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

by Kelly McDaniel

“When someone is behaving in an offensive or violating manner, the healthy shame they are not connected to . . . spills over onto the offended party (the betrayed partner) who then ends up carrying the shame of what happened.” In therapeutic circles, we call this psychological phenomenon carried shame.

If your mother put you in the role of her friend, you may have an unconscious belief that it is your job to make her happy or affirm her mothering, or that it’s up to you to give her life meaning. You may struggle with ambivalence, feeling guilty for wanting your own space.

Femininity training, or learning the “girl code,” impacts not only the work that women do but also how women are supposed to behave in relationship to men. The girl code teaches women to serve, seduce, and submit to men while competing with one another for male attention.

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

Understandably, mothers may quietly grieve the loss of their own youth and beauty as they witness their daughters becoming young women. But daughters lose a trustworthy guide when mothers mismanage this rite of passage and steal joy from their blooming girls by competing with them. In the process, mothers sometimes teach their daughters that women can’t be trusted.

Being female is biology, but “femininity” is a social and cultural creation based on multiple systemic factors. For generations, women learned that worth comes from being nice and attractive.

The media is part of femininity training as the “male gaze” uses the female body for marketing and entertainment.

As understudy to our mother, we form an internal compass that directs our desires and feelings about our body by watching her. Many of us feel confused as our body develops and we first feel sexual desire. Caught in a sexual and social double bind that asks us to be good (saintly, pure, and sacrificial) and bad (sexy, erotic, and seductive) at the same time, we aren’t sure how to navigate erotic feelings in a healthy manner. When our mother hasn’t made peace with this double bind herself, we are on our own to find other guides.

Play is the language of paternal love and guidance.

Paternal guidance in the form of praise, helpful limits, and shared time increases a daughter’s confidence. Studies show that if a father enjoys his daughter and encourages her natural strengths, she may be more inclined to see herself as capable.

Daughters learn about sex from both parents. Growing up, a daughter watches how her father treats her mother to learn how men behave with women. When a father takes time away from his hobbies and work to spend time with Mom, a daughter observes that Mom is a priority to him.

Fathers who are unaware of their impact and responsibility for sexual guidance may bring “locker room talk” to the dinner table or flirt with waitresses in a restaurant. Girls learn from such fathers that feminine power comes with sex appeal, that being sexy gets attention.

Overt signs of sexual double standards like these teach a daughter how to behave, perpetuating the dominant culture’s sexual messages.

Women of color and lesbian women, who don’t fit into white heterosexist norms, become targets for unwanted sexual attention in media and movies. Lesbian women are often forced to actively face their sexuality in ways that heterosexual women are not.

When sexual identity threatens belonging, daughters understandably may withhold the truth from their mothers to avoid possible rejection. Daughters who can’t turn to their mothers to talk about sex and ask questions, for whatever reason, may maintain a secret life, which is not only lonely but also a breeding ground for addictions and other harmful behaviors.

Maybe you learned that it wasn’t safe to be different—you may have picked up on your mother’s hidden hope that you would be just like her. To avoid criticism, you learned to fold the laundry like she did, fix your hair the way she wanted, and stay out of her way when she was stressed. You learned to keep your opinions to yourself if they were different from hers.

This is the exact message I received from my mother through her her actions and statements.

Or perhaps your mother needed you to rise above her and become something better. You had to be amazing so she could feel better about herself.

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.

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 Overinvolvement with your own children, with periodic abandonment to take care of your mother instead

Dr. Christiane Northrup writes, “Our culture gives girls the [false] message that their bodies, their lives, and their femaleness demand an apology.”

More than anything, we want to belong and be included among other women. But along the way, we may discover that belonging means hiding our strength. To fit in, we play small.

In a culture that devalues qualities such as empathy, collaboration, and connection, owning our attributes can feel like a liability.

power. Healing means you claim your own power in ways that feel healthy and constructive. Becoming the authority for your life may require you to find new guides and role models—people who inspire you.

Healing Mother Hunger brings you the opportunity to rebuild damaged dreams and goals—and to no longer apologize for being a woman.

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) differs from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because it is caused by repeated trauma.

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.

In Judith Herman’s research on complex post-traumatic stress disorder, she documents adults receiving psychiatric treatment, noting that “survivors of childhood abuse display significantly more insomnia, sexual dysfunction, dissociation, anger, suicidality, self-mutilation, drug addiction, and alcoholism than other patients.”

If you grew up with a mother who was cruel and frightening, her behavior required your autonomic nervou...

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 s...

At the same time, pathways designed for self-preservation gained strength to keep you ...

When you understand that your nervous system has been shaped by early, ongoing fear, and that your body is doing its job to protect you, it can be very empowering. Reactions that might cause you to feel ashamed and different from others begin to make sense. You are not broken. Your body is simply biologically wired in protective mode and responds very quickly, below your awareness, to anything that is a reminder of childhood abuse.

Third-Degree Mother Hunger shares symptoms with personality disorders like borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and dissociative identity disorder.

Patterns of relationship instability—idealizing someone one moment but in the next experiencing the same person as cruel—are normal for those with Third-Degree Mother Hunger. Fear of abandonment, difficulty sleeping, eating disorders, mood problems, and difficulty finding meaning in life are all part of complex post-traumatic stress and Third-Degree Mother Hunger.

Addiction to something or someone can feel like a life raft. So can suicidal thoughts and self-harm.

As adults, women with Third-Degree Mother Hunger often suffer physical symptoms as well as psychological symptoms of trauma. Physical symptoms may include chronic back and neck pain, fibromyalgia, migraines, digestive problems, spastic colon or irritable bowel syndrome, allergies, thyro...

For those with Third-Degree Mother Hunger, there is no body-based experience of comfort or safety, because the person designed to be our source of comfort became our source of fear.

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.

Terrible mood swings startle you and anyone close to you.

Perhaps you found temporary relief from a clinical diagnosis or medication, but it rarely lasts. This is because a diagnosis of a personality disorder misses the original wound underneath your behaviors.

cannot see it because deep inside each of us is a little person who remembers the vulnerability of being totally dependent, and the idea that a mother could betray this dependency is terrifying. It strikes a primitive fear in our mammal brain.

But when a mother is the source of fear, her love is the traumatic event. And there is no way to make sense of this.

Instincts for self-preservation surrender to the overarching need for bonding, creating what’s known as a betrayal bond with the mother.

An abusive mother generates traumatic stress, because your coping capacity becomes overwhelmed and you are too young to protect yourself.

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.

It’s impossible to develop new protective skills if you aren’t aware of how you were hurt and where you need help.

Defining emotional abuse is complicated because we can’t actually see the injury.

Lack of nurturance and protection is neglectful, and neglect is a form of emotional abuse. Neglect is sometimes a “quiet” form of abuse—it’s not obvious, because it happens privately. This explains why it can take decades to identify, understand, and recover from this type of emotional abuse.

The mother who tells her child, “You’re everything to me . . . I don’t know what I’d do without you,” isn’t mothering. She’s creating a confusing emotional bind for her child.

She might also feel afraid (Is Mom okay?) or excessively dutiful (I belong to Mom; it’s my job to protect her and keep her happy). This child may grow up to feel she’s betraying her mother if she has other interests or friends or wants to move away.

My mother did this and I ended up feeling like I had to hide my life from her and ended up leading a double life as a teenager (starting as early as 12 years old).

Verbal insults are “noisy” forms of emotional abuse. Cruel comments such as “I wish you’d never been born” or “You’re stupid” impact the body like a physical slap.