When Mother Is There But Far Away - The Emotionally Absent Mother, Jasmin Lee Cori Interview

The motivation, the beginning, the origin of that was dipping into the pain I felt about my mother. So we did not have a highly conflictual relationship. We just had an emotionally more distant one. And especially for me, For her, she might have said, "It's fine. Nothing I'd do differently." But for me, it was missing a tremendous amount.

That's what we want to remember. To the audience: did you feel your mother was emotionally present and providing what you needed? Part of it is learning what children need, because if you come from a very neglectful family or parenting situation, you don't necessarily know that.

That was the part about my relationship with my mother. Then, yes, I went beyond my own experience. Before I wrote the first book, I interviewed a bunch of people. I found some volunteers and interviewed them about their experience with their mother. Then, of course, I had clients.

After that book came out I had more clients, and then droves of people came to me. So that gave me more and more experience and then in the second edition you know I added more content and then I added a second book called Healing from an Emotionally Absent Mother.

And what about your father if you are comfortable sharing what was your relationship like with him in childhood? Well, to my knowledge, as I was a child, he was the person I felt a little more connected with. Now, all of that changed when at age 40 I had my first incest memory.

After that memory and the dozens and dozens and dozens of memories that followed, it was like I lost my father too, because this was totally unforgivable for me. The more I allowed up, the more I saw how devastating that was.

You say on your website that you didn't uncover your childhood trauma until you were 40. What was that process like for you? How were you able to do it? What would you say to others only starting their healing journey at a later age?

First of all, I'd say it's not uncommon to start at a later age. I think we're pretty busy in our 20s and 30s doing other things that are critically important. Some people start their healing journey and their awareness very early. For me, I started doing some deep therapeutic work with somebody at age 38. The first issues to come up were my mother. I let that bubble up and worked with that. Then this incest came up right before I was 40.

And that really turned my life upside down. And then for many years after that, each of those would take center stage at different times. I think that things come up generally, and I won't say always, generally when we're ready for them. And the critical thing is that we have a little bit of space in our lives and we have a little bit of support. If you don't have support or space, I think your system will do everything possible to keep whatever is overwhelming off your plate.

Yeah. I've heard before that when people have these kind of experiences and memories that start to come up later in life, there's a lot of self-doubt like they're not sure if it's real, if they're creating it, if it was because of therapy.

Some emotionally immature parents will accuse therapy of causing it.

What are your thoughts on that? And if I'm somebody who's starting to have these memories, but I'm unsure, what would you say to them?

Well, I think that the memories are true to something. Now, the idea that, oh, you're making this up to have an excuse is kind of unfathomable to me. One, oh, why would you want to give yourself this kind of pain? And secondly, memory is not a perfect snapshot. You could create and combine elements, and you could distort elements.

The tracks of the memories, meaning the impacts in your life of whatever kind of trauma we're talking about, you're not making those up. You discover an impact. You're really reactive in a situation and you don't know why. For me, every time that happens, if I can identify the theme, it relates generally to either Mom or Dad and the dynamic there.

We don't make up the impacts. It's not an easy excuse not to take responsibility. In fact, we're putting a huge backpack on our shoulders. What I would say to people who are having memories and questioning is: give yourself some space to hold that this is your experience right now.

This is what's coming up. And just try to be curious and have support around you that you need because it's very disruptive. And try not to put yourself on the witness stand. Oh, how do you know that? Where's the proof? And all that kind of thing. Just accept that this is somehow part of your unconscious.

Yeah. And speaking of that pain, you have a line in the book that says, "Many don't dare to uncover the painful truth of what was missing in their mothers because they are unprepared to deal with what this would mean." And so, what would you say was missing in them? And what does it mean?

It depends on the age of the person. As a child, the younger you are, the more dependent you are, the more you can't afford to have a caretaker who is missing in action.

I like the analogy of being on an airplane and suddenly finding out the pilot is totally impaired. You would be in freak-out freefall. That's what it's like to think that the person in charge of my safety and survival is not up to the job. That's too much.

We need to protect ourselves at times, and we need to protect mother and our image of mother. If we see too much that's dark, it interferes with bonding with mother.

Interfering with bonding with mother at first affects survival, when we need the bonding to have some needs met. Later, it certainly endangers the relationship. Whatever age you are, if you have an actual relationship with your mother, it will be affected by what has come up into your system. We always have an internal relationship, but I'm talking about a person-to-person relationship.

I think there was another part of your question I'm trying to remember now.

What was missing in them, and what does it mean?

A whole lot of different things could be missing. In The Emotionally Absent Mother, one way of talking about that is through different roles.

