Psychology Today: The Elephant in the Room on Mother's Day: Emotional Neglect

"The world is full of people who love their mothers, most of them very much. But love comes in many different shapes, sizes, forms, and depths.

Mothering is one of the most complex and demanding jobs in the world, and the huge majority of moms try their genuine best and meet the threshold of what famous psychologist D.W. Winnicott called “the good enough mother.”

Even many mothers who do not meet that threshold did try their best. They simply didn’t have the tools to respond to their child's emotional needs, perhaps because they didn’t get nurtured properly by their own moms.

Childhood emotional neglect happens when your parents fail to notice or respond enough to your feelings while they raise you.

It’s not the amount of time she spent with you and it’s not the number of things she did for you. The key question is this: Did she notice what you were feeling? Did she seem to care what you felt, what you wanted, or what you needed to be happy and emotionally strong? Did she do all of these things enough?

Emotionally neglectful moms, because they’re not tuned in enough to the feeling world, end up delivering a unique kind of love to their children. It’s real and genuine love, of course, but it is missing something. It’s missing emotional attunement.

Emotional attunement is the source of true empathy. It happens when your parent connects with you on an emotional level, sees what you feel, knows you deeply enough to predict what you will feel, and understands what you feel. An emotionally attuned mother is also able to feel what you feel.

Growing up without being deeply emotionally seen, understood, and known by your mother takes a toll on your relationship with her. Since emotional attunement is a necessary ingredient for all children, you will always feel, on some unnamable level, that something is missing, or not quite right, between you.

And that is what weighs on you on Mother’s Day. That’s why this special day may feel slightly empty or "off" for you.

How to Celebrate Mother’s Day With Your Emotionally Neglectful Mom

• For yourself, name the elephant in the room.
• Talk about it with a trusted person, whether it’s your partner or spouse, a sibling, family member, friend, or therapist.
• Don’t just think about your mom on Mother’s Day. Also, do something kind for yourself.
• Think about talking with your mother about emotional neglect. There are ways to approach it that are indirect and thoughtful and ways to talk about it that are non-blaming.
• Once you’re through Mother’s Day, it will be time to start learning everything you can about childhood emotional neglect. It affects much more than your relationship with your mother. It affects your self-worth, your self-knowledge, your emotional awareness, and your emotion skills.

You may notice that when you acknowledge the elephant, everything feels a bit different in your life. And in doing so, you can see that you can give yourself everything you never got and that you can become emotionally attuned to yourself."

Read the full article here!

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