The forces that make us hesitate

Psychologically speaking, humans are a conservative lot and we’re much more comfortable staying put, even if it makes unhappy, than sailing forth into an unknown future. Then, too, there’s the habit of mind called the sunk cost fallacy which has us focus on the investment we’ve already made—it could be time, effort, or money— which we’d lose if we abandoned ship. Of course, it’s called a fallacy for a reason because staying longer isn’t going to retrieve the years you’ve already invested; those years are gone in any case.

Fear also keeps us stuck and on the merry-go-round too which isn’t surprising since there’s no certainty ahead. If we have children, how will we manage? Will we meet someone new or is this a decision to become permanently single? Will the next relationship be any better? Could it possibly be worse? Many people fall into the habit of thinking about the frying pan and the fire.

And, finally, there’s hopefulness—that somehow the relationship can be turned around.  We’re apt to bring to mind stories we’ve heard of couples who brought their relationship back from the brink and found ways of being happy again. We may embark on couple’s therapy, thinking that it will help. (A reality check was offered by my own couple’s therapist years ago who pointed out that people end up consulting with one after things have reached a boiling point; Susan’s observation was that, most of the time, the good parts of the relationship had long since been swept under.)

The signs you should really pay attention to

These observations are based on Dr. John Gottsman’s groundbreaking and authoritative work (and his book Why Marriages Succeed or Fail), research, interviews, and personal experience.

As you read, do keep in mind the behaviors Gottman calls the “Four Horseman of the Apocalypse:” criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.

1. Your discussions always turn into arguments

Disagreement on issues large and small are part of every relationship and, as Gottman and others have pointed out, it’s not whether you disagree but how you resolve those disagreements and it’s not whether you fight but how you fight. Relationships can get to a place where they’re so parched of empathy and real connection that, like parts of California, just about any spark will set off a wildfire. The most pernicious pattern of behavior is what experts call Demand/Withdraw or DM/W, and the withdrawal is what Gottman rightly calls stonewalling.

What makes this pattern so toxic is that escalation is built into it, even if it begins reasonably. As one partner makes a demand, the other party deliberately withdraws, refusing to answer; again, the issue at hand could be just about anything. Research by Paul Schrodt and others revealed that usually the female is in the demand position and the male in the withdraw. Of course, confronted by a refusal to answer—and a stony face, jaw muscles working, arms folded across his chest—the woman becomes more and more frustrated and, eventually, angry. It’s at that point that the person in the withdraw position is likely to say that the real issue is the woman’s anger. Bingo! Everyone is stuck. If the woman then apologizes to him, hoping to end the conflict, the pattern gets set in stone.  (If this is you, the chances are good that you resort to pleasing and placating as a result of your childhood experiences. For more, please see my book, Daughter Detox: Recovering from an Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life.)

2. Abusive tactics have become the norm

Have your arguments degraded into name-calling? Is your partner telling you that he/she never said that (that’s called gaslighting)?  Is your partner blame-shifting—telling you that he would have told you the truth if you’d asked the right question or saying that you always bring up issues when it’s clear he’s tired and upset and so that it’s your fault? Does he or she threaten you with leaving or tell you to “just leave if you’re that unhappy?” These are all forms of verbal abuse.

3. Your thinking about the relationship has shifted

You’re finding it harder and harder to come up with reasons why you are still together and, even worse, your partner’s foibles—her clothes piled high on a chair, his habit of leaving dishes in the sink instead of washing them—have become major irritants. You’ve shifted from complaining about a behavior to personal criticism, beginning each sentence with “You always” or “You never.” What’s happening here is that you’ve invited criticism,the first of Gottman’s Four Horsemen, in and asked him to stay awhile.

4. You resort to silence or avoid your partner to keep the peace

You have always avoided confrontation and since you’re still on the fence about what to do, you wrongly believe that you are doing something positive by not bringing things to a head. But what you fail to realize that you’re disempowering yourself and ducking for cover. Again, the chances are good that this is an old behavior, learned in childhood, in a household where expressing yourself was emotionally dangerous. How this works is fully explained in Daughter Detox. This is especially pernicious if you have children and you are modeling behavior

5. You’ve stopped turning to your partner when you’re upset or making a decision

Anecdotally at least, this usually isn’t a conscious decision but one that happens subtly and gradually as your trust in him or her erodes and you basically stop thinking of “we.” One woman learned that her husband was thinking of taking a new job out-of-state when her neighbor told her; another reader wrote to tell me that he learned that his wife switched jobs because the Human resources department of the new company called the house phone rather than her cell. Yes, you are doing it because you have one foot out the door but to leave, you will need both feet.

If some or any of these behaviors have become the norm, you need to pay attention. Please seek professional counsel if you continue to flounder.

Photograph by Priscilla Du Preez. Copyright free. Unsplash.com

Gottman, John. Why Marriages Succeed or Fail. New York: Fireside, 1994.

Schrodt, Paul, Paul L. Witt, and Jenna R. Shimkowski, “A Meta-Analytical Review of the Demand/Withdraw Pattern of Interaction and its Association with Individual, Relational, and Communicative Outcomes, Communication Monographs, 81,1 (April 2014), 27-58.

An inability to calm yourself not only amps up your angst but it effectively stops your ability to think anything through dead in its tracks. It’s basically a double whammy that will keep you ruminating and wake you up in the middle of the night. But there are things you can do to help yourself.

First calm yourself and then get to work

Begin by addressing the anxiety that is driving your thinking, and do what you can to defang it. Self-calm by either deep breathing or by visualizing a person you feel safe with or a place that calms you. Reassure yourself.

