The Mother Wound…
On the face of things, it is difficult to admit to ourselves that our mothers, the women who gave us life, were unable to give us the unconditional love, safety and support that we needed.
The Mother Wound is steeped in pain, it stems from relationships (or lack of) with our mothers, which usually have been passed down through generations, the result of which is profound and painful.
When the Mother Wound is left unhealed and unresolved, we pass it on to our children, in the same way our mothers, grandmothers and generations before failed to heal it and passed it on to us.
Collectively the Mother Wound usually stems from the disempowerment and the dysfunctional coping mechanisms that women have employed to process pain. Spiritually the Mother Wound is a wound with its own life, causing an existential disconnection from our bodies and the people who surround us, often adults who have experience such upbringings are unable to feel, grieve or cry, they remain detached from emotions, both good and bad.
The Mother Wound usually consists of toxic behaviour and oppression which has a negative impact on our own perceptions and choices and about those we come into contact with for the the rest of our adult lives.
I speak from experience when I say that the Mother Wound includes painful patterns, where our mothers cause us to sabotage or limit ourselves unconsciously.
The Mother Wound manifests itself in many ways, some of which are:
Being unable to be our real, full selves and feeling frightened of making others feel threatened
Having a high tolerance to people treating us badly
Taking on people with ‘baggage’ in friendships and romantically, leading to co-dependent behaviour
Self-sabotage
Eating disorders
Depression
Addiction
Entering into abusive relationships
Feeling the need to control everything, being a perfectionist
It also comes with deep feelings of pain:
Never feeling worthy of good things happening to us
Feeling embarrassed to share our successes
Feeling guilty and shameful
Trying to remain small, in order to be lovable
A vague, persistent sense that “There’s something wrong with me’’
Fear of failure and disapproval
Having weak boundaries and an unclear sense of self
Not feeling worthy or capable of creating what we truly desire
Arranging our lives around people to avoid ‘rocking the boat’
Never feeling we have our mothers approval
Not feeling safe enough to take up space and voice our truth
Breaking the cycle:
The good news is, as painful as this experience has been for those of us who have been through it, there are ways of healing the Mother Wound. You can break the cycle so it no longer needs to be passed on. To do so you need to start by taking personal responsibility, examine your relationships with the intention of making positive changes, these learned behaviours are hard to stop, they are as natural as blinking and breathing, but stopping these unconscious patterns allows you to make new ones which really do reflect the way you wish now to behave.
In my next blog I will share ways in which you break the cycle and rebuild your self esteem.
You may feel that added support would help in the process: Growing up without the mothering we need can leave us with real psychological issues that take time and commitment to overcome.
I use CBT and have been through such a process personally, meaning I can help to fast-track your results and provide you with a calm, non-judgmental space, which will allow for self revelations to come faster.
Contact me today to see how I can be here for you during this process.
““I observed her, amazed and disappointed, and determined to not be like her, to become truly different and so show her that it was useless and cruel to frighten us with her repeated ‘You will never ever ever see me again’; instead she should have changed for real, or left home for real, left us, disappeared. How I suffered for her and for myself, how ashamed I was to have come out of the belly of such an unhappy person’’ ”