My psychology. Cold mothers and cold daughters Warm mother and cold mother

I have not been to the circus for a long time, the last time it was in childhood. I liked the circus with its performances, I liked aerial acrobats that made my heart skip a beat, trained animals that follow any instructions from a person, I liked ice cream in a waffle cone during the intermission, and I liked clowns. They were very funny, with childish naivete they played adults.

Already as an adult, I visited the circus, but I was disappointed. Surely the artists and the performance were no worse, but my perception changed, and the clowns were no longer funny. Does our capacity for direct perception disappear with childhood? Then we understand that clowns also cry.

It is customary to talk about childhood as a happy one. The peculiarity of our memory is such that we remember only what we want to remember, choosing the best moments, the rest is forced into the unconscious. This is not the idle reasoning of psychologists, this is a scientific fact that has been repeatedly proven experimentally.

Children are not cruel, and adults have duplicity, cynicism, cruelty. But children suffer, they feel pain, and feel it much stronger than adults. Children perceive everything directly, they experience everything as the last time. They do not yet have thick skin that will protect them from the aggressive human world, they are very vulnerable.

Today these children will make adults laugh with their clumsy movements, their naive phrases, their play of adults, today they are smiling happily in a family photo, and tomorrow they will become "uncomfortable", naughty, demanding attention, desiring parental love. Tomorrow they will be punished, thrown at them with an offensive phrase, shamed, hit, deprived of what they want, deceived. And all this will go straight to the child's heart, leaving a wound for the rest of his life.

Sometimes people are so mentally crippled in childhood that they have to live the rest of their lives with heart cripples or invalids.

If you think that this happens only in socially disadvantaged families, then you are deeply mistaken. This happens in ordinary families, outwardly very, very prosperous. Emotionally cold families in which it is not customary to express love, in which there is a cult of achievement, give rise to narcissists who spend the rest of their lives trying to prove something and achieve something with the sole goal of unsuccessfully obtaining the love of their parents. A cruel mother who says to her daughter in her childhood "you should have been thrown into the trash" does not even suspect that her daughter in adulthood will end up in the trash, only social - she will become a prostitute. A cruel father who, as a punishment, puts a 4-year-old boy outside the apartment door, cannot imagine that his adult son will become a vagabond and an alcoholic. A wife who wants to calm her drunken husband and puts him to bed with a young daughter is unaware that she provokes incest. An adult who has never experienced in his life what it is like to be pitied. The mother, who found out about the sexual harassment of her little daughter by a pedophile, did not find anything better than to accuse her of the fact that she herself was to blame for disobeying her. The son who gets beaten for B's at school. These are all real stories of real people.

Surely, if you dig deeper, these parents will not have the most joyful past, they were also not loved in childhood. But to get a specialist diploma, you need to unlearn 5 years at a university, in order to get a driver's license, you need to attend courses for 3 months. And in order to become a parent, you do not need to take anything, no one will check how it performs its parent functions, and if they do check, they will first of all be interested in the conditions of life, whether the child is fed and dressed, the rest is unimportant.

Unfortunately, we cannot predict what the child may be injured about. Sometimes, in our adult view, this is an ordinary event, but it can be imprinted for a lifetime. And if a bad photo can be removed or burned, then the wounds in the heart heal for years. Adults are so preoccupied with their pressing problems that they are simply not able to hear about the suffering of their child at a particular moment, they brush it off, saying: stupid things that you come up with, stop crying right now! - and the child is left alone with his pain, he no longer has a chance to survive this pain, now he will carry it through his whole life.

Do you know what is the most severe punishment for a child under 5 years old? It's not even physical punishment. it ignoring! An upset and crying child is put in a corner for misconduct or a prank, they stop talking to him and pay attention to his intensifying crying. He is now alone with his pain, with his suffering - my parents do not love me, I'm bad! - and parents think that this is an educational process. You can say whatever you want, just stay in touch with your child, look into his eyes, you will see everything in them.

