Hey everybody! Happy thursday.
Now today's question comes from the website.
You know, katimorton.com, where you go under videos
and Q&A for videos or submit an idea
And you can put your questions in there, and people answer them and I answer them
Yeah that place.
So the question today is
'"One topic I'd love for you to discuss on your channel someday
is recovering from an emotionally abusive, emotionally unavailable, or generally 'mean' mother.
How do we heal from the hurt of not having a "'good enough'" mother?
As adults, how do we fulfill that longing to be held and hugged
most importantly, feel fully accepted, understood, and comforted?"
And I really wanted to talk about this because
this is something that comes up in my practice a lot
and honestly, comes up online a lot.
Many of my viewers, many of you have spoken to me about
how you grew up without a mother that was either available,
maybe she worked too much
maybe she just wasn't like a lovey-dovey mom like you needed
Or, you were told that it wasn't ok to cry
or to feel anything, and so we slowly
as children
start shutting down
and disconnecting from those emotions
And so today, I want to talk with you about that
But I want you to stay tuned until the end because I'm trying something new
I asked you on twitter or facebook if you had any other questions about this topic
and I'm gonna pull one of those and answer it at the end of the video, so make sure you stay tuned for that.
Before I even get into this topic
I want to recommend that I've used in my practice multiple times
and even with some of you, you've told me about this book and how much it helped
and that is, I don't know if you can see it
but it says "The Emotionally Absent Mother"
And I think I've mentioned this before
and I wish it had like, a nicer title
and didn't look quite so sad
But it is extremely helpful
And I can't tell you how amazing this has been for so many of my clients
and so many of you
Because the truth about healing from an emotionally absent mother
Is that is has so much to do with attachment
an attachment is something that is so vitally important
because it tells us, as children
that we have a safe foundation.
Almost like, it is really safe for us to go out in the world
and to try things that we either do well or not
and know that it's ok because we have this foundation
We have this base, this
I like to think of it like a safe harbour
like we can always come back to our safe harbour
bring our boat in and we can relax
knowing that people are there to support us and they're behind us
And when we don't have that safe attachment
It can lead to a lot of different things.
I'm just gonna name a couple
But the book is amazing!
If you're struggling with this,
please purchase this!
and read it, and work with your therapist on it.
It has amazing tools and techniques and things in there
that are easily usable and things that you can do in your daily life
But when we don't have a safe attachment,
it can lead to us struggling to manage any emotion
Every emotion can feel really scary
because when we were children we were told that it wasn't ok
and it wasn't something that was comforted,
like feeling sad, it wasn't something that our mother was like
"It'll be ok, don't worry"
We never got that.
And so we feel like those emotions are scary
and overwhelming
and no one is there to soothe us.
It can also make it difficult for us to have empathy in others
because if we aren't ok expressing ourselves,
when we see someone else expressing it,
we thing" eeeh woah woah woah" I don't think thats quite ok
and it can make us really uncomfortable
Also it can cause us to struggle in relationships
we can struggle to let people close to us,
because it can feel really unsafe and uncomfortable
And also, it can make us really uncomfortable with anything that's emotionally driven.
If someone is really emotional towards us we're uncomfortable,
Everything that we feel
and every emotion that we go through in a day can be really uncomfortable
and so you can see how this can hinder us in so many ways.
Along with understanding what not having a good enough mother can do to us,
I think it's also important to note
how we heal from it
Because that's really the question, and that's what I get more excited about
Is how can we get better?
But I do believe that understanding where it comes from,
and how it can affect us,
is really pivotal in our recovery from it.
I do think it's really, really important for you
to take time reading through the first few chapters of this
because understanding how not having
an emotionally available, or a "good enough" mother
Affected you
I think that's really important
but also now, moving forward and
the question at hand is:
How do we heal from it?
What can we do?
And that's why I love this book so much
because it starts out
telling us what it may
what symptoms we may have because of it.
and the later, gets into what things we can do to help heal
and a lot of that work
comes, like, from the "child voice"
and I know you're thinking,
"What the hell does that mean, Kati?"
