Welcome to the Mother-Daughter Relationship. Show the podcast for mothers and daughters who want to build stronger bonds, deepen their understanding and transform their relationships. I'm your host, Brittany Scott, licensed therapist and mother-daughter relationship coach. After years of working with hundreds of daughters. And mothers. I've developed strategies that help break generational patterns, heal wounds, and create the loving relationships you've always wanted. Each week I'll be sharing insights from real clients, expert interviews and practical tools you can use immediately to improve your mother-daughter dynamic. Whether you're struggling with communication breakdowns, navigating major life transitions, or simply wanna take your already good relationship to the next level. The show is for you. And yes, the transformation I guide my clients through can be yours too. I'll share more about how you can work with me. It's time to experience the relationship you both deserve. Are you ready? Let's dive in. Hey, and welcome back to the show. It's your host, Brittney, since it's the last Friday of the month and this month had five Fridays. I figured this episode could be a little bit more fun, maybe a way to get. To know me and some of my perspective a little bit better. I think, of course you get my perspective through all of these episodes, but you'll see we just maybe get a little bit spicy here. I wanna share my perspective my opinions, maybe some unpopular about the mother-daughter space, things that I see or said, things that are shared, all that good stuff. So. We will just jump in. So my first opinion that I want to share that I see is, I've seen it said, and I've seen it multiple times from different people, but the idea that you don't have to know your mother's story or know the women that came before you, and you don't have to work on seeing your mom. As a whole woman, outside of motherhood, all her other roles in order to heal. And I wanna push back on that and say, yes, you absolutely do. If you want to heal from a mother wound and you want to move on from a mother wound to have healthy and fulfilling relationships with other women, romantically healthy relationships in the workspace, like what? Whatever we're talking about, if you wanna go on to have healthy. Successful, joyful relationships and heal from a mother wound. You are gonna have to know the story of the woman that you come from, and you're gonna have to understand that your mom was an entire person, a girl, and a woman before you came along. And so you come along as a part of her story. There's more to her story, which means you were affected by what shaped her. So you can't dismiss those things and heal from a mother wound you're missing a huge, integral part of the story, a part of who you are and a part of what shaped your brain and what you learned, what you saw, what you watched, what you experienced, what emotions you felt. All of that is, told in the stories, and knowing why. Your childhood was the way it was, knowing why your mom was neglectful or abusive, or mean or non-existent, maybe physically there, but emotionally just not present for you in any way. You have to know what happened to her if you don't wanna repeat who your mom became and you don't wanna repeat her patterns and her behaviors. In your relationships, you're gonna have to get real comfy with the story and know what happened. Know who you come from because when you were a child and you're experiencing the pain that you experienced, the kind of mothering that you got, or lack thereof, your brain was being formed, all of the wiring connections, the behaviors you learned, how you learned to talk, how you learned to. Act, how you learn to move about this world, how you learn to interact with other people. All of that happened in childhood and all of that happened. While you were in connection and relationship with your mom, maybe in that you were being hurt, maybe you were being neglected, maybe you just weren't being supported, or maybe your life was completely enmeshed with hers to where we couldn't, you couldn't see the line between where her life stopped and your started. It was all just blurred together. If you don't look at that, your brain is gonna resort to what it knows and what it knows is your childhood. That's how people look up and say, oh my God, I sounded just like my mom. Or, oh my God, I can't believe I just said that. That's something my mom would say, or, wow, I guess I thought I was gonna be different, but I turned out to be exactly like my mom. That happens because your brain developed in childhood when you were being hurt by her. So if you're gonna heal from a mother wound, if you're going to. Be different, show up differently. Have healthy relationships, and learn healthy behaviors and all of the things that come with relationships. You're gonna have to know the story and you're gonna have to separate your mom from her mothering role and see all of her roles. You have to know about her childhood and if she's not around, maybe there's other people that can tell you about her childhood. You have to know what her relationship with her mother was, your grandmother, these are the things that shaped who you are and what happened to you. And I'm sorry, but you just can't ignore them. You can't push it away. I have seen people say that, you know, we put mothers on pedestals and they need to be knocked down off the pedestal. And if you're so focused on the story, then you're keeping her on the pedestal. And I think focusing on the story knocks her off of that pedestal. if you're not willing to look at the women that came before you. Then what you're doing is solely focusing on the one role of her life that really involved you like her motherhood. You're so solely focused on that, and you're mad and you're upset, and you're hurt rightfully so, like you should be. If you have a mother wound you, you are only looking at that lens and through that she failed. And mothers aren't supposed to fail. Mothers can't fail. They're supposed to be the one person that got it