Mothers Who Can't Love: A Therapist's Guide to Healing from the Emotional Damage of Unloving Mothers

People who have cut ties with their toxic parents usually face more criticism when their toxic parents get old or sick, and this is always a loaded topic. I have struggled in this difficult situation for 18 years. My mother is poor and always needs money ( she refuses to work since the age of 37 ), divorced, and I am her only child. I wanted to make her happy and be a good daughter. I worked hard to support her financially for 18 years, be her substitute spouse and parents ( she refuses to start a new life ). But 18 years later, I found that the more you sacrifice your own needs to satisfy her unjustified demand, the more she felt entitled for. You owe her because you are her only child. If you don’t do whatever she wants you to do, or don’t give her the amount of money she asked, she feels that she is entitled to make your life miserable, just because she is old, poor, and alone, as well as the fact that I’m her only child. Some people say toxic people can’t change. I’d like to say toxic people can’t change for better, but they can easily change for worse. They use being old, poor, or alone as a golden opportunity to manipulate, control and use you to an unlimited level. She knows those are your hot buttons and she know when she press those hot buttons and say jump, you will immediately respond “how high?” If you turn your back to her, she can easily turn you into a bad person in the eyes of outsiders who never have had such an experience, but are certain that you should do more for your mother. There is no too low in a toxic mother’s mind to get what she wants and use you. She just wants to move you like a chess piece on a chessboard so she can win. Some outsiders even told me she is your mother, you are her only child, just give her money and do whatever she wants to make her happy. It is your fate. This is simply not right. It is manipulation and control through emotional blackmail in order to satisfy her unjustified demands. They forgot one fundamental element to keep any family relationship alive and that is love. Love makes people feel good, relaxed, peace, safe, and respected, but not off balance. People have limits. After 18 years of struggle, I’ve had to cut ties with my mother. I love the words put together by Dr. Susan Forward in her book “Mothers Who Can’t Love” as she speaks for my experience and feeling: “You may be surrounded by friends or family members who are certain they know what’s right for you and your mother. But you are the only one who knows what you can handle, and what you need to do to preserve your own health and sanity. Your mother’s illness or widowhood isn’t an excuse for her to behave badly. It doesn’t obligate you to tolerate having your life turned upside down, despite great pressure on you simply to go along with her requests and demands. You need to stand up for yourself, difficult as that can be… If you’re faced with a mother in crisis and have trouble putting yourself in the picture according to expectations set by others, fall back on your assertiveness, your non defensive communication, your boundary-setting… if you still feel torn or guilty, remember how much of your life you spend as the one for whom promises were rarely kept, the one whose needs rarely mattered. The neglected side of yourself is still there inside you, healing now because at last it sees you honoring it and all you can be - remember that when you think your needs count for less than someone else’s. Your well-being depends on it.”

Insightful and interesting read

I was SO tired of hearing girls and women say that their mothers were 'difficult' or that their relationship was 'strained.' The woman who raised me is toxic poison. If that sounds like your type of situation, I highly recommend this book. This book really helped me. I always thought that I was the only one with a mother who said and did this kind of crap. The book is written by a therapist and contains personal stories from women that she's helped. The therapist and author splits mothers into five categories: 1. The severely narcissistic mother (But what about me?) 2. The overly enmeshed mother (You are my whole life.) **I call this the smother. 3. The control freak (Because I said so.) 4. Mothers who need mothering (I depend on you to take care of everything.) 5. Mothers who neglect, betray, and batter (You're always causing trouble.) I can't say what a relief it was to read this book and find out that my mother falls into most of the aforementioned categories, with one or two really pinning it down. I finally felt like someone got it. Some of the stories of these women were almost exactly like my own, it was scary at times. Just reading through those women's stories helped me so much. At the end of the book, the author gives some exercises and examples on how to move on and get though the abuse. She recommends therapy, but honestly, that's why I bought the book in the first place. I'm that kind of person, though...therapy doesn't really work for me. This book did, though. I highly recommend it.

