Sons And Their Mother Wounds

In this episode, Lisa delves into the topic of their son's and mother's wounds. She explains how men have been conditioned to suppress their emotions, especially when it comes to expressing vulnerability or seeking help. This conditioning is often reinforced by toxic messages regarding men and emotions, which can lead to a man struggling with suppressed rage.

Lisa also discusses how emotionally unavailable mothers can cause a son to crave maternal love in the future. This can lead to a man seeking out relationships with women who remind him of his mother, hoping to finally receive the love and validation he never received as a child. However, this can also lead to a cycle of disappointment and frustration, as the man may never truly find the love and validation he seeks.

Transcript

Welcome to the breakdown to breakthrough podcast.

My name is Lisa a Romano.

I am a life coach best-selling author YouTube vlogger Meditation teacher and expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness Rather than living a reactive life May your heart feel blessed your mind feel expanded and your spirit find hope As you spend time with me here at the breakdown to breakthrough podcast So today we're going to be talking about sons and their mother wounds So when we're talking about mother wounds,

What we're talking about is essentially a mother who has unhealed childhood trauma This is a mom who has unknowingly in most cases transferred her feelings of inadequacy Her feelings of unworthiness her anxiety Her view of looking at the world on to her sons and in this this section We're going to be talking specifically about sons I do a lot of work when it comes to mother wounds and daughters because obviously I had a mother who had a ton of mother wounds and I'm a daughter and I understand how specifically a mother's unhealed trauma can affect a daughter but I am also a Unhealed daughter or I should say I'm I am working on healing my wounds forever in that process I am the daughter of an unhealed mother who had a son and I recognize how my unhealed trauma my mother wounds infected my son and affected my son in terms of him experiencing mother wounds as well and those of us who are on the healing path those of us who are Looking at our childhood trauma those of us who recognize ourselves as struggling with low self-worth Low self-perception.

We have a negative perception of self.

We feel inadequate.

We feel broken We look our side of ourselves for answers to why we feel the way we feel and we are mothers We also have to recognize how our unhealed trauma affects our daughters and our sons if we have sons So a mother wound is the result of a mother being put in a situation where she has been raised by a mother who was emotionally unavailable a mother who was highly critical a mother that she could not please a Mother who had low self-worth herself a mother who had unhealed trauma in My situation I was raised by a mother who was the adult child of two alcoholics and My grandmother came from extremely humble beginnings a lot of abuse on her side of the family And you can just see that mother wounds are generational and how we pass them down From one generation to the next the Bible says the sins of the mother and the father Fall on the sons and the daughters and so this is how programming works.

This is how generational trauma works and It's important for us to take the time as moms to recognize how our trauma affects our children and today We're talking about how that trauma affects our sons So trauma that we pass along to our sons is felt on a visceral level Our sons absorb our trauma.

They can watch a mother be Self-deprecating they can watch a codependent mother feel lost inside a narcissistic relationship They can observe their mothers be highly critical of themselves highly critical of others sons of Mothers who have mother wounds you may have been raised if you are the son of a mother who is highly critical Nothing you ever did was good enough.

You could have been raised by a mother who saw you as her little husband Maybe your mother had an unhealthy relationship with her spouse and you became the replacement spouse And so in that sense you grow up feeling invisible Because your needs are not being attuned to you become your mother's caretaker You become your mother's friend you become the little spouse It's now your responsibility to make sure that mom's emotionally regulated I've had male clients who at a very early age went out and began to provide for the family because mom was struggling financially and Was unable for whatever reason to get her act together and so the son takes up the sword of being the man in the house and then goes out and fends for mom and There are situations where mom is an alcoholic and you have a son who is now taking on the responsibilities of the home You have sons who watch their mothers participate and be involved in toxic relationships and Sons want to take care of their mothers naturally and they end up giving their mother the emotional support that they're Observing the partners of their mothers unable to give them and in all of these cases What's happening is that the son is learning that his needs don't matter When we are unable to really see our sons when we don't recognize how our trauma is Affecting them then our children are feeling abandoned.

