controlling mother

Did You Have A Difficult Relationship With Your Mother?

One of the dominant themes that my clients and other readers of this blog usually have that has undermined their self-confidence is a difficult relationship with their mother. When we have a good relationship with our mother from infancy through adolescence, our nervous system is wired for a sense of safety and we are prepared to take on the world as an adult. However, if we had a difficult relationship with our mother, this can wire our nervous system for anxiety and leave us feeling unsafe long into adulthood. Psychologists call this an attachment disorder, and the implications on the rest of our lives can be devastating.

A controlling mother can leave you feeling unsafe

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By Graham Stoney, ago

How (Not) To Manage Anger: Lessons From My Parents

When we are young, we learn to manage our emotions through the interactions with our immediate caregivers, principally our mother and father. The way our parents manage their emotions leaves a dramatic imprint on our developing nervous system that can last long into adulthood. This is particularly true of strong emotions like anger.

Two common adult reactions to poor emotional management by our parents are to submit or to rebel. We either live the rest of our lives managing our emotions they way they taught us out of fear and submission, or doing the opposite out of anger and rebellion. Neither of these two reactions represent true freedom. A better approach is to make our own choice in each situation but this takes insight and practice, especially if we choose to do things differently from the default programming we got from our parents. (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Get A Controlling Mother Out Of Your Head

One of the challenges in growing up with a controlling mother is that they tend to implant their own insecurities into our heads. Controlling mothers are fundamentally driven by fear and the way that they assuage their own anxieties about their growing children is often by passing their insecurities onto us. If we’re too insecure to take any risks in life or to violate our parent’s absurd “rules”, then they don’t have to worry about us hurting ourselves, scaring them or ultimately leaving them.

The obvious problem with this is that all children inevitably grow up, leave their parents and form intimate relationships with other people. This can cause a lot of jealousy to an insecure and emotionally immature parent. Controlling mothers often try to manipulate their children into staying as long as possible in order to forestall the inevitable pain of separation. It’s ultimately a futile strategy since children growing up and leaving home is the natural order of things. Trying to stop us living our own lives just makes us want to get away even faster and really it’s just a consequence of the parent’s wounded inner child and unwillingness to grow up.

All this craziness can really mess with our heads and leave us feeling insecure as an adult. We can’t do much about our controlling mother’s behavior since trying to control her in return would just be using the same losing strategy that she’s been using on us all our lives. Manipulating other people doesn’t lead to true freedom or a deep sense of inner security.

A Controlling Mother Can Really Mess With Our Head and Undermine Our Self-Confidence

Instead, we need to learn to get our controlling mother out of our head. Here’s how to do it: (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Recover From Childhood Emotional Abandonment

One of the most challenging childhood scenarios for a man to recover from is emotional abandonment. I grew up in a household where emotions weren’t dealt with openly in ways that felt safe to me, so I know this scenario backwards; and so do most of my clients.

However, emotional abandonment can be hard to spot unless you know what you’re looking for so to find out whether emotional abandonment in childhood could still be affecting your adult life, check out my article on 12 Adult Signs That You’ve Experienced Emotional Abandonment In Childhood.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

How And When To Go No-Contact With A Narcissistic Parent

One of the best things I’ve ever done for my own self-confidence and for my relationship with my parents was to go “no-contact” with my narcissistic mother for over a year. Narcissistic parents create a family dynamic which is all about putting their own needs ahead of everyone else. This becomes a real problem when we become adults because we can end up trapped by the unconscious belief that our parent’s needs and desires must always come before our own.

Because the emotional dynamics of the parent/child relationship are so strong, this will keep us perpetually stuck as an emotional child emotionally even though we are physically adults. Since our unconscious mind projects our experience of our parents onto everyone else and onto the world at large, the limiting impact of being trapped in the role of a child who must always please their parents restricts our whole lives.

Going “No Contact” With A Narcissistic Parent Can Give You Space To Heal.

Going “no-contact” with a narcissistic parent is one way to grow up emotionally by breaking this unhealthy parental relationship dynamic.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Handle A Boyfriend Or Husband With A Controlling Mother: Part 2

The solution to this whole issue is for the man to man up and start stand up to his mother and saying what’s important to him whenever there’s some kind of conflict so that he can learn to side with you in the relationship rather than with his controlling mother.

There’s really nothing that you can do as a partner in terms of what his mother does, and the solution to the problem is not for the mother to change her behavior. You can’t expect other people to change, and we have really no control over other people’s behavior.

 

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By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Handle A Boyfriend Or Husband With A Controlling Mother: Part 1

Most of my advice is aimed at men, but today I have a video for you ladies out there on the topic of how to deal with a man who has a controlling mother. I’ve written a previous article on how to deal with a controlling mother, and I’m getting an increasing number of comments left by women in response to this article which was originally aimed at men. And the women are talking about their frustrations in having dealt with partners who had controlling mothers.

What I’ll cover here today is what you should if your boyfriend, husband or partner has a controlling mother and this is having some kind of impact – and it’s generally a negative impact – on your relationship with the guy.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Recover From a Controlling Mother

Growing up with a controlling and/or domineering mother can suppress your masculinity and leave you stuck feeling and acting like a boy in a man’s body. My mother was the dominant figure in my family of origin and with a relatively passive father it was a disastrous recipe for my developing masculinity.

A controlling mother creates a relationship dynamic that will undermine your confidence in yourself as a man unless you take steps to counter its effects. So here are some steps to take to help you recover from growing up with a controlling, dominant mother:

Recognize that Your Mother is Controlling

Did you have a controlling Mother?

Did you have a controlling Mother?

The first step to dealing with a problem is to recognize that it exists. It took me a long time to even see that my mother was controlling. It wasn’t until I did The Landmark Forum in my mid-30s and they started talking about how controlling most of us are that I had this insight.

When I was a child, my mother used a physical leash to control me; partly for my own safety, and partly for her convenience. As I got older, verbal stoushes with my father made it very clear that the masculine point of view wasn’t welcome in our household.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago