Transcription
Hi everyone, I'm Anthony. Welcome to my channel. This is our first video of 2026. Happy New Year to everyone!
Today I'd like to continue discussing a psychology topic. It's a mother-daughter relationship. Recently, several female friends told me about their complicated relationship with their mother.
The first woman was the eldest daughter in the family. She grew up amidst her mother's scolding. Because there are younger siblings in the family, she was always the one being criticized and ignored. The person who is asked to make concessions. She was filled with anger towards her mother. I vowed to escape when I grew up.
But what made her most desperate was she couldn't truly hate her mother. Whenever her heart was filled with hatred, she would remember what her mother did after scolding her. He quietly went to the kitchen again. I cooked her favorite dish. Or you might see your mother complaining about life while helping her wash her dirty clothes clean. Then she suddenly realized the woman who assaulted her, also a victim of an unhappy family of origin and marriage. She was also a girl who grew up in the suffering of male chauvinism. Her anger instantly turned into immense guilt. She would think, "Mom only has me left. If even I hate her, she will be very pitiful."
The second woman's story is more complex. Her mother almost never hit or scolded her. They even showed meticulous care for her health. Take care of her like a baby. Her father was a cold, selfish, and irresponsible man. And a person who occasionally flies into a rage. The mother was the one who endured and accepted everything passively. The victims who silently endured all of this. This is a mother who suffered and sacrificed. The combination of a cold and authoritarian father. Logically speaking, her mother did not directly harm her. She must feel very sorry for her mother. It's right to hate your father. Of course, she did indeed hate her father very much.
However, deep down she, yet, a strange, inexplicable hatred often welled up within me. This hatred was directed at the mother. She felt a sense of pity for her mother's misfortune. The feeling of being angry at their lack of ambition. And this anger sometimes even surpasses anger towards one's father.
The two stories above are very representative of Chinese society. Although the mothers in these two stories look very different, the parties involved all had similar feelings of mental exhaustion. This feeling is... Although I am already an adult, even far from home, they have their own work and life, but you still feel it's like I have an invisible umbilical cord. It is a direct spiritual connection with the mother. You might have been in a good mood today. Life is going smoothly. But as long as I receive a phone call from my mother, hearing her sigh, or the tone was slightly off, your entire state of mind will collapse instantly. Your stomach will cramp. Heart rate will increase. That familiar feeling of anxiety and guilt will overwhelm you like a tide.
And you will also find this kind of internal friction can seep into many aspects of life. When you try to love someone else, you find it difficult to build healthy relationships. Even when you find happiness yourself, when you succeed, deep in your heart, there might even be a hidden sense of guilt and remorse. It feels like all of this is unstable and illegitimate. At the same time, feelings for the mother are also a constant back and forth between love and hate. Maybe a second ago you felt sorry for her. But the next second, I felt extremely suffocated. This complex psychology of love and hate is both confusing and distressing.
So this video, let's have a preliminary discussion on this topic. I will upload this video, included in the list of "Psychology and Education". If you have anything you'd like to discuss with me and the topics of consultation, you can contact us. My email appointment.
First of all, we say there are only four combinations of parent-child relationships: Mother and son, mother and daughter, father and son, and father and daughter. In these four relationships, the mother-daughter relationship is quite special. Some might say, "Every relationship is special." However, we believe, differentiation from self-awareness, from the perspective of establishing personality boundaries, mother-daughter relationship is indeed easier to form the deepest bonds.
Because generally speaking, the relationship between fathers and children is relatively simple. For example, father-daughter relationships are often quite polarized. Either the daughter is the apple of her father's eye, or the father and daughter are completely estranged or hate each other. The father-son relationship is usually even more distant. Fathers often play the role of an enforcer of rules. There is often not much emotional communication between fathers and sons.
In comparison, the mother-child relationship is more complicated. We can easily see the kind of "mama's boy" with a pathological Oedipus complex. This symbiotic parent-child relationship is easy to tell. Many times, on the surface, it was the mother who humbly served her picky son. In fact, the son also enjoyed it. But there is still a natural bottom line between mother and child. Because of gender differences, no matter how close the bond is between mother and child, there has always been a physiological and social barrier. This barrier, invisible, this preserved the final boundary for the relationship. Mother, it's hard to truly see your son as another version of yourself.
