Do I Have A Mother Wound And How Can I Heal It? Masterclass With Therapist Nicole Johnson

If you feel like you struggle with some other wound, please know that you're really not alone in this one and that some of our experiences, while personal, seem to have some commonalities to them. Okay, so before we really unpack the mother wound itself, I want us to look at the impact mothers have and the role that they play. This is going to help us understand the level of impact that the mother wound has. So, let me talk to you a little bit about that. So, um for the most part, mothers are still seen as the primary caregiver and the first attachment that a child creates.

We've talked a lot about attachment style. That is the determining factor for the type and quality relationships that we're going to have for the rest of our life. And so, there's already out the gate this heavy sense of responsibility because attachment style is so important to the health of our relationships in life and attachment style is almost always determined by the mother. Obviously not 100% of the time. There's many different types of families and situations that go on, but it's still leading the pack in terms of the person that a baby attaches to first out of the gate. Um there are lots of studies that are done on mothers who carry their children in utero and one of the really interesting ones that has been talked about recently is that um mothers who carry their children in utero, so that they're pregnant with their baby, not like adopted or things like that, um are biologically intertwined with their kiddos. So, they did a study and they found that cells of the child's

body live in the brain of the mother indefinitely. They're trying to figure out like does it ever go away? Does it stay? It's a little bit undecided, but looks like it stays there. That kind of explains that mother's intuition or attachment that you hear moms talk about with their kids, where their kids at school and get hurt gets hurt or something goes wrong and like the mom knows, right? Um so that might have a factor in it, but that is a really unique experience to just the mother-child relationship for the children that are in utero that creates that connection that creates that bond. So there's a heavy heavy influence on the relationship between the mother and the child.

Um mothers influence on a child directly affects their emotional regulation, their ability to have empathy, whether or not they have empathy, their social skills, cognitive development, and their sense of self. You guys know I've done lots of sessions on all of these topics. The impact of being dysregulated or having emotional immaturity or lacking empathy. Um and I've done a whole series on the sense of self and those factors and what happens when they're impaired. So because a mother directly influences all of these things and all of these things, when they are negatively impacted, have a really profound impact on our life. It creates like this ripple effect.

Right? So it's not just like you have a mother wound and it touches one area and that's the impact it has. It kind of ripples out into every corner of your life. Um and that one's been pretty well established that obviously lots of people influence a child's development and regulation, but the mom carries a lot of weight. All right, they um did a study. This is really interesting and I've been talking about this lately. But there's a study out of uh Ohio State University that examined the direct link between a mother's subjective happiness um or well-being and the child's outcomes. And they looked at a lot of different factors.

But what they found was that children of happier mothers did better academically and had less behavioral issues. And they were able to conclude that a mother's happiness directly and positively affects the child's cognitive abilities and emotional health. Most of us when we're talking our wounds, guys, it's we're talking a lot of emotional woundedness, right? We talk a lot about our feelings and our difficulty with them and how they impede our life. And so understanding that there is a direct connection between the mental health and well-being of a mother and that child's outcomes academically, behaviorally, emotionally, their overall well-being. That's huge. Right? That's so so huge.

And again, it just carries this weight that makes us have a better understanding of the impact a mother wound can have, right? And then lastly, the thing to know here about the mother-child relationship and the role mom plays is that research shows that the quality of the mother-child relationship is considered to be the single most important factor in a child's well-being well-being as they get older. That is a tremendous amount of responsibility on moms. But that's huge. That's huge influence, right? So I think it makes sense then that a lot of us probably would relate to having a mother wound in one way or another because no human's perfect. Life is messy. We can't control what happens a lot of the time. And so anything the mom is going through that impacts her outside of her control or not is going to influence the child.

So that's why we see even like the best, most well-intentioned moms still have an impact on their kids in some way. It's not necessarily a bad thing. We can't be perfect, but awareness is really important, right? Okay. So, what is the mother wound? Let's Let's define it. Now that we see that the role a mom plays in a child's life and the influence and the impact that she has, let's look at what it means when there's a mother wound. So, um it is loosely defined and a bit subjective, but it is a term that describes a lack of mothering or parenting and how that affects a child's psyche.

So, for those of you who talked a lot about um what was missing, the lack of something, abandonment, neglect, that kind of thing, you're spot-on. In this instance, it really is what didn't happen or what was missing. When we talked about the father wound, we looked a lot at what happened, um what occurred to impact. This is This isn't looking more at like what didn't happen, okay? Uh some things to know here about the mother wound, um and I want to make sure that we go over these because sometimes we can get sort of confused um or if we had a well-intentioned, best-meeting mother, we can minimize or miss where there might have been some woundedness.

