by Peg Streep
The answer is, once again, attachment; the girl who emerges from childhood securely attached will be motivated by approach goals, while the insecurely attached daughter will focus largely on avoiding negative outcomes. Keep in mind that everyone—depending on the situation—will shift focus from approach to avoidance from time to time; the difference here is that these are broad underlying tendencies and ways of responding that affect every decision and thought process in every area of life, including work and relationship.
Here’s what we know about daughters who are largely motivated by avoidance: Fear of failure—or rather, the shame associated with failure itself—is a driver of this behavior. Often, this simply means that the daughter rejects challenges as too difficult, and change as impossible to effect, so she stays where she is, regardless of whether it makes her happy or not. One study by Elliott and Thrash showed that fear of failure was actually closely connected in college students to mothers’ withdrawal of love when the child had transgressed some rule or had performed in such a way as to displease the mother. (It’s important to note that this study relied on students’ self-reports on what their relationships were like, along with the administration of an attachment scale.) The withdrawal of love on the parent’s part when a child makes a mistake, breaks a rule, or somehow disappoints the parent can take many forms, among them looking at the child coldly; refusing to speak to or look at the child; expressing dislike of the child; moving away from the child or isolating her in another room, thereby symbolically banishing her; or even worse, threatening to send her away. These scenarios are ones that may resonate with many unloved daughters. It’s interesting to note that in this study, fathers did not practice love withdrawal.
In the pages that follow, you and I will be looking at the maternal behaviors most likely to produce a daughter who is largely motivated by avoidance and what that means in practical terms. But there’s one experiment in particular, conducted by Heather C. Lench and Linda J. Levine, that can act as a metaphor for the effect avoidance can have on a daughter’s life. The researchers had the participants identify themselves as either approach- or avoidance-oriented and then gave them three sets of seven anagrams that they had to solve within a specified time period. What the participants didn’t know was that the first set was unsolvable. The approach-oriented people were able to give up on the first set and move on, while those who were focused on avoiding failure kept working away at them, futilely, guaranteeing that they’d fail the test overall.
In a second study, rather than rely on self-reporting on approach and avoidance, Lench and Levine divided the participants into two groups, telling one that this timed test was a measure of verbal intelligence and that they should focus on attaining success, and instructing the other that this was a test of verbal weaknesses and that they should avoid failure at all costs. Once again, it was those who were told to avoid failure who kept at that first set of anagrams, feeling more frustrated and angry by the moment, and ultimately failing as a result.
Daughters motivated by avoidance often find themselves stymied in life situations, so focused on not failing that they end up dooming themselves to failure. Not only do they miss opportunities, but they become complicit in staying in situations that make them unhappy long past the expiration date. That applies to all the relationships they have, including those with their mothers and perhaps other family members.
If this is you or a pretty close-to-true description of you, the good news is that there are solutions at hand. We can all be thankful for the plasticity of the brain and ability of all dogs, young and old, to learn new tricks. Most important, the past need not dictate the future. Being unloved by your mother doesn’t mean that no one will ever love you or, for that matter, that you can’t learn to love yourself. There’s a road out of the past that can be taken with work, time, and effort, and the pages ahead will help you on your way. Really.
CHAPTER TWO
THE POWER SHE HAD OVER YOU
I had no idea that there were other women whose mothers didn’t love them. Can you imagine discovering this at the age of 40?
~Cecile
H aving seen the extraordinary power a mother has in shaping her daughter as science understands it, the second stage of discovery is more personal: seeing how your mother shaped you. It’s true enough that in sharing our stories, we discover deep commonalities, understanding that what happened in my childhood home happened in yours and in Carla’s, in Annie’s and Charlotte’s. We’ll look at those shared experiences first.
That said, there are also meaningful differences in individual experiences, and understanding them is also part of the task at hand.
Let’s begin with the common ground so you can start to reconstruct the effects of your childhood experiences with the broadest of brushstrokes.
CHILDHOOD: COMMON GROUND
During childhood, a daughter usually draws the following conclusions, all of them incorrect, but they affect her sense of herself and her experiences in ways that are complicated, and may—in and of themselves—shape her almost as much as the love that’s withheld or lacking. As you read, you will want to note how many of these thoughts and feelings were yours during childhood and beyond.
That she is unlovable: Because maternal love is so essential to a daughter’s ability to thrive, even the love and care shown by others don’t assuage her belief that there’s something about her that stops her mother from loving her. The child tries unsuccessfully to come up with strategies to win her mother’s love, on the one hand, and to explain its absence, on the other. The first explanation that comes into most children’s minds—that they are unlovable—is both terrifying and disheartening. Dislodging this thought is one of the primary tasks of healing since it is deeply internalized and lies at the heart of the daughter’s fears and insecurities even in adulthood.
