The Separation Criteria
How do you know when your real self has developed and has separated from orbiting with Mother? How do you know when you have successfully uncoupled from maternal dysfunction and are truly standing tall, strong, and able? James Masterson, in The Search for the Real Self, describes the key capacities of the real self.5 I have interpreted for daughters, below:
• The capacity to experience a wide range of feelings deeply with liveliness, joy, vigor, excitement, and spontaneity. You allow yourself to feel your authentic feelings and do not create barriers to numb the full gamut of human emotion. You allow yourself to express these feelings in appropriate ways.
• The capacity to expect appropriate entitlements. You believe in yourself, and are no longer filled with the angst of self-doubt, so you are freely giving yourself credit where credit is due.
• The capacity for self-activation and assertion. You can identify your dreams and desires and are able to set out to accomplish them while believing you can do it.
• The acknowledgment of self-esteem. You now believe you are worthy and can validate yourself regardless of external, worldly approval.
• The ability to soothe painful feelings. When life creates painful situations, you can comfort yourself, not wallow in misery, and can find solutions.
• The ability to make and stick to commitments. When decisions are right for you, you can stick to your guns and overcome obstacles, criticism, and setbacks.
• Creativity. You can find solutions to problems and be resourceful and also replace and defuse negatives with positives.
• Intimacy. You can express yourself fully and honestly in a close relationship with another person with minimal anxiety about abandonment or engulfment. You can create emotional intimacy without fear or anxiety about being abandoned or swallowed up.
• The ability to be alone. You can enjoy a relationship with yourself, be alone, and find meaning within.
• Continuity of self. Your inner core is real and remains the same through the trials and tribulations of life, and throughout the aging process.
You may be thinking, Sounds good, but I can never get there! The remaining chapters will assist you in accomplishing all of the above. Remember, however, recovery is lifelong work and you cannot accomplish all of them at once. Here are some encouraging stories of women who have individuated from their mothers.
• “I never understood the ‘individuation process’ until I began to undergo therapy. Now I can see her and keep me at the same time. I cannot tell you how much this means to me” (Erin, 40).
• “Understanding the envy part was a big step for me. This has been a painful thing in my life forever—my mother, sister, and some female friends showed envy and I always had to keep a tight lid on anything good or successful I was doing because I didn’t want to get their wrath. Now I understand it has nothing to do with me and I am able to be proud of myself and give myself credit. I can’t tell you how important this has been to my belief in myself. I always had to disparage myself to feel accepted and now I can just be me” (Annabel, 34).
• “It always seemed like if I made mistakes, I was more accepted by my mother. When I did well, she always had something bad to say. Or she would make comments about me getting too high on myself. This hurt so much. Now it doesn’t matter really what she says. I have worked so hard on individuating from her because I now know that she is not a reliable source to define me anymore. This finally makes sense” (Chloe, 62).
• Holly, whose mother is a minister, has forever felt pressured and “less than” because she did not choose her family’s religion as an adult. “After doing this recovery work, I find that when my mother sends me letters with scripture about what kind of wife I should be, I no longer ruminate for days and become undone. I am able to accept her beliefs as hers and also accept my own separate beliefs about my spirituality and lifestyle. It feels so neutral now. Like I am in control of my life.”
• “I used to cry for days after just talking to my mother on the phone. She always gave me messages about how I would never quite measure up and I took it so personally. Now I can see that she is not a reliable source. She has some serious problems that she has always put onto me. I still think this is so very sad and it sucks, but I no longer take it on” (Josette, 39).
Let’s move on to the next chapter, so we can focus more on you and your unique qualities as a truly deserving woman.
CHAPTER TWELVE
* * *
BECOMING THE WOMAN I TRULY AM
DESERVING DAUGHTERS
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
—Agnes Repplier, The Treasure Chest1
After years of having been coerced into being what your mother wanted you to be—whether it was how you looked and acted, or what you believed in and valued—it is time now to focus on what you want for yourself. No more succumbing to Mother’s attempt to mold you into her image. No more putting your internal growth on hold in order to please Mom. No more superficial smiles on pretty little faces.
In order to do the fun work I encourage in this chapter, I want you to address two serious issues.
• How to erect and strengthen your “internal mother”
• How to understand and manage “the collapse”2
Below, we will take each concept in turn and discuss the strategies you need to recover.
The Internal Mother
The internal mother is best understood as your own maternal instinct. It is the intuitive voice that speaks to you and wants to nurture, love, and mother you. While in the past you had to give up on the notion that your external mother could give you what you needed, you can now have an internal mother readily available to you. She makes it possible to parent yourself.
