Healing Mother Wounds: Understanding and Overcoming Generational Trauma... what this means, how it applies to you and how to change!

How deeply do childhood experiences with emotionally unavailable mothers shape our adult lives? Join me, Kirsty Harris, on Find Your Inner Glow as we explore the profound concept of "mother wounds" and how they influence our emotional and behavioral patterns. We'll uncover how these early perceptions can lead to feelings of being unloved or the compulsion to seek approval. Understanding these patterns is the first step toward breaking generational cycles, and we'll discuss the importance of healing work in this journey, especially when it comes to forgiving our mothers for their own unhealed traumas and societal pressures.

In our quest for healing, reconnection with our true selves is essential, especially for women who have historically ignored their own needs. Our conversation extends to the compounded trauma faced by women, particularly those from marginalized groups, and how societal expectations have perpetuated these wounds. We'll touch on the barriers women face, the fear of failure, and the unrealistic goals set by others. By embracing authenticity and prioritizing self-care, we aim to help listeners overcome self-sabotage and burnout, ultimately reclaiming their power and unique light.

Creating safety through strong boundaries and self-love is critical to healing. We'll discuss the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship, the necessity of forgiveness, and the importance of recognizing that parents did the best they could with the resources they had. Counseling and coaching are advocated to address the root causes of these wounds, leading to improved self-esteem and relationships. Finally, we'll emphasize the importance of living authentically and setting goals aligned with personal desires to break negative family patterns and positively impact future generations. Stay tuned for our future exploration of father wounds, and don't forget to leave your reviews and reach out with your thoughts!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome to Find your Inner Glow. Hosted by me, kirsty Harris, I am a manifestation coach and an intuitive healer. I am here to talk to you all about mind, body and soul and how we can find your inner glow together. So kick back, grab a cuppa and let's get into it. Hello and welcome back. You have to bear with me, guys.

Speaker 1: 0:26

I've got a bit of a cold today, but I didn't want to miss out on recording this episode when I felt super motivated to basically record it. So we're going to be talking about mother wounds today, and this episode is pretty much relevant for everyone. Okay, this episode isn't about saying about how your mum was a terrible mum. You might have had the best mum in the world that was so loving, caring, empathetic, everything or you may not have. This episode, though, is about how behavior is perceived differently. So stick with me. When you're a five-year-old and behavior is a certain way when you're an adult, you can look back and go oh, it wasn't that bad, but at five, your perception is I don't understand this. This makes me feel like this, and that gets stuck within us, even when we're adults, and we can look back and go oh, I can see like. That's totally reasonable. Now I can understand why and we can logically do that. But at five years old we don't have an adult logic brain that can process things like we can now. So sometimes this can, like leave a bit of an imprint on us. It can shape our behaviors. It can shape lots of different things about us. So I want to talk about what a mother wound actually looks like, because, basically by our parents, we are giving blueprints. So your grandmother would have parented your mother in the way that she had been parented, unless they had changed the blueprint. Now lots of people don't do the healing work. I imagine you're listening to this podcast because you're the one in the family that's doing the healing work. Okay, or maybe your mum may have started doing the healing work now, or maybe your mum may have started doing the healing work now, or maybe your gran has. But actually it's not that the damage is done, but the things have been done already. So it doesn't matter if mum changes her behavior. Now it's up to you to change your behavior, to change your blueprint for your children going forward. I hope that makes sense. So, mother wounds what do they look like? Basically, they look like when children are not allowed to express negative emotions.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Mum may have been extra critical and, yeah, maybe there was care taken of physical needs, but love, security and care felt ongoing and unconditionally. This may have felt like a conditional thing, like if you behave a certain way, then you are loved. You know, I think this is probably the most common thing I see with clients is that they feel like they have to act a certain way in order to be loved, to feel secure and to feel safe. And when we put that into context, we may have siblings who really like misbehave. So we felt the intense responsibility to be the good child to help out, and with that might come with, yeah, you needing to help your mum with their own emotional or physical needs.

Speaker 1: 3:20

You might have had a mum who was quite unavailable emotionally because she was dealing with her own trauma, her own experiences. Or she might have had a mum who was quite unavailable emotionally because she was dealing with her own trauma, her own experiences. Or she might have just worked all the time and, yeah, just not there for you, physically, emotionally, spiritually, as always. One of the biggest revelations I ever had in my entire life was realizing my mum is not a stereotype. Society puts a a stereotype on women so that they are meant to be this whole thing as a mum. They are supposed to have everything together, to look after everyone, to be on it, when really like that's not realistic because mums are just humans with their own trauma, their own experiences, their own behavior patterns and that can get passed down to us through generations. But also acknowledging that maybe if you're doing the work, that it can create friction with somebody who is out of alignment with you, which might be your mum, like she might continue to act in a way that she continues to act. But then, yeah, you might have done the work and be feeling very different to how maybe she's showing up in the world, and and that's totally fine. It's about accepting that she is who she is and that the healing journey is not for everyone. The healing journey is deep, it's hard, it's really hard, it's so fucking hard and that just people sometimes are just not built for that with their mental health and underlying issues. So that's why it's important that you are doing the work. Okay, you know you might have had a mother who had untreated mental health issues, or she may have been involved with drug and alcohol, like these can all shape us and shape our beliefs about things, and how does that actually show up for us as adults?

Speaker 1: 4:58

Well, basically, if we have a mother wound, we might feel like our mum wasn't there for us emotionally. Emotionally, we find it hard to turn to mum for comfort. We always, consciously or subconsciously, seek approval from our mum and just doubt that sometimes we actually have their approval at all. We might feel nervous or frightened around mum. We may not know what to say. We might be walking in our eggshells, you know. We might have mum who still expects you to take care of them. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, on all different levels. We may have feelings of not feeling loved by our mum. Or we might experience conditional love, feeling like we have to do xyz in order to be perfect, to gain love. We may have low self-esteem. We might lack emotional awareness because we were never taught how to identify our emotions by our mum and obviously, like dad, does have a role to play in this. But today we are focusing all around mother wounds. Okay, and you may not be able to self-soothe. You might have to constantly seek validation and comfort from other people because you're unable to regulate yourself. You may go into a fight or flight when you're around mum, because she's not a very safe person and you may feel unsafe and, yeah, we might have a feeling that warm or nurturing relationships are out of our reach.

Speaker 1: 6:23

And, of course, one of the biggest things as well is perfectionism. When I see people with perfectionism, I am a perfectionist recoverer. Recovery I'm in perfectionism, recovery, that's it. That's what I'm trying to say, because I always felt like before, if I was perfect and I did this, then I wouldn't get shouted at as a child and when I used to say that out loud as an adult, you're like that doesn't make sense. Like everyone loses their their cool, everyone loses their their shit.

Speaker 1: 6:52

Sometimes, like, one of my mum's favourite memories is that basically, I'd broken my video player and now that's how old I am video player and like, yeah, she was there like cussing and screaming and shouting and I had fallen asleep. But yeah, to me that shows that I was just so used used to her shouting and screaming that I was like, oh, I'm just going to sleep. I wasn't a hard. I wasn't a hard child by any means, but I wasn't an easy child either. So, yeah, and my mum was a single parent. She was dealing with her mum, who was poorly, and there's a lot of like family dynamics going on that created a lot of stress and pressure in my mum's life and my mum has also struggled with mental health. She had postnatal depression, you know.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Hopefully she doesn't mind me sharing that, um, but yeah, it's just one of those things where we have these things and these are normal life things, but it does impact our children and who we are. It doesn't make us bad parents, it doesn't make us bad mums at all, but it just leaves an imprint on us which sometimes can affect us when we're older adults and we have the power to be able to heal that. Like I said, it's not about slagging off mum and even if, like we are talking about mum, we can also be talking about that female caregiver. Sorry, I jumped straight in and started talking about mum, but if we had a female caregiver that was our lead caregiver at that time this will all apply to them as well.

Speaker 1: 8:11

So, yeah, sometimes as well, when we are dealing with our parents, they always want the best for us and sometimes, like if they're super successful, they may feel the pressure to push that down onto you, which again will lead to perfectionism, to high achieving, to pushing you into your masculine energy an awful lot to ensure that you are achieving. And sometimes the only validation you get is from achieving because you spent so long working really hard to get that achievement. Like you may have only really got attention especially if you had multiple siblings. You might have only got attention like good attention when you were achieving or you've achieved something. So then that becomes more addictive and like I need to achieve, I need to be always achieving so that I can have that. And then that's not only where we seek validation from our parents, it's when we seek validation from other people as well. Okay, it's, it's inherently what makes us I hate this like, but air quote needy um where we constantly need others to validate our experience and our existence.

