Ending Your Mother Wound and Mommy Issues in Brief

All right, gentlemen, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Connor Beaton here. Have you ever felt like you can't seem to get it right with women or that your needs don't seem to matter to them, or you just feel small and insignificant? Or there's like this strange almost push, pull dynamic where you really, really, really, really want women, but you don't trust them, you're afraid of them, and you kind of all messed up around them. These are just some examples of having a mother wound, right? Dr. Robert Glover and Nice Guy, no mercy. Nice guy talked about this a lot where the nice guy is really a result of having some type of core mother wound. And today we're going to dive deep into the mother wound. We're going to talk about what creates it, we're going to talk about how it shows up in your life, and then we're going to talk about what you can do to move through it. So with all that said, I let's dive straight in. How is the mother wound created? The first place that I want to start is with the devouring mother. The devouring mother, or I like to call it the smother mother. I know that Peterson, Jordan Peterson has talked about the devouring mother quite a bit. I like to call it smother mother. It's a little bit different. But she's can be very obsessive. She can be invasive, she can be intrusive, almost penetrating, like you have no real privacy. Like she wants your thoughts to be an extension of her thoughts. She wants your emotions to be extension of her emotions. She cuts her son off. She cut you off from any type of risk taking. So there's a couple hallmarks of the devouring mother or the smother mother. And I, you, you kind of have to feel into, because for some men, it felt devouring. Like, you know, mom was sort of like really consuming, all consuming. And for other men, it felt like she was just smothering the living crap out of them. So here are some hallmarks of this type of mother wound. So number one is overprotection, right? She really prevented you from experiencing any type of pain or failure or risk taking and thereby haltering your halting, not haltering, halting your development, halting your maturation process. And almost in inadvertently and unintentionally keeping you stuck in this very, very youthful orientation. And in, in certain parts of psychology is something called puerto, that is the eternal boy. You can think of Peter Pan. That is the sort of quintessential mother wound, right where you have A grown man who's in his 30s or 40s or 50s. But internally, very childish, right? His reactions are very childish. His thought process is, um, he has a terrible relationship to risk, doesn't really like responsibility or is afraid of responsibility. And that's no judgment, right? Because we have to remember a lot of this is a developmental thing based on the environment that you grew up in. So overprotection, emotional enmeshment is the next big one kind of treats. Maybe your mom treated you like a substitute partner, substitute husband, an extension of herself. So whatever she went through, she wanted you to go through, right? And she would sort of say things or inadvertently bring you into her emotions in a way that was just not good, you know? So if she was sad or angry, she would want you to sort of commiserate with her in that way. These are the. This is the formation of the mother wounds. These are different variations of how the mother wound will form. Next, I want to talk about how it shows up in your adult life. There's a couple very, very basic things, and there's a couple little, little bit more complicated things. So I'm gonna break them down. First one is a hypervigilance or a complete shutdown in the nervous system. So some men will. You'll swing in your relationship. Specifically, you'll swing between this kind of hyper vigilance, constantly fixated on the relationship. Is she okay? Am I all right? Is the relationship okay? This, like, chronic questioning of, is, is everything all right? To just complete. This is hopeless. I'm shut down. I'm never gonna get my needs met. I don't matter those types of things. And you'll start to pull away and disconnect from the relationship. So this is where a lot of the times something like disorganized attachment can be. Can be mislabeled because the man actually just has a mother wound. And there's just a very deep mistrust of women or the feminine. So hypervigilance, complete shutdown. Next is a heavy projection onto the woman that you're with and a kind of parent confusion. And so this can show up in a lot of different ways where maybe you are seeking maternal soothing from your wife, right? Like, there's this strange desire to have her really take care of you and nurture you and almost treat you like. Like she's your mom. This might show up in the sense that you see her. You see your wife or your girlfriend as somebody who's, like, extremely aggressive and hostile anytime that they bring up conflict. And so there's this hypersensitivity to the woman that you're with because of mom. And so the main thing here is, and you can ask yourself this question and start to do some journaling on it, is how might I be projecting my mom onto the woman I'm with? What behaviors, what things does she say that really get me reactive or cause me to shut down? What things does she do that feels very similar to mom? And a good sort of indicator of that is the things that you get really reactive about when it comes to your wife or your girlfriend. Number four. How this can show up is a kind of hyper overachievement or chronic underachievement. So really heavy in both. In one of those directions, right? This. I need to appease mom. I need to be this extreme overachiever to make mommy happy. Okay, last piece. What do we do? What do you do about this? How do you work through and actually heal this mother wound that can be honestly plaguing a lot of your life, plaguing how you see yourself, plaguing your relationship, plaguing a deeper sense of purpose and meaning in life? What do you actually do? Well, the first thing is to do what we've been doing this whole video, which is to name and normalize that this has been taking place inside of you, that this took place inside your life. So you break the denial and understand that that wound isn't necessarily a weakness. Okay? You have to break the denial that you know, because a lot of. A lot of men that have a mother wound are so protective of their mom. They are so in denial that there was anything wrong. They're so protective. Well, my mom was so great, and. What do you mean? And I can't possibly. And, you know, but, you know, she might. She might never talk to me again if I. If I said that she did anything wrong. Those types of things, you have to break the denial that there was anything wrong, and you have to really name and normalize that this happens. So this is about building some awareness. So your big goal and aim, and this is how I'm going to wrap this all up, your big goal and aim is to find your own way towards emotional independence and emotional sovereignty, meaning that you do not deal with your emotions the same way that your mom did, but you're also not dealing with your emotions simply in opposition to how your mother did you really find a place of. This is how I want to feel. This is how I want to relate to my own emotions, to my sadness, to my anger, to my grief. This is how I want to express my emotions as a man, completely independent from what mom said that you need to do. And then begin to take some risks. Right. Begin to orient yourself towards healthy, grounded risks. All right. Thank you so much for joining me. I know that's a good amount of work for you to tackle. Comment below if you're watching this on YouTube and let me know what you thought or comment on Spotify, because they have comments now. I'd love to hear what you thought and any pieces that you would like for me to go deeper on. See you next week.