In this episode, Henri and Heidi Carlson discuss the mother-daughter wound, its impact on relationships, and the importance of healing from it. They explore the definition of the mother-daughter wound, its origins, and its manifestation in adulthood. They also delve into the ways it affects body image, self-worth, and relationships with others. The conversation emphasizes the significance of breaking free from unhealthy attachments and healing the wounds for personal growth and healthy relationships.
In this episode, Henri and Heidi Carlson discuss the mother-daughter wound, its impact on relationships, and the importance of healing from it. They explore the definition of the mother-daughter wound, its origins, and its manifestation in adulthood. They also delve into the ways it affects body image, self-worth, and relationships with others. The conversation emphasizes the significance of breaking free from unhealthy attachments and healing the wounds for personal growth and healthy relationships.
Takeaways
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Heidi is a Certified Master Life Coach specializing in relationships, particularly mother-daughter dynamics. Starting her self-discovery journey at 19, she has trained with top institutions like The Gottman Institute and The Elementum Coaching Institute, graduating at the top of her class. After leaving her corporate marketing career in 2021, Heidi has helped hundreds transform their relationships. She believes everyone deserves healthy, empowering relationships and is passionate about guiding women to heal their struggles and build thriving connections.
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heidicarlsoncoaching/
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Mother-Daughter Wound and Its Impact
03:17 The Origins and Manifestation of the Mother-Daughter Wound
08:55 Healing and Breaking Free from Unhealthy Attachments
32:03 The Role of the Body in Healing and Self-Discovery
41:31 The Importance of Breaking Free and Generational Healing
Henri (00:00.174)
Hey there, you're listening to Living Beyond Expectations, a podcast dedicated to exploring what life could be like if we all stopped outsourcing our inner source. I'm Henri Emile, your host, coach, and proud mama's boy. Today I'm joined by Heidi Carlson, a certified master life coach specializing in relationships and more specifically, mother -daughter dynamics. In today's episode, we're going to talk about the mother -daughter wound. What is it? How does it show up?
How does it impact our relationships with the people around us? And most importantly, our relationship with ourselves. We'll also talk about some ways it could show up that aren't so obvious, like challenges with body image and self -worth. As always, if this resonates with you, please subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. All right, let's get into it. I'd love to get an understanding of how you see the mother -daughter wound, how you define that. So yeah, welcome.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Henri. I'm happy to be here. The mother wound is essentially psychological, emotional, or physical pain or trauma experienced as a result of an unhealthy relationship with your mother. And it is caused by an unhealthy relationship, which kind of if we go back in time to when a child's born,
In the womb, we actually start to build an attachment with our mother in the womb before we're even out on Earth yet and living on Earth. And during that time, we are building either a secure or an insecure attachment with our mother. And then we come out into the world, we're born and our mother starts physically, emotionally, you know, nurturing us, which is the hope.
And depending on how our mother cares for us, that continues to reinforce a secure or insecure attachment with our mother. And a secure attachment is when all of our fundamental needs are being met. So our mother is obviously, well, you know, starting from like baby, right, feeding us and all those things. But just through time, our mother is nurturing us, loving us, showing approval.
Henri (02:20.718)
showing that we matter and validating our feelings, you know, emotionally available when we're feeling whatever the feelings are, right? And then there's the other side of if a mother is not doing those things, and the list can be quite lengthy, if the mother is not emotionally available, like for example, as a baby, when you're even just crying and your mother is like unavailable, doesn't come to you to nurture, hug you,
let you know that you're safe, that starts to develop an insecure attachment with your mother. And then you could just imagine as we grew up, you know, having unhealthy communication with our mother can again lead into insecure attachment. And then that leads into different wounds that we would then have as a result of our relationship with our mother. Yeah. And, you know, it's really interesting because I think that there's kind of a,
a whole school of thought for maybe more than one generation of, you know, cry it out, let them cry it out. And so as you just said, that can create, or most likely for a lot of us created an insecure attachment with our mother because that was the prevailing wisdom of the day. Absolutely. And you know, there is of course like letting your baby cry when you're trying to sleep train them. You know, I'm not an expert in that area, but I would.
I would assume that you're letting them cry because you need to teach them, you need to sleep, this is how we need you to sleep on a daily basis. But when you're letting them cry repeatedly on an ongoing basis throughout their upbringing, that's when the message to the baby is, I can't trust my mom, I don't have safety, I don't have security, I can't trust whoever's supposed to be caring for me, right?