That she is isolated and alone: Virtually all daughters believe they are the only unloved girls on the planet when they are children and much later in life. In childhood, an unloved daughter is likely to be too scared to tell anyone and, besides, she’s worried that she is maimed or awful and that the fewer people who know, the better. In adolescence, the need to fit in usually trumps the daughter’s need to talk; she wants to be taken for one of those lucky girls whose moms take them shopping and blow kisses at them from the car. In adulthood, few people will understand her story because of the cultural myths about maternal love; she’ll hear people say, “You’re fine now,” or “It couldn’t have been so bad,” which only underscores her aloneness. The size of the family doesn’t seem to matter; an only child is no more isolated than a child with siblings who are treated differently by their mother.
The feeling of being the only unloved child in the world inflicts a kind of wounding almost as devastating as the lack of maternal love itself.
That it’s her fault: Blame-shifting is part of the abuse of power, and some unloving mothers, through their criticism and hostility, will actually do exactly that (“You are impossible and difficult. It’s no wonder I can’t stand looking at you”) so it’s easy for the daughter to internalize the blame as self-criticism. Children as young as toddlers are often treated this way, and they assume, given how little they understand of the dynamic, that they must be lacking somehow or deserving of their mother’s treatment. Internalizing either things said (“You’re a bad little girl and no one will ever be your friend”) or extrapolating from actions and gestures (“My mommy yells at me because I’m a bad child”) are heavy burdens for the young self and become, for most, a wellspring for self-doubt and even self-loathing. In other households, assigning blame may be more subtle and less articulated, but the burden is still on the daughter to disprove why she’s unloved.
That she might be “crazy”: In later childhood and adolescence, a daughter’s perception and understanding of the relationship may sometimes become clearer. But any effort to question her mother will be batted down, denied, or ridiculed, and often, she will—as I did by the
age of seven or eight—come to the conclusion that her point of view and her mother’s are incompatible and that one person of the two has to be wrong—or even worse, “crazy.” Many daughters are gaslighted by their mothers—in other words, they’re manipulated into believing that their vision of reality is skewed—a subject we’ll return to in the pages that follow.
That she belongs nowhere and to no one: An unloving mother robs her daughter of a sense of belonging because if you aren’t loved by the person who put you on the planet and you don’t feel as if you’re part of your family in a very real way, to whom or where will you ever belong or fit in? That sense of being the odd girl out or some kind of outcast dogs many daughters in both obvious and subtle ways, especially if they’ve been scapegoated or bullied by their siblings. Those daughters brought up by mothers who are aggressive in their treatment—combative or hypercritical—often see the cost of belonging as high and perhaps not worth it. Those raised by dismissive or unreliable mothers may despair of ever feeling secure anywhere. For many unloved daughters, the quest for belonging is lifelong.
COMMON WOUNDS
Again, while the behaviors learned in childhood depend on the variations in maternal behavior and treatment, there are nonetheless generalizations to be made about the psychological damage done. As you read, you will want to think about which of these you exhibit and, additionally, which plague your interactions in the present most forcefully.
Lack of confidence: The unloved daughter doesn’t know that she is lovable or worthy of attention; she may have grown up feeling ignored or unheard or criticized at every turn. The voice in her head is that of her mother, telling her what she isn’t—smart, beautiful, kind, loving, worthy. That internalized maternal voice will continue to undermine her accomplishments and talents, unless there is some kind of intervention. Daughters sometimes talk about feeling that they are “fooling people” and express fear that they’ll be “found out” when they enjoy success in the world; this feeling of fraudulence can absolutely coexist with high achievement and often does. Alternatively, some daughters are so beaten down by the barrage of criticism or the effects of being constantly marginalized or dismissed that they become chronic underachievers. Ironically, underachievement or, even worse, self-destructive behaviors only help to convince these daughters that their mothers are right about them after all.
Lack of trust: The attuned and loving mother teaches her child that the world is a safe place where her needs will be tended to, her questions answered, and someone will have her back if there’s trouble or difficulty; the securely attached daughter doesn’t find it hard to depend on people and doesn’t feel vulnerable trusting others because of her vision of the world and her confidence in her own judgment. For the unloved daughter, the world presents itself very differently—as a potentially hostile place filled with people who can either hurt you or be unreliable. “I always wonder,” one woman confides, “why someone wants to be my friend. I can’t help myself from thinking whether there’s some kind of hidden agenda, you know, and I’ve learned in therapy that that has everything to do with my mother.” These trust issues emanate from that sense that relationships are fundamentally unreliable, and flow over into both friendships and romantic relationships.
All insecurely attached daughters have trust issues, although they present in different ways. The anxiously attached woman scans the horizon for potential breaches of trust, reading into every conversation, gesture, and facial expression so as to be on guard. She needs constant reassurance that trusting is the right thing to do, and, ironically, her vigilance often creates relationships that are marked by extreme emotional turbulence, which, of course, tends only to trigger her anxiety even more.
