Daughters Of Passive Emotionally Unavailable Mothers

Are you the adult daughter of a passive, emotionally unavailable mother who fawned after her significant other's approval? Are you the adult daughter of a mother who you feel you could not attune herself to you? Were you praised for not needing her? Were you taught to fear speaking your truth because it made her uncomfortable? Adult daughters who grew up watching their mother's codependent ways rule their lives have been modeled a relationship style that can continue on in them.

Transcript

So today we're going to be talking about the daughters of passive emotionally unavailable mothers.

So today we're talking about the consequences of being raised by a mom who's passive and who is essentially emotionally unavailable.

If you grew up with a passive emotionally unavailable mom,

Chances are you might be secretly angry.

Chances are you might feel like you suffer with self-esteem issues.

You suffer with self-worth issues.

You suffer perhaps with perfectionism.

You may suffer with imposter syndrome.

You may be someone who is codependent,

Who is taken on people-pleaser tendencies,

Trying to feel good enough,

Trying to figure out how to avoid abandonment and rejection.

When you have a passive unavailable mom,

Chances are there's trauma in her background that is unresolved.

Passive mothers are those who cater to the moods of their husbands,

For instance.

These are moms who think that things are just going to work out.

They're moms who tend to have rose-colored glasses on and who ignore the stuff that we should be talking about as a family.

They are often women who were raised by alcoholic fathers and or mothers.

They grew up feeling like their feelings didn't matter.

They grew up feeling like the best thing for them to do was to just be quiet.

They grew up feeling like if they opened their mouth and they spoke about something that was significant,

There was a chance that there would be some trauma or drama when that happened.

Mothers who grew up and become passive and emotionally unavailable are really stuck in time.

They are wounded inner children that have never done any emotional recovery work and they've learned that it makes sense to be helpless.

They don't have the life skills to be able to set a boundary.

They don't have the life skills to speak their truth.

If you grew up with a passive,

Emotionally unavailable mom,

Then you grew up as an adult daughter watching your mom cater to the moods of your dad.

You watched your mom cater to a man that was difficult to please.

Lots of the cases.

It isn't always this way,

But of course the board,

This is generally what happens if you grew up in this dynamic.

If you grew up with a mom who believed that her mood really did depend on the mood of other people,

In other words,

It was her job to regulate her husband.

You watched your mom fall all over herself trying to please someone who was impossible to please and you grew up feeling very invisible because of that.

So mom wasn't emotionally available for you and if you had anything negative to say about your dad,

She quickly shut you down.

This is what emotionally unavailable mothers teach us.

They teach us that it makes no sense to complain.

So how that manifests in our life and our relationships is we struggle with boundaries.

We struggle with,

Should I talk about this?

Should I address this with my husband?

Should I actually bring this up with my kids?

Should I talk about this with my boss?

Should I talk about this with my coworker?

We sort of get this sense and we're not even aware that we feel this way that maybe we just shouldn't say anything about it.

We've learned by watching our passive,

Emotionally unavailable moms that it really doesn't make much sense to bring something up because nothing ever gets resolved.

And this becomes embedded in us and now we don't have the life skills to resolve issues.

And it's even deeper than that because if our mothers aren't attuned to what they're feeling and our mothers aren't teaching us how to speak up and if our mothers remain externally focused,

Catering to our fathers,

Then they are teaching us to do the same.

And so we have no one modeling for us how to tune into the divine self,

How to have an authentic conversation with the self.

If our mothers aren't attuned to their authentic self,

There is no way they can help us attune to our authentic self.

So we end up feeling like it makes no sense to address problems and we don't have any life skills to address them even if we were able to identify them.

Many emotionally unavailable moms who are very passive and don't want to kick up the dust and don't want to hurt anybody else's feelings,

One of the things that we heard growing up is you just need to be more patient.

Our mothers were martyrs,

Our mothers were stoic,

Our mothers stuffed their emotions and they didn't know what to do with us when we had emotions,

When we cried,

When we were frustrated,

When we thought that dad was being unacceptably cruel or dad was saying something to mom that we thought he should have never said and we speak up on behalf of our moms.

Our moms quickly shut us down because they don't want to upset dad.

So this passivity in mom teaches us that it makes no sense to speak up.

It frustrates us.