And then that leads into our upbringing and it ultimately all of these wounds that are developed that are by the way subconscious, which is really important to know. They show up in our adulthood. So in our relationships and our life out in the world, which is really critical to understand. It's. Let's see its impact in the way we show up as adults.
Henri (04:36.91)
Yeah. So how do those things? So if you had maybe an insecure attachment with your mother, if you're a daughter, we're talking mother -daughter wound here, you had an insecure attachment, how can that manifest or be detrimental to your life as you grow up and move out, become an adult, become independent? How does that impact that? Yeah. So let me just go back to some mother wounds to really let your audience know.
some concrete examples of way wounds can arise. So again, I mentioned like emotional neglect. So let's say you're being raised. Your mother doesn't know how to honor, express, encourage your feelings or even wants to hear them or see them. So you're shut down. You're being shut down as you're raised. You're being taught to suppress your emotions, to press your feelings, not share them with people. So that will translate into adulthood.
As to I don't know how to share feelings. I don't know how to identify my feelings. I'm not worthy of sharing my feelings with others. I don't even know what my feelings are because I was never able to identify or share them growing up. And so there's a lot of, I would say, suppression of yourself within. Also, it's really a barrier in your relationship because if you can't express how you're feeling and be vulnerable with others, that really limits the level of
depth you can go in your relationships with other people. Another example would be if your mother's overbearing and controlling and it does not let you be you. It's always telling you what to do, telling you how to dress, telling you to stop talking the way that you do, telling you that your opinions are wrong, wants you to believe all the ways that they live and breathe and all the things, right? Then you go into life kind of like a mini version of your mom.
really confused with your identity. You don't really know who you are because you've been programmed to be like your mom and that's a whole nother level of struggle. And then it's just, there's not, you know, if you have abuse in your emotional abuse, verbal abuse, certainly physical abuse, those also lead into struggles in life and in your relationship. Yeah. And so if you can't feel your emotions, you can identify with them.
Henri (06:58.926)
I imagine that that then has kind of an impact on not only, as you said, your ability to express them, but could that also then show up with kind of even outbursts with your partner or in your relationships because it's just so overwhelming when you don't know what's really going on inside? 100%. Actually, you nailed it. So, you know, our emotions have to go somewhere. They exist. It's energy. So if we can't release them and communicate them to others,
and release them in some way that's healthy, ideally, they're just building up within us. And so, yes, over time, it's building up, building up. And so when things happen in our life or in our relationships, we get triggered and the emotions just come out. We get angry, we get really dysregulated. So 100%, it is really important as a child and certainly as adults too, to feel like you are safe.
and encouraged and worthy of expressing and feeling and identifying every emotion you have because that's also how we connect with people. If you can't tap into your feelings, emotions, and also share them with others, again, I mentioned you're really keeping yourself at a distance with people, even in your marriage, even in your long -time partnership, even with your children. It just perpetuates all your relationships.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the things that's really interesting about that, and it speaks to a larger thing where it's just, you know, the mother daughter wound isn't just something that will then show up with your kids. As you said, it shows up with your boyfriend, your husband, your girlfriend, your friends, your children. It shows up in every single relationship that you have. And so.
I think if we also kind of zoom out a little bit, right, I think one of the challenges with parents, and this goes for mother and father, but I think one of the challenges with parents is from a kid's perspective, that parent is their everything. And in this case, that parent could be the, you know, if they're getting breastfed, that parent literally is my source of survival, right? And...
Henri (09:23.31)
we sometimes forget that our parents are also human beings who have their own crap that they brought from wherever they've brought that from, right? More than likely inherited from their parents and that generationally continues to go back and back. And so I just wonder if we're, if part of that equation, when you're working through the,
Wounding and the traumas and the things that you have with your mother is is it all about me fixing myself or is there an element of that where we work in cooperation if we can Right with our mother to also heal some of the things for them Yeah Really good question and I'll say that there's some like three steps that you would do before you you know, go theoretically fix yourself
And the process would ideally, you know, if you have a really, depends on the relationship with your mother, you know, like for example, I had, when I went off to college, my relationship with my mother became very difficult because she wanted me to be like her and have the same opinions. And that's just the way she knew what to be. She wasn't trying to hold me back. However, I went on a journey to heal.
