Toxic Mothers
A toxic relationship is any relationship between people who don’t support each other. where there’s conflict, one seeks to undermine the other one.
While every relationship goes through its ups and downs, a toxic relationship is consistently unpleasant and draining for the people in it, to the point that negative moments outweigh the positive ones. Toxic relationships are mentally, emotionally and possibly even physically damaging to one or both parties.
What’s worse, a toxic mother or an absent father?
A toxic mother can cause just as much damage as an absent father.
“An absent father is like a blank space that you can fill, but a present but toxic mother is something that leaves a permanent scar or a lifetime open wound.”
What Makes a Toxic Mother?
This is not to make Moms look bad or to make you hate your mothers. However this is to tell you not to make excuses for her behavior or to underestimate the extent her toxic behavior affects you.
A toxic mother is one who doesn’t have boundaries, one who will act like they don’t love you until you’re ready to bend your will to make her happy. A toxic mother makes you fear them. Even if you’re an adult, you still fear your toxic mom. The pain she has caused you over the years, and maybe she's still causing it to you even now doesn’t seem to go away. A toxic mother not only just shoots down your ideas but becomes the curse of your entire existence.
7 Characteristics of a Toxic Mother
Humiliator
She will regularly make negative comments or jokes about you in front of your family and friends, without putting your feelings into consideration. She will disregard how her words may/will affect you.
Manipulator
She actively works to make you feel guilty or responsible for her bad behavior, often when she cannot have her way. She can also, indirectly or directly, blame you for her problems, or hold you accountable for her failures in life. Since she knows you too well, she can use your emotional weak spots to toy with your emotions or even blackmail you through your emotions like shame, guilt etc.
Control Freak
This is where she tries to control every aspect of your life as their child. She issues you with instructions on how to behave, what to wear, and what to do, even when you are an adult and can make your own decisions.
Overly Critical
She never sees your achievements, regardless of the great things you have done and still doing even as an adult. She is constantly putting you down and makes herself look better or exceptionally talented. Nothing is ever good enough for her.
Self Centered
Everything revolves around her. A Toxic mom will constantly force you to suppress your own feelings and focus on hers. It may feel like everything returns to the same question: “What about ME?”
Ignores Personal Boundaries
We can argue that a mom keeping a close eye on their child is a good thing, and in certain situations, its even necessary to snoop on a child to keep them safe. However, everyone needs to be able to set boundaries for themselves including teenagers. A mom who is toxic overrides these boundaries every time, which causes many problems. She will get to your room without even knocking the door justifying that she's your mom.
Disallows Negative emotions
There is nothing wrong with helping children see the positive side of any situation. However, being completely dismissive of a child’s negative feelings and emotional needs can lead to Depression.
A toxic mom doesn't allow you to express unhappiness or negative emotions towards how she's treating you. Expressing anger towards her is not allowed, She will make you feel bad for feeling bad, irrespective of the reason.
HOW DOES HAVING A TOXIC MOTHER AFFECT YOU?
· You have a Low Self-Esteem
· You become Overly Competitive
· Self-Sabotage
· You get high to tolerate poor or bad treatment that you receive from others
· You constantly feel guilty for wanting more in life
· You become excessively controlling
· You become really shy coz you constantly feel like there’s something wrong with you
· Eating Disorders, Depression, and Addictions
· You might end up being fake coz you fear that the true you will threaten people away.
· You constantly feel like you have to remain small/powerless for others to love you
Family have a huge impact on how one views the world and everything else: their self-worth, perceptions, trust etc. Basically, this is the foundation for how you see and interact with people, places, and things.
Once you realize that you have been exposed to toxicity, it may be liberating to recognize that many behaviors you learned are toxic. You may have viewed damaging experiences you had growing up as normal but toxic is just that…toxic!
There’s good news here though. With putting in some little work, learned behaviors can be unlearned. Recognize that you cannot change until you understand and accept the things that have influenced your behaviors. You are a product of the environment you grew up in, you were shaped by your environment.
Realizing that you need help to deal with an issue is most often the first, important step in any healing journey. If reading this article was triggering, that could be an indication that there’s something at the back of your mind that needs your attention. However, it would not be advisable to tackle this alone. You can turn to a trained counselor for assistance towards your healing.
