How to Heal from a Painful Relationship with Your Mother

The greatest gift a daughter can give her mother is to alchemize their inherited pain into healing.
-Dr. Nicole LePera

by Tiffany Walking Eagle | 10-minute read

Please note that I am not a therapist: I only share what I’ve learned along the way in my healing process and through my struggles. I highly recommend therapy to everyone, as I believe everyone can benefit, no matter your story. <3

Pain and struggles from childhood can affect you long into your adult life, and hurt experienced from your relationship with your mother can be especially difficult to heal from, perhaps even more so if she’s still in your life and the issues haven’t been dealt with.

Difficult mother-child relationships will vary on a vast spectrum, but no matter how large or small your struggles may seem, they are valid and need to be acknowledged and worked through.

I know I’ve been stuck in the line of thinking that well, there are others who have had much worse childhoods than I had, so I’m fine.

Don’t do what I did and put off working through your struggles because they “could’ve been worse.”

Pain is pain and dysfunction is dysfunction, and it can have more of an effect than you may even realize. There is no minimum requirement for dysfunction or emotional pain to be valid.

Every mother-child relationship is different, but the fact is, your mother can be one of the most influential people in your life, and if there is underlying trauma, harmful learned behavior, or whatever your case may be, it will take awareness and conscious effort to heal and grow through it.

Here are a few steps I’ve found to start working through the healing process.

1. Try to have an understanding perspective of her struggles and background.

It can be easy to feel like your mother was against you and didn’t care enough to try to learn how to treat you better. But oftentimes, our mothers are dealing with pain of their own, and they were working with what they knew.

This will depend on the situation or generation, but I know that in my mother’s case (and I think many will be able to relate to this) she was brought up in a household and generation where you really weren’t supposed to talk about your struggles or pain. You just were supposed to keep quiet and keep the peace; don’t make waves. No matter what you went through, keeping the family happy and together was most important. Kind of a “grit your teeth and pull yourself up by your bootstraps” kind of mentality that resulted in a lot of unresolved hurt and resentment.

Now, the fact that your mother’s childhood may have been difficult does not at all excuse the pain that she caused you. That doesn’t mean that everything is instantly forgiven and you shouldn’t pursue healthy avenues like setting boundaries or maintaining healthy distance.

But understanding your mother’s background can help you extend her some grace and perhaps understand a little bit of the why behind the way she was or is.

2. Be honest with yourself about her tendencies and prepare mentally for them.

Do you ever find yourself getting your hopes up that your mother is starting to change only for them to be dashed once she goes back to her old ways?

(This applies to far more than just mothers, but I digress.)

If that has happened to you, it might be time to start being honest with yourself and realistic about your mother’s tendencies and stop being surprised when she reverts back to negative patterns.

It doesn’t mean you can’t be hopeful that things will get better. It doesn’t mean you can’t try or she won’t try. All I’m saying is that placing your expectations high only to have them crushed over and over is just causing you more emotional pain.

So how should you proceed?

With hopeful yet prudent caution. Hope for the best, but be ready for the worst. Enjoy the good times but remember to guard your heart and watch for the signs and red flags where you can. It takes practice, but I believe in you.

3. Try to recognize when you’ve fallen into an unhealthy role.

When I was 14 years old, I was my mother’s therapist.

I so vividly remember us sneaking off out of earshot of my dad so she could pour out her heart and share the deep struggles of her marriage with me. The twisted thing is, I treasured these times because it’s one of the main ways I connected with my mother, even though my fragile teenage heart really wasn’t meant to handle the role of counselor and friend.

I would then go to my father and we’d have these long, difficult talks, and I tried my best to communicate my mother’s pain to him. I became this mediator that tried so desperately to heal their marriage, and it was such a painfully unhealthy role.

I don’t know your story, but identifying any unhealthy roles you may have fallen into can be an important part of healing.

Here are some common unhealthy roles:

Counselor/confidante/friend who is trying to please and help a parent by being there for them

Caretaker who takes on a similar role to a parent and often grows up too fast due to neglect/absence of the parent(s)

Parent (as in, a role reversal; the child parents the parent)

Mediator who tries to keep the peace in the family

Scapegoat who takes blame for things that aren’t their fault

Clown/entertainer trying to keep everyone smiling and happy to distract from the pain

Manipulator who learns to push buttons and manipulate family members or situations to their advantage

Loner/wallflower who fades into the background to avoid drama, dysfunction, abuse, etc.

Can you relate to any of these roles? It’s possible and likely even that you can relate to more than one of them or a combination of several. And just because you may be an adult now doesn’t mean you’ve stopped taking on those roles with your mother or even in your own relationships.

If you do recognize that you’ve taken on any unhealthy role, I highly encourage you to go to therapy.

Therapy will help you identify the roles you played, validate your pain, see the effects the unhealthy role(s) have on you now, and start the healing process.

