Is it always the mother’s fault?

Inga is the mother of two daughters. The eldest suffered from anorexia for a long time, from which she eventually managed to get rid of. The youngest is struggling with severe bouts of bulimia. Inga tried to persuade her to see a specialist, but the answer upset her: “If you have such children, then you yourself should go to a psychotherapist!”

Listen to some of us, so you might think that the mother is some kind of disease that hides behind any of our symptoms. But why are we «sick» with it?

“A mother is an initially conflicting figure, because feelings for her are always contradictory,” explains psychotherapist Svetlana Fedorova. “We will not go anywhere from what was born from the body of the mother. And each of us has a temptation to return to the “lost paradise” of complete merging with it: to that state of omnipotence and narcissism, when all our needs were satisfied, when there were no internal conflicts, there was no mental suffering.

But we also have the opposite desire — to separate from the mother, to be independent, to go our own way. As we develop, we attack the mother figure again and again, solving this dilemma for ourselves.”

This is the foundation on which our personality is built. It leaves an indelible mark on our history due to the fundamental principle of «repetition»: from the relationship with the mother, all our other relationships follow.

Even today, despite the efforts of the «new fathers» who are increasingly tender and ready to take care of the child, it is the mother who spends the most time with the newborn. Mother and baby have a special relationship, which is an extension of the physical bond that has united them for nine months.

Although a substitute can also play a maternal role in the family, Varvara Sidorova, a systemic family psychotherapist, recalls: “In Soviet times, when mothers went to work quite early, a grandmother often turned out to be in this role. She gave the child warmth and helped him to know the world, he saw her, falling asleep and waking up. And in this case, who will we blame for everything, grandmother or mother? The therapist smiles.

No guarantees

“She was too soft, and the guy had to be stricter. That’s why I’m so unassembled, weak-willed, ”complains 25-year-old Nikita. The reproaches against mothers sound like they did something wrong on purpose. We do not take into account at all the power of the unconscious that affects mothers.

“Let’s take as an example the most difficult case for a child of a cold, depressed mother,” suggests Svetlana Fedorova. — The mother is experiencing her own internal conflict, which does not allow her to share her life energy, love of life with the child. She has no control over herself. Can we talk about wine here?

So the problem is that mothers are not aware of their feelings?

“Of course, the better we are aware of ourselves, the more likely it is that the development of the child will be successful,” the psychotherapist answers. But there are no guarantees here either. Even though we are aware of our feelings, we are not always able to cope with them. For example, the crying of a child can cause unbearable anxiety in some mothers, although they know that the child is not in danger.”

“Blaming the mother for being the way she is is like blaming the table for being square,” continues Varvara Sidorova. “After all, she also had a mother, and that one has her own mother, and this chain goes back centuries.”

“The same action for some child will be destructive, traumatic, but not for another. When psychologists say that such and such an action leads to such and such a consequence for the child, what they really mean is “most often,” the family therapist explains.

And by the way, what about your father? After all, his role is no less important.

“This is the role of the third, which is designed to open the symbiotic relationship between mother and child. Was he able to deal with it? This moment is often not taken into account by those who are inclined to blame the mother for everything, ”notes Svetlana Fedorova.

Do not confuse beginning and cause

“In the first sessions of my work with a psychotherapist, I talked only about her,” says 39-year-old Emma. — I was convinced that my mother is the root cause of all my failures in my personal life. It was absolutely impossible to look the other way!”

What do these complaints of grown children say about themselves?

“We call the mother to account, for example, because we are in pain and we hope to find the cause of this pain outside ourselves and at the very beginning of our life. And at the very beginning of our life there was a mother, explains psychoanalyst Virginie Meggle. “However, we forget that the beginning is not the same as the cause. Everything starts with the mother, but this does not mean that the mother is the cause of everything.

Behind this confusion lies an unconscious desire to remain a child dependent on the mother. This situation, even if it hurts, is still sometimes cheaper than the fear of becoming an adult and cutting the umbilical cord.

Svetlana Fedorova offers another explanation: “Some of us have such a fantasy that since a mother gives life, she can take it away, take it back to herself. And this gives rise to many complex and difficult feelings. When we have anxiety, a convenient way to get rid of it is to put the responsibility for our lives on the mother.

The paradox is that, while calling the mother to account, we simultaneously blame ourselves for it. And mothers themselves tend to reproach and blame themselves.

But ideal mothers do not exist, recalls Varvara Sidorova: “Having avoided some mistakes, mothers inevitably make others.”

Source of irritation

“Sometimes I see myself from the outside and am horrified: am I really yelling at my son? I, who so dreamed of a child! How could you imagine that he would annoy me? What kind of mother am I? 35-year-old Alina, the mother of three-year-old Sasha, is worried.

“We were inspired once and for all that for a mother a child is only and exclusively happiness. This, of course, is an extremely simplified picture,” comments Varvara Sidorova. “Like everything that is vital for us, motherhood is ambiguous, the most conflicting feelings are associated with it.”

Anger and irritation arise if only because the appearance of a child for any mother means a sharp restriction of her personal freedom. But if we forbid ourselves some “bad” feelings, then we forbid ourselves to love, warns Svetlana Fedorova.

By denying the negative side of motherhood, women increase their feelings of guilt and justify those who are ready to throw stones at them.

“Meanwhile, mothers already naturally feel guilty,” explains Jungian analyst Brigitte Allen-Dupré. “Because, in giving life, they are also aware that they give death, because their child will inevitably die someday.”

Abandon the “me and my mother” scheme

How to move away from this serious accusation? First of all, you need to restore balance, Brigitte Allen-Dupré believes: “The mother conveys to the child not only sorrows and fears, but also energy, the ability to withstand a blow, to resist adversity.”

Let’s try to give her a place in our heart, to see the mother in the context of her own history. What was her family like? Who surrounded her, how was she treated, what injuries were passed down in the family from generation to generation?

Finally, turning our attention to ourselves: why do I attach such importance to her influence?

“When my clients start blaming their mother for everything,” says Svetlana Fedorova, “I ask: “Do you understand that in this way you show your very strong dependence on your mother? Where are you yourself? Where is your «I?» And then healthy anger wakes up in the client, he begins to think about where the responsibility of the mother is, and where is already his.

“If we take responsibility for ourselves, then we must look in the actions of the mother not for guilt, but for the reason for what is happening to us. How does this experience affect us today? You can already work with this to improve your life.”

Such work has another effect: by ceasing to criticize the mother persistently and recognizing ourselves as a responsible adult, and not a victim of parenting, we can free ourselves from our own children’s feelings of guilt.

But what about mothers who are filled with remorse that they raised their children “wrongly”? After all, there is nothing to fix …

“What happened has already happened. People are wrong. You just need to admit your right to make a mistake, — suggests Varvara Sidorova, — and not make another one: do not compare yourself with others, they say, they managed to educate “the right way”, but I don’t. If only because others had other circumstances. And besides, the “success” of education is not always obvious, and we don’t know what its results will look like in 20–30–40 years.”