The Emotionally Absent Mother and the Parentified Daughter

Throughout my childhood, but especially during the teen years, my mother and I reversed roles. Convinced my father was having an affair with a co-worker, she turned to me for comfort and advice. Although I had no experience with romantic relationships (let alone marriage), I become her personal on-the-spot therapist. I took on the grownup role – doling out wise words and offering constant support – while she became the confused kid who didn't know what to do or where to turn. It's only recently in reading about narcissistic parents that I come across the term for what happened to me during these years; I was parentified.

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It's amazing how having a name for something brings much relief. Finally, I wasn't alone, knowing that other daughters (and sons) get parentified by moms and dads who are self-absorbed, depressed, or mentally ill. Parents who are troubled – going through a divorce, supporting a family by themselves, struggling at a job – turn to a child to help them cope. At the time this happened to me, I was flattered to be placed in such an esteemed role. After all, I was just a kid with little life experience and here was my mother coming to me for counsel. It was heady stuff but had powerful negative consequences for my future.

Now, in my fifties, I understand how extremely damaging being parentified was to my development. It separated me from my peers and the normal activities that teens do: going to football games, dating, hanging out with friends, getting a part-time job, discovering what I wanted to do with my life. Without the benefits of a carefree childhood, I grew up to be an adult who struggled with social anxiety and depression. I found it hard to build and keep relationships.

According to Dr. Samuel Lopez De Victoria, a psychotherapist, my reaction to being parentified is typical. He explains that many of us also suffer from intense anger. That was certainly true in my case. My clinical depression stemmed from the rage and frustration I had pushed down within me. Now I understand that my anger came from not having a joyful childhood and getting burdened with my mother's issues. It came, too, from feeling used by my mother. When I became a parent myself and no longer had the time and energy to listen to all her problems, she dumped me and found someone else to play the therapist role.

Now that I identify myself as a someone who was parentified, I understand my choices so much better. I see how I've avoided relationships because I didn't want to get put in another care-taking situation, feeling helpless and used. I only want healthy reciprocal friendships in my life. Knowing this intellectually hasn't yet given me the impetus to start building new relationships, but it's a first step in a long journey.

Daughter of an Emotionally Absent Mother:

Embracing the Label

Like many who work in special education, I often wondered if labels – dyslexic, hyperactive, high functioning – did more harm than good. But, after years of working in the field and having a son with autism, I decided they're a necessary evil. They're what we need to identify kids and get them the services they need. When I read Jasmin Lee Cori's The Emotionally Absent Mother, I started thinking of labels in a more positive way. By accepting and embracing the label, daughter of an emotionally absent mother, I felt like I was not alone. That label summed up my life so perfectly and succinctly. It gave me an effective way to describe my history. It helped me feel both relief and elation at finally discovering who I was.

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 I hated my childhood...while living it as a kid and while remembering it as an adult. But I could never quite put a finger on why it was so unhappy, lonely, and frustrating. I hated myself for the mistakes I made as a kid and wondered why I had been such a train-wreck. Why hadn't I been fun, popular, and carefree like other children? Why did I always have the weight of the world on my shoulders? Why did I find solace in food? Why did I suffer from depression and anxiety as a teen and nobody stepped in to help?

When I was an adult, my father died unexpectedly and I was able to observe my mom's emotional detachment from a safe distance. Even though she had been married to my dad for 36 years, she didn't shed a tear or express a sad sentiment. She moved on with her life unfazed. The only feeling she showed was jealousy when people said nice things about him at his funeral. (yes, she got envious of a dead man)! This was the first big moment when I started to question my mom's ability to connect with others on an emotional level. It started me thinking of all the times throughout my child when she was cold and indifferent about my feelings, causing me to shutdown, turn to food, and become more and more depressed.

I think it's so valuable for anyone who identifies as the daughter of an emotionally absent mother to make a timeline of such events and examine each one. While painful at times, it helps you understand yourself so much better. It lets you travel back in time and take care of that little girl you once were – the one who never got the unconditional love and support she deserved. She was a sweet little girl who needed a mommy and didn't really have one. It lets you realize how much she needs to be mothered now...by you!

                                 

The Emotionally Absent Mother and the Weak, Malleable Daughter

While teaching kindergarten, I had the opportunity to experience many amazing mother-daughter relationships that filled me with awe but also left me feeling sad and jealous. Unlike the little girls in my class, I never had a strong, loving mother who was determined to rear a confident, independent daughter. Instead I had the opposite. My mother did things – both consciously and unconsciously – that sabotaged my self-esteem and made me needy. As the grown daughter of an emotionally absent mother, I now clearly see three ways she made me weak and malleable so she could feel superior and in control. 

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1. Creating an Adult-Centered, Not Child-Centered World

According to Jasmin Lee Cori, author of The Emotionally Absent Mother, my experience growing up in an adult-centered environment was not unusual for daughters like me. My mother was incredibly self-centered so my siblings and I lived in a household where her drama was front and center. She was always battling with her husband, father, aunt, cousin, or some other family member. When creating this chaos, she felt alive and consequential. She talked on the phone for hours each day, detailing her problems to anyone and everyone who would listen.