However, because the mother and daughter are of the same sex, therefore, there are no natural barriers between them. This homogeneity, making the blurring of boundaries effortless. This also makes control ubiquitous. Many daughters unconsciously become mirrors of their mothers. When the mother looked at her daughter, what she often sees is not an isolated individual. Rather, it was yourself when you were young. Or I think, the self that I became but never could be. This same-sex mirror relationship makes it easy for mothers to express their fears and regrets. Even anger towards men, all of it was projected onto the daughter. She would think, "You cannot experience the pain I have gone through," or "things I didn't do, you must do it for me."
It is precisely because of this subconscious illusion of "you and I not being able to distinguish," this leads to control between mother and daughter. It's often not a simple and brutal command like a father's. Instead, it's an impenetrable net.
Certainly, it needs to be emphasized that when we discuss father and mother here, it doesn't necessarily refer to your biological parents. And firstly refers to, it is the one that assumes the corresponding psychological function and people who have had a corresponding influence on your life. For some people, that mother might be your grandmother who raised you from childhood. Aunt and Grandma. That father role, could be an uncle, maternal uncle, or grandfather in real life. The key here lies in the psychological role, rather than a blood-related title.
So, this close connection between mother and daughter, how did it come about? This connection is first established physically. For example, many women, even after reaching adulthood, the mother will still take the place of her daughter in sensing warmth and cold. Worried that her daughter wasn't eating enough, not eating well enough, then I asked my daughter to eat more. Or wear something thicker. Some people might say, many mothers do this with their sons as well. However, after all, there are gender differences between mothers and sons. As my son enters puberty, the mother will consciously or subconsciously avoid suspicion. For example, not going into the bathroom, no longer overly intimate. These physiological boundaries will force out psychological boundaries.
But for the daughter, this boundary does not exist. The mother would think, "Anyway, we're all women." Therefore, it is possible to comment more directly on the daughter's development. Menstrual period, appearance, body shape, hairstyle, etc. For example, "this hairstyle doesn't suit you. It makes my face look particularly big," etc. Many mothers express their anxiety about themselves, projected onto the daughter. For example, the mother herself felt fat, he would drastically restrict his daughter's diet. When a mother hopes her daughter will study hard, he forbade his daughter from wearing makeup. And when the mother is insecure about her appearance, she's also picky about her daughter's facial features. Or perhaps they dislike their daughter for not knowing how to do makeup, etc.
Many mothers and daughters share clothes. Shared cosmetics. Even sleeping together. Such things would be almost impossible for this to happen between a mother and child. Therefore, we say, physical identity in mother-daughter relationship is far stronger than mother and child. Under such meticulous care, the person involved will have a feeling, "My body doesn't just belong to myself. Rather, it is property jointly owned by my mother and me. My own feelings of being hot or cold, beautiful or ugly, are not for me to decide. It must be approved by the mother."
This extreme physical intimacy sometimes makes people feel very warm. It felt like going back to the womb. But at the same time, it also instilled a sense of unfathomable fear. Because it's as if all your senses have been taken over by your mother.
So this extreme focus on the body, what problems might occur? When we talk about a person having a self, we are referring to a set of bodies, developed jointly by the brain and mind. It has continuity and stability. But at the same time, an experience system that maintains openness and flexibility.
First, we say that self-affirmation is inseparable from the body. For example, your heartbeat, the sensations in your internal organs. Secondly, the brain. The brain can process countless signals from the body, transformed into nerve impulses and psychological activities. Then these neural activities are given meaning. For example, your heart is beating faster. The brain captures and processes this signal. Then your consciousness explains: "I am excited" or "I am anxious." Only when these three are smoothly connected, only then can you have an integrated sense of self.
A person who has experienced trauma, heard a loud noise, his body may have stiffened. The amygdala will be activated. But at the level of consciousness, I have absolutely no idea what happened. Unable to effectively analyze and organize one's own feelings. At this point, we say that he has fallen into a state of dissociation. His mental state and physical state are disconnected. Freud believed, the first and most important self is the bodily self. The earliest sense of self comes from bodily experience.
We are now talking about living my own life. For example, "I want to become an artist. I don't want to be a doctor anymore." Then I need to realize, "Me, the doctor, the person I am who wants to be an artist is the same self." This itself is a rather abstract spiritual pursuit. However, this spiritual self, it was initially based on physical experience. We imagine a person just coming into this world. She felt that the world was changing every second. The surrounding temperature, humidity, and airflow are all changing. And only her body, the rhythm of her heartbeat, the rise and fall of her breath, her skin sensed the boundary between hot and cold. It is present at every moment and continuously. These bodily operating modes, provided the earliest of our lives. It is also the most reliable sense of constancy. For example, the baby noticed that every time she exerted her muscles, the arm will definitely be able to be raised. And this incident of raising an arm, it is completely related to the movement she makes. The baby will then perceive that arm as belonging to them. Conversely, if the baby makes this exertion movement, but his arm took a while to lift, then the baby might perceive this as belonging to the outside world. Not belonging to myself.
