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“What will I be like in twenty or thirty years?” Many women ask themselves this question. But for some of them, the thought of resemblance to their mother (now or in the future) is seriously disturbing and even frightening. Why and what to do with this fear?
“I look at my mother and see a tired, irritated woman who is constantly waiting for an attack and at the same time demanding love,” admits 30-year-old Tatyana. – I’m afraid to be like that. Especially when I notice that I am talking to children in the same displeased tone.
We are like our parents. “Resemblance is inevitable,” says family psychotherapist Elena Ulitova. “It’s partly in the genes, partly comes from upbringing and imitation.” But we treat this similarity differently.
“If we like, for example, our smile, then the fact that it looks like my mother’s is unlikely to cause rejection,” the psychotherapist continues. “But if we don’t like our tone of conversation with children, we will be even more unhappy, noticing that it is similar to the tone of our mother.”
Let’s look at the main reasons for this fear.
“I only want to be myself”
We all have an unconscious need to separate ourselves from our parents in order to assert our own “I”. The need for self-affirmation is often realized in the form of a protest. We rebel against the lifestyle of our parents and against themselves.
“If such a confrontation could not take place in adolescence (for example, parents were too vulnerable or, on the contrary, authoritarian), it arises later,” explains psychoanalyst Brigitte Alain-Dupré. “Sometimes it takes the form of open competition with parents (“I’m better than you”) or remains hidden and manifests itself in an unwillingness to be like them.”
Rejection of one’s resemblance to one of the parents means in this case the fear of not becoming fully oneself. In a woman, this fear is stronger because of the premonition that she is called to repeat her mother’s fate – the girl is told very early that she will become a mother in the future. There is a contradiction: the script is known, but we need our own role. And we are trying to become as different as possible from the previous “performer”.
“I have no freedom of choice”
“If a mother looks at her daughter as an extension of herself – she expects her to fulfill her dreams, demands that her instructions be followed, then it is difficult for her daughter to treat herself as an independent person,” the psychoanalyst continues. She will feel that she has been deprived of her freedom of choice. When we catch ourselves in a similarity, we feel that something is happening to us that we cannot resist. We are like a computer that performs the given actions in accordance with the program embedded in it. Our passivity can be depressing.”
“I see myself as old”
Common character traits and physical similarities lead to the fact that, looking at her mother, a woman understands: one day I will be as old as she is now. It is difficult to be enthusiastic about age in a society where old age is devalued.
The mother appears to the child as powerful and eternal, it seems to him that she has always been and always will be. But here we see new wrinkles on the mother’s face, we see her vulnerability. We understand that we have the same path ahead of us, and we are afraid of our probable future. The questions before us are: will we be better? Worse? How will we experience our own aging?
How to deal with this fear?
1. Adopt your mother
We are disappointed by the imperfection of our parents, which we begin to notice in adolescence. As we get older, we understand that no one is perfect, and we get the opportunity to see parents as real people who have both strengths and weaknesses. We can accept a mother not only in her maternal role, but also as another person, in some way different from us. We can also accept ourselves – as we have become, in some ways following her example, and in some ways starting from her. Are we more considerate and generous than she is? If so, you can try to forgive the mother’s shortcomings.
2. Take back your freedom of choice
We inherited a lot from our parents: ideas about the world, skills and habits, but also fears, prejudices, and sometimes curses … yes, now it is ours. But we don’t have to carry everything on indiscriminately! Take only what suits you. It’s not about rejecting everything at once, but about taking responsibility for your choice. And become an adult.
3. Understand the parent story
If you feel like a prisoner of history or personality, reflect and note, for example: “My mother is aggressive.” Then find anything that opposes that thought, such as “Her mother was depressed and received little attention.” The point is not to justify it, but to move away from the preconceived point of view that causes a painful response in you.