Have you ever wondered if you grew up with a toxic mother or if you are? Do you know how to identify if you have a toxic bond with your mother or with your children? Would you like to learn how to overcome it?
In this article we explain what it means and what it means to have or be a toxic mother, how to recognize if your relationship with your mother or your children is maladaptive and what to do to overcome this situation.
In this connection, Enric explains that the education of the children is conditioned by the education received from the parents. Achieving an emotional balance is key to avoiding establishing toxic relationships with our children.
In this YouTube live, David Corbera answers several questions about how to become aware of our conflicts and conditioning with the mother figure and how this is essential to transform this relationship and become emotional adults.
Does the perfect mother exist?
If you had to describe what a “perfect mother” is, what qualities would you mention?
Most of us, regardless of our personal experience, when thinking about the image of the ideal mother, will emphasize attributes such as care, attention, tenderness, nutrition and unconditional love towards their children.
That we share this vision of motherhood is not accidental, but rather the idea of the “perfect mother” is rooted in our unconscious.
This image is what we call archetype and defines what should be a “good mother”.
This unattainable ideal, shaped by our family and cultural context, shapes our way of perceiving to our mother, to other people who symbolically represent this role – such as a caregiver, aunt, grandmother, teacher, etc. – and our own motherhood, real or symbolic.
Do you use your idea of ”mother” as a guide or as a limitation?
This image of “perfect mother“exists only in our mind and we can choose to use it as a guide or as a template, to make sense of our experiences.
We can use it as an aid to orient ourselves, since it allows us to know what to do as mothers or caregivers, acting as a guide that in the animal kingdom we call maternal instinct.
However, we may also use this information to create an inflexible moldmaking comparisons between what we experience and an impossible ideal.
This happens when a person considers that his mother, or herself, is a “bad mother” or one “toxic mother”for not fitting into the mold, since he has exercised not so perfect upbringing.
Certainly, in many cases, a mother fails to establish a beneficial bond with her children.
If this is your case, either as a mother and/or as a child, you can always become aware of what is dysfunctional and make changes, instead of continuing with the accusation and guilt.
What is a “toxic mother”?
Not all mothers play their role in a beneficial way for their children, since they do not provide them with a firm emotional foundation that allow them to build themselves as adults capable of walking safely through life.
In the 90s the psychologist Susan Forward first used the term “toxic mother” to define the behaviors of those mothers characterized by harmful upbringing for their children.
This concept is widely used today, however, we have lost sight of the fact that What is really defined as “toxic” is not the person, but the maladaptive relationship that hinders the natural development process of children.
The person is not toxic, but the bond that we maintain with them
When an adult person says that their mother is toxic, they usually do so because they are notor does it fit your mental image of the “ideal mother”.
Also, he doesn’t have a good relationship with her. Do you think that you are responsible for the problems you currently have? and therefore still holds a grudge against her for the way she treated her during childhood.
Call “toxic” to a person -mother, partner, boss, friend, etc- is the best way to put one’s own fears, shortcomings and limitations outside of oneself.
In other words, it is hold another person responsible for what, as adults, we must assume: our own life and
“Growing up is to stop blaming parents.”
— Maya Angelou
Other times, the person is not aware that certain limitations and blocks that you are currently experiencing are related to the type of bond you have established with the mother, so the need to transform this relationship may go unnoticed.
This happens because what we mean by “toxic mother” does not always have to do with what most imagine: an evil woman who hates her children, violent and abusive.
On many occasions, the toxic bond between mothers and children goes unnoticed.That is why we are going to see some keys to be able to recognize it, both with our mother and with our children, and what we can do to transform these relationships that are so important to life.
How to recognize a “toxic mother”
Although maintaining a toxic relationship with the mother is much more common than we think, it is not always easy to notice.
Being aware of this is essential to be able to capable of directing her life and taking responsibility for her well-being, freeing herself from “toxicity” and also freeing her mother from a burden that is not her responsibility to carry.
