But She’s Your Mom! Unpacking 5 Signs of Mother Wounds
It sends chills up your spine—when someone doesn’t get it and keeps urging you to get in touch with your mom. Your relationship with her is…complicated. One moment you feel like you “should” be best friends with her and confide everything in her. But the next minute? You feel betrayed, guilty, and horrible. Sometimes being around her does not feel good at all. You just don’t get it! Could it be that there is more to your relationship with her than you have explored before?
Let’s dive into the complexities and signs of mother wounding.
What is Childhood Trauma? Understanding the Signs with a Trauma Therapist in Falls Church, VA
Childhood trauma usually can’t be isolated to one specific event. Instead, it’s a mishmash of multiple confusing, insidious, and murky overwhelming moments. That’s because the experiences that fall under the category of childhood trauma are both relational (happening between people) and systemic (created by external, oppressive forces).
What is Parentification Trauma? How it Happens & How to Heal
Parentification trauma is the impact of continued, ongoing relational and external stressors by not having access to developmentally appropriate experiences in childhood (safety, nurture, protection, free play, guidance) and feeling pressure and necessity to assume an adult role during childhood. When adults in a family have high external stress and unmet internal needs, they are less able to look to their children as their children. This means that the skills and space to offer guidance, protection, and nurture are not as present.
When you needed something, what happened? Chances are, someone was too busy or got annoyed with you for asking. If you did not show up as the parent for the adults around you, chaos ensued. Now, the repeated exhaustion, terror/panic over making a mistake, people pleasing, hyper-independence, and difficulty with feeling taken care of is telling you something. The impact of parentification trauma is hitting you, mind and body.
Why Seek Online Therapy in CT for Childhood Trauma?
Your past is murky. Some things are unclear and confusing, and some things sting you with shame and discomfort. Your relationship with your parents is frantic: somehow, you have always been the “fixer,” the “responsible one” and whenever you have softened and shown your vulnerable, angry, hurt, or upset sides, you have experienced backlash and panic. The ways that you have hidden yourself worked so well. I mean, hardly anyone has noticed the REAL you. But now it’s starting to eat away at you, make it hard to function, cause you fear. It’s time for you to honestly care for yourself and heal. Why not explore online therapy in Connecticut?
How Do You Reparent Yourself as a Mom? Strategies to Begin
Your gut reaction is to focus on everything and everyone, especially when it comes to your kids. If you learned anything from your own childhood, it was that the moment the attention shifted onto you, you were “bad.” This message, coupled with the high expectations of Moms, leaves you in a whirlwind of traps.
But when you only focus on others, you lose the opportunity for you to care about you—to give yourself the replenishment, care and energy you need to be present for others in a way that feels safe. What would it be like to give and receive help and to love authentically rather than out of obligation?
How Does Parentification turn into Hyper-independence?
You were responsible, independent growing up: the “good” kid. But for some reason, that external version of you? It doesn’t match the internal version of you. Inside, you’re scared, anxious, terrified of the next bad thing happening. You desperately want to be connected to others, to get and receive help, but you never find yourself able to do it. Instead, the wrong people come your way, or they don’t “get you,” or that shaming voice in your head just ruins everything good.
What’s going on here?