Then, there are two strategies you can use when you’re beginning to spin and feel utterly demoralized. The first is to imagine the worst-case scenario and to look at it objectively and figure out what you will actually do if it happens. Mentally, this puts the ball back in your court and permits you to become proactive instead of emotionally reactive. Coming up with a plan if this should happen will also make you feel less anxious and besieged. Spend time thinking about what you will do if what you’re afraid of actually happens, and even better, write it down; think about both the practical aspects and the emotional fallout. Again, you can use this technique to deal with situations that will merely be disappointments on the road of life—such as being passed over for a promotion, not getting a job, or having a relationship hit a rocky patch—or those that are really important and affect your emotional equilibrium, such as the end of a relationship, losing your job, or going through a contentious divorce. I found it a life-saving technique during my protracted divorce, in fact.

The second technique is cognitive reframing—changing how you’re thinking about the problem or situation. While this is potentially a very valuable strategy, it’s also relatively hard to master, especially if you still are learning how to manage your emotions. Reframing does not mean that you’re reaching for those old rose-colored glasses and murmuring that “Everything happens for a reason” and “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Absolutely not. Instead, cognitive reframing has you abandon that doom-and-gloom view of the situation and permits you to see it more objectively and, with luck, without all the self-blame and character assassination you often resort to. You know how when you take a photo, you frame the subject and change the perspective by zooming in or out? Or you decide to focus on a specific detail rather than the whole to reflect a different vision? That’s basically what you’re doing when you deliberately reframe; you’re actively shifting your perspective and focus.

Reach for your journal

Using journaling can be very helpful as you begin to learn to reframe. Let’s say that you’ve had a huge blowup with your husband or lover, and you’re absolutely convinced that there’s no way back from this argument, that he’s going to leave you, and that’s probably your fault. Begin by describing the situation as accurately and objectively as you can, using both distance and a third-party perspective (“cool processing”). Reread what you’ve written and see whether or not your vision of the situation has shifted. What cues or signs did he demonstrate that were positive in nature? What might you have done to shift the tenor of the argument that you didn’t? What would you say if this fight had taken place between two strangers? How would you evaluate the behavior of each of the parties?

The more often you use these techniques, the more comfortable they’ll feel to you and the less likely you’ll be to catastrophize.

Photograph by Annie Spratt. Copyright free. Unsplash.com

Copyright © 2019, 2020 by Peg Streep. All rights reserved.

“I don’t see why you tear your mother down in this public way. It’s very clear that your mother must have done something right because you turned out fine, didn’t you? After all, not everyone gets to be a writer, you know? Grow up, move on, and stop blaming Mom. Your childhood was perfectly fine.”

I have heard comments like this so many times that if I had a twenty-dollar bill for each, I could retire tomorrow in luxury. It’s interesting, too, how the “turned out fine” part gets attributed to my mother’s efforts; that’s a function of the mother myths, of course. Many high-achieving daughters continue to suffer the effects of a toxic childhood, all appearances to the contrary. To make use of a well-worn cliché́: You can’t tell a book by its cover.

How to deal with people who say things like this or, in a variation, tell you that you need “to move on because the past is the past,” or simply call you whiny because you’re “still” talking about your childhood was actually one of the questions readers wanted answered in my book, The Daughter Detox Question & Answer Book: A GPS for Navigating Your Way Out of a Toxic Childhood. This post is adapted from the book.

Should you respond when someone marginalizes your experience?

Whether you want to answer at all really depends on how connected you are to the person who’s making the comment. But it is valuable, I think, to examine why people say these things without understanding that they’re marginalizing your experience as well as your pain; ironically, most of the time, these folks wrongly believe that they’re being helpful.

Be aware that this is common and try not to take it personally.

Have you ever noticed that the culture finds it way easier to accept that a father can be unloving or even downright abusive than a mother? A deadbeat dad is one thing, but an unloving mother is another—even though that commandment tells us to honor both. I have a personal theory—unproven, of course, as all personal theories are—that our cultural myths make it very hard to accept that a mother can be unloving. We all need to believe in one kind of permanent and inviolable love, and alas, romantic love just doesn’t fill the bill. But wait: There’s maternal love, which, according to the mythology, is instinctual and hardwired and, even better, unconditional. People don’t want to hear your story or mine because it contradicts a deeply reassuring belief about the nature of maternal love.

Our “can do” culture, fixated on the Little Engine That Could, often responds to crisis or loss by insisting that there’s a time limit on grief, mourning, or recovery. Many people think that taking “longer” to recover or show that you’ve bounced back is a sign of weakness or lack of resilience. They apply this standard to the recovery from childhood along with divorce, job loss, and other calamities believing all the while that they’re being helpful.

Healing vs. wallowing

And then there’s ignorance about the process of healing. There are those who believe that even thinking about your past and its effects constitutes “wallowing” and you simply need to move on because “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” The irony is that they believe they are being empathetic when the truth is that they’ve just marginalized your pain and your continuing efforts to make sense of your past and its influence on you. Mind you, some of the “get over it” group will not necessarily be disinterested bystanders; in fact, if you have aired your feelings about your mother’s treatment of you or have gone low- or no-contact, you may well find yourself under attack by close family members. Each of them might have different motivations—one sibling might disagree with your assessment of your childhood while another might simply want to keep the peace or be alarmed that dirty laundry is being aired—but their attacks add another layer of pain and loss to a situation that is already full of both.

How to find support in an unsupportive world

Breaking the silence helps, but how to do it without feeling as though you’re the crazy one or outlier? Here are a few suggestions.

                           Consider therapy

Some unloved daughters are highly resistant to the idea of going into therapy because they wrongly see it as a sign of weakness or confirmation that there’s something wrong with them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Putting your own happiness and ability to deal first is a sign of healthy self-compassion and a commitment to your own well-being.