So, I want to get us all on the same page. So, the first thing to understand about the mother wound is that it not only can, it is most often passed down through generations. Somebody mentioned that in the chat that the mother wound when you think of generational trauma and how mothers take what happened to them and sort of pass it along in one way or another, right? So, there is a lot of emphasis on generational trauma here and how the mother wound has a direct tie to things being passed down through the line. Mark Wolynn's book, It Didn't Start With You, talks a lot about this, particularly what we're understanding scientifically in terms of what happens in utero to like the grandmother and great-grandmother, like the line and how things can pass down. It's really fascinating.

Um but there is an influence there. We, you know, we can only build off of the foundation that we have and so we almost always need to look at what the mother's experience was like. What was her upbringing like? What was the foundation that she had to build off of? Because everybody knows parenting doesn't come with a handbook, right? And so we're going off of what we've been given. So, that's important to keep in mind. The second thing to be aware of is that the mother wound is almost exclusively used to talk about the relationship relationship between mothers and daughters, but it happens with sons, too.

Right? This There, depending on your culture and and the society you're raised in, we see an emphasis on the mother-daughter relationships and the problems that can be there, but sons are included in this, too, okay? Uh the next thing to know about the mother wound is that it impacts our core beliefs. So, you guys know I've done sessions on core beliefs before, the beliefs that we hold about ourself, others, and the world. These beliefs are developed often before the age of six. They are deep in our wiring, often subconscious, and really sort of dictate um the way in which our life unfolds. And so, because the mother wound really directs directly impacts the core wounds, it's one of the reasons why it cuts so deep. That it hurts so deeply cuz it's going all the way down to that foundation.

Right? Um so we see this often show up specifically in how people with a mother wound tend to feel unloved or unworthy or abandoned or not good enough. Um it can really cause a sense of confusion, which is like an interesting symptom that we see associated with the mother wound. Um and the the term and this is the term that's used, utter devastation. Um so with kids specifically as well, like as they're growing up if they're experiencing a mother wound, it often creates children who are really fearful of expressing themselves and then that continues into adulthood. Right? So it's got a very deep and then long-lasting impact that has a lot of um difficult symptoms associated with it. Right?

Okay. So as I mentioned, when we are talking the mother wound, we're almost always talking about the lack of what was needed. Um and if you remember in our conversations about lack, sometimes that is synonymous with neglect. Right? So neglect isn't what happened to you, it's what didn't happen to you. And that's a tricky wound because it's hard to point to something, especially if it was emotional neglect or psychological neglect. That can make it really complicated. So for people in that camp, I always like to give you permission to acknowledge all the things that were done. If you had a roof over your head and food on the table and clothes on your back, great. But also give yourself permission to examine what didn't happen.

The ways in which maybe mom wasn't there for you or was neglectful. But that's not the only ways in which the mother wound happens. There's that sort of camp of people, but there's also the people that have mother wounds from things that happen outside their control or unexpectedly. So, we can get a mother wound because our mom passed away or our life circumstances. Mothers that have their children during times of war or who are are refugees or who are in poverty or who are going through something really traumatic um can be in a survival mode quite literally just trying to keep their children alive. That can create a mother wound, but not intentionally. We saw a lot of this with World War II.

We saw sort of a generation of very hard, cold survival mode, you got to be tough women who made it through World War II and then kind of raised their kids similarly from that place and passed that along and then it created a mother wound when all of those mothers had the best of intention of just trying to keep their children alive. So, it's important to take those things into consideration and recognize that it's not always deliberately done by the mom or that that her intention was to harm you. There are a lot of circumstances that can lend itself toward a mother wound. Um and to recognize that in examining that, we're not we're not villainizing anybody and we're not looking to excuse anything. It's an explanation. And I'm going to talk more about this as we continue to go on because we tend to bump into yeah, but she did her best. Yeah, but she That was outside of her control. And those things can be true. Those things

are true. But that doesn't do anything to help you examine where you might have pain or woundedness that needs healing. So, remember two things can be true at once. Somebody could have tried their best and had no intention um to hurt you, but that impact of what happened or how things unfolded or their behaviors could have wounded you and made a huge impact on your life. Um so, if that's something you struggle with, just give yourself permission to explore this topic without guilt um or feeling the need to defend because this is really about your own healing journey. Right? Okay. So, I would do want to touch on uh generational trauma here for a second.

Um because this is such a player in the mother wound itself. Um most of it is from unprocessed trauma. So, what we see happen is a a mother goes through something traumatic, uh maybe has a traumatic childhood in some way, experiences abuse or neglect, and then it's unprocessed, it's undealt with, and then it gets passed along. And it either gets passed along in that the mom perpetuates those behaviors, maybe her mother was emotionally unavailable, and so she's emotionally unavailable, or we can sometimes pendulum swing. Right? Like a a mother could have been so neglected that she and and and out of that neglect she was harmed that she overcompensates and becomes overbearing or overprotective, and then that can cause its own problems. Right? And I I highlight the emphasis of unprocessed

trauma because you guys know I work primarily with women with childhood trauma and abuse who are often mothers and don't want to pass that stuff along and are so scared that they're going to. But the emphasis is the unprocessed. And if you're aware of it and you don't want to and you're committed to working through it, you can't pass it along because you're processing through it. Right? So, that's that's the key here and it's why we see a lot of mother woundedness from some of the older generations because they didn't deal with this stuff. They didn't have the resources, things are stigmatized, it wasn't really an option, right? There was a lot of keeping it within the family and not talking about it.