I talk about ten different roles a mother plays, and things could be missing in each of those. In the follow-up workbook, I have scales and self-tests: do you remember this or this, or how would you feel about this? There are so many things that can be missing. But I think the most fundamental and important is a feeling of being held, cared for, known.

Just this morning, I had a conversation with someone who was having an interaction with her mother and could clearly see these fake apologies, like, "I'm sorry that you misunderstood," or "I'm sorry that you saw it that way." The person could clearly see these emotionally immature and absent qualities. But she shared with me what happened after the call.

The call ended, and she had this sense of anxiety that she had to call her mother to apologize to her.

Yes. So often, with a mother who's, let's say, not mentally healthy or shut down in some way, the child, a particularly sensitive child, takes over. They feel responsible for keeping mother even and okay and feeling good about themselves. We do a tremendous amount of changing ourselves to protect and caretake mother.

Is that something that goes away in time? Is that something we have to work through in a specific way? How do we keep boundaries in those conversations, when we can see mother overstepping, with a low enough level of anxiety to deal with it?

I think a first step is learning to protect yourself and have clear boundaries. There are a number of skills involved. It will take practice catching what you're responding to. Is it tone of voice? The facial expression, certain words, certain unavailability? Find the triggers.

There needs to be enough self-support that you haven't scattered and can do something. You may not be able to do something in the moment, but over time, if you practice, you could do it sooner and sooner: "Mom, that's not the way I experience it."

A lot of these children end up feeling like it must be me.

That's the big trap to learn how to sidestep: "It must be me." That's why it's critical to understand mother as a person, and the dynamics, the relationship, the chemistry between you. So you don't end up with the child's default of, "It must be me."

Often the sensitive people in this situation say, "I'm too much. I'm too much for other people." Really, I was too much for mother, who is uncomfortable with sensitivity. We have to get around to, "I'm not too much."

If I had an emotionally absent mother, or suspect I did, what would my childhood look like, and how would it still be impacting me as an adult?

I'll ask you to hold the second part so I don't neglect it. Let's start with what it will look like. There will be things it looks like in terms of behaviors, but even more telling is what it feels like or felt like. That's the biggest clue. Especially with early-life things, we often don't have very clear memories. The more traumatic your childhood, the fewer memories you probably have.

It will look like mother is not all here, not engaged with every part. She might have some parts: maybe your schooling or appearance is important to her. But there are other things she's totally uninvolved with. Doesn't even know your friends.

Doesn't know what you like and what you don't like. In the workbook, Healing from an Emotionally Absent Mother, I have scales to help you measure what it was like. Measuring behaviors and what it felt like gets into the impacts.

You feel more alone, more unsupported, unseen, lonely, a deep grief. You don't know that you're loved. You wonder what's wrong with you. It can feel like something is missing. Something is missing. It's important to remember that we're talking about the foundation.

The foundation of our psyche, especially early life. If you build a house on sand, metaphorically, there are going to be some wobbles and troubles.

When your foundation is not strong, you're going to see it in relationships. Often, you either avoid people because you don't think anything good is going to come to you, or you're desperately hungry for love and attention or relationships. It may be in communicating and showing yourself.

I think it will even be in overall health. I'm taking a little bit of a leap, but there's even some indication of cognitive functioning and attentional style. It is going to affect every part of you.

Does that mean you're forever limited? I would say no. But the foundation changes because you rebuild it. It's not just a matter of fading away in time.

We often talk on the channel about big-T trauma versus little-t trauma. Most people think, "I wasn't traumatized because I had a roof over my head. My parents fed me. Maybe they never hit me." I'm curious about how subtle that absence can be.

How subtle can that absence from our primary caregiver be for us to still be impacted by it? Are there a lot of people living in denial of the type of parent they had?

It could be subtle in the sense that a lot of people on the outside might not notice. It's not extreme in the sense that you don't have a mother screaming at the top of her lungs at you. The more sensitive the person, the more subtle it could be and affect them deeply.

I would say often, in some of the most painful situations, the denial is strongest. In that denial there's an idealization: "I had a great mother." But if all the cards were seen, mother was not great at all.

What would you say to that line specifically: "It's her first time living too"?

I'd say it's an attempt, perhaps, to be compassionate. But it's missing compassion for self. It's saying, "Let her off the hook. She's just learning." It's true, often, she's just learning and is not well prepared for the mammoth job of being a mother. But let's not erase all responsibility.

You don't hear that in the business world. People don't say that of a CEO: "He's just learning too." We expect them to step up and learn to do what they need to do.

Mothers can. I had a lot of clients who were undermothered but became mothers and were very good mothers because they learned, they leaned into it. They read books. You get mentored, do your personal work. Let's not dismiss the situation by saying it's her first life too.

