Mothers Who Can't Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters

by Forward, Susan

  I asked her what she thought would happen if she ever allowed herself to get angry, and she answered with words I’d heard many times.

  ALLISON: “I don’t know… . I’d probably really lose it. I’d probably look hideous, and I’d lose all my dignity. I don’t know if I could calm down once I started—I’d probably stay angry the rest of my life. I’d be a bitch—and nobody likes an angry woman.”

  Many women falsely believe that anger is a dangerous and uncontrollable force. But like a red warning light on a car dashboard, it’s actually a strong signal that something is wrong—and that something needs to change. It flashes when you’ve been insulted or taken advantage of, when your needs are going unmet, and when someone has trampled on your rights or dignity. The healthy response is to stop in the moment and ask, “What just happened? What’s wrong? What needs to change?”

  Daughters like Allison, though, are accustomed to pretending their anger doesn’t exist, which is the emotional equivalent of putting a piece of tape over the warning light so we don’t have to feel the discomfort of seeing it. Our emotional intelligence goes unheeded, and important parts of our lives—often our boundaries and self-respect—break down. If you tend to stuff your anger, as Allison did, you’re probably familiar with the results:

  • Your needs continue to go unmet, and your rights and dignity continue to be ignored.

  • You may turn your anger inward into physical symptoms or depression.

  • You may “self-medicate” your anger with food, drugs, sex, or alcohol.

  • You may resign yourself to your situation and make your anger a seething part of your identity, becoming the resentful martyr, the one who suffers, in your home or workplace.

  It was time for Allison to challenge her fears of strong emotions and move the anger she was so afraid of out of her head and body so it could serve its intended purpose. I put an empty chair in front of her and asked her to imagine that her mother was sitting there.

  SUSAN: “Close your eyes and picture your mother at her most helpless, demanding, and insistent. Let yourself fully conjure up the woman whose hurtful and unloving behavior you described in your letter. You’re safe—it’s okay. Rather than pushing the anger away, let it speak.

  “To begin, start some sentences with the words ‘How dare you,’ finishing with whatever she did that distorted so much of your childhood. Let’s give voice to that powerless child you were and the frustrated adult you’ve become. Let them finally have their say.”

  ALLISON (tentatively): “How dare you make a little girl take care of a whole family.

  “How dare you think it was okay to ask a tiny child to cook, clean, take care of her siblings, and give up her childhood for you!”

  Her voice began to gain force. I told her she was doing fine and encouraged her to keep going.

  ALLISON: “How dare you suck me into your sick and twisted game with my father! How dare you make me your counselor! I always had to be the peacekeeper, and then you’d throw me under the bus as soon as you reconciled with him!” (She was speaking more loudly now.) “How dare you take away my happiness! How dare you infect me with this need to make you happy, even though I know it’s impossible! How dare you make me feel like a failure because I couldn’t fix your life! It wasn’t my job! You were supposed to help me. How dare you turn me into a people-pleasing magnet for men who can’t take care of themselves! How dare you!”

  She paused, looking almost stunned, and I asked her how she felt.

  ALLISON: “Less like a victim. I actually feel stronger.”

  Allison’s anger was giving her clarity and conviction. I could see her gaining power with each “How dare you!” as she allowed her anger to become an integral part of her. She was using it now to express years of hurt and frustration, and at last she was facing her anger with courage instead of pushing it down and trying to avoid it.

  “Hold on to that feeling,” I told her. “All that anger has energy, and when you let it out, you also got a lot of certainty about what’s bad for you and what you don’t need to accept anymore. Notice that the world doesn’t come to an end when you express your anger, even if you yell. You need to feel the heat of this emotion, and get comfortable letting it out in safe ways like this. As you do, you’ll find the relief that comes from saying things you’ve been stifling, things you’ve always wanted to say. It’s a kind of unburdening that ultimately will make you feel lighter.”

  When daughters show their anger, and listen to the valuable cues it offers, they gain access to an important component of their emotional guidance system.