So, that played a huge role. Um Okay, so let's look at the ways, the specific ways in which mothers wound us. This is not a comprehensive list. Obviously, um there is an indefinite amount of ways that we can be wounded, but I want to look at some of the most common ones and explore and unpack those a little bit. Okay, so the the first one and the one that probably packs the biggest punch is when we fail to develop a secure attachment with our mom. Again, this can be because the mother never developed a secure attachment as a child and doesn't know how. Um this can be because of the circumstances that uh the child is born into. Again, like I

mentioned, like wartime or in times of crisis. It's it's not really an option. Those needs aren't the emotional needs aren't prioritized or being met that would foster the secure attachment. It's very much about survival. Um but for whatever reason Um and then another reason uh to be aware of too is sometimes moms have certain diagnoses uh that also are correlated with not having a secure attachment style. We sometimes see this with like borderline personality disorder um which we've talked about and how that comes from relationship relationship childhood trauma and how that can impact attachment style and then they don't attach to their child. So, if you guys remember, attachment styles developed in like the first year so of life. So, we have no control over it as children, as infants.

Um, and it's something that happens very very early. And when we don't create a secure attachment with our mother, it not only sets the foundation for like the rest of our relationships. So, like you might have had um difficult relationships in your life, trouble attaching to people in a healthy way, having a lot of relationship drama, whatnot, and maybe not recognize that that's part of the mother wound. It's like branches on a tree, right? Um, but not developing a secure attachment also impacts those core beliefs we talked about. So, if we conclude that our mother doesn't um, love us or that we're not safe with her, we're going to develop some beliefs about ourself, about our worthiness, our importance, about love, about others. And if we develop poor

beliefs like I'm unlovable or people mistreat me or the world is dangerous, that is going to have a profound impact on how we live our life and that sets us up for more hurt and more pain. But it all stems back to that attachment style. Um, so that's the the biggest way that we see the mother wound sort of show up is that there's a disruption in forming a secure attachment. This is another way in which we see the generational trauma have an impact. Mothers who didn't have secure attachments as children with their mothers, unless they are aware and educating themselves and working through that, don't have the skills or tools or knowledge to foster the secure attachment with their child. Um sometimes they do do attach deeply, but it might be anxious driven.

Right? And that I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, um and we all do the best that we can, obviously. Um but it has an impact. It has this domino effect impact, right? So, secure attachment or lack thereof is one of the biggest contributing factors to the mother wound. The next one, um is when the mom is emotionally neglectful or unaffectionate or unresponsive. I see a lot of people fall into this category, where maybe they had a really nice mom, and she maybe she was a stay-at-home mom, and she was there all the time, but she wasn't really available emotionally. She didn't model emotional intelligence and maturity and how to handle emotions. Maybe her own generational uh trauma influenced what emotions you were allowed to feel or express.

Um I've seen a lot of parents who uh if they were punished as a child for expressing anger or even crying, when their child then is angry or cries, they have a trauma response out of fear for their kid, even though they logically are like, "Well, if I don't do anything, nothing's going to happen to the kid." There's this inner child fear of, "Oh, no, no, stop crying, stop crying." And right, you're going to your room. And it can cause a trauma response, and then we can be really reactive to that and want to shut that down in our children to protect them, but now we're being emotionally neglectful, right? Now we're being reactive and that's wounding to a child.

So, if you had a mom who was maybe emotionally unavailable, emotionally neglectful, or even lacking in affection, which this is there's some cultural influence here, right? There are cultures that are less affectionate and some that are way, way more affectionate. I remember I did um a TikTok series a lot like over a year ago on parents not being affectionate and I had thousands of people from all over the world chime in about their culture and whether or not they're affectionate and the impact it had and what was so fascinating was I heard from a lot of people in the UK where um they aren't as affectionate in some ways and even though that's their culture and it's widely accepted, they talked about how it impacted them having a mom who's maybe stoic or emotionally unavailable. And then there was lots of people who talked about how in their families and in their culture and a lot of them were from places in like South America where they're extremely affectionate and what that did for them.

