Is your mum supportive and emotionally available?

[Shangrilala]

I don’t feel I’ve ever had that special close bond/relationship with my own mother. She’s critical, judgey, defensive and very much close minded/emotionally unavailable.
I’m a mother too now and in my early forties. I’ve had issues my whole life with intimacy, self acceptance and body image. Depression featured heavily in my teenage years. Alcohol came later. Now chronic anxiety.
It’s dawning in me (albeit too late) that my unfulfilling relationship with my mother has basically screwed all this for me

Hi doskant,

I can only give you my own experience and your 'journey' (sorry cheesy phrase) may be different but in my case my highly dysfunctional family imploded (again) due to the actions of my mother. I won't bore you with the details but it was the final catalyst for me to break away and change my life. I stopped the cycle.

I started by reading everything I could about dysfunctional families, narcissistic parents, roles in families which made me understand my part in my family system. Websites like 'Out of the fog' and 'Daughter of narcissistic mothers' were very useful. There's also a great book by Robyn Skinner about 'Families and how to survive them'.

I came to realise that I was very much the family scapegoat and ironically carer which led me to develop social anxiety as a teenager, and later an eating disorder. I also had a series of abusive relationships because I had been well trained as a child to accept such treatment. I developed chronic anxiety which led me to a therapist twice a week for a year but it was the start of my recovery.

The result of this led me to cut ties firstly with my mother. This was my own decision and took a few stops and starts. My mother holds a very powerful role in my 'family'. The spider in the middle of the web who controls everyone else with her manipulation, self pity and lies. Unfortunately this has meant cutting ties with anyone connected with her. Next I left my husband, who is a clone of my mother. (You tend to attract the same relationships if you don't have the self-awareness to realise what's going on). I also broke away from a group of friends who were a repeat of the my family and were being manipulated by my ex-husband. It was very lonely but I was lucky to have a couple of solid, supportive friends who looked out for me when I really needed it.

It has been a long-winded and painful process and I am no longer in contact with any of my family as a result which was very hard but my life has improved immensely. My eating disorder disappeared overnight, probably because I was finally being listened to. I am able to judge situations and people accurately and I don't associate with anyone who is going to bring me down. I am able to be my authentic self and don't put on a front to please others. I like myself. My relationship with my daughter is great and I am in a 'normal' very loving relationship with my partner. Don't get me wrong. It's not all sunshine and roses. Life isn't like that.

If I had to sum it up I would say you need to realise what happened to you as child, the effects it has had on you and allow yourself to grieve. Our childhoods seem normal to us. Often they aren't. Also the ways you can sabotage your own happiness by habits learnt from the dysfunction. I don't think it was possible for me to keep in contact with my family, for my mental health, as they will never change and don't see anything wrong in their attitudes and behaviours. As my therapist says you can pity a rabid dog, you don't need to pet them!

Good luck to everyone going through this but I would love to give people hope. You are all good enough, sometimes you are conditioned by your families to believe you aren't.

My mum is great! We've been through some tough times together but come out of the other side and rebuilt a relationship. Wouldn't change her for the world!

No, absolutely not.

It was very clear to me growing up that I was on my own from the age of about 17. I've not had any emotional support from her since then. And I mean NONE. I have always know that if something bad happened to me, I would be out on the streets. She wouldn't lift a finger to help, despite being able to do so.

My mum is great! We've been through some tough times together but come out of the other side and rebuilt a relationship. Wouldn't change her for the world!

Good for you

My DM is a mixed bag. My childhood was awful, she treated me terribly with physical and mental abuse. I ended up with PTSD and anxiety issues due to low self esteem. CBT and having an amazing husband has helped hugely.

She does have a personality disorder so this is why she can behave awfully and abusively, but I tend to forgive her because she can't help it.

I have clear boundaries (don't talk about anything too personal, or anything negative, don't spend longer than 2 hours with her, never see her at home as it's her 'den' and if she has a tantrum, walk away and don't engage etc etc...) which has worked beautifully well for both of us the past few years.

Yes she is manipulative, critical, somewhat unstable (which has got better as she's gotten older) and very emotionally immature but she can also be really funny, incredibly generous (like here, have £10k) and occasionally thoughtful. I'm really proud of her when I see she's making effort to think of others.

We have the best relationship that's possible between a parent that has been abusive to a child that's grown into an adult.

I'm responsible for my own emotions and behaviours now, which has been a fantastic realisation. The past is the past. I can't forget, but I can forgive and try to make the best of it.

