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

by Kelly McDaniel

Deep in their bones, women with disorganized attachment believe no one is safe. Living this way requires some form of self-medicating. Judy Garland and Édith Piaf both used drugs, alcohol, and romance to numb the pain of their childhood. In spite of health problems, loss of respect, and trouble singing, their addictions escalated. Their stories aren’t unique. Most women with disorganized attachment work too much, spend too much, or eat too much. Some deprive themselves of basic needs. Fleeting emotional highs mask the pain of not belonging anywhere or to anyone. Generally, their first experience of human safety and genuine warmth comes from a professional who is trained to work with complex developmental trauma.

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. It’s not a conscious process. It’s automatic. Dissociation happens when we feel there is no other option in the face of a threat.

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.”

When we are helpless, dissociation buffers unbearable reality, but it also creates a division between the self that is going through life (attending school, learning to read, making friends, playing sports) and the self that is holding unexpressed fear, shame, and anger. In essence, we divide into parts. We have an external part who goes through the motions of life and an internal self who hides. Sometimes, we don’t know which self is real.

Freyd coined the term betrayal blindness to explain how adults can forget or simply not know when we’re being hurt in an intimate relationship. She explains that “because we are dependent on the betrayer—our next best defense is to block out awareness of the betrayal; in other words, a kind of mental freeze (betrayal blindness) is our next best option.”29 Freyd helps us understand how this psychological adaptation to danger is based on an extreme need to keep a situation intact, whether “maintaining a marriage, keeping a family together, or holding on to one’s position in a community.”

“Children are programmed to be fundamentally loyal to their caretakers, even if they are abused by them. Terror increases the need for attachment, even if the source of comfort is also the source of terror.”31 In this way, betrayal becomes wired with love. This is not a conscious experience. 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.

Dr. Stephen Porges’s polyvagal theory, like Dr. Shelly Taylor’s tend-and-befriend work, explains how our social nervous system is built to bond with others, especially during adversity.32 This is a human response to fear. We need to “befriend” when we are threatened by someone or something.

Maternal cruelty brings on the emergency response system, rapidly changing a daughter’s developing brain architecture. High levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, damage brain regions meant for social interaction.

Stress irritates the functioning of the amygdala, where empathy develops.33 Cortisol poisons the hippocampus, which makes sense of incoming data and memory processing.

Imagine for a moment what the brain must do to ignore (and eventually prune) the neurological processes that identify a dangerous mother? It must compartmentalize fear somewhere outside your consciousness so that bonding can happen. Over time, the brain shrinks danger signals, like a mother’s shrill voice or furrowed brow, so you can tolerate her proximity. Pruning alters perception and protects you when you are small and dependent, but over time, your innate ability to detect or discern risky situations is twisted.

Maternal abuse is a devastating betrayal because not only do you miss out on essential nurturance, protection, and guidance, but your neuroception and protective instincts are also damaged. Since you are adapted to danger, situations that would frighten a regular person don’t raise a red flag for you. You know how to bond with others who may betray you. You might even be bored by people who don’t.

Toxic shame makes you question your right to be here. Toxic shame mires your soul in a tar pit of insecurity. My hope is that understanding Third-Degree Mother Hunger will reduce the shame you are carrying. You aren’t defective or broken. Toxic shame is an inherited type of shame that has nothing to do with you. You could be carrying shame that belongs to your mother, like the shame she didn’t feel when she mistreated you.

Afterward, the voice that says I am disgusting and useless and no one should ever talk to me again starts talking. And it usually sounds like your mother. But remember: Your personality developed to survive your mother’s lack of care. It’s not your true self.

Second, if you haven’t done so already, it’s time to stop reaching for your mother, rest your weary soul, and grieve what is lost. In order for this to work, you need the company of someone who understands this unique pain and/or a clinician trained in and dedicated to healthy attachment. Your pain emerged from relational trauma, and it will only heal with healthy relational experiences.

