Mother Hunger: How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from Lost Nurturance, Protection, and Guidance

by Kelly McDaniel

The severity of Mother Hunger is unique to each daughter, and the intensity of adaptations depends on the degree of missing maternal protection and the availability of alternate safe adults. In adolescence and adulthood, adaptations might look like constant low-grade depression or chronic anxiety. Attention problems, hyperactivity, and perfectionism are also evidence of Mother Hunger. So are addictive habits—addictions are a form of self-soothing and a resourceful way to avoid pain.

Addiction may begin as a way to appease a mother and adapt to her vulnerability. The addictive behavior begins with the innocent hope that If I can simply do the right thing (say the right thing, be the right thing), she will protect and love me. I can calm down. Dr. Gabor Maté states, “At the core of every addiction is an emptiness based in abject fear.”30 Addiction is an attempt to regulate fear and despair—fear of being unlovable or alone, fear that grows without a fundamental sense of safety.

Compromised maternal guidance shows up in myriad ways, some of which include: Competing with daughters for a partner’s attention Carrying the weight of household duties with resentment Showing a preference for sons over daughters Escaping reality with addictive and secretive behaviors

If you identify with having had poor maternal guidance, you may often feel anxiety, because your behavior and achievements don’t reflect your true desires. Perhaps your life feels like your mother’s résumé builder instead of your own journey. Life without maternal guidance can lead to a few of the following characteristics: Excessive caretaking in relationships Deep insecurity Difficulty making decisions that reflect your own desires Chronic guilt and a belief that you’re never enough (for your mother) Constantly comparing yourself to other girls and women Dissatisfaction with your body image and appearance Loyalty to abusive people, usually your mother or people like her

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) differs from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because it is caused by repeated trauma. When little ones endure parental abuse, the incidents are rarely a singular event, and the childhood trauma is ongoing. The prolonged nature of this kind of adversity creates challenging, enduring symptoms that may not go away, because living with constant fear changes the brain during rapid growth periods.

If you grew up with a mother who was cruel and frightening, her behavior required your autonomic nervous system to stay in overdrive. Under constant threat, developing brain pathways meant for social behavior took a back seat to the pathways meant for safety. Unused neurons became weaker and less able to carry signals that govern attention and mood regulation. At the same time, pathways designed for self-preservation gained strength to keep you alert for signs of danger. Complex trauma explains why you were wound up, energetic, anxious, or irritable as a child and may still feel this way as an adult. Like someone anticipating a blow, your body and mind are wired for war.

The legacy of maternal abuse is what I call Third-Degree Mother Hunger. Third-Degree Mother Hunger shares symptoms with personality disorders like borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. But I don’t consider Third-Degree Mother Hunger a disorder; it’s a profound attachment injury that creates a constellation of symptoms that make life unbearable.

Third-Degree Mother Hunger comes from having a compromised mother who frightened you during the years you depended on her. Instead of nurturing, protecting, or guiding you, she yelled, hit, shamed, or abandoned you. As a result, your relationship with yourself and others is devastated.

The helplessness and devastation of life with Third-Degree Mother Hunger is why I believe having a dangerous, frightening mother is the worst childhood adversity of all.

Since a mother’s love is your primary defense from adversity, when she is the threat, her care is a profound relational betrayal.

To bond with an unkind mother, our merciful imagination works overtime to create a different mother from the one we have. We create one who loves us, one who is taking care of us, one who isn’t betraying our vulnerability. Our brain designs a different mother to help us cope with constant fear. Sadly, in service to bonding, these necessary brain changes create long-term personality problems. Surviving Third-Degree Mother Hunger may have left you with automatic dissociative patterns, chronic shame, and the propensity to land in relationships with others who betray you.

Missing an emotional safety net, the developing young brain focuses on finding safety elsewhere instead of playing, relaxing, or bonding with others. In this way, an emotionally abusive mother distorts her daughter’s inner life, creating personality adaptations that may bring on future trouble. For example, girls with abusive mothers have difficulty making friends. They struggle to trust. Prolonged activation of the stress response system (from lack of trust) disrupts developing brain architecture, making it difficult to manage emotions, moods, and thoughts.

Physical contact between a mother and daughter is part of nurturance. A mother’s touch is as necessary as food. But when a mother’s touch is disrespectful or aggressive, it leaves a damaging impact that can last a lifetime.

While spanking might appear effective in the short term, there is no existing study to support the idea that spanking or physical pain leads to long-term positive outcomes. The research suggests that parents who spank their children are actually unable to regulate their own emotions. Spanking is a shortcut, an emotional bypass from parental discomfort, anger, or helplessness. Parents justify spanking in all kinds of ways, but it is an abuse of power. Spanking leads to fear, aggression, humiliation, and withdrawal in children.

you were spanked as a child, you may feel disgusted by your body. It may be difficult to care for yourself (including pursuing medical care, dental care, regular exercise, and healthy nutrition) because your body has been a battleground.

Violations of a sexual nature often lead to a full rejection of one’s sexuality, or risky sexual behavior.