right, because that's supposed to be the one person that should have loved you and protected you fiercely, and maybe yours didn't. And if you want to be different, you have to know without a doubt what you learned, what you got from her. The bad behaviors you got from her, the painful behaviors you got from her. You have to know what they are so that you can say, okay, on this healing journey that I'm on, these are the dynamics that I want to break. I don't want to be this, I don't want to copy this. I don't want fall into this pattern by accident because it's what my brain learned. I don't want to be that kind of friend. I don't want to talk like that. But if all you're gonna say is I'm not gonna be my mom. You are missing a huge part of the story, a huge part of the puzzle. And I'm sorry you it. No, I pushed back on that. You have to know the story and you have to separate your mom from her role as a mother and see all aspects of her so that way you can know what cycles you are going to break, where you are going to be different, and what parts of you you need to heal. Because that's also going to be how you heal your inner child because part of that story. Is what was missing for your, your childhood, for you when you were a little girl. There's so much wrapped up in that. And if you're gonna heal, you're going to have to pay attention to the story. So I push back on that first one. I don't think that's true, and I think that's doing people a disservice you're missing a huge part of healing. Okay, the second one the phrase, you only get one mom. That one, for lack of better words, pisses me off. Yes, that's true. You don't get more than one biological mom, but there's a lot of mother figures out there, so I can already dispel that one. By that you can have other mother figures. But the idea that you only get one mom, and so that phrase means you only get one mom, you better call her. You only get one mom. You better forgive her. You only get one mom. How could you cut her off? You only get one mom, but you as the child are supposed to accept, hurt, bad behavior, neglect, abuse, enmeshment. You're supposed to just accept these 'cause you only get one mom. Why do we not look at moms and say, you only get one chance to get this right with your child, and you're refusing to do anything about it. You're refusing to make any adjustments that they're asking you to. You are refusing to acknowledge the hurt that happened when they were a child. You're refusing to acknowledge the areas where you may have not gotten it right. You're refusing to talk to your child about how they're still hurting today. You only get one child. You only get one chance to make this right and you don't wanna do anything about it. Why don't we say that? Why does society say you only get one mom? Why do we give her so much leeway to mess up but still get everything that she wants from her children? Nope. Not good enough for me. I hate that phrase, and I don't think it should be said to anybody that has been hurt by their mother or any parent. You only get one dad. Nope, let's stop saying it. It's not fair because they have a chance to make a right with their child and they're choosing not to. Okay. Number three. That just drives me crazy. I am going to push back and say most people on the internet that say they have a narcissistic mom does not in factually have a narcissistic mom. They had a mom who was abusive. Most people say narcissist when they want to say abusive. Narcissist is now being used in place of abuse and I really wish it would stop. I'm not gonna get into what narcissism is. And how do you know if you have a narcissistic mom or not? Not gonna do it because I don't think we should be diagnosing people that we don't meet. Um, I don't think any therapist should, you haven't met this person. You don't know this person? We can't. We cannot just attach narcissism because they have bad behaviors. Most abusive people are not narcissists. They're assholes. They're just abusers because they want to be, because they get something out of it, because they like being manipulative. Most of them are not narcissists and would not meet the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. Now are most narcissist abusive? Yes. And that's why it's so hard to separate these because there are people that did experience a narcissistic mom and they were abused inside of that relationship, but that's a small handful. Most of the population does not have narcissistic personality disorder. It is a very, very small select few, and one of the biggest issues with that is most therapists, most people in the mental health field don't really come across narcissists because narcissists are not going to enter into therapy. And so a lot of people are being diagnosed, and I put that in air quotes. they're being diagnosed with narcissism based off of the counts from other people. And not to say that's wrong, but what it means is they're guessing. They're saying, yes, this sounds like this could be, this might actually be this. But they can't say for sure because the person's not sitting right in front of them. And in order to meet a mental health diagnosis, there are certain criteria that have to be in place, and each diagnosis has their own list of criteria. So let's say for narcissistic personality disorder. That there are 10 possible criteria symptoms that could be, and the person has to meet seven out of 10. If they don't, then maybe they have some narcissistic traits, some narcissistic tendencies. And side note, I think a lot of us have a few of the tendencies. But if they don't meet seven out of 10, they cannot have the diagnosis. So I. I don't necessarily wanna push back and say, you did not experience a narcissistic mom, because who would I be to tell you that you didn't? I don't know your mother, but what I want to happen? I wish people would just say I had an abusive mother, because what also we don't do is we don't say, I had a bipolar mother. I had a depressed mother. like, we don't say that in the same way that narcissistic mom is used, and I don't think it's fair. And