And so there's a cultural influence here and there is a spectrum, but research is really clear that lack of affection, particularly from a mother, has a huge impact on So, um I think we talked about it before. You guys might remember the still face experiment that was done in the '70s. Um I cannot remember who it was by, but Dr. Tronick, I think. Um so this was an experiment done where they had the mother respond to their infant child in varying ways. So, baby would coo, mom would coo. Baby would coo, mom would not. Baby would smile, mom would smile back. Baby would smile, mom would not. Mom would frown. That kind of thing. And they called the still face experiment because they were looking at what happens with that baby when mom is emotionless, shows nothing.

Right? This very dull face. Um and that study was controversial because as they learned the impact that it had on the babies, um it is upsetting, right? It's really quite harrowing some of the outcomes. Um but what they saw was that if mom was not naturally engaging in this give and take where um we mirror each other and we do the big facial expressions or baby calls out and we call it back or comfort thing then when they cry, um the baby goes into a state of panic. They will become desperate to get a reaction from their mother. So at first they're sort of shocked and caught off guard and then their behavior escalates.

Um maybe they do the behavior bigger, so maybe if they were shaking a rattle, they shake it more and more and more to getting desperate, maybe hurting themselves, screaming, crying, lashing out, whatever it is. Um and then if mom continued to just not respond, the baby would shut down. Kind of go into a state of shock or dissociation. Um and of course all of this has profound impacts on our nervous system um and how it's getting wired, our programming, those core beliefs because even though that baby's not speaking a language yet and thinking in language, it's developing conclusions. The brain is assessing and learning like how does this world work? Um and so we see a really big impact on children when their mothers are emotionally neglectful or lacking in affection. So that's also something to sort of assess for. How did your mom respond when you were sick? How did she respond when something exciting happened? How did she respond when you were sad? Um and and this is where we see our our mother's own programming

come in. If no one held space for her, was compassionate toward her, um, when she got her heartbroken as a teenager, she might be the same toward you. If she had no ability to deal with certain emotions in herself, she can't do it for you. And we know this to be true, right? The level with which you can feel shame is the level which you can hold space for another to feel shame. If you don't allow yourself to feel sad, you're going to have a real hard time allowing anybody else around you to feel sad. Um, this is how human interaction sort of works. It just is amped up a notch when we're talking the mother-child relationship. Um, and so taking time to reflect on your childhood and looking at how did mom respond.

It's hard if we don't know about our early years. Sometimes we need to go ask people. Sometimes we need to have a conversation. You don't have to know. And a lot of people ask me like, how can I heal from something if I don't remember and I can't know? We might not cognitively have the memory, but your nervous system never forgets. And I'm a huge proponent in trusting your intuition. If you feel like you've got attachment issues, you struggle with certain emotions, you struggle to validate your own feelings, you struggle with comfort, and you ask yourself, did I receive a lot of affection and nurturing as a baby?

If your gut is like, I don't think so, and you've got all these symptoms that support that, you can trust that. And, um, that provides you sort of groundwork then to begin working through these things. But it can be helpful to data collect. It can be helpful to have some conversations or reflect back to get an understanding. Childhood goes fast and we only have these little tidbits of cognitive memory with it, but our nervous system is being trained the whole time. And even if we were provided for, we do need to assess for what was the emotional temperature of my childhood. What did that look like? Um because that that plays a huge role in the mother wound.

Another way in which our mothers wound us, and this one is a more overt way, so it isn't necessarily what didn't happen. This is looking at something that did happen, and this is if our mothers were abusive. Um you know, women are not exempt from this either. And uh we do see it. So, that can look a few different ways. Our minds tend to jump right to the obvious ones like physical, which would include things like hitting, slapping, spanking, um or you know, putting our hands on somebody in an angry way. If you you guys always know that I say anytime we parent out of anger, it's abusive. So, it doesn't have to be severe.

All right. Um but physical is not just the only one. Uh there are times and instances where mothers are sexually abusive. We also see relational abuse. This is where we get the um talk of moms and daughters a lot. So, mothers that are really competitive with their daughters or maybe jealous of them, um that have some deep wounding. This is often like male wounding influenced. Um can create some relational abuse that happens. But, we also see psychological and emotional. So, psychological are things like gaslighting, intimidating, bullying, uh ridicule, humiliation, um or we see like uh infantilizing somebody. We see this more often with mothers and sons.

Treating them um like their baby boy and waiting on them hand and foot. Um and then we see parentification a lot with mothers to daughters where they're trying to grow them up quickly, put a lot of responsibility on them, holding them to a different standard. So um those those are all forms of psychological abuse. And then there's emotional. So obviously there's things like emotional neglect, but there's also blame shifting and guilt-tripping and verbal insults. Uh belittling and threatening. Those forms of abuse often get overlooked or minimized, especially if they were normalized within the generations of the family. But you guys know this and I've talked about this. Research is really clear that these forms of abuse can create more severe symptoms associated with PTSD and longer-lasting PTSD than physical and sexual abuse because they are hard to spot and

identify and most of the time we're not having something to point to and they do get normalized. So then we don't address them or heal from them. So if you suspect that maybe part of your mother woundedness was that there was abuse there, just make sure you take time to account for all types of abuse and to check yourself on that demines, right? We talk about demines, which is denial, minimization, normalization, and defending. It's the natural process our brain goes through when it's struggling to accept or digest something that's hard. We might have been taught to naturally deny something um or normalize it, right? Everybody.