                            Choose your confidantes carefully

Recognize the cultural biases and the fact that in a knee-jerk kind of way, people are much more likely to judge you without even thinking about it because of their own assumptions and denial. The taboos are out there; you simply have to be discerning about whom you confide in. I will readily admit that when I was in my twenties, my closest friends both had great, if very enmeshed, relationships with their mothers and did not understand what I was feeling at all.

                             Don’t take it personally

Recognizing why people react as they do rather than falling into old habits of thinking it’s somehow your fault is very important. The whole subject of the unloving mother is a loaded one, and people’s responses can be very volatile. I’ve been called names for assailing “the person who gave me life,” which, honestly, isn’t my problem.

                            Work on seeing yourself clearly and curbing self-criticism and blame

The most important person you need to convince of your truth is you. You know it happened. It happened to lots of us. You’re not alone.

For self-help strategies, my book, Daughter Detox: Recovering from an Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life, may be of help.

Photograph by Luca Iaconelli. Copyright free. Unsplash.com

Copyright © 2019, 2020 by Peg Streep

“How is it possible that I made excuses for how he treated me for years? Ten years to be exact. Am I just stupid? What’s wrong with me that I allowed him to use me like his personal doormat and I just sucked it up? I am angrier with myself than I am with him. Does that make sense?”

This is a message I got from Eliza, 39, a few weeks ago and, unfortunately, it’s hardly the first; in fact, I have received lots of them. One of the hardest things to accept about a failed relationship with someone high in narcissistic traits or control is how you normalized, rationalized, or made excuses for what really was abusive and manipulative behavior, whether it went on for months or years. No matter the actual length of it, all agree that it was way too long.

Manipulation, abusive behavior, and the imbalance of power

All of these relationships share a basic commonality: an imbalance of power. Put simply, one partner is more emotionally invested in not just the relationship but in the person, and that makes her or him vulnerable to manipulation.  (From here on, I’ll be using the male pronoun for the narcissist or controller to avoid a pronoun pile-up but feel free to switch up genders if you like; women manipulate too.) Of course, she doesn’t see that but her commitment—as well as her fear of losing the connection—lead her to accept his behaviors and, even worse, not even register them as toxic or manipulative.

Her partner high in narcissistic traits or control has a personal script to which she’s not privy; not only is he less invested in the relationship but he wants specific things from it, all of which have to do with him and his needs, and little to do with her. One of the things worth noting generally is that these individuals act as though they are in the relationship on a superficial level but, in truth, they actually don’t want intimate or dyadic connections. The attention they pay is closely tied to what benefits them in the moment, and has little to do with you or your needs. In fact, as Katya recounted, one of his goals might be making you forget you had any needs or wants of your own:

“I didn’t recognize the love bombing at first; I was swept off my feet. I also didn’t know how he took control over me, first in small ways and then bigger ones. My sister saw it and warned me but I didn’t listen. I didn’t see it but it was as though he had a giant eraser and I started disappearing. It was never what I wanted but what ‘we’ wanted. But the ‘we’ didn’t include me. It was all about him.”

Looking at those 5 behaviors

All of these are manipulative and abusive, and they are all easy to miss especially if you desperately want the relationship to work. These observations are drawn from interviews and research for my book, Daughter Detox: Recovering from an Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life, as well as Dr. Craig Malkin’s excellent resource, Rethinking Narcissism.

1. Exerting stealth control

This is drawn from Dr. Malkin’s book and basically describes a process by which the narcissist slowly begins to control you in subtle ways; they don’t like looking needy but they need to be in charge so there’s a tactic for that. It usually begins small such as changing the glass of rosé  you ordered to a cocktail because you “deserve the best” or insisting that you return the dress you bought for another he picked out because “I know what makes you shine.” These may, in moment, seem like gallantry or caring but they are actually not. They usually escalate as in “surprising” you with a change of plans after you’ve already agreed on the restaurant or the movie, “upping the ante” by booking an expensive getaway when you’d planned to hang out with friends in their backyard, “preempting” plans you’ve made with something better that he says you deserve.

It doesn’t take long for him to disappear you and your wants entirely if you don’t pay attention.

2. Belittling others

One way of guaranteeing that you are totally under his control is make sure that other people exert little or no influence over your thoughts; isolating you and making you ever more dependent upon him puts you where he wants you. This tactic of manipulation may start small and quiet—commenting that your best friend really uses you in a not nice way or suggesting that something a friend said was meant to be hurtful—and may increase your own insecurities. Eventually, what he says about others will be louder and more direct—that someone you’re close to has been bad-mouthing you, for example, and that he’s upset by it—and you’ll pay attention to how he’s so quick to defend you rather than wonder why he needs to put people down. Eventually, it will come down to a choice: Between him and the others.

3. Playing emotional hot potato

Again, this insight is drawn from Dr. Malkin’s Rethinking Narcissism and I think the metaphor works better than the word projection because it underscores why the narcissist does it. The narcissist doesn’t want to own or acknowledge his emotions so the best way of deflecting attention from his behavior is to ascribe it to you. So he’s standing there, clearly furious—his arms are tight across his chest, his jaw muscles are working, his eyes narrowed, and he’s flushed—but he’s telling you that it’s your anger that is the real problem.  The chances are good that his ranting and berating you will make you angry and that will leave you emotionally confused. You don’t want to fight but is he right?  Are you the problem?

That leads us right into the next tactic….

4. Blame-shifting

Let’s say that there’s an issue in your relationship you feel is getting to be a problem and you decide that you need to discuss it, even though you know he’s really sensitive to criticism. So you figure out what you want to say because you really, really want the relationship to work and succeed. So you begin calmly but, somehow, it escalates and you hear him say, “Well, maybe I’d be more mindful of your needs if you weren’t so sensitive or needy” or “Has it ever occurred to you that I lose my temper because you’re a 24/7 nag who’s never satisfied?” or “It’s always the same old tattoo and you always start up with stuff when I’m dead tired and had a hard day.” That’s a blame-shift and it’s meant to make you feel guilty and suddenly you are thinking that maybe he’s right and you’re too needy, or that you should have paid more attention to him instead of thinking about yourself.  And guess what? It works because seconds later you are apologizing to him.

