Episode 23
How to Build a Mother-Daughter Bond That Feels Safe
The salient point of this podcast episode is the exploration of the profound and often complex bond between mothers and daughters, emphasizing the significance of emotional communication in nurturing this relationship. I am joined by Monika, a seasoned marriage and family therapist, who elucidates the dynamics of mother-daughter interactions, particularly in the context of emotionally focused therapy. Throughout our discourse, we delve into the underlying factors that contribute to the strength of this bond, as well as the challenges that arise, such as misunderstandings and emotional dysregulation. Monika articulates the necessity for mothers and daughters to foster a safe communicative space where both parties can express their needs and feelings without fear of judgment. Ultimately, we advocate for the importance of empathy, understanding, and the willingness to engage in difficult conversations to cultivate healthier relationships that can withstand the tests of time and life transitions.
The intricate dynamics between mothers and daughters are explored through the lens of emotional attachment, emphasizing the profound impact of these relationships on emotional health and interpersonal communication. Monika, a seasoned marriage and family therapist, elucidates the concept of attachment theory, originating from the pioneering work of John Bowlby, which posits that secure attachments foster emotional resilience and psychological well-being. In our dialogue, we delve into how mothers serve as crucial figures in mirroring safety and emotional understanding for their daughters. This mirroring, or emotional attunement, plays a pivotal role in shaping a daughter's self-esteem and ability to form healthy relationships. As we navigate this rich terrain, we highlight the complexity of the mother-daughter bond, acknowledging that while it can be a source of profound connection, it is also fraught with challenges, particularly during adolescence when daughters begin to assert their independence.
Takeaways:
- The podcast emphasizes the profound importance of the mother-daughter bond, which is foundational to emotional resilience and development.
- Monika discusses how emotional dysregulation often exacerbates conflicts between mothers and daughters, leading to misunderstandings and hurt feelings.
- The conversation highlights the necessity of effective communication in relationships, particularly in navigating the complexities of mother-daughter dynamics.
- Shobhna and Monika explore how family patterns and attachment styles are passed down through generations, influencing future relationships.
- They elaborate on the significance of seeking support for mothers to adequately meet their daughter's emotional needs and maintain a healthy relationship.
- The episode concludes with a reminder of the value of honest conversations in fostering understanding and connection within familial relationships.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Freemind
- Emotionally Focused Therapy
- Restoring Relationships
- John Bowlby
- Donald Winnicott
- Lisa Damour
- Mary Main
Transcript
Hello, guys, and welcome back to busy Freemind.
Speaker A:This is Shobhna.
Speaker A:This is a space where we slow things down and have honest, meaningful conversations about mental wellness, emotional health, and the relationships that shape our lives.
Speaker A:Today I am so honored to be joined by Monika.
Speaker A:Monika works with couples and families who feel frustrated, scared, lonely, or stuck in painful communication patterns.
Speaker A:She helps people learn how to communicate peacefully and effectively, rebuild trust and create deeply bonded relationships where both partners feel fully seen and emotionally safe.
Speaker A:Welcome, Monica.
Speaker A:I'm so grateful to have you here.
Speaker B:Thank you so much, Shobana.
Speaker B:Really wonderful to be here.
Speaker B:Excited to have this conversation.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Please let us know your journey into this therapy field.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:You know, the focus of my work as a marriage family therapist for over two decades, unbelievably, has always been the family and the family system.
Speaker B:And the way that I have, I think probably really found, I want to say, like my.
Speaker B:My home in an approach to helping families and couples is through the modality called emotionally focused therapy.
Speaker B:Emotionally focused therapy is designed to.
Speaker B:To understand how normally people may get into conflict with each other who are in important bonded, close relationships and then helps those people find, with their therapist help and guidance in session, a step by step approach to slowing down the old pattern and starting to be able to create and engage more and more in a new pattern.
Speaker B:So the reason that I bring that up now is that it just so is aligned with what I'm wanting to put out into the world.
Speaker B:The mission of my practice, which is called restoring relationships, is that every family member to the greatest possible extent, can feel fully seen, deeply understood, and really experience the most enjoyable relationship possible.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:So I'm lucky enough to call northern Nevada, a small town in northern Nevada, my.
Speaker B:My work home for many, many years.
Speaker B:And that's where I've been doing this work.
