Katherine Fabrizio's Blog, page 11
April 4, 2018
Why You Can’t “Make” Mom Happy – Although You Can Waste A Lifetime Trying
When you look back do you realize how much of your life you have tried to make mom feel better about herself? Before you realized it was an impossible thankless job, did you spent much of your childhood being good for mom so mom would be happy? You didn’t, couldn’t, realize it was a trap. It didn’t […]
The post Why You Can’t “Make” Mom Happy – Although You Can Waste A Lifetime Trying appeared first on Daughters Rising.
Why You Can’t Make Mom Happy – Although You Can Waste A Lifetime Trying
When you look back you realize how much of your life you have tried to make mom feel better about herself. Before you knew it was an impossible thankless job …you spent much of your childhood being good for mom so mom would be happy. You didn’t, couldn’t, realize it was a trap. It didn’t work. […]
The post Why You Can’t Make Mom Happy – Although You Can Waste A Lifetime Trying appeared first on Daughters Rising.
Why You Can’t Make Mom Feel Better About Herself ?
When you look back you realize how much of your life you have tried to make mom feel better about herself. Before you knew it was an impossible thankless job …you spent much of your childhood being good for mom. You didn’t, couldn’t, realize it was a trap. It didn’t work. It never works. Before you […]
The post Why You Can’t Make Mom Feel Better About Herself ? appeared first on Daughters Rising.
March 27, 2018
Dear Mom- 3 Reasons I Am Avoiding Your Call & What To Do Instead
Dear Mom,
You call me and I don’t pick up.
Do you wonder why I avoid your calls?
Is it that I don’t love you? Am I a thoughtless, ungrateful, heartless child?
Is that true or is there something else going on?
Here is my truth.
I am sorry I am hurting your feelings but I think you are insensitive to mine.
Here is what I would tell you if I had the nerve and I had faith you would really listen.
1 -You expect a report
It is as if you are the FBI and have authority to ask anything you want. There is no topic you won’t breach. My time and privacy are yours for the taking. If you have questions, you expect me to provide you the answers.
How this makes me feel? Invaded and intruded upon. When you expect me to report in to you, it feels as if I am offering up my life for your inspection. That my life is yours to fret over, manage and fix.
There is always an air of judgment underlying your questions.
What you can do instead? Don’t automatically expect me to share everything with you. Approach me knowing that I have a choice about whether or not to share. Know that there are some things I’d like to keep private, even if for only a while. When you respect my privacy, I will be more willing to share.
2- You overreact
If I’m worried, I don’t need you to pile on or freak out. Your anxiety doesn’t help me, it just makes me feel more unsure. Paradoxically, when you worry I feel the need to reassure you, which only adds to my burden.
How it makes me feel? Defensive. Like I am not seeing the seriousness of the situation. That it is so much worse than I ever thought and I might make it worse if I don’t have you to rescue me.
What to do instead? Listen and convey to me that I have what it takes to figure things out. Be my calm, steady safe place.
3- You tell me what to do
Before I can flesh out my thoughts, you jump in with your suggestions and take over. When I am struggling and you jump in with your opinions, it makes me want to avoid talking to you.
How it makes me feel? Stupid. Like I don’t have what it takes to make it on my own. Like I’m not good enough. That you think I don’t have what it takes to handle the situation.
What you can do instead? Say, “I might have some ideas, would you like me to weigh in or would you like me to listen now?”
The pressure and guilt that divide us
I get it. Our culture tells you if you love me… you should fix all of my problems – even into adulthood. WRONG! That only leads to your overreach and my feelings of resentment.
Then, I feel like my only option is to avoid you to avoid takeover, criticism and burdening you.
But then I walk around with this underlying sense of guilt, and you feel rejected. When we do talk and you tell me how much you need my engagement with you, you put me in an impossible position.
I feel an overwhelming sense of obligation. When I feel guilty, I will work to offload my guilt by fulfilling my obligation. And when I am operating on guilt and obligation – there will be resentment in the mix.
This is not the way to sustain a loving relationship. I imagine what you really want is my affection, not my obligation or guilt.