During the summer breaks from school, our friends would take classes through Parks and Recreation, go on family vacations, and attend summer camps. But we just stayed home and watched endless hours of TV game shows. At the dinner table, we sat silently and ate while our mother rattled on to our father about her drama. It took all his time, patience, and energy to deal with her neediness so he never had any left over for us. It was an adult-centered world that made us kids feel lonely and abandoned. As adults, we've all struggled with depression and social anxiety.

2. Meeting Physical Needs But Ignoring Emotional Ones

Nobody who knew us when we were growing up would suspect we were emotionally deprived. From the outside, everything looked perfectly normal and fine. Our parents were married. We had a nice home in a safe area. We attended Catholic school, and we always had plenty of food on the table. However, while our physical needs were met, our emotional ones were definitely not.

As a child, I longed for a warm, loving family and would try to satisfy that craving by watching TV shows such as The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. When I spent time at the homes of my friends, I envied how close they were, how they played board games together, talked about their days, and helped one another with homework. I had learned at a very young age never to ask my mother for help with school assignments as it made her mad and she'd belittle me for being so stupid. She'd snap at us kids when we wanted anything from her other than what we already had. In her mind, our physical needs were met and we should be satisfied and grateful, not asking for more.

I was the first child in our family to suffer from depression but certainly not the last. In high school, I became extremely low after a lifetime of not feeling loved and supported. Instead of taking me to a doctor, my mother just berated me and let me go through this period on my own. I blamed myself for my depression and became convinced that I was the world's biggest loser. It was only years later when I became a parent myself that I realized how abusive and neglectful my mother had been. This realization made me want to travel back in time and hug my teenage self. I wanted to take care of her, get her the help she so badly needed, and tell her it wasn't her fault. 

3. Damaging Self-Esteem

As the daughter of an emotionally absent mother, I focused on the feelings of my mom and ignored my own. I was her unpaid therapist, listening to her drama and giving advice even though I was just a kid with little life experience. It was a complete role reversal and I knew it. But it was either be her therapist or get no attention at all.

As a result of playing this role, I grew up with little sense of who I was. I didn't develop a healthy ego with the self-care habits of most preteen and teenage girls - watching what I ate and exercising to stay fit. Instead, my self-loathing coupled with depression led to a huge weight gain and a sedentary existence. I was ashamed of how I looked and isolated myself from the world. I didn't know how to make friends and had no social life.

My siblings and I all struggle to this day with poor self-image. My brother is almost 50 and has never had a serious relationship. He continues to stay connected to our mother in an unhealthy way, acting as her therapist in a role I've long abandoned. I know he'll continue to do this until the day she dies. He knows if he doesn't they'll have no relationship  at all or only a superficial one like I have with her.

The good news is that the next generation – her grandchildren – are much stronger. They don't take the grief that grandma dishes out to them. They speak up for themselves and won't let her nitpick their clothes, hair, and makeup. She can't hurt them in the ways she hurt me and my siblings and I'm so glad for that.

The Emotionally Absent Mother: Detachment Through the Generations

Like many daughters of emotionally absent mothers, I can't fault my mom for her detachment. I've known her story since I was a little girl. Her parents divorced when she was a child. Her mom was an alcoholic who died from cirrhosis of the liver. Her father placed her in Catholic boarding schools and saw her only on the weekends. My mom wanted to enter the convent and become a nun but her dad forbade it. Becoming a wife and mother of four was her plan B and that was never lost on us kids.

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When we were growing up, it was obvious she wanted to hang out anywhere but at home and do anything but interact with us. I spent my childhood in front of the television set, watching moms such as Florence Henderson on The Brady Bunch and Shirley Jones on The Partridge Family. Those moms were so present – not just physically there in the home but emotionally there for every crush and heartbreak, every fight with a sibling and conflict with a classmate, every tear that got shed and every problem that needed to get solved.

When I watched Mrs. Brady and Mrs. Partridge, I saw them act compassionately through all their children's ups and downs. But, my mom was just the opposite. She got angry when I needed her support, patience, and kindness. She lost her temper, frustrated she couldn't give me what I needed. It was like trying to get water from a rock. I stopped going there after a while, knowing it was futile but never losing the thirst.

When I was eight, my hamster died and I sobbed wildly. It was my first experience with death. But, instead of keying in on that, my mom had no sympathy. She yelled at me to stop crying and told me I was acting like a fool. She said I couldn't get another pet because I couldn't control myself. She shut me down because she couldn't deal with the emotional side of life.

Not surprisingly, I took anti-depressants for many years as an adult. From an early age, I learned feelings were bad. The anti-depressants muted my emotions and, for the six years I took them, I never cried. But I also never felt excitement, joy, and happiness – just a flatness. In many ways, the anti-depressants were turning me into my mother. I weaned myself off of them, deciding it was time to deal with my emotions head-on instead of running from them.

As a kid, I was always told, “you're too sensitive,” as if it were the absolute worst possible thing. In my family, where name-calling, teasing, and cruelty were commonplace, being sensitive was definitely a liability and I suffered because of it. This book made me realize how beautiful it is to live as a sensitive soul but how to protect one's self from the world's brutality.