But often, when we grow up without an emotionally available mom
We don't feel like we have a voice as a child
We often snuff out all of the emotions,
all of the experiences
and we just don't feel safe expressing it
And so part of the work that I do with my clients in my practice is
having them express
from that child voice
all the things they maybe wanted to say when they were growing up
and felt that they couldn't.
I know that can be very awkward in session sometimes
But something that has helped a lot of my clients
is writing it down,
or typing it out and bringing it in to session later
and it can be a letter from your child-like self
to your adult self.
All the things maybe that were really hurtful
and that happend
all the feeling you have about it
and really just letting that child be a child
and letting it throw a tantrum
letting it vent
I know this can sound really crazy
but often when we grow up without an emotionally available mom
We don't feel that it's safe to do that
and having a safe space
like the therapy setting to do it can be so incredibly healing.
There are also techniques for self-soothing
and that's something that I think a lot of people who didn't have an emotionally available mother struggle with
beause we didn't get any of those
rubs on the back,
and "It'll be ok"
and "I'm here for you"
and "I believe in you!"
We didn't get any of that softness
and that mothering that we so very much desired
and so what I have a lot of my clients do
is practice what I call "good mother messages"
and I'm taking it directly from this book
and these "good mother messages"
are things that you wish you could have heard from your mom
It could be
"I love you no matter what"
it could be
"You're so amazing,
and I'm always here for you."
It could be any number of messages
and they even give examples in the book
Which is what I love
because sometimes, when I'm saying this to clients they're like:
"I don't know what that means, good mother message?"
Because, we didn't have it.
So how can we just, pull it out of thin air?
And so it can help to kind of
think of things that maybe we really wanted to hear
and reading about it can really help spark those ideas.
so I have my clients tell themselves
these good mother messages while doing
something caring for themselves
this could be, you know, rubbing your own feet
this could be taking a bath
it could be just relaxing, put it on your cozy pjs
and watching your favorite movie.
Could be any of those things that
are kind of part of the self care realm, right?
we're doing things that feel good to us
at the same time we're starting to re-mother ourselves
and I know that sounds kind of creepy and odd
and it's hard to put it all together but what we have to do
is we have to heal that child
and we have to talk to that child in us
that didn't get all the things i'm talking about
and so it's really important that
even if we don't believe them at the beginning
we continue to tell ourselves
these good mother messages
And one of the last techniques that I'm gonna talk about today
but like I said
there's so much more about this
that I, this is just like the tip of the iceberg
if you want me to do more in-depth videos about different parts of this
let me know and give us a thumbs up
but the last thing
that I would encourage you to do if
you're struggling with this is to build up your support
who are your people that you know love you unconditionally?
who are friends that have been there for a really long time?
we may not have these people yet but we
but we can start to build them
maybe that's getting the therapist can help support
and you know you have regular touch bases with
I would recommend that you see an attachment based or trauma therapist
because that is such a part of this
and it can make it so much more
healthy for you to count on a therapist
and they know all the techniques
and tools to make sure that it's done healthfully
but those are just some of the things that I would encourage you to do
and i know this is really hard
like I said, there's so much more to get into when it comes to this
I worked on this book a lot with my clients and I know
many of you have worked on it.
There's so much to talk about so like I said if you
want me to do more and get more in-depth
let me know in the comments and give us a thumbs up.
like I said remember the beginning
I said stay tuned to the end I'm going to
answer some of your questions on
Facebook and Twitter
well let's do just that so on facebook
one of the questions is: "what do you do
if your mom acknowledges that she
" Could have done better" but when you start
talking about your gripes about her parenting
she becomes defensive."
Now, a lot of the work when we're healing from
an emotionally absent mother has to be
done on our end because the truth about it
is that a mom is always going to be
defensive about her parenting and
someone who is emotionally absent
usually has their own ish going on that
they need to workout and truthfully,
has nothing to do with you so I would
encourage you to not work on the
relationship with your mom directly,
work on your relationship with yourself
because that's how we learn to
re-mother ourselves and slowly start healing from this.
Another question is:
"How about a mother who is too emotional?
My psychologist that it's like my mother-
i'm my mother's personal therapist.
