What is a Mother Wound?

How does a Mother Wound occur? What are the childhood conditions that contribute to the wounding?

The Mother Wound develops in a child as a result of having a stressed and overwhelmed, ill, absent, abusive, or highly critical mother. Something is going on with Mom that prevents her from fully showing up in a healthy way for her children. Many mothers lack the needed support to thrive. And a mother who is struggling creates an environment of struggle for her children. Children with a struggling mother develop a deep wound that occurs for two main reasons: (i) the mother is unable to form a safe, secure connection with her child and, (ii) she does not meet her child’s physical and/or emotional needs.

A mother must be physically and emotionally present in order to create a safe, secure connection with her child. And for that to happen, she must be emotionally regulated and calm. Meaning, she can recognize when she’s worked up and not react, she can take a few breaths to calm herself down, and then respond. Some mothers are emotionally shut down, a self protection mechanism, and are therefore unable to connect in an emotionally intimate way to her children. Some mothers are highly critical, usually from her own anxiety and fear, however its affects leave the child feeling small and fearful. Some mothers are physically abusive or prone to outbursts of anger. Some used authoritarian parenting styles that include spanking, yelling, shaming, or other forms of punishment.

A mother must be able to respond appropriately to the needs of her child. There are many factors that contribute to a mother being unable to respond in a healthy way. She may have her own trauma and unresolved wounds. She may not have adequate support from other adults. Many mothers will meet her child’s physical needs but not her emotional needs resulting in emotional neglect (because Mom is emotionally shut down and dissociated herself).

When disconnection with the mother is chronic, the child becomes devastated, confused, and feels abandoned. She develops a wound at the very core of her self image and forms deeply-rooted beliefs that the she is unloveable, unimportant, and unworthy of care. These beliefs form the root of our adult identity. Our identity impacts every aspect of our lives.

The child is very open and can feel the pain and suffering going on in its immediate environment. The child is aware of its own body and can also feel the tension, rigidity, and pain in the body of the mother or of anyone else he's with. If the mother is suffering, the baby suffers too. The pain never gets discharged. The organism does not develop the confidence that it can regulate itself and that things will happen the way they should.

- A. H. Almaas, Spiritual Teacher, Author

When the child experiences a lack of safety in the home, she becomes fearful of expressing herself. She represses her needs and authenticity. She doesn't know who she is. Due to the overwhelming pain and isolation, the child disconnects from herself (her ‘Self’). She disconnects from being able to identify and communicate her needs. Our nervous system becomes calibrated to a persistent state of survival because the energy of the childhood home was one of survival (vs thriving).

Children who experience emotional neglect develop a response to the environment in one of two ways: either a complete mistrust of everyone and everything (ultra independent and denying herself healthy, loving connection), or a desperate need to be loved that she is boundary-less and willing to be loved at any cost (narcissist-empath relationship dynamics).

Authoritarian parents focus more on obedience, discipline, and control rather than nurturing the child’s authenticity and prioritizing her needs. ‘Mistakes’ tend to be addressed through punishment rather than educating the child. And when feedback is given it's often critical and shaming. Yelling and spanking are also common.

Our brains, bodies, and psyches develop in childhood. The coping mechanisms and strategies we needed in the childhood home became normalized in our psyche. For example, if there is a lot of chaos in the home we may develop the perfectionism coping strategy - if I’m perfect then my parents won’t have to worry about me. We are largely unconscious of our coping mechanisms and nervous system responses - they were ‘programmed’ into our system at a very early age. While these programmed responses and strategies helped us navigate the childhood home, their continued presence comes at a cost to us in our adult lives.

It’s important to understand the context of our childhood experiences. Our childhood provides the clues to ‘how we got here.’ It gives us a clear understanding of the source of our patterns and pain so we can address them. Until resolved, the undigested pain and coping patterns related to childhood continue to unconsciously play out in our adult lives. While those patterns and coping strategies were really helpful to an eight-year-old, they are painfully limiting to a grown adult. Understanding the Mother Wound and our childhood experiences is part of the healing path. Letting go of what we have ‘outgrown’ is part of creating a thriving life.

Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom.

But the personality formed in the environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative. She approaches the task of early adulthood ― establishing independence and intimacy ― burdened by major impairments in self-care, in cognition and in memory, in identity, and in the capacity to form stable relationships.

She is still a prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma.

- Judith Herman, Harvard Psychiatrist, Author

Mom/parents who are living in survival mode teach their children to live in survival mode. The children then grow up to be adults living in survival mode. In this way, our childhood forms the foundation of our adult lives. We cannot become a thriving human if we are living from habits, beliefs, and a mindset based on being in survival mode. Below you can continue to read how these childhood patterns and coping strategies manifest into painful adult symptoms.