Afraid of Being Like Your Mother : A common Fear for Daughters with Mother Wound
If you’re afraid of being like your mother, I want you to know it’s a common fear for daughters with a mother wound. If you tried your best to be unlike your mother and were shocked to see her show up in your reactions to your own kids, your partner or even in your thoughts, then this blog is for you. It is possible to not be afraid of being like your mother, but it doesn’t come from trying hard to do the opposite of what she did that hurt you. Learn about unhooking from limiting beliefs rooted in the mother wound, and be free from this fear of being like your mother.
Before I get into telling you about the 5-stage process of unhooking from the fear of being like your mother, I’d like to share with you that I’m co-hosting a summit: Healing the Mother Wound 2.0. Hundreds of women from around the world have already joined us. You can register for FREE! Check out all the details below.
My ego doesn’t like to see inherited voices whispering in dark corners at the back of my inner stage. So I was shocked to notice inside me during a business coaching workshop a voice that said:
“If you have money it will be taken away from you!”
The immediate inner response to this was "No way! That’s stupid. Non-sense.” If you’re like me, you’ve probably been afraid of being like your mother and tried every way imaginable to be the opposite of her.
As much as I resented that voice that showed up in that workshop, it was reminiscent of my childhood story with my mum and I was familiar with this common fear that daughters with a mother wound have—‘don’t repeat the hurts you suffered from your mum!’
The connection neurons fired in my brain so quickly and bridged the chasm between the simple task of creating a new architecture for my business and the childhood voice that pierced through out of nowhere.
Even though I didn’t like to witness that my mother was still occupying space in the inner chambers of my mind, the wiser parts in me knew how to deal with it.
Unexplored mother wound influences adult daughters
Many mother wound influences are left unexplored.
The “mental health” field doesn’t like (or doesn’t know how) to talk about the scenarios of mothers who can’t love, mothers who abuse and neglect or mothers who are so wounded that in spite of their best efforts their wounds bleed onto their daughters.
On the common unexplored mother wound-territory is in relation to a woman’s career, financial success and sense of fulfilment.
When I heard that voice, I was wondering if it was possible for me to grow anything new in my life if the inner foundations of my beliefs were made of rusty old chains, ancient fears and worn-out designs!
I'd been working with limiting beliefs through Hakomi for a while at that point, so I knew that I was beginning to see more clearly which old beliefs were still in my way.
Fear dissolves when there’s a clear picture of the trauma we’re dealing with. We might not like that picture to begin with. But we mustn’t mistake the story that shaped our past with the story we can narrate for the future once we’ve fleshed out the old childhood structure.
The roots of past stories
My mother stole money from the family for years. I learned about it one morning when I was sixteen.
Waking up to an eerily silent house, it wasn't difficult to notice in our two-room flat that my mum’s bed was empty, the beddings untouched.
She had had a mental crisis, or perhaps her conscious part was catching up with the fact she had stolen a huge amount of money from us. And now, the night before my grandparents were due to arrive in Israel to visit us, she didn‘t want to be exposed. She panicked.
I was the teenager, but it was my mother who ran away from home.
And as if that was not enough, while in the aftermath of her disappearance my sister and I were tossed between family members who didn’t really want us, my mother managed to sneak back at some point and sell all the contents of our house, as well as the tiny flat that was my home.
Whatever I had was taken away from me forever.
Transforming past stories
I’ve been through this story many times with therapists, but never before have I seen so clearly the connection between what happened to me in my childhood and how I regarded money and career as in that workshop.
What transformed the way my story was held inside me at that moment in the business workshop was the time I had spent studying Hakomi, working with my own core beliefs.
Stories hold the keys, but those keys need to be pulled out of the story and used!
Otherwise, they remain just another mental fact that makes no change to our lives.
Beliefs have roots in the events of our life. However, the direction they grow in and what they’ll turn into is mostly not straightforward.
Which is why often we’re the last ones to notice the limiting beliefs and the way they manage our perceptions, behaviours and relationships.