Or minimize it. It wasn't that big of a deal. It only happened once. Um and often defend. Well, she did the best she could. She didn't know any better. Her parents did it to her. All understandable. All something that our brain does to try to get itself around the truth and the reality of what happened. But be aware of that. If you find yourself thinking those thoughts or saying those things, it doesn't mean you weren't wounded or that it's disqualified. It might just mean you're struggling to accept what the truth was. All right, so be patient with yourself in that and pay attention to those things.

Okay, so those are some of the ways in which we see um the mother wound happened. Our attachment style gets disrupted for whatever reason. There is a lack of something, a lack of support, a lack of emotional connection, a lack of affection. There's neglect there. Um or they're overtly abusive in some way. That can also have cultural influence as well. So something to keep in mind. So, what is the impact of the mother wound? There are I'd say like an infinite amount symptoms associated with the mother wound because of the domino effect. Right? Our core beliefs get impacted. That creates a creates a situation where we make choices or find ourselves in circumstances that wound us further.

That creates symptoms, right? So there's this domino effect here. But let's look at some of the most direct ones associated with the mother wound. The first one, and many of you said this in the chat, is perfectionism. Um we see this present a lot with women that have a mother wound, but obviously it can happen with males as well. But this is almost this this symptom is almost a reactionary symptom. It is like a defense mechanism to protect yourself against rejection. Perfectionism is nothing more than looking for approval and acceptance. That's what we're trying to do here. So, you can see how this ties together. If mom was strict or um unaffectionate or not very supportive, you as a child would have done anything you could to get approval and attention.

And if that meant being straight A student or being the best on the team or weighing the right amount or looking the right way or going to that college or on and on and on, uh we develop perfectionism out of a place of longing for approval and acceptance and striving for it. And there are people out there who are aware that their child is wanting approval and acceptance and they keep raising the bar on giving it, whether they're trying to make their child be the best they can be or they're coming from a place of woundedness and going, "Well, I didn't get it, so you're not going to get it, either." Right?

So, perfectionism, uh you guys also mentioned this one quite a bit, feeling like you're not doing well enough, like you're not doing enough or doing good enough or doing well enough in life or in whatever. This is often a result of internalizing the criticism that you received from your mom. So, uh it's still connected to that drive to be approved of. Approval and acceptance are directly linked to a sense of belonging and we know that belonging is the greatest need that we have as humans. Right? As a child, belonging is paramount to your survival. So, we will avoid rejection at all costs and seek belonging no matter what we got to do.

Um and so, feeling like you're not doing well enough or not doing good enough is you internalizing that voice uh that you received as a child if you had a critical mother um and holding yourself to that same standard still in search of trying to get that if I just do better, if I just do better. Um we also see it as a result as like a response to not wanting to get caught off guard. Children that came home with their picture that they drew and they're so proud of themselves and they're like, "Mom, look what I did." And then the mom responds like, "What is that even supposed to be?" Or, "That's not very good." The shock of that immediate pain of rejection um and criticism is so painful that we will often teach ourselves to be that critical so that we never get caught off guard like that again.

So, we just become our own haters, our own most greatest critic um to try to protect ourselves from ever feeling something like that. Another impact that the mother wound has is and I mentioned this a bit earlier about how a mother influences our sense of self. So, with the mother wound, it's going to negatively impact our sense of self. There are six factors. I did a whole series on this. We broke them all down. But, there are six factors that make up your sense of self. If you remember, those are agency continuity coherence feeling complete authenticity and vitality. I'm not going to get into all those today cuz that's a lot. You can go back and listen if you want to. Um but, when those get impacted one all, some in any way, it off balances and sort of weakens, like chinks in an armor, our sense of self. And our sense of self is is what is guiding us through

life. How authentic we are, how full of vitality we are, how complete we feel in and of our self. And a mother's role directly influences that sense of self. So, a lot of people with a mother wound have weakened areas of sense of self or lack a strong sense of self, and then that creates a whole host of issues. We really see it show up in our romantic relationships, but it can be the friends we choose, the jobs we go after, all sorts of stuff. Um another one, and you guys will not be surprised to hear this at all, and we talk about it all the time, is people with a mother wound have a really hard time setting healthy boundaries.