And how many readers will be able to remember from their childhood seemingly simple questions from their parents: "How are you doing? What is happening to you? What do you feel now?" It's about emotional intimacy. Do you think that in adulthood such people know what a truly intimate relationship is if they do not have this experience?

Most people are baffled by this question: "How do you feel right now?". After all, no one has ever asked me about this, I am not used to asking myself this question and I do not ask it to my loved ones. At best, I'll get off with listing the events of the day.

What about casual hugs? As soon as we cross a certain age limit, we stop cuddling with loved ones, and at the same time we lose the opportunity to feel human warmth and attitude towards ourselves. Do you know that a child needs at least 10 hugs a day, and an adult needs up to 5 hugs for a good quality of life? It becomes so difficult for adults to do this that they have to come up with a social flash mob "hug day". That's how we live.

Therefore, when your "little clown" amuses you now, remember that clowns also cry, and the older we get, the less people see it. Someone cries alone, as he used to do in childhood, because no one cared about his tears. And someone eventually becomes coarse and callous, losing the ability to cry, hiding behind cynicism and indifference. But I know for sure that if you look deep, deep, you can find that very child, injured and in great need of love.

Arseniy Volodko- psychologist, psychotherapist, hr-consultant, blogging about psychology, psychotherapy and relationships adnosiny.by. Creates hr-brands and develops corporate culture. He believes that psychotherapy is not a craft, but a way of life.

They do not braid their daughters and do not comb their long hair in the evenings, braiding the stars of evening fairy tales into them.

"Which will be colder - the physical corpse of me or my emotional coldness?"

It was the last argument in her head to remain contemptuously calm, frost-coated emptiness. That immense, enveloping and dissolving emptiness inside, which often arose for some reason in the evening or at night and was very familiar. So in childhood, her mother’s eyes were empty, when, as a child, trying not to deserve, but just to get a little warmth, she painted trees with a thin brush and checkmarks of birds on a blue background of landscape sheets prepared in advance by educators.

There was no enthusiastic gleam in her mother's eyes; her thoughts always turned out to be somewhere not here and far from now.

"Look how beautiful," - the last attempt to attract the mother.

"So what? Get dressed quickly, we still have to pick up your little brother."

And the cold poured from the legs, sometimes lingering on the knees and on the stomach. Like cold water in a river - she then compared this cold. Is very similar. And also sink slowly into the river of cold. A slight trembling still lets know that the body is alive - but in a moment it has already frozen. And at the same time she became warmed by the familiar cold. And then when someone threw a look of alienation, an unfortunate joke or a caustic remark, the familiar cold again filled the body. Sometimes she herself knew how to call this anesthetic and it didn’t hurt, though sometimes she could have a cramp in her legs, but it was familiarly cold.

And the all-encompassing greed for the inaccessible and so close and at the same time far away when looking at the hugging mother of a child - another girl from the group and a sense of guilt for the fantasy of the same meetings.

The feeling of guilt remained a thin shale layer in the subconscious and only slightly broke through when suddenly there was no need to pay anything for acceptance, and it was unexpectedly sincere and warm.

And at home waiting for a cold kettle, cold slippers. And then she noticed - that slippers can be warm if they are put on the radiator before leaving the house. But my mom said it wouldn't work. And it's not aesthetically pleasing at all.

While growing up, she learned to warm herself with a cigarette while taking a puff of smoke.

And it became easier for her when they took blood for analysis. If you think carefully that the body is frozen, then the needle was not felt at all. But what warm eyes the nurse and doctors have. So she learned to get sick when she wanted warmth. She had to pay in parts in the body, but she could not stop.

She returned to her thoughts about comparing the coldness of the body and the soul, but the emptiness, the anesthesia for life, already covered her all. The tips of the toes froze, then the knees, the hips, and now the stomach was empty, it was empty, cold and there was nothing, which means it didn’t hurt and you could live. Live as usual - a shell, expressing what is necessary at the place and time and sensitively controlling the reaction of others.