The power you have for the connection you want is right under your nose
You need to know the power you have. Because you have been a witness to my strengths and my vulnerabilities no one is in a better position to lift me up or put me down. I want to encourage you to use that power wisely. How you use it will determine how eager am to pick up the phone when you call.
I dare say it will determine the quality of our relationship.
How to use this power
1) Ask me if I am free to talk. Respect my time and privacy.
2) Be a calming presence in my life who reminds me of the times when I struggled and came through with a win.
3) Let me come up with my own solutions even if I struggle and fail. Let me own my failures so I can own my successes.
I need your loving solid presence.
Postscript *
For daughters of mothers who are Narcissistic, Borderline Histrionic or Addicted, this trap of intrusion, criticism, and boundary-crossing is especially problematic. If she is in the role of the Good daughter, this dynamic can be hell on earth.
Find out if you are experiencing the Good Daughter Syndrome here.
Article first appeared on PsychCentral.com
The post Dear Mom- 3 Reasons I Am Avoiding Your Call & What To Do Instead appeared first on Daughters Rising.
March 20, 2018
Is Something Really Wrong With My Mother ? Dealing With A Narcissistic/Difficult Mother- Trapped in the Role of the “Good” Daughter
“My mother is driving me crazy!” Is this just any daughter complaining about her mother or is it an indication that something is fundamentally wrong with the relationship? Is she dealing with a Narcissistic Mother? A daughter has been raised by a mother with serious psychological difficulty, isn’t just bitching about mom. She is trapped […]
The post Is Something Really Wrong With My Mother ? Dealing With A Narcissistic/Difficult Mother- Trapped in the Role of the “Good” Daughter appeared first on Daughters Rising.
Dealing With A Narcissistic/Difficult Mother- Trapped in the Role of the “Good” Daughter
[image error]
“My mother is driving me crazy!” Is this just any daughter complaining about her mother or is it an indication that something is fundamentally wrong with the relationship?
Is she dealing with a Narcissistic Mother?
A daughter has been raised by a mother with serious psychological difficulty, isn’t just bitching about mom. She is trapped by her mother’s needs in ways that cost her then & now.
When mom has NPD ( Narcissistic Personality Disorder) or BPD ( Borderline Personality Disorder) or has traits of these personality disorders, her daughter will suffer.
The daughter who is attuned to mom is frequently in the role of the “good daughter”.
To her, rejecting mom is simply not an option. She is not only hurt by her damaged mother but feels responsible for her mother’s well-being.
This adaptation to moms’ distorted sense of self will affect every aspect of her daughter’s life.
Her mother’s defenses mandate she look “good” for mom or be “good” for mom. Mom’s need for self-preservation comes at the cost of her daughter’s developmental needs
Growing up – the good daughter learns that caretaking is the only way for her to feel emotionally safe.
She has to learn to shut down her own feelings in order to protect her mother’s fragile self-esteem.
For emotional survival, she learns to disconnects from herself and tunes into mom’s needs instead.
What does it cost her to be ‘good” for mom instead of real for herself?
The daughter in the role of the good daughter may look like she has it all together yet be flooded with self-doubt when met with the slightest criticism.
Years of looking good for mom and feeling that she has to be better than she leaves her with little emotional resilience.
Consequentially, detaching from her essential self, while letting another person in is almost impossible.
Because of this detachment, her capacity for intimate relating is severely limited.
[image error]
Isolated and lonely, the good daughter is plagued by an emptiness she doesn’t understand. She assumes everyone feels it. The acceptance she longs for frequently feels out of her reach.
Tragically, when the “good daughter” feels the need to keep up an illusion of perfection, no one gets to see whom she really is. When a love interest gets too close, she may back away, fearing if she reveals her real self, she will be found lacking.
This is her double-bind, let your true self-show and you risk losing the love you need.
Keep up a front and you never really feel loved for yourself.
Alternatively, she will pick partners who are in desperate need of narcissistic mirroring themselves.
She may be surrounded by people but feel profoundly lonely and not know why.
Riddled with anxiety she won’t measure up in some way, the good daughter often over-functions at work or at school. Rather than bringing a sense of satisfaction, she feels like an imposter only waiting to be found out.
