Healing the Mother Wound

By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
September 29, 2015

Many of us have a deep and painful mother wound from not receiving the nurturing we needed. Without adequate healing, this wound can follow you around your whole life and affect all your relationships.

Are you still trying to get the love from your mother that you did not receive as a child? This is the situation that Katie is in:

“Over the decades, it’s finally dawned on me that my mother is incapable of forming emotional attachments. I always believed she was ‘hiding’ her feelings out of shame, but now I see that she doesn’t have those types of feelings in the first place. Are some people born this way? While she’s always been there and played her role, she doesn’t really BOND or empathize with anyone, apart from controlling and caretaking. Can anything really heal the lack of bonding with one’s mother – especially for women? Even at middle age, I still have the urge to ‘get through’ to her or ‘break down her walls.’ I still share way too much and get judgment or disinterest in return. If it were anyone else, I would have moved on a long time ago!”

It’s likely not true that Katie’s mother was born without the capacity to feel caring and empathy, and to bond with others. What is more likely is that Katie’s mother didn’t received the love and bonding she needed as a small child, and so developed her own protections against the pain of that early in life. In the case of personality disorders, such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder, research indicates that this can start as early as two years of age. It’s possible that Katie’s mother suffers from this disorder – since she can’t form emotional attachments and lacks empathy.

It’s important for Katie to understand that she can’t heal the lack of bonding with her mother, but she CAN heal from the lack of bonding. Her mother isn’t going to change or heal without intensive therapy and it’s extremely unlikely that, at her age, she will ever seek help. So Katie needs let go of the hope of getting through to her or breaking down her walls. She needs to stop putting her inner child in the line of fire of her mother’s judgments and disinterest by stopping sharing so much with her mother. She needs to fully accept that she will never have the relationship with her mother that she seeks.

However, Katie CAN heal her mother wound by learning to be the mother to her own inner child that she never had and still yearns for, and receiving mothering from another loving person.

My mother was also incapable of bonding with me and incapable of having any empathy or compassion for me. She was angry and judgmental my whole life. Before Inner Bonding, I tried to ‘get through to her’ in many ways and it always ended up with me feeling hurt and rejected.

When Spirit brought Inner Bonding to Erika and me, and I learned to love myself, and I received mothering from Erika, that deep painful mother-wound hole inside me healed. I even reached a place where I could mother my mother, since she also had a deep and painful mother wound. In her later years, I could hold her and feel much compassion for her woundedness, even though she never could feel any compassion for me. Since I could see that she was stuck at a two-year-old place in terms of her empathic ability, I was able to let go of believing that she would ever be able to love me back.

With Inner Bonding and adequate nurturing from others, we CAN heal the mother wound.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her new 30-Day at-home Course: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.” To begin learning how to love and connect with yourself so that you can connect with your partner and others, take advantage of our Free Help, and take our 12-Week home study eCourses, “The Intimate Relationship Toolbox” and“Dr. Margaret’s Permanent Weight Loss Course” – the first two weeks are free!