Understanding and Healing the Mother Wound:
A Comprehensive Guide
Understanding and Healing the Mother Wound:
A Comprehensive Guide
Many of us have heard of “daddy issues,” but what about the “mother wound?” Mother wound is not a term we hear bandied about on social media, or even in therapy sessions–yet it can still significantly impact our adult relationships. In essence, when a child receives physical care from their mother but not emotional support, we call this the mother wound.
The reason why the mother wound has such a profound effect on us in childhood and later in life is that it plants seeds of doubt in our minds about our worth, trust in others, and safety in the world around us.
Because of the pain and distress of experiencing the mother wound, it’s not something many people talk about. As a result, recognizing that you have a mother wound, processing this, and healing from it can be difficult. However, with the right support and knowledge alongside a series of practical steps, you can learn to heal from these painful past experiences.
To answer all of your questions on understanding and healing the mother wound, this article will cover:
- What the mother wound is, including how it happens
- Signs and symptoms of the mother wound
- How the mother wound manifests in sons
- What the mother wound looks like in daughters
- Practical steps to healing the mother wound
Many of us have heard of “daddy issues,” but what about the “mother wound?” Mother wound is not a term we hear bandied about on social media, or even in therapy sessions–yet it can still significantly impact our adult relationships. In essence, when a child receives physical care from their mother but not emotional support, we call this the mother wound.
The reason why the mother wound has such a profound effect on us in childhood and later in life is that it plants seeds of doubt in our minds about our worth, trust in others, and safety in the world around us.
Because of the pain and distress of experiencing the mother wound, it’s not something many people talk about. As a result, recognizing that you have a mother wound, processing this, and healing from it can be difficult. However, with the right support and knowledge alongside a series of practical steps, you can learn to heal from these painful past experiences.
To answer all of your questions on understanding and healing the mother wound, this article will cover:
- What the mother wound is, including how it happens
- Signs and symptoms of the mother wound
- How the mother wound manifests in sons
- What the mother wound looks like in daughters
- Practical steps to healing the mother wound
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What Is the Mother Wound?
The mother wound occurs when a mother offers their child physical but not emotional support. For example, our mom may feed us, bathe us, and patch us up after a cut or scrape, but they may not offer the safety, attention, and warmth that we need to feel truly loved. The mother wound is very similar to “daddy issues” (also known as the “father wound”) in that they both arise from some form of neglectful parenting. However, there are differences, and these tend to reflect the varied societal expectations between a mother and father.
For example, society suggests that the mother’s typical role is to offer love and acceptance, so the mother wound occurs when this is not given. Yet, the father’s role is seen as the protector and supporter, so the father wound occurs when they are physically absent, emotionally abusive, cut off, or critical.
But regardless of which parent or caregiver it comes from, growing up with an attachment wound such as those associated with fathers and mothers can affect you in more ways than one. Common difficulties associated with mother and father wounds are low self-esteem, relationship problems, and difficulties recognizing and managing emotions.
Before we go any further on this topic, it’s important to clarify something: When we talk about “mothers” in this article, we don’t just mean biological mothers. We mean anyone who takes the role of a mother, such as a single dad, grandmother, adoptive mother, or foster mother. This is an important distinction, as the lack of emotional support from any mother figure can cause a mother wound.
How Does the Mother Wound Happen?
There is no one specific reason why the mother wound happens—a variety of factors can contribute to it. However, a child may develop a mother wound if their mother:
- Meets their physical but not their emotional needs. For example, feeding them and changing their diapers, but not providing them with comfort, warmth, and emotional safety.
- Resists their negative emotions, potentially even admonishing them for expressing their negative feelings.
- Has a critical mindset toward their child.
- Doesn’t respond empathically to their child’s emotions (and hence prevents their child from learning how to manage and communicate their emotions).
- Expects the child to cater to their own physical and emotional needs.
- Is addicted to alcohol or drugs.
- Struggles with an untreated mental health condition.
- Is unavailable to the child, whether this is physically through working or emotionally through distraction or mental health issues.
- Has unprocessed experiences of physical or emotional abuse themselves, making it difficult for them to be emotionally available for their child.
It’s important to note that children with a mother wound may experience one or multiple of these situations. And this isn’t an exhaustive list; there may be other scenarios where the mother doesn’t give their child emotional support that results in them developing the mother wound.
Signs and Symptoms of the Mother Wound
It’s not always easy knowing whether you experienced the mother wound as a child. However, your feelings towards your mom may give you some indication. Here are some signs that you may have experienced the mother wound:
- You feel like your mom didn’t really love you or that she loved your siblings more.
- You always felt a sense of responsibility to look after and care for your mother.
- It feels like your mom only loves you when you say or do the right things.
- You never feel like your mom approves of you or accepts you for who you are.
The mother wound can also influence the way you feel about yourself and act in relationships, which you can identify by looking for the symptoms:
- Low self-esteem
- Difficulties understanding and managing your emotions
- Feeling the need to be perfect
- Relationship problems (including patterns of codependency and self-sabotage)
- Negative inner voice
- A deep-rooted fear of becoming like your mother
When considering these signs and symptoms, it’s worth bearing in mind that mother wounds may manifest differently in sons and daughters. Let’s consider some examples.
Mother Wounds in Sons
The mother wound is often referred to in the context of mother-daughter relationships. However, sons can experience a mother wound, too. In fact, an unacknowledged mother wound can significantly impact a man’s life in several ways.
Men with an unprocessed mother wound may long for a woman’s love and approval, particularly if they develop an anxious attachment style in childhood. The anxious attachment style is characterized by reassurance-seeking and clingy behaviors in relationships, which may occur as a means of compensation for a lack of love someone felt from their mother.