Our sons are feeling abandoned Emotionally when we are unable to attune to them When we cannot sue their own emotions when we are Emotionally dysregulated as mothers when life is so stressful and we're freaking out Our sons are observing this and we have to also recognize that this creates panic in our sons When mom is losing it a son feels like it's his responsibility to fix it in lots of the cases And they will fawn they will people please mommy.

Please don't be angry.

Please don't be angry I'll do anything mommy and anything mommy and Sons can feel responsible for a mom being angry.

It's all my fault.

I'll fix it.

Mommy.

I'll fix it.

Mommy This is a son who is learning that it's his responsibility That mom is upset and his responsibility to fix it this is where shame comes from this is where over-responsibility comes from what makes this an even more terrible situation in my opinion is that men in our society are often given the message that they are supposed to be unemotional or They get this impression that being emotional is wrong They grow up hearing things from their own father's father wound saying suck it up only babies cry don't be a girl You're a sissy.

If you cry big boys,

Don't cry men.

Don't cry be tough be tough What does that mean on one side of the equation the parent table?

We have mothers who may be emotionally unavailable may be overly emotional and caught up in their own trauma their own CPTS day and be Completely overwhelmed with their emotional landscape and not recognize that that situation makes them unavailable to their children or their sons than the other side of the Parent table you might have a father who is completely shut off from his emotions Who is completely cut off from his emotions due to his own mother wounds and his own father wounds thinking that?

Men don't cry and it's wrong to be emotional And so when we're talking about little boys little boys may oftentimes experience the one message where?

They hear their fathers say big boys don't cry So that means I have to cut myself off from my emotions and on the other side They see that their mothers are so over emotional and mom can't be there for them And if a mother can't soothe her own emotions,

Then she's going to be super frustrated When her son starts to act up at two or three or four or five and she can't manage his emotions that's when a lot of unaware parents and unconscious parents resort to spanking their child or Ridiculing their child or shaming their child or withholding love from their child or screaming or yelling at the child You can't negotiate with the five or six year old.

They are completely limbic You can't all you can do is understand where they're coming from in the best-case scenario Remain calm,

But in order for a parent to remain calm,

They have to be conscious They have to be understanding of their trauma They have to understand that they might not know how to emotionally regulate or they might be very controlling and think that if their Children look good if their children perform well in school if their children have everything a child could ever need what could go wrong?

A lot could go wrong because what really children really want more than anything and need is an honest Authentic connection with their mother and their father or their caretakers That's what a child needs to feel seen to feel emotionally valuable To know that someone has the capacity to help them with difficult emotions Sons of mothers who carry mother wounds don't know how to emotionally regulate They don't know how to self-soothe They're very confused as well because they can see a mother who they have empathy for Especially if their mother is struggling inside a toxic relationship And so their empathy for their mother their love for their mother clouds their ability to understand that they are not Growing up feeling emotionally attuned to this can be very confusing for a young man because it's unidentifiable They might not be able to understand Why it is they can't connect to their emotions or why it is their emotions are so all over the place Or why all they can feel is either sadness or anger or once in a while bouts of happiness So there are a full range of emotions It's like a spectrum of emotions that they can't get in touch with When we have a dad who is emotionally unavailable for a son this compounds the situation Oftentimes what happens is boys become very very angry because their emotions have been forced to go underground So they're not allowed to cry like their sisters And what do they do they yell at their sisters for being a drama queen that happened in my life Where my brother was raised by my father to believe that he was a sissy if he cried yet My brother was a very emotional young man my mother emotionally abandoned my brother allowed my father to say whatever he wanted to to my brother in my case my parents both criticized me for crying and being emotional and when my brother was able to partake in those types of criticisms My mother took him under her wing and he she encouraged him to mock me and to make fun of me so this also becomes a sibling issue when you have a Mother who has both a female and a male a daughter and a son and these dynamics begin to play out in my situation This is was the way that my my brother felt seen by my mother by mocking me and mocking my emotions But what was the end result my brother ends up having all of this repressed rage?

