If your mum was highly critical and judgmental are you like now?

[toomanykeys]

I'm just interested to see what effects people have had if their mother was extremely critical and judgy of you and orhers.
I have very low self esteem and doubt myself a lot, don't trust my own decisions.
I would describe my mum as a snob, always looking down her nose at others and wore her heart on her sleeve so was very dramatic with emotions, especially disappointment.
I have spent a lot of my adulthood trying to gain approval often changing my plans if she disapproves.
I'm also very quiet and have social anxiety which is at the end of the day fear of judgment/scrutiny which I know comes from my mums judgement.

I grew up hearing my mum comment about people's weight and I have had an eating disorder since as if I ever put on a few pounds she will notice and point it out so I obsessively keep it off.
She will looks down her nose at anyone she perceives as common so I'm always wearing my smartest clothes in her presence and using my best telephone voice so doesn't pick at that.
Her house is show home perfect and I worry so much when she visits because her standards are so high.

I can't relax and I can't be myself whoever that might be, I'm not sure I even have an authentic self but I'm also socially awkward around others and constantly worrying about what they think of me.
Having said all this my brother grew up with her and is super confident, bold and carefree of her views but I haven't been able to make a life for myself that doesn't evolve around her approval and I feel like a failure if she I don't measure up to her ridiculously high standards.
Can anyone else relate to these negative effects of an overly critical mother?

You sound just as judgemental and demanding as the judgemental mothers being mentioned here, @Glassofeau

A lot of people from abusive backgrounds don’t realise how damaged they are. For instance they don’t think they have low self esteem, they just believe they were a disappointing child. They become people pleasers as a survival mechanism but just assume it’s normal kindness. They can’t work out what they like or don’t like because opinions and feelings got them into trouble as kids, but they think it’s just because they are naturally easygoing as people and not because they have learned to suppress themselves.
The list goes on, but short to say many victims of child abuse take a while to realize they are acting out of trauma

Dunno what you said there @Glassofeau that was deleted as it broke the civilised rules of conversation but perhaps you need to work on yourself a bit more.

Yes OP, I can relate. I have had a lot of therapy to understand that the critical voice is coming from my childhood and that I can choose whether or not I listen to it anymore. I have chosen not to live in submission to this voice which at it's harshest has led me to some very dark places. However through the therapeutic work I can also see that my Mum was shaped by her childhood too and I can also appreciate the relationship she has with my kids which is so different. I don't think you need to cut her off to gain your emotional security and autonomy, but I do believe you need to go through a process where you learn what was taken away from you as a child and you can see what you have been denied by living like this. Good luck to you. You are worth it.

I understand that which is why it's helpful to let someone know that they have agency, are in charge of their life and can do something about how they feel. It also helps to point them in the right direction for example, therapy, books and websites.

Some people have learned helplessness and think there's nothing they can do about their situation.

My mother was very critical and judgemental.

The main impacts it has had on me:

I don't really give a shit about her or what she thinks. I am still in touch and do see her but emotionally I very much keep my distance. It's just my normal now and I always find it surprising when I see close mother daughter relationships

There are some things that I deliberately do to be defiant - they are going to sound ridiculous but for example she is obsessive about cleanliness and every time I don't wipe my washing line before hanging out my clothes or don't open a door with my elbow, I think "ha take that" to her in my head. Very childish.

I am so wary of being like her and dragging down my family with negativity that I go too far the opposite way and I find it difficult to admit when something has gone wrong or I am having a bad day. E.g. if it pisses it down on a day out, I am that person who is like "it is still fun, look at the puddles" because my mum would have spent hours making it everyone else's fault that it was raining.

@Happyinarcon I agree with everything you say. 'Kindness' is sometimes a mask for something else, and all sorts of difficult things can lie under that surface.

It's absolutely right that people need to face the sometimes-severe problems that their childhoods have caused, but sometimes it just isn't possible to undo all the damage.

But I do think that a parent who has faced what they have done, apologised and try to put it right, as far as possible, and certainly act differently towards their child and grandchildren should be given a chance if their child is able to give one without treading endlessly on eggshells.