Uh boundaries are a big one. Now, this is This can be um from if you have like an an overtly abusive mother who didn't tolerate or allow boundaries or saw boundaries as disrespectful. Um this can also be from if you had a a mother who was in trauma or who was being abused, if maybe you were raised in a domestic violence situation, or maybe she had an abusive parent growing up and never had boundaries and then passed that along to you. Um we can see it show up in a number of ways, but the problem with this mother wound symptom of not being able to set healthy boundaries is that it makes us really susceptible to predators, to abusive people looking to take advantage. It makes us more inclined to have relationship trauma, and it really impacts your self-confidence and sense of self-worth. It's hard to have self-trust and self-worth when you don't know where you end and another begins, and you struggle to advocate or speak up for yourself.

So, this is a big one that we see come up a a with a mother wound. We also see a lack of emotional awareness. Uh Dr. Gibson talks about this, right, in her book Adult Children of Emotionally Mature Parents and how there's that domino effect as well. If we have an emotionally immature parent, we're not being taught how to be emotionally mature. Maybe emotions aren't even talked about or discussed in the home, and so we might even lack awareness at all. Um you guys know I always play the game of name three emotions, and after you name three, give me three more, uh and see how far you can get. Um we often if we weren't raised with an emotionally mature emotionally aware parent or mother, uh we will carry that with us, and we don't even realize how we're suffering from it because the awareness isn't there.

You cannot process an emotion that you cannot label, and if you don't have emotional awareness, if as far as you go as happy, mad, sad, and maybe a few others, how are you going to identify and know what those really complex emotions feel like? And that, of course, also lends itself to a bunch of problems, right? When we're not emotionally aware, we don't know what we're feeling, we don't know what to do with what we're feeling, it's going to come out sideways. Sometimes we internalize it and we get sick, right? Gabor Maté talks talks about that in When the Body Says No. Sometimes it comes out and we pour it out onto others, and that can cause us to continue our own cycles of abuse and trauma.

So, uh lack of emotional awareness is a big one that we see. Um and then, of course, uh mental health conditions. So, the big three associated with the mother wound um are depression, eating disorders, and substance use problems. But, of course, this list is actually super long. Um we see I believe there are some personality disorders that are associated with the mother wound. We see things like anxiety, PTSD, but we know that this can actually go really, really far. Uh There was some research that was done. Um I'm not going to remember the name of the book now. I think it's called The Killers Among Us.

Back in my obsession with psychology and abnormal psychology and serial killer days, um I remember reading on them and one of the There's like the common denominators um in childhood for serial kill- serial killers. So, things like they start fires, like pyromaniac, or they hurt animals. Another common one is that they had a dysfunctional relationship with their mother and that their mother in particular was abusive. So, research actually showed that serial killers were more likely to be psychologically abused by their mothers than physically. So, that psychological abuse that we're talking about that we tend to minimize and deny, like intimidation, bullying, criticism, that was far more prevalent serial killers than something like physical abuse.

Um and that dysfunctional relationship, particularly with mothers who were really domineering um and emotionally abusive. So, again, not a lot of like physical, but a lot of psychological and emotional is considered to be a factor in the development of a serial killer. So, this mother wound, because the role is is so important and the influence it has on us and sort of setting up our programming so young in life that when it's in extreme situations, right? There there are are times where we see the father be extremely abusive. But if kiddo is safe with mom, if mom is their advocate, we don't see the abuse from the father be a factor in something like whether or not somebody becomes a serial killer. But if the mom is abusive at those levels, it's a determining factor. Which just shows you that the power of it, right?

Now, those are the extreme ends of the spectrum, right? But, that just goes to show that it isn't just oh, she hurt my feelings, or I have some anxiety, or some people-pleasing tendencies. It can really deeply wound us in ways that alter us that can change the way we live our life. Um so, healing it is a great thing to prioritize, um because you know, we all deserve healing and freedom from it, especially because it can just uh have such a profound impact. So, what do we do about it? How do we heal it? Right? Healing the mother wound is almost like healing every other wound, but there's a couple different considerations.

So, like with everything we talk about, it starts with awareness. I know you're shocked to hear me say that, right? It starts with awareness. Um but, because this almost always goes all the way back to the beginning, especially if you were if your mother wound comes from your biological mother that you were in utero with, it can start even in before you're born. Right? There's research that talks about how a mother's mindset or emotional health, her stress levels impact baby in the womb. So, this can go all the way back. So, the awareness gets a little bit trickier. Um and so, we need to take time to explore the development and relationship with our mom.

You also need to take time to kind of maybe learn a little bit about, and you don't have to, but this can be helpful, a little bit about like who she was, like what was her age when when you were born. Um where was she in life? What was her parenting style, right? We've done sessions talking about parenting styles and the impact that they have, Like, how was she raised? Was there Is there possible passed down trauma here? What was her relationship with her mother like? Um I love that Gabor Maté talks about this and how no two siblings have the same parent cuz we know that we continue to develop and grow as humans. And so, if, you know, your mom was 19 and it was a scandalous situation with a really abusive man, that's different than if she was 35 and was trying to have a baby. Right?