This permits him to take zero responsibility and has the added benefit of robbing you of any sense of agency.

5. Curating and gaslighting

All of these tactics combine to create the giant eraser my reader Katya mentioned but certainly the most powerful tool the narcissist or controller has at his disposal is his ability to curate the supposed truth of what happened between you by using gaslighting. Again, the person with the power controls the tool and he will not just be preying on your insecurities and your desire to make the relationship work but will capitalize on how you have normalized and accepted all the other tactics, each of which chips away at your sense of self.

Please seek counsel if you start to see that relationship you’re in falls into these patterns. They are subtle but they are forms of abuse nonetheless.

Malkin, Craig. Rethinking Narcissism: The Secret to Recognizing and Coping with Narcissists. New York: Harper Perennial, 2016.

Photograph by Sergio Souza. Copyright free. Unsplash.com

An unloving mother does none of those things and, in their absence, the daughter’s sense of self fails to thrive. Even worse, if her mother is hypercritical, controlling, dismissive, or combative and weaponizes her words, there is real damage done to how the daughter sees herself. Some of that, often, is aimed at her physical being.

Body-shaming: a specific kind of bullying

Many unloved daughters report that, in some profound sense, they don’t know what they look like; I was certainly one of them. My mother told me I was fat from the time I was little and I believed her because, in truth, my body looked nothing like hers. She was naturally thin—she never dieted—and had a boyish build; I was a slightly chubby child who grew up to be a busty and curvy teen who was always on a diet. I wasn’t overweight by any stretch of the imagination but between my mother’s carping and the ideal body image of the 1960s and 1970s—boyish, small breasted, with a concave belly—I looked in the mirror and saw a fat girl. Old photographs tell me something else entirely and make me sad for that young woman who fretted so about being fat and was always trying to starve herself.

When asked, my mother always said that she focused on my weight to help me look my best but, in retrospect, it’s pretty clear that she did it out of jealousy and the fact that she was thinner than I was one of the few things she could lord over me. And I think she enjoyed seeing me feel lousy about myself.

Body-shaming is often used by unloving mothers to humiliate, demean, and marginalize their daughters but it’s rationalized as an effort to be helpful or caring as the following examples make clear. They are all drawn from stories shared with me for my book, Daughter Detox: Recovering from an Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life and while they are different in detail, they all depend on the mother’s misuse of her power and they are all verbally abusive. The intention is to make the daughter feel inadequate and ashamed.

“My parents had an acrimonious divorce when I was three and my sister was seven. I had the misfortune to look like my father and his side of the family—tall, dark, and broad-shouldered—while my sister was a petite and blonde clone of Mom. I became a stand-in for my father and she carped on how much I looked and acted like him constantly. It segued into scapegoating as I got older.”

This is a persistent theme in many daughters’ stories—looking like someone disliked or hated and having that person’s looks and flaws projected onto you. It might be an ex-husband, as it was for Alyssa, but it could easily be some other relative.

“I always felt like the ugly duckling in the story except I didn’t grow up to be a much-admired and beautiful swan. My mother, father, and two brothers lived and breathed for sports, and I was the klutz in the family. They ragged me for my weight, for my lack of grace, my inability to play tennis or ski decently. The boys joined in, of course, and I was the butt of every joke. Never mind that I am the first person in our family to become a doctor; that only raised the ante. It didn’t even stop when I married and had kids so I ended up cutting them all out of my life.”

In Ella’s case, her looks and lack of athleticism were used to exclude her and make her feel as though she didn’t belong—which is, of course, what bullying does.

“My mother insisted on absolute control over what I ate and what I wore; she insisted that how I looked reflected on her and if I looked bad, she’d look bad in everyone’s eyes. She didn’t do that to my sister or brother who were seven and eight years older; I was her DIY project. As a teen, I rebelled against the dowdy clothes she made me wear, and I spent most of high school grounded because of my rebellion. I left home at 18. I still have trouble seeing myself clearly and I am an emotional eater. She still picks on me and I am thirty-four and trying to figure out whether I can stay in contact. She makes me feel horrible about myself.”

Mothers high in control or narcissistic traits see their children as extensions of themselves and how they look is always a part of it. They mete out attention based on how well the children play by their rules; in Brianna’s case, it was a recipe for disaster.

Seeing body-shaming as a form of verbal abuse

The end goal of all verbal abuse is to make one person feel powerful and the other humiliated and powerless, and body-shaming is no different. Body-shaming packs a wallop because it’s echoed by society at large with its image of the skinny and perfect girl who seems to subsist on air. Body-shaming can be overt, as in the examples given, or covert as in telling someone that “You are brave to wear that piece of clothing” (translation: you are actually too fat to wear that) or “I’m not sure that prints suit you” (translation: you look like a walking couch) or “I know you love your chocolate but I try not to eat too many carbs” (translation: maybe you should try my approach and then maybe you wouldn’t be so fat).

Verbal abuse, including body-shaming, is never okay. See the word “never?”

Photograph by Sharon McCutcheon. Copyright free. Unsplash.com

“No way. She bad-mouths me no matter what and I honestly don’t want my kids hearing it.”

“I am still trying to put boundaries in place in the hopes that my daughter and son can have some kind of connection. But, honestly, it’s really not going well. It’s not that she’s unpleasant to them but that she ignores them the way she ignored me when I was a child. Even though the visits are infrequent, I’m not liking the effect it has on my kids.  When I try talking to her about it, she says—as she always has—that I’m too sensitive and that I am turning my kids into cry- babies and wimps.”