He ends up being very angry and like many men they identify With what they can do for their family they identify with their role in society there They are policemen.

They are firemen.

They are doctors.

They are lawyers.

They are landscapers.

Whatever it is They believe that their worth is in providing for the family now this creates communication problems because when a man gets married and his partner wants to Discuss things that a little bit deeper men who have mother wounds are frustrated because they can't Jump that divide you're asking them to access a part of themselves that their mothers taught them Didn't exist because they were ignored and their fathers taught them.

It was a bad place to go So even though they're living out Pandora's box They think Pandora's box is closed.

No,

It's not you're living through your trauma,

But you don't know it Why this is very complicated because the human mind is more subconscious than it is conscious And we are designed to run away from forest fires ie our feelings and negative emotions and shame We are not conditioned and we are not taught traditionally to embrace our emotions and to explore Unexplored emotions within our own beings.

So this becomes a very Convoluted experience for the son that has a mother wound when his wife or partner is like can we just talk about this?

And they can't they don't want to talk about it And when you push them oftentimes they withdraw as a way to protect themselves From these overwhelming emotions that they've been taught were wrong now Imagine the pain versus pleasure which is all subconscious kicking in when you want your husband who's had a narcissistic mother or even a codependent mother and or a mother who has borderline personality disorder a mother who was Overwhelmed because she had to work three jobs and she wasn't able to be there for her son or a mother who was an Alcoholic the sons have not been attuned to emotionally they have unmet psychological needs Now as a big person this person looks very capable and you as their spouse try to talk to them And you're asking them to tell you how they feel they can't You have to understand if you love a man who has mother wounds.

This is not his fault This is someone whose brain is triggered by the accusation that he even has Emotions or that he should access them because his childhood programming his faulty subconscious programming Tells him that doing this means he's not a man.

There's something wrong with him if he has Emotions what happens is we are a society of people cut off from what makes us human We don't know how to access the parts of ourselves that are so beautiful That allow us to know who we are That allow us to tell people who we are that allow us to be able to stand there in the presence of another person Emotionally vulnerable emotionally naked without fear.

We don't know how to do it But I'm hoping that with information such as this as we learn more about childhood trauma as we deep dive into Codependency codependency in my opinion I call it the disease of invisibility if you are a man and you shut down and you are angry all the time or you subconsciously expect your wife or your spouse to be the mother you never received and When your spouse is frustrated by you making them guess at what you need or they don't understand Why you shut down or why you have emotional outbursts?

This becomes a marital issue and as we get Hopefully as we get smarter as a society as we become more self-exploring self-accountable as we understand the severity of childhood trauma and how childhood trauma manifests in most personality disorders most borderline Personality issues many bipolar those of us who are struggling with bipolar have childhood trauma undiagnosed That studies are proving that those of us who are having health issues We have unresolved childhood trauma.

I think this is the smoking gun addiction childhood trauma Schizophrenia lots of times childhood trauma Asthma childhood trauma feeling unseen feeling invisible Feeling like you don't matter that you are worthless and no one cares about how you feel Triggers a stress response triggers cortisol constricts the bronchioles I mean we can go on and on about how feeling disconnected from love Disconnected from our mothers disconnected from our fathers how that triggers the brain into fight-or-flight and how unresolved trauma Keeps us on in these suspended states of survival and it also makes us prone to toxic narcissistic relationships in the future Why if I don't feel good enough and I believe that I need to seek approval Which was the story of my life.

It was repetition compulsion It was an unmet psychological need that I had to gain a connection to my mother This did not go away this goes underground and it manifests in our choices and partners I married my mother the first time I married someone who was energetically her twin and guess what I chased approval Looking back.

I'm sure my ex-husband had mother wounds as well and Me wanting to connect with him frustrated him.

It caused him to withdraw and unfortunately,

He came off very Narcissistic very angry very frustrated and resorted to stonewalling and gaslighting and deflection and blame-shifting and making stories up and As I grew in self-awareness in mindfulness and in self-compassion I realized that I didn't have to stay in a relationship with someone who didn't want to figure out his stuff Looking back.