Click To Tweet
The good daughter might exercise and starve herself to quiet the internalized critical voice that relentlessly calls her “fat,” “lazy,”. If she obeys the internal critical voices and gives of herself enough, she can sometimes calm the voices to a dull roar.
Still, the internal tyrant is always there, lying in wait—waiting to hunt her down the minute the “good daughter” lets down her guard.
In an effort to look good, she may keep it all together only to turn to food or alcohol when no one is looking. In extreme cases, she resorts to cutting or other forms of self-harm to release the accumulated pressure she feels from keeping up the facade.
Perhaps she is a suburban mom who can’t pull herself away from the shopping channel or the Chardonnay, her only escape from the relentless tedium of making her life and family look better than it is- emptiness and anxiety haunting her every footstep.
Keeping up the facade is exhausting and never-ending.
The “good daughter” may not know how to fail in small ways and bounce back. There is no middle ground. Her so-called successes are both a pedestal and a prison. Every success sets an expectation she feels she has to meet, every time.
The fake smile, the protective mask, the relentless pursuit of perfection has crushed the little girl inside who has learned to look good her narcissistically defended mom instead of being real for herself.
Click To Tweet
Being real wasn’t good enough for mom.
The good daughter must look good and make sure everyone is okay with her-even when mom is nowhere in sight.
No one told her that this is an impossible task. Because happiness, even her own, is an inside job.
As a result of trying, she may feel overwhelming shame, guilt, and self-doubt.
These oppressive feelings threaten to bury her alive.
What can she do?
She needs to know that her buried self is still there, waiting to be reclaimed and brought back to life.
[image error]
Paradoxically, her discontent holds the breadcrumbs to trace a way back to herself.
The good daughter's unhappiness holds the impetus to unearth her full range of feelings. The stifled anger, at last, given a voice, can free her from the shackles of living inside of a false self.
Click To Tweet
Plugging back into the current of her true range of feelings—not merely the “nice” ones—can energize her passion and creativity.
With that energy, she may finally be able to shake off the shame, claim her true feelings, and find her way back home—to her essential self.
Armed with awareness, the Good Daughter can use the map of her mother's narcissistic wounds as the detailed guide to finding her power as a woman. Understanding the roots of her pain is now the path to her empowerment.
Click To Tweet
The post Dealing With A Narcissistic/Difficult Mother- Trapped in the Role of the “Good” Daughter appeared first on Daughters Rising.
March 13, 2018
Does Mom Need You To Be Perfect? Are You Ensnared In The “Good” Daughter Trap?
[image error]
When a mother needs her daughter to be perfect, this ensnares her in the “good daughter” trap.
Golden child, False Self, Imposter Syndrome… all have this story behind the mask of perfection.
Here is how it unfolds.
Thundering applause and you take your bow. An audience of one holds you in her sights. Mom approves!
You have gotten into the college of your choice. You’ve scored a promotion or delivered mom’s first grandchild.
Beaming proudly, mom has a self-satisfied look on her face. You’ve made her look good and that’s what counts. You’re golden.
Success.
So why do you feel like a fraud, an imposter, a fake?
The sinking feeling in your gut tells you, mom needs you to be perfect… perfect for her.
You are caught in the “good” daughter trap.
[image error]
Here’s the way the “good” daughter trap works-
When mom lifts you up and puts you on a pedestal -it feels so good.
Tentative, but good.
You do the thing that makes mom glow. The good grade, the impeccable manners, the flattering hairstyle ( according to mom ) or appropriate ( again according to mom) outfit.
You’re good. Mom’s good.
But…
it’s hard to live on a pedestal.
Impossible actually.
You are always worried about slipping off. It’s confining up there- no room to move and a terrifying drop if you fall.
Plus, the prospect of falling is always there.
One slip up and down you go…
If you are completely honest with yourself, you wish your success didn’t matter so much to mom.
Mom cares too much about your success.
It’s like she is living through you and your successes.
And, that’s a lot of pressure.
The pedestal mom puts you on becomes your prison.
Anxiety is your prison guard.
You feel anxious you will lose your footing… say or do something that disappoints mom or makes you look less than perfect.