I didn't know I had mother wounds, but I went on a journey to heal our unhealthy relationship, break the attachment, all the things. My mother was not a part of any piece of that. I did it all on my own. And what started happening is I started showing up differently in our relationship, and that's what slowly changed it. However, if you have a mother or parent, because this really is applicable to dads as well, dad, daughter, father, son, all the things,
If you feel your parent or your mother would be receptive to hearing you say, mom, you know, I have these issues and I found out, you know, however you word it, but I realized I have these wounds from my upbringing. I want to work through them. It would be valuable to work through it together. And what I would also recommend first is actually meeting with a mother, daughter, coach or therapist to address this and talk with them about the best
Henri (11:45.134)
strategy to move forward because it really is unique to every single person. However, I would say that it's wonderful if you can go through the journey of breaking the attachment with your mom and healing your wounds and including your mom's in that journey where it's applicable, but it's not necessary. You can still break the attachment. You can still heal your wounds 100 % without your mom present or even aware of the work you're doing as in my case.
And that really is the beauty of it because a lot of moms may not understand, they may take offense, they may be like, what are you talking about? I was the best parent I could have been for you. So we don't want to be dependent on them to build ourselves up to be the best we can. We can do it on our own. Right. I guess that is even more especially true if they're still the same mom that you've been with the whole time. So.
If they're the ones that kind of created the thing, it might be harder if you have a mother who you can't really involve. Your mother is still who they are, right? And so if they're the ones that perpetuated those things, those wounds, whatever, however you want to label that, then getting them to change seems a lot harder when, you know, what's really the most beneficial is changing yourself, right? You can only take responsibility for your own stuff.
Yeah, and I would say absolutely start the journey without your mom involved. And again, during the process when you're working with a coach or therapist, you could decide at any point should you pull your mom in and that's even if you think your mom may be receptive or if you're willing to take the risk to see if she is. But it's not necessary. And the beauty of it is you have full power to heal yourself without your mom involved. And I do want to just quickly mention,
Our mother is our very first relationship in life. And so that's part of the significance. Our mother is our primary caregiver, our nurturer. She births us. And so when we have a broken relationship with our mom, it impacts so many things in our life. It impacts how we feel about ourselves, the way we show up.
Henri (14:06.798)
communication boundaries, like so many different things. And again, it's unique to every single child. But I just wanted to really make that clear that our mother is our first relationship and we want to honor that, but also realize or understand like, you know, that's great, but there's a lot of unhealthy things that I got from it that are holding me back in life. And I need to go work on it and work on myself to heal them so I can have a better life, better relationship.
and not pass all this stuff down to future generations, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I think what's also interesting about what you're saying and the way that it shows up in the way that it can manifest is that there's probably also some kind of sideways ways that it shows up or ways that are a little less obvious. Can you give a couple of examples of that? Yeah. So for example, when I went on my journey, I didn't go on my journey saying,
I had an unhealthy relationship, but I had an unhealthy upbringing. I mean, actually, I kind of knew I did because my parents had a really unhealthy marriage. So I knew quite young that there were a lot of issues. But I didn't start my journey saying I have mother wounds, I need to heal them, they're holding me back in life. I started my journey because my mom and I had a lot of conflict often because she wanted to control me. And I, after I moved away from college, I wanted to
I was exerting my independence, I was finding my voice, I was finding my identity, I was becoming more of Heidi and my mom didn't know what to do with that. So as you're talking about kind of the ways that the mother wound shows up, right, we're talking about not being able to handle your emotions, right? Some of the really big ways that it can show up in relationship with others. But I wonder if there are some ways that it shows up that are a little less obvious and a little less about the relationships that you have with others.
and more about the relationship you have with yourself. And I'll give you an example from my own, right? I know that we're talking primarily about mother -daughter, but there's also, right, I, as a child, still I'm a mama's boy through and through, but as a child, I remember knowing that my mother had her own insecurities. She had her own issues. I could see them with her mother, right? And so even if she wasn't directly,
Henri (16:31.918)
neglecting me from, you know, a love perspective or letting me have my feelings or those types of things. I still saw that. And some of those insecurities manifested in body issues, right? The need to go to the gym, the need to, to, you know, be skinny and, and those types of things. And for me, that I think is another wound, right? That showed up for me and I have a similar outlook on life and...