There was about a three-month period where the two of us committed to going to Separate therapists he was on medication for a short time and things were really looking good But his mother convinced him that taking medication was not in his best interest If we ever went to court,

It would make him look bad and he came off medication His anxiety went through the roof and my opinion and things just got worse from there But when you're dealing with people who have mother wounds,

Whether it's you or you're married to someone who has mother wounds It's really important to understand the childhood trauma piece It's really important to understand why in this case a man would be upset with someone pushing him to feel he doesn't know how to feel and How this can result in repressed rage not being able to express Sadness not being able to express grief not being able to express loss It's like you take a beach ball and you're trying to hold it underwater Eventually,

The pressure is going to bounce it right back up and you're going to pop like a cork and how sad that is And so I wanted to add this to this discussion.

I wanted to put this on on record I want men to feel supported I want them to understand that women as well as men suffer mother wounds Although they might express themselves differently Another point I want to make is that we have a really big problem in our society in the especially in the West with expressing emotions and Emotional regulation.

I think we are a society that's being driven by External validation.

I have to look a certain way.

I have to make a certain amount of money I have to drive a certain car.

No,

You don't I have to look a certain way No,

You don't my kids have to excel just like everybody else's kids No,

They don't my kids have to be an X amount of sports in order for me to look like a good mom or good dad No,

They don't.

These are all external conditions that we are placing on ourselves and I think it's society fueled I think we society is built that way where we are Teaching people that they have to keep striving and striving and striving and striving Putting unnecessary stress on us as human beings and making us feel unworthy Making us feel afraid triggering our survival response and when we have unhealed trauma,

We are like stuck in this ectoplasm and we don't even know and We really need to learn how to express our emotions so what women are taught from the time they're little that if they have emotions their babies if they have Emotions or something wrong with them if they have emotions it's because they're a drama queen.

They're looking for attention My mother used to call me Sarah Bernhardt.

I had no idea who Sarah Bernhardt was she would say things like oh Lisa should win an Academy Award.

What is the implication you're telling me that what I'm feeling is wrong It's inappropriate and I'm making it up.

So my suffering doesn't matter not even to my mother Eventually,

I became numb.

I Stopped paying attention to what I felt which fueled an eating disorder because I felt so out of control Internally,

I was looking for something to control and I had been taught by my dad that if I looked a certain way I got external validation.

It was a very immature Way of viewing the world,

But my self-perception was skewed My brother was taught that if he had emotions,

He was a baby and he was a sissy.

What did he do?

He became a police officer and He became someone who felt very confident wearing a police uniform and in my opinion my brother has tremendous repressed rage from being raised by people a my mother ignored his emotions and she also allowed my father to verbally and psychologically abuse him and sometimes physically and My brother was raised by a man who mocked him for having emotions and there is no doubt that my father had mother wounds because His mother took her own life when he was about three or four years old and his father was an alcoholic So as you can see both of my parents suffered mother and father wounds My mother's mother was an alcoholic.

Her father was an alcoholic.

He was domestically abusive and what happened?

She raised us she married a man who had mother wounds and father wounds my grandmother on my father's side took a life and His father was an alcoholic.

So here we have wounded parents Raising wounded children and then what do my brother and I do we raise wounded children?

Thankfully at this stage in my life,

I do everything I can I've committed myself to healing my mother wounds and my father wounds I've committed myself to healing from childhood trauma.

I do this through the work of mindfulness through self-compassion through self-accountability and through consciousness I will never stop doing this work because I see the benefit in my own life and it also Allows me to show up for my children In fact,

I just took my son out to breakfast last week and I said to him.

I know I hurt you It's not just your father and I don't want you to have that block between you and I I want you to understand that I know I had anxiety.

I know that I was overwhelmed I know that I worked three jobs just to keep the house afloat and that's not playing the victim.