So, those things matter. So, it can be helpful to collect data on that and get an idea of if there's a generational influence, what was going on in life, even things like, you know, where people are at financially. We know the impact that poverty has on our ability to parent. There are some of the best mothers in the world out there who have to work three jobs or who are super stressed financially and can't be the mothers that they want to be or could be because of their life circumstances. So, those things matter. Treat it like a Treat it like a project. Treat it like a science experiment. Go collect data. Again, I will say we're not looking to villainize anybody.

Um we're not looking to just blame people. We're definitely not looking to just ruin a relationship. I have a lot of clients who are like, "But my relationship with my parent is good now and I don't want this to disrupt that." We're not talking about any of that. You don't have to have a disruption in the relationship. You don't have to, if you're no contact, you don't have to re-engage. You don't have to have a conversation if you don't want to. This is just for you, for your own healing. Um and you're collecting data so that you can better understand the impact it had on you so you know what your next step is in your healing journey. That's the focus here, okay?

So, I always encourage people to start with awareness. Collect your data. Right? Put Push yourself where you feel resistance. Excuse me. If you have like if you find yourself normalizing it or you find yourself minimizing it, ask those questions. Why? Why am I doing that? What am I afraid of? What's going on inside of me? This is often half the battle. Once you've sort of collected your data, uh a good step to take here is to connect the dots. So, you want to look at maybe your current issues or symptoms. Sorry, guys. Um and the ways in which the mother wound has impacted that or influenced your life.

Sometimes we can look back and be like, "Oh, yeah, as a kid I felt really alone or I felt unloved or was not good enough, but I'm grown now and everything's better." And we fail to see how maybe our current perfectionism at work or a fear of our partner leaving us or our criticalness toward our image is still associated with the mother wound. Right? So, you want to connect those dots and see, how is this still impacting my life? This is a really important step because it's going to help foster self-compassion. It's going to help you to release judgment toward yourself and criticism and then improve self-love.

You guys know the slogan. I say it all the time. You can't change what you judge. And if you're over here going, "What's wrong with me? Why am I this way? Why can't I just change it?" and you're blaming yourself and criticizing yourself, you're going to stay stuck in that loop. But if you can work to connect the dots and go, "Oh, my mom had a mom like this and she did the best she could, but her lack of emotional availability caused me to be this way and this is why I still struggle with this." Now compassion can enter the room and love can enter the room and now solutions can come cuz we're getting clarity. So, this is a really important step for that part of the healing process and that alone provides healing.

When you're able to release some judgment and criticism towards yourself, you are healing, even if nothing else has happened yet. If you're able to understand why your mom did what she did, and you're able to not excuse it away, but it helps provide an explanation so you stop blaming yourself cuz you were just a child, healing is happening. Right? That's what that looks like. Okay. And then, where this healing process with the mother wound is a bit different than some of the other wounds we heal from is that it requires reparenting. I saw the question in the chat that said, "Is there any hope for my kids?" Absolutely. Of course. And the really important thing to know here is that every generation is getting better and better and better. We are parenting at levels we've never seen before. Kids are safer than they've ever been, and I know that seems counterintuitive because we have such access to the internet and social media, but it is true.

Um abuse overall is down from what it used to be. What used to be considered normal is now something people will go to jail for. Um so, we are making progress. And like I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest factors that caused a mother's a mother wound is unprocessed trauma in the mom. So, if you're here and you're listening, and you're becoming aware, and you're wanting to heal and grow, you've already broken the cycle, and things are already going to be better. Um no parent is perfect. We can't heal ourselves perfectly and then go be a mom. Most of us, if we have children and we're women, are healing as we're going. But this is where reparenting comes in.

This is an important step in healing from the mother wound, um because any and all parental wounds need to be reparented. Uh this is because you might logically understand that uh it wasn't you, it wasn't your fault, you were the child. You might logically understand like why your mom did something, you might logically understand like oh these symptoms of my life are residual woundedness from the mother wound, but that wounded inner child, that inner child that uh was the one who was, you know, actively wounded by your mother, doesn't know or understand any of that. Uh if you are interested in Internal Family Systems, this is a great method to apply in this because it helps you understand those parts of you, but if you can at least see yourself conjure an image of yourself as a child.

It can be at several different ages, it can be at one age. If you have children, our children can help us with this cuz we can sort of look at them and maybe sort of remember us at that age, um or we see the vulnerability and innocence of a child at that age and it can help us have compassion toward our own inner child, but if you can see yourself as a child and tap back into those emotions. I know, this is the part where everybody's like, "No, thanks. Why would I go back to that?" But this is what reparenting is about. It's not enough to just logically understand something and work some steps.

