Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / When Your Parent Won't Listen To Anything About Your Difficult Childhood

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When Your Parent Won't Listen To Anything About Your Difficult Childhood · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hello, everybody, and welcome to the doctor psych mom show.
• 0:09
  I got it, I listener question and it was pretty specific about
• 0:15
  her situation. So at some points, I can allude
• 0:18
  to the various things she said, but really it was a common issue
• 0:24
  broad scale that I see with a lot of people.
• 0:27
  So, she has a difficult relationship.
• 0:28
  She's an adult my mother married, and she has difficult
• 0:32
  relationship with her own mother.
• 0:34
  And this is very common among women that I see and the
• 0:39
  mother-daughter relationship is very fraught and tense more, so
• 0:44
  than mother-son relationships or father-daughter relationships.
• 0:48
  Usually, although son, father relationships, can be similarly
• 0:52
  tense. There is more identifying with
• 0:56
  the child of the same gender and then more expectations.
• 1:00
  Usually for them to be more similar to you, you know, and
• 1:04
  And a daughter deviates from what the mother thinks that she
• 1:08
  should be like or when the mother on the end for the
• 1:12
  daughter. When the mother does not seem to
• 1:14
  care enough about the daughter then the then both get upset,
• 1:19
  right? So the daughter also has a lot
• 1:20
  of expectations for her mother that her mother will be close
• 1:23
  and connected on will try to know her and understand her.
• 1:28
  Many times. A daughter has more expectations
• 1:30
  for her mother then she does for her father because the mother
• 1:33
  was expected. Had to be closer and more
• 1:36
  similar to her being the same gender.
• 1:39
  So sometimes this isn't the case.
• 1:41
  But usually, with people that I see, this is the case where the
• 1:44
  mother-daughter relationship is more fraught and has more
• 1:47
  tension. So, in this situation, as is the
• 1:51
  case for many of my clients, the woman who The Listener says that
• 1:56
  she has tried to Broach, numerous times with her mother
• 2:00
  stories about her past and to try to kind of resolve This with
• 2:05
  her mother to get hurt. And to have her mother say yes.
• 2:07
  These things were hard in her unique case, her mother started.
• 2:11
  Dating somebody and moved away. When the daughter, my listener
• 2:15
  was in her last year of high school and leaving her with
• 2:20
  extended family, because father wasn't present.
• 2:22
  And this was a major empathic rupture and The Listener my
• 2:27
  listeners trying to process this and maybe get her mother to even
• 2:33
  admit that this was difficult. Built, which is frequently all
• 2:36
  that the adult child wants is for the parent to say.
• 2:40
  Yeah, I'm really sorry. That was terrible if I could do
• 2:44
  that again. I wouldn't.
• 2:46
  And or if they can't even go that far, they could at least
• 2:49
  say I'm sorry that it was so hard for you.
• 2:52
  You know, I'm upset by the fact that your life was made more
• 2:56
  difficult by this thing that I did, and sometimes they even
• 3:00
  just want the parent to listen. Even just listen to the story at
• 3:03
  all or to listen. Any thoughts that the child has
• 3:07
  about this past event or events. I mean, sometimes the
• 3:11
  relationship continues to be bad through the current day with
• 3:14
  empathic ruptures criticisms insults and so forth.
• 3:17
  And the parent will never really listened to any feedback at all
• 3:22
  now. The less likely it is that the
• 3:26
  parent will listen, the more likely they are to have some
• 3:29
  narcissistic qualities that prevent them from really ever.
• 3:34
  Leaving any negative feedback. So I mean, in this case, it is
• 3:39
  fairly obvious to me that that would be a Hallmark of somebody
• 3:43
  who may struggle with some either narcissistic or
• 3:47
  borderline personality disorder traits.
• 3:50
  Somebody who just up and leave. They are child, you know, for a
• 3:54
  romantic relationship especially because the child did not have
• 3:57
  another parent around. So this kind of, you know,
• 4:03
  brings me to my Major point, which is frequently listener.
• 4:08
  You and other people really underestimate your parents
• 4:12
  ability to be healthy and rational and you really
• 4:17
  underestimate the mental illness that's there.