It's never too late to start dealing with the hand you were dealt, however unfair that hand may have been. You're in control now.

My mother was loving, supportive and emotionally there whenever I needed her.

Then she died unexpectedly. I was still young. So I’m fucked up in other ways.

My mother was wonderful. Generous, supportive and proud of everything we did.
I took it for granted that everyone's mother was like that.
I have been very lucky, and I miss her every day

No not at all

Fuck me, my mother cared more about what the outside world thought.

My mother did a short stint working on a hospital ward, and when i was a teen, I had to have an operation and ended up on the ward next door to where she worked for nearly two weeks. She continued working and walking past the door of the ward i was on, to get to work - and she did not visit once. She walked past my ward to go and look after other people

She never went to a parents evening, or walked us to school, or get involved in anything.

There were a lot of negative body image comments and she couldnt wait to fuck all the kids off, and kicked every one of us out well before we were 16

Then over the years she offered no help, whilst, me as a single parent also tried to support my bipolar sister, in fact she helped by moving 200 miles away and building a 6 foot fence around her bungalow.

Then, about three years ago, she ghosted me. Out of the blue, no argument, nothing, she stopped speaking to me

No and neither was my dad. I've also grown up with severe anxiety and low moods and I'm sure it's not a coincidence.
I feel so sad when I see other women walking round shops, cafes, parks with their mum knowing I will never have that.

@Dacquoise Thank you for elaborating and I'm glad you've moved on from your family's dysfunction. A lot of what you wrote resonated with me. I like your therapist's quote you can pity a rabid dog, you don't need to pet them! Very apt. Can I ask what age you were when you cut them off?

Lol no. Never was, never will be.

Hi doskant,

I was 50. My mother played the ultimatum card. Toe the dysfunctional family line and fit back into your assigned role in my orbit. Or don't bother. I chose to pass!

I suspect you are getting ready or thinking about jumping?

@Dacquoise Hoping not to derail this thread away from the OP but I had been thinking about jumping, yes. Over the last few years but last six months in particular I have been shocked into reevaluating my relationships and looking at how my upbringing has affected me, and could potentially affect my own child. It's been a lot to take in.

I had been emotionally distancing myself from my mother as a result, and starting to sever the many invisible ties I never even knew existed that connected us. However, she was recently diagnosed with cancer and given my siblings lack compassion (not surprising given our upbringing) the job is mine. I am the family scapegoat and carer, much like you were. The only time I ever felt free was when I was abroad alone for years away from them all...

Interestingly, I also married a man who has some striking similarities with my mother. Not that that was obvious at the time or would be obvious to anyone now but get them together and they really egg each other on and bring out each others' worst sides. They're both very critical, negative, prone to schadenfreude, very focused on appearances. On the one hand I'm glad I haven't turned out like this and can recognise it's a messed up way to be. On the other, I've not escaped completely as the two closest people to me in life are like this. Scary.

Yes, to a point, as much as she could be. She suffered from depression and tried to kill herself a couple of times so she had her own problems and was suffering. I used to blame her for all my emotional and mental problems until I got older and saw her life as it really was. I don't blame her anymore, I've let it go and feel better for it.

Oh doskant, I really feel for you. Tricky one with her illness and accompanying guilt trip and I can identify with the bizarre dynamic that makes you both the punchbag and saviour of a person like your mother. Funny how the siblings who had an easier ride are the ones that back away in a crisis.

Are you able to access therapy? I found an neutral safe place to explore my feelings gave me the courage to get out of my situation that seemed impossible at the time. When you're in it, it's very difficult to get the clarity you need.

I would also add that one of the biggest reasons for getting out was to protect my daughter. As I said earlier, the cycle needed breaking.
Please feel free to pm me so we don't derail the Op's thread. Hopefully Shangrilala will be getting some information for her own recovery.

So many similarities between what you say and my situation...

Thanks again. I hope the OP is feeling supported too.

My DM is very supportive and emotionally available, I'd say about 95% of the time. Her own DM was awful and she's worked hard to not have that sort of distant relationship with me.

The flipside however is that she's sometimes a bit domineering and very much likes to be in control. As I've got older and gained my adult independence I've had to forcibly erect a few boundaries and actually work at having a healthy distance. Occasionally she is purposely cold but I have good friends instead!

Overall though, she's got my back.

No - but I don't really expect her to be a support to me though to be honest. I'm an adult now and should be able to deal with my own issues.