Speaker A:Wonderful.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker A:You explained how a relationship should be in beautiful words.
Speaker A:I really appreciate that and I'm so excited for today's episode because, you know, when we talk about therapy, people talk about stress or couple therapy or productivity kind of stuff.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:But we are going to take a topic that is so beautiful, which is mother and daughter bond.
Speaker A:So tell us, why is the mother daughter bond so strong?
Speaker B:Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker B:I'll start at sort of a broader spot and then dive right into that.
Speaker B:I'll say the parent child bond, as you know, all of us have experience is incredibly important.
Speaker B:And I notice how sort of simple those words even sound.
Speaker B:Let's talk just a little bit about something called attachment.
Speaker B:So as I mentioned I have extensive training in emotionally focused therapy.
Speaker B:And that particular approach is rooted in something called attachment therapy theory.
Speaker B:So the really the kind of.
Speaker B:The founder of attachment theory is named John Bowlby.
Speaker B:And he just said that a secure bond with a caregiver is what really lays the groundwork for lifelong emotional health.
Speaker B:And then there are other practitioners who expanded on that in their own way.
Speaker B:The one that I want to mention now is named Donald Winnicott.
Speaker B:And these are both, you know, sort of pioneers in the, in the therapy field and with the focus on attachments between children and caregivers.
Speaker B:And what he brought to that theory is there's this importance in how a caregiver can mirror for a child love essentially.
Speaker B:And so really, simply put, what we know is when a mother is mirroring safety and security, safe haven and a secure base for a daughter, that is really that foundational moment by moment opportunity for that child to develop emotional resilience.
Speaker A:When the caregiver is mirroring how to behave or when they become the model for the child to mirror themselves in the society, aren't the caregivers, in our case it's mom, aren't they taking this risk to behave perfectly all the time for their kids?
Speaker B:You know, I think I would put that a different way simply because that concept of mirroring really encompasses all different ways that a daughter, Right, an infant daughter might be developing.
Speaker B:So, so rather than focusing just on behavior, really what is happening is the emotional developments, the ability to create relationships with other people, to have a sense or to eventually develop positive self esteem.
Speaker B:All of these things are being provided by a caregiver mom to her daughter.
Speaker B:So another way to look at it is to, I guess remember that when a mother has the support that she needs and there's so many different valid sources of that support and is able to provide positive, attuned mirroring to a daughter, then there's going to be this way that a daughter simply can view that relationship and the world as a safe place, place.
Speaker B:And then the reverse is true.
Speaker B:If a mother is not resourced for whatever reason, then I guess a way to put it is it can lead to anxiety for that daughter or some challenges in navigating healthy relationships.
Speaker B:I will also say that this is a very wide spectrum of experience.
Speaker B:Experience and all people have a very wide spectrum of how they navigate that and what that looks like in their lives.
Speaker A:True.
Speaker A:So why do mother daughter fights hurt so much?
Speaker B:Well, you know, kind of talking about that wide spectrum, I just want to start by saying it.
Speaker B:In most Relationships, it's totally normal and, and can absolutely be productive for caregivers and children to argue.
Speaker B:So for mothers and daughters to argue, sometimes that's a necessary part of their relationship.
Speaker B:I think what can hurt so much, in my experience, because I've focused primarily on adolescent and young adult daughter mom relationships, is that mom can have expectations about herself that can be very closely connected to her daughter's thoughts, feelings, actions.
Speaker B:So it's a learning curve for, I would say, all of us parents to learn who our children are becoming.
Speaker B:And there can be moments of tension, big tension, when maybe a mom's expectation of herself isn't being, I guess, demonstrated in a daughter's choices as that daughter is working so hard to develop her own sense of identity and way in the world.
Speaker B:So because of this dependence and interdependence that a mom and daughter have on each other, there's a lot of vulnerability.
Speaker B:Yeah, those two people.
Speaker A:Yeah, true.
Speaker A:Not only in this relationship, why do small comments turn into big fights?
Speaker A:Is that a lack of understanding or is it due to expectations between the relationships?
Speaker A:Why does it happen?
Speaker B:Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker B:As I have spent lots of time with people in relationships, I'm doing that on a moment by moment basis in session.
Speaker B:And so why comments can sort of spiral, I think has a lot to do with something that I'll call emotional dysregulation.
