Building a better relationship with your Mother

Book Title: The Mom Factor

By: Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend

 

Our relationship with our mother affects our ability to trust and to love and receive love. The way that we experience security, freedom, healthy self esteem, and connection with God is strongly influenced by the kind of mothering we received.

We need honest friends who will confront us when we are not seeing reality

Our Response to Mothering:

If you had difficulties mothering, you may have built up defenses such as withdrawal, angry control, and compliance to resist the mothering process n general. Then, when mothering is available, you fail to respond. If you are serious about responding to mothering available to you, following are the tasks you will need to accomplish.

1) The first task is to come out of the world of your own head and experience. You must make contact with the outside world. Here is how you do this:

a) A support group

b) A professional therapy group

c) Individual counseling

d) A regular meeting with a wise and understanding friend or two

e) A Bible study where you can process your feelings and experiences

f) An open, relational church that encourages personal growth

2) It is not enough to be there. You need to talk, to open up, to share, and to allow others into the immediate experience of your overwhelming emotional states.

3) As you open up, you also need to respond to the care you receive. Take in the soothing, empathy, validation, thinking, and the other available jewels. Stop resisting love and grace when they show up.

4) You might find it helpful to keep track of your involuntary negative thoughts during the week and then challenge them.

5) Specific plans and accomplishable goals help structure a personality.

6) Loving others and helping them with their overwhelming experiences helps us as well.

Forgiveness: Means to “cancel a debt.” This is what it means to forgive mother. We have to come to a place of making peace with her- a place where she no longer “owes” us. Hating someone for what he/she did or did not do in the past keeps the injury very much alive in the present. Let mother of the hook, even if she does “deserve it.” Let your mother off the hook so that you and she will be free for something better.

The essence of an adult relationship with a fragile mom is this: if she cannot contain feelings, then relate to her in a way that she can handle. Take your need to be soothed and validated somewhere else. Do not continue wanting what she can’t give. Relate to her in the ways that she can relate. Here are some suggestions:

a) Talk about the issue, for example, “I just want to let you know how I am doing from time to time.”

b) Set limits on your wishes to be understood by her. If she becomes critical, then just say, Would you like to talk about something else”

c) Appreciate her for who she is not for who you want her to be

d) Love her in your best way; she still has needs of her own. She yearns to be liked and valued. Find ways to love her. Do the kinds of things that show her you value her. In doing this, you will gain as much relationship as possible, you will ease her pain, and you will decrease the power that she holds over you.