physical health and that's an inherited thing from my mother that she didn't necessarily thrust upon me. But it's still there because I still witnessed it in her. I still witnessed her wounds from her mother that I then took on as for myself. So I wonder what other ways can things show up that seem maybe a little less obvious. Yeah. And that's such a good example because, you know, that's something that you
wouldn't have attributed to your mom, you know, it's earlier in life, right? But I think again, it comes back to we're each unique people and we have unique parents with unique backgrounds, with unique wounds and traumas and all the things. So a lot of things can surface that are not identifiable as being a mother wound. I think the best way to start to figure that out is to look at your life and look at where am I struggling?
on a somewhat recurring basis. What keeps coming up in my life that's a problem? What are my triggers that keep coming up? And I would look at your life in that way and your relationship. So I would have a life bucket and maybe a relationship bucket and look at both separately. And what is not working? What keeps coming up that's a problem or occurring problem? Because that's an identifier of a wound of some kind that came from somewhere. And your situation with your mother,
you inherited that programming that unless I weighed as much, unless I look this much or this way, then I'm not worthy. I'm not valuable enough. I'm not important enough. I don't look good enough. And absolutely. So your mom passed that down to you unknowingly. And by the way, all these wounds are unknowingly just the punches. But that one in particular is a behavior and a belief that she had.
Henri (18:55.342)
that you grew up under over and over and over as she raised you from zero to whatever age you left the home with that belief. And so you went into the world believing that if I look a certain way, I'm too thin, I'm too fat, I'm not dressed in the right colors, you know, my hair, you know, whatever it may be, you pick up that programming, that belief from your mom and you take it into the real world and your life and in your relationship.
And that's a really good example of a wound that is one that you wouldn't necessarily pinpoint. That was my mom who did that to me, right? Yeah. And I guess even in this case, she didn't necessarily do it to me, right? It wasn't an action where she wasn't telling me that I was fat or any of those things. She never said any of that type of thing. She never ever specifically said, hey, Henry, you should get to the gym, right? Like none of that.
My mom was very supportive and very positive. But again, I witnessed it because I, you know, especially as kids, we pick up literally everything. We are always, you know, not just a sponge in our brain, but a sponge in the things that we see and the things that we hear. And even if we don't know what they mean, our body still takes it in. So it takes in all of this data, all of these messages. And she didn't do it to me, but I was witness to her doing it to herself.
Yeah. And one thing I'd love to mention that's really valuable for parents. So for example, I have a son, he's 15 now. I've done a lot of work and I've healed a lot. I really have come to a great place in my life. But like, for example, for your mom, if she knew if she had the awareness, I have this issue. I'm working on it. It's something I need to work on. I'm not happy with.
I mean, of course she's not going to talk to you about it when you're five, but when you're older and you could understand. If she was able to have a conversation with you and say, you know, Henri, I have this issue. It's with, you know, my looks, my weight, my mom had it, my grandmother had it. I don't want you to inherit it. So please know that you are beautiful exactly the way you are. Never change your weight. You know, like, so if she said don't, if she told you.
Henri (21:12.494)
please don't inherit my pattern. You're beautiful just as you are. And she continued to share those words of affirmation and validation and worthiness and approval to you throughout your childhood. You may not have inherited, but of course we can't say for sure, right? So that's really powerful as parents to identify we're not perfect. We're never going to be perfect parents ever.
It's really helpful to identify areas that we may fall short for our kids and let them know, hey, I fall short here. I love you. It is not intentional. I'm working on it, but I want you to know that it has nothing to do with you ever. You're perfect just as you are. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, parents are people, human beings with their own stuff, trying to keep other people, other human beings alive.
Right. And they're not always as, you know, they're not as always as good at doing that. And so, you know, holding some of that recognition, I feel like can be a little bit more freeing, especially as an adult, where it's like, you don't have to condone what they did, the actions or the triggers or the things that they instilled in you don't have to say, that's okay. But you can also say, I understand. And
give a little bit of grace, a little bit of compassion to it without saying that what you did to me, was that right? Yeah. And I would say that the pro, so that's part of the journey of breaking the attachment of your mom and the healing is the grace, compassion. And I would say that you wouldn't really reach that stage or step or phase of grace and compassion until you understood and went through some healing work to understand your mom's journey. You know, for example, when I went through my journey,
I learned a lot about my mom's journey that was really difficult and traumatizing. And she was forced to get married at 16 years old to a man that she didn't know. So she was traumatized at a very young age. So as I learned more about my mom's story and about her troubles and about her wounds and through my journey of working on me and discovering and healing, I was able to slowly build compassion for my mom. But it does not excuse the behaviors.