Speaker B:So let me just give a very simple term for that.
Speaker B:If I'm feeling really stressed out and I'm having a lot of feelings at the same time, let me say with my daughter, I can absolutely talk about it from that spot.
Speaker B:It's going to be very difficult for me to be able to take in a new perspective other than my own.
Speaker B:I may be having body sensations that make it very difficult for me to feel grounded and safe in the conversation.
Speaker B:I may not be open to new information or ideas.
Speaker B:And that's absolutely what's going to be happening with my daughter.
Speaker B:She's going to be wanting me to take in her experience.
Speaker B:So when people are able to find a calmer, more grounded place with each other and establish a sense of emotional safety with each other, then those comments have much less of a sting to them and there's much more of a possibility for people to come up with a new solution to that, that old problem.
Speaker A:Do you think?
Speaker A:And open communication would solve that problem?
Speaker B:There are so many valid reasons why emotional.
Speaker B:Did you say emotional communication?
Speaker A:No, open communication.
Speaker B:Communication.
Speaker B:There's so many valid reasons why it's a process to get to that.
Speaker B:And absolutely.
Speaker B:Open communication can have many different descriptions, but I would say simply, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker A:But why does sometimes love feel like criticism?
Speaker B:Well, I think, you know, going back to that bond, going back to something that I mention at all stages a little bit more about now, we go back to interdependence.
Speaker B:The idea, or really the definition of interdependence, is that we are both dependent in our.
Speaker B:In our family relationships on each other, but we also have a way that we're independent and we have equal needs for both of those.
Speaker B:So as a mom and a daughter are practicing or developing that, as that daughter is growing up, that tense moment where maybe the two of them are feeling misunderstood can absolutely feel like the opposite of love.
Speaker B:I think there's.
Speaker B:There's also a vulnerability that a mom and daughter may feel because there are unspoken but very important expectations in family life that a relationship look a certain way so that it's familiar and safe, and that relationship's inevitably going to change.
Speaker B:So the words I love you can be sincere, but they don't necessarily form the basis of a new kind of communication that's needed.
Speaker A:But why do daughters feel judged by their moms?
Speaker B:Yeah, I love that question.
Speaker B:I think, about how daughters are developing and growing in their own identities.
Speaker B:And also let's notice and factor in that a daughter, as she's developing her neurological development is also still very active.
Speaker B:So adolescents and young adults are definitely kind of ruled by their emotional brain.
Speaker B:So if that conversation starts to go into a heated or kind of negative pattern, it's very difficult for a daughter who's trying to make her own decisions, trying to force her own relationships and engage in her own activities, to see a mom who maybe for her own valid reasons, really asking for a different thought process from that daughter, it may be very difficult for that daughter to take that in as a constructive conversation.
Speaker B:So when we kind of pair this emotional approach, this uncertainty a daughter is experiencing, and possibly fear that a mom is experiencing as her daughter is telling her, hey, I'm going to go try this really new thing, it can absolutely come across as, you don't trust me, you don't have my best interest, you think you know what I need, but you really don't.
Speaker B:So I think that's where that perception of being judged kind of spring up.
Speaker A:Why do moms feel unappreciated by their kids?
Speaker A:After doing all of those things, they feel unappreciated.
Speaker B:Why?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, I agree with you.
Speaker B:You know, when a daughter is young and I'm gonna call young as a preteen.
Speaker B:And clearly there's a wide range of when a daughter might go from a child into kind of an adolescent way of being.
Speaker B:Family life is it needs to be more predictable because the needs of a younger child and a mom and parents oftentimes.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Have, I would say, control.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And understanding that that's their responsibility to create that routine and meet their daughter's needs.
Speaker B:But as a daughter gets older, she's going to be prioritizing her own interests, her peer relationships, she's encountering new academic challenges, and she's going to want to put more time into those places or indoor schedule.
Speaker B:And so she needs to be more in charge of her schedule.
Speaker B:And that sort of change can feel shaky for a mom because they're just sort of simply spending less time together.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Also, don't forget that as daughters are out in the world, they come home after experiencing quite a lot of stress.
Speaker B:And home often is the place where a daughter can express frustrations the most freely.
Speaker B:So a daughter may be described by her friends or teachers as a total joy to be around.
Speaker B:And the moment gets the daughter who's dressed out and hears about the rough spots in her day and says, ow.