  Unknotting Anger to Find Grief

  Samantha seemed quite different from Allison on the surface. She expressed her rage toward her sadistically controlling mother strongly as she read me her letter, almost shouting as she reached her final words and telling her mother, “I will do things my way whether you like it or not.”

  “I can’t tell you how good it feels to finally, finally stand up to her, even if it’s only in a letter,” she told me when she had finished reading. “I’ve looked and looked at those words since I wrote them, and I think they’re really going to help me change things with her once and for all.”

  I told her I knew that was true. In speaking her truth, she had come to genuinely see and feel that she had power, that she wasn’t a four-year-old anymore. “I really noticed the humiliation and the pain of that little girl you described in your letter,” I told her. “Where did those feelings go? What do you think happened to that little girl?”

  SAMANTHA: “I don’t know… . I guess she grew up and became me.”

  And the grown-up Samantha, I told her, still harbored layers of emotions that she’d never outgrown. All those years of humiliation and pain don’t magically vanish. The wounded child is an energy that’s still alive inside daughters, and that child is still afraid of being hurt. Samantha’s blowups at work, and her increasingly hair-trigger temper, were a good indication of that, I told her. People often defend themselves against feelings of deep vulnerability with explosive anger.

  “One thing you said in your letter sticks in my mind,” I told her. “You told your mother: ‘I feel like there’s an invisible string tying us together and keeping me from getting on with my life.’ Those old feelings are the string. They make you behave in ways that hurt you, and they come up when you least expect it.”

  SAMANTHA: “What do I do about that?”

  SUSAN: “Let’s spend a little time comforting the hurt little girl inside. She needs to know that she’s safe, that no one will ever hurt her again. Once she feels safe, you’ll feel safe, too. I want you to imagine that little girl sitting on your lap. Imagine your arms around her. She’s hurting, and she really needs your comfort. Say what you would have wanted someone to say to you when your mother hit you in the face or bullied you. Start with ‘Honey, I’m so sorry those bad things happened to you… .’ ”

  samantha: “Honey—I’m so sorry those bad things happened to you. I’m so sorry Mom was so mean to you.” (Samantha stopped and looked at me.)

  “This is really hard—I don’t know what to say … I feel so uncomfortable.”

  I told Samantha that was understandable. She had been defending against these feelings, which made her feel weak and vulnerable, for a long time. Now her walls were coming down and she felt exposed. I encouraged her to keep going, and to say what she would say if she had adopted a little girl who had been mistreated. I prompted her gently.

  SUSAN: “You were a precious, sweet little girl and you didn’t do anything bad.”

  SAMANTHA: “Yeah—I like that. You were a precious sweet little girl and you didn’t do anything bad … I want you to know that I will take care of you… . I won’t let anybody hurt you or scare you or punish you in really mean ways for no reason at all… . You’re safe now. You have a good mommy now… . You can just be a little girl and you don’t need to be afraid anymore.” (She stopped again and looked at me.)

  “W
hy couldn’t my mother have said those things to me, Susan? Why couldn’t she have loved me like that? God, Susan, I don’t think she ever loved me at all. She couldn’t have loved me and done those things to me—that’s not how someone who loves you behaves… .”

  Her eyes welled up with tears.

  “I’m afraid that’s true, from all you’ve told me,” I said. “Love doesn’t make you feel terrified or lost or alone. It doesn’t punish you for no reason, or berate a little girl for acting like the child she is. You’re right, Samantha, what you’ve been describing isn’t love.”

  SAMANTHA (through tears): “You said I was supposed to be comforting my little girl, Susan. But now I have no idea what to say… . I feel so completely sad and abandoned… . I don’t know if I can go on.”

  SUSAN: “Samantha, I know how much this hurts. Realizing that your mother couldn’t love you is one of the most painful discoveries you’ll ever make. You deserved to be cherished, but your mother was a disturbed, unhappy woman who took out her frustrations on you. And it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t little Samantha’s fault. She was innocent. Nothing you could have done would have made your mother love you more. She couldn’t. We can’t know why. But we can be sure of one thing: It had nothing to do with you. It wasn’t your fault. I want you to say this back to me, Samantha: ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ ”

  SAMANTHA (very quietly): “It wasn’t my fault.”