Mom’s compliments feel more like mandates.
It’s all so tentative. You never know what will make her and her opinion of you crumble. And you wonder deep down that she might crumble if you don’t keep up the show.
It is a lot of pressure.
Because of her limitations, she is living through your successes. She doesn’t have the self-esteem to stand on her own. You wonder if she could be Narcissistic, Borderline, Histrionic, struggle with an addiction or low self-worth.
No matter the reason, this dynamic feels suffocating and confining.
You wish mom’s support was solid and dependable.
It’s not.
That would give you the confidence to try, fail and bounce back. Instead, you feel constantly worried that you will lose her approval. So the win of getting her approval isn’t really a win.
It is a “win for now”.
You can’t count on it.
You want to be able to make mistakes, struggle, stretch and try your wings without feeling like you will destroy mom if you don't get it right.
Click To Tweet
The expectations set for you are sky high.
The very same “good” daughter behavior that elevates you in mom’s eyes traps you in a prison. Here’s how –
Transcript
Hi, this is Katherine Fabrizio with help for The Good Daughter Syndrome. I’ve been seeing women in psychotherapy for 27 years. I’ve come to identify several things about The Good Daughter Syndrome. One thing I’ve seen, I call The Pedestal and The Prison.
The good daughter gets lots of accolades. Mom usually has praise. She has praise, she’s your highest cheerleader and your harshest critic many times. When you come through, when you do something that pleases mom, you’re put on a pedestal.
Then when you want to push back, make your own decisions. Set some boundaries because that very pedestal can become a prison.
You’re the only person mom can count on.
When you’ve reached a level of what you would say is perfection, I don’t like that word, but a certain level. Many good daughters feel like they have to maintain that level. This is exhausting and is not a real way for anyone to live.
This is Katherine Fabrizio with help for The Good Daughter Syndrome.
This is how we Rise!
DO YOU EXPERIENCE THE "GOOD DAUGHTER" SYNDROME?
Do you have a Narcissistic or Difficult Mother?
Are you the "Good Daughter"? The Rebel? or The Lucky One?
Take the quiz and find out!
The post Does Mom Need You To Be Perfect? Are You Ensnared In The “Good” Daughter Trap? appeared first on Daughters Rising.
March 6, 2018
3 Ways the Good Daughter of the Narcissistic/Difficult Mother Feels Trapped
[image error]
“My mother is driving me crazy!”
Does every daughter complain about her mother or is there something fundamentally wrong with the relationship?
Are you a daughter of a Narcissistic Mother?
If mom is Narcissistic, Borderline, Histrionic has traits of these disorders or is insecure, her daughter attuned to mom frequently finds herself in the role of the Good Daughter.
For the daughter in the role of the Good Daughter, she is trapped in a dynamic that she feels… but just can’t put her finger on.
When is good for mom, bad for her daughter?
Let’s dig in.
A daughter who has been raised by a mother with serious psychological difficulty isn’t just bitching about mom.
She is trapped by her mother’s needs in ways that cost her dearly.
This destructive Good Daughter dynamic is often hidden.
Here are 3 ways this Good Daughter role is a trap.
The daughter’s attunement traps her in the role of the Good Daughter. She is the one who sees, feels and senses when mom is upset.
Her closeness to mom and hypervigilance to mom’s moods may feel like love to her. Why wouldn’t it? It is all she has ever known.
If mom is upset, the Good Daughter feels it is her job to fix it. This is habitual and ingrained.
This dynamic that is rooted in childhood when daughter needed mom to be okay.
Because her own needs have been intertwined with her mothers, the Good Daughter has a hard time rejecting mom or causing mom upset without feeling her own security is jeopardized.
2. She is not only hurt by her damaged mother but she feels responsible for her mother’s well-being.
Growing up – the Good Daughter learns that caretaking is the only way for her to feel emotionally safe. Making sure mom is okay comes first. Then and only then can she feel safe.
She has learned to shut down her own feelings in order to protect her mother’s fragile self-esteem.
3. The Good daughter is frequently the one mom looks to- to be the example.
Her mother’s defenses mandate she look “good” for mom or be “good” for mom. Mom’s need for self-preservation comes at the cost of her daughter’s developmental needs.