Henri (23:35.694)
that they are, as an adult, when you can make your own decisions, we can have compassion and grace for our parents, but it doesn't make it okay that they're showing up in an unhealthy way for us. Does that make sense? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And so you've mentioned it a couple of times, and I'd love to walk through what a process like that could look like, right? So.
We'll just kind of skip to the part where we've acknowledged that there are some things in our lives that keep recurring, that are constantly coming up for us. I'm constantly fighting with my boyfriend. I just feel like I don't know whether I'm mad or whether I want to cry. And I just, I feel, they wouldn't use this word, but dysregulated. So they kind of just feel all over the place all the time, overwhelmed all the time. And so if they've acknowledged that, kind of what would be the next few steps?
in that process on a healing journey? Yeah, I would say that, again, it's unique to every single person. Some people have a lot of stuff going on and are very dysregulated. And the first step could be just to bring them down to a regulated place and really settle their nervous system, right? Someone else could come in and say, I'm completely functional, I'm good, but I'm struggling with my mom, right?
And it would start with, okay, let's look at your relationship with your mom. Where are you struggling? Like when do the struggles come up? What are the circumstances? What are the situations? So we kind of, to start the process of helping my client in this example, start showing up differently with her mom, I would give her coaching on how to start showing up differently in that situation that triggers her. So that's kind of the more short term step that we would do.
And parallel to that, we would really look at the holistic relationship with a mother and understand what are the big areas that really get at you with your mom, where it really impacts you, it makes you feel terrible inside, you feel like you're a bad daughter, you have guilt, it holds you back in life. So I would ask my client, along with the goals, what are the specific areas that really impact you? And are those the ones you want to work on? Client says, yes.
Henri (25:54.19)
And then we look at the client's relationship with themselves because when you have an unhealthy relationship with your mom and mother wounds, you have an unhealthy relationship with yourself. They kind of go hand in hand. So now we have to look at the relationship with you and where do you personally struggle in life from relationship? So it's kind of like a process of let's build you up to be a stronger, healthier person while we look at your relationship with your mom and figure out.
how to get you engaging with her in a healthier way, whether that's improving the communication, the way you show up with her and communicate your needs, setting boundaries. You may have no boundaries with your mom. That would probably be a very first step if you have no boundaries. And so it's figuring out how do I maintain my relationship with my mom, but in a healthier way, as I work on myself, heal the wounds and build myself up. And that's really, really the step is that is,
understanding where the issues are with the mom, where the issues are with you that you want to address and heal, building you up in that process and then helping you show up differently with your mom on a regular basis. Yeah. So some of those things, you know, we've talked a lot about specifically between the daughter and the mother, right? And now you've mentioned more about creating a healthier relationship with yourself or even building one if you don't really have.
much of a conscious awareness around your relationship with yourself. So what are some of the ways that that can show up? Like how could you build a relationship with yourself? Or what does it even mean to have a relationship with yourself? Yeah, such a good question. So I would say if I use myself as an example of that, I was raised in a family where there were no boundaries, unhealthy communication, parents fought all the time, we were huge people pleasers.
There was no self -compassion, no awareness of self -compassion. I mean, the list goes on and on. Unhealthy communication, you know, conflict was not positive, not handled in a good way. And that's just an example. So having a healthy relationship with yourself is number one, self -prioritizing you. You are number one every single day. Number two is giving yourself compassion when you make mistakes all short.
Henri (28:17.678)
aren't the best parent to your child that day. Don't do as good at your job on Tuesday or having a bad week or having a bad month. So self -compassion is really huge. It gives you grace to just be human and not be this like perfect person that actually doesn't even exist anyway. It also includes absolutely boundaries. Every single person on this planet needs boundaries and boundaries aren't something you have to go and communicate to the world.
