The Emotionally Absent Mother: A Guide to Self-Healing and Getting the Love You Missed

Good self-care is finding (healthy) activities that give you a moment of pleasure or are a time out from what is so stressful.

One woman reported that her mother had shown her a few things like how to make salads and wash the dishes, but had taught her nothing about how to “do life”—how to have a conversation or relate to other people, how to manage her emotions, or anything important. Such mothers seem to have vacated the mentor role, or at the least to feel quite insecur

Their interactions are like passing a shuttle of yarn back and forth, weaving a connection between their hearts.

Just as it is believed that a young child constructs a picture of his mother that he carries around inside and that helps in the process of eventually separating and differentiating from Mother, so building an internal sense of a Good Mother figure creates, in essence, a portable Good Mother that you carry around with you.

Unfortunately the strategies used to secure the desired attachment often drive people away. By the time we…

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Studies in Sweden found that even when a mother works outside the home and the father is the primary caretaker, babies still strongly prefer being with the mother.2

extreme loneliness.

You might set aside a time to dialogue with your inner child states about what they need to feel safe.

Meaningful work

To feel that you aren’t important to your mother leaves a hole. Most often it is felt as a hole in the heart. It’s the hole where Mother was supposed to be.