Also, Healing the relationship with the mother is a fundamental step before we can establish a healthier bond with our children..
Characteristics of a “toxic mother”
Before seeing what characterizes what we call “toxic mother”we must be clear that In no case is the mother “toxic”, but the relationship that you have with your children.
A woman can have several children and establish a dysfunctional relationship with only one of them.
Next, we detail some characteristics of a mother who establishes a toxic relationship with her children:
- Controller, is always aware of his children, overprotecting them, making them .
- Absent, either physically or emotionally. They do not have the capacity to accompany or assist the affective needs of their children.
- Negligent in basic care, either because they are unable to detect the needs of their children or because they consider their own needs a priority.
- emotionally unstablecannot adequately manage their emotional states and expresses emotional ups and downs that condition the family environment.
- Manipulative and victimizer. It oscillates between invasive and passive-aggressive attitudes.
- conflict generator on a regular basis, be it with your partner, family, work, etc.
- He projects his frustrations onto his children. such as unfulfilled wishes or goals not achieved throughout your life. She tries to achieve what she couldn’t or didn’t know how to do through her children’s lives.
- overprotectiveworries and acts excessively for their children, underestimating their worth, acting as if they really needed their help and, as a consequence, prevents them from developing their abilities.
- Absorbent and possessive, she needs to be with her children all the time, occupying all their spaces. They feel that their children are her property and that, in some way, they are indebted to her both for the care offered in childhood and for having “gave them life”.
We are responsible for our way of relating as adults
It is important that all these attitudes of the mother are the result of patterns of behavior learned in her emotional environment of childhood.
When kept regularly during the rearing years, constitute a subtle form of mistreatmentoften unconsciously and even well-intentioned, which can mark the life of the future adult.
However, although there is a general belief that this bond determines adult life, the truth is that is not determinativebut all We have the ability and responsibility to transform our way of relating to our mother when we are adults
It is essential to understand that, when we are older, we are the ones who maintain the toxic bond with our mother and, therefore, those responsible for transforming how we relate to it.
How to know if you still have a toxic relationship with your mother
In order to make the internal changes that will allow us to overcome the conflicts with the mother, the first thing we must do is recognize the signs that indicate that we still maintain a toxic bondeven if she has passed away or we do not interact with her on a regular basis.
At this point, let’s remember that We are not talking only about our mother, but about the archetypeand we can see represented what it symbolizes in other people around us, such as a boss, a friend, a partner or even our own daughter.
In this way, the conflicts we experience with the people around us they allow us to recognize the type of relationship we have established with our mother during childhood and the influence that she still exerts in our lives.
Example:
Becoming aware of the emotional and behavioral patterns generated by the dysfunctional relationship that we still maintain with our mother, allows us to understand why we act and relate the way we doeither with friends, partner, children or in the workplace.
He is key to identifying this information and redefine the relationship we have with our mother from emotional maturity.
Let’s see an example:
A woman holds a session at Bioneuroemoción in which she consults about a conflict with her boss at work.
The point of greatest stress occurs when she tells him that “the help he is giving in the company is not useful for him.”
When investigating other situations in resonance, we found that, during her childhood, she helped her mother with the housework and she used to tell her: “You’re not doing it well, you’re not helping me, you’re giving me more work.”
Both scenes show us the particular conflict of the client, expressing the archetypal image of the “mother” in her “boss”.
Thus, beliefs, thoughts, physical sensations, feelings and automatic response behaviors are activated automatically and unconsciously.
The client thinks that her mother “doesn’t love or appreciate her”, “that she doesn’t “recognize her effort or value her”.
Thus, the perception she has of herself in this work situation is that “she is not valuable” or that “she is not good enough”, among others.
This information is projected on the stress situation in the workplace, which allows him to recognize the conflict with the mother and understand the origin of the stress that he currently lives with his boss.
This understanding is essential to be able to take back the reins of our life and begin to build ties more in line with what we really wantleaving aside old patterns, of thought and behavior, that do not belong to us and that no longer serve us today.