Mother as … accuser

The daughter says to her mother: «We bought a lot of groceries, I hope you don’t have to go to the store in the next few days.» She replies: “I knew that I would not see you until a couple of weeks later.” Some mothers instinctively hit our most vulnerable spots and do it no matter how old we are. Their words instantly turn any of us into a bad son or a bad daughter. How to change the situation?

Admit you are being manipulated

“If we are strongly attached to our mother, it is not easy to understand that she is manipulating us, but we are really not to blame for anything,” says Ekaterina Mikhailova. It is not easy to admit this, because over the years we have deeply absorbed (internalized) this type of relationship with her. And, as adults, we still feel the fear of being rejected if we no longer meet our mother’s requirements.

To free yourself from the imposed guilt, you will need to protect yourself from her desires, to overcome the prohibitions that she has established. It may be worth changing jobs or choosing another job if you are doing it at the insistence of your mother.

Or maybe part with a partner, whose candidacy she so carefully selected for you. All this will help to understand: contrary to her predictions, the world did not collapse when you set about implementing your own plans.

Don’t take the bait

“In the case of emotional blackmail — and this is how you can call the imposition of guilt on another person — you need to remember that you are unlikely to be able to change the mother’s behavior, only your attitude to the situation can change,” emphasizes Ekaterina Mikhailova. “Be strong enough to acknowledge that your behavior helps her keep playing her favorite games.” Try to change the angle of view and see in the mother not an omnipotent demon, but just a person who does not know how to build relationships in a different way. “It is quite possible that it is not easy for your mother to ask you, an adult, for something, and she does it in such a strange way,” notes Ekaterina Mikhailova. “But why are you angry instead of just saying, “I’m not ready to discuss this now…”?” A constructive dialogue can be built only by controlling your behavior, without accusations.

It is also useful to figure out if there is something in your relationship with your mother that you are really to blame for. “If you have something to seriously reproach yourself for, left alone with your mother, ask her forgiveness — sincerely and thoughtfully,” advises Ekaterina Mikhailova. There is a good chance that the tension in your relationship will gradually subside.

switch attention

Emotional blackmail is often resorted to by parents who do not have their own life, their own interests. Because of this, they seem to pull the children closer and try to live their lives, completely unaware that they are literally suffocating from such closeness. “Look at your mother in a detached way and think about what“ this woman ”could do,” suggests Ekaterina Mikhailova. — Maybe in her youth she was fond of painting? Encourage her to draw again, buy what she needs for it, find a place where she can draw for her pleasure. Perhaps with your help she will find her passion. But she will have much less time to interfere in your life.

Make a schedule

Every time, leaving her mother, Marianna is late for the bus: at the moment when she is about to leave, her mother begins to complain that her daughter spent little time with her, and she, proving the opposite, forgets about everything. “Relationships need clear boundaries,” Ekaterina Mikhailova is sure, “but it takes time to establish them. So, for six (!) years, one of my clients taught her mother to start a telephone conversation not with a complaint about feeling unwell, a demand to do something urgently, but with a question whether her daughter now has the opportunity to speak.

Since it is precisely mathematical precision that helps to minimize such conflicts, when you come to visit, immediately tell your parents what time you will leave; warn in advance that you will not spend the entire vacation in the country. The conversation should not start with the words “I can’t (don’t want)” — this “childish grammar” is unlikely to help establish adult relationships. Tell me more about your intentions and feelings. If the situation has gone too far, a radical remedy will help bring it back on track: do not be afraid to “shake up” your mother a little, bring her back to reality, reminding her that you have matured and live not by her, but by your own rules.

Don’t sacrifice yourself

“It happens that an adult son or daughter themselves does not want to change their relationship with their mother,” says Ekaterina Mikhailova. — To some extent, they even like that my mother depends on them, it’s flattering that she asks them to help. Such children say: «I am her whole life.» If you don’t like being taken advantage of, but at the same time paradoxically give a sense of self-worth, you are faced with a choice: leave everything as it is (including your role as an “honorary donor”) and stop waiting for your mother to what she can never give you, or start a long, difficult job, the purpose of which is to establish an emotional distance in a relationship.

Be prepared for the fact that your resistance will increase the mother’s insistence: she may even resort to one of the most effective methods — an attack or the image of the victim. Since most people do this unconsciously, there will be endless conversations, arguments, clarifications that will require you to be confident, consistent and firm. So, you have to start working on your relationship with yourself.

Be able to maneuver

To achieve the necessary distance in a relationship, some decide to resort to a last resort — deception. “Don’t wait for me, I definitely won’t be able to come until the end of the month — the audit is at work.” The path of lying is simple, but it does not solve the problem of emotional dependence. This also applies to a formal break with the mother: in the end, this is just a way to stop contact with her, and not a solution to the problem. At some point, we again run the risk of facing the same claims.

How to act? Insist on respecting your own boundaries, because they create the space within which you build your life. Follow your own needs and train yourself not to look back at your mother — what she thinks, what she says. Only then can you hope that her words will lose their power over you and you will stop flinching when she again presses on your sore spot.

You can easily answer “no” to her and not feel guilty or, on the contrary, say “yes”, sincerely agreeing with her. If you succeed, then your mother has lost her ability to bring you to despair. Perhaps you have a new relationship ahead of you: you will finally be able to meet a real person and deal with him in the future, and not with the fantastically omnipotent Mommy from your long-ended childhood.