• 4:19
  So in these cases, now in this case, she says, I'm not going to
• 4:22
  read her whole email because pretty long and has a lot of
• 4:26
  identifying data and details. But I'll allude to some of it as
• 4:31
  I do, when people write in with their unique situation, And in
• 4:35
  this specific case like it seems like the the child here.
• 4:41
  My listener is really trying to get her mother to admit that
• 4:45
  this was a misstep, and the mother can't admit this.
• 4:50
  And in fact, like, leaves the room or says she has to go to
• 4:53
  the bathroom or just kind of walks out whenever the adult
• 4:57
  child tries to mention anything that could be construed as -
• 5:03
  from the past. This like let's really look at
• 5:06
  this Behavior. This person is obviously
• 5:08
  extraordinarily intolerant of any sort of feedback.
• 5:13
  I mean, if somebody did this, at work, in the middle of a work
• 5:16
  evaluation, you would not doubt that they had some form of
• 5:20
  mental illness, right? I mean, the ability to not even
• 5:24
  engage in the conversation, right?
• 5:26
  Or I mean it's fairly obvious what the adult child would want
• 5:30
  the mother to say, you know, I'm sorry if the person cannot do
• 5:35
  This you really have to think to yourself, what are the
• 5:37
  limitations of my parent. You know, in this case as is
• 5:42
  usual, honestly, the other parent was worse, quote, unquote
• 5:46
  worse. He had more severe mental
• 5:48
  illness, which is why he wasn't in the picture so frequently a
• 5:51
  child, they have to pick one parent.
• 5:53
  Has a good one, otherwise it feels really crazy and out of
• 5:56
  control their whole life. So what a child will frequently
• 6:00
  do is a lie with the parent, who is around fairly obvious.
• 6:05
  They need to do that and be has less flagrant mental illness.
• 6:09
  This does not mean though that this parent that their allying
• 6:13
  with is mentally healthy at all, just they are not as flagrantly,
• 6:16
  mentally ill, right? So when you're older, it's hard
• 6:22
  to shake this perspective that this parent the one that you I'd
• 6:26
  allied with was normal, they're pretty normal and healthy.
• 6:29
  Except, you know, they just did these few like really egregious
• 6:34
  sorts of things to you. And then they still kind of do
• 6:37
  maintain this strange sort of way of interacting with you, but
• 6:42
  it must not be that they can't be normal toward you.
• 6:46
  It's just that they won't and if you explain it different somehow
• 6:50
  this otherwise rational healthy person will understand finally
• 6:54
  what you mean. Invalidate you now I call
• 6:57
  bullshit right. Somebody who is unable to engage
• 7:01
  to the point that they are walking out of the room when you
• 7:04
  bro check Relational, topic and that left, like, you know, when
• 7:09
  you're like 17, this person sounds to me, like, they in
• 7:14
  another situation, perhaps, when the other part parent would have
• 7:17
  been present, would have been considered a very narcissistic
• 7:22
  emotionally, immature person. And I will link you to the book
• 7:26
  adult children of immature of emotionally, immature parents,
• 7:29
  which could be a very good read for this listener, and many
• 7:32
  people struggling with relationships with parents, Like
• 7:35
  this. I'll also link you to some other
• 7:37
  books on difficult relationships with parents specifically
• 7:41
  mothers. So what I'm saying here is let's
• 7:46
  really look at whether your mother is able to have the
• 7:52
  relationship that you want. I'm not saying that your
• 7:54
  standards are high. You literally just want her to
• 7:57
  say. Yeah.
• 7:57
  That was kind of fucked up and I guess I shouldn't have done that
• 8:00
  real. Sorry I wouldn't do it again.
• 8:02
  I guess my head was clouded by You know, new love or I thought
• 8:07
  you were more mature than you were or I'm just kind of a
• 8:10
  selfish person. Now this isn't asking for a lot
• 8:13
  but for somebody like this, who would do these things, it may
• 8:17
  be. It may be asking for too much
• 8:20
  because I do not think that you have put this person your mother
• 8:24
  into the bucket of people who are mentally ill.