We've got to reconnect with that part of us that was wounded, that pain, and finally give ourselves the safety and space and permission that we didn't get as a child to process through it now. The concept of reparenting is to be to yourself the parent you didn't get. So, if you had a mother who didn't allow you to cry or didn't hold space for your emotions or just didn't even understand them and didn't know what to say, it's one thing to grow your emotional intelligence maturity, but then you need to apply that back to that little kid that's still sitting in their room crying, uh feeling alone, not knowing what to do, or feeling shame and embarrassed about something and having no one to go to.

So, this is deep deep work and it's often emotional, yes, but that's not bad, but it is also deeply deeply healing. And because the mother wound cuts so deep, we need deep healing. So, if you can connect back with those emotions and give yourself permission permission to process through them, if you can reconnect with the that part of yourself and even develop a relationship with that part of yourself, um you can then practice being for you what you needed. Not just now, but also back then. This is great if you have kids because we often subconsciously sort of re-parent ourself in parenting our children. If your mother was never affectionate and now you're affectionate with your kid, every time you're hugging your kid when they're crying, that inner child in you is getting that affection and nurturing as well. If you can consciously be aware of that and practice that, you will see uh that healing process sort of expedite itself.

So, there's uh two ways you can kind of do this, um and this is a whole other session in and of itself, but there's the then and now re-parenting, right? So, you can do it in the now, which is this is where you're working on slaying that inner critic and rewiring some of those that you hold about yourself. You're practicing kindness and compassion and empathy, affection with yourself. Looking in the mirror and speaking kindly, hugging yourself, speaking nice to yourself, catching that inner critic when it's going off and popping off about something, and being like, "No, no, shh. We're not doing that anymore, right?" There's also the re-parenting of the back then. So, there's re-parenting exercises for this.

We've talked about them in a couple of sessions, but this is where you can relive a memory, bring it back to your awareness, and change the ending. Maybe you see sexual little you sitting in the bedroom, crying on the bed alone, feeling alone, abandoned, rejected, confused, and envision yourself as the adult you are now walking into that room and scooping her up and hugging her, comforting her, right? Whatever. There's a million different ways that you can do this. Those mental exercises are really, really good. Emotional, but very, very healing. I I often see my clients have a pretty um significant decrease in symptoms fairly quickly when they're related to those inner child wounds.

Um it also really helps in the self-love journey cuz we're connecting with all parts of ourselves. So, and then lastly with this, um with regard to the mother wound, remember to be patient with yourself. This wound in particular takes time. Right? Um and you are always going to have the scars. We can't undo that. Uh but the goal here is to take the power back and to heal the wounds so that it doesn't continue to negatively impact your life. It's one thing to have healed the mother wound and just still have the scars from it, but to be living as your authentic, healed self. It's another thing to still be in the wound and that wound having power and control over your life.

The people that say things like, "Are there hope for my kids?" Yes, because of this. Because of this reason right here. You and you alone are the only one who can do anything about this wound, and when you make the choice to heal it, it changes everything because you're taking the power back. You're no longer going to live life from the wound. You're not going to parent from that wound. You're going to be able to live life aligned with your character and in accordance with your values and like who you really are. So, it is deep work. You want to be patient with yourself. It's not going to happen overnight, but it is a very, very worthwhile endeavor, because you're going all the way back to the beginning and healing yourself up till now, and that can dramatically change your life. Not just who you are, your confidence, and how you present, but I see clients who their life seriously changes. Relationships change.

Sometimes their career changes. Sometimes they move. Like, really, really, um, odd things you wouldn't think can are connected to this, but because you're setting yourself free, uh, it can have quite the pleasant domino effect. So, here are your questions to consider if you're wanting to do this work. Here's a good way to get started, uh, is to use these questions as a prompt, and you can journal or you can talk them out with yourself, but uh, this is to help you get your feet wet. Number one, how did my mother impact me? Start with single words if you need to. This is where I like journaling. Just put pen to paper, get writing, you'd be surprised at how much comes out.

If you are struggling to think of all the ways, break it down. How did she impact me psychologically, emotionally, socially, physically, relationally, whatever, right? So, how did my mom impact me? Number two, what wounds do I still have that I need to heal? Let's have a real, honest conversation with ourselves about that. And then number three, what beliefs about myself do I hold that I need to address? This is talking those core beliefs. What do you believe about yourself? How did you come to believe that and why? Is there mother woundedness tied to this? Okay, what are we going to do about it? But start there. Start with those three.

Um and hopefully it'll get you thinking and get the ball rolling. If I you guys have any questions, you know where to find me. Uh I'm going to go ahead and wrap the recording. I'm going to stick around for a little bit to answer questions in the chat, but hopefully you guys found this helpful.