Speaker B:Why am I the one that's always getting the negative?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Why do old hurts keep coming back?
Speaker A:Moms make mistakes.
Speaker A:We are all human.
Speaker A:Moms make mistake.
Speaker A:And why do kids mainly pull that old thing in a new fight?
Speaker A:Why that whole thing comes back again and again in a relationship conflict in any relationship.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:I. I'm so glad that you pointed out, of course moms make mistakes.
Speaker B:And we've never had a child that age and that moment on that Friday night.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Why do old hurts come back?
Speaker B:I think there's two reasons for that.
Speaker B:One is I was talking about emotional regulation and the ability to, um.
Speaker B:I'll say right now, the ability to actively listen isn't always online.
Speaker B:For a mom and a daughter, that bond is so important.
Speaker B:And as a daughter goes out in the world, a mom could feel more anxiety about that.
Speaker B:As a mom has big feelings and so does a daughter in conversations, those feelings don't always get fully addressed for so many valid reasons.
Speaker B:So feelings and needs that can't be spoken about can kind of go underground.
Speaker B:And when a mom and a daughter maybe encounter a similar situation, say it's a decision about when to do homework, or if the daughter is going to go out on a weekend night, they may be faced with an old conversation.
Speaker B:An emotionally focused therapy and emotionally focused Family therapy, we call that a negative cycle because it's so understandable that a mom and a daughter won't always have time and space to express unresolved feelings and needs.
Speaker A:But Monika, how can we solve that issue?
Speaker A:How can we process that old fights or old problems that we faced already?
Speaker A:Because when there is a new issue, we always go through the past thing again and again.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:They are reliving the past again and again, which gives them additional stress.
Speaker A:Do you think therapy would help them to process those old things out?
Speaker B:I mean, I really kind of like where you're going with that.
Speaker B:And that's absolutely true.
Speaker B:I would say part of human relationships is having that hindsight and noticing when we haven't been able, you know, to listen and respond with empathy and understanding, to kind of have a do over is essential for a healthy mother daughter relationship.
Speaker B:And it can be really, really important for a mom and a daughter to find the emotional language that works for their relationship.
Speaker B:When the emotions are validated, generally speaking, for each, both a mom and a daughter and okay to talk about, then there's a possibility to create a new pattern, a new approach.
Speaker B:And that can happen in a moment and that can happen in several therapy sessions.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It's really up to that.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Those two people.
Speaker A:So when kids are young, they always want moms and dad's attention towards them and they want their parents to hug them, to care for them, love them at all.
Speaker A:But why after a particular stage, that closeness feel overwhelming for them?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Not such a perfect word for it.
Speaker B:Overwhelming throughout, you know, kind of, kind of that adolescent.
Speaker B:I'll start at the adolescent lifespan because that's when we really start to see that ambivalence in a daughter.
Speaker B:There's so many changes.
Speaker B:There's physical and sexual development, there's emotional development, there's cognitive development and that can be very overwhelming for.
Speaker B:It was overwhelming for every single one of us.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, at that time of our lives.
Speaker B:So I think as that young woman is tolerating her own uncertainty, she's just not quite sure on many different levels how she may feel comfortable with attention.
Speaker B:Let me call it from her mom, there is a.
Speaker B:A wonderful author.
Speaker B:Her name is Lisa Damore.
Speaker B:So I'm going to credit her really quickly on this great picture she gives people in a book of hers, the name of it is Untangled.
Speaker B:She talks about how parents are like the swimming pool and the daughter is doing the swimming and what she describes how a parent as the swimming pool can suddenly, as a child is sort of a daughter is like treading into open water, can feel kicked hard in the stomach, so to speak.
Speaker B:And like, oh, that hurt.
Speaker B:As a metaphor for describing how that daughter kind of needs to.
Speaker B:To push away her mom as a real normal developmental task.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:How do our life changes affect the relationship?
Speaker B:I mean, really, I have about a thousand answers for each of your questions.
Speaker B:They're.
Speaker B:They're just such insightful questions.
Speaker B:You know, maybe generally speaking, life transitions are a stressful time.
Speaker B:And so when a relationship experiences stress and uncertainty, then the kind of familiar approaches don't fit anymore.
Speaker B:Some very kind of common transitions are.
