People pleasing & the mother wound

3,743 views

By viral standards that's not a lot, but for me, bumbling away in my small social media community, those numbers are big and unusual. So what was it that made this particular reel connect with nearly four thousand people and prompted a fair few people to save it and to start following me?

I think something about the subject landed for people and I have been reflecting on it more and more. How much I see this subject underlying the struggles that show up in my therapy room, how widespread I think this issue is.

I am naming this issue as:

The mother wound

This is what my Reel said:

Let's call people pleasing what it is...

...the survival strategy of a child growing up with emotionally unavailable, rejecting or unpredictable parents.

and then in the caption, I wrote]

• Also true for always putting yourself at the bottom of the never ending list of To Dos and tasks.

• It's saying sorry when someone helps you, instead of thank you.

• It's gaslighting yourself about any struggle you have - physical, mental or emotional.

• It's feeling that needing healthy boundaries is somehow selfish or reflective of a failing in you to push on through.

• It's feeling guilty about needing rest.

• It's discomfort acknowledging your feelings.

• It's seeing your pain as a burden to others.

• It's grind culture.

• It's never enough.

• It's your value dangling like a carrot - always ahead and never present...just one more step, and then I'll feel good about myself.

I'm calling it. This isn't people pleasing. It's trauma. And trauma heals in safe relationship.

The answer is you, claiming your worth with the care, responsibility, love and acceptance that your parents couldn't give you (& probably they never received themselves). It's doing this with support. Not alone (hyper-independence) or delegating it to another (helplessness).​

Be the chain breaker.

What do you think? Does this land for you?

Straightaway I want to acknowledge that this is not parent bashing. And it is not mum-bashing.

It can be hard for people in therapy to talk about what they didn't receive from their parents and how this has impacted them - the way they live, their habits, their self-esteem, their beliefs about themselves...I know guilt or discomfort can come up. People tell me they feel disloyal, that it is uncomfortable to talk about the gaps in care because they also did feel loved or did receive a lot of value too.

[I also want to acknowledge you, if you are reading this and had a toxic, painful, unsafe or abusive childhood - I am sorry that what you got was far beneath what you deserved and I know how hard it is to face that.]

But I would say that us humans able to (and do) hold complex and often opposite emotions. It is perfectly possible to appreciate what you did receive and acknowledge what you didn't. And it matters to do this, not just because it is the truth (and that's a pretty big reason to do it). But also because it is in understanding how our past has shaped us that allows us to begin to unlock change in our present.

Self-worth as reparenting

The reason I call it a Mother Wound is because the experience of being mothered is what I see many adults lacked as they grew up. Fathers or any carer can also provide mothering qualities, it's not female-focused but rather a way to describe things like:

• Being attended to, being listened to and knowing that our feelings matter.

• That our needs, hurts and pain were responded to with care, patience and gentleness.

• Feeling nurtured, protected and loved.

• Knowing we matter and that being unconditional - not predicated on fitting or following restrictive rules to feel accepted or acceptable.

• That our bodily needs were responded to with care and no judgement - sickness, tiredness, hunger, hurt being met with kindness.

• Our interests and dreams were fostered and celebrated.

• Our problems listened to and solutions sought.

• Our privacy, boundaries and opinions respected.

And more than this just receiving this, that we also saw our parents meet themselves in these ways too. That we learnt our worth by how we were treated.

And we learnt it by the way our parents treated themselves.

Self-worth is learning and choosing

When I work with adults in therapy, I am often representing and bringing to the session some of these same "good Mother" qualities - the trusted, safe and reliable person they can turn to. And I am modelling the responses that come with that - understanding, gentle challenge, consistency, care. Overtime, people absorb these things, they begin to feel they deserve these responses and in sessions they can explore what it means and how they can begin to offer them to themselves. I think that's why so many people felt my Reel - because so many people have grown up being parented without these qualities. And parented by adults who themselves were not given emotional warmth or understanding.

There was a recognition that people pleasing isn't about pleasing - it's about feeling emotionally safe. And that this behaviour was probably learnt during childhood.

Can you see now that it really isn't bashing or criticism of your Mum or Dad or carer?

It is actually understanding and acknowledging how far back in our collective history and family lines these kinds of emotional responses and emotional skills have been lacking. How common it is to have parents that can't handle their own emotions or any discomfort or intensity and who reject, blame or respond with coldness or judgment or dismissal.

And that's why working on self-worth and unlocking the impact of parenting is such powerful work - it is the means to create profound change for my clients AND it ripples out into their families, friendships, homes and workspaces. These adults are learning how to show up for themselves and that means they show up for everyone around them in a different way too.

And this is why I believe self-worth is revolutionary...

By changing how we feel about ourselves and how we approach our own lives, it influences all our choices. Our world is crying out for us to reparent ourselves so we can do better for each other and for our environment.

How much needless consumption happens because of unmet emotional needs?

How many "getaway" flights to reset from lives that are too stressful?

How much outward rage, judgement, gossip or division bubbles up from people feeling forgotten, dissatisfied, unvalued and hurt?

How many people rushing around, living at a pace that feels self-abandoning...and then turning to "quick fixes" like drinking, emotional eating, over-exercising?

There is so much unsoothed emotional pain in our world. There are so many adults who are holding a mother wound.

When we can make sense of ourselves...

...when we look back and understand how our past has shaped us, then we can begin to offer ourselves what we needed then but didn't get. This is the path to true healing and empowerment and it is the path I set out in my book and am offering in my eight month Claiming You programme.

I would love to know how this lands with you.

And if you can feel this is the path you need to walk then please get in touch.