How To Spot Hidden Ways Mothers Create Self-Doubt in Daughters

You look great, but wonder if that dress comes in a larger size? I’m glad you got the job but are you sure you want to put the kids in day care… all day? The apartment is nice but can you really afford something so fancy with your job?
Does Mom offer up a question that’s not really a question-but rather a judgment disguised as a question?
Do you need to pay attention to what is not said, but implied to decipher the real message?
Do you look to tone & facial expression for the truth?
Does mom have trouble being upfront, transparent, or real?
Do her “questions” leave you second guessing yourself?
Why is this a problem?
The problem is, when criticism isn’t direct, it is difficult to process it recognize the insult hidden inside. You feel it but your mind argues against it. When a question isn’t a question but an indictment of a choice you have already made the “question” is designed to produce self doubt.
I am here to say this is amongst the most destructive ways mothers relate to daughters.
When someone in your life tells you upfront they don’t agree with you, that’s one thing.
You have the opportunity to address it.
-You might not like it. It might even hurt, but ultimately we all need to be challenged in order to make better decisions and grow.
Conversely, mixed messages plant the seeds of self-doubt.
It works like this-
The toxicity in mom’s mixed messaged, double-speak are ingested, taken in — like the shiny apple offered to Snow White in the Grimm’s Brother fairy tale.
Because it is offered as a gift and looks pretty on the outside, eager to please mom -you swallow it whole. Before you know it, you feel something is not quite right. Having taken in a message that is contains a poison, it makes you sick. This poison makes you sick and erodes your confidence but you might not be fully aware of it’s toxicity.

This is how the spell of self-doubt takes root in your psyche.
You don’t feel that you can refuse moms “caring”.
You feel that you have to play nice and take what is offered. That is the way you stay under the spell of the mixed message.
As a psychotherapist, for 30 years I have seen woman struggling from the spell they were put under by their mothers.
This is ugly and far more common than you would guess.
Some daughters in the role of Good Daughter have seriously impaired mothers who cause serious damage. Their care is heavily laced with toxicity.
Other daughters are hurt by mothers who are passing down what they themselves have suffered. They have swallowed the toxicity from their mothers and can’t help but poison their own daughters if they follow cultural expectations.
Either way, it is very hard to face the fact that the person who is lifting you up is also hurting you and undermining your self esteem.
Hurtful, even if mom is unaware of the hurt she is causing.
What’s worse, you take this toxicity inside of yourself which becomes part of your self talk.
What will it cost you if you don’t break the spell?
If you can’t consciously face that your mother is serving up arsenic laced apples, you will never be able to tell which relationships and life situations are good for you.
You will need to repeat those relational patterns in your close intimate relationships. You will take one shiny apple after another, ingest the poison therein and all the while tell yourself this is what you deserve.
You will unconsciously need to keep yourself in shady situations and tell yourself that you are in sunshine.

You will convince yourself that the problem is yours. The apple tastes good, not bitter and that the shadows are only in your imagination. You are too sensitive, that’s all.
It is so very hard to face the truth of your relationship with your mother.
Yet if you don’t, you will be compelled to treat your own daughter the same way and put her under the same spell.
What you don’t pass back, you pass on.
That is why it is both hard to face, and so important to face this for yourself.
But you must face this consciously, in order to break the spell.

This is grown up work with grown up rewards.
You must break this spell in order to get free of it’s grip on your life. Step out of the shadows, call a spade a spade and an insult an insult.
Hand back the poison laced apples along with the backhanded compliments.
Only then can you claim what is most beautiful about you.
Breaking this spell is at the heart of healing the difficulties between mothers and daughters.
Heal this one and you will heal so very much in your life.
This is how we Rise.
Bio- Katherine Fabrizio, M.A., L.P.C. has treated Adult Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers, Trapped in the Role of the “Good Daughter” for over 30 years. Dedicated to empowering these women, she now offers online help for clients and training (CE’s) for therapists at Daughtersrising.info. Her book, Daughters Rising: Rising Above the Shame, Guilt and Self-Doubt Mothers Pass Down to Daughters, is now on Amazon. Katherine lives in Raleigh N.C. where she raised two daughters and still speaks regularly with her mother.
This article was originally published on http://daughtersrising.info/
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