Speaker 1: 9:15

Okay, so the mother wound does include dysfunctional coping mechanisms of women, and this is like we're talking about on an individual level, but also on a collective level. Okay, women's women have been sacrificing their own needs, like denying power and their own potential and abandoning their authenticity for years and years and years, and that is getting programmed in their dna. Do you know what I mean? Like that is generational trauma, right there. Obviously, we talk about generational trauma in different spheres as well, but actually, as a woman, this is a compounded layer of trauma. So, for example, if you are disabled and a woman, that is a compounded layer of trauma. Or experiences that are different to other people. So it's really important that when we are working with or we are spending time with people who are like different ethnicities, different, um, different cultures, different sexualities anything that can fall under equalities we have to be aware that sometimes that can cause compounded trauma alongside our gender as well. Okay, so when we have all of this going on, like no wonder why sometimes we end up with mother wounds.

Speaker 1: 10:27

So more signs that would show that you have a mother wound would be your pressure to idea, to strict expectations of womanhood. So I went through this, not when I was in my 20s, and it was like, oh, these were the rules that my mum had instilled in me and that was like it, that was it. I couldn't think outside of those rules and it was like one day I was thinking like, oh, actually I don't have to do this anymore. I am my own person and I can make my own choices, and it took me a long time to step away from that, but that was a huge part of me claiming back my authenticity and just being authentic. To me, it wasn't following the blueprint that maybe I was given. So that's why I always encourage people to embrace their authenticity, because sometimes, when we have those rules in place, it can be really difficult to step outside them.

Speaker 1: 11:17

Okay, you may not reach your full potential and do this on purpose, as a self-sabotage, because you don't want to threaten other people. Okay, that is such a thing. I've seen people do it like they're so afraid to shine their light that they're worried it's going to threaten other people. Well, guess what? Nobody is you. You are completely unique and nobody can do what you can do. So you need to shine that light because you are here for a unique reason on this planet. I totally believe that everyone is here for a unique reason. We are here for a lesson or to help other people, whatever it is.

Speaker 1: 11:50

So, yeah, you need to shine your light brightly and also be confident to do that and not worry about others, because sometimes we can feel very pressured but other people's needs ahead of ours, to the detriment of us. So if you're that people pleaser who is always like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, that's absolutely fine. Then you're probably not only informed which, again, is a nervous system response, which, again, our nervous system would have been going haywire throughout all these different experiences as a young child that that also gets programmed into our nervous system. It's a bodily thing as well as an emotional and spiritual thing that we just basically, yeah, we put everybody else before us and then we end up not taking care of ourselves. We're the people who are always burnt out. We're the people who, like they, say yes to everything, and the minute you start to say no to people, you become the bad guy. So it's really, it's a really tricky one, that one. But yeah, we may also feel like we don't want to put ourselves out there because of fear of failure. Now, fear of failure is a normal thing.

Speaker 1: 12:55

I constantly challenge this with clients and say that failure doesn't exist. I would challenge them and say when was the last time you really looked at somebody? Went oh my god, they are such a failure. Before you looked at them and went they are a nice person, they are this, they are that. When do you ever turn around and look at people and go, oh my god, you're such a failure. Failure only exists in our minds, and if we project it onto other people, it's probably because it's a reflection of how we are feeling. So I would say failure doesn't exist, it only exists in our mind. Sometimes we try things, sometimes they don't work out. That isn't failure, that is trying and learning. There's no such thing as failure, just learning, um. So there can all be interlinked as well.

Speaker 1: 13:34

And another thing that we can show as a sign would be the pressure to live out your mum's dreams. You know, oh, we see it all the time, don't you like? Oh my god, on those terrible tv shows where there's like kids in beauty pageants. I don't even know, I feel like this was like an mtv thing back in the 2000s, but they would be like proper pushing children to live out their dreams as mums. They're just, they want them to be like the top of the beauty pageant and they will be very ruthless. You know, you might feel like that is for you as well. Like you have an obligation to live out your mum's dream, maybe because she gave up her career to have you, or maybe because she worked so hard, she got to a certain level, and there's an element of comparison that needs you to come up to that level, okay.

Speaker 1: 14:21

And again, this comes back to unconsciously or consciously wanting mum's approval in everything that we do. And you know, as a result of this, we do get unrealistic expectations in relationships because we don't have a very solid template of our relationship to pass on to others. So our primary caregivers whether that's your mum and dad, or caregivers or adoptive family, whatever it is the mom and the dad, or the female and male version in that family will give you a, will give you a blueprint, okay, and that means then that will be your relationship template. If there is something not right with your template, this will affect our relationships. And you know, when we're constantly seeking validation from others because of our low self-esteem, because of low self-worth, because of the need for or being in the state of conditional love, this can lead us to being what is perceived as needy.