There's something, it's a way you just show up in life and in your relationships and you teach people how to build a relationship with you through that. Another one is communication. If you don't have healthy communication, a healthy way of communicating with people, that's a big struggle and that's certainly going to impact you. And then that feeds into like having self doubt, self sabotaging with negative self talk and being too hard on yourself. And so the list can really go,
on and on and on. And again, we talked about the emotional, emotional piece, emotional expression. And what's interesting there, I think when you talk about self -talk or even just the way that you talk to others, right? If you talk to other people poorly, if you're kind of a dick, right? Or you're a jerk or you're just crabby and mean all the time. In most cases, or at least in my experience, I know that when I speak to someone some way, I am
more than likely either speaking to myself that way or I'm speaking to myself even worse, right? Because if I'm willing to do that to someone else, I'm definitely willing to be meaner and more crabby with myself and hold myself to even higher standards than I do other people. Yeah. So people who show up angry, mad at the world, victims, they have wounds. They have an upbringing. And I'll say too that,
All of our being isn't impacted just by our upbringing. It's also impacted by our life experiences. We also have wounds and traumas from life too, but it all starts with our upbringing. And that is a huge part of the way we show up in life. So I just want to point that out. But yes, if somebody is showing up angry, negative, victim every day, they have wounds. They have wounds. And...
Henri (30:39.086)
You know, I can't confirm that they would be treating themselves that same way every day, but it's quite likely it's quite likely that they are. Yeah. And, you know, that could stem to children. Right. So if you're treating everyone out, everyone outside that way, then how are you treating the people inside the home? And this is just an assumption because sometimes you could be treating everybody just beautifully in the home. But if you have that ability to treat people poorly on a constant basis with poor language and.
anger and all those things, then how do you just suddenly turn it off when you walk inside the home, right? Yep. Yeah, definitely. And so what's one, you know, we've talked about kind of identifying where there might be things continuously showing up. And we've talked about the communication piece and we've talked about that relationship with ourselves. What are some ways that, you know, this is all kind of seems to me very heady type of stuff, right? It's, it's, I'm
becoming conscious, I'm thinking, that thing keeps showing up in my life. And I wonder if there's some ways that you can do it more through the body. Or if at the beginning stages, does it make sense to really go through the body if you can't articulate or recognize how you feel, where you feel it, et cetera? What do you think about that? Yeah. Yes, you absolutely have to go through the body if you need to heal wounds from your upbringing. That's, I would say absolutely yes.
I would say that it wouldn't necessarily start with doing somatic work. It would first start with let's just get it all out. Let's just get it all out. What is your life like today? What are all your struggles? What was your upbringing like? How did your mom show up for you? And really, how did your dad show up for you? When I coach clients, I'm a mother -daughter relationship coach, but when I coach clients, I want to know it all. What was your whole upbringing like? Did you have a dad? How did your mom and dad communicate? Because...
That's the whole picture on the client. So it absolutely requires somatic work. And that would just be a part of the process when it makes sense for the client. It's required. And I would say that that's when it's like you have to do inner child work. And that's essentially when you are reparenting, reparenting yourself the way you were supposed to be. So we've talked a lot about kind of ways that you can start to do this work.
Henri (33:02.734)
Ways that you can identify, ways that you can look into where are things not working in your life, not working internally with yourself, and that can be very heady stuff. You just mentioned some of the stuff that you can do with the body, like inner child work and re -parenting yourself, which essentially is just parenting yourself the way that you should have been parented with all, as you said, needs met. And so how do you determine whether or not your relationship with your mother is healthy or not? Because you said,
and healthy and unhealthy, secure, insecure attachments, how do you really even know, right? If you are completely oblivious, right? If even the steps of determining whether or not you're stuck in these themes keep coming up, how do you just know that you have a secure or an insecure, unhealthy relationship with your mother? Yeah, really good question. So you know if you have a secure, healthy relationship with your mom, if you feel...
like your mom approves of you every single day. You have unconditional love. She doesn't judge you. She doesn't criticize you. She doesn't put you down. You have healthy communication, healthy loving communication. She has compassion for you and your feelings. She expresses feelings of joy, sadness, all the things with you and lets you do the same. She honors how you feel and wants to understand how she can help you when you need help.
She accepts you fully and doesn't try to change you. What else? Respects and honors you unconditionally. Isn't trying to make you be her. Doesn't compete with you. Obviously doesn't have narcissistic behaviors. Certainly isn't abusive. I think those are some obvious ones. And also doesn't pit you against your siblings, like create sibling rivalry. So.