Many daughters are sad and angry when first confronted with the concept of parenting themselves, but when they realize and accept these feelings, they get through them to a sense of inner strength and empowerment.
To grow the internal mother, you must first give her permission to be there. You allow her kind, maternal voice to resonate within you. You allow yourself to hear it. To begin, find a quiet, lovely healing place where you will have solitude. This may be the bathtub, your deck, office, or on a walk. Whatever works for you. Try to create an atmosphere where you will not be interrupted. After you’ve done this several times, you will be able to do this anywhere and even go through interruptions. But start with having complete quiet and focusing on yourself. Have your journal, writing pad, and pencil with you.
Your first task is making what I call the “I am” list. To do this, it is important to allow your internal mother to share and review your many incredible strengths and characteristics. Write them down in a manner similar to these examples:
“I am strong, I am intelligent, I am wise, I am loving, I am helpful, I am empathetic, I am industrious, I am energetic, I am productive, I am sensitive, I am honest, I am a person with integrity, I am talented, I am caring, I am responsible, I am spiritual, I am beautiful inside and out, I am healthy.”
Your next task is to push away negative messages like “I don’t have any good traits.” You know in your heart that you do. If you give her permission, your internal mother will help validate and verify the positive you sitting right there. If the negative thoughts persist, it is a red flag that you have additional grieving and trauma to process and you must go back to first steps. As discussed earlier, reaffirming messages do not “stick” unless you have done the proper grieving.
Your “I am” list is the starting point with your internal mother. Practice being with her. Talk to her often and let her console you. I often tell clients to treat themselves at this point as they would treat a two-year-old child. Be gentle, kind, understanding, and sweet. You so deserve this. When you don’t know what to do, ask yourself how your own maternal self would treat a child with this same emotion or struggle and then do that. When I think of
two-year-olds, I think about scooping them up and giving them lots of love and attention. I bet your maternal instinct is similar.
As you practice conferring with your internal mother, she will begin to grow and strengthen. You will feel a committee forming of “me, myself, and I.” The internal mother heads this association. I have found that the times to practice and strengthen the internal mother are in those situations where you want to reach out for help and advice from someone else because you don’t know what to do. This is the time to go internally and find intuitive answers and consolation from the maternal committee. The more that you confer with them, the stronger and more self-assured you become. This mother will never abandon you.
You will particularly need the internal mother when you experience what is called “the collapse.”
The Collapse
In true narcissism, the narcissist often experiences something called a “narcissistic injury.” According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM):
Vulnerability in self-esteem makes individuals with narcissistic personality disorder very sensitive to “injury” from criticism or defeat. Although they may not show it outwardly, criticism may haunt these individuals and may leave them feeling humiliated, degraded, hollow and empty. They may react with disdain, rage, or defiant counterattack.3
The narcissistic individuals I have known who have had this kind of injury reaction take a long time to get over it; they hold grudges, want to get back at the person they perceived harmed them; they seek revenge, try to cause problems for their attacker, and seem never to forget or forgive. Most daughters of narcissistic mothers with whom I have worked experience a similar condition, although to a much lesser degree, which is called “the collapse.” They feel as if they just popped their self-esteem balloon and all the air rushed out and they need a bit of time to restabilize and refill that balloon. It is different from the narcissist’s injury, because it doesn’t last long and the daughter is able to forgive and forget, and she is not haunted or humiliated for long periods of time. She is also typically not out to get revenge, do paybacks, or seek to harm. The daughter’s collapse is due to her internal sensitivity caused by being insulted and invalidated as a child, adolescent, and adult by her narcissistic mother. When it happens during recovery, it is as if it triggers a momentary regression back to childhood; old memories make the current situation feel much bigger than it really is. This “domino effect” leads to the feeling of internal “collapse,” which is also described as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder, commonly referred to as PTSD. The DSM explains this further:
The traumatic event is persistently reexperienced in one or more of the following ways. . . . Intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event, and . . .physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.4
This means that the daughter will feel the collapse when something reminds her of early childhood wounds. At this moment, a daughter is most tempted to reach out for external validation and ask someone else to make it better for her, and she may act needy. You can manage this differently—without acting needy—by going to your internal mother for support and comfort.
Without naming it, daughters frequently describe “the collapse.” As Felicity told me:
• I was recently sitting with a guest at my house who announced to me that he was having one of his employees stop by my house to pick up a work check. I thought this was a bit strange, but certainly okay with me. The employee did stop by, and I welcomed her into my house and offered her a beverage while chatting briefly. We had never met before. When she left, after only about ten minutes, I walked her to the door, and expressed that it was nice to meet her. She responded with “Nice to meet you too, even though you have issues.” I was floored by this inappropriate comment from someone who didn’t even know me. I knew instinctively that it was about something that was going on with her, but it still felt like a punch in the stomach, and that feeling lasted for a whole damn day! Why, Dr. McBride, would I allow this stranger’s inappropriate comment to bother me so?
