"The Mom Factor" (Recap #2) - The Phantom Mom

The word mom prompts us to ideally think of: nurture, care, cookies and trust .. for most people it encompasses a "caring connection". For some people however, nurture and trust were not there at all and in its place is an emptiness and a void.

(Example) Keith reflects on his life growing up, a big house in which he felt so small in, there was a darkness to it and when he pictures it in his mind .. he doesn't see anyone else there but him, He knows his mother was there a lot but he just does not remember interacting with her. He sees her reading or working in the kitchen but there was rarely if any dialog. He also pictures her in bed a lot, for hours, and his dad would say "just leave your mother alone" that she was not feeling well. She would come home from work and be irritated about the day although not at him, but she remained unapproachable. As Keith got older he just spent more time away from home as there was not warm feelings there and she seemed to be so emotionally empty. Keith asked if this might be why he struggles with relationships .. and the authors just nodded in agreement.

Keith was gifted academically and socially .. most found him warm and engaging and he had a lot of friends. But his girlfriends all felt that he did not need them and with those broken relationships he fell into a deep depression.

Keith had experienced a Phantom Mom, a mother who was detached and absent. Keith never learned how to connect or be intimate with others. Some Phantom Moms also abuse their children but Keith did not experience that. Here are some variations:

• overt abuse that makes connection impossible
• control issues that block true connection
• perfectionistic demands that leave the real self alone
• abandonment that makes trust too dangerous
• difficulties in the mother's life that takes her away from her child
• reactive mothers with whom the child can't freely share without upsetting her

The result is a child that never develops their relational capabilities. Five basic needs that mothers provide are:

1. Safety - to a baby this comes to them from a person who is reliable, predictable, stable and danger-free. Without a mother like this a child remains in a panicked state unable to love or to learn.
2. Nurture - fuel for the soul, good mother pour care into their children that is like sunlight for plants. Without this nurture we wither and fail to thrive. Institutionalized babies have died from maternal depravation - a lack of nurture.
3. Basic trust - is a learned thing and takes time with enables one to invest in a relationship .. allowing us to depend and need others without fear.
4. Belonging and invitation - to something bigger than ourselves towards a healthy community where we feel wanted and needed in time as well when we bring something of ourselves to a family. Mothers who help their children feel wanted allow them to mature easier into other relationships as they get older never feeling like they do not belong.
5. Someone to Love - as an object for the child to safely care for their mother as they mature from just being loved to loving their moms in return. This is essential for healthy development of children.

The results of a Phantom Mom: (Relational Problems)

• Shallowness in relationships
• Aloofness
• Withdrawal
• Mistrust, aggression and hostility
• Overvaluation of relationship
• Negative relationships

The results of a Phantom Mom: (Functional Problems)

• Risk avoidance
• Devastated by failure
• Unable to accept criticism
• Suffer from devastating guilt
• Feel estranged from our talents

Emotional problems like depression, feelings of emptiness, addictions, thinking problems, hopelessness and meaningless ..

At this point it is normal to ask out loud :Why Me?"

People with mothering problems will ask this at some point of their journey of recovery. Here are a few things that might have been the case for your mother that don't have anything to do with you:

• She lack connection and nurture she needed as a child
• She was abandoned or hurt in the past and was unable to attach to anyone later in life, even her child
• She was emotionally empty
• She feared intimacy - knowing and being known
• She was depressed and did not have the emotional energy to give
• She had marital pain and was being torn apart
• She was ill or had other difficulties

Like the proverb that states not having walked in other people's shoes, we really may not know what they are dealing with.

Another possibility is that your mother chose the selfish path, the path that worked best for her. "Not-good-enough" mothers are rarely evil, just caught up in themselves at the exclusion of those around her. Children in these instances are only used by the mother for her own needs. What may have been done to your mother in combination with how she responded to what was done to her can move us towards compassion and then possibly forgiveness. The bottom line is that her lack of love had more to do with her than you.

At this point it is necessary to enter the present, what does it look like now as an adult child with an adult "Phantom Mom"

• Please Love Me - the adult child attempts to perform well to get their mother's attention, trying to show mom what has been accomplished in their life so mom will be proud and possibly engage in needed dialog ..
• Where Did The Family Go? - the adult child just gives up the attempts to connect with mom/family since he or she has found others that they can connect well with, but as we will see in later chapters this "disconnected time" can be a time of great growth
• I Hate You, Don't Leave Me - picking petty fights, quarreling and bickering is a misdirected attempt at correcting the connection issue

So .. where do we go from here? That is what the next chapter "Rebuilding Your Connection" is all about. There is hope, a bit of work but healing can come a little further in our life's journey.