I know how my living and survival made it impossible for me to show up as authentically as I could have and should have for you on top of you experiencing the Dysfunctional relationship between your father's so my poor son got it on both ends but what I'm doing is I'm being accountable and I'm healing myself and I'm able then to Find space to heal the shame that I have from wounding my son.

I'm able to have self-compassion for myself,

I'm able to have self-compassion for the suffering and the acknowledgement of Causing my son to suffer I'm able to withstand the shame that shows up knowing that I unknowingly Hurt my children.

I'm able to hold space for him so that when we discuss it I can show up as authentically as I possibly can at this stage of my recovery journey for him So healed mothers are able to heal their children and that's the only way it goes And so I hope that this session has been helpful I hope that if you are the adult son who is struggling with mother wounds you feel more seen dear one and You find ways to embrace how you feel.

I hope that if you are a woman and you believe that the man that you love is struggling with mother wounds that this makes you develop more empathy and more understanding and more compassion for the man that you love who May be looking to you to mother him in a way that he was denied now this is a very difficult thing to Navigate because a woman who is overwhelmed.

Let's say in a relationship with a man She has children who feels like her husband wants to be nurtured It could feel for the woman like give me a break.

I give so much to the house I give so much to my job.

I give so much to our children It might put pressure on her to do that However,

I feel that when women when we're talking about heterosexual relationships right now Just to make things easy when a wife or a partner understands the wounds of her husband Then it is far more easy for that woman to give compassion and to be nurturing Understanding that she's helping her husband heal if you can get the man to recognize Ah,

This is what I'm doing.

I have unhealed wounds I have mother wounds.

My mother was married to an alcoholic.

My mother got involved with an alcoholic.

She ignored me She ignored my sisters.

I grew up feeling unseen.

I felt like I had to protect her from this alcoholic I didn't get that nurturing that I needed from my mother because I was so worried about her and I can see how as an Adult male.

I just want to take care of my family take care of my family take care of my family The way I took care of my mother took care of my mother took care of my mother But below the veil what I'm doing in the rescuing and their caretaking and the people-pleasing and the appeasing and working my butt off I'm identifying with my role and Subconsciously looking for my wife to fill that need and that could frustrate my wife I see that now if a man could see that and work on his wounds He will need his wife to nurture him in that way less and It can elevate the relationship between the husband and wife and bring it to a much more mature Authentic level and now rather than have codependency rather have abandonment trauma run the relationship We develop interdependency the ability to rely and depend on my partner in a healthy way Not in an unhealthy subconscious way and that really is possible Especially in this day and age where the information is there there are programs that can help you There are books that can help you heal your life men have resources that can help them heal They have men's groups that can help them heal we have this entire emotional landscape inside of us that is unexplored and We just go out into life based on our childhood programming.

We have all of these egoic Anachritic narratives happening inside of our head.

We mess things up We don't know how we're messing them up and we're not looking within we're stuck I call it the ectoplasm the codependent ectoplasm And then we have cultures and societies that encourage the seeking of validation that they encourage this intermittent quick Validation from someone outside of you.

It's encouraged to Be someone who is powerful and almighty and is taking the world by storm At anyone's expense we encourage it We applaud people and especially men that are this mighty and this powerful Well,

Can we look at the state of the world right now?

I think that a good dose of Nurturing is what the entire world needs before we blow each other up.

We can use some comfort We can use some nurturing we've got to find the middle ground So I believe that we have been lied to I believe that the true nature of a human being is Connectedness the true nature of a being is Comfort the true nature of a being is love and being able to connect to people in our tribe in society I do don't do not believe that our true nature is Hedonistic and narcissistic.

I do not believe that I believe that's what we've been told And I think that that justifies a lot of why we take advantage of one another But I don't believe that that is the truth and I do believe that if we can teach people to make a u-turn In life,

Just stop what you're doing.

Just stop.

Look at your life Look at how you feel inside if you're not happy something's wrong if your relationships suck Something's wrong.

If you're on your second marriage a third marriage and you can't get along with people Something's wrong.

