Cold mother

[SerCay]

A while back I posted about my mom being very controlling over my life decisions. From that thread, another question arose in my head, which I would like to address here in the self-improvement section.

 

In my childhood and when growing up, my mom never gave me compliments and she was physically very cold. Now that I'm an adult, she still doesn't do it, says it's not in her nature. And she still is a cold person.

On the other hand though, she has been criticizing everything I did wrong (according to her) and everything that didn't look nice, since I was a child.

 

Some examples of this:

 

I have high IQ and attention problems, I shift interests very quickly when I understand something. My mom always told other people how I was so easily bored, and how I couldn't stick to one thing. How I was unmotivated and lazy. Never has she had research done as to WHY I was this way. Instead she chose to call me "smart but lazy". Her behaviour left me insecure, and very shy. Only in my late 20's I found myself through a long personal journey. After being diagnosed with ADD and high IQ combination that causes my lack of attention span. Now I've found interests that don't bore me.

 

I always thought myself to be fat, growing up. My mother encouraged these thoughts. Whenever we went shopping she would say things like "I'm not sure that size will fit you, you have a large bottom" only to say "hmm, ok" after finding out they WERE fitting. She never told me that I wasn't fat, or that I had a beautiful body and never took the time to ensure me that I was beautiful. When I look back at pictures of then, I was not fat at all, not even chubby. I was normal leaning towards thin.

 

Never any compliments on how beautiful I was, never on how nice something looked on me, never any compliments on how talented I was (because I was always praised by teachers for music, arts and sports.) There just never were any compliments.

 

On the other hand, all things that can be criticizid were criticized. When I first started learning how to play the violin, she laughed and showed the family how I was making weird noises with the violin like ghdjhs gzzzjj. On school reports, I used to have very high grades for languages and bit lower grades for mathematics. Instead of EVER focusing on how talented I was at learning languages, she ignored this always and always commented on how she liked mathematics so much and was so good at it, how come I wasn't interested in it?

 

A while back I had my nose fixed, I didn't like the shape of it and had it shaped up a bit by plastic surgery. My mom was on holidays and she knew I was going to have the surgery. 3 weeks after my surgery, with my nose still very swollen, I went to pick her up from the airport. Since it was a big deal for me, and she knew this, I thought she would say something when she saw me. Instead she looked at it weirdly and started talking about something else. Later when the swellings disappeared she said: "well it was very swollen so I couldn't say anthing, I thought if it would stay like that it would be very ugly".

 

More and more of things like this, basically comes down to:

 

Never complimenting

Always criticizing

 

I love my mom and she's always there for me. She loves me very much. But the above mentioned traits of hers are the reason that I don't share my feelings, life decisions or thoughts with her any longer.

 

I was wondering if anybody else has experienced the same thing? And how has this influenced you?

Edited June 14, 2015 by SerCay

[Tayla]

you are getting a taste of what her self conversations are about. She must be so hard on herself.

 

I feel compassion for what it must be like for you to be in the presences of someone with that hyper critical nature. We do not have to welcome or listen to that talk. Flat out be direct.

 

As my counselor told me once, we cast out to others some of our own flaws..,

[SerCay]

you are getting a taste of what her self conversations are about. She must be so hard on herself.

 

I feel compassion for what it must be like for you to be in the presences of someone with that hyper critical nature. We do not have to welcome or listen to that talk. Flat out be direct.

 

As my counselor told me once, we cast out to others some of our own flaws..,

 

That's absolutely true...she is extremely hard on herself...to the point that she will suffer terrible depressions and migraines for months on end when she doesn't succeed at something at once..

 

I sort of got used to it...when she comes to my house, for example, she will check my plants one by one, only to tell me that I don't take care of them well enough. Even though they're perfectly fine. There's always something she does better, and I should change my ways. Her food is always better tasting etc etc etc

 

I'm going to keep what your counselor said in mind, I think it will make me feel better in lots of circumstances in the future

[Arieswoman]

SerCay,

You have my sympathies as I also suffered with a cold and controlling mother.

 

No matter what I did, it was never enough for her and I was criticised from morning until night.

 

As soon as I was old enough and had a qualification, I left home and never went back. I put as much distance between her and myself as I could and went to live in another city.

 

I think I spent about the first 30 years of my life trying to get her love and approval. Finally, I realised that it wasn't going to happen and that I had to learn to love myself.

I got some therapy and stopping trying to be all things to all people. I felt a lot better for that.

 

I envy those that have had good supportive relationships with their mothers but we have to work with what we've got.