We end up stuffing our emotions of frustration because it can't go anywhere.

Mom's not listening.

Mom then teaches us that it's our fault.

We should just be more patient,

That we're too much.

We expect too much and that if we're just a little bit more patient with the people in our lives,

Then things will just magically work out,

But they never magically work out.

Our problems go underground.

They become emotionally embedded in our emotional bodies.

It messes with the way that we feel and the way that we think and we have all of these emotions that our passive mothers really haven't learned to allow and actually prevented us from actually feeling and expressing as their daughters.

We watched our mothers adapt to insanity.

We watched our mothers mitigate their emotions for the sake of our fathers who were rigid,

For the sake of our fathers who may have been cruel,

For the sake of our fathers who were domineering.

So as their daughter,

We're watching mom just mitigate and adapt and that teaches us that we should do the same thing.

And so when we grow up,

We have this high tolerance for nonsense within relationships that we shouldn't have,

But it's our programming.

This is literally what mom has taught us to do.

And there's this internal conflict because we have this abandonment wound from mom and oftentimes even from dad.

And so we're in a relationship.

We don't want to lose that attachment.

And the only coping strategy we have is to simply adapt.

We end up stuffing our emotions,

Becoming passive ourselves inside relationship dynamics and doing exactly what our mother did,

Which was adapt to insanity.

We were also downloaded to sort of like feel like a victim.

In other words,

Like our mothers were,

Or at least appeared to be victims of circumstance.

They weren't women that took control.

They weren't women that said,

I'm not tolerating this.

They were not women that set boundaries.

They were women that were very dependent,

Very codependent,

And also tolerated things that they should not tolerate.

And so the feeling that we get as their daughters is that we are unable to make a change in our life.

We don't know how to set a boundary because mom never taught us how to make a boundary.

And even though we might be angry growing up and seeing this behavior,

And even as a young adult daughter,

And even as an older adult daughter,

We could like have this anger that mom never got out of that relationship.

But it becomes part of our subconscious mind.

It becomes part of our neural wiring.

It becomes part of the way we relate to other people.

It becomes our relationship model.

And so we find ourselves in relationships feeling very much like we are at the tail at this end of someone else's kite.

We are being pushed around by the needs,

The moods,

The wants,

And the demands,

The opinions of other people.

And we below the veil of consciousness don't even realize that we also are at least behaving in the 3D world like we can't set a boundary or like we are being controlled by circumstances that are outside our control.

I remember having this awareness after my divorce because people would say to me,

If you were that unhappy,

Why didn't you leave?

And they were right.

I was so unhappy.

It was like at my wedding,

I was like,

I just made a huge mistake.

Before I walked down the aisle,

I was like,

I think I'm making a mistake.

But when you have a passive mom who has ignored your feelings and who has told you that you're too much and she just didn't want you to rock the boat to upset your dad or her husband,

You doubt yourself.

So when spirit and their divine self says,

Oh,

Lisa,

I don't know if you should do this.

This is a red flag.

This is a no for me or definitely like maybe not.

You don't know how to honor that because you don't have the confidence in the self because mom really never gave you the confidence to believe in the self,

Yourself personally,

Nor did mom mirror that you have the right to listen to yourself and be yourself.

So when those feelings came up,

I just swatted them down.

I couldn't look at them.

They were too scary.

It would have taken tremendous self confidence for me to be able to say,

This is what I think.

This is what I feel.

I need to hit the pause button or you know what?

I made a mistake and we should end this now before we make it worse.

I didn't do it.

I very much felt like once I was married,

I was stuck.

It never even crossed my mind that I didn't have to stay.

And that's super,

Super sad to me that there are adult daughters out there of passive,

Emotionally unavailable moms that feel the same way.

Like they really feel like I can't move.

I can't get a job.

I can't leave.

I can't end the marriage.

I have young children.

I can't,

I can't,

I can't,

I can't,

I can't.

I mean that was my mindset.

And the reality is that for me at least that I could have left.

It would have been incredibly difficult to leave,

But I could have left.

My feet weren't stapled to the ground.

And ultimately when I did leave after this terrible,

Terrible breakdown in our marriage and both of us became people neither one of us could recognize,

That is when I was forced to realize that I actually could get out.

I actually could advocate for myself,

Which is something that my mother never taught me to do.

