For many adult daughters, the mother-daughter bond is a tenuous balance of both positive and negative feelings, connection, and autonomy. And for some, the bond is greatly affected by conflicting individual needs. After a particularly tumultuous weekend with my own 92-year-old mother, I began to think about the many stories I heard from my clients about their struggles for love and autonomy with her mother. These stories fall mainly into three groups: abandoning mothers, narcissistic mothers, and symbiotic mothers. Here are some examples:
Diana grew up in a downtown neighborhood. She never knew her father, and her mother was involved with a series of boyfriends, drugs and alcohol. When Diana was a little girl, her mother went to jail and Diana went into foster care. She grew up in several different homes, never feeling that she had a home with parents who valued or loved her.
As an adult, Diana takes pride in her professional accomplishments, but feels like a complete failure in relationships. She is extremely needy and undifferentiated in intimate relationships, requiring constant attention and proof of her partner’s devotion. In the work we have done off and on for several years, she has learned that she is clearly looking for what she did not get as a child, but that another healthy adult will never give her the undivided attention she seeks.
Looking at Diana, it is clear that she never had the healthy early symbiosis (unity with her mother) that is necessary for optimal separation or differentiation from a parent. A loving, reflective parent is essential for a child to feel valued, secure, and trusted. No wonder Diana tests her lovers constantly and she is subject to panic and deep depression when she doesn’t get the attention and admiration she needs to feel encouraged. She had not one, but two parents who abandoned her.
Connie and her two young daughters live with Connie’s elderly mother, who is chronically ill. When she asks Connie about the stress of this relationship, she sighs in frustration. Recently divorced and excited about the possibilities of a new life, Connie feels “sucked” by her mother. She tells me that she “never had a self” before, having moved from her parents’ home into an unhealthy marriage. She never felt differentiated from her mother or her ex-husband and she is only now beginning that process. Her mother’s inability to support Connie’s differentiation due to her own need creates a tense situation in which Connie feels held hostage.
With Connie I see that there has always been an overly entangled mother-daughter bond. Connie has come to understand this in therapy and now she is working hard to become her own person. However, it can be very painful for both mother and daughter when the adult daughter turns to herself and the undifferentiated mother feels threatened by the “loss” of her bond. The will of the mother is also needed to work on the understanding that the differentiation process is healthy and does not have to mean the loss of love.
Paula is a single young woman with an extremely narcissistic mother. She has never felt safe setting appropriate limits because Mom can’t tolerate limits and all hell would break loose, leaving Paula desperately alone. Many months of work have been necessary for Paula to really feel the pain of having compromised her autonomy. Now her attempts to establish even the smallest boundaries with her mother feel like pushing against an impenetrable wall of resistance. Breaking an unspoken agreement with a narcissistic parent can seem downright desperate. For Paula many times it has been easier to fill the void with various addictions.
Many undifferentiated adult women have narcissistically toxic mothers or fathers. An adult daughter of a narcissistic mother will report feeling empty inside with no sense of self. She often feels treated as if she is the “possession” of her mother, as if her “job” is to glorify her mother. Narcissistic parents reward children for being like them, but may condemn, judge, or criticize a child for her true uniqueness.
Paula feels that she is in a “no way out” situation. If she makes her own decisions, she risks Mother’s hurtful criticism and her wrath. If she complies, she’s still a child, an appendage of her mother. Autonomy is a very slow and painful battle.
Additionally, a mother’s response to a daughter’s trauma will certainly affect their bond. Even a securely attached daughter will feel tremendous abandonment when her mother denies the reality of childhood physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. The mother is supposed to be the protector in all cases, but sometimes mothers would literally rather die in denial than acknowledge the possibility that something bad has happened to a child for whom they are responsible.
Shelly, for example, tells me that her mother finally admitted on her deathbed that Shelly’s childhood sexual abuse was real. And for Shelly, this admission had tremendous healing power in her relationship. Petra, for her part, remembers that her mother died refusing to admit the possibility that Petra suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a relative. This denial only confirmed the profound abandonment and isolation that Petra has felt since her childhood.
These customer examples are, of course, just a few of the many ways mothers and adult daughters relate. Each individual brings specific developmental and attachment needs to any relationship, and each mother-daughter relationship has its own unique struggles.