Obviously ,that's a bad thing right?
This can go both ways, even a mother
being too emotional expressing too much
to you means that there was no time for
you to express things to her
hence she's still emotionally absent to
you and that's really where the work comes in
and it's very similar and I know
it can feel very different but you
having to be a parentified child,
that's what we call it in the therapy world,
when you have to act older than you were
and like, parent your own parent
we still need to learn how to re-mother ourselves
now i'm hopping over to Twitter
on Twitter one of the questions is:
"My mom knows she's an unfit mother
but she won't let me stay with another
family member because she doesn't want
me to be happy.Why?"
Like I said before, often
mothers that were emotionally absent have a lot
of their own problems.
They may have had trauma in their life.
Often they came from an emotionally absent mother as well
and truthfully, imagine what it's like for them
because if they can't be
emotionally available to their own child
chances are they don't have any healthy,
close relationships that they can count on
therefore, by your mom saying this,
she's kind of forcing you to be her only support
and I would encourage you to set
healthy boundaries and know that you get
to choose where you go and what,
where you stay and what you do
and then you get to work on the whole process of
re-mothering yourself
Another question on Twitter says: "Is it considered
emotionally absent when she wants
me to open up to her but then ends up
devaluating my problems on her own?"
I would call an emotional abuse and
It could definitely be part of this but you
can check out, i'll put in the description
my link to my emotional abuse video
because her asking for you to express
things and then devaluing it is really
part of emotional abuse.
Next question, we got a couple more says:
Is it normal to find another mother figure who you feel very
attracted to, maybe an older friend,
family, friends etc.
It's very common and like i said
i can't recommend this book enough because it really helps you
recognize where that attachment comes from
and work to heal it because when we
are so attracted to other people
and trying to fill that mom void it can
honestly be unhealthy and so it's
important that it's done slowly.
I think family, friends and close friends are
really great but making sure at the same time
that you're still learning to
re-mother yourself and healing the wounds
and because no matter who we try to stuff in there
what that whole really represents is
the mom that we wish we had.
Next question: Is it healthy to just
give up on ever having a good
relationship with an emotionally absent parent?
The truth is yes, if they are not
healthy for us I would compare it to
kind of like a toxic family member or
toxic person in your life
if it's not good and they're not working on it and
they're not trying to help you then it's
completely ok to not try to have a
relationship with them if it benefits
you none
it's okay to not do that and
to even cut them off because often people who are
emotionally absent don't recognize their faults
and will continue to do it over and over
Last two questions, this question says:
"Does that gap have to be filled or
can't just stay that way?
if so how would one fill it and not let it affect the rest?"
The gap cannot stay there for us to be healthy
if we leave that gap in ourselves
where a good mother would have been
we will find ourselves attaching
unhelpfully to people in our lives
that can really harm us and
often will get in really unhealthy relationships
as a way to try to cultivate the love and care
that we wanted for so long and so
the truth is that it may not need to be
filled with another person but we're
going to need to learn how to heal that
stitch up that wound
give it time so that we don't need to fill it
with someone else.
And the final question: "Can emotionally absent parents
influence/damage our own future relationships?
I try to be the opposite."
It definitely can but if we work on ourselves
and if we do some of the tools
and the tips and tricks that are in this book
and that I've mentioned in this video
we can heal from it and grow from it
and not do the same thing again.
They find that a lot of people who come from
emotionally absent parents will try to
do it again themselves if they're not aware
of it and they don't do things
to try to heal and to re-mother themselves
so that you have complete control over this.
I know it's really hard work,
therapy is really hard,
but using some of these tools and doing some of these things can
help us begin to heal that wound and
know that we can move forward without
feeling like there's a void
or it having an effect on any of our future relationships.
A lot of the answers
and tips and tricks that I offer
in this video, like I said, come from this amazing book
and you can find it under
my amazon list that I have on my website
so hop over there and check it out
i'll put a link in the description so you can get
so you can get over there easier but know that
I will keep following up on this
I know it's a really important topic
Thank you so much for asking your questions!
I love you all!
Have a wonderful day,
And I will see you next time. Bye!