Daughter Detox

by Peg Streep

  DEALING WITH FALLOUT (AND NO END IN SIGHT)

  I am a pariah in my family—the crazy one, the mean one. My sister and brother have seen an opportunity for themselves when I went low-contact with our mother and worked it to their advantage, painting me as ungrateful, impossible, and yes, a narcissist. Which is pretty ironic, given the givens. Family gatherings became even more impossible, and they waged a campaign for our mother to “fire” me. Ironic, because I had been back and forth in therapy on whether or not to go to the final step. Long story short: She divorced me. It made it harder on me in some ways and easier in others .

  ~Margaret, 50

  For some daughters, divorcing Mom is the very last stop. It was for me; my relationship to my much younger brother, long uneasy, finally succumbed within a few years. With the rest of my extended family an ocean away, I was on my own with my daughter and husband. The core conflict, for me, stopped on a dime because becoming a good mother became my focus .

  For many, though, the pain of exclusion continues—hearing about family gatherings but not being invited to them; being gossiped about and then informed of the gossip, especially if they live where they grew up or are still in touch with outsiders who are connected to family members; feeling as though they can never go home again, even back to their old neighborhood. Some still feel real shame about the choices they’ve made even though they know, deep inside, it was the only choice and they have support in their circle of intimates. But it’s over, except for emotional loss and, perhaps, the continuation of the core conflict.

  But that may seem like paradise compared to what happens to some whose mothers continue fighting a battle of attrition even when the daughter has opted out. These mothers continue to try to insinuate themselves into their daughters’ lives by contacting other family members, their husbands, and anyone who will listen, spreading lies and creating drama. Sometimes, they co-opt friends and neighbors, too. One daughter wrote to say that her mother sent her husband a birthday greeting with a gift card for his favorite restaurants, sends presents on every occasion to her daughter, and calls them both even though the daughter has repeatedly asked her not to. It sounds crazy but it’s true. Another daughter recounted how her mother actually tried to convince her husband that she was cheating on him, and offered to help bankroll the divorce! (No, I’m not making this up, but you’d have a hard time getting past an editor’s red pencil if you put it in a novel.) Yet another recalled how, when she decided to divorce her husband, her long-estranged mother ended up colluding with him to try to take her children away. (!!! She kept her kids, by the way.) Daughters have even found themselves the victims of smear campaigns at work, which turn out to have been orchestrated by their mothers.

  And yes, there are nightmarish incidents when a daughter’s children have been co-opted into their grandmother’s orbit. When it does happen, it seems to take place at moments of stress in the mother-child relationships—usually the transitional periods of adolescence or young adulthood when there’s often tension in even fundamentally close connections—and the grandmother is able to insinuate herself into the mix. That’s what happened to Janine: “My mother started to manipulate my daughter when she was 14 by buying her things I couldn’t afford, but especially the provocative, sexy clothing I didn’t want her wearing. Grandma told her I was too strict, unreasonable, and became her cheerleader, all of which contributed to growing tension between me and my child. She moved out of my house at 18 and into my mother’s home. Luckily for me, once my daughter moved in, my mother started treating her as she did me. She was back home in three months and then went off to college. Our relationship is still a work in progress, and she has limited contact with her grandmother. I have none.”

  There’s no data on the mother vendetta, but if it befalls you, please recognize that it’s a form of gaslighting and a reflection of your mother’s need to continue to control and manipulate you. Even though you’ve vacated the sandbox, it’s no fun for the bully to find herself there alone. Remember that her actions are a reflection of her, not you, and represent more evidence of the toxic environment she needs to create to feel good about herself. Get professional support if you need it, and stay out of the fray as much as you can. Try not to feed into her needs.

  EXERCISING SELF-COMPASSION (AGAIN)

  Why is it so damn hard not to blame yourself?

  ~Leslie, 43

  Please try to be kind to yourself as you attempt to “resolve”—and the word is in quotation marks for irony because there’s really no resolution—your relationship to your mother. Use your goal-setting skills to figure out and make concrete what you want to do. Write it out. Don’t be hard on yourself if you second-guess or worry from time to time; important decisions require thinking through. Get help if you need it; therapy is best, but if you can’t afford it, a nonjudgmental friend or intimate will do in a pinch. Give yourself time to sort out your emotions and work on labeling them so that your emotions inform your thoughts. If you are anxious about your choices, the best way to quell your anxiety is to remind yourself of the validity of your feelings and why you felt as you did.

  Most important, have self-compassion for the hurt little girl inside of you; it’s her endless hopefulness that she can somehow make this right that makes this process so agonizing. Here are some ideas for growing your self-compassion at this stage:

  ♦ Recognize you’re not alone

  Going no-contact can be a lonely place, and if you’re still not convinced that your mother’s treatment isn’t about you, it can be a place of shame as well. I realize it’s hard to confide in others, but if there are people in your life you trust, please do. Get professional support if you need it, making sure that your counselor isn’t categorically against going no-contact. (Some are.) Remember that your struggles are shared by many others—yes, the percentage of those whose emotional needs weren’t met in childhood is somewhere between 40 and 50 percent—so it’s likely that someone you know has faced similar challenges even though the taboo nature of the subject keeps everyone mum. Break the silence using newfound discrimination.

