Hello! I really hope to get your advice, since my current life situation does not give me rest day or night. I am 23 years old. My boyfriend is 28 years old. We are going to move together from Belarus to St. Petersburg. We've been dating for a year now. He recently began working in St. Petersburg. I won't tell you all love story, I will say only the most important thing: I love and trust this person very much, like myself. At the moment, I am finishing my studies at the institute and getting a diploma in a month. The whole problem is that I have a very difficult relationship with my mother. Civil marriage mine is not the first. Then my mother cried for a very long time and became hysterical when I moved out. But I lived in my city ... Mom is an incredibly stubborn, emotional and conflict person. When I tell her that I will quit my current job (my reasons) - she loudly declares "no!" and for a week he reads morals to me: the work is good, you won’t find another like this, you will plow for a small salary. Remembering my childhood, I understand that I am a terribly insecure person, often unable to make any serious decision on my own. Mom always decided everything: is it possible for me to go to hobby groups (I don’t know how to knit or play sports), what to eat (she forced me to eat through force), what to wear (if I liked something, but she didn’t - she won’t buy this thing at all), to whom to go to study (unloved profession and eight years lost to study it). She can easily swear at me with a choice obscenity, so much so that I sometimes cry from resentment. She believes that everything she read in the newspapers is true, and my knowledge is childish babble. At school I was complete. I was bullied by a lot of my peers. All because I could never answer properly or hit back. The result on the face is a life-long complex of my body (although I am not full now). I was not difficult child. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, there were only two men in my life, and then after 18. I treat all people with tolerance, respect, I don’t allow myself to offend anyone, and even more so to say mate. Friends and loved ones say that I am a good person. I cannot respond to rudeness and injustice. I endure in silence, and then I cry and tell everything ... to my mother ... And my mother says - be patient, be silent, ignore ... And now ... I'm afraid to tell my mother about the move. And, it seems to me, I am afraid not only of a scandal, but I also feel sorry for her ... So sorry that my heart shrinks ... I'm afraid to hurt her, I'm afraid of her resentment against me and constant reproaches that I'm doing everything wrong . Most likely, she will tell me that he should go to me, and not me to him, if I so want to be with him. I understand that now I'm going to go against her anyway, and it makes me feel bad... I'm starting to suffer from insomnia and uncertainty that I'm doing the right thing... I'm doing it my way.... I'm losing my nerves.... No, I don't make scandals.... I just start crying quietly into my pillow. I shared my thoughts with my loved one. He told me that I decide how to live, not my mother, and this feeling of guilt needs to be fought in myself, because after the rest of my life I will hate my mother. I understand the essence of my problem, but I can’t pull myself together and resist my mother’s manipulations .... I am very afraid of losing my beloved because I choose my mother’s opinion. No, he will not leave me if I change my mind, but I am sure that his respect for me as a person will evaporate ... In recent years, I have been sitting behind the door with a closed lock in my room. This is how I try to shield myself from my mother's negativity. But this does not save, on the contrary, it makes me think even more that I am a bad daughter. I have to talk to her when she wants to, and if she calls me and I'm busy at that time, which I report, I become a selfish bastard ... Yes, there are glimpses of my "I" when I still do it wrong, as she wants. But I think that it became clear to you what happens next ... I would be grateful to you for reading my story. Perhaps, from your advice about the above, it will become easier for me. Thank you for your attention!
Why the connection between the two closest people turns out to be not even ambivalent, but polyvalent, psychologist Ekaterina Ignatova argues.
Once you were one with her, lived in her stomach for nine months, enjoying symbiosis and total acceptance. Then she was born: the obstetrician slapped you on the pope, you began to breathe and mourn the loss of that state in which there was no loneliness. Thus began the separation from your mother - the process in which your character was formed. By her actions or inaction, your mother influenced your personality and future fate. It was from her that you learned what love is. If she was warm and accepting, you concluded that love and intimacy were safe. If she was cold and inattentive, she decided that intimacy was a very risky adventure. She talked about what you are like, and you unconditionally believed her.