“divorcing” your mother will be part of healing this third-degree burn. You might start with a 30-day separation, disconnecting from contact via phone, text, social media . . . anywhere she can see or connect with you. As you practice new boundaries, creating safety for yourself, you are essentially coming out of a dissociative trance that you’ve been in most of your life. Emerging from constant dissociation means facing buried emotions. This is a good time to remember what your goal is: You are building secure attachment within yourself that was lost in your formative years. You are creating an internal home where you are safe and loved.

Keep in mind that others have walked this journey before you, paving the way to a new, steady sense of self without the constant disappointment, heartache, and betrayal that comes from unhealthy maternal contact. As your body feels safe, overall emotional reactivity diminishes. You’ll recover faster after a nightmare or an argument with someone you love. Gradually, dissociation loses its hold on you. Your suffering diminishes. And with the help of a trusted guide, you will build relational resilience. The heartache that has been your constant companion takes a break. In this new brain space, you can make better decisions about how and when to contact your mother—and whether contact is possible at all.

Even if you feel ready for guidance, the power imbalance between you and a helping professional reminds your unconscious of the fear that if someone really knows you, they can manipulate and control you. For these reasons, it’s essential to find a therapist who understands attachment theory and who can gently pace your healing process.

Healing Mother Hunger means you have a chance to earn the secure attachment you missed early in life. While this goes faster when you have healthy relationships around you, new inner security can also grow from your own efforts.

When it does, ask yourself what hurts. Are you longing for affection? Are you feeling scared? Do you feel lost?

Identify your primary missing maternal needs. Do you crave affection and quality time from one special someone? You need more nurturance. Are you routinely anxious and afraid? You need more protection. Do you feel uninspired or lost? You need guidance.

Earning security comes from finding new ways to self-nurture, building authentic protection, and creating a coherent story about your formative years. I realize this sounds clinical and laborious. The truth is that although it’s possible to create a healthier attachment style, it takes considerable effort to grow new pathways in your brain. Like beginning a new exercise routine, the first days are the worst. You’re tired, off-balance, and unsure it will work. But with practice, you gain strength, momentum, and confidence.

Here are some excellent ways to help you replace the missing maternal element of nurturance: Soak in a tub or saltwater tank: the water is like a human hug. Seek regular bodywork that is trauma sensitive. Practice restorative yoga to ease emotional wounds stuck in your body. Try a gravity blanket when you go to bed or rest on the couch. Listen to a mindful podcast like Tara Brach or On Being with Krista Tippett. Walk in nature where silence can find you. Light your favorite scented candle. Drink noncaffeinated herbal tea at night. Take naps when possible. Curl up with something soft, like a favorite pillow or pet.

For 21 days, I encourage you to detox from regular exposure to your mother (or thoughts of your mother). To do so, you’ll want to practice healthy nurturance and avoid texting, talking, or being with her. For three weeks, try the following: Feed yourself as you would a young child. Avoid sugar, caffeine, and processed foods. Write down your thoughts and feelings as you notice them. This is one of the hardest healing tasks, but it’s essential. Make sleep a priority. Apps like Calm or Insight Timer are helpful for sleepless nights. Limit your exposure to social media. Check e-mail only when necessary during the workday. Practice spending time alone, without a romantic partner, family member, or friend to entertain, comfort, or distract you. Try practicing solitude in a conscious, present way. Put devices away at night. If you use your device to listen to a sleep or meditation podcast, set it to airplane mode or “do not disturb.” If all of this seems impossible, and you keep reaching for your mother only to find yourself hurt and disappointed again, consider seeking the help of a licensed therapist. A support group can be extremely helpful if you currently have addictive habits. Some groups have phone meetings as well as local meetings. I recommend the following: Overeaters Anonymous (OA): oa.org Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA): slaafws.org Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA): adultchildren.org Alcoholics Anonymous (AA): aa.org

Listen to educational podcasts about attachment. Therapist Uncensored is a good one.