For emotional survival, she learns to disconnect from her essential self and tune into mom’s needs instead.
What does it cost the Good Daughter to be “good” for mom instead of real for herself?
The daughter in the role of the Good Daughter may look like she has it all together yet be flooded with self-doubt when met with the slightest criticism.
Years of looking good for mom and feeling that she has to be better than she is leaves her with little emotional resilience.
Consequentially, detaching from her essential self and letting another person in is almost impossible.
Because of this detachment, her capacity for intimate relating is severely limited.
Isolated and lonely, the Good Daughter is plagued by an emptiness she doesn’t understand. The acceptance she longs for feels out of reach and she doesn’t know why.
She keeps thinking that perfection will be the fix that she needs when what she needs is connection.
How does being good for mom get in the way of closeness with a partner?
When the Good Daughter feels the need to keep up an illusion of perfection, no one gets to see who she really is. When a love interest gets too close, she may back away, fearing if she reveals her real self, she will be found lacking.
This is her double-bind, let your true self-show and you risk losing the love you need.
Ironically though- if you keep up a front, you are never loved for yourself.
Alternatively, she will pick partners who are in desperate need of narcissistic mirroring themselves.
The Good Daughter may be surrounded by people but feel profoundly lonely and not know why.
How does this Good Daughter role cause her to feel like an imposter?
Riddled with anxiety she won’t measure up in some way, the Good Daughter over-functions at work or at school. Yet, rather than bringing a sense of satisfaction, she feels like an imposter only waiting to be found out.
The Good Daughter might exercise and starve herself to quiet the internalized critical voice that relentlessly calls her “fat,” “lazy,”. If she obeys the internal critical voices and gives of herself enough, she can sometimes calm the voices to a dull roar.
Still, the internal tyrant is always there, lying in wait—waiting to hunt her down the minute the Good Daughter lets her guard down.
In an effort to look good, she may keep it all together only to turn to food or alcohol when no one is looking. In extreme cases, she resorts to cutting or other forms of self-harm to release the accumulated pressure she feels from keeping up the facade.
Or she feels a chronic sense of self-doubt, never able to relax and simply be herself.
She might be a suburban mom who can’t pull herself away from the shopping channel or the Chardonnay, her only escape from the relentless tedium of making her life and family look better than it is- emptiness and anxiety haunting her every footstep.
If she is a mom, she is likely to over function in her relationship with her daughter. She doesn’t know when enough is good enough. She wants so desperately for her daughter to feel good about herself.
For the Good Daughter, keeping up the facade is exhausting and never-ending.
The Good Daughter may not know how to fail in small ways and bounce back. There is no middle ground.
Her so-called successes are both a pedestal and a prison. Every success sets an expectation she feels she has to meet, every time.
The fake smile, the protective mask, the relentless pursuit of perfection has crushed the little girl inside who has learned to look good for her narcissistically defended mom instead of being real for herself.
Being real wasn’t good enough for mom.
The Good Daughter must look good and make sure everyone is okay with her-even when mom is nowhere in sight.
No one told her this is an impossible task. Because happiness, even her own, is an inside job.
As a result of trying, she feels overwhelming shame, guilt, and self-doubt.
Her essential self is buried under the Good Daughter facade.
What can the Good Daughter do to help herself?
She needs to know her buried self is still there, waiting to be reclaimed and brought back to life.
Paradoxically, her discontent holds the breadcrumbs tracing a way back to herself.
The Good Daughter’s unhappiness holds the impetus to unearth her full range of feelings. The stifled anger, at last, given a voice, can free her from the shackles of living inside of a false self.
Plugging back into the current of her true range of feelings—not merely the “nice” ones—can energize her passion and creativity.
With that energy, she may finally be able to shake off the shame, claim her true feelings, and find her way back home—to her essential self.
Armed with awareness, the Good Daughter can use the map of her mother’s narcissistic wounds as the detailed guide to finding her power as a woman.
Understanding the roots of her pain is now the path to her empowerment.