Speaker 1: 15:14

Now, another thing as well is when we lose our authenticity and we're constricted by maybe strict expectations of womanhood, we do not feel safe to express ourselves. We are scared to shine our light again. It's so important to come back to your authenticity. There's only one of you. There's nobody else like you in the, in the entire world like is a reason why you have unique fingerprints it's because you're unique. Otherwise we'd all be the same, okay, and with feeling unsafe, we might go back into our fight and flight phase of our nervous system and this can help us, like, get through and survive, but then we're not actually thriving. So regulating our nervous system is so, so important when we're doing this type of work.

Speaker 1: 15:59

And something else, when we're linking it back to unrealistic expectations, we might have weak boundaries as well. We may have boundaries in which that we yeah, we might be one or the other, to be honest. We might have weak boundaries and let people walk all over us and be that people pleaser. Or we might have incredibly strict, high guarded boundaries that doesn't let anybody in, because then nobody can hurt us. There needs to be a healthy boundary where you don't let people take the mick but you also are not so guarded that you don't let anybody in, and that's a really hard thing to do and this often leads to well, it's linked to feelings of not good enough.

Speaker 1: 16:38

Okay, how many times have you thought maybe I'm just not good enough. It's not because you're not good enough. Nobody's ever told you that, or maybe they have. Maybe a parent implied it. Maybe a parent actually said it to you, maybe you just felt that way growing up, but the fact is, you are enough as you are and you can do whatever you put your mind to. You're the only person who's putting those limitations in place, because you're not living your mum's life. You're not living anybody else's life. You're living your life okay. So you are good enough to do whatever you want and, with that being said, I'm going to go into now how to heal. So if you feel like, oh my god, this is really ringing true for me, this is something like oh my God, I have wondered why I felt this way for so long. I've wondered why this relationship was like this with my mum. I always thought it was normal. Maybe it's not. This is all really showing up for me. So, yeah, if this is all kind of ringing true for you, then here are some things that you can do to help heal yourself, okay.

Speaker 1: 17:37

So basically, when we are healing a relationship of our parent, we need to create a new relationship. We need to reparent ourselves. Okay, we need to do what a good parent again bunny quotes like a good parent would do. So it doesn't mean that your parent was bad or not good enough. But sometimes our parents do our best and we have to accept that sometimes the best wasn't good enough and that's okay, like it's nothing wrong with that, it's just a fact. It's just a fact and the minute that we start to look at this stuff like it's fact, it just becomes a lot easier to accept. I needed xyz. Those needs were unmet, that is a fact. Okay, that's fine. Doesn't mean your mom did a bad job. Means that she did her best and you have a specific set of needs that weren't met and now you need them met. So this is when you go in and you start to reparent yourself and start to do what what like a good parent would do.

Speaker 1: 18:30

Okay, this is where you start to address where you feel stuck or where you feel hurt. Okay, this is about reflecting on why you feel like you have this relationship with your mum, why is it so hurtful, and giving yourself permission to feel those feels. You need to give yourself love. You need to work on your self-love. There is an episode here I'll link it below around self-love and this is all linking into inner child work. Okay, do you have a relationship with your inner child. Do you know what inner child theory is? Do you know what inner child looks like? If you don't get to know, because it's about this little version that lives within, inside us, that can be crying out for all different types of things which impact on our behaviour. And this is where, where, like, I constantly talk to clients about building a relationship with your inner child, because then it validates your emotions and you can actually do the grieving with your inner child about not having the parents that you needed or that would meet all of your needs. Like that's absolutely fine.

Speaker 1: 19:32

Something you can do as well is to, basically, when you are feeling very reactive or triggered, is to try and find out what's happening to your younger self. So say, for example, somebody criticizes you or they give you criticism, and your instant reaction is to be reactive one. You've probably stepped into fight because you're like I know I'm being super defensive and in attack mode. But then why? Was it because your parent was hypercritical of you as a, as a young person? Was it because you felt immense pressure to be perfect or to be the good girl? And that's it. When we fit into a box and we do the things that we feel like mum wants us to do. We feel like we are the good girl and that equals love. But that doesn't always work out and as we get older, it can massively, in fact, in fact, impact our behaviors. Impact our behaviors, okay, and also, what do you?