"Good and neat" or "sloppy and restless" - these definitions were carved on the granite of our unconscious. IN adolescence many have tried to amend these statements, but no eraser can erase what is carved in granite. Later, we more calmly began to discuss with my mother, to defend our point of view, often to disagree. However, no matter what they say, no matter how they behave, and at thirty, and at forty, we unconsciously want to achieve her attention and approval or prove the right to our own opinion, to be heard and understood.
The process of separation from the mother begins at the same time
with our birth and lasts much longer than it might seem at first glance. You can get married, give birth to your own children, move to another continent for permanent residence and still remain connected with it by an invisible umbilical cord. And this is not about love, closeness and gratitude to the person who gave us life. This invisible thread is woven from insults, claims and misunderstandings. Every mother loves her child, and none of them can give him exactly what he would like. The acceptance that existed in the first nine months of his life. This impossibility gives rise to painful sensations that psychoanalysts call narcissistic trauma. Moreover, many mothers often end up bankrupt. Tired, unsure of themselves, anxious, they want, but cannot be a support - neither to themselves, nor to their daughters.
Real separation and growing up, which is not related to reaching puberty, issuing a certificate or getting a stamp in the passport, begins with an attempt to understand your parents, to see people in them, with their advantages and disadvantages. Unfortunately, accepting a mother is not always easy, but only by doing this, you can truly accept yourself and not repeat her mistakes.
LOVE-offense
Lena started reading at the age of three, adding and subtracting at four, and at five she went to a music school, where she became an excellent student and a star. Mom always admired her talents, told everyone how smart her daughter was. The ideal picture began to fade at the moment when Lena graduated from high school - the girl entered the university, where she barely passed the sessions for triples, moved from her parents to the first man she came across with an apartment, soon married him, gave birth to a child and sat at home. No one could understand how this smart and talented girl from such a wonderful family could choose such an absurd fate for herself. And why she was talking to her mother through her teeth was also incomprehensible. After all, she did everything for her. Hand on heart, Lena herself could not figure out her motives. To find answers to questions, she turned to a psychotherapist for help. At the consultations, she talked about her childhood, about her mother, who constantly sat in the next room and read. The fact that she always lacked simple human attention. And that the parents were puzzled only by what other circle to enroll the child in. Lenin's mother realized her own ambitions through her daughter, while completely ignoring the needs of the girl. She saw in Lena her improved copy or, in the language of psychoanalysis, her narcissistic extension. Growing up, Lena chose a very strange way to prove her right to individuality - she went on strike. She tried in vain to get the unconditional acceptance from her parents, which she so lacked in childhood.
Unsure of themselves and at the same time ambitious mothers do not know what they are doing. Not noticing the needs and characteristics of their own child, they provoke the emergence of a strong resentment in him. The rejection with which they treat their little daughter rebounds years later. Having matured, the girls refuse to visit their parents on weekends and talk to them through their lips. The feeling of resentment turns out to be soldered into love, and it is possible to share these feelings only when you are in the psychologist's office.
LOVE-JEALY
Alice was the second child in the family. When she was born, her older sister Marina was already learning Chopin. And this is in the second grade of a music school! Parents began to nurture the young talent, and Alice was brought up according to the residual principle. She tried to compete with her sister, but nothing came of it. The handicap was too big. Alice was not angry, she accepted the situation as it was. More precisely, she forced out anger and jealousy, doing what worked well: helping her mother with cooking and cleaning. Then life put everything in its place - the talented Marina, after graduating from the conservatory, married an alcoholic, quit the orchestra in which she played, gave birth to a child and buried her hopes of winning the Tchaikovsky competition. Alice, unexpectedly for everyone, made a career in show business - however, as a director and administrator. We must pay tribute to her mother: realizing her mistakes, she asked Alice for forgiveness. True, a little late. By that time, my daughter had turned 35, and her whole life was subordinated to the idea of proving her own usefulness.