And her own daughter, here she runs and carries another scribble on a sheet and asks, asks. What does she ask for, what does she need? Well, how should I react - questions like axes cut her shell, but the more she swam in them, the faster the moment passed and the daughter saw the same empty, confused look in her own mother's glassy eyes. And she herself was confused - but is it necessary at all? - But in general, is it really interesting what I did there? and a layer of guilt is already transferred to the daughter.

A woman who was not loved, who is not loved, except for a survival shell and cold anesthesia of cold in her soul with a layer of guilt, passes on to her daughter this viciously vicious circle of the spiral of generations as an unsuccessful way of trying to start living and feeling.

They do not braid their daughters and do not comb their long hair in the evenings, braiding the stars of evening fairy tales into them. They tightly keep their lips closed and clench their jaws, perhaps from not crying ourselves, and then as a habit to be tough. It is the lips that betray their coldness. A cold thread of a pale color, or vice versa - a pompously carefully summed up pair of scarlet petals on a sharp white background of the face. And also hands. Hands with tenacious claws and the little finger turned to the side also look into nowhere...

They are the first to run around psychoanalysts with requests for their daughters' unsuitability, if there are such, for the most part they are left alone with their emptiness and coldness in their souls. published

Anna, a top manager of a large company, carried out massive staff reductions that day - she called it the beautiful word “optimization”, which meant: ruthless layoffs, non-payment of salaries, and large fines were issued to those who remained (she developed income accrual schemes allowed it is easy and legal to do so). She felt important and needed at work, and stayed at it until night. But leaving the office and getting into her foreign car, she was again tormented by thoughts of an empty house, a cold bed and her daughter ... who had long become more of a burden than a child she wanted to take care of ...

A successful business lady Anna has everything: an apartment, a car, a career, lovers… But only such a feeling as love is inaccessible to her. Why did her soul become covered with layers, and she stopped trusting, sympathizing and loving?

When a child is born, then in the first year of life, it is extremely important for him not the mechanical departure of the mother, but the emotional dialogue with her. This means that when breastfeeding, for example, you need to feel, convey love with your eyes, gently hold him with your hands, talk to him affectionately, even the thoughts of the mother are transmitted to the newborn. The baby should play enough with the breast even after feeding: suck it, bite a little and in no case should you deprive him of this, much less punish him. For example, a mother who lives in a dysfunctional environment, experiencing stress, being anxious, will not be able to fully feel the child. And then we can observe the picture: on one level she shows her love for him, but on the other - her body attacks the baby - she pushes the nipple into her mouth, because the baby himself pushes it out, fills the baby with milk, holds him like a bag of potatoes and etc. And all this is forever deposited in the psyche of the child! After all, the first six months is a reserve of love that he receives for the rest of his life. And if the emotional dialogue with the mother has been broken, then the child will not receive a sufficient supply of love, and even when he becomes an adult he will try to compensate for this: shopaholism, gluttony, drugs, gambling, a promiscuous sex life, etc. They also talk about violations of the first year: strabismus, a constant increase or decrease in temperature, skin diseases and many other psychosomatic diseases.

Anna has everything: an apartment, a car, a career, lovers ... But only such a feeling as love is inaccessible to her ...

An experiment was conducted on newborn monkeys, they were fed from bottles that were inserted into dummies, i.e. they were fed by "robots", not mothers. These monkeys received purely mechanical care: they were fed, cleaned up after them, but they did not give emotional contact with their mothers. Unfortunately, all these babies died!

The Austrian emperor Frederick II conducted a horrifying experience: twelve newborns were torn from their mothers and placed in luxurious royal apartments, they were mechanically brought food and looked after, but no one spoke to the children. The emperor was interested in the question: “What language will the children speak?”. Unfortunately, none of the children spoke, moreover, they all died before the age of two. All these experiments once again confirm that a sensual dialogue with mother is very important for a child!