It is precisely because the body always, operating in a relatively stable manner, our brains can then anchor themselves to the body. Establish a sense of continuity of self. Only when my body tells me, "The body I had yesterday was me. This body is still mine today." Only then can we develop identity on a spiritual level. That idea from yesterday is mine. This idea of mine is also... Therefore, the stability of the body, it is the premise for the spiritual self to maintain its identity.
Therefore, when a mother is concerned about her daughter's body, to make meticulous judgments, when correcting and taking over, she is actually disrupting this constant. If your body feels, it's not determined by your nervous system. It was determined by the mother's mood. For example, you feel hot, but your mother insists on dressing you; you don't feel hungry, your mother insists that you eat. So, your body's natural, unquestionable continuity and stability, it was destroyed. Instead, it's a kind of "you in me," the close connection of "you in me." Over time, you will be confused. "My own feelings, is it out of one's true desire? Or was it to calm the mother's anxiety?"
Certainly, speaking of which, some people might think this is all the mother's responsibility. It's all because the mother is too controlling. However, the father is the elephant in that room. In Chinese families, the functional absence of fathers is almost the norm. Many fathers are merely symbols who provide money. Or an authority figure responsible for making the final decision. However, in terms of emotional communication and participation in family chores, they are invisible and evasive.
This absence led to an overload in the mother-daughter relationship. When a woman, not receiving emotional support from her husband in the marriage, unable to get any relief from the heavy burden of childcare and housework. Her inner grievances, anxieties, and loneliness, it did not disappear. These emotions were pent up there. An outlet is urgently needed. When the husband is unreliable, the only lifeline the mother could grasp, it's one's own child. Especially that daughter who is more caring and more like her own. This greatly increased the difficulty of a daughter becoming independent from her mother.
Daughters typically have a sharper radar than sons. Many sons, you can enjoy your mother's sacrifices with a clear conscience. They took it for granted. However, due to the similarity in body and gender, daughters are naturally more likely to empathize with their mothers' pain. In a typical pathological family structure, there is often a brutal, indifferent, or absent father. In order to fight this common enemy, the mother will try to win over her daughter. Prematurely forming a women's alliance. The mother would constantly confide in her daughter. "Your dad's stopped taking care of the family again." "How bullying your grandma is," etc.
In such an alliance, the daughter was forced to engage in emotional incest. He became his mother's spiritual husband. Because the father is emotionally dead, the mother then expressed the lack of understanding she received in this marriage. Companionship and support, he demanded everything from his daughter. The daughter became the mother's only lifeline. She also became a mother, a dumping ground for all marital garbage.
But what truly devastated the daughter was, it is the duality of this relationship. Mothers sometimes treat their daughters as comrades-in-arms. But sometimes it can be achieved through splitting and projection mechanisms. Expressing one's hatred towards one's husband or mother-in-law, he vented his anger on his daughter. She might suddenly point at her daughter and yell, "You're just as selfish as your father." The daughter will feel extremely confused at this moment. "I am your savior. How did you suddenly become my enemy?" This disorientation is the feeling of being swallowed up. It's a feeling of being forced to act as a container for emotions.
Therefore, many daughters will experience this during puberty. An anger that seemed incomprehensible to outsiders erupted. This anger is actually a survival instinct. She subconsciously felt, in the mother's meticulous care, it is actually poisonous. If there is no anger and no resistance, she would be completely overwhelmed by her mother's suffering.
And this chain of tragedy, there is usually an even more ironic ending. That's because the mother was confined to the family for a long time. No other identity, no self. As a result, she became petty, resentful, and hysterical. And the father who caused all of this, because he is rarely home, doing not do housework, irresponsible, and you don't have to face a mess. On the contrary, in her daughter's eyes, he appeared so dashing, free, charming, and relaxed. This led to the daughter, it has fallen into an extremely divided set of values. She rationally sympathized with her mother. But emotionally, she loathed her mother's humility and weakness. She rationally knew that her father was irresponsible. But subconsciously, she, however, longed for the unfettered privileges her father enjoyed. This sense of division, it is a hidden wound in the hearts of many Chinese daughters.
In the next video, we will continue to explore several common coping strategies for daughters and try to find that true path to psychological differentiation.
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I will upload this video, placed in the list of psychology and education. I also recommend everyone to watch it. Other videos in this list. Thank you for watching, goodbye.