So emotionally unavailable passive moms do it by default.

They attune themselves to other people.

And so as children we're watching our mothers attune themselves to our dads or attune ourselves to the needs of other people.

So we're actually our model for the self is someone who is externally focused.

It could be the job.

It could be someone at work.

It could be the neighbor next door.

But what we see is continually a mother who is not in her own power.

We see a mother who thinks that it's her responsibility to cater to the needs of other people.

We see moms whose mood is dependent upon the mood of their husband or whose mood fluctuates depending on who she's interacting with.

Another thing that we deal with as daughters of passive emotionally unavailable moms is that they can often be jealous of us as we age.

And so if we have friends and we start to go out,

That freedom is a trigger for a passive emotionally unavailable mom.

Although she won't be able to actualize those words,

She won't be able to understand what's happening in her own skin,

But a mom who is really arrested emotionally and who isn't dealing with her trauma can be very triggered by the daughter in her life who is finding a life of her own because it's something that the mom is unable to do.

Mom is trapped inside her own life or at least that's how she feels.

And it's all related to her childhood.

It's all related to what's in the subconscious mind.

It's all related to being more subconscious than conscious and unaware of self and not understanding that life evolves as a result of a pattern.

And so when you have a mom that's that arrested,

She's very immature and she can struggle as her daughter begins to age,

As her daughter begins to blossom,

As her daughter begins to have fun and have a boyfriend and go out and have friends,

And that freedom can be a trigger for her.

So it can be a very tumultuous time when you have a passive emotionally unavailable mom when you start to age as a daughter and she will literally resent you and you will feel like your mom is jealous of you and you will feel afraid to even admit that because it doesn't make sense.

And you know that people might judge you for saying that and you know how bizarre it sounds to say,

I think my mom is jealous of me.

I mean it just,

It doesn't make sense,

Right?

Like what mom is jealous of their daughter,

But it happens.

So if you are the adult daughter,

You are a wounded adult daughter who's been raised by a passive emotionally unavailable mom,

I'm here to tell you that those of us who have the same experience totally relate to feeling like mom's jealous of us.

It doesn't feel right.

So our mothers behaved in the 3d world as if they had no control over their emotions.

So they regulated their emotions apparently when dealing with your dad and his moods,

Or if it wasn't dad,

It was a man in her life or it was a significant partner in her life.

So you could watch your mom turn it on and turn it off.

So she knew when she could blow up and when she couldn't blow up.

And so because she was regulating herself based on the moods of your dad or her partner or a significant other,

What ended up happening was she can't express her anger and she can't express her rage.

So she's walking around on eggshells trying to make sure everybody's okay.

But what happens as the child of this passive emotionally unavailable mom is that that rage comes out sideways.

It's not uncommon for adult daughters of this type of a mom to get the wrath of that.

You are the one that will suffer the consequences of her anger.

No one else will be around.

No one else will believe you.

They won't believe that this very cute,

Passive church going Bible toting person who picks up stray dogs could be cruel to you.

It just won't make sense to them.

And you will feel very alone in your experience of your mom.

And you may even struggle with your own perception of her because on the surface she seems so passive,

Especially with your dad or the partner in her life.

She seems so subjugating.

She feels she seems so able to adapt to this person.

You may even struggle as the adult daughter with feeling sorry for her or guilty that you feel angry towards her because you know that she's not happy.

We recognize that our mother's moods are really dependent upon the moods of our fathers or the moods of their partners or the moods of others.

We recognize that our mothers are not emotionally here with us.

That their sense of beingness,

Their identity,

Their sense of purpose is tied up in the external world.

And it's certainly not tied to us.

So our moms are not available for us.

Another thing that a passive,

Emotionally unavailable mom will do is they will reward their daughters for not having a need.

And so I know this happened to me.

So when I did school projects by myself,

When I took care of something completely on my own,

Whether it was like filling out forms for school,

Whatever it was,

I was rewarded and patted on the back for doing it on my own,

For not needing her.

And how that shows up in our life later on as adult daughters is that we end up becoming lone wolves.

We are lone wolves in business.

We're lone wolves in our relationship.

We take everything on and we don't know how to ask for help because we have been conditioned to think it's weak to ask for help and it's good to not need.

And this gets us into trouble.

So all of this programming that our mothers have modeled for us becomes our own.