When a mother feeds a child, the “hormone of affection” oxytocin is released in her body - on the one hand, this is a physiological process, and on the other, a mental one. occurs under the influence of feelings for the child. If the mother, whose narcissism is disturbed, does not feel her child, is anxious, depressive, who herself did not receive love from her mother, then this process is disrupted and the child does not receive enough oxytocin, and as a result, the "hormone of happiness" is not produced in his body. » endorphin. As we can see, the psyche and physiology are closely interconnected: children who have not received love suffer all their lives! The lack of mother's love often leads to the formation of infantile depression (which initially manifests itself as poor sleep or dermatitis), and in order to protect itself from it, the child's ego ceases to be attached to objects, it is flooded with drives from the unconscious. Normally, our psyche distributes sexual and aggressive drives in approximately equal proportions: some of these drives are directed to us, and some to others. But in the case of children who have had a cold mother, whose own narcissism is disturbed, a failure occurs: because If they have not received love, then it is a great danger for them to become attached to others, as a result they protect themselves from this: sexual desires are directed at themselves, and aggressive ones at others - this is called "narcissism". And this is a tragedy! This is a pain that will be carried through the whole life of a person! These are tears that are stuck very deep and want to break out to the surface!

This is how business women grow up like Anna, for example. There is a deep depression inside her, from which she defends herself with activity: working late, her schedule is scheduled to the minute. At the same time, she is not able to become attached to objects, she does not show sympathy, because. she herself does not know the feeling of love - it costs her nothing to fire, not to give out a salary, she even perceives her daughter more as a burden than as a LOVED child. Inside, she feels abandoned and not needed, but she defends herself against it. Sexual drives are directed at her, hence the grandiosity: “I am a successful business woman!”, And aggressive drives are directed at others, other functions for her are only functions that must satisfy her needs. Even her daughter is only a function for her, which should confirm that Anna is a successful woman both in work and in her personal life, while the desires of the child himself are ignored. Often such mothers give birth to children "for themselves", and raise him without fathers. Such people treat others like their left foot. Imagine this situation: a person wakes up, he urgently needs to go to the store, and his left leg is gone. This causes rage in a person: “Where is my leg ?! I need you!!”, i.e. the leg is only a function that must satisfy the owner, and his own desires do not interest him.

A bright, active, charismatic personality striving for fame and power, breaking hearts and beating plates. Those around her call her a hysteric, but in fact she is a little girl in need of care and support, unable to express her needs and emotional experiences. Psychologists associate this type of personality with a mythical heroine ...

The psychologist told what to do if the girls break the dishes and change their behavior dramatically.

A bright, active, charismatic personality striving for fame and power, breaking hearts and beating plates. Those around her call her a hysteric, but in fact she is a little girl in need of care and support, unable to express her needs and emotional experiences. Psychologists associate this type of personality with the mythical heroine Cassandra - misunderstood and unheard. Why do they become hysterical, how do they live and what does Kassandra have to do with it, says psychotherapist Zlata Zankovskaya.

Cassandra is a character in ancient Greek mythology, a typical example of a girl raised by a "cold" mother. The American psychologist Lori Leighton Shapira wrote: “The girl gets the impression that life cannot proceed as she wants, but only as her mother wants. In the mind of a child, reality is not credible.” Why? Because a mother for a child is the first and, until a certain age, the only reality. If the mother showed her coldness in early childhood (didn’t take it in her arms, didn’t give her breast, didn’t caress), the thought grows stronger in the mind of the baby: the world will not give me anything just like that. I can only live if I am comfortable, the way my mother wants me to be, and therefore the world.