Speaker 1: 20:25

What do you need to feel safe? This is a question you need to ask yourself. How can you create safety in your life right now? Is it by having strong boundaries? Is it by protecting your time? Is it by doing self-care and self-love like? Is it by having strong boundaries? Is it by protecting your time? Is it by doing self-care and self-love Like? Is it about surrounding yourself with positive people? What do you need to do to feel safe? And it's really okay if past traumas come up. This is your chance to alchemise your past trauma and recreate safe relationships, not only with yourself, but with your parents as well.

Speaker 1: 20:58

With mum, because when you start to do the work and you start to accept her as a separate entity from you because sometimes I feel like the mother-daughter relationship can feel like one when you separate that entity and you're like, you are you and I am me and we are very separate and we are very different people with very different experiences and perspectives on the world. You can kind of come to a middle ground and meet that and I think that ultimately helps you to improve the relationship with your parent. Also, I feel like there has to be forgiveness. Your parent, your mum, did the best that she could with the information available to her, with the support around around her, with her own experiences, and maybe she does have unprocessed trauma and that is her responsibility. It is not your job to fix that. It's not your job to emotionally support that. It's your job to hold a very firm boundary and be like you need to get professional help, in which speaking of this work is really really heavy and deep, and sometimes you may need somebody to talk to you about this.

Speaker 1: 21:57

So I do advocate for counselling therapy. Obviously I advocate for myself and having coaching, because this is something that is the root cause. I like to think of it like, like a, like a Jenga. Like a Jenga. So you know, when you have a big jenga block and you take out the bottom, that is your root cause. That will cause surface level issues to collapse in on themselves. For example, you have a mother wound. So we look at that and we heal it and we soothe it and we are able to get you to a point where you can reparent yourself in a really beautiful and meaningful way.

Speaker 1: 22:34

And then, yeah, that will collapse. The self-esteem issues, the neediness, the relationship problems, the lack of boundaries all those issues will collapse down in on themselves because we are learning how to reparent ourselves. We're learning how to do those things again in a way that make us feel safe, secure out of our you know, our nervous system is not in fight, flight, fauna freeze. It is literally just completely chill and we can function, be our best selves, be authentic and express ourselves authentically. Because if we have all of this stuff holding us back, how can we express ourselves in an authentic way that makes us feel good?

Speaker 1: 23:10

And also, I talk about this a lot with manifesting when I always say pick the goal that feels aligned for you, not what other people want you to do. And what I'm saying is don't feel like you have to get a certain house or a car or a job to be successful in your parents eyes. You have no obligation to them. Okay, your job is to love them. It's not to please them, it is just to make sure that you are doing what you want to do and I have wholeheartedly. I've got to a point now where I do that and my mum just rolls her eyes and goes. Oh yeah, she goes again like my mum, just kind of learned to accept that I am different from her and you know, mum's relationships with children are incredibly complex, because not only do women like so.

Speaker 1: 23:55

When you have children at different ages, you can be reminded of different traumas. It can bring up loads of difficult emotions for you. It can really make you resentful of children as well. If you have your own mother wound and you see like your children being super successful, it can make you resentful as a person as well, depending on your experiences, trauma etc. So mothers don't have a really easy job and if you're a mother listening to this thinking, oh my god, I'm worried about my children. It's just about having that open and honest relationship with them, that openness to connect with them. And also you can heal yourself at any time. You can heal yourself now and still have a positive impact on your children and you can change the blueprint. You can break the chain in your family because that blueprint has been handed down time and time and time again and you don't have to be that person.

Speaker 1: 24:48

So, with all that being said, as always, guys, I've got a free consultation on my website. If you do want to dive in deeper to this work and basically reach your full potential and unblock some of these mother wounds, and if you are maybe not quite there for coaching, check out the manifestation hub. There is an entire section all around inner child healing and in there we have inner child healing, we have mother wound stuff. We also have father wound stuff as well.

Speaker 1: 25:15

I will be doing another podcast about the father wound, because I like mother wounds and father wounds are completely different and, yeah, I'm just in the process of doing deep study on both, so I'm hoping to maybe hold a workshop. I don't know, but we will see what happens. But yeah, as always, guys, if you like this podcast, please leave a review. It really helps me when you leave a review. And, yeah, if you have any questions, any comments, anything you want to say to me about the podcast, send me an email, dm me on instagram. Wherever you want to find me, I'm there. And that's it for today, guys. I'm gonna leave you there, leave you with loads and loads of love and I'll see you soon.