That brought up a question I think about often. I'd love your take on it. Do we have to forgive to heal? Is it a requisite for healing?

I don't know that it is. You'll find people on both sides of the argument. Susan Forward, who wrote Toxic Parents and another pointed book about divorcing your mom...

She would say, "No, I don't find that's true." Often forgiveness is premature, before you've done the uncovering, working through and processing. Don't make it an absolute: "You must forgive." In fact, it's often a quick exit.

Forgiveness can also be helpful, but I think it has to arise organically as you work through things. Particularly as you understand the mother more, you may feel more forgiving.

Can you explain what you mean by having a parent who delights in you, something you write in the book?

Speaking to people, I hear, "I don't even know what that would look like."

You may not know what it looks like in a parent, but you might know what it looks like somewhere else. If you've had a partner, a teacher, anybody who communicates, "Oh, I love being with you." Their face lights up, they smile, they have warmth. That's what we're talking about.

What does it do to a child, in childhood or as an adult, not to have had that experience, and to feel like they don't even know what that looks like?

It's a very sad realization: "I don't know what that looks like." But if you can bear the pain of that, or of opening it up a little more, wouldn't you like to know what that looks like and, moreover, what it feels like?

If so, you've got to give yourself to that healing process. That will involve vulnerability and risks. I'm not saying you're going to get it from mother. Most likely not. Only very occasionally do I hear of a mother really changing personality-wise, but you may get it from others.

Yeah, that's one of my favorite kind of questions to ponder there that you touched on. So it's great to get your perspective of can parents actually change?

Well, that would go to the question, can anybody really change? You know, and there's kind of a way that it seems not because people have this consistency. We call it personality. It's their conditioning. And for myself, I have felt tremendous change, transformation we call it. But it takes a hell of a lot of work.

What signals do we have that the healing fantasy, as Dr. Gibson calls it, is really just a fantasy?

In the workbook, you have a scale to rate mother's ability to really do some work on the relationship. Is that supported by evidence? Can you see that in any other relationship in her life? Look at her capacities in general, and at your own in the same way. Maybe one or both of you don't have the resources, time, energy or willingness to do that. Then it's kind of a foolish mission.

It was a turning point for me when I realized: it's that she couldn't. It's not that she wouldn't. She didn't have the capacity to do certain things.

My relationship with my mother changed from very awkward. I wouldn't want to stand next to her for a photograph. It'd be uncomfortable. I remember once, in the years before my 70s probably, hearing my mother say, "I love you," and being uncomfortable with that too.

She lived into her 90s. I remember a weekend or something before she died, going and curling up next to her in bed and holding her. Before I went in there, she had gotten into this habit of saying, "I'm going to go lie down." I said, "Do you want to be alone?" She said, "No." There was a warming up.

That happened without any of this, "Why didn't you do this? Why was it this way?" Any archaeological expedition. Even without talking about the elephant in the room: what happened between my father and me and her lack of protection.

It could happen, what Laura Davis was saying too, in a way that's right for that particular relationship. Let's not have too fixed a template about how someone would get to a more reconciled relationship. Let's not hold reconciliation as a criterion.

You don't have to reconcile. In fact, when people start this work, they think, "It's all about the relationship. How am I going to work this out with Mom?" No, you work it out in yourself. Then you consider: what's possible, what's practical, what do I want with Mom? If you start early involving her, it's going to get very messy.

What can you say to a parent who struggles to feel love, joy or connection with their child?

I recognize that's painful too. If you do your work, you may be able to make that connection.

I'm speaking to that parent right now. Often, practically always I would say, it's the inner child in you who is getting in the way. It's hard to give what you haven't received, especially if you haven't grieved it and can't give it to yourself. You can do your own work. There is an exercise in the workbook about giving what you didn't receive, because that's painful. Step up to the extent you can, is what I would say.

You write about a pretty wild statistic on attachment. Every time I stream and talk about this, it blows people away. Can you talk about a good enough mother, and what it means both for adult children trying to heal and parents worried they're not doing enough?

Well, I think for parents it's good news. The statistic was something like, if you are responding to the needs 30% of the time, that is good enough. That's what Winnicott, a pediatrician and psychoanalyst, said. So you don't have to be perfect.

As adult children trying to heal, I'm not sure that's very useful, because there could be a tendency to say, "She was good enough. What's my problem?" She was not good enough for what you needed to have a foundation. She was good enough for some things.

You're alive. But let's worry less about measuring her, and more about what inside needs attending to.

You write in The Emotionally Absent Mother, "The good news is that the deficits of inadequate mothering can be made up for later. Maybe not completely, but more significantly than we usually dare to hope." It's one of my favorite lines. Why do you say not completely? What does significant healing look like for you?