Due to the lack of approval from her mother, a girl from childhood is taught to hide her true feelings deep in her soul and hide her world. Hiding her true self, she immediately begins to feel guilty. Thus, a guilt complex and auto-aggression are born, and hysteria becomes the only way to present oneself. Why does the mother do this to the girl? Yes, because they treated her the same way. This is how "ices" multiply - passionate, but not accepting their passion, capable of much, but not understanding it. Girls are victims of dislike.

Flirtatious, seeking attention in many ways. Moreover, not only with catchy makeup or frank outfit: deliberate, as if flaunting modesty, is also a projectile from the arsenal of hysterical women.

TRAFFIC

The hysteric is in constant motion. She manages to move even lying down. This is her attempt to control everything.

STEP TO FEAR

Doing what I'm afraid of is one of the manifestations of the hysterical personality type. If a hysterical woman is afraid of her ugly appearance, she begins to actively expose it; if he is afraid of sexuality, he demonstrates it.

CONTRADICTIONS

A hysteric is sociability and detachment, compassion and selfishness, talkativeness and secrecy in one bottle.

FEMININITY IS TERRIBLE

It is very difficult for a hysterical woman to accept her femininity. In it, she feels a danger to herself, behind which there are a number of fears - for example, the fear of unwanted pregnancy, dependence on a man, and so on.

Feelings of hysterics are very strong. They are not afraid of them: they live by them. How does a hysteric express aggression? Screaming, waving his arms, throwing knives, breaking plates. And after a few minutes she cries, asks for forgiveness, sincerely laughs. And be sure: even inside you no longer feel anger. She's already gone.

SAD SCENARIO

EMPTINESS. As a result of the cold attitude of mothers towards their daughters, a generic scenario is formed, which is transmitted through the female line. Often in such families, girls begin to feel like the mothers of their mothers, they try to give them protection, and this is an unbearable burden for the child's psyche. The baby should receive a lot of love and care, otherwise she will have an emptiness inside. Not finding love and support from her mother, the girl begins to look for them in society and chooses a male scenario for her life.

ILLUSION. Since childhood, Cassandra has been looking for the attention and support of men, raising her father on a pedestal, managing to simultaneously love and hate, obey, feel like a victim and strive for freedom. After all, on the one hand, along with the birth scenario, the girl was given suspicion and anxiety towards men, and on the other hand, she wants to be a better woman for her father than her mother. She wants to feel care from him and at the same time turn into an active boy in order to become her father's favorite. Having matured, she is looking for a husband who will be like her father, but will give what her mother did not give. Moreover, caring and sweet is not interesting to her, but rejecting and cold is what she needs. Why does she need him? In order not to lose the illusion of freedom. A woman with a Cassandra complex is predisposed to sacrificial behavior and provokes her man to be next to her callous, soulless, tough and cruel. In fact, she reflects the mother's idea of ​​a man, which is verbally and non-verbally transmitted to her daughter in the process of upbringing. The bitter truth is that even the most sensitive and caring man next to Cassandra turns into a soulless monster.

Recently I wrote an article about the peculiarities of the internal phenomenology of children who grew up with "killing dead mothers".
These are mothers who, of course, are alive, are close to their children and even take care of them.
From the outside, some may even consider them ideal ... But there is one BUT ..
Their children never felt truly loved, needed, important and accepted next to such mothers.

Most often, the phenomenon of "killing a dead mother" occurs in children of "dead mothers". This term was introduced by Andre Green and you can read more about this syndrome.

In this article, I would like to talk about the behavior of people who grew up with a "dead killing mother." (The term is borrowed from Olga Sinevich.)
It is important to point out that in a "dead killing mother" the feeling of love is always associated with aggression, conscious or unconscious.

This is because in childhood they could not receive love and warmth from the most important and dear person for them - their mother. And now any love and affection is subconsciously associated with danger and disappointment, which always gives rise to anger and aggression. This anger and aggression subsequently extends to another important person in their lives - the child.

That is, the more intense the degree of affection and love, the higher the degree of aggression.

