The Emotionally Absent Mother: A Guide to Self-Healing and Getting the Love You Missed

The small child is not yet able to discriminate between positive and negative life circumstances. She loves her parents and needs their presence to feel secure. Thus she takes pleasure in being with them, whether or not their behavior merits her love. When treated with cruelty or humiliation, rejection or withdrawal, the child “attaches” the pleasu

At times, it feels Herculean to be present to this hurt. A mother wound is deep. It’s a primal attachment rupture that impacts all other relationships. If left unattended, such a wound can be a haunting trigger, distorting one’s capacity to trust and nourish healthy connections with others.

An adult can be fully aware of his feelings only if he had caring parents or caregivers. People who were abused and neglected in childhood are missing this capacity and are therefore never overtaken by unexpected emotions. They will admit only those feelings that are accepted and approved by their inner censor, who is their parents’ heir. Depressio

Maladaptive coping strategies, often learned from our parent-figures, give us a brief distraction or reprieve from the discomfort (say, by drinking alcohol at a wedding, as I did) or avoiding any emotional reaction (as I also did when I dissociated). Either of these attempts at relieving our distress, however, ends up in more disconnection from the