  ♦ Focus on mothering yourself

  Be good to yourself by being understanding, rather than self-critical. Focus on the progress you’ve made and use if/then thinking to tackle the moments at which you fall short of your own expectations. Spend time with people you care about and who care about you when you’re feeling discouraged. Applaud yourself when you’ve handled something better than you used to or when you feel you’ve taken a stride in an important direction. At their best, mothers are their children’s life coaches; be your own.

  ♦ Begin the process of mourning

  We’ll be discussing the need to mourn the mother you deserved in the next chapter in greater detail, but this is the moment to start mourning the mother you deserved. Yes, not your actual mother but the one, absent the lottery of life, you should have had. Mourning in this way can help you gain in self-compassion—it’s a way of seeing that your needs were legitimate and that it wasn’t because you were too sensitive, needy, or difficult—as well as bolstering your faith in your judgment as you compare the mother you had with the one you needed. Mourning the mother you wanted and deserved can also help you self-mother and provide an image for visualization when you’re stressed or nervous .

  ♦ Look forward, not back

  Letting go of the past doesn’t mean denying that it happened or insisting that it really made you stronger, but it does mean setting it behind you as you move forward. Once you’ve decided the right way for you to manage your relationship to your mother, recognize that you’ve reached an important milestone by exercising your agency. If you decided to try to maintain a relationship and it’s not working, don’t beat yourself up. Keep in mind that the success of your efforts isn’t fully in your control; your mother will either cooperate or she won’t.

  STAYING FIRM AND BALANCED: BOUNDARIES AND TOLERANCE

  I’m still struggling with feeling as though people wo
n’t like me if I assert myself. I realize that this is self-destructive because I’m the one making myself into a doormat and then get angry at others as if they made me stunt my life. I’m working on it, but it’s hard .

  ~Celeste, 37

  If you’re going to redirect your life in meaningful ways, you will continue to have to pay attention to boundaries—both yours and those of others. Set goals for yourself to manage reactivity if you’re still having trouble finding balance in your relationships, and continue to use if/then thinking to prepare yourself for moments that might be stressful or that you know will test your ability to manage your emotions. These could be situations as various as having to address a group at work, going to a gathering where you know very few people, or doing something new and unfamiliar. If you’ve come to realize that you’re still highly sensitive to abandonment, gear up before your partner or spouse goes off on a business trip or if a friend or intimate has decided to take some time off alone to recharge.

  Part of setting boundaries entails being very clear about how, in this new stage of your life, you will allow others to treat you and about behaviors you simply will no longer tolerate. Again, work on being consciously aware of your responses to other people’s words and actions, checking to see if you’re reacting in the present or to triggers in the past. That said, deciding that you won’t permit people in your life who try to marginalize or manipulate you or are verbally abusive is a perfectly healthy response and part of redirection.

  If you’ve lived your life armored and wary of others, work hard at becoming more discerning about people’s intentions and motives, especially if self-isolating in this way is no longer working for you. If you want and need to have closer connections, you will also have to become more aware of how unconscious processes are driving your choices and substitute conscious awareness in the area of relationship.

  PARTNERS, FRIENDS, ACQUAINTANCES: FINDING THE RIGHT ONES

  There’s no question in my mind that I keep wandering back to where I started. Is it that I’m attracted to people who treat me as my mother did, or do manipulators see me as an easy mark? I’ve been more discerning of late, getting out of situations that feel familiar the minute I realize that they do. That’s progress .

  ~Miranda, 36

  It’s at this moment that what you’ve learned about your own style of attachment needs to be put to work, no longer theoretically, but as information you’ll need to draw on as you redirect and reconfigure your relationships to others.

  You can set relationship goals for yourself as you would any other goal pertaining to work or life. Begin by assessing your relationships across the board—from the truly intimate ones to those that are much looser or to ties that are shallower—and see whether they are working the way you want and need them to. This isn’t a decluttering exercise because the point isn’t to get rid of every existing relationship and start over from scratch. (That may be true for some who have managed to recreate their childhood environments, but it’s not going to be the norm, although many will find a few relationships aren’t salvageable and are impediments to growth.) This also isn’t a call to heap all the blame on others; you need to take responsibility for what you bring to the party. This is about taking a realistic inventory.

  Following are some strategies, derived from research, that may help you set relationship goals.

  ♦ Use abstract thinking, not specifics, when you consider what’s missing in your life

  Studies show that people who think abstractly about losses and lacks in their life are more likely to meet their goals than those who think in concrete terms. Let’s say, for example, that an important intimate relationship has ended; rather than thinking, “I need a new lover, spouse, boyfriend,” think instead about what you miss having in your life. That could be a sense of connection, mutual caring, sharing your life, or anything else, but the point is that if you think about what it is that you want in this way, you’ll discover many different avenues for achieving your goal that thinking “I need a new lover” doesn’t. For example, a sense of connection can be fostered by group activities, working on a project such as community gardening, mentoring a young person, and many other pursuits. Charles S. Carver and Michael F. Scheier, experts on self-regulation, note that understanding the core desire abstractly makes you far more flexible in terms of achieving your most important goals because it allows you to see different pathways to achieving them.