The Emotionally Absent Mother and Hugging

I still remember the exact moment when I knew my mom was emotionally absent. It happened twelve years ago when my husband and I were going through the heart-wrenching process of getting our 4-year-old son diagnosed with autism. We had to travel an hour away to the nearest Children's Hospital and my mom stayed at our house with our newborn.

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When we returned home in the evening after a grueling day of interviews, examinations, and long periods of waiting, my mom greeted me as if we had taken my son to the amusement park for rides and games. She knew where we had been all day and what we were doing, but she wasn't invested emotionally in any of it. She didn't connect with me on any level, mom to mom, to acknowledge what a heartbreaking experience I had just endured. I felt incredibly alone.

I still remember that day as if it were yesterday. I felt so vulnerable – like I was standing there naked in front of a crowd and nobody would wrap a blanket around my body. I needed a hug more than ever before in my life, but I didn't get one. At the core of my being, I knew something was profoundly wrong in our relationship and I started to search for answers.

That's when I began reading about emotionally absent mothers and the pieces of the puzzle came together to form a clear image. Every since that day 12 years ago, I've kept in mind how important it is to hug people when they're in pain. So many of us have difficulty coming up with the “right” words to say when someone is suffering but touching is more powerful than talking. We're too worried these days about not invading people's personal space. But there's so much research that proves the healing powers of human contact. Here's some:

• Hugs help people deal with depression, anxiety, and stress.
• Hugs build trust between people, create intimacy, and give a sense of security.
• Hugs raise oxytocin levels, which alleviate feelings of loneliness, anger, and despair.
• Long, firm hugs raise serotonin levels, elevating one's mood.
• Hugs enhance self-esteem, increasing the chances we'll treat ourselves with kindness and respect.

This film won an Academy Award for Best Picture in 1980. I watched it in the theater and on television many times, always transfixed by the strained relationship between mother and son. The mom was so uptight and cold. I wanted her to hug her son so badly and make him feel better. But she wouldn't. Now I understand that this mother, exquisitely portrayed by Mary Tyler Moore, was emotionally absent. She couldn't and wouldn't give her son the emotional support he needed so badly. 

The Emotionally Absent Mother and Depression

For most of my life, starting in my early teens, I've suffered from depression. But, it's only recently that I connected that depression to being the daughter of an emotionally absent mother. With this new-found knowledge, I'm able to deal with my blues in a more positive, pro-active way that includes lots of exercise, meditation, healthy foods, and journal writing.

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I came to realize the big hole in my heart – the sadness that weighed me down – got created by my mother's inability to see me for who I was and to love me unconditionally. My mother wasn't interested in my emotional life as a kid. When I'd say, “I feel this way or that way,” her response was always “no, you don't.” I learned to suppress my feelings – eating to bury my emotions and becoming more and more depressed and fatter and fatter.

As an adult, I started taking anti-depressants (Lexapro and Zoloft) and that's one of my biggest regrets. Taking those anti-depressants for six long years turned me into a virtual zombie and delayed my efforts to find the cause of my overwhelming sadness. I now warn others about the disastrous side effects of these drugs.

If someone absolutely needs to take an anti-depressant, I urge them to take it only if they also do talk therapy. In talk therapy, they can work on finding healthier ways to deal with their feelings. The anti-depressants only put a Band-Aid on the hurt but, in no way, heal it. Once you get off the anti-depressants, you're back at ground zero, wondering why you're miserable. You've gained no tools for dealing with your emotions.

Today, I look back at those six years when I took anti-depressants as a huge waste of time. I resent the doctor who kept prescribing them without urging me to get counseling. We're a society that likes the quick fix of popping a pill, but dealing with depression is more complicated than that. It takes effort, time, and focus.

Once I started reading about emotionally absent mothers, I knew instantly that was my situation and I felt tremendous relief. I knew the key was to start mothering myself – giving myself the love, patience, acceptance, and guidance I never received. I developed an inner-voice (my mother voice) that showed tremendous compassion for me. She would say nurturing things. If I felt tired after a long day of teaching, she would say, “That's enough for today. You need to get in your pajamas and read a book.” If I felt tempted to eat fast food while driving in my car, she'd say, “You need to slow down. You need to take time to eat a healthy meal.”

It seemed silly and awkward to me at first, using this mother voice, but then I started to understand how valuable it was. I had never heard those kind, generous words when I was a kid – those words that said I'm valued and loved. Developing this mother voice was so much more powerful than any pill I could take and it finally gave me peace and comfort.

One of the most important steps I took when realizing I was the daughter of an emotionally absent mother was to read. I had never given myself permission to take the time to relax with a book. I thought I needed to act like a work horse – always doing something to justify my existence. I started to build a home library of books that talked about my childhood experience with a mom who didn't see me and didn't connect with me in a deep, emotional way. This book was particularly helpful because it showed me that my childhood didn't need to define my present and future. It helped me to stop wallowing in my past and to move forward in a positive way.