Using beliefs as keys to opening new doors
When we get the rare opportunity to actually witness one of our core beliefs and how it manoeuvres, our perceptions and decisions are instantly transformed!
In order to make sure you’re not like your mother, you’ve probably focussed on your behaviour. Yet behaviours are only a fraction of the change that needs to happen to make sure you’re not like your mother.
I was afraid for years that I'd fall into depression like my mother. Because of that, I was afraid of the dark hole inside me which propelled me to pursue in my adult life an image of a person that wasn’t true to who I was or how I felt about my life.
Other ways women try not to be like their mothers are:
Avoiding a divorce from an unhealthy relationship lest they end up becoming a divorcee like their mum
Becoming overprotective to compensate for the protection and safety their mum couldn’t provide
Treating their daughters as their best friend to remedy the sense of aloofness and distance they experienced from their own mother
Pushing themselves towards career success in order to run away from the failure their mother was in their own eyes
While such behaviours and choices can offer some reassurance about not being like your mother, they’re not the key to actually breaking the cycle of generational pain.
Many women discover that after trying to do many things differently from their mothers, there’s still an emotional inheritance they carry inside them which remains unaffected by changes at a superficial level of behaviour.
They might discover that they have married someone who’s emotionally illiterate like their mother was, say things to their kids they swore they’d never say, or that they’re just as frustrated and constantly disappointed with life as their mother was.
Witnessing your beliefs through a somatic process such as Hakomi can offer allows you to discover what it is that you want to do with your life other than shaping it purely in opposition to your mum’s.
It helps you to see more clearly how full and gifted you are in your own right. This breaks the spell of being afraid of being like your mother.
Choosing our own beliefs
If we could have believed whatever we wanted, we would all have been flying unicorns with millions in the bank by now. Unfortunately, beliefs are not affirmations we can simply repeat every morning and turn into reality.
We cannot not have beliefs, but we can learn to see those that limit our emotional body, those that keep us attached to past narratives, and learn how to undo them so new, more supportive beliefs will emerge naturally from an inner place of healing and wholeness.
This process is drastically different from pursuing dreams that come out of ideas. It’s the most delicate, profound and exciting inner work I know.
Choosing your own beliefs includes five steps:
Discovering the way a painful experience narrates a belief
Finding out how this belief operates within your system and releasing the pain it creates on a daily basis
Providing medicinal and nourishing experiences to what was missing in the past, so there can be a reconfiguration of body-memory
Witnessing the new, empowering beliefs that emerge spontaneously out of our system
Learning to feel safe with the new belief and integrating it into our system
Afraid of being like your mum is a healthy sign that you already have awareness of the mother wound and its impact on you and that you know you have a choice about doing things differently. When this choice is hijacked by our belief-system, we can get discouraged and demotivated. It doesn’t take much effort to be unlike our mother. It’s also not a matter of doing the opposite to her. It’s really simply a matter of using a somatic approach to working with your inner self so you can unhook from that fear.
I’ve designed an online course for breaking free from mother wound-related limiting beliefs. It’s a self-paced course that will guide you through a process that I offer my private clients.
If you’re joining the healing the mother wound summit and want to purchase a discounted ticket you’ll get my course for free!
You will also be able to:
Participate in 5 exclusive summit workshops
Receive gifts from summit speakers
Receive all the presentation recordings
This is my personal story as well the proven professional process I use for breaking free from being afraid of being like our mother, a common fear for daughters with a mother wound. My personal story can resonate with many women who’ve done a lot of healing work and still carry limiting beliefs from their childhood. When you use this 5-stage process to disentangle from the fear of being like your mother, you’ll discover how much potential from your true, divine self is activated and is ready to blossom in your life.
Not sure yet? No problem!
Here are a couple of ways to learn about healing the mother wound:
Sign up to my Museletter for regular, useful content on healing the mother wound
Take my video training on breaking free from mother wound limiting beliefs
Shelly's helping women who've had a complex relationship with their mother and want to unplack the way it shaped them so tehy can become unlimited in their personal or professional life
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