Those are pretty much it. And then also just, she encourages you to just be you every day. Like see life, be the best you can be. You're amazing. She compliments you. She lets you know that you're worthy every day by showing and saying that you matter, that you're important to her. You know, all those loving, all those loving words that we really need reinforcement from our mother on that, you know, we are beautiful beings just as we are, just as we were birthed.
Henri (35:28.302)
Yeah, and I think even part of that, what I heard in there too, is even with the respect piece, right? Because you talked earlier about wanting to test your boundaries and get your independence and those types of things. So even with the respect thing, it's like, hey, mom, I don't want to do this or this makes me uncomfortable or this is my opinion, which might be different from yours. And at the end of the day, it's kind of like, OK, well, we can agree to disagree. And then there's no, you're not creating any beef there.
Right, there's no animosity that comes out of that. It's just like, okay, we're gonna go to our separate corners on this because we don't align and that's okay. I still love you, I still respect you. I still want nothing but the best for you. Yeah, and you can see how just what we shared here about how do you know if you have a healthy or unhealthy relationship with your mom. If all those things are in place that I just mentioned, you can imagine the type of adult you grow into, right? Secure, like.
My mom cherished and loved me every single day of my life. She never turned her back on me. She never left me. She never made me shut down my voice. She encouraged me to use my voice, right? So that's the type of adult that the mom is launching into the world. Right? So and then just on the flip side, you know, to understand if you have an unhealthy relationship with your mom, do you get triggered all the time? Are you stressed all the time? Do you feel like you're on eggshells when you're with your mom?
Do you argue a lot? Do you have a lot of conflict? Does your mom not honor your voice and your opinions? Does your mom love you conditionally and even tell you so? Does she make you feel guilty or ungrateful when you have a different opinion or wanna do something that she doesn't wanna do? So that's just kind of on the flip side to give you some examples of when you know it's an healthy relationship. Yeah. Yeah.
And I'm curious because I think that, you know, there's so many different makeups of family. And as you said earlier, there might not be space in your life, right? Maybe you don't even have a relationship with your mother anymore because of what you experienced. And so if you, if you can't involve your mother, right, where it becomes absolutely about your relationship with yourself, but then you can't go and be like, mom, you know, you did this thing and whatever.
Henri (37:47.374)
I want to fix this. I want to change this dynamic, whatever. If you don't have your mother to do that with, how do you do it? Like, how would you do it when you don't have, there is only the one way, there's only you? Yeah, great question. So your mother, as I mentioned earlier, your mom does not have to be present. And you know, if your mom has passed, you can still do the healing work. And I'll also say that if your mom has passed, you still have the same unhealthy relationship.
that's impacting your life, an unhealthy attachment, even though she's passed, and you still have the mother wounds. So you can go and do the work without your mom physically present, without your mom physically living today. And I'll say that until you identify that, yes, I have an unhealthy relationship with my mom and these are the reasons why, or I need to go to a culture therapist to really confirm what the reasons are, but I know I do.
until you realize that you do have an unhealthy relationship with your mom and you have a lot of wounding, whatever that may look like, and do the work to heal, you will be impacted throughout your life in life and in relationships until you break that attachment through healing work, through growth, growth work and heal the wounds because those will follow you throughout your life. They will follow you into all your relationships.
They will follow you into having children and they will potentially repeat themselves, including if you have a daughter, you might subconsciously repeat the exact same patterns your mom had with you with your daughter. If you do not do the work to heal. And that's how critical this work is. Yeah, it's interesting. I hear a lot of, a lot of times, right? And I'll never, I'll never be like you.
I'll never do those things. And then you see exactly that same behavior, even if it's maybe slightly tweaked because it's coming out of a different person, but it's still the exact same vein of what that parent did to you. And it takes a lot of conscious effort, a lot of awareness to really be able to see where those behaviors are, where those things are being potentially perpetuated in your relationship with your child.