Since a mother is our first intimate partner and she has access to our body at all times, her cruelty is a form of domestic violence. If she handles us aggressively or directs her rage at us, we experience unimaginable terror. Carrying symptoms like the victims of intimate partner violence, we struggle to make friends or find a place to belong. We feel inherently bad. Almost unanimously, victims of partner violence believe domestic abuse is their fault. Daughters of abusive mothers do too.

Psychobiological adaptations to fear brought on by maternal abuse can be long-lasting, complicating relationships for a daughter throughout her life. The NCADV explains how a person who has been through intimate partner abuse will have symptoms long after leaving the relationship. Symptoms of domestic violence include sleep problems; intrusive flashbacks and feelings of terror; avoiding topics or situations that are reminders; feelings of hopelessness, rage, and worthlessness; and panic attacks.20 Daughters with Third-Degree Mother Hunger share these symptoms. They idealize the abuser (their mother), believe they deserve the abuse, and suffer a humiliating loss of self-worth. Some professionals use the term pathological accommodation to describe what happens when a child learns to survive abuse.

Trauma bonds—strong emotional attachments between an abused person and her abuser—form when the human neuropathway for danger and attachment are activated simultaneously and damage the attachment system.22 When a traumatic bond forms between a mother and her daughter, this toxic connection impacts all other relationships in the daughter’s life.

Ainsworth’s student Mary Main found signs of a fourth attachment category. Main noticed how some children without secure attachment behaved differently than their anxious or avoidant peers when their mother left and reentered the room. When the mother returned, these little ones would first run toward her, but then pull or run away. Some curled up in a ball or hit the mother. The first impulse to seek comfort is evident, but as the mother approached, the child became afraid. These children were “disorganized” and disoriented, as demonstrated by confused expressions, freezing, or wandering.24

My reaction as it applies to S?

Dissociation, a parasympathetic process of downregulating the nervous system in response to impending danger, is a survival reaction. We literally and temporarily leave awareness as our breathing slows down and we become immobile. This is nature’s way of preparing for death.

As infants or children, the reality of a frightening mother presents us with an impossible dilemma: the person who could soothe our fear is causing it.

Cognitive processing is inextricably linked with our bodies. . . . All early relational dynamics with primary caregivers, traumatic or nontraumatic, serve as blueprints for the child’s developing cognition and belief systems, and these belief systems influence the posture, structure and movement of the body.”

Tucked away from conscious awareness, like it or not, the memoir of your life is in your body—silently informing physical and mental well-being—trying to get your attention through body aches, regular nightmares, and chronic anxiety.

Nature’s merciful design, keeping you from having to reckon with overwhelming reality, hides data that could be useful, such as information about how to detect a dangerous person. When the dangerous person is your mother, what good is the information? Since you couldn’t leave her, your brain constrains awareness with an emotional eye patch. In this way, dissociation is a lifesaver.

Anticipatory trauma—rehearsing how to cope with the next spanking or coming home from school or the next drink Mom pours—explains why fear may cause immobility. Feeling slow, stuck, or frozen is the body’s way of preparing for assault.

Pathological hope starts as a protective measure—a way to endure adversity. But over time, pathological hope may keep women stuck in painful relational cycles with others. Most don’t notice the nature of pathological hope because the brain adapted so early.

Pathological hope has amazing staying power. The enduring nature of wishful thinking could relate to a psychological phenomenon known as betrayal blindness.

A survival personality with little self-awareness forms, as betrayal blindness protects us from knowing that we have become experts at living with and loving a dangerous person.

We don’t have control over early adaptations to fear. We need our mother even when she yells at us, pulls our hair, or tells us we’re fat. Appeasing an abusive mother sets up a lifetime of relational confusion. And we may find ourselves in one destructive relationship after another.

The toxic shame that results from maternal abuse convinces us we are defective. This is not the kind of shame that you feel when you hurt someone’s feelings or the shame that tells you it’s not a good idea to flirt with your sister’s partner. Toxic shame makes you question your right to be here. Toxic shame mires your soul in a tar pit of insecurity.

Relational psychotherapist and author Patricia DeYoung says toxic shame is “lodged somewhere deeper than words, a ‘sickness of the soul,’ with even less form than a feeling.”35 For this reason, it’s hard to identify or discuss toxic shame. Over time, toxic shame fuels forms of self-abuse like cutting, starving, addiction, and isolation.

Healing Third-Degree Mother Hunger requires support from well-trained professionals who understand complex trauma, attachment, and sensorimotor psychotherapy.

You need guidance. Understand what I call apology ache. Understand disenfranchised grief. Discover the benefits of a having a celestial mother. Find professional support. A qualified attachment-focused therapist can help regardless of where you are on the Mother Hunger spectrum. If you are facing Third-Degree Mother Hunger, a therapist who is trauma informed is critical.

Pathological hope is some of nature’s finest work. Protective mechanisms meant for bonding wire us for hope even in the face of ample evidence that change is not forthcoming.

Disenfranchised grief has nowhere to go.4 When we don’t have a name for what hurts or a place to talk about it, the grief process freezes.

Deciding to divorce your mother should never be done in anger or as an attempt to “win” and finally feel powerful. Instead, like any other healthy boundary, a decision of this magnitude must come after careful consideration and from a place of peace. That’s not to say you won’t feel sad. Grief is part of any divorce process. And divorcing your mother can be the most painful divorce of all.