  I took her hand and held it as she wept.

  “Say it again, louder,” I told her.

  SAMANTHA (stronger): “It wasn’t my fault.”

  SUSAN: “Louder. Make me believe you.”

  SAMANTHA (yelling): “It wasn’t my fault!” (She took a deep breath and looked at me.) “Susan, it wasn’t my fault.”

  It Was Never Your Fault

  “It was all my fault” is the pervasive lie daughters must refute if they want to reclaim their lives. It’s a belief that leaves them laden with guilt—and the sense that they’re responsible for their own mistreatment and their mother’s lack of love. Deeper than that, it’s a powerful source of shame—the feeling that says, “There must be something wrong with me, or this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Implanted by a lifetime of programming that may have been punctuated by slaps, sighs, criticism, finger-pointing, or yelling, the belief that daughters are responsible for their mothers’ choices, feelings, and behavior toward them is the force that holds dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships together in their destructive status quo. As long as daughters feel guilty and shameful for having “caused” their mothers’ unloving actions, they’re incapable of challenging them, standing up for their rights, or fully experiencing their anger and grief at what they’ve experienced. They continue to accept the lie that they are bad, selfish, wrong, and defective, and therefore have no right to feel what they feel, or do what’s right for themselves, regardless of what their mothers want. “It was all my fault” is the big lie that enables all the other lies unloving mothers tell—the ones my clients challenge in the Lies and Truth Exercise—to flourish.

  Challenging this last big lie until it loses its hold brings daughters a freedom, and a sense of self-love and self-acceptance, that’s often been missing all their lives.

  There’s a great deal of power in the words Samantha spoke: “My mother couldn’t love me and it wasn’t my fault.” Repeating that several times, until the words sound and feel convincing, has been a giant step toward liberation for many of my clients. Simple though the action is, speaking that truth aloud seems to carry it deep inside.

  I suggested to Samantha that she take the work one step further by telling the little girl on her lap what she wasn’t responsible for. “It can be very healing and comforting to do this,” I told her, “and it will go a long way toward freeing Little Samantha from the huge load of guilt and shame she’s been buried under all her life.”

  SAMANTHA: “Okay… . Sweetie, I know Mom always told you you were bad, and you deserved to be hit and punished and yelled at. She told you it was all your fault. But she was wrong. You were a wonderful, smart little girl. And you weren’t responsible for her slapping and punching you. You did nothing to deserve having a tooth knocked out. You weren’t responsible for the way she kept you from going to the basketball tournament. You didn’t do anything to deserve that. You weren’t responsible for her cruelty. You weren’t responsible for the way she was obsessed with your studying and grades. You were a smart little girl. You didn’t deserve to be treated as though you were lazy and stupid. You weren’t responsible for Mom’s craziness. It was all hers. It didn’t have anything to do with you.”

  When a daughter pictures the child she was, and remembers the burdens and unloving behavior that this little girl had to face, it’s far easier to accept the truth: The child was blameless. The woman she’s become is blameless as well. The reasons given for abuse, mistreatment, role reversals, and suffocating behavior had everything to do with her mother, and nothing to do with her.

  When that truth penetrates, as it continued to do over time with Samantha, a great deal of emotion can surface. I asked Samantha how she was feeling.

  SAMANTHA: “So ripped off and outraged … but mostly incredibly, horribly sad. No—it’s beyond sad. I feel like somebody died.”

  Samantha was weeping now, grieving. And her grief helped carry her to a deep acceptance of the truths that were clear to her now. She could no longer call her mother’s unloving treatment love. She wasn’t responsible for the terrible treatment she’d received—her mother was. The world seemed turned upside down.

  Everyone who comes to this point must grieve the enormous losses they have had. The majority of daughters of mothers who couldn’t love them lost a great deal of their childhood because their mother didn’t allow them to have one.