Many of us are experts at acting like it’s no big deal when someone hurts our feelings. We swallow pain to avoid conflict. Alternatively, some of us seek revenge when someone hurts us—we want them to feel as badly as we do. Most of us learn these strategies very young because when Mom hurt our feelings, she didn’t apologize. We became masters at pretending we were okay when we didn’t feel okay.

The legacy of an unapologetic mother is incredibly hurtful. You might not recognize a sincere apology from someone else, because you never experienced one in your formative years. An apology is more than just the words I’m sorry, although those words are a great start. A true apology involves two things: recognition of your pain and repair efforts to mend hurtful behavior.

An apology is not a denial. If someone tries to talk you out of your reality, that’s not an apology. That’s a way to avoid feeling remorse. Words like “Was it really that bad?” or “You’re being too sensitive” add insult to injury. This type of apology asks you to ignore how you feel and adds shame to the hurt. Shaming efforts hide behind false apologies, like when someone suggests, “I’m sorry you feel that way,” as if your feelings happened in a vacuum. Not only is this pseudo apology unhelpful, but if you were hurt before, now you’re probably mad too.

When a mother blames you for her behavior, she is reacting from her own unexamined powerlessness. She distorts the truth of what is happening. You did not and do not cause her to hurt you.

If you have Third-Degree Mother Hunger, you may never receive a real apology from your mother. While this might be a hard thing to acknowledge, it’s important to know that you can heal without her involvement. Her apology would certainly make it easier, but it’s not necessary for mending your broken heart.

It’s rare to give up hope for a mother to apologize or change if she is still alive. Instead of facing reality, you wait for the apology because that seems easier. Consider this a gentle invitation to try. Waiting for her apology delays your ability to grieve early losses, fill in missing pieces, and start enjoying your life. Waiting might be the biggest roadblock to healing. The necessary next step is facing grief.

“Lack of safety and security during essential developmental periods, lack of responsiveness to [our] affective needs, and lack of recognition of [our] internal states of mind may lead to dissociative states later in life, as well as to prolonged and complicated grief.”

Are you grieving the mother you didn’t have? Are you grieving how much this attachment injury has impacted your life? Are you grieving lost dreams? Are you grieving broken relationships and destructive behavior? Are you grieving all of these?

“Abnormal” grief, however, according to psychology experts, doesn’t move through predictable stages. It stays stuck in patterns of mourning. Patterns of mourning look like the following: Protest: Arguing or demanding, and angry outbursts. Pining: Prolonged mourning, being haunted by loss. Despair: Depression, hopeless, and resignation. Disconnection: Dissociation, frozen mourning. Sometimes an addictive process, behavior, or substance steps in and the mourning process doesn’t happen at all.

Gilbertson sees wallowing as “(w)allowing”—allowing emotions to have room and attention. While some might consider wallowing indulgent, I think Gilbertson is right on. Wallowing is a powerful way to move through difficult emotions. Pushing them down doesn’t work; we just get depressed. Repressing them won’t work; they leak out in other ways. Denial further abandons the little girl inside us who tucked away the emotions her mother couldn’t tolerate. We already know how to do that. It’s time to learn something new.

Healing comes from facing your fear, from being present with the wounded parts of you that your mother didn’t see and couldn’t tolerate. Let disenfranchised feelings wash into your soul. Face the pieces of yourself that you’ve been hiding. Wallow.

Without a sense of belonging, we default to addictive substitutes to numb our loneliness. While loneliness might feel safer than risking connection, finding a place where you have temporary relief from your own thinking is an essential piece of healing Mother Hunger. Bruce Alexander’s pioneering research on addiction makes this truth irrefutable. In his research, he noticed that when rats were placed alone in a cage with a bottle of regular water and a bottle of cocaine-infused water, they drank the cocaine water to the point of illness and death. However, when Alexander gave the little mammals something to do (toys, wheels) and some companions (other rats), the animals drank the regular water and avoided the cocaine water.