Typically, the aggression of such a mother manifests itself in:

Constant attacks and demands on the child;
- the desire to change the child and make him better;
- reproaches against the child for lack of respect and love;
- hypercontrol and hyperprotection;
- excessive focus on the child's illnesses (the influence of repressed aggression);
- anxiety about the occurrence of unpleasant situations with the child, accidents (the impact of repressed aggression);
- focus on their projections, and not on the personality of the child;
- complete or partial lack of empathy;
- frequent outbreaks of uncontrolled aggression;
- chaotic behavior and unpredictability of the mother (today you can do this, but tomorrow you will be punished for this).

Connections with similar features of the mother, the child, in turn, grows up with his own features:

Increased anxiety and expectation of danger, trouble, accident, imminent death; (self-introjected repressed maternal aggression);
- a feeling of a "hole" in the heart and a split perception of oneself;
- partial or complete lack of self-image (my characteristics, values, desires);
- fear of error and "wrong choice" (especially the consequences of this choice);
- the eternal search for a "universal recipe" - how to stop being yourself and become someone better;
- low self-esteem;
- auto-aggression, often unconscious (sometimes a subconscious desire for death);
- inability to accept love, support and care from others;
- often lack of desire to give love, support and take care of loved ones;
- constant doubts about love, respect and acceptance of other people;
- affective outbursts of aggression (uncontrollable);
- violation of sensitivity;
- lack of awareness of one's own feelings of love (often these feelings are also accompanied by aggression).

Thus, we can observe that this phenomenon practically passes from generation to generation.
For those who recognized some of these signs in themselves and in their mother, they probably felt anxiety for themselves and their loved ones.
But this article is not about hopelessness and "snowball", but about healing and the way to discover Love within yourself.
There is some observation that can help many people in "healing".

The first step is to recognize your aggression. Aggression towards one's own child, husband or wife, parents and other relatives.

The second step is to notice the expression of this aggression towards relatives (“why did I just think that if a child gets his feet wet, he will definitely get sick and die”, “why do I pay so much attention to my child’s shortcomings”, “why do I sometimes come to head thinking that when I go to the baby's crib, I can find that he is no longer breathing")

The third step is to learn to control your affective outbursts of aggression. This is a long and difficult process. Gradually realizing the previously hidden aggression, the affects will become less. But here it is important to stop yourself “in front of me is my child, I love him. This anger is not for him. This is the anger and resentment of my inner child, my mother. What is happening now is my projections, which have nothing to do with my child. The child loves me, he does not wish me harm. He doesn't want to deprive me of his love."

The fourth step is to realize that the aggression that you find in yourself is your love.
It's just that once upon a time, it became very dangerous for you to love. Love is full of disappointments, resentment and pain. Over time, you may have completely forgotten what it is to feel love. So here is the thread that will lead you to your love and there is hatred and anger.
If you are angry, hate, try to feel your fear and your resentment. It is behind him that there is that cherished feeling that was once buried in childhood.
Let this feeling inward. This is an unconditional feeling of love that only children are capable of in relation to their parents. Let it in and feel it. With love, there will probably come a lot of pain and a lot of self-pity.

Fifth step - mourn your fate, your childhood, your mother, your failed love. Live this grief. Live the grief, realizing that nothing can be changed. You will NEVER feel needed, accepted, loved and will no longer receive the necessary support from your mother. All this was necessary and important there and then. And here and now this child has long been gone, and that mother is no longer there either. All that's left is the ability to love. To love like that child once loved his mother.

The sixth step is to accept your fate, your mother, your characteristics. Allow yourself to be. You have already come too far from suffering and suffering. Now you deserve happiness. You really have a right to it.

Seventh step - do not lose sight of your love. Remember that everything you do, even all your affects, is all driven by love. One day the scales will tip. And the "hole" in the heart will be filled with love, but now with your love, which you can pass on to your children, gradually healing yourself and the next generations.
Because you are complete inside. You are capable of love.