“I thought I did owe my kids grandparents especially since my husband’s parents live in another country despite the history. I did pursue therapy and my therapist, too, thought an extended family would be good for my kids. But it just wasn’t workable on a regular basis; she criticized my every move as a mother and, as the kids got older, laid into them too. I couldn’t stand it. We see them on holidays, on a schedule, and maintain deliberate distance.”

What will Mom be like as a Grandma?

Again, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. which every daughter with children confronts. Our heads are filled with images of generations seated around a table, the wisdom of the elders informing the younger ones, with love and pie served in equal portions painted as Norman Rockwell might, and that’s what makes us hesitate. Never mind that our family of origin never gathered around in that way; we may remain hopeful of a miracle in our heart of hearts. Our fear of depriving our own children of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins may dominate our wishful thinking, despite all that we know. This is one of the issues women write me about most often, despite their real and substantial worries that their mothers (and other family members) will treat their children as they were treated.

Of course, the big question is whether an unloving mother can become a decent enough grandmother, if not precisely a doting one. Well, the jury is still out on that question, and it’s impossible to generalize because the particulars matter and, of course, the role of a mother and that of a grandmother are very different. It’s unlikely that a mother high in narcissistic traits or control will act any differently as a grandmother; your children are likely to be seen as smaller planets in her orbit and not as individuals in their own right. And yes, she will likely favor those who reflect her most brightly and hew to her standards. A mother who was emotionally unavailable to her daughter might be able to deal with grandchildren relatively well because they are visitors to her life and not constant fixtures; the emotional demands on a grandparent are considerably less than those on a parent. Seen in that light, enmeshed and role-reversed mothers might also do better as grandmothers. But—there’s always a “but”—it very much depends.

Personal answers to a big question

As discussed in Daughter Detox: Recovering from an Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life, each of us has to decide on the path we take when it comes to our family of origin. I was absolutely categorical that my mother would not be permitted to see my daughter, and I felt no qualms about depriving her of this particular grandmother. I knew exactly how my mother would miss no opportunity to criticize and undercut me and perhaps my daughter, too. Ironically, when my daughter was about seven or eight, she was curious about my mother and asked to see her; I set it up with a friend doing the ferrying, but in the end, it was my mother who turned my daughter down.

Some daughters who live long distances from their mothers are able to manage a twice-yearly kind of relationship. Still others begin that way but then reverse themselves as their mothers (and fathers) display the same kind of favoritism with grandchildren that they did with their own children. One woman told me that it was the year that her two sons received a tee shirt each while her favored brother’s boys got expensive dirt bikes for Christmas that clinched it for her, writing that, “This wasn’t about the money she spent on the cousins; it was about the looks on my boys’ faces. If she didn’t do it on purpose, she is even more insensitive than I thought. It doesn’t matter; it’s done.”

If you have gone no-contact, do remember that we are free to define family any way we wish; my daughter was surrounded by caring and loving adults growing up, even if they weren’t related by blood. And besides, you don’t actually need a village or a table that sets 12 to give a child a sense of family. It’s not about the numbers; it’s about the love. But then, you knew that, right?

How to deal with family gatherings

You deal with them proactively by coming up with a plan and sticking to it. If you are still participating in events with your family of origin, you have to remember that you’re an adult now and no matter what anyone says, you are allowed to set boundaries and rules, chief among them being that no one has the right to be abusive. Most important, you must set your own goals and expectations so that you are prepared, remembering that no one can push your buttons unless you allow them to. You need to be clear about your own behavior, remembering that you can’t control how other people act but that you are the captain of your own ship. Don’t think of yourself as helpless in the situation because you’re not.

If you have gone low-contact without ever articulating why you’ve put distance between you and your mother and family, family gatherings may be incredibly stressful because, by avoiding overt confrontation, you’ve escalated potential conflict. You may want to rethink why you’ve avoided making a statement and whether that’s right for you and your children and spouse, if you have them, going forward. Yes, it’s easier to duck for cover than it is actually speaking your mind—and there’s way less pushback—but it will probably create more problems in the long run. Remember that being clear about your position and expectations doesn’t mean you have to start World War III.

If the response you get to setting reasonable boundaries is unreasonable or angry pushback or stony silence and a refusal to listen, spend time thinking about why you’re still attending the gathering; weigh the pros and cons ahead of time. Again, conscious awareness is key, and if this is just another cycle of the core conflict—and you’re going to try to get love and validation once again—you may want to rethink why you are attending. If you’re unsure whether or not you should attend, ask yourself the following questions. Again, it’s better to write your answers down so that you can review them later, rather than just thinking about your answers.

1. Do I feel pressured to attend? If so, what are those pressures and who or what is behind them?
2. What is my motive for going to the event?
3. Do I have a specific goal or goals?
4. Am I in command of my emotions so that I won’t react out of habit to old triggers?
5. Am I clear about behaviors I won’t accept and how I will deal with them if they happen?
6. Are my expectations realistic or am I being overly optimistic? Are my goals realistic?

As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child but remember that the villagers don’t have to be blood relatives.

Photograph by Kevin Gent. Copyright free. Unsplash.com

This text is adapted from The Daughter Detox Question & Answer Book: A GPS for Navigating Your Way Out of a Toxic Childhood. Copyright © 2019, 2020 by Peg Streep

Misconceptions about healing and its progression

Let’s begin with the word “heal” which means “to make whole;” in our Western culture, we deal with damage by repairing in such a way that it looks as though the object was never broken to begin with. Many daughters wrongly believe that this is what healing from childhood looks like too; it does not. The metaphor I use for healing is drawn from the Japanese art of Kintsugi because it captures the healing we can expect much more accurately. When a delicate object such as a porcelain bowl is broken, it is repaired using lacquer and the dust of precious metals such as gold and silver; the result is an object that has been restored but which testifies to its history and, thus, becomes a testament to transformation and survival. This is, I would argue, a much better way of thinking about what it means to heal from childhood.

