of yourself in that way), and to have access to healthy anger...to your fierceness that knows when to growl in warning.
To reclaim the power that comes from and with sensitivity, not from denying it.
Question: If I stopped being ashamed of my body for trying to keep me safe (which is its job!), what would it tell me? How could I work with it and gain its trust?
~~~
Untruth #3: "It's my job to fix the relationship/make things right."
This usually means being who your mother thinks you should be, and not having honest conversations with her about how you feel, because she acts like doing so hurts her. In other words, "fixing the relationship" means "being responsible for how she feels" and that means you're engaging in her emotional immaturity (more on that below).
Practice this instead: It's not my job to be someone my mother approves of, or to protect her from her own feelings, so the relationship can be "fixed" (aka "go back to the way it used to be")
This frees you up to take responsibility for who you are being now (versus "being In reaction to her"); to manage your behavior, not hers; and to take blame, justification, and over-explaining out of the equation.
You may have have spent much of your life trying to "make things right" with your mother because you believe #1 and #2 above: that you're bad and that you're too sensitive/weak/reactive. No matter how hard your brain works to find evidence for it being true, it's just not.
Question: If I stopped trying to fix it, who would I be? What would I do with my time and energy instead?
~~~
If those three untruths feel true to you, you may have been raised by an emotionally immature mother. That isn't an insult or an accusation. It's the result of her growing up in a family (and culture) in which it wasn't safe to have and express feelings, and so her feelings became someone else's responsibility.
Then she raised you the same way.
As much as your mother probably prizes honesty, she taught you by example that it actually isn't okay (and thus not safe) to be honest about the one thing that makes you you: your feelings.
That makes many of us emotionally immature. I, for sure, am emotionally immature in some ways, in some situations, and with certain people. Knowing that about myself frees me rather than imprisons me.
~~~
The bottom line: any hurt/anger/fear/sadness your mother feels and tries to make you responsible for isn't the result of you being yourself or you setting boundaries. It doesn't even come from you going no-contact (if you have), even though she thinks that's why she feels the way she does.
As long as she thinks that – as long as she is focused on you as the cause of her feelings – she will continue to feel hurt/anger/fear/sadness.
As long as you believe it too, you will continue to feel like a bad girl try and fix it.
For her to break that pattern and feel better, she could choose to look inward, and ask herself, "why do I feel/react this way when my daughter feels/acts that way?"
"Why do I feel/react this way when my daughter sets a boundary with me?"
"Why do I feel/react this way when my daughter tells me something I did when she was a child hurt her?"
She could choose to practice emotional maturity: to befriend her emotions and understand them rather than being afraid of them.
She could choose to say, "I made mistakes and did stuff I wish I hadn't done...and I am willing to work through that so I can forgive myself rather than make this about my daughter."
She could choose to stop running from her own triggers.
She could choose to stop involving you in, or making you responsible for, what is hers.
She could choose to work through it with a therapist or someone like me who can hold her hand with so much compassion as she walks through the fire and comes out on the other side, free from the crippling untruths she believes about herself (whether she knows it or not).
As I wrote in You Are Not Your Mother: Releasing Generational Trauma and Shame:
There are mothers – who instead of being okay with their daughters choosing a different way – take it as a personal affront and rebuke of themselves, their values, and their mothering. When uncomfortable feelings (usually fear, shame, or grief) arise, they don't have a healthy way to process those emotions (because they were taught not to).
In some cases, those feelings are so painful they trigger a fight, flight, freeze, appease (or fawn) response.
If your mother is one of those mothers, when you try to talk with her about it, you're met with some combination of a blank stare, tears, dismissive comments, helplessness, pity, resentment, contempt, anger...and definitely a lack of empathy.
The vulnerability is too much.
She "can't" have these conversations. She can't acknowledge her own trauma or choose to do her own healing work because her nervous system has been hijacked, and even though the tools are now available to her too, she won't use them.
Over time, she creates a narcissistic shield to protect herself from the shame, fear, and deep sadness or grief. She becomes increasingly bitter, critical, and negative, and projects the shame, fear, and sadness onto you.
Understanding that does not mean giving up and letting your mother's emotional immaturity run the show. It's an invitation to make a different choice.
Much, much love,
Karen
Benevolent double-agent deploying fierce love and partner in a heart-wide-open life
"...and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do – determined to save the only life you could save." ~ Mary Oliver