Henri (40:09.774)
but I find it interesting, it's always the, I will, I'll never be like you. And yet, oftentimes you just do it and you don't mean to, but it happens. Just like I'm sure your mother may have thought the same thing when it was happening to her because of from her mother. She was like, I won't grow up and treat my kids that way. And then, it just continues to perpetuate. So we've, just to kind of recap where we're at, we've talked a lot about ways that you can start the process, both from in the head,
with further down the line, it could be through the body, how to get a sense of where you actually are within that relationship with your mother. Do you have a secure, healthy, or an insecure attachment, an unhealthy relationship with your mother, and how does that then manifest, not only in your dynamic between each other, but also in how you show up in relationship to yourself and in relationship to others, even potentially in relationship with your own child.
So we'll end it on this question, because I think this is a really good way to encapsulate all this. Why is it so important to break free from that attachment and heal those wounds with your mother? Yeah, you know, it's really for you. I mean, it's the bottom line. It's for you. So if you want to have a healthy relationship with yourself where, you know, you aren't, you know, there's no negative self -talk, there's no self -doubt, there's no low confidence.
you have low respect for yourself, whatever those things are. It's so you can develop healthy relationships in your life with other people throughout your life. So at work with a potential partner or a husband or a wife or whoever it is that you choose to marry. Because like I said, if you don't heal your wounding, they're going to show up in all your other relationships, especially your close relationships.
So, you know, do you want to have a peaceful relationship with your husband or your partner or at least set your relationship off with the healthiest way you can, right? Yeah. And then, as I mentioned, you know, this is for you to have a good, healthy life and to not have, you know, to understand that, you know, what are boundaries? I need to instill boundaries so people respect me. And so I get the respect that I, you know, I need at work and respect in my family and just in friends and the community.
Henri (42:33.742)
I need to learn how to communicate better because I have no idea how to communicate my needs to get what I want. So if you want to get what you want in life, you need to be able to communicate and ask for them, communicate your needs. Certainly you need to know how to show up in conflict because conflict is a part of the human life. I think we all know this quite well, but if you don't know how to show up in a healthy way in conflict to speak your voice, stage your ground while -
expecting to the best of your ability the other people in the room, that feeds into your work because we certainly can have conflict or a difference of opinion with projects and such with our colleagues, with our boss, and then of course with our spouse if you don't know how to communicate, don't know how to show up in conflict, don't have boundaries. And then as I mentioned, this just trickles back down into our children. So if you don't know how to do those things,
Plus you've inherited some patterns from your mom that are unhealthy. Parenting patterns, you now are very likely gonna show up with some of those patterns as you parent your daughter and your children. And now you're passing all these unhealthy patterns down to your child. And then when they, if they choose to get married and have children or not get married and have children, they're gonna, unless they do the work, they're gonna pass it down. So it's called generational trauma. We just keep passing it down until somebody breaks the cycle.
And so it's just so critical to do it for yourself because you deserve it. And you deserve to have inner peace or any uneasiness inside about the way you're showing up in life. And you know, you have a responsibility to raise healthy kids, as you know, right? Because we have wounding ourselves. Do we want to pass that down to our children and future generations? Yeah. Why would we want our, our misery, our things, our
crap to be put down on someone else. And I like to call it, you know, why would I want to make someone else carry my water, right? To have my thoughts in the way that I beat myself up in the, you know, the lack of emotional regulation and being able to express myself. Why would I want to put that on someone else? Right? Which is inevitably what I'm going to do. Exactly. And don't you want to raise secure children? You know, there's...
Henri (44:55.406)
It's said to be about 95 % of us in the Western world are raised in dysfunctional families. So theoretically, 95 % of us are raised with a unhealthy parent or unhealthy parent plural. And with that, we have wounds. So you can imagine how many of us out in this world are functioning with impacts from our unhealthy attachments to our mom and or our dad and have mother and father wounds that are just operating in life every day.
with all these wounds, we don't want to pass them down to future generations, do we? Absolutely not. No. No. Definitely not. It takes work, but it starts with one person at a time, one family at a time, one generation at a time. Absolutely. Amen to that. Yeah. Yeah. So it's one person at a time.
Well, this has been a great conversation. I know that there's going to be more of this in the future. So I'm definitely looking forward to picking this back up with you at some point. And otherwise, everybody, thank you so much for tuning in. And until next time, see you later. Thank you for tuning into today's episode with Heidi Carlson. If you want to learn more about working with Heidi, you can find her on Instagram at Heidi Carlson coaching, which I'll of course drop in the show notes. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to living beyond expectations.
Until next time.