So for the most part, I think this was a great book. I am all about having exercises, scripts, mantras, and practices to work with, and I feel like this book was a great balance of mental changes with active changes. For the most part, I also really agreed with the content - it did not victim blame as many resources on the subject tend to do, and it left room for the survivor to make their own choice on how to proceed while preparing them with resources and likely outcomes. Very empowering! What I would have liked better was for the book to be more careful in how it discusses mental illness. I think it’s got a good start with differentiating a mother’s choice to behave poorly from mental illness as a condition. However, it was unsettling to me that the book only talked about mental illness as a way to explain some of a mother’s behavior - which I think strengthens a cultural misperception we have, where we think bad behavior is caused by mental illness or that mental illness makes you a hurtful person. What about the daughters who may have developed mental illnesses themselves from their mothers’ poor parenting, but are working to be good and healthy people? The book could have been more careful and more representative here. Second, a lot of the book’s examples of how to have a better relationship with your mom focused on the overly attached mom. I would have liked more examples of how to work with angry, controlling moms, and how those situations can play out.

I can't believe how helpful this book has been. I know... "self-help" books as a genre can get a bit it a bad rap, but as the daughter of a cold, critical mother, this book has been therapeutic. Got a narcissistic mother? Overly-enmeshed mother? Control-freak mom? Abusive mom? Give this a read. The tips in the later chapters about dealing with an unloving mother now, as an adult, seem so obvious but for some reason I never got there on my own. The author must have a lot of experience because she seems to know the push we each need to see that we are not - and should never have been made to feel that we are - responsible for, as she writes in chapter 11, our "mother's life, moods, feelings, or distorted perceptions" of us. I'm glad to have found this resource.

Achei o livro ótimo , com o padrão de comportamento dessas mães bem detalhado e a forma de lidar com elas da melhor forma, foi muito útil !

Excellent book. I would highly recommend this to anyone who has a difficult relationship with their mother. I had read Susan's other book first 'Toxic Parents', but needed to understand my relationship with my own mother a bit better so bought this book. I am so pleased that I did, to read that other women are also struggling to understand why they have such a difficult relationship with their mothers, is very empowering. This is such a taboo subject and no one wants to talk about it, so to have a book full of other women's stories who can resonate with my own has been very healing. The books offers very practical advice, how to enact boundaries, what battles to fight, which to walk away from. But most of all, the message is that as a child of a woman who was unable or unwilling to bond with you, it's not your fault. It's taken many years to finally get that message but now I have I want other women to know that it's possible to move on in your life and be proud of who you are.

Excellent resource book

The reader will without doubt need immense courage and objectivity to benefit from this book. Author's experience in this area seems extensive and the exercises recommended by her works. IT WILL WORK FOR "SONS" AS WELL, as it did for me. Everything might not resonate, not all the case studies and tips mentioned in the book, but the one who has an "objective" understanding of the damage done by a mother or parent will be able to cherry pick things which apply to him/her. I am highly thankful to the author to pick up this sensitive and often discarded issue and reality of some people's lives and put it up for scrutiny. But I also wish lots of patience, strength, self-love, and courage to the readers who wish to engage with this vital aspect of their life. Not everyone will agree, even some mainstream "experts" - in my personal experience - the amount of weight this issue of parenting holds on an individual's psyche and thus their lives. Author here has steps recommended to undo the damage and create a safe distance from toxic patterns of mothers in a manner which is NOT forthright aggressive, but systematic and very thoughtful.

Escribe de forma muy dura y directa los comportamientos de las madres que no han podido maternar de una forma sana. Definitivamente empoderada y ayuda a las hijas a salir del círculo de abuso. Sin embargo en terapia me ha sanado más entender el porqué del comportamiento de los padres. Y no solo juzgarlos como “no amorosos”.