  I enumerated those losses to Samantha:

  “You lost the right to be playful and silly.

  “You never got to feel the joy of being a carefree kid. You were four, or fourteen, going on forty, bearing adult burdens from the time you were small.

  “You didn’t experience the predictability, consistency, and nurturing that could give you an inner sense of security.

  “You had far too few opportunities to feel free and trusting.

  “You were starved for validation of your worth, and your mother hid the truth from you: That you are a unique and wonderful person whose job in life is to be herself.

  “You’ve kept this knowledge hidden inside on a semiconscious level for most of your life,” I told her, “and at last it’s in front of you, where you can take it in fully with your mind and heart.”

  Guarded and wary, Samantha had cut herself off not only from other people, but also from her own soft and loving feelings. I promised her that they, too, were on the other side of the pain she was experiencing now.

  Putting to Rest the Fantasy of the Good Mother

  Samantha was, naturally, very raw at this point, and I suggested that she might want to do an exercise that would help calm her and put her in a better emotional place. The exercise would be a symbolic burial of the fantasy that had kept her, and so many unmothered daughters, running after the love from their mothers that would always be held just out of reach. “Are you up to trying it?” I asked.

  SAMANTHA (with a slight smile): “Yeah, it can’t get any worse, that’s for sure. I’ve come this far—let’s go for it.”

  I picked up a small bunch of dried flowers that I keep in my office for this purpose and put it on the coffee table. “Imagine that this table is a coffin,” I said. She flinched at the word coffin, and I assured her that this was all symbolic. “Now visualize the coffin being lowered into the ground. What we’re burying is the fantasy of the good mother, so over the casket, I’ll show you how the eulogy goes, and you can add your own words.”

  SAMANTHA: “Okay.”

  To get her started, I began: “I hereby lay to rest my fantasy of the good mother. It wasn’t in the cards for me. It di
dn’t happen, and I know it never will. It wasn’t my fault.”

  SAMANTHA: “I did everything I could think of to get her to love me, but nothing worked… .”

  “I’m no longer willing to keep banging my head against a stone wall to try to earn her love,” I continued.

  SAMANTHA: “I’m no longer willing to distort the rest of my life to try to make her happy. I’m not going to pretend that the few crumbs I got was real love. It’s hard to let go of you, but rest in peace, my fantasy. I need to get on with my life.”

  Samantha sat with her eyes closed, wiping away tears with the back of her hand. I asked her how she felt.

  SAMANTHA: “Sad. Still sad. But calmer. A little freer. Stronger. A little more me.”

  The most important thing about the eulogy isn’t the words. It’s the way it helps women put to rest the fervent wish that their mothers will suddenly transform.

  The eulogy is a potent vehicle for change because with its symbols and symbolic behavior, it speaks directly to the unconscious and begins to reprogram it. A symbolic burial is a powerful way to end the “if onlys.” “If only I do this she’ll be nice.” “If only I rescue her, she’ll be happy.” “If only I let her steal enough attention from me, she’ll eventually give some back.” “If only I become perfect enough, she’ll stop criticizing me.” “If only I try hard enough, she’ll finally love me.”

  For daughters who have been focused all their lives on figuring out what they were doing wrong, and searching for a way to win their mothers’ love and approval, the acceptance that they have been chasing a fantasy that wreaked havoc with their lives marks a turning point for them. Samantha felt exactly that.

  There’s No Magic Wand: Living With—

  and Through—Anger and Grief

  My clients often swing from grief to anger and back again as they adjust to the truth. I tell them that it’s appropriate and healthy to feel sad—or furious—as your whole being acknowledges that you didn’t receive the love you deserved and needed from your mother. Viewed through this new understanding, a memory from childhood may unleash a flood of sadness. Irritations that may have been easy to take for granted in the past may now trigger unusual anger. It’s important for daughters to take each emotion as it comes, and remember that what will bring the greatest peace and power in the long run is working with these difficult feelings rather than pushing them away.