• 8:29
  Right? Narcissism borderline
• 8:31
  personality the, you know, ability to move.
• 8:35
  Away from a child, when there's no other parent present these
• 8:39
  things, don't they don't sound good.
• 8:41
  You know, if you put them all together.
• 8:43
  Now, if you are another listener in another situation, you could
• 8:46
  be like, well, my mother wouldn't do something like that.
• 8:48
  I still have problems with her though.
• 8:50
  Especially because for example she insists on telling me
• 8:56
  frequently that everything I do as a parent is wrong or and that
• 9:01
  my husband is so much smarter than I am and She's pretty
• 9:05
  normal, except she just like really mean.
• 9:07
  Well, listen though, I mean, does that sound really normal to
• 9:10
  you? I mean, let's think about it.
• 9:12
  Does that sound like somebody who again, would be able to, if
• 9:15
  they did, those things would be able to have friends or
• 9:18
  coworkers. No, it doesn't.
• 9:20
  It sounds like somebody with a very limited interpersonal
• 9:23
  ability. So sometimes you got to look at
• 9:26
  the evidence in front of you. If you cannot engage in a
• 9:30
  healthy way with your parent, isn't it possible that they just
• 9:33
  do not have the capacity? Any to do.
• 9:35
  So in this case you would be free to grieve and mourn that
• 9:40
  you do not. And never did have the parent
• 9:43
  that you deserved. That was able to really be there
• 9:47
  for you then or now and you could move forward and try to
• 9:51
  deal with the limited person that you have before you some
• 9:55
  people can have some sort of a very light kind of superficial
• 10:01
  relationship with this parent with the overarching goal of
• 10:04
  Bring them access to the grandkids and potentially
• 10:07
  creating a nice relationship there.
• 10:09
  Now, by the way, I've written an article about this but the
• 10:12
  grandparents don't usually fuck up as much as they do with you.
• 10:16
  With the grandkids, they just don't have the same triggers.
• 10:19
  They're older, they're mellower. And the demands of the
• 10:22
  grandchild relationship are very, very small.
• 10:25
  So, for all the people that think that the parent is going
• 10:28
  to screw the, your kid up the way, they screwed you up there,
• 10:31
  not your kid, doesn't look at them as important, you know?
• 10:34
  They, this is just some, you know, a very tangential
• 10:38
  relationship. So it can be just like Grandma
• 10:42
  says, some wacky stuff. Sometimes is usually how they
• 10:44
  would think about it, but so therefore, they could either
• 10:48
  have a good relationship or kind of a non relationship based on
• 10:52
  them. But the grandparent, unless they
• 10:54
  are allowed to be really a primary caretaker to the child,
• 10:57
  which you wouldn't let the camera Lee screw up the kids in
• 11:01
  the ways that you fear, so it may be your goal to Facilitator
• 11:06
  positive or, you know, neutral relationship between the
• 11:09
  grandparents and the grandkids. And that's why you're going to
• 11:12
  still engage with your parent or it may be because you feel some
• 11:16
  sense of obligation or duty to not be estranged from your
• 11:21
  parent because that would cause them too much pain.
• 11:24
  And this can be your you know what you decide is the right
• 11:27
  thing to do, ethically, or you could decide not to talk to them
• 11:30
  or you could decide not to talk to them as much or whatever.
• 11:34
  But either way, Way, you have to think about, what does it say
• 11:38
  about my parent? That we have had these forms of
• 11:41
  interactions. And if I had a friend who was
• 11:43
  telling me that their mother acted like this, what would I
• 11:45
  think about that woman? Because probably, you wouldn't
• 11:48
  just be like, well, that sounds like a woman with the capacity
• 11:52
  to give a lot of love and you know for some reason for the
• 11:56
  past 20 years she's just not doing it with her daughter.
• 12:00
  My friend ought to just figure out a different way to
• 12:02
  communicate with her mother. No.
• 12:05
  You like my friend's mother, sounds batshit crazy, you know,
• 12:08
  like my friend can do what she wants but man, she did not look
• 12:11
  out in the mother pool, you know, like the lottery of
• 12:14
  mothers, she did not get somebody who can potentially
• 12:18
  meet her needs because look how this woman act.
