How To Cut The Emotional Umbilical Cord With Your Mother

4. Establish Some New Boundaries and Ground Rules for Your Relationship

This is very important for me in cutting the emotional umbilical cord with my mother. I found that after expressing how I felt towards her, it did get to the point where she stopped talking over me and was almost willing to listen to what I had to say.

But I realized that I just didn’t feel safe around her because the boundaries that we had in place meant that she was open to criticizing me at any point and trying to control me through the things that she said and the way that she behaved.

So I highly recommend that you negotiate some new boundaries with your mother so that you can transition from the boundaries that you had when you were a child and you had an adult-child relationship with her into the sort of boundaries that you want when you’re in an adult-adult relationship with her.

If you want to see the boundaries that I attempted to negotiate with my mother, you can read the article I wrote which is titled How to Treat Each Other With Respect.

Now, at this point in time my mother hasn’t agreed to treat me with respect, but remember the point of this isn’t to get your mother to behave in any particular way. The point of this is to cut the emotional enmeshment that you have with her so that you can behave in the way that you want to behave in the world, rather than in a way that simply reflects her control, manipulation or indoctrination, or whatever it is that she’s conditioned you to be.

So you don’t need a particular response from her. The important thing is to stand up and initiate the new boundaries that you would like in the relationship.