Additionally, there are other misconceptions as well:

• That there is a timetable for healing

No, healing and recovery aren’t trains that can be run on a schedule; it will take you as long as it takes you, and everyone is different. Keep in mind that your mother’s influence over you—as well as the dynamics of your family—lasted for many years, including the most formative ones, and that healing takes real time.

• That healing is about putting the past to rest

This is an echo of what well-intentioned but clueless people often say to unloved daughters and, no, healing doesn’t entail putting the past under lock and key; denial and rationalization have made that the status quo for years. Your recovery begins when you begin to recognize the maladaptive behaviors you learned in childhood and you start to unlearn them. Your healing is complete when your past experiences no longer shape your thoughts, feelings, and actions in the present.

• That healing has an upward arc

Our popular models of success all point upward but that is simply not how unlearning unconscious behaviors—aka healing from a toxic childhood—works. I always use the metaphor of a garden and the unwelcome invasive plant to explain how healing actually proceeds. Once you see the invader plant that is threatening others, your first impulse is to grab it or perhaps to lop the top off which is satisfying but ineffectual since it will come right back if you don’t dig it out by the roots. The same thing is true of these old behaviors, and the pull and lop techniques don’t work here either; the truth is that the process of digging them out by the roots is hard work, best accomplished by working with a gifted therapist along with dedicated self-help. Then, there is the work of learning new behaviors.

So we’re not talking an upward arc but a pace that is more two steps forward and one step back until, finally, you’re there. That is why the photograph I chose doesn’t have her on the summit.

6 signs of process in healing

There are lots of different signs, some more nuanced than others and I’m not including all of them, but the point of the list is to make you feel better about your progress. If you feel as if you are falling short in some areas, redouble your efforts.

Write this down and tape it up somewhere: The journey of healing from childhood is a marathon, not a sprint.

1. You are managing your emotions more skillfully

Knowing what you’re feeling and being able to distinguish emotions (anger from shame, anxiety from fear, etc.) are hallmarks of emotional intelligence. Being able to deal with negative emotions without either being overwhelmed by them or walling yourself off from them is an important measure of progress.

2. You are seeing yourself with greater clarity

Most unloved daughters have internalized what was said to and about them in childhood and wrongly believe that these are truths about themselves. Seeing the true self—not the one described as too difficult, sensitive, lazy, unlovable or anything else—is a key moment and needs to be celebrated, even if it’s not as consistent as you’d like.

3. You are controlling your reactivity

This is another important milestone as you give up becoming defensive or armored the minute you feel uncomfortable or you start tamping down your anxiety when things don’t go as planned.  Additionally, if your attachment is anxious-preoccupied, being able to talk yourself down from scouring the horizon for signs of betrayal is an important step.

4. You are voicing your opinions and thoughts

This is important for those daughters whose mothers were hypercritical, combative, controlling, or high in narcissistic traits and who managed by ducking under the radar, becoming echoists in the process. Beginning to trust your own thoughts and feelings is also central to every unloved daughter’s reclaiming herself.

5. You are learning not to self-blame and criticize

There’s research that shows the blaming yourself for the dynamics in your family of origin—believing that you are responsible or that, if you only tried harder or were different, you would get your mother’s love and support—is far less frightening to a child or adolescent than the scarier alternative which is to face the fact that the person who is supposed to keep you safe won’t. Self-criticism—the habit of mind that attributes failures and setbacks to your own fixed flaws in character—is a default position for most daughters, and unlearning it is true progress.

6. You are more open to possibility

As you begin to break free of the hold of the past and its influence, you’ll notice subtle as well as obvious changes in how you move into the future. You may feel more emboldened to take risks if you’ve always been motivated by fear of failure, for example, or your newfound trust in yourself may lead you to explore new opportunities in all areas of your life. Again, this isn’t likely to happen all at once but will happen over time. Once again, think marathon, not sprint.

Photograph by Jimmy Conover. Copyright free. Unsplash.com

Image of Kintsugi sake cup, copyright Lakeside Pottery; works made by Morty Bachar.

For more, please visit:http://www.lakesidepottery.com

Or perhaps you’ve finally set some boundaries in place with your high-in-narcissistic traits and controlling mother, only to discover that she has mounted a smear campaign against you, filled with false accusations, and has contacted everyone you know from relatives to your boss, painting herself as the victim of an abusive and ungrateful daughter. And, to your shock, many of the people she contacts believe her.

Or maybe you’ve decided to divorce your narcissist at long last because you’re tired of his abuse, his lies, and, yes, his cheating, but you want the process to be dignified and civil because you intend to try to co-parent your kids with him. You live in a no-fault state so you tell your attorney to come to a mediated settlement and then you’re hit with a barrage of accusations, including infidelity, along with alleged child abuse. He portrays himself as the victim of a conniving woman—and asserts the kids are victims too. None of this is true but it doesn’t matter to him because he both wants to win and appear like the victim.

All of these stories are ones shared by readers, either for my book, Daughter Detox: Recovering from an Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life, or for posts and articles.

Why the narcissist takes on the victim role

Given that narcissists curate the personae they present to the world, tend to be self-aggrandizing and conscious of material success, and care a great deal about what other people think, playing the role of the victim seems somehow counterintuitive. After all, victims by definition lack agency and power which are both important to the person high in narcissistic traits. So how does this work exactly?  I turned to Dr. Joseph Burgo, author of Building Self-Esteem and The Narcissist You Know, for his expert take: “Because narcissists lack authentic self-esteem, they often resort to self-pity as a substitute. Feeling sorry for yourself because you’re a victim makes you the mistreated and misunderstood hero in a story that’s all about you.”