• 12:21
  But then people have trouble saying that about their own
• 12:23
  situation. So they keep this hope like
• 12:25
  Charlie Brown and the football or Lucy.
• 12:27
  Always pulls away the football. Right?
• 12:29
  So they keep on having this hope that because their mother is
• 12:33
  pretty rational oil and normal overall, you know, then they
• 12:37
  could just explain a different and then their mother will come
• 12:41
  forward with this sort of recognition.
• 12:44
  This isn't going to happen, usually, in any sort of
• 12:48
  situation where this can happen, it would have happened before
• 12:52
  now statistically, right? So it is so unusual for in their
• 13:00
  30s, 40s, and beyond for an adult child to finally figure
• 13:04
  out the right. Right way to talk to a parent
• 13:08
  about their upbringing, if they have already tried to do so,
• 13:11
  now, there are people that have never really broached the story
• 13:15
  of their grown up, and then they will go to their mother.
• 13:18
  Let's say and say something like, you know, I was, I've
• 13:22
  always really thought about how you acted to me and this and
• 13:25
  this a time and this is the first time they're mentioning it
• 13:28
  and the parent having a capacity to learn and grow and a more
• 13:32
  emotionally healthy person will say Say, oh my God, I'm so
• 13:36
  sorry. I never thought about it like
• 13:37
  that. There's that, that happens.
• 13:40
  But if you have tried like my listener repeatedly to bring up
• 13:47
  things from the past, and your parent cannot hear it then, that
• 13:51
  is, because there is a deficit in them, in the areas of empathy
• 13:56
  perspective-taking, or literally the ability to tolerate negative
• 14:00
  emotion, and this is usually linked to some sort of
• 14:04
  personality. Sword or symptoms and or
• 14:06
  symptoms of anxiety profound anxiety such that, they cannot
• 14:11
  tolerate hearing that things or less than we're less than
• 14:14
  perfect or that they were less than perfect or even a less than
• 14:17
  good parent. In this case, you are pinning,
• 14:21
  your hopes for changed and mature relationship on nothing.
• 14:27
  It is a femoral, it's not there. You are.
• 14:29
  Trying to have an emotionally healthy relationship with
• 14:32
  somebody who does not have the capacity.
• 14:34
  T2 and if you say, yeah, but you know, she's nicer to my sister.
• 14:39
  She's nicer to my dad. Listen.
• 14:41
  I'm right now, think about it. Do you know anybody, anybody
• 14:45
  that she's close to any intimate?
• 14:48
  Friends is different. People can keep it together with
• 14:50
  friends, but do you know anybody that your mother who is so
• 14:54
  difficult with you? Genuinely engages in a
• 14:57
  reciprocal, deep, emotional relationship with.
• 15:00
  I'm sincerely down again because in a hypothetical if she gets
• 15:04
  along with yours, Sister, I'm willing to bet anything your
• 15:06
  sister doesn't criticize her. And your sister has a different
• 15:10
  way of interacting with her where there is never any sort of
• 15:15
  feedback and this or any sort of genuine connection.
• 15:19
  Now this listener did not write in about her sister, having a
• 15:22
  better relationship with her mother, it was just this is a
• 15:24
  common thing and this keeps the hope alive that there is a
• 15:28
  person there, like a real deep emotionally available person
• 15:33
  that you can access if you speak to them.
• 15:36
  The right way. I am here to say, I Out it I
• 15:39
  doubt that there is this really emotionally available parent.
• 15:45
  Waiting to be approached in the right way and for you to
• 15:49
  continue to try, you're really hurting yourself.
• 15:53
  You are hurting yourself and disappointing yourself and
• 15:56
  devastating yourself over and over and you do not deserve
• 15:59
  that. So it would be good to have.
• 16:03
  Give yourself permission to really see your parents capacity
• 16:08
  for What it is. And from anything that you
• 16:10
  described in this email, your mother, does not have the
• 16:14
  capacity to deeply reflect and and emotionally be available for
• 16:20
  you in this way and you thinking that she does is the heart of
• 16:24
  your disappointment and your ongoing issues.