Even with irrefutable evidence of their success, unloved daughters feel insecure. They walk through life in invisible T-shirts with the inscription "Number Two". Not by washing, but by rolling, they return their mother to themselves - they take on the solution of all her problems, provide financial and moral support. And having got a precious prize, they don’t really know how to dispose of it. Hidden jealousy, anger and resentment do not allow you to fully enjoy the victory. Recognizing and re-living these negative feelings, releasing them, can provide an opportunity to build a warm and close relationship with the one who once made such a mistake, confusing the process of raising children with playing on the hippodrome.
LOVE-NEGATION
Olya used to say all her life: “I am my father's daughter”. As a child, she complained that her mother did not know how to play, and as a teenager she claimed that her mother was a boring person. Her whole life was subordinated to the principle: listen to your mother and do the opposite. Mother was a physicist - Olya became a lyricist, her mother loved to cook - Olya could only cook a sandwich and scrambled eggs, her mother got married early - Olya changed men like gloves. The daughter spoke to her exclusively in a jokingly dismissive tone.
By thirty-three, the number of Olya's cavaliers somehow drastically decreased, she began to visit the house more often, to be interested in pasta recipes.
If a girl had gone to a psychotherapist, she would have found out that girls adopt the scenario of life from their mother, to a greater or lesser extent repeat her behavior patterns and partly their fate. Convinced daddy's daughters, as a rule, follow the anti-script, that is, they try to do everything differently from their mother. However, our unconscious does not suspect
about the existence of the “not” particle and transforms the program “not like mom” into “like mom”. Sooner or later, daddy's daughters come to what they were running from. For example, they become boring and homely. Moreover, the more they become similar to their own mother, the more irritation it causes in them. In order not to step on this rake, it is very important to be not against someone, but for something. Teenage rebellion and denial is very important to turn
to a peaceful rally with positive slogans. Then and only then can you become yourself and at the same time agree with your mother.
LOVE-DISCLIEF
Katya's mother was a bright, emotional, controversial woman. She liked to play all sorts of performances, there were always many guests in their house. She could hug her three-year-old daughter, and then build scary faces and pretend to be Baba Yaga. She could praise Katya at a party, and then tell some funny story, from which it clearly followed: her daughter is a rather ridiculous creature. In general, the girl lived like on a volcano, never knowing what to expect from her mother. At the age of six, she decided not to share anything intimate with her. When Katerina turned 15, she began to spend most of her time with friends, and at 18 she ran away from home to her boyfriend. Mom wondered why her beloved child treated her so cruelly. The child tried to call home as little as possible.
Moms who send double messages to their little daughters tend to get a distant, formal attitude in return. This does not mean that they become indifferent to their grown-up girls, no. It's just that they are afraid to shorten the distance and get once again in the gut. “Contradictory” mothers, of course, know ways to breed their daughters for emotion: from time to time, quite unexpectedly, they attack them with reproach or, conversely, with inappropriate caress, break the emotional jackpot and retreat.
LOVE-WINE
Throughout Masha's childhood, her mother worked three jobs - her father was a research assistant, and at that time it was impossible to survive on his salary. The woman did not have any time and energy for veal tenderness and attention to children. At some point, her father was offered to work abroad, but it was time for Masha to go to school, and her older brother to go to college, and her parents refused the tempting offer. When the girl finished school, her mother hired the best tutors. There were no longer three jobs, but one, but this did not make me feel much better - my mother rarely came home before nine in the evening. Masha entered the budget, graduated from the institute with honors and very quickly got a job in a good company. Now he and his brother covered most of the family budget. Of course, Masha could not give half her salary to her parents, but rent an apartment and start living separately, as she had long wanted to. But she felt compelled to help them, just as they had once helped her. And deny yourself in much the same way as mom and dad did in their time.