Bingo! This makes perfect sense—the idea of substituting self-pity for true self-esteem because, appearances to the contrary, what the narcissistic is most afraid of is revealing the damaged and hollow center at his core.

Once you understand this part of the equation, you can also see how playing the victim connects to the other behaviors that reveal the narcissist in his full glory.

Other behaviors that connect (and reveal who he is)

Playing the victim is only one part of the puzzle that makes a narcissist and it’s important to see how the other pieces fit together.

• In it to win it

His thinking is all black-and-white with a nary a hint of nuance or gray, and that means you are either for or against him—period and end of story. If you’re against, then you are victimizing him—yes, there’s the narrative again—and as Dr. Burgo points out in The Narcissist You Know, he is highly vindictive, and feels absolutely free to victimize you and anyone else who gets in the way of his winning. He takes no prisoners and no responsibility, and could care less if anyone gets hurt. That includes his children too, by the way, if you happen to be divorcing him.

• Plays emotional hot potato

The phrase comes from Dr. Craig Malkin’s book, Rethinking Narcissism, and I think it is easier to grasp than the fancier term projection which describes much the same thing. Not only does the narcissist deny his feelings—telling you that he’s not angry when his jaw is clenched or working, his face red, and his arms folded tightly across his chest—but he’ll go on to attribute what he’s feeling to you. But he’s not going to leave it at that; he’s going to accuse you of being angry all the time, yell at you about how he’s tired of the “same old tattoo,” and guess what will happen? Sure enough, if he pushes you hard enough, you will get angry and now you are victimizing him and he’s going tell you that he’s tired of your anger. In the narcissist’s best-possible scenario, you will end up apologizing to him.

Dealing with the narcissist’s acting like a victim can be trying but realize that he wants you to react. Your best bet? Stay out of the sandbox as much as you can.

Photograph by Aejaz Memon. Copyright free. Unsplash.com

Malkin, Craig. Rethinking Narcissism: The Secret to Recognizing and Coping with Narcissists. New York: Harper Perennial, 2016.

Noting the difference between NPD and “narcissistic”

Because in the world of the Internet, “NPD” and “narcissism” are often used interchangeably, it’s important to offer a small corrective and then to turn to Dr. Craig Malkin, author of Rethinking Narcissism and a working therapist (and instructor at Harvard Medical School) to help answer this  question about change. Dr. Malkin encourages us, first of all, to separate NPD from what he calls a “trait label” and, even though the Internet is full of memes and articles telling you to run like the wind if you’re in a relationship with someone high in narcissistic traits, he does believe that it is possible for these people to change, though it’s neither easy nor a slam-dunk.

Trait label vs. diagnosis

Being narcissistic is a trait label, as he points out, not very different from the much friendlier trait labels like “introverted” or “extroverted.” He reminds us that:

“When they become diagnostic labels, like ‘pathological narcissist’ or ’Narcissistic Personality Disorder,’ these stark descriptions imply something that goes far beyond a tendency or a style; they suggest permanence and a set of stable, enduring features. I have more hope than this. I believe that rather than simply being ‘who we are,’ our personalities are also patterns of interaction. That is, personality, whether disordered or not, has as much to do with how (and with whom) we interact as it does with our genes and wired-in temperament. It’s the patterns of interaction that set those with NPD or high in narcissistic traits apart.”

How narcissists become narcissists

For those of you who haven’t read Rethinking Narcissism, which explains narcissism as a spectrum (from the lack of healthy narcissism called “echoism” to healthy self-regard to what we’re discussing here), I highly recommend you do. But let’s continue with Dr. Malkin’s explanation of both NPD and narcissism as a trait, which he, among other theorists and practitioners, sees as a response to an environment in the family of origin. You’ll note that his explanation converges with the discussions of avoidant insecure attachment in my book, Daughter Detox:

“NPD or being high in narcissistic traits emerges from an environment in which vulnerability comes to feel dangerous, representing, at worst, either a grave defect, or at best, a stubborn barrier to becoming a worth-while human being. That explains the correlation between narcissism and insecure attachment styles, in which the fear of depending on anyone at all triggers consistent attempts to control the relationship or avoid intimacy altogether. If you devote yourself to directing interactions or holding people at arm’s length, it’s a lot harder to become vulnerable. No matter how they appear to the outside world—whether supremely confident or in control—they have learned to ignore, suppress, deny, project, and disavow their vulnerabilities (or at least try) in their attempts to shape and reshape ‘who they are’ in their interactions.”

The risk that change involves for the narcissistic parent or person

You may have already known about the armored and frightened self that is hidden beneath that public persona, but the key here is how that self connects to the possibility of change. I think Dr. Malkin does a nuanced job of explaining why it’s very hard but perhaps—note the “perhaps” I have added—not impossible. This is what Dr. Malkin has to say:

“Change—allowing the vulnerability back in—means opening up to the very feelings they’ve learned to avoid at all costs. It’s not that people with NPD or those high in narcissistic traits can’t change; it’s that it often threatens their sense of personhood to try. And their failed relationships often confirm, in their minds, that narcissism is the safest way to live. Put another way, narcissists can’t be narcissistic in a vacuum. They need the right audience in order to feel like a star, for example, so they often cultivate relationships with people who stick around for the show, instead of the person. Over time, as their perfect façade starts to slip, their constant fear that people will find them lacking becomes a horrifying reality. The very people who stuck around for the show lose interest when it ends—which merely convinces the narcissist that he or she needs to hide those flaws and put on a better show. Alternatively, even when they fall for someone who could be more than just an adoring fan—someone who offers the hope of a more authentic, enduring love—narcissists still live with the paralyzing fear they’ll somehow be deemed unworthy. Their terror is frequently out of conscious awareness, and nearly always managed with bravado and blame, but it’s profound and palpable. Sadly, their anger at having their mistakes and missteps exposed ultimately alienates their loved ones, and the demise of yet another relationship prompts them to redouble their efforts to avoid vulnerability—in short, it pushes them toward more narcissism. The sad irony of the narcissistic condition is that, in an effort to protect themselves, narcissists inevitably invite the very rejection and abandonment they fear in the first place.”