• 16:27
  I give you the permission to understand that your mother is
• 16:30
  really. She is what she is.
• 16:32
  She does not have the ability to come forward in the way that you
• 16:36
  deserve. I wish your that you add a
• 16:38
  mother who did but you don't write what you do have from what
• 16:41
  you said is somebody with whom you can have a conversation.
• 16:46
  That is not that deep and who appears to love you and your
• 16:50
  children, fine. So this is what you got.
• 16:54
  So at this point although you say you've been in therapy about
• 16:57
  this it would be good to be in therapy.
• 17:00
  About the idea of grieving the mother you wish you had and
• 17:04
  making peace with this person. But in order to do that, you
• 17:07
  really To deeply reflect and have really an epiphany.
• 17:11
  A Eureka moment that happens to many adult children of
• 17:15
  dysfunctional. Families, and is the inflection
• 17:17
  point in really a different understanding of their world and
• 17:21
  their narrative makes a lot more sense to think.
• 17:25
  Yeah, my daddy was real mentally ill, but my mom, she was two,
• 17:30
  she was too but not as flagrantly.
• 17:32
  So somebody who would do that and also this was predated by
• 17:36
  the mother also disappearing for others.
• 17:38
  Weeks at a time leaving her with extended family.
• 17:41
  So, in this case, this woman has intimacy issues, intimacy issues
• 17:47
  with her own child, and they were always, and somebody who
• 17:51
  has this limitation is unable to engage in the way that I wish.
• 17:56
  And you certainly wish that she could but she can't.
• 18:00
  So we need to grieve and put away this conception of what
• 18:04
  your mother could have been. And we need to deal with this
• 18:07
  person in front of you. And it wouldn't, when you
• 18:10
  finally understand the limitations of this person, you
• 18:13
  it will be like a weight off of you.
• 18:15
  You'll say, oh, I can never get her to say, she was wrong, that
• 18:20
  she doesn't have that capacity. It's like asking a colorblind
• 18:23
  person to perceive color. She cannot do it because of the
• 18:28
  mental and emotional issues. She has, which now that I am
• 18:32
  thinking about it, there was always evidence of and therefore
• 18:35
  I'm going to see if I can have Any sort of positive
• 18:39
  relationship with this person that remains once I strip away
• 18:43
  all of my hopes and Illusions from her.
• 18:48
  Can I have a relationship with this person?
• 18:50
  You may well be able to you would think about her more in
• 18:54
  her, current state as like a nice neighbor that comes over
• 18:59
  and does activities with the kids with your kids and whom
• 19:03
  they have fondness for. And if this is how you would see
• 19:06
  it, you Out of your sadness would be able to be processed
• 19:12
  and worked through and eventually gotten over because
• 19:16
  you'll always have it a little bit, right?
• 19:18
  The sadness that your mother is not who you want, but you can
• 19:21
  see it more like that. My mother was never who I wanted
• 19:25
  and needed, she didn't have the capacity to be, that's sad for
• 19:29
  me. I'm a different kind of mother
• 19:31
  myself. Thank God.
• 19:34
  And my children will not know any of this sadness.
• 19:37
  However, it was Unfair to me but I can't keep opening myself up
• 19:43
  to constant disappointment by convincing myself that my
• 19:47
  mother, something that she's not IE a woman who would understand
• 19:52
  and empathize with my past experience.
• 19:54
  She does not have that capacity. So I'm going to link you to a
• 19:58
  bunch of books that may be helpful.
• 19:59
  You said that you're a long-term blog reader.
• 20:01
  So I assume that you have read some of these but usually I
• 20:04
  linked to to ones that aren't the adult children of the Only
• 20:08
  amateur parents that one I think is specific for you.
• 20:11
  Although Children of the self-absorbed I'll also link to
• 20:15
  and that's usually my go-to in this situation so hopefully this
• 20:18
  helps you. Thank you for writing in with
• 20:21
  your story and please tell me if it was useful.
• 20:25
  Thank you for subscribing everybody.
• 20:27
  Please subscribe and have a great day everybody.