As in the past with her mother, Felicity was reminded of years she had tried to be so good and pleasing, to do things right and be kind and polite and then got zapped in the end as never being good enough. This domino effect or collapse took Felicity back to historical wounds, but she handled it by talking to me, her therapist, and a friend. She reached out for external validation in this case, but eventually learned to manage other situations like this on her own, which was her recovery.
Now that you are aware of what the collapse is, you will be better prepared to deal with it when it happens to you. Notice your reactions in the next week; keep track of how many times a collapse actually happens to you. Your increasing awareness will give you increasing strength. You are in charge of you.
Kristal describes another example of a collapse moment:
• I stopped by my friend’s house to see if she could babysit for a couple of hours while I ran some errands. We do this for each other often and we are both fine with it. On this particular day, however, my friend, Beth, asked me how long I would be gone because she had laundry to do. That was it. She just set a boundary and asked a simple question, but I immediately interpreted it as her intimating that I was being a burden on her, and she did not want to help me.
In Kristal’s case, the friend had good boundaries, but what she asked, although not inappropriate, triggered in Kristal feelings of being a burden on her mother, and she had a strong reaction that lasted for several days.
The collapse can cause another problem, as described by Joanie, 36.
• We were at a family barbecue and I was sparring with my brother. We do this a lot, but on this day, he actually told me I had gained too much weight and my butt looked big. He always teases me about trying to look “J-Lo-ish,” his term for a great-looking butt and body. But today, he just said, “Big!” I was hurt. I went to my sister and complained to her, and she said, “Why would you let him bother you? He’s just a brat, and who cares what anybody says about your butt? Get over it.” Then, I was not only hurt by my brother, but mad at my sister for not supporting me and giving me sympathy. The thing that bothers me most, though, is that I thought about it for a week and it reminded me so much of the constant criticism and insults from Mom about my weight while growing up.
Joanie’s experience with her weeklong collapse is interesting. First she was hurt and then angry at not being rescued from her pain. She could have worked on this and shortened her distress if she had strengthened and called on her internal mother, who could have comforted her immediately. Instead, she did not get the validation for her feelings that she needed until she came to therapy a week later. Again, getting support is a good thing, and we all need it on occasion, but you can save a week of feeling bad by building up your self-reliance—your internal mother.
The Sensitive One
Daughters were often called “the sensitive one” in the family. They tire of people telling them that they are overreacting to things said or done by other people. Daughters of narcissistic mothers have to work on freeing themselves of this tie to their past. You will feel more normal and less crazy when you understand that any temporary collapse is a normal reaction to a trigger from your history. When you can identify and understand it, you can also work to relieve it and prevent it from recurring. Otherwise, you may tend to beat up on yourself for letting things bother you and buying into the old “you’re the sensitive one” script.
• Deadra, 35, tells me, “Feelings were generally not allowed in our family, so whenever I had some feeling going on and tried to express it, I was told that I was being too sensitive. That usually shut me down, but I didn’t know what to do with the feelings that were left inside of me.”
• Melodie, 42, said, “I’m so sick of people telling me I’m oversensitive! My
mother said that to me anytime I showed even one little feeling growing up. I know it is because she couldn’t deal with my feelings and so she wouldn’t allow them. Now, when my husband or children say the same to me, I just want to bop them. I want to be real and have whatever feelings I have and quit worrying about it.”
Now that you understand why you need to strengthen the internal mother and recognize your being at risk for periodic emotional collapses, you are ready to start reinventing yourself. After the painful work of prior chapters, the rest of this chapter should be fun and entertaining. For the exercises that follow, you need only your own approval and that of your internal mother, who is always on your side, no matter what. Let’s get started, so you can discover your passions and preferences, which you may have kept under wraps before now, when it was “all about Mom.” You will be asking yourself questions such as:
• What do I value most?
• What makes me happy?
• What gives me the deepest sense of fulfillment?
• What are my passions and talents?
Who Am I Really?
Because daughters of narcissistic mothers have been forced into supporting roles demanded by their mothers and the narcissistic family system, it is not uncommon for them to say they don’t really know who they are or what they like. They have become accustomed to doing for others and not focusing on themselves in healthy ways. As Mei tells me, “The message I got from Mom is that she will love me if I do what she thinks I should do. So I try to be me, but I don’t know who I am.”
To begin the discovery process, it is important to know the basics of what you like and what you believe in. To do this, I am going to suggest two exercises to get you started.
Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Page 16