However, there is a problem - in that she offloads all her mental health issues onto me and has done since I was 10 years old and my father left her. I have held her hand through so many depressive stages with her, including alcoholism, anxiety, depression, nervous breakdown. She treats me like her therapist. It drives me mad! Now she is in poor physical health too so every phone call is a litany of misery. I've never had a real good laugh with her or fun in her company. I never look forward to seeing her or speaking to her. Sigh.

I can handle more or less everything else in my life, including my useless late father, but she is just a drain and so frustrating.

Reading these posts makes for very sad reading and makes me really appreciate the mother I had. She was lovely, understanding, supportive and just a great Mam in general. I’ve lost her to Alzheimer’s now but I’m so thankful for what I had.
I’m so sorry for those that haven’t experienced what I did. I can’t imagine what you must have felt and still be feeling.

I think the issue with lots of women that grow up with emotionally unavailable Mothers is that they feel that at some level it is their fault.

It’s not, but it can take a lifetime to really believe that.

No, she's quite cold, but she does provide practical help which she sees as more valuable (and it usually is, to be honest).

My mum is very emotionally distant.

She is not a nasty woman, not a narcissist or anything but she has never been able to be there for me emotionally.

When I was upset as a child it nearly always ended up with how it upset her, or her saying she was a bad mum, but missing out that I was upset. Or how I was effecting my brother. She would pretend she knew the problem and dismiss what I was saying.

When I was ill it was always met with a sigh, then taking me out too early because she didn't want her life curtailed, but also didnt want to leave me alone or with a grandparent when I was ill. She would always joke that I was faking it, or overexaggerting but I wasn't she just didn't recognise when I was ill? This resulted in me vommiting in public several times, and spending a several days camped out in public toilets because I was still ill when she insisted I wasn't.

She has never said she's proud of me, never talks about my positives.

She's not like this with my brother, part of it is she doesn't want me to get a big head and this involves never praising me or b eing proud of me, all through childhood and even now as an adult she won't say I did something well.

I had a period of quite bad mental health as a youngish teen, looking back I think it was an OCD type thing. But she just sort of pretended it wasn't happening, and she has spoken about it once or twice in a sort of casual jokey way. I did kind of get over it eventually but she obviously knew it was happening and it ruined a lot of my teenage years.

With my mum I think it stems from her own anxieties, she desperately wants me to be a social, popular, strong, clever adult and so if I ever show weakness this shatters her idea of me. Obviously I am not these things, but is anyone? She has her own made up personality for me in her head but it's not me at all. I also think she just has no idea of how to be there for someone emotionally, it's like when I cried as a child she genuinely couldn't deal with it

I think a lot of it as well is she doesn't realise how she's coming across, and can't pick up on the signs of someone needing emotional support. I have always thought she might have asd, because she's not doing it on purpose. And I genuinely think she'd be really really upset if she knew how distant she was, but at the same time it doesn't change the fact I spent a lot of my childhood feeling really lonely and terrified of fucking up.

Nowadays I sometimes wish I had a mum I could just call if something goes wrong. But she's not a bad mum, she's just crap emotionally. But she's good in other ways. My dad is good emotionally but crap in every other way so 🤷🏼‍♀️

Thanks for starting this thread Shangrilala. Other people’s lives can always seem so perfect and (even though in an ideal world this would happen to no-one) it’s good to know you’re not the only one.

If I’m honest, I don’t really have any happy memories of time spent with my DM and find visiting her emotionally straining.

I remember being very quiet as a child. I don’t have great self-esteem and have a tendency to depression (a negative though pattern that developed in childhood I suppose). Also sadly wasted years in an abusive marriage.

I have learnt not to expect too much. It’s taken years to come to this realisation.

Another dysfunctional mother/daughter relationship here. My mother isn’t a bad person, but her skills and perspectives are limited. She has absolutely nothing to offer in terms of practical or emotional support, despite making all the right noises and promising everything under the sun. She’s completely uninvested in her dgc and literally weeks will go past without her even bothering to enquire about them - yet she’s got all the time in the world for socialising and shopping.

I have had some really great counselling which has helped me to break the mould and help me believe I can be a much better mother than she ever was. I love her because she’s my mother, but she’s a shell of a person with not an ounce of maternal love in her and it I hope one day I can come to terms with that.

No

When I told her I was pregnant and also been told that I would be totally on my own (dumped) my mum replied I am not ready to be a grandmother yet

That sums her up

She adores her grandson and does help out but she isn’t reliable and it’s at a cost