Hey everyone,
I’m a 23-year-old guy currently on a journey of self-improvement and healing from some childhood wounds. Lately, I’ve come to a deeper realization about my relationship with my mother.
I’ve always loved her, and I know she loves me too. She provided for me — food, clothes, cared about my education, and made sure I had what I needed to grow. But emotionally, I now understand that many of my core needs as a child were never really met.
She has always been emotionally distant. I don’t have many memories of us doing things together or bonding deeply. I remember wanting to cook with her when I was a kid, but she would push me away, saying I’d just make a mess or that I didn’t know how to help. She rarely opened up to me, and that made it very hard for me to open up to her — or to people in general.
Looking back, I suspect she had a difficult childhood herself. From what I know, my grandparents had a cold, work-focused relationship, where love wasn’t really expressed. I think this may have shaped how she sees relationships and emotional connection.
She also tends to be emotionally unstable. When things don’t go her way, and especially when she feels pressured, she can explode — yelling, breaking things, even becoming violent. That kind of instability created an unsafe emotional environment growing up.
Despite all of this, I love her. She’s my mother — the woman who gave me life and made sacrifices to raise me. I’m deeply grateful for that. But at the same time, I’m trying to process the pain of growing up without emotional closeness, without that feeling of being truly seen or supported.
To others who’ve been in similar situations — how have you healed? What helped you reconnect with yourself and build healthier emotional patterns? Any thoughts or advice would mean a lot to me.
Thanks for reading. ❤️
Comments
Since you shitlords like to delete your posts, here’s an original copy of /u/bfdc16’s post (if available):
Hey everyone,
I’m a 23-year-old guy currently on a journey of self-improvement and healing from some childhood wounds. Lately, I’ve come to a deeper realization about my relationship with my mother.
I’ve always loved her, and I know she loves me too. She provided for me — food, clothes, cared about my education, and made sure I had what I needed to grow. But emotionally, I now understand that many of my core needs as a child were never really met.
She has always been emotionally distant. I don’t have many memories of us doing things together or bonding deeply. I remember wanting to cook with her when I was a kid, but she would push me away, saying I’d just make a mess or that I didn’t know how to help. She rarely opened up to me, and that made it very hard for me to open up to her — or to people in general.
Looking back, I suspect she had a difficult childhood herself. From what I know, my grandparents had a cold, work-focused relationship, where love wasn’t really expressed. I think this may have shaped how she sees relationships and emotional connection.
She also tends to be emotionally unstable. When things don’t go her way, and especially when she feels pressured, she can explode — yelling, breaking things, even becoming violent. That kind of instability created an unsafe emotional environment growing up.
Despite all of this, I love her. She’s my mother — the woman who gave me life and made sacrifices to raise me. I’m deeply grateful for that. But at the same time, I’m trying to process the pain of growing up without emotional closeness, without that feeling of being truly seen or supported.
To others who’ve been in similar situations — how have you healed? What helped you reconnect with yourself and build healthier emotional patterns? Any thoughts or advice would mean a lot to me.
Thanks for reading. ❤️
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Wake up; eat; go to work; lift; get shit done— move on with your life. There is no “healing”; you just get on with it and make something of yourself.
Come and join us over here my friend…. welcome home https://www.reddit.com/r/AdultChildren/s/Xk0qq4MZMV
I had an abusive and distant mother. Over time life has taught me that everybody has their baggage. Everybody has their negative traits and positive traits. I’ve learned there’s no point in pointing the finger cuz none of us are completely innocent. I still struggle to connect deeply with others, but I am aware of it and often apologize to my loved ones for it. And continue to work on it and try and improve
Another thing that helps me is did she do better for me than her parents did for her. And am I doing better for my kids than she did for me? The answer to all of those is yes so that helps.
Take the lessons she taught you about love and dependence and unpack them BEFORE you have kids.
Suck it up bro…..
I’m a woman but I too grew up with an unstable mom who is not capable of meeting emotional needs. Learn to give yourself the love that you never had. Be the parent to yourself that you needed growing up. Take it easy on yourself and learn to trust others.
Read the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. I think recognizing that your needs weren’t met is a great first step in healing. The hardest part for me was addressing the often times unhealthy roles we learned to hide behind subconsciously in order to try & get what we needed. I fell into a lot of codependent relationships as a result. Learning how to trust again & not listen to the insecurities telling me that no one is reliable is an ongoing process. Journaling helped a lot in reconnecting with my long-neglected innermost self. It affects everyone differently, so I’d suggest looking for a good therapist.