The avoidantly attached daughter assumes that fully trusting someone and making herself vulnerable are terrible mistakes. If she’s dismissive-avoidant, she adopts a stance of “trust no one” as a maxim to live by to keep the upper hand; if she’s fearful-avoidant, she does it because she needs to self-protect.
Difficulty setting boundaries: Starting in infancy, attuned mothers teach their daughters about healthy dependence and independence, respecting their children’s emotional and physical spaces rather than intruding on them. These behaviors affirm both the child’s independent self (“You are you, and that’s a good thing”) and a strong sense of connection at once (“If you fall, Mommy is here to help you”). In contrast, the unloved daughter who’s ignored may have trouble seeing her independent self because she’s too focused on getting her mother’s attention; these daughters often replay the same role in their adult relationships, becoming inveterate “pleasers” and plagued by the inability to say “no.” They tend to over-immerse themselves in relationships because they don’t really understand how boundaries work, which, ironically, may end up assuring their worst-case scenario, being left.
The daughters of combative and enmeshed mothers—mothers who don’t respect their daughters’ boundaries at all—may end up confusing a coat of armor or a fortified wall with what constitutes a healthy boundary.
The larger problem is that the inability to manage and understand the importance of boundaries makes it virtually impossible for the daughter to forge and maintain healthy ties until she brings the unconscious lessons learned in her childhood into consciousness and begins to change how she acts.
Difficulty seeing the self accurately: We learn who we are by seeing ourselves reflected in the faces of other people—especially our mothers—and how they respond to us, our words, and our actions. These cues—beginning early in childhood—build the self-concept, one experience at a time. A loving and attuned mother not only helps a child build a positive self-concept but also allows her to develop self-acceptance. Self-acceptance permits you to see yourself with both strengths and weaknesses as part of the whole. The bottom line: You can deal with not being perfect because you know you’ll be loved and accepted anyway.
That does not happen, alas, with the unloving mother.
While, again, the specific maternal behaviors directly affect the daughter’s self-concept, all unloved daughters have problems seeing themselves clearly. Many have internalized their mothers’ belittlement or disparagement as self-criticism—the habit of attributing every failure or setback not to circumstances but to fixed personality and character traits which define her as worthless or a failure.
Being overly sensitive: Words and gestures act as emotional triggers that recall childhood treatment for many daughters, making life in the present hard to navigate because of the weight of the unconscious and unexamined past. These daughters’ sensitivity to slights—both real and imagined—and the reactions that often accompany any kind of criticism complicate their lives in highly unproductive ways. A daughter may mistake banter for critique and overanalyze and even obsess about an offhand remark. She’s likely both to read meaningfulness into situations where there is none and to misread intentions and motivations because of her experiences in childhood.
Her sensitivity is further complicated by the difficulty she has managing her emotions, what I call “The Goldilocks Problem.” I’ll turn to that momentarily.
Replicating the mother bond in relationships: Unconscious patterns—those mental models of relationship—draw us to what we know, like a moth to a flame. If you are securely attached, this is actually very good news since you’re likely to be attracted to friends and romantic partners who are themselves secure, are able to open themselves up to others, and actually need and enjoy intimate connections. Insecurely attached people, alas, are also drawn to what they know; they end up in relationships that make them unhappy in the end but that are nonetheless “comfortable” because they are familiar.
These are comfort zones that offer no comfort, and doom the daughter to seek out connections that make her feel as she did in childhood. “I married my mother, for sure,” one woman says. “He was, on the surface, completely different from my mother, but, in the end, he treated me much the same way, the same seesa
w of not knowing how he would be with me. Like my mother, he was indifferent and attentive by turns, horribly critical or vaguely supportive.” As many of you will attest, she is not alone in having chosen a partner who treats her as her mother did.
THE GOLDILOCKS PROBLEM
The most significant effect an unattuned and unloving mother has is that her daughter doesn’t learn how to manage her emotions in infancy and childhood. What does this mean precisely, and why does it matter?
The interactions of the mother and infant teach the child not just that it’s safe and okay to express happy feelings—having your smiles and coos and gestures answered in kind—but also that negative feelings—being afraid, lonely, sad, or in pain—can be dealt with, too. With comfort offered by the responsive mother—by soothing her child when she’s distressed—over time, she’ll also teach her to self-soothe in times of need and stress. The child learns to bring up mental images of connection that reassure her that she’s not alone, that she’s loved, and that things will be okay. Research shows that securely attached children grow up to be adults who are reasonably adept at managing negative feelings when they’re stressed. Why? Just as working models of relationships are stored unconsciously in the brain, so are instances of beneficial interactions with caring others and memories of coping successfully in bad times. These memories help the securely attached person not only to weather whatever storms life hands her more easily but also remind her to seek out the support of others in times of crisis. Like Goldilocks in the three bears’ house—trying to navigate between too big and too small, too hot and too cold—they have the capacity to live “just right,” finding the balance between an integrated, whole, and independent self and depending on others when they need to.