  ♦ Strive for a more complex definition of self

  Studies by Patricia Linville show that people who have defined themselves narrowly—believing that a single role defines them in a primary way—not only have more trouble dealing with the daily stressors in life but are also less resilient and have more difficulty coping with goal-related setbacks. This makes perfect sense. If your marriage has imploded and your primary definition of self has been “wife,” there’s a good chance you might go down for the count; if, though, your definition of self includes “wife” along with “friend, tennis player, volunteer, singer in the choir, mother, worker, cousin, sister,” many of these other definitions of self will help to buffer you from the blow. This strikes me as doubly relevant as you move from defining yourself as an unloved daughter to a more proactive, more engaged self.

  Thinking about self-definition in this way will also help you forge new connections, pursue new activities, and—in the process—enrich existing relationships. This is especially true for those women who have kept their troubled relationships to their mothers a closely guarded secret, unwittingly self-isolating themselves in the process, or who have avoided close connections. Remember that attachment styles aren’t set in stone.

  ♦ Build on the relationships you have

  What you have learned about your own reactivity, triggers, and attachment style can be used to further understanding in your adult relationships as you become more adept at recognizing the attachment styles and behaviors of close others. Part of redirecting your life may include strengthening the relationships you already have and working to make those connections closer and more intimate. If/then thinking is useful if there are relationships that need repairing since you will be forcing yourself to think about the various ways you can reach out and have Plan B and Plan C in mind if your initial response isn’t well received.

  CHILDREN: FEAR AND JOY (BOTH OR EITHER, TAKE YOUR PICK)

  The idea of having a child and becoming my mother and doing what she did to me terrified me. I married someone who didn’t want children for that very reason. Now, looking back, I wonder whether I was right about myself. I am kind in ways my mother never was. I am caring. I don’t know now what might have happened .

  ~Linda, 55

  In the best of all worlds, the decision to have a child would be a considered one, even though we all know it isn’t always. People have children for all manner of reasons, and some are better and more predictive of good parenting than others. Unloved daughters have a different kind of stake in this decision, largely driven by the fear that they will simply repeat their mothers’ behavior and continue the cycle for another generation. Is the fear reasonable or unreasonable?

  As someone who was afraid and decided not to have a child for almost two decades of adult life and then reversed myself, the answer isn’t as clear cut as some would like it to be. Basically, it depends on the daughter herself and the degree to which her behaviors have become conscious and aware. Since parenting is learned behavior, we’re more likely to repeat learned patterns if we’re not emotionally and intellectually present. For starters, it’s worth looking at some pretty terrible reasons to have a child. You may recognize some people you know in the description, perhaps even your mother.

  ♦ To have someone who loves you

  I’ve had a number of women, all of whom had babies very young, make this confession. In most cases they explain that having a baby seemed to offer a respite from the pain of unloving parents or rejecting relationships with lovers or spouses. The real problem, of course,
is that the burden of supplying love is shifted onto the child, who is supposed to be emotional first aid for the parent. That is a recipe for disaster.

  ♦ Because someone expects you to

  It doesn’t matter who that someone is—a parent, a spouse, or societal pressure. Having a child is a decision you need to own on every level because it is an enormous commitment. The work that good parenting requires is far too intense and demanding to be inspired by anyone’s expectations other than your own.

  ♦ To fit in

  Yes, some women actually admit that they were afraid that others would somehow shun or stigmatize them if they decided not to have a child. Perhaps they would seem “less” than women with children. If we are honest with ourselves about so-called cultural “norms,” we would recognize that this is actually a legitimate worry for many. Still, it isn’t a healthy motivation to commit to parenting.

  ♦ To give your life purpose

  While it’s true that raising a child can give your life focus and purpose, it’s a lousy reason to have a child. You are the only person who can define what gives your life meaning. It’s not an obligation that can be fulfilled by another human being, not even one you give birth to. This reason (and the next) can easily become enmeshment—which involves denying the child the room she needs to become herself and totally ignoring her emotional boundaries—or micromanagement. A child’s job isn’t to make your life look better or richer than it actually is.

  ♦ To establish your legacy

  Historically, dynasty, the protection of material goods and assets, and a need to leave something behind in the wake of mortality have all been reasons to have a child. But that doesn’t give them any more emotional or psychological validity. Like those who have children to give their lives purpose, mothers concerned with legacy see children as extensions of themselves and, as reported by many daughters, put enormous pressure on their children to reflect well on them. In this scenario, what the children want—and for that matter, what they feel and think—are largely ignored. As one daughter told me, “It was hugely important to my mother that I be admired so that she could be admired by others for having raised me. She picked my clothes, my friends, even the college I went to, based on how ‘enviable’ it would seem to her social circle. I became a lawyer because she wanted me to. When I finally realized I hated practicing law, my mother freaked out, especially when I went from this high-paying, prestigious profession to, in her opinion, the lowly work of teaching in public school. She mentions it constantly and belittles me for my choices.”