There's rarely a one size fit all answer; different people have different levels of damage and different ability to realise that and to heal.

my mother was similar but loving. I emulate the loving bit with my now grown up DD but try not to be judgy or foist my views on her. I'm sure I don't get it right all the time but I do try to be as supportive as possible - practically, emotionally and financially

Both my parents were strict and critical but I never got the feeling my mother really liked me. She much favoured who would be off to do 'boys stuff' which was exciting etc and he still is the golden boy. She never bothered to do much with me at all. But she was very concerned about what people would thing and the 'done thing'. I was a girl and had to be in pink and all the usual gender typical stuff. I was to keep quiet and be meek and a people pleaser. My brother could do what he liked so he has always had much more confidence and an ego.

Needless to say I work (she never did) in a male dominated environment and have had a very different life to her and what my whole family thought i would do. My brother was heard to say there was no point me going to university as I would just be a housewife.

@monsterfish my mother was also obsessed with what people would say ir think. She was far more interested in that than her children's happiness.

Question: what ages do you think these feeling began OP and those who have experienced similar?

I felt my mum was the same, sometimes critical towards me and often had a put down when talking about people to other people.

i feel like I’m treading her path (but accept I’m responsible for myself). I try so hard to be positive and supportive but I do get frustated as a parent and now my tween has this week called me patronising for the first time.

It has hit hard. Especially because I actually know I can be… but it comes after having said things nicely or politely ten times and been ignored?!

So where is the line? How do you deal with people who just can’t or don’t do obvious things? After being endlessly patient yes I do snap because I feel like a doormat and I want them to know that I’m not??

Example 1: son home late from activity (home 10pm)… I make him food, ask him all about it, tell him to lie in tomorrow as I will wake him up, pack his bag, make his food and drive him to school as I know he’s tired. Send him up to bed… then he spends 45 mins in shower (he’s 12) and it’s 11pm and I have to tell him to get out after dropping heavy shampoo bottles several times and waking everyone up… and apparently I’m patronising??

Example 2: both dh and I at work all day yesterday. DS needs packed lunch for today. I’m out until 10pm with kids activities… DH gets home 6.30pm with free evening. Asks what he can do to help… I send message saying pls make 2 x cheese sandwich for DS. Get home and there is half a sandwich made in a piece of foil. I remind what I actually asked for and am patronising for it….

sorry I don’t mean to derail the thread but am I turning into my mother, and if I am do I have time to do anything about it??

I have zero self esteem. This affects everything including being in a minimum wage job because I don't dare apply for anything with more responsibility.

I'm also pathetically people pleasing and have in the past slept with men purely because I was so surprised they had asked.

It has however, made me an extremely positive, attentive and jolly mum! I'm not critical or snobby myself.

My mum didn’t criticise her children often but criticised others relentlessly. She would spend hours talking to me about her problems with family and friends and trawling through why they behaved the way they did. I was a child/tween so this was massively influential on my ideas about relationships and friendships. She also has zero self awareness. It’s a messy mix I’m trying to undo and remove from my own mind, it’s left me too self aware and self critical.

@MillyGoat none of that sounds patronising to me unless it's in the way it's delivered

You don't have to be a doormat to your son, lovely. You can encourage him to look after himself even if he's tired; encoragjng a healthy self reliance is good! It sounds to me like he's starting to become a teenager and develop a teen's big mouth, honestly.

Both things can be true at the same time; that you take responsibility for your own life and that you realise your mother’s behaviour wasn’t healthy and normal.

You have every right to prioritise your health and especially if there are children involved and distance yourself ..to whatever extent..from someone who is so problematic.

For me, I didn’t go to therapy but I did read a lot about the kind of behaviour my mum exhibited. I worked on myself during the relationship and after I left, realising she was always going to put one face on for others and another for me. She would always make out like it’s me with the issue despite being an absolute pain with people. Realise you deserve normality.

When you are a parent you train your child how to think, even if you don’t realise it. Yes they have some autonomy but if you tell them they’re stupid constantly, they’ll grow up believing this. It is a process to get out of that mentality and whilst a person may understand that there is the concept of having agency, it’s hard to switch off the old mentality. It becomes so ingrained.

It’s taken me decades to be ok with just existing in public. I felt so much shame and yes it’s down to how I took the belittlement. However, I also had to realise that I deserved better and that I did have to distance myself from the abusive behaviour. I do think it’s strange how we underestimate emotionally abusive behaviour.