You're disconnected from the true self And if we can get you to sit long enough to understand why and to become curious Then we've got a chance and helping you connect to the love that you are We can actually heal that abandonment wound and help you connect yourself Help you heal shame help you get to a point where you have you are losing self compassion and in turn you have compassion for other people and That's when you're able to connect to people without Expectations without being critical without expecting them to change for you.

You're good.

You're good.

You're good.

You love yourself And you begin to attract people who love you at that level and life can become magnificent It can become glorious.

You will physically heal your relationships with heal and Life becomes very different than what you've known for your lifetime I hope this has been helpful dear ones namaste until next time as I bow to the love and the light that is Absolutely in you.

Bye for now

Reviews

Lisa, thank you. This is so brilliant and important. May all humans understand your message. I agree with everything you say. I will share it in my man's group and elsewhere.

Great.

This was very helpful and nice. Thank you so much 😊

Thank you for a important message.

Wow. I'm a 45 yr old father of a 14yr old son and 5yr old daughter, who absolutely suffered mother/father wounds. They split early, I was passed between and neglected by both, and I've never learned to properly process it.

Now I'm struggling mightily with how to connect with/parent my son, and I'm fearful of how it will affect my daughter. So much of what you said resonated with me I can't put it all in a short comment, but thank you for sharing this. It's given me so much to think about and I plan on coming back to it.

Namaste 🙏🏽❤️🙏🏽

💜

This was very insightful, Lisa. Many thanks!

I was wondering if you would speak more on the continuing influence wounded mothers have over their adult sons with mother wounds. You mentioned it briefly in connection with comments your former mother-in-law made to your ex-husband about being on medication, but what if the wounded mother (with a very domineering personality) resides in the same household as her adult son? In this case, the work her married son is trying to do (and making good progress under the circumstances) is almost continuously undermined by the constant presence of his mother in the home. For various health and financial reasons, she has been unable to live on her own for the past 17+ years, though that situation will be changing within the next few years as she gets her new place ready to move into at last. Her son is frustrated and wants her out of the house as soon as possible (his wife as well, and has for many years - their child, also affected by this dynamic, is gratefully out of the home and soon to be a college graduate). The more the son attempts to re-assert himself and embrace the healing work he has already done and continues to do, the more his mother seems to be stepping up the same behaviors that caused the wounds in the first place.

I have observed this dynamic (it is within my family) from the beginning, and despite my education and professional experience in counseling psychology and relational psychology via genealogy (my almost-completed PhD), I have not really looked into the mother and father wound concepts in great detail - though I am very familiar with them in general terms.

I have, until hearing this talk, been viewing the ongoing harmful dynamics as more of persistent retraumatization and co-dependency where the son is trying to break free and his mother is not letting go. (She does not seem to be consciously aware of this situation, however.)

Now I'm rethinking how I frame this, and wondering how I can best support the family while waiting for the mother-in-law to vacant the family home at last - even if she'll be living on the other side of the driveway. Contact will be ongoing, but there won't be same in-home interaction 24/7. I wonder what effect that physical separation will have on her son's healing work, despite continued general proximity.

Thank you so much for giving such helpful material to mull over and incorporate into how we approach and interact with others. I would love to hear more of your thoughts specifically on this topic of sons with mother wounds, and in particular the difficulties sons face when they recognize they need to step away for their own wellness but they feel obligated to care for their mothers who still perpetuate those same old wounds and make it hard for their sons to detach sufficiently.

I don't comment here much, but I do listen to your uploads to Insight Timer often and have for years. You do great work and are a blessing in your service to this community and the world as a whole, Lisa. I see you and the light within you. Be well. 🤲🏻💖🤲🏻

So very good as always so grateful for you 🙏🏼❤️‍🩹

Thank you, as a mother of 3 sons, 2 divorces and a lot of generational trauma, this was so very helpful in leading the pathway to healing for my family. Namaste.

Tha fact that this content is free is astonishing. There's just so much wisdom and clarity in your words 💕 thanks Lisa

Thanks for sharing this information with me. I have been trying to reach out to my inner child and this talk has helped me to understand better what makes me tick.