Masha was tied to her parents not with threads, but with ropes. For many years, the mother shifted the responsibility for her failures to her daughter and nurtured in her a sense of duty and guilt. Once in a consultation with a psychotherapist, she returned to her childhood feeling of uselessness and realized the fact that she was now trying to prove her usefulness to her mother and exchange the “debt” for freedom. But since she indirectly accused Masha of the fact that she and her father had lost some opportunities because of her, which were given only once, the daughter had no choice but to repay the same. That is, to give up the maximum number of opportunities - read, from your own full life. At some point, Masha fiercely hated her mother and began to explain all her problems by the fact that she was raised incorrectly. The path to the realization that in adulthood we ourselves are responsible for our victories and defeats turned out to be thorny.
The only way to end this agonizing game is to step out of the guilt paradigm and start talking to yourself and your mom in terms of responsibility. At the same moment, it will become clear: in a senseless and merciless war - a conflict with mom - it is impossible to win. As long as the fight goes on, both sides only lose.
Hello dear community members. I need help and an outside perspective.
As I already indicated in the title of the topic, I have a difficult and painful relationship with my mother. All my life (I'm now 33) they have ranged from more or less tolerable to disgusting. And never good and trusting.
Perhaps there were good moments in my childhood, but I don’t remember them (except for summer trips to my grandmother in the village). Only continuous pressure, anger, demands, screams emerge in my memory.
From childhood and youth, I learned a lot of "useful" information and ideas about myself: that I am not capable of anything, that the little finger of any child of acquaintances-relatives-and-anyone is better than the whole of me, that I am an ungrateful brute, that I they feed and put shoes on and even treat me (I was often sick as a child) and for this I have to please everyone always and under any circumstances to be a good, kind and pleasant girl. And even if I was offended and treated badly, it's still my fault. Because it was necessary to foresee this, somehow smooth it out, and in general, why are you offended here, look what a princess. It will be very difficult for you in life with such a character!
At 16, I was not allowed to leave the house without permission. I never had pocket money and any personal space whatsoever - my mother could at any moment get into my diary or personal letter and not feel constrained in anything. As a result, I began to rebel and demand more freedom and personal space. Conflicts began.
In parallel, my mother began a thriving romance with a certain man, who soon began to live with us. And after a couple of months it turned out that the mother was pregnant. I must say right away that I reacted with joy and relief to these events, because it seemed to me that now the pressure on me would ease up, my mother would switch to other worries and leave me alone. I treated my mother’s husband (they soon got married) with trust and sympathy, he was smiling, behaved nicely, we went to maternity hospital together, everything was fine. But after the birth of my brother, on the same day, something happened to him. He stopped talking to me at all. It's like I've disappeared from his world.
In the same year, I entered the university at the Faculty of Economics. Came in and realized that this is not mine at all. I entered this faculty also under pressure. I was determined to be an accountant, get a good job, earn a lot and be no worse than others. On the way from university, I thought a lot about my predetermined future and realized that it was unbearable for me. I went back to the university and took the documents. When I got home, I told my mother everything. At that time, our relationship was on the scale of "tolerant", I thought, out of youthful naivety, that she would be able to accept my point of view on my future if I explained everything to her properly. It wasn't here. A storm broke out. I was ordered, since I am so smart and independent, to provide for myself. And don't you dare take food from their fridge and their toothpaste and their bread.
From that day my independent life began. I started looking for a job. In the end, I managed to get a job in one place, despite my age. I began to earn for myself, bought food, clothes, toothpaste. I tried to return home later, so as not to intersect with anyone. I tried not to leave my room until they went to bed. We didn't talk to my mother. But the stepfather suddenly felt like a master in the house. And he began to get me out of the apartment with the tacit consent of my mother. When I returned home, insults and obscenities rushed to my back. My shoes were thrown behind the closet, various small items disappeared from the pockets. He could spend hours walking under the door of my room and shouting insults into the void.