This article originally appeared in PsychCentral
GET YOUR FREE MEDITATION
Does dealing with your difficult mother cause you anxiety?
Here is a Free meditation I created just for you
DO YOU EXPERIENCE THE "GOOD DAUGHTER" SYNDROME?
Do you have a Narcissistic or Difficult Mother?
Are you the "Good Daughter"? The Rebel? or The Lucky One?
Take the quiz and find out!
The post 3 Ways the Good Daughter of the Narcissistic/Difficult Mother Feels Trapped appeared first on Daughters Rising.
3 Ways the Good Daughter of the Narcissistic/Difficult Mother is Trapped
[image error]
“My mother is driving me crazy!”
Does every daughter complain about her mother or is there something fundamentally wrong with the relationship?
If mom is Narcissistic, Borderline, Histrionic has traits of these disorders or is insecure, her daughter attuned to mom frequently finds herself in the role of the Good Daughter.
For the daughter in the role of the Good Daughter, she is trapped in a dynamic that she feels… but just can’t put her finger on.
When is good for mom, bad for her daughter?
Let’s dig in.
A daughter who has been raised by a mother with serious psychological difficulty isn’t just bitching about mom.
She is trapped by her mother’s needs in ways that cost her dearly.
This destructive Good Daughter dynamic is often hidden.
Here are 3 ways this Good Daughter role is a trap.
The daughter’s attunement traps her in the role of the Good Daughter. She is the one who sees, feels and senses when mom is upset.
Her closeness to mom and hypervigilance to mom’s moods may feel like love to her. Why wouldn’t it? It is all she has ever known.
If mom is upset, the Good Daughter feels it is her job to fix it. This is habitual and ingrained.
This dynamic has it’s roots in childhood when daughter needed mom to be okay.
Because her own needs have been intertwined with her mothers, the Good Daughter has a hard time rejecting mom or causing mom upset without feeling her own security is jeopardized.
2. She is not only hurt by her damaged mother but she feels responsible for her mother’s well-being.
Growing up – the Good Daughter learns that caretaking is the only way for her to feel emotionally safe. Making sure mom is okay comes first. Then and only then can she feel safe.
She has learned to shut down her own feelings in order to protect her mother’s fragile self-esteem.
3. The Good daughter is frequently the one mom looks to- to be the example.
Her mother’s defenses mandate she look “good” for mom or be “good” for mom. Mom’s need for self-preservation comes at the cost of her daughter’s developmental needs.
For emotional survival, she learns to disconnect from her essential self and tune into mom’s needs instead.
What does it cost the Good Daughter to be “good” for mom instead of real for herself?
The daughter in the role of the Good Daughter may look like she has it all together yet be flooded with self-doubt when met with the slightest criticism.
Years of looking good for mom and feeling that she has to be better than she is leaves her with little emotional resilience.
Consequentially, detaching from her essential self and letting another person in is almost impossible.
Because of this detachment, her capacity for intimate relating is severely limited.
Isolated and lonely, the Good Daughter is plagued by an emptiness she doesn’t understand. The acceptance she longs for feels out of reach and she doesn’t know why.
She keeps thinking that perfection will be the fix that she needs when what she needs is connection.
How does being good for mom get in the way of closeness with a partner?
When the Good Daughter feels the need to keep up an illusion of perfection, no one gets to see who she really is. When a love interest gets too close, she may back away, fearing if she reveals her real self, she will be found lacking.
This is her double-bind, let your true self-show and you risk losing the love you need.
Ironically though- if you keep up a front, you are never loved for yourself.
Alternatively, she will pick partners who are in desperate need of narcissistic mirroring themselves.
The Good Daughter may be surrounded by people but feel profoundly lonely and not know why.
How does this Good Daughter role cause her to feel like an imposter?
Riddled with anxiety she won’t measure up in some way, the Good Daughter over-functions at work or at school. Yet, rather than bringing a sense of satisfaction, she feels like an imposter only waiting to be found out.
The Good Daughter might exercise and starve herself to quiet the internalized critical voice that relentlessly calls her “fat,” “lazy,”. If she obeys the internal critical voices and gives of herself enough, she can sometimes calm the voices to a dull roar.