However, mother wounds don’t always lead to anxious attachment. In some instances, the mother wound can cause men to develop an avoidant attachment style. Avoidantly attached men may shut down their difficult feelings, causing them to feel out of reach and distant in relationships.
Aside from insecure attachment, men who experienced the mother wound may also struggle with feelings of inadequacy and sadness, which then manifests as anger. This anger may reveal itself in random, unconnected scenarios, such as in a traffic jam or at work.
Mother Wounds in Daughters
For daughters, the mother wound can involve a strong sense of shame that something is wrong with them and that they need to remain small to be loved. It may also manifest as a continual feeling of guilt that they should have more or achieve more.
The low self-esteem associated with an unresolved mother wound can also manifest as women comparing themselves to others. For example, they may compare themselves to other women whom they deem more successful, beautiful, or wealthy–and constantly come up short in their own perceptions. These comparisons then perpetuate the feeling that something is wrong with them.
Furthermore, experts suggest that the belief that their mothers see them as “not good enough” puts daughters in a double bind—they internalize the belief that they’re “not good enough,” but, as a result, become a self-fulfilling prophecy as they limit their positive beliefs about themselves and their potential.
Healing the Mother Wound for Sons and Daughters
The mother wound isn’t a mental health condition or clinical diagnosis, so there isn’t a specific medical treatment for it. However, an unresolved mother wound can have a profound impact on our adult lives and, due to the intergenerational nature of it, can be difficult to heal.
While there are steps you can take yourself to overcome your mother wound, seeking the support of a trained mental health professional is highly recommended. Therapy is recommended for many attachment-related traumas as it gives us the space to explore our past experiences and feelings relating to our parents. Therapy also provides opportunities for us to receive the validation we need for our feelings and experiences and helps us to develop more positive self-esteem and emotional awareness–allowing us to feel better and act healthier in relationships.
Alongside therapy, there are five practical steps you can take to heal your mother wound.
How to Heal the Mother Wound: Practical Steps
1. Communicate Your Emotions
Have you ever heard the phrase, “A problem shared is a problem halved”? This simple phrase highlights the importance of communicating our emotions with others.
Yet, communicating our emotions can feel exceptionally hard if we have a mother wound, as many of us weren’t taught how to recognize or manage our emotions in childhood. When attempting to communicate your emotions with others, it’s best to follow these three strategies:
Reflect before you act
It’s important for us to understand our emotions before we try to communicate them with others. Otherwise, they may come out in ways we don’t want them to. Consider how you feel about a certain scenario and ask yourself how this may relate to your past experiences. By thinking about this, you may gain clarity on why you feel the way you do about this current situation.
Use “I” statements
When we are learning how to communicate our emotions, it’s easy to slip into the blame game—this involves blaming our partners for making us feel a certain way through their actions. Remember that you are in control of your feelings, and no one can “make” you feel anything. When you communicate your emotions, stick to “I” statements such as “I feel upset when…”
Use calming strategies
Many of us close down when we’re being yelled at, which means we’re no longer listening. For this reason, it’s important to use calming strategies while communicating your emotions so we don’t send the other person (or ourselves) into shutdown mode. Consider focusing on your breathing or going for a walk beforehand.
2. Process Your Attachment Wounds
Attachment wounds don’t simply vanish—we need to bring them into our awareness, process them, and tend to them to let them go. Our first step to processing our attachment wounds is understanding our attachment style. If you’re not sure what your attachment style is, you can find out using our Attachment Style Quiz.
Therapy is a great place to process your attachment wounds, as you’ll have a trained professional to support you while you uncover the emotions relating to your early experiences. However, if you decide against therapy, journaling is a good alternative. Getting your thoughts and emotions down on paper has been shown to help people process their past traumas.
3. Accept Your Inner Child
As low self-esteem is one of the most common consequences of the mother wound, learning to accept yourself and your inner child is crucial to healing. Accepting your inner child means developing your self-awareness, building your self-compassion, and working hard to break the unhealthy patterns of behavior you learned from your parents.
One of the best ways to build your self-awareness and self-compassion is through mindfulness. Mindfulness helps us to become more aware of our negative thoughts, beliefs, and emotions, which is the first step toward changing them. Furthermore, mindfulness reduces stress, helping us to manage our emotions and communicate them in calm, healthy ways.
You can also learn to accept your inner child by listening to it. Try asking your inner child:
What are you feeling at this moment?
What do you need from me right now?
What are you trying to tell me?
Conclusion to Understanding and Healing the Mother Wound
Not receiving warmth, care, and attention from our mothers in childhood can leave us with a deep attachment wound. These early feelings of rejection may lay the foundation for beliefs that we aren’t good enough to be loved or that there is something intrinsically wrong with us.
If you have a mother wound, know that there is nothing wrong with you and that you are worthy of love. Your mother wound is not a reflection of you, but instead demonstrates a skill that your mother was lacking in your childhood, and maybe still does now.
However, regardless of how much we remind ourselves of our worth, the pain of a mother wound runs deep, making it difficult to heal from. But rest assured—with the support of a mental health professional and your commitment to your own healing, you can begin to overcome your mother wound.
Belden, R. (2017, December 6). Men and the Mother Wound. Huffpost.
Bluth, K., & Blanton, P. W. (2014). Mindfulness and Self-Compassion: Exploring Pathways to Adolescent Emotional Well-Being. Journal of child and family studies, 23(7), 1298–1309.
Gaba, S. (2019, October 25). The Mother Wound. Psychology Today.
Lewis, R. (2020, September 29). What Is the Mother Wound and How Do You Heal? Healthline.
Montgomery, A. (2018). Rough All Over: Processing Trauma and Gaining Empathy through Journaling. InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 14(2).
Webster, B. (n.d.). Why it’s Crucial for Women to Heal the Mother Wound. Nadine Macaluso.
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