Healing Mother Hunger is a nonlinear, fluid process. No timeline can reveal the necessary effort or schedule that will yield the best results. However, what I have found very helpful is to let go of the idea of a finish line. You don’t need this pressure. Like an apology ache, seeking closure is longing for a fantasy. Even when you use all the tools and your life starts looking up, there will be days when grief finds you again—like on Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day is a particularly dreadful day for so many adult daughters.

I’ve found that women who heal the pain of Mother Hunger become very attentive, loving mothers.

“There’s no magic switch that turns on maternal instinct and ensures that a woman, especially a troubled one, will suddenly bond with her baby.”1 While there is an element of truth here, particularly if you have Third-Degree Mother Hunger, you do have a magic switch—oxytocin. Nature gives you what you need to bond with your baby. Unfortunately, our culture doesn’t support nature in this powerful attachment process. Demands from the outside world put incredible pressure on you. Problems arise when misinformed experts get involved and redirect nature’s way of helping you become a mother. Be cautious of sleep training experts who tell you that your baby can self-soothe, that your baby needs separation, or that your toddler needs a time out; these folks are not concerned with attachment. Their poor advice can keep you from accessing nature’s magic switch and developing the nurturing behavior you and your baby need.

Bonding is enjoyable because oxytocin is at work, creating a positive experience that you will want again and again—not because you’re needy, but because you’re human. Oxytocin, sometimes called the love hormone, is a powerful neurotransmitter that floods the body when you cuddle with someone you love, experience an orgasm, give birth, or make breast milk.

Oxytocin transforms an adult into a parent—turning you from a maiden into a mother. Becoming responsible for the well-being of a vulnerable, completely dependent little human is an incredible undertaking, and you will change. Change hurts. Even if we want it, we may resist it. Resisting this particular opportunity for change only makes mothering harder. Embrace the opportunity to pause, slow down, be curious, and tune in to the changes in yourself and the needs of your child.

Hold your baby as much as you can so you turn on the maternal magic switch. The flow of oxytocin depends on this. There is no need to worry about creating an overly dependent baby. Babies cannot be spoiled. A baby who is touched a lot grows a bigger, better brain. A mother who stays close to her infant grows a maternal heart. Oxytocin and prolactin (a milk-making hormone) are designed to slow you down so you can bond with your baby. The hazy “mommy brain” that you’ve heard about or might be feeling right now is purposeful lethargy; it is nature’s invitation to relax and be with your newborn.

As most epigenetic transmission goes through the matrilineal line, your mother’s story impacts your own. She could only give what she received. The science of epigenetics informs us that we inherit the resilience and trauma of our ancestors.

If it becomes too stressful to nurse your baby from your breast, be assured that your little one can thrive with your sensitive care regardless of how you feed her. Bottle feeding is a salvation for mothers and a cuddly time for babies when eye contact and physical touch are part of the ritual. Fortunately, even when feeding from your breast isn’t going well, skin-to-skin contact, shared cuddling, and playful interactions will keep your oxytocin flowing.

Rather than feeding schedules designed by formula companies, or advice from sleep training experts, listen to your baby. Your baby knows what he or she needs to feel secure. What works for one baby won’t for another. Some babies are harder to soothe than others due to exposure to maternal distress in utero. Interrupted breastfeeding rhythms can cause early feeding problems that complicate bonding. Prolactin slows down without adequate nipple stimulation, diminishing milk production. You may struggle with sadness or shame if breastfeeding is difficult or when your baby cries. If you are stressed, you may avoid holding your baby, which will diminish your oxytocin levels. It’s easy to get caught in a paralyzing cycle of anxiety and depression when this happens. These challenges are normal.

I’m so glad you’re here learning about nature’s design and how important it is for you to have the nurturance, protection, and guidance that your child also needs. With awareness, tenderness, and preparation, you can mother yourself while nurturing your baby. In fact, becoming a mother may be the first time you care for yourself, because life is no longer just about you, and caring for yourself is also what’s best for your child. As you nurture yourself with good food, sleep, and connection with other women, you stop the intergenerational transmission of Mother Hunger. At any stage of mothering, your healing is a gift to your child—and to the world.