Still, the internal tyrant is always there, lying in wait—waiting to hunt her down the minute the Good Daughter lets her guard down.
In an effort to look good, she may keep it all together only to turn to food or alcohol when no one is looking. In extreme cases, she resorts to cutting or other forms of self-harm to release the accumulated pressure she feels from keeping up the facade.
Or she feels a chronic sense of self-doubt, never able to relax and simply be herself.
She might be a suburban mom who can’t pull herself away from the shopping channel or the Chardonnay, her only escape from the relentless tedium of making her life and family look better than it is- emptiness and anxiety haunting her every footstep.
If she is a mom, she is likely to over function in her relationship with her daughter. She doesn’t know when enough is good enough. She wants so desperately for her daughter to feel good about herself.
For the Good Daughter, keeping up the facade is exhausting and never-ending.
The Good Daughter may not know how to fail in small ways and bounce back. There is no middle ground.
Her so-called successes are both a pedestal and a prison. Every success sets an expectation she feels she has to meet, every time.
The fake smile, the protective mask, the relentless pursuit of perfection has crushed the little girl inside who has learned to look good for her narcissistically defended mom instead of being real for herself.
Being real wasn’t good enough for mom.
The Good Daughter must look good and make sure everyone is okay with her-even when mom is nowhere in sight.
No one told her this is an impossible task. Because happiness, even her own, is an inside job.
As a result of trying, she feels overwhelming shame, guilt, and self-doubt.
Her essential self is buried under the Good Daughter facade.
What can the Good Daughter do to help herself?
She needs to know her buried self is still there, waiting to be reclaimed and brought back to life.
Paradoxically, her discontent holds the breadcrumbs tracing a way back to herself.
The Good Daughter’s unhappiness holds the impetus to unearth her full range of feelings. The stifled anger, at last, given a voice, can free her from the shackles of living inside of a false self.
Plugging back into the current of her true range of feelings—not merely the “nice” ones—can energize her passion and creativity.
With that energy, she may finally be able to shake off the shame, claim her true feelings, and find her way back home—to her essential self.
Armed with awareness, the Good Daughter can use the map of her mother’s narcissistic wounds as the detailed guide to finding her power as a woman.
Understanding the roots of her pain is now the path to her empowerment.
This article originally appeared in PsychCentral
GET YOUR FREE MEDITATION
Does dealing with your difficult mother cause you anxiety?
Here is a Free meditation I created just for you
DO YOU EXPERIENCE THE "GOOD DAUGHTER" SYNDROME?
Do you have a Narcissistic or Difficult Mother?
Are you the "Good Daughter"? The Rebel? or The Lucky One?
Take the quiz and find out!
The post 3 Ways the Good Daughter of the Narcissistic/Difficult Mother is Trapped appeared first on Daughters Rising.
February 27, 2018
Promises to Our Daughters- Sexual Assault Prevention Starts With Messages Mothers Give To Their Daughters
Share
Are You The Good Daughter?
Take the Quiz!
Powered by the Simple Social Press
Messages mothers give to their daughters about their bodies reverberate throughout their daughters’ lives and have major consequences for their safety now and later.
Mothers signal to their daughters what is expected of them.
Do they owe others a hug to show their gratitude- even when they don’t feel like it?
Should they smile to make another person happy and override their own feelings?
Should a daughter “get over” feeling uncomfortable with a certain relative or family friend?
Daughters incode these messages early on and are either strengthened by them or left vulnerable.
Where will you stand?
Transcript:
Speaker 1: 00:01 Oh, just give aunt so and so or uncle so and so, a hug. They gave you this nice gift. They’re so happy to see you.
Speaker: 00:12 Where’s that pretty smile? Put a smile on your face. All these messages that we give our daughters, I think lay a foundation, um, that when there are enough of them, daughters feel ambivalent about what they owe other people and what they owe themselves.
Speaker: 00:41 So they feel conflicted about it. And it starts with the messages that mothers give. Very, very young daughters because if you think about it, the bodies, the baby comes from the mother’s body. So a child naturally looks to the mother for protection and direction about her body. You know what’s okay, what’s not okay?
