Terms of endearment

Family counselling, or family therapy, addresses psychological, behavioural, and emotional issues. In a mother-daughter relationship, there is pressure for a presumed harmony in existence. Any peaks of conflicts are often blamed on cores of personality or hormones. Rashikkha Ra Iyer writes about seeking therapy to help discover one’s love language

I don’t want any relationship with you!” my mother vociferated when I asked if we could give it the old college try at family therapy. I was flummoxed beyond my wits when I heard these words and incredibly gutted. This was the person who always stood by my side no matter what. However, our relationship always leaned on rigmaroles of differences of opinion. When I qualified to be a mental health professional and entered the field, I was quite surprised to see many mothers and daughters in a love-hate relationship, very similar to the one that I had. I started researching more to find answers to my own personal scenario and to help others in similar situations. The deeper search indicated the dearth of specialised training in this field. Only as of 2016 was the mother-daughter relationship questionnaire even developed.

A mother-daughter relationship typically receives heavy weightage from the societal lens. There is pressure for a presumed harmony in existence. Any peaks of conflicts are often blamed on cores of personality or hormones. A pubescent daughter or a menopausal mother are far from being the reason for this conflict. This conflict is typically an outcome of several social, cultural, and multigenerational integrants. Most importantly patriarchal and misogynistic views also play a huge role in the development or destruction of this relationship.

Some daughters would engage in unremitting activities to get a hint of validation or acclamation from their mothers. However, the constant dismissive pattern and lack of engagement, furthers the daughters to welter deep into self-doubt. This is when they start branching out for external validation with the constant mental question of “why do you ignore me mom?” While this can be true of dismissive mothers, this can often also overlap with controlling mothers. As human beings,
we are wired for maternal proximity and substantiation.

Controlling mothers often disguise micromanagement in terms of looking out for the child or saving the child from the mistakes she made herself. This can lead the daughter to be over-dependent on the mother’s judgement due to the fear of floundering or travailing without the mother’s input on something. Some mothers on the other hand can be emotionally unavailable or engage in literal abandonment of the daughter by staying farthest from contact.

The hunger for love in daughters increases, and they go on to develop a sense of insecurity and overdependence on interminable reassurance.

This in turn can affect the daughter’s interpersonal relationships where the transference gets applied to a lover or a friend. Not receiving a text from a boyfriend can thus remind the daughter of abandonment from her mother.

An emotional outburst precipitated by this in the daughter would seem obnoxious and irrelevant to the unaware boyfriend. Contrary to this, some mothers can get over-involved or enmeshed in their daughter’s lives. This happens when the mother sees the daughter as an extension of herself. A daughter who thus can be an answer to the mother’s own unrealised dreams. These blurry or rather lack of boundaries can sometimes turn into jealousy or a combative relationship. This is where the mother tries to compare herself to what the daughter has or has not done. This leads the daughter to believe that the win of a medal means the win of mother’s attention. The mother thus achieves this often through the modalities of shame and blame.

Sometimes, it can be hard for a daughter to understand when she would receive which version of the mother. An unreliable mother suddenly showers affection on her daughter and flees to another end of the continuum by becoming hostile and aggressive. Some daughters fortunately have the support of another family member that they can seek refuge in such as that of a grandparent. However, most do not. This thus makes a daughter develop a belief that emotional connections are precarious or even so frightening, with a further transference to other interpersonal relationships in life. The final pattern that can be observed often is a relationship where the daughter and mother play the role of the other. This is quite common where a mother has birthed children very young or in the case of single parenthood. In the former instance, the mother might see the children to have robbed the childhood of her own and thus seek for caregiving from the children.

In single parenthood, the mother may see her daughter as a rock or a best friend and thus land up looking for support from her daughter. When the daughter thus goes on to form relationships with other women such as that of a mother-in-law or an aunt, it can trigger a sense of threat in the mother. These daughters, when become mothers themselves, may continue to repeat this pattern as this is all they know about a mother-daughter relationship. All these patterns are intricately interconnected and are far from a healthy mother-daughter relationship.

There are, however, ways in which a healthy balance can be struck. When a daughter moves further towards independence, a mother can be threatened and feel a sense of lack of control. Thus, giving too much advice may come off as intrusive. It would thus be healthy for the mother to take a step back and give the daughter the confidence to make her own decisions. This is especially true when there are physical distances between a mother and daughter. The lack of proximity may lead to overcommunication. This in turn thus needs to be replaced with an agreed space, the opportunity to observe non-verbal communication like facetime and getting involved in shared activities. It is important for both mothers and daughters to relinquish any expectations of an ideal mother-daughter relationship.

Unconsciously, both mothers and daughters engage in manipulation of the other in fear of rejection. Thus, drawing healthy boundaries and being aware of the manipulations is a good next step. Some relationships may take longer to heal than the others. Thus, take it as it comes and give it all the time and space needed. Sometimes, despite all these efforts, an intervention from a third party might be needed. When my mother finally agreed to family therapy, I was already in the UK and she was in India. We still did take it up virtually and I couldn’t be more grateful for this intervention.

My mother and I have definitely learned each other’s love language, better ways of communication and most importantly realised the value of having a time out. If a situation necessitates a required distance and quiet time, my mother and I honour the process without the fear of permanent loss of the relationship. This thus helps us to thaw and get back to each other from a better place and we end up understanding the other person’s point of view. All this said, daughters can never know what mothers went through with their own. Thus, it would be worth understanding how to help a mother’s healing alongside the interpersonal one with her daughter.

(The author is a multidisciplinary professional who works in the UK.)