I’m a people pleaser with low self esteem and I can’t stand anyone to be angry around me, ever. (I’m in therapy about it.)

I constantly second guess myself, don’t trust my own mind and feel like I underachieve (I do because I run away from any conflict / difficulty).

I’ve have had a lot of therapy, and have read a lot, and I parent my own children very differently. But I still struggle with my own sense of self.

My mother is dead now. But my father talks about her as if she was an excellent mother. Ironically, I think she thought she was an amazing mother when she was alive even though I never trusted her with any of my problems or… well, anything really.

When I was a child, she screamed and critized and made me feel small. Shamed my hobbies, which were really wholesome.

She didn’t do it as much to my sister, but my sister was her perfect golden child. I can’t relate to the childhood my sister remembers: it isn’t the same as mine even though she’s only a year older than me. But we never talk about our childhood because I don’t do conflict. I tried to once, but cried, and was so ashamed that I never spoke about it again.

Low contact and chose not to have children partly due to the fucked up cycle of her and her with her own mother.

I often don't feel good enough and struggle with relationships. I didn't trust my own judgement on things for a long time as she instilled in me that it was all in my head if I challenged her behaviour. Interestingly I often end up in conflict in relationships too eg at work as I really struggle if I don't feel listened to or valued.

Generally though I'm doing OK.

I feel like I could have written this post. I feel strongly that my mother's criticism of others (sometimes just walking down the street she's say nasty things about people and also things like, "Am I as fat as her?' or, "Look at that man! There's no excuse to be that fat!") has caused me depression and anorexia as a teen and anxiety and anorexia as an adult. When I was pregnant we had 2-3 fall outs. She improved. Then she had a terrible cancer scare and got a lot more chilled since then and I think age has improved her. She's been outright nasty to one sister; our other sibling age appears to favour. She ALWAYS compares us, even now. I'm the cleverest for academic achievement and have an MA. She'll always say my other sister is the cleverest and when I was 18 I challenged her and she just said, "Yes but you have to work hard. She doesn't." She had stopped saying things like, "Oh one day you'll be fat like me." And she also used to say, even when my BMI was about 16 that she could tell I wasn't underweight because my legs were still chunky. She's always called me big and heavy-boned and really I've only been over 9 stone since I hit 43. At 5 ft 6 really that's not big or chunky or heavy-boned at all. It's caused quite a distortion of my body image. She's been a real bitch at times. She also used to say, "You'll never be thin after having a baby!!" and all of my sisters and I are slim post pregnancies. I don't know why she's got to threaten fatness. But I do know age has softened her, plus I weigh 10 stone 8 these days and am much happier. I keep at a distance - I don't let her know me and my thoughts - and we live about 400 miles apart, which helps. But she isn't half as nasty as she used to be and now I'm nearly 50 I'm actually really good at just shutting her down or shutting her off and being super, super nice and championing other women, meaning she realises she is the one being nasty. I think she's not very bright, really, because she has to talk about someone/people and give all her judgements about them and sometimes I am so close to saying I DO NOT CARE. She's been exhausting in the past but something good came out of a cancer scare.

I still love her. Weird.

I had zero self esteem or confidence due to my domineering mother. It was drilled into me not to appear bold or forward. I got married at 22 and moved to another part of the UK. I can remember being left with a group of WAGs of my husband's football team while they played and I just couldn't talk or interact with them. It was the 80s so acceptable to be rude about people so I found out they'd been mocking me and laughing at me behind my back.

My mum is like this I have shut her of I to have mental health conditions my mum does judge and criticize others especially me its dreadful I don't think that she knows shes doing it her dad was like that as well my nana and grandad had my mum in her early forties in 1960 so my mum has my grandad personally he is very good at making judgemental statements at others the thing is it wears you down. I don't have any contact with my grandad my nana died nearly 20 years ago miss her loads and I struggle every day I suffer from severe anxiety depression ocd clusterphobia and stress in a carer of a severe disabled person over 35 hours a week live with him and I always do get criticised and judged even in relationship. The thing to do is spend time on your own go somewhere and take some time out its reallly hard and people can be really nasty at others there is no need to judge someone by their hair size clothing what you like dislike every one is different and everyone should made to feel loved wanted respected supported