Speaker: 01:08 And these subtle messages I’ve said them, they just come, came out of my mouth when I was raising kids.
Speaker 1: 01:18 As a woman, particularly in the south, I was trained that other people’s comfort is more important than my own.
Speaker:01:27 So I didn’t think this consciously… I didn’t, you know, do the math inside my own head, but as a little girl, giving somebody a smile and making them feel good when you feel good..that’s a wonderful thing.
Speaker: 01:42 Or if you feel grateful for a gift or someone’s attention …if you feel like giving a hug back, that’s a wonderful thing.
Speaker: 01:54 But if you are asked in some way to override your own natural feeling, then you’re taught to put others’ needs, wants and desires for you ahead of your own sense of sovereignty or power over your body.
Speaker: 02:18 So what I want to do is to ask other women and other mothers to make these promises to our daughters.
Speaker 1: 02:27 If we have little daughters or granddaughters or nieces or her school teacher, kindergarten teacher, a preschool teacher, to really think about the messages that we send.
Speaker: 02:41 I think we have to be thoughtful and intentional and if you’re if you have been raised traditionally by definition, I think you’ll have to go against the grain. Go against something inside of yourself to break this pattern that lays a foundation for a sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexual abuse.
Speaker: 03:11 I want to be really clear about this, it doesn’t make the woman responsible for what happens to her. It just that these internal messages matter. I think they create a vulnerability that can be taken advantage of or an internal conflict.
Speaker: 03:31 I mean, if you think about it, a little child is powerless. The toddlers are powerless. We do this with my granddaughter… um, I mean she just so delightful. You just want to pick her up and eat her up and hug her and kiss her in and all that.
Speaker 1: 03:49 But her mother has encouraged me to do something different with her – to ask her permission first.
Speaker: 03:53 I think it’s so important to ask her first. Ask, “Can I pick you up” and …, nine times out of 10 I’d love to say she rushes into my arms. But she says, no, 9 times out of 10.
Speaker:04:09 And when you do have to pick her up..put her in the car seat or whatever her mother encourages you to say, “I’m going to pick you up now and put you in the car seat.”
Speaker: 04:16 So there are times when you take over her body, right? But um, if she allows you to pick her up and she says,” down” she fully expects you to put her down.
Speaker: 04:30 If you think about it, how powerful that is for her to get the sense that she can direct whether or not somebody picks her up and gives her a hug or she gives them a hug or puts her down.
Speaker: 04:47 I mean that’s gotta be encoded in the unconscious foundational part of her brain that she is valuable and she’s in charge of what happens to her body.
Speaker 2: 05:01 Yeah.
Speaker 1: 05:03 So I think these messages when, when mothers say, Your safety comes before my social comfort.” are important.
Speaker 2: 05:13 Yeah.
Speaker 1: 05:15 When mothers say, ” If you tell me that you feel uncomfortable around a relative or family friend, I’m going to listen to you and take you seriously.”
Speaker: 05:27 That doesn’t mean that you’re going to run out and accuse a person of doing something. It might mean that you won’t leave your daughter alone with the person…or that you will accompany her and supervise things. I mean, what, what could be wrong with that?
Speaker: 05:43 That may mean that it inconveniences you, you’d rather be talking about the adults in the other room or something, but if you take that really seriously what she says and know she has to tell you something on, she’ll be more likely to trust you later on.
Speaker: 06:01 We expect kids to tell us everything without putting the foundational pieces in place. Um, so you don’t owe anybody a hug or smile. I’ll put your safety before my social comfort. And if you tell me you feel uncomfortable with a relative or even a family friend, um, I’ll listen to you.”
Speaker: 06:28 I think where we can make these pledges to our daughters, our granddaughters, our nieces, anyone we’re in charge of, as an adult authority figure.
Speaker: 06:42 We heal a little bit within ourselves when we work to break these cycles and empower ourselves as we empower other women and daughters. This is Katherine Fabrizio with daughters rising. Thank you. Goodbye.[image error]
[image error] [image error]
The post Promises to Our Daughters- Sexual Assault Prevention Starts With Messages Mothers Give To Their Daughters appeared first on Daughters Rising.
