Difficult Mothers by Terri Apter

Author:Terri Apter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2012-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

ENVY IS A bizarre distortion of admiration; instead of seeing a child’s success as a source of pride and taking delight in a son or daughter who flourishes, an envious mother feels that a child’s happiness takes something away from her. She feels she cannot relate to what is good in her child or what her child takes pleasure in, and so she wants (unconsciously) to destroy this. She believes that she can have a comfortable and secure bond with her child only if her child’s sense of self-worth is as low as hers.

Leaving Is Difficult

Surprisingly, leaving a difficult mother can be a greater challenge than leaving a mother who offers comfort, respect, and support. An envious mother may make you feel so bad that your pour energy into making it up to her. You may stay behind, limit yourself, and live within the aura of her dissatisfaction because you blame yourself for inflicting unpleasant feelings on her.

An envious mother has a full armory for instilling guilt. Her weapons include:

Accusation. “You think too much of yourself” or “You’re being a show-off” can turn a child’s normal pride in his or her achievements into perceived flaws.

Denigration. A child is reminded that “there are lots of people much better than you.” A sibling, a friend, or a long-dead relative may be set up as a standard the child can never hope to meet.

Debt collection. This includes reminders of others’ sacrifices on your behalf. “Don’t think you got here by yourself” and “Lots of people gave up a great deal for you.”

Coldness and discontent. When a parent is reserved or unhappy when a child thrives, no words are necessary to instill in a child anxiety about the bad effect of the things he or she once saw as good.

Harbingers of doom. “You’re headed for a fall” and “You know what happens to someone who flies too close to the sun?” and “High hopes just lead to disappointment” reinforce the general message that happiness and optimism are dangerous.

Medical emergencies. When a range of more subtle messages that “good is bad” are ineffective, an envious mother can resort to a medical emergency. The underlying message is, “Your happiness or growth or success is killing me.”

Every experienced therapist I know has a story to tell about a mother who makes a suicide attempt in response to a son’s or daughter’s decision to move away. One colleague described a man who had left home at the age of fifty-nine, and only after his “suicidal” mother died of natural causes. Whenever he determined to move out, she attempted suicide, and guilt bound him to her.

When we feel guilty for being different, when we feel guilty for being individual, we may become suspicious of our core self—the self that registers our day-to-day feelings and own individual responses. Whatever we experience as ours, unique, personal, is suspect: “Is my achievement going to damage me?” we wonder as we reach for our goal. “Do I have a right to this?” we ask ourselves as we consider a place in college, a job offer, a travel opportunity.

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