Even though we're not happy about it growing up,

And even though as adult daughters of age,

We can see that our mothers are still way too passive and they're not setting boundaries and we can be angry about it,

But we have to take into account how this modeling has affected us and how it's manifesting in our 3D lives.

One of the things that we have to be careful of as healing adult daughters of mothers like this is that because we watched our mother's mood change according to the moods of others,

So she wasn't grounded,

She wasn't self confident,

She didn't have self efficacy,

She wasn't self actualized,

And she didn't have a sense of self empowerment,

What ended up happening was we got the message that if something goes wrong and we're unhappy,

It must be someone else's fault.

And so we have to stay aware of how easy it is or how simple it is for us to develop the propensity to blame other people for why we're unhappy.

And it's innocuous,

It can be insidious,

Like we don't see it happening,

But if you are someone who feels very much affected by what's happening outside of you and you think you have an inkling that you were raised by an emotionally unavailable,

Especially a passive mom,

If you think this sounds like something that you were exposed to,

Take some time and ask yourself,

Like how is this showing up in my life?

Is my mood dependent upon other people?

Do I expect people to invite me everywhere?

Do I expect people to understand everything that I feel?

Do I blame people for why I'm unhappy?

I mean it makes sense.

If we have mothers whose moods depend on what's happening outside of her,

We get infused with this idea that has us believing that whatever's happening inside of me is because of what's happening outside of me.

And what I try to teach my adult daughters,

The ones that I coach,

Is that no,

No,

Dear mom,

We have to dial it back and we have to find your ability to ground yourself.

We have to heal those attachments to the external world.

We have to heal the wounds and the patterns and programs that are responsible for this stinking thinking.

We learn that it's not good to ask for help.

We learn that it's best to just rely on the self.

We learn that people can't be trusted.

People are not going to show up for us.

We end up feeling very,

Very frustrated by the dynamics that have been downloaded into our subconscious minds.

And we can feel very perplexed about what do we do with these feelings?

What do we do with the anger that we feel towards our mother?

Because we're not able to reach her.

We can't get to her.

We can't get her to wake up and be a part of our lives.

Back in 2010,

I had a routine hysterectomy and I actually ended up having a near death experience.

So I died on the table and it was quite the race to bring me back.

And fortunately,

I'm here.

Anyway,

The following day,

It turns out that my mother and father didn't come to see me in the hospital.

They didn't come for the entire week that I was there,

Even though I was in a medically induced coma.

And when they took me out of the coma and I was able to talk on the phone with people,

I remember a very painful conversation I had with my mom that really sums up what I'm trying to teach you here today as the daughter of a very passive,

Emotionally unavailable mother.

My mother was really caught between a rock and a hard place because my dad didn't want to make the two and a half hour trip to see me because he had a dentist appointment in the town that I lived in a week later.

His theory was if I drive in and see her today or tomorrow,

Then I have to drive back and then I have to drive into New York again.

I don't want to do that.

The kid's okay.

She's out of the coma.

Hooray.

What's the problem?

Why do I have to go?

Did my father have to come see me?

No.

Did my mother have to make the trip?

No.

Would it have been nice to?

Sure.

Would it have been the normal and expected thing to do for a mother to rush to the bedside of her daughter that had a near death experience,

Who was a single woman who had three children to take care of?

Wouldn't it have been normal for that to happen?

Absolutely.

I knew what was up.

When my mother called me,

I already knew that she was struggling,

That my father was giving her a hard time.

And I said to her,

Mom,

It's totally fine if you don't come.

And she said,

Are you sure?

I said,

Yep.

I said,

I know dad's giving you a hard time and I don't want to make it harder for you.

And we both know that you're not going to go up against him anyway.

So let's just make this nice and easy.

You don't have to come in and I'll be fine.

I'll make my way.

And that's the way I left it.

But I never forgot that phone call.

And I don't think she ever did either because it signified what my entire life with my mom was.

My mother was unable to detach herself from my father enough to be present for her children.

And there were major consequences.

I would dare to say that my brother,

My sister and I have all struggled with eating disorders.

We all struggled with extreme low self-esteem.

We have all been very sensitive to rejection.

We have all been very sensitive to what other people think about us.

We have become doers.

We have become people pleasers.

We're very hyper vigilant.

