Why the Mother Who Lives in Your Head is the One Who Matters. [VIDEO]
It isn’t only the difficult mother in your life that gives you trouble, it is the internalized mother that lives in your heart and head that controls much of what you do and how you feel about yourself.
Here’s how-
Transcript
Mother Daughter Relationship Issues: The Internalized Mother. How your relationship with your mother (past or present) effects your feelings about yourself. A child internalizes his or her mother and carries his or her parent inside themselves that is expereinced at the psychological level.
This internalized mother can have an effect on her child even when she is not close by.
The Internalized Mother- Your relationship with your mother (past or present) effects your feelings about yourself today.
This internalized mother has an effect on her child even when she is not close by.
Like it or not, whether or mother’s living or not, your relationship with her ( then and now) really matters.
It doesn’t have to be the ongoing current relationship you have with mom, it can be your internalized mother that has the greatest affect on you.
By that I mean… what we do with attachment figures, parents, people that were important to us as children, is we experience them and then we take them in.
This is called an introject.
We take them in and we relate to them as if they were there with us.
Thus we take our mothers in and relate to her even when she is nowhere in sight.
That’s the reason why you might feel guilty or check in with yourself and ask…what would my mother think? Maybe even out of conscious awareness that you’re relating to this introject.
This may be out of conscious awareness… that you’re relating to this introjected mother.
If mom was hypercritical, her daughter’s self-talk will be critical if she doesn’t work to separate the two voices.
To really sort through how you got mom’s approval and whether or not that’s best for you in the here and now… is important.
Many times daughters struggle with the question- “How can I take care of myself, do what’s best for me… and still feel like a good person?”.
“How do I set healthy boundaries with my mother and still feel good about myself?”
The ways in which you learned to be a good girl for mom… has everything to do with how you relate to yourself in the present.
This is complicated and it’s individual but it’s so important to establish a healthy sense of self, that with a healthy sense of separation from mom.
As both a mother and as a daughter, and a therapist to women, I talk a lot about these issues with women. I help women sort through what their values are… and their self-assessment is — to be differentiated from moms.
P.S. It is essential that a daughter challenge and eventually rid herself of the hyper-critical statements from a critical mom. These can be deadly to her sense of self-worth.
Become Aware.
This is how we Rise!
This article first appeared on https://daughtersrising.info/
DO YOU EXPERIENCE THE “GOOD DAUGHTER” SYNDROME?
Do you have a Narcissistic or Difficult Mother?
Are you the “Good Daughter”? The Rebel? or The Lucky One?
Take the quiz and find out!
Bio- Katherine Fabrizio, M.A., L.P.C. has treated Adult Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers, Trapped in the Role of the “Good Daughter” for over 30 years. Dedicated to empowering these women, she now offers online help for clients and training (CE’s) for therapists at Daughtersrising.info. Her book, Daughters Rising: Rising Above the Shame, Guilt and Self-Doubt Mothers Pass Down to Daughters, is now on Amazon. Katherine lives in Raleigh N.C. where she raised two daughters and still speaks regularly with her mother.