Put simply, it's any relationship in which your well-being is at risk. This includes your physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
A toxic mother constantly makes negative comments or jokes about you in front of family or friends. She lacks empathy for your feelings. A toxic mother minimizes your problems and ignores or belittles your feelings, accusing you of being too sensitive. Your opinions hold no weight with her.
When the roles of a mother and daughter become entangled, this is described as an enmeshed relationship. In an enmeshed relationship, a mother provides her daughter love and attention but tends to exploit the relationship, fortifying her own needs by living through her daughter.
Traits Of A Healthy Mother-Daughter Relationship
They acknowledge each other as individuals and spend adequate time – neither too much nor too little. The mother-daughter duo recognizes and respects boundaries. They make reasonable commitments to each other and come through on them.
This overwhelming turmoil affects daughters in incomprehensible ways, and daughters of unloving mothers can even go through stages, similar to the grief cycle: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
If your daughter feels unloved, she may suffer from several emotional problems. Symptoms can include depression, anxiety, self-harm, and more. These feelings are often the result of the way her parents treated her during her childhood.
Mothers provide daughters with three important developmental needs: nurturing, protection, and guidance.
The most common form of this is when the mother would like her daughter to be more like her. This may be in personality, values, choices, opinions. The mother may try to make the daughter feel guilty for being different and may consistently try to change her.
A daughter's need for her mother's love is a primal driving force that doesn't diminish with unavailability. Wounds may include lack of confidence and trust, difficulty setting boundaries, and being overly sensitive. Daughters of unloving mothers may unwittingly replicate the maternal bond in other relationships.
“As the daughter becomes less dependent on the mother and starts to make some of her own decisions - that can cause rifts in the relationship. This is most evident when the daughter's thoughts and beliefs start to differ from those of her mother. This 'coming into self' can often feel like rejection.
“A dismissive mother is unable to empathetically respond to the child's needs,” explains Kimberly Perlin, a clinical social worker in Towson, Maryland. “They often send the message to their child that they are too needy or clingy when the child is expressing developmentally appropriate needs.”
Parentification occurs when parents look to their children for emotional and/or practical support, rather than providing it. Hence, the child becomes the caregiver. As a result, parentified children are forced to assume adult responsibilities and behaviors before they are ready to do so.
Mommy issues in women
Difficulty trusting others/commitment issues. Having very few female friends. Feeling like you must do everything perfectly. Avoiding anything having to do with your mother.
A sense of warmth, support, and closeness
It's not surprising that daughters who feel that their relationship with their mother is characterized by these traits tend to report that the relationship as a whole is positive.
“The daughter who has a fulfilling relationship with her father is usually more trusting, more secure and more satisfied in her romantic relationships than the daughter with a troubled or distant relationship with her dad,” she said, adding that this is the case regardless of whether her parents are married or divorced ...
An emotionally absent mother may fail to develop the kind of satisfying attachment bonds in her children that make sustaining ordinary relationships possible. Such children may come to grow up with a complicated sense of emotional absence in themselves.
Daughters of emotionally absent mothers find it extremely challenging to build healthy adult relationships, especially with other females. There is a lack of trust and fear of abandonment. They become armored, wary and defensive. They feel too ashamed to share why they act and react like they do.
Teens pull away from their parents due to a biological instinct to separate themselves in preparation for adulthood. If a teen pushes their parent away, it is often because they feel secure in the relationship and therefore take it for granted temporarily.
Parenting: The 3 C's – Consistency, Care, Communication.
Perhaps the most essential thing a parent can give a child is the belief that his or her presence gives joy and delight. By simply being there in the world, the child is a precious gift.
Feeling disconnected from your child is a usual part of parenting. Although it leaves you questioning your abilities, with some time and effort, you can work on restoring your connection. Excess screen time, neglecting your own needs, and replacing quality time with material things can contribute to the disconnect.