Speaker B:We've been talking a lot about the transition from childhood into adolescence, adolescence into young adulthood, which has gotten this wonderful kind of term called launching.
Speaker B:When a daughter leaves her parents home in some very independent way, A daughter maybe partnering with another person, losing family members.
Speaker B:I mean, as I described that, you know, you and I both can kind of feel in our bodies right now what stress might be like.
Speaker B:And so when, when a relationship experiences stress, it has to adjust, but at the same time, it's managing the stress of that rhythm, that particular transition.
Speaker A:Monica, how to family patterns gets passed down.
Speaker A:When you said that kids are mirroring their parents, the daughter is mirroring her mom, do you think the family patterns get passed down?
Speaker B:I mean, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker B:One of the things that is that I think applies to many parts of our conversation today is acknowledging really just those external influences of culture, particular, particular family's economic circumstances, other circumstances, luck, or how a family maybe has experienced trauma.
Speaker B:There is some very strong research indicating that there is now something called generational trauma, and there's data regarding that.
Speaker B:So those are all highly impactful as to how family patterns are passed down, Just to speak about that generally.
Speaker B:But here I'd like to share an interesting body of research that kind of, what am I trying to say, kind of connects to your question.
Speaker B: r many decades ago now in the: Speaker B:So she was also an attachment theorist, and she wanted to know how much the way people were parented was going to predict how they parented as parents.
Speaker B:And it was an astonishing correlation.
Speaker B:It was an 80% correlation between those two.
Speaker B:So just to kind of bring us back to that way that a caregiver provides a quality of attachment for her daughter that was really demonstrated as a real strong predictor of what patterns a mom might be passing down to her daughter.
Speaker B:Also based clearly 80%, based on her experience, her parenting.
Speaker A:That's why I said I was asking you that.
Speaker A:We are the real time example for our kids as a human.
Speaker A:People also get into stress as parents.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:At the same time we have to be like role model for our kids.
Speaker A:So most of the times parents have to swallow their stress and they have to act perfect for them.
Speaker A:As a result, they are getting into more stress.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I appreciate you circling back to that.
Speaker B:That is absolutely true.
Speaker B:It's absolutely true.
Speaker B:Parents, we are all resourced to the degree that we are and we all face those challenges.
Speaker B:So however parents, a mom has adequate support, acknowledgement of those cultural or economic or traumatic kind of circumstances and can be, you know, seek out, offer yourself self compassion.
Speaker B:See, seek out compassion and support from others because there's no way.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:That we are going to be offering some sort of perfect representation of a human being for our child to look up.
Speaker A:What makes a mother daughter relationship feel safe.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, I think what can be very helpful for mothers is, you know, I'll call it.
Speaker B:We were just talking about support.
Speaker B:So, so let's say in a very gentle way, the support from community members, from their co parent, if that co parent happens to be a man, you know, considers the co parent is a dad.
Speaker B:Support from the mom's professional role.
Speaker B:All of those things can go into a mom learning or support.
Speaker B:That is a mom learning what her daughter needs because she doesn't have to feel the stress of those, you know, kind of external places.
Speaker B:And I think learning what a mom needs as a mom allows that mom to pass that, that approach and that lesson onto her daughter because a mom can, can offer that kind of relational space for her daughter.
Speaker B:I'm going to also use a really big word right now, but I want to talk about it in the context of communication.
Speaker B:Communication that prioritizes listening and receiving.
Speaker B:So giving your own communication about what you need and receiving, receiving what your mom or daughter needs allows those two people to be flexible and open in their approach and allows them to practice.
Speaker B:I would call forgiveness because we're all going to be making mistakes.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so having a communication style that allows for the bumps.
Speaker B:Very helpful.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Yes, I absolutely agree that there should be a two way communication.
Speaker A:A mom should take the common ground without taking her side or her daughter and try to acknowledge what they are saying or what they are going through will be a very good solution for it.
Speaker A:Monica, thank you so much.
Speaker A:You explained everything so clearly and this episode has been such a grounding and meaningful conversation.
Speaker A:Thanks for being with us again.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:And viewers thank you to everyone listening if this conversation resonated with you, take a moment to breathe, reflect, and maybe even start one gentle, honest conversation of your own.
Speaker A:Until next time, take care of your mind, your heart and your relationships.
Speaker B:Bye Bye.
