Good Daughter Mini-Session #4
Trap #4 of the Good Daughter Syndrome
Mixed Message
So Amanda writes, “I’d rather my mother insult or criticize me directly than do what she does. She says things like, oh, that’s a beautiful dress. I wonder if it comes in a larger size, or this is a lovely apartment. I do hope you can afford it on your salary or I’m so glad you got a promotion, but will the kids be in daycare all day?”
Here’s how the trap works…
Transcript
So Amanda writes, “I’d rather my mother insult or criticize me directly, than do what she does. She says things like, oh, that’s a beautiful dress. I wonder if it comes in larger size or , this is a
lovely apartment.
I do hope you can afford it on your salary or I’m so glad you got a promotion, but will the kids be in daycare all day?”
Yes. So many of us, good daughters, know this one all too well.
Because women are raised to know what’s socially acceptable and so many times they hide their barb’s with the cover of something that’s more socially acceptable that seems nice.
It seems for your own good.
Nobody will tell you but your mom, right? I think the only way out of this trap is to not fall into the trap in the first place. Assuming that you’re taking in something that feels good, when in fact it’s a fish hook.
You take the bait, you swallow the bait, and then it hooks you in some ways that really feel pretty bad. …So here’s the person that you would hope to be the closest thing to unconditional love being, sometimes your harshest critic.
So if you tune in, get out of your head and tune into your body and you feel that fishhook, you feel that sucker punch to the gut.
You tune into that in the moment and you can say to Mom, “Mom ouch. I’m not really sure why you would want to say that, but I want to let you know it hurt.”
Now, most of these kind of Moms we are talking about moms…will say, “Oh, I’m just a terrible mother or I was only trying to help.”
Or you’re going to get some pushback, but do this for you… because when you’re congruent, when you feel hurt and you say something outward, you let it register and you don’t go along with it.
That’s what’s so bad is when you go along with it.
But when you say, “Yeah, that really hurt”, just the shortest plainest simplest thing that you can say. You align with yourself, which is really good.
You can’t stop her from doing it. You might call her out a few times and she may stop doing it.
I don’t know, so she may be completely unaware that she is doing it. That’s also possible, but either way you do this for yourself and then you don’t have the knowing feeling in your gut that you’ve gone along with something that actually hurts.
That was then, this is now.