I gave up. In such an environment, I could not properly prepare for the new entrance exams to the university, I could not concentrate, my hands were constantly shaking and my eye was twitching. I felt at home like a hunted animal. Long story short, I left home. She moved to live with her boyfriend, whom she dated for a while. Actually, he himself took me out of the house, unable to see what was happening to me.
Here is my background, in order to make it clear where the legs grow from. Sorry if it got too long.
Since then, my relationship with my mother has not improved.
Otherwise, everything is fine in my life, I am married, I have no children. But these relationships put pressure on me and poison my life. I tried to talk to her, and swear, and go to family constellations, it does not help. One call from her can throw me off balance for half a day. I can’t cope with my feelings when I talk to her, I have to completely abstract, fall into suspended animation, so as not to react to these endless attempts to climb into my personal space, some reproaches, hints, moralizing, so as not to quarrel again.
Recently there was another crisis and we did not communicate for a couple of months. And I'm so unaccustomed to this that I just can't bring myself to call her, although our "relationship" has been restored. It's very difficult for me to pretend, and in this recent crisis, I found myself hating her. If it were possible, I would like to have no feelings for this woman at all, in fact we are strangers to each other.
But, I think about how the years go by, no one gets younger and, eventually, she will become old and possibly sick. And he will begin to demand, for example, that I take care of her. Or, if my husband and I have children, she will probably be happy to enlighten them on the topic of what a fool their mother is.
From all these thoughts I feel uneasy, I do not see a way out of the situation. Please help me see him.
Hello! I have been gathering courage for a long time to consult specialists about my problem. The fact is that from early childhood I have had serious problems in relations with my mother. To begin with, our family was quite prosperous. We never lived The house was in order and beautifully renovated. I didn’t need anything. A good school, beautiful clothes, a lot of toys. 5 everything was perfect. And then I realized, judging by the scandals and terrible scenes in our house, that mom and dad had a breakdown in their relationship. they began to raise their hand and not only their hand... dad and mom. Both. Moreover, with special cruelty. I was 7 years old when my dad deliberately hit his head on mine. He just came up and hit me. Mom beat me with a thick belt and pulled out my hair. Over time, this became normal in our family. I am not a timid person, so I tried to stand up for myself as best I could. hands only for a while. Then we moved to live in another country. My grandmother was dying, and my mother looked after her. She lived in another city. And I lived with my dad for almost half a year. All alone. In a strange city. No acquaintances. Dad was not at home all the time. It was a difficult time, on the one hand, but on the other hand, no one touched or beat me. At that time I studied and didn’t walk at all. Because I was scared. I was a very insecure teenage girl. Then my mother came to us. Dad was torn. At home, the scandals were just wild again. With beatings and threats from my mother that she would commit suicide. I was just scared! That one day it will actually happen!
At the age of 17, I began to communicate with my future husband. But at first, insecurity really bothered me. I didn’t have a very high opinion of my appearance. Because my mother called me a fat ass all the time. were hungover. They asked me to go to the store for a beer, but I refused. Because I was tired. I can’t stand my parents in this state. I just could not communicate with them. I was both scared and even sick. Both parents, in front of their very decent friends, threw me on the sofa. Mom hit me on the head, and dad kicked me ... Then a miracle happened in my life. My beloved proposed to me and I agreed. He lived in Europe, and therefore I went after him. But it so happened that before my departure it was just my birthday. Mom quarreled with me because I didn’t wash the dishes. And he and dad didn’t talk to me all my DR. Dad came and threw me in the face of a banknote, they say, this is my gift. I didn’t take it. I packed up and went with my friends to a restaurant. Then I finally left. But I still hoped that at a distance my relationship with dad and mom would at least slightly improve. At first, yes. any chance to mend our relationship? And what should I do for this? And what am I doing wrong?
