When the Relationship with the Mother Negatively Influences Our Lives

Everyone is influenced by different people throughout their lives – educators, teachers, friends, colleagues, artists, bloggers, etc. However, the deepest and most lasting influence comes from family members, especially parents.

Of all familial bonds, the one between mother and child is the strongest, both biologically and emotionally. This bond is formed on a physical level in the form of the umbilical cord. Although the umbilical cord is severed after birth, the emotional and energetic connection remains. This is one of the reasons why the relationship with the mother often has a stronger influence on our lives than that with the father, even if we may not be aware of it or may even deny it.

In many cultures, it is the mother who spends the most time with the child and plays one or THE key role in its upbringing. Daily communication with her leads to imprints that have an effect both in childhood and in adulthood. The type of communication practiced by the mother as well as her communication style strongly contribute to the emotional reactions, thoughts, attitudes and behavioral patterns that develop and consolidate in the child. These in turn influence the type and style of communication as well as the relationships of the adolescent in adult life.

For more details, see my book: ‘EPIC communication. Your Key to Constructive Interaction and Personality Development’, Part II: ‘Mature and Immature Positions in Communication’, especially Chapter 3: ‘How the Dominant Position in Communication is Formed’.

Relationships between mother and son or daughter can be of a different nature, or rather: they can be evaluated differently – by the mother on the one hand and by the son or daughter on the other. The spectrum here is broad, ranging from ‘extremely positive’ to ‘very negative’, with all possible shades in between.

In particular, if a son or daughter evaluates their relationship with their mother and, as a result, their mother's influence on their life as critical or negative, the following considerations are advisable.

An adult has the opportunity to consciously choose how they view and shape their relationship with their mother. This requires personal maturity as well as the willingness and ability to engage in differentiated reflection and self-reflection.

In addition, applying the basic principle of constructive communication plays an essential role in creating and maintaining a positive and harmonious relationship with the mother. The article ‘How to Learn to Love: The 5 Levels of Love’ describes five levels on which a person can build and maintain their relationships overall through acceptance, respect, compassion and empathy. This also applies to the relationship with the mother, which is ideally one of unconditional love. However, without applying the basic principle of constructive communication, it is impossible to reach even the first level (acceptance).

You can take an important step towards recognizing the influence of your relationship with your mother and working through it if necessary. Discuss with her the situations from your childhood and adolescence that had or still have a lasting effect on your life. Talking about such situations or events will help you to better understand your mother's life situation at the time as well as her motives and behavior.

This understanding alone can help you to achieve more calm, peace and awareness in your own life. It is important to ask questions in order to learn, accept and understand, not to judge! Also bear in mind that this may be the first time your mother has spoken about the situations and events you have discussed! It is therefore quite possible that you will be dissatisfied with your mother's answers... At the very least, however, these answers may reveal aspects that you were previously unaware of and that you can only imagine with difficulty, as you yourself grew up in different circumstances to your mother.

It is of utmost importance to repeatedly remind yourself of the fact that you yourself are responsible for the course and quality of your life, not your mother, and not a certain number of situations or events from your childhood. Even the most painful situations can ultimately be seen as lessons that, among other things, help you to consciously shape your relationships with your own children. Whether you follow your mother's example or not is up to you. In this context, I recommend that you read the article: What Is Resentment and How to Deal With It?

This method is of practical use if you want to consciously work through difficult or unpleasant situations from your childhood and draw lessons for building ‘healthy relationships’ – with your mother in particular and with other people in general. The simple sequence of steps contained in the KSS method helps you to formulate clearly:

If you succeed in this, you will also succeed in your relationships with other people in your life.

Imagine an adult son who often feels frustration or anger when dealing with his mother. Every time she gives him unsolicited advice about his private life or career, he has the feeling that she doesn't trust him to shape his own life and make the necessary decisions independently. Sooner or later, this leads to tensions and increasingly frequent conflicts.

Using the KSS method helps the son to develop a different style of interaction with his mother and thereby build a calmer and constructive relationship with his mother, based on acceptance, respect and understanding.

In our relationship with our mother, we receive and process an extremely important part of our experiences, which influence our personality development and our life path. An open and constructive dialog with the mother helps us to perceive, accept and understand the specifics of our connection with her. This leads to a better perception, acceptance and understanding of ourselves. And finally, it shapes the way we shape our relationships with our own children and other people and thus lead a conscious and fulfilling life.

The relationship with the mother has a particularly formative influence on a person's development in childhood. In this context, I recommend that you read the article: How to Heal Your ‘Child-Self’?