Significant healing can be, "Boy, I'm not the person I grew up being. I'm much more..." Whatever it is. For me, it's a more open heart, continually more open.

More vulnerable, more expressive. To know significant change is possible. This comes back to what I said earlier: do we change, can we really change? We can, but I would say most people do not. It doesn't mean we can't.

When I say not necessarily completely, it's like you don't erase the past. There's a tradition in Japanese pottery, wabi-sabi or something, where there are cracks in a vase, and rather than try to hide them, they accentuate them and make them beautiful. Accepting: I've been through it, I have some scars.

Can I lovingly accept those, not necessarily accentuate them, and not make them cause for self-rejection or judgment about, "I haven't really healed"? It's like saying, "Have I gone through some process and come out perfect?" There isn't a perfect. Or, to say perfect, it looks different on everybody.

Who you are in your biggest self looks different for everybody. You've got to give yourself a lot of room and not get into, "I have this idealized model, and if I'm not 100% that, then I'm not healed."

I say in the workbook that healing doesn't mean you'll never hurt again, never be a little triggered by something, or never have a little holding back or limitation in some way. But when you are triggered and when you are hurt, the more you've healed, the quicker you can move through that and then the less it drags down your life.

Yeah. On a related note, can you talk a little bit about this idea that we can get the things we lacked from our parents from other sources as an adult? And then I realize now that I'm always asking you two parters, but how do we avoid putting that responsibility on others? Because when usually that's like a negative thing like in a romantic relationship especially, we're trying to get something that we didn't get in childhood and that creates problems. So, how do we get the good stuff and avoid kind of that negative side?

I'd say self-awareness is one, and negotiation the other. In self-awareness, you see what you're doing: "I'm really wanting that person to compliment what I just did," or "I feel like they owe me something." Self-awareness comes through any kind of inner work. Journaling would be one helpful tool.

And negotiation. Different individuals you might be in relationship with have different capacities. What's the capacity? What do you agree on? You might agree to do a fair amount of that, even some reparenting consciously at times. But separate that from the relationship as equals.

Now we're us. It's not that I'm the big one and you're the little one and I'm taking care of you. Now we're both us. You could invite the partner to mirror back to you when you feel like you're coming from a child place and asking too much. Set boundaries, say no.

It takes a lot of care and conversation to skillfully, fruitfully deal with childhood feelings and patterns in a partnership. But it's a great resource, so don't make the boundary too daunting.

Allow yourself to feel, "It's wonderful being taken care of right now."

Guilt and shame are often an internalization of somebody else's voice or beliefs. The anger is natural. Anger is a primary emotion that needs to be worked with in this healing process. When you get angry, it gives clues. Is a boundary being trespassed? Is something being missed or neglected here? Anger is a clue.

Welcome your anger, but hold it. Too often we think, "That means I need to act it out. I need to either cathart it or show it to the other person." Both have a time and place, and both have limits.

Finally, Jasmin, how has your perspective changed or evolved since writing The Emotionally Absent Mother and meeting so many people because of the book?

I went further. It was 2023 when I started working on the workbook, and it had been 2016 when I wrote the second edition of The Emotionally Absent Mother. In that time I change, my perspective changes. You see it partly in the dedications of the two books.

In the first book, I'm concerned about the pain, healing and loneliness. I feel with that injured child. In the workbook, I'm a little more with the adult, saying, "Fly, go for it. Be all of yourself."

I went steps further with what healing looks like. What can you give to the world? Not just getting from being weighed down, or even miserable, to higher functioning. What's beyond that? What people call post-traumatic growth? How does that open new vistas for you? That was big, also more about nourishment.

What we miss if we had emotionally absent parents is being nurtured, the nourishment of that. We have to make up for what we missed: our work with ourselves, in therapy, with partners and friends, maybe with parents or family members. Sometimes an aunt or another family member becomes very supportive.

In short, I went further with the ideas about healing. On the other hand, I went deeper and darker, talking more about trauma, self-rejection and self-hatred.

It's a little different spectrum in the books. I'm talking about the difference in the books, but the difference in me echoes my attention to myself. Where am I still stuck? What am I able to do more of? Where do I want to work? A lot of that for me is more relational. My perspective is a little more about our life in the world, as opposed to our life in therapy.

Thank you so much, Jasmin. This was such a pleasure getting to speak to you.

Your books are incredibly validating to all of us with emotionally absent parents and ones that I personally feel that anyone who even suspects that this was their experience should read and that they would get a lot out of it. So, thank you so much for writing it and for sharing it with us and for speaking with me today. I'm very grateful for it.

Thank you.

Yes, I'm happy to have done it. Thank you.