Journaling and reflecting on these struggles can also be incredibly healing.

4. Work on defining and setting boundaries with her.

Boundaries are hard. They just are. Especially with the person who birthed you, let’s be honest!

But if you find yourself still playing an unhealthy role in your relationship with your mother, or if she is controlling, manipulative, meddling, verbally abusive, or just causing you loads of emotional distress, it might be time to start practicing setting boundaries.

It is not your job to be her friend. Or her emotional punching bag. Or her pawn. Or anything in between. If there are some major overhauls that need to happen in your relationship for it to be healthy, boundaries are necessary.

One quick question I want to ask is, does the thought of setting boundaries with her scare you at all?

Confrontation is hard and it’s fairly normal to want to avoid it, but if the thought of setting boundaries with your mother is scaring you and you’re already worrying about how she might react and how terribly the conversation might go, that is a surefire sign that something needs to change!

So start small. First, identify the things you need to change or what you can and cannot handle. Start with the smallest thing on your list, and write out what you want to say to set the boundary. Or practice saying it to yourself in the mirror. Just get it out of your brain and articulated in some way so you can start to grow more comfortable with it.

One thing I do (and this is just an example; it won’t work with every situation), since my mom and I text a lot, when I need to send a boundary-setting text, I just type it out quickly and don’t hit send. Just let it sit for a bit. Then go back and read it a few times.

Let yourself adjust to it, since standing up to your mom is a new and uncomfortable thing.

When you’re ready, hit send. And just keep practicing and practicing this (in whatever form applies to your situation; might not be texting).

I’ll be honest with you, it’s not that setting boundaries ever really gets easier or more comfortable. But what does happen is that the more you do it, the better you get at it. Setting boundaries is a skill, and skills need to be practiced to improve. Keep working at it!!

5. Maintain a healthy distance if you need to.

My mom and I have a good relationship now, and things are better than they’ve ever been. But it wasn’t always smooth sailing.

A few years back, my mom called me up to complain about how my younger sister, Abby, had given her an attitude and lashed out at her about something (I don’t remember what.) She then proceeded to tell me that whatever Abby had said to her must have been because I put the idea in her head, and that Abby was lashing out because I had been a bad influence. She put all the blame on me for Abby’s actions.

I didn’t even live in the same state as my mother and my sister at the time, let alone the fact that my sister is a free-thinking adult!

This had been a recurring pattern of me getting blamed for things my sister did, and I decided in that moment that I wasn’t going to take blame for things that weren’t my fault anymore. So I told her that, and I took a little break from talking with my mom for a while.

Cutting your mom out of your life may not be the answer, or it might be the answer. That’s something for you to work out, hopefully with the help of an excellent therapist.

However, if your mental health and self-worth would benefit from some distance, start to consider what that would look like and how you can implement it.

Here are some examples of ways to implement healthy distance:

Does your mom call you at all hours and expect you to be at her beck and call? Limit your calls to a couple times a week.

Does your mom guilt you about not making enough time for her, so you spend more time with her to make her happy, even though it causes you more stress? Might be time for an honest conversation about this. Perhaps find a compromise that works for you, and explain that the pressure she’s putting on you is causing you guilt and stress.

Does your mom like to randomly drop by your home and expect you to have time for her? Might need to ask her to call first.

Or, perhaps your mother is really hurting you and you haven’t worked up the courage to stand up to her about it. It could be time to maintain distance until you can work on yourself and be healthy enough to call her out when you need to.

These are just a few examples, and as I’ve said multiple times now, it will depend on your situation.

6. Discern what’s healthy for YOU, regardless of the opinions of others.

A lot of people will say things like “but they’re family!”

I fully understand the reasoning behind that, and of course I believe that family is so important.

BUT, that’s not a reason to continue putting up with abuse, manipulation, blaming, or negative behavior. You shouldn’t overlook when someone’s causing pain just because they’re family.

Statements like “but they’re family!” can result in feelings of guilt and putting up with behaviors that should not be tolerated simply because, well, they’re family.

Here’s the thing: you need to decide and discern what’s right for you and your situation. If your mother is absolutely trashing your mental health and causing you emotional pain, you shouldn’t continue to take it just because she’s your mother. That may not mean cutting her out, or it might. That’s for you to decide.

Do what you need to do. If you do decide to distance yourself from her, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to forever. Maybe just until you’ve had time to heal, find your worth, and build the courage to stand up for yourself when you need to.

I don’t know your story, but I want to say how proud I am of you for even starting the process of thinking about how you can find healing. Awareness and acknowledgment is such a brave first step, and every step toward healing matters. <3

If you feel comfortable doing so or if it would help, feel free to share your story in the comments below, or send me an email if you’d like to chat. And as always, thanks for reading. <3

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Tiffany Walking EagleApril 27, 20201 Comment