There is nothing to be healed. Sure, it would have been nicer if she showered me with love, instead of being distant.
But life is not fair, and I aint gonna dwell on the past.
I am not damaged because of that, I am just a tougher person now.
Therapist dude
Please give Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson a read if you haven’t yet.
Therapy man. Therapy.
It’s funny, going into it, I joked with friends that I was expecting to have some ground breaking moment, where my therapist will say something, and it’ll shatter the invisible barrier in my mind. But all my friends said “No Frank, it doesn’t work like that.”. But for the first couple sessions, that exact thing happened.
But to go more into my stuff. I grew up in a household with 5 older sisters. My dad worked full time, and after my mom had me, she went back to work. My dad was pretty absent through most of my life, so it was mostly my mom. My mom ruled the house with an iron fist. There was absolutely no backtalk. No rolling your eyes. If you said something out of line, you’d get hit/grounded/or just publicly degraded in front of the family.
As I said in another comment. Love and affection wasn’t the norm, it wasn’t expected. It was earned. My mom only seemed slightly happy when we did all the chores, had good grades, did homework, and stayed quiet.
I remember once, it was summer. My mom gave me a list of 6 things to do in the day as my chores. My dad had given me 1 quick thing to do. So I did what my dad wanted first. When my mom found out, she pinned me down in a chair, and screamed at me, an inch away from my face, “Who are you more afraid of, your dad or me?” She didn’t let go of me, until I said ‘her’, and promised to do the chores she gave me first.
There was one time when my family had a whole family sit down meeting, because my oldest sister (who was in college at the time) realized that the tension in the house was crazy high. It felt like the family was gonna implode. So everybody sat down. And only 2 people talked about anything meaningful. One sister said “Mom you cause some of my anxiety”. And my mom BLEW UP. She screamed, she cried, then she stormed out of the house and disappeared for 3 days. No word of when she was gonna be back. She just left. Then when she came back, she told the sister that had anxiety, that she had to leave the house for the foreseeable future. (She was 14 btw)
To me, that was just a normal childhood. I grew up thinking that was normal. I have other instances like that, it happened enough, that I just thought “yeah, this is what every family is like”. But it wasn’t til I was in college, telling people about my family that they said “oh, Frank, that’s fucked up”.
I knew then, I had my own issues, but I chose to ignore them. I buried my issues deep down. I figured “its okay I didn’t have a good childhood, but I’ll just move on”. Until I realized that I had a hard time holding onto relationships. And it usually ended because I didn’t show enough affection. I was bad at showing love. Any guesses where that came from?
Therapy has helped show me so many of my short comings that stem from my childhood. And I’m just like you, I love my mom. She raised me, she helped me out time and time again. But I realize now, that a lot of what she does is performative. She does it so she seems like a good mom, not because she is a good mom.
But going back to therapy, it’s gonna be work. It’s gonna be a lot of work. It will make you really reflect on yourself and your habits. There will be habits that you will need to change, and it will be hard to do so, because every moment leading up to then, you mentally thought “A”, but suddenly you realize that “A” is flawed, and that you need to shift to “B”
Don’t worry, when you figure out that being emoionless is actually good for your health, you Will choose your priorities and not stress about things you cant change. Live your own life and be happy, this is your jurney, dont let others spoil it for you.
I just tell myself «it is what it is»
because I cannot do anything about it, it’s considered as normal in African families
You can still have the unconditional love we hold for parents whilst recognising things we’re not perfect, we should always try and respect parents but you can do that while remembering no human being is infallible or perfect. Questioning certain things does not make you a bad person. You can do a serious self evaluation to understand how your upbringing affected your mentality, your emotions, and the way you perceive things and interact with others.
So many people from these situations end up becoming their parents, the fact you’re questioning this in the first place shows growth mindset and shows you’re ready to break the cycle. Just never blame yourself for anything as a child (unless it was as genuinely your fault) and remember we don’t choose our parents, but we can choose the families we create, so work on this and be the best person you can be for yourself and your children if you have some.
Therapy, and learn new patterns in new relationships with new people. There’s a lot your mom taught you to do or not do with other people, so pay special attention to what other people, especially other women, expect and allow differently from you.