I also think that gives moms an excuse because if you did actually have a narcissistic mom, then she met the diagnosis for a mental health disorder, and now we're going to excuse some of her behaviors by saying that was part of her mental health disorder. Why give her an excuse. Why give her an out for the abusive behavior that you experienced if she did not actually meet that criteria? If she's not actually narcissistic to me, you're just giving. You're giving this woman who was abusive for whatever reason, maybe her trauma, maybe she just didn't care. Maybe she lacked knowledge. Whatever we're going to tie to that, you're giving her an excuse I think it should just be replaced with abuse because that's what most people mean anyway, because then they go on to say narcissistic abuse. that does not exist. There is no special kind of abuse. Narcissist is not a special kind of abuse, and so we're trying to make it seem like it's different. It just falls under abuse. You were maybe abused by somebody who has narcissistic personality disorder. Just say you were abused. Okay. I'm gonna get off of that one because that one really frustrates me, as you can see or as you can hear, I should say. But anyway, let's go on to number four, the phrase. Forgiveness is for you, not them. That one makes me roll my eyes and on the surface like yes, that phrase is true. Forgiveness. If you're going to go down the path of forgiveness, you're forgiving for yourself, not for them. Okay? Not for the person that hurt you. You're not forgiving your mom. For her, you would be forgiving your mom for you. So on the surface it's true, but when I hear that, to me, it's a way to convince you. To forgive like honey, like you should really work on forgiveness because forgiveness is really for you. It's not about your mom at all. It's a way to free you. It's like you're trying to convince somebody to forgive who isn't ready. So you're letting them know it's for them. If you're not ready, you're not ready. If you don't want to, you don't have to. And if you don't think you can wait until you're ready. So forgiveness is for you, not them. It just, it feels. It feels dismissive to me like you're dismissing where the person actually is on their journey because maybe, maybe you wanna forgive, you just haven't gotten there yet. Maybe you want to forgive, but you don't know how to, or maybe you have no desire to forgive the pain and abuse, or the neglect, or you know, whatever. Fill in the blank. Maybe you don't want to forgive your mother. Maybe you have no desire to do that, and in my perspective, you don't have to forgive to heal. I don't think those two have to go hand in hand. I think they are separate and I think they are separate, and I think that you can do both or you can choose that. You just wanna focus on healing that, try that forgiving her. Just doesn't feel like the right thing to do. You don't wanna forgive her, so you don't, but yeah, I think it's dismissive. I think that is only used when the person isn't ready to forgive or when they said they don't want to. So let's stop dismissing where people are on their journey of forgiveness if they even want to at all, and stop telling them that it's for them. They know that. We all know that. And if you're not ready to forgive, don't force yourself to be ready until you are. If forgiveness is a part of your religious practices, then talk to a spiritual advisor and somebody that can help you on how to get down that path. If it means something to you to figure out how to forgive, you know, there are people out there that can help you. A therapist can help you. If religious is important to you, if religion is important to you, then spiritual advisors can help you go down the path of forgiveness and figure out how to do it, if that's what you desire. And if you have somebody in that, in that realm that you trust, I say, that's who you should talk to. But if you don't want to. Then don't like, it doesn't change how you walk down this silly journey. It doesn't change how you learn about your mom and her story, and your grandmother and her story, and what has been passed down in your family. It doesn't change how you separate your mom from her motherhood and look at the entire woman to know everything she brought to your childhood. It doesn't change how you learn about the patterns that your family passed down that you no longer want to pass down and you're gonna work on breaking. None of that has to do with forgiveness. Okay? So free yourself from this idea that you're supposed to, and let's stop telling people. Forgiveness is for you, not them. When we know that maybe they're not ready, stop trying to convince people to forgive when they're not on that path. Maybe tell them like, Hey, I know some steps to forgiveness if you desire that, and I can help you down that path if you want to, but don't dismiss where people are by using that phrase. Okay. That's what I've got for today's episode. I kind of like this. I think I'll do another one again in a couple months when I have some more to share. Thanks for being here today. That's all for today's episode of the Mother-Daughter Relationship Show. Thanks so much for spending this time with me. I hope you picked up some valuable insights that you can start using right away in your own relationship to create deeper connection and understanding. If something from today's episode resonated with you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with the mother or daughter in your life who needs to hear this message. And while you're at it, please consider leaving a rating. And review so we can reach more families and transform the way mothers and daughters relate to each other. For those ready to take the next step, you can visit my website to learn more about my private coaching programs and my program designed specifically for mother-daughter pairs. Whether you're dealing with communication challenges, life transitions, or just wanna strengthen an already good relationship, I'm here to help. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you in the next one.