This strikes me as true in so many aspects, even though I certainly lack the empathy Dr. Malkin evinces as a human and a therapist. Reading this, I will say, doesn’t fill me with sadness but frustration and, yes, an impulse to find my running shoes or a good lawyer.

So back to Dr. Malkin and his advice, which I think is kind, smart, and true and which I hope in my heart of hearts is possible:

“The key, then, to interacting with someone you suspect is narcissistic is to break the vicious circle—to gently thwart his or her frantic efforts to control, distance, defend, or blame in the relationship by sending the message that you’re more than willing to connect with him or her, but not on these terms, and to extend an invitation to a version of intimacy where he or she can be loved and admired, warts and all. That’s only possible if the person allows the experience to happen.”

Please note the last phrase: “if the person allows the experience to happen.” This strikes me as hugely important, and is a lesson that deserves to be underscored always; the only person you can change is yourself.

So, can a narcissist change? Only if he or she wants to and is willing to take the risk.

Photograph by Sandy Millar. Copyright free. Unsplash.com

Copyright © 2019, 2020  by Peg Streep. All rights reserved. Adapted from The Daughter Detox Question & Answer Book,

Why you probably can’t see the bags you’re carrying

As I explain in my book, Daughter Detox: Recovering from an Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life, seeing how you’ve been shaped by your childhood is a slow process of discovery; most daughters are still hopeful that their relationship to their mothers and others in their family of origin can somehow be changed. That hopefulness is fed by denial and normalizing how they’ve been treated as well. The chances are good, too, that we’ve internalized what has been said to us and about us, and that we assume that the traits described—that we are lazy or not good enough, too sensitive, or anything else—are inborn traits that cannot be changed. We don’t see that that emotional baggage we’re carrying into our adult lives is a function of maladaptive coping skills we learned growing up in order to muddle through or stay afloat.

None of this is helped by the fact that the people in whom we confide are apt to tell us to “move on” or “that the past is the past” or “Your childhood couldn’t have been that bad because you turned out fine.” While often offered up in the spirit of helpfulness, these kind of statements tend to shut us down and encourage us to look away from the carousel piled high with baggage.

Naming the baggage most unloved daughters have in tow

These are generalizations and so you might find that some apply to where you find yourself more than others. Again, you cannot change behavior you can’t see so the first step towards healing is discovery.

• Difficulty managing emotions

There’s a body of research that suggests that the inability to self-soothe in times of stress and deal with negative feelings is the most damaging legacy of an insecure attachment style. Those with an anxious-preoccupied style are easily flooded by emotion and are very volatile, going from anxious to defensive or aggressive in a flash because they are always looking for possible signs of rejection. Those with an avoidant style—whether that’s dismissive or fearful—push off from their feelings and, as a result, have real deficits in emotional intelligence.

• Deep insecurity about herself

Our mothers’ faces are the first mirrors in which we catch a glimpse of ourselves and for the unloved daughter the image is distorted and bears little relationship to reality. This may be both literal and symbolic; told she is fat or ugly, the daughter may look in a literal mirror and be unable to see herself as she really is, while on a symbolic level she sees herself as not good enough and fundamentally unlovable. But even worse is the fact that she doesn’t trust her own perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; that is the steamer trunk she carries with her, sight unseen.

• Issues with trusting others

Whether her mother is controlling, combative, dismissive, hyper-critical, or high in narcissistic traits, this daughter has learned from an early age never to relax or to feel totally safe. Her vigilance may make her anxious or armored, but she never lets her guard down. She may revert to pleasing or erasing herself from view or she may abruptly exit relationships because they threaten her but it all comes down to never being comfortable with true emotional connection. This may also tie into the next suitcase at hand, self-blame and criticism.

• The habit of self-criticism

Self-criticism is the default position of many unloved daughters when faced with a crisis, a setback, or a failure; rather than look objectively at the factors that caused whatever it was to happen, the daughter sees her own fixed character flaws as the sole reason, usually repeating the same criticisms that were leveled at her in childhood as set-in-stone truths. Whether it’s the breakup of a relationship or being passed over for a promotion, not getting invited to a party or feeling left out in some way, the unloved daughter makes it highly personal and has trouble getting over it. Needless to say, this is extremely self-limiting, and has real-world consequences. It may well be why so many unloved daughters are chronic underachievers.

• Vulnerable to familiar manipulations

Until she recognizes the emotional baggage she’s carrying, the unloved daughter is likely to fall into old patterns of relating which will include normalizing abusive behavior that’s familiar to her such as gaslighting, stonewalling, expressing contempt or being dismissive, or name-calling. Additionally, her neediness makes her open to accepting and excusing behaviors that mirror those of her mother and other members in her family of origin; she’s likely to mistake control for steady confidence, extreme criticism for someone trying to help her, and the like. It’s not an accident that daughters of mothers high in control or narcissistic traits often end up with romantic partners and friends who act the same way.

If you are still carrying the emotional baggage from childhood experiences, the best way to learn how to ditch them is working with a gifted therapist, as well as using directed self-help. It can be done.

Photograph by Rene Bohmer. Copyright free. Unsplash.com