Trying to fix wrong relationships
A woman in her 50s, who I’ll call Liz, has always found her relationship with her mother difficult.
Over the years Liz has felt that it’s made it hard for her to enjoy her relationships with her own daughters. In retrospect she can see it may have held her back in lots of ways.
“For some reason my mother and I seem to always be on the verge of an argument.” Liz says she has tried everything to resolve the problem but with no success. “I feel ashamed to admit it, but it’s like there’s some sort of communication breakdown between us. I think I’ve worn myself out trying to paper over it, but the fact is that my mother is always suspicious of me and very quick to be critical. It has really sapped my confidence.”
“Eventually a friend told me I should try psychotherapy and that gave me a chance to take a more balanced look at things. That’s when I saw how suspicious and critical of people I become, often without very good cause, that I often treat others like my mother treats me.”
Liz’s aunt thinks her mother may have suffered from undiagnosed post natal depression which went onto shape their relationship and that gradually over time a distance set in between Liz and her mother. Liz used to think that things would get better but they never did. Liz says that she has gradually come round to the problems in the relationship but found it hard to accept how depressed their arguments left her feeling. She can see it has made it hard to enjoy other relationships.
Liz says “It took me a long time to come to terms with the problems between my mother and I. Now I can see that I spent much too long working on the idea that there must be something I could do to fix it. But I can see now that may have made it very difficult to enjoy relationships with other members of my family, like my daughters. Now I try to save a lot of the breath I used to use up arguing with my mother and put more of that energy into my girls.”
It was only when Liz found a way to stop endlessly repeating the destructive pattern with her mother that she became able for the first time to commit herself properly to her own family.