And it's been a struggle to really pull myself back from that and to heal so that I can break the patterns in me and be a more present mother for my children.

It took me a long time to get where I am.

It took me a long time to figure this out.

And I just hope that the information that I share is enough for any adult daughter out there who grew up with a passive,

Codependent,

Emotionally unavailable mom to recognize the consequences that had on you.

And you have come to get in touch with your divine feminine power.

It just means that we learn to celebrate our femininity.

It means that we learn to celebrate the nurturer that we are in a healthy way.

It means that we learn to speak our feelings.

And we don't have to live in fear of what a man thinks or what a man says.

We don't have to live in fear of someone's criticism,

Especially a man's judgment.

And this is super powerful because if we are mothers and we have daughters and we have sons,

We're modeling relationship behaviors for them.

And so the best thing that we can do is break through.

The best thing that we can do is heal from the patterns and the programs in the past that have wounded us in sometimes very invisible ways,

But manifest in the way that we show up in our relationships with other partners as well as with our children.

Thank you so much for being here and I so hope this has been helpful.

Namaste everybody.

Until next time.

Bye for now.

Shea Knight McL HORkey

Reviews

Very powerful, very relatable, very much needed this Monday morning. Will be coming back for more talks.

WOW - I never considered this was an issue with my mother, and you explained it perfectly. Thank you for sharing….it has helped me understand a lot!

This was great, would have appreciated something a bit less gendered as this doesn’t just apply to women, but it got the point across.

Fabulous as always ❤️🙏✨Lisa A. Romano, thank you for all you do for us 🌅🌌

I'm a Son of a woman who was not present. Mom was not a mom, nor a friend, nor, sadly, even a real person.

✨Mom, this is your story. I'm glad you are safe and happy now, and that - at long last - you see me and love me from the other side. I call on you to help me heal and grow from the Hell that we shared. I love you, Mom. 💖✨

Thank you, Lisa. 🙏🏼

This talk described my life. Been working thru healing the past 13 years and it’s still a struggle at times. I have healed a lot but I continue to feel guilty and angry about my relationship with my mother and when I have contact with her. I am glad that you spoke about mothers being jealous of their daughters and also the anger they display towards their daughters. I never got yelled at but my mom was overly critical growing up and I internalized that.

Thank you for the talk. It came at a time when I’ve been trying to do everything myself and I’ve made myself sick from it. Lone wolf thinking which always made me feel proud but now I understand it’s also something else - still trying to please my mother.

I’ve listened to some of your talks but this one hit home. I’ve had a hard time with Mother’s Day and I originally thought it was because of my own trauma after I left home but I believe it’s more to do with my mom and the expectation of that day.

Thank you. I can't say more... it's been eye opening...♥️

Thank you. I was able to hear somethings that helped me understand some of my own “quirks” (not asking anyone for help, staying in a broken relationship far too long, and my own emotional confusion.

I’m learning about tapping into my feminine more and more. Meditation has been such a huge help and taking the time whenever I need to without guilt also.
Thank you for sharing your story. That was rough. But I get it. 🙏🏾🌸🙏🏾

Another thank you for another piece of the puzzle!🙏🌄🐾

My mum left me with crazy Post Natal Depression with my 2 week old, cos my Dad got the flu. Yea "I understood" then however I have never truly understood until now. Thank you.

Wow, fantastic talk, thank you Lisa. I want to share this with my sister and my mom- that stuff is generational and explains a lot!

Thank you Lisa for making it simple to understand my life story!!
Together we heal and we are stronger
Love and light !

When a podcast describes your life exactly ❤️
Thanks for allowing me to listen today

GOD BLESS YOU LISA!

Holycow
You just described my situation and how my happiness / freedom / success at 50 yo is a trigger for my mom to tear me down (not to my face of course…. Because that would look bad) to others. She’s jealous. WOW. Thank you for this insight 🙏

Omg that made me almost cry… I’m a “tough old bird” and it still touched my heart. Thank you for your clarity.❤️

You are enough also Lisa. Thankyou for sharing your insights and thereby helping me and others. ✨🙏🏽✨♥️✨

Bingo! Thank you Lisa. All I can do right now is cry. Thank you 🙏

Bingo! Thank you Lisa. All I can do right now is cry. Thank you 🙏