{"id":27401,"date":"2015-04-03T06:00:10","date_gmt":"2015-04-03T13:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=27401"},"modified":"2017-05-12T13:57:12","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T20:57:12","slug":"when-parents-project-their-appearance-issues-on-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/when-parents-project-their-appearance-issues-onto-children-0403154","title":{"rendered":"When Parents Project Their Appearance Issues onto Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"girlI recently overheard a young woman bemoaning that her 2-year-old was “too chubby” so she was going to put her on a diet. This started me thinking about people who are unaware of the negative consequences that result from anxieties about how their children appear to the world, especially their weight, body type, and demeanor.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeri\u201d began therapy expressing anxiety<\/a> and depression<\/a>, mostly about her appearance: \u201cI was an overweight kid, and everyone always made fun of me. I lost a lot of weight by high school, but it was only after I went away to college that I could reinvent myself and feel a little better about how I looked. But I kept on worrying if people liked me. Now I\u2019m a 43-year-old woman and I\u2019m still upset all the time about my weight and my looks. My doctor tells me that I\u2019m not overweight, but I see all those thin, beautiful women out there, and that\u2019s not me. I can\u2019t lose the 15 pounds I keep trying to lose. My husband tells me that I have a great body. But how can that be when I\u2019m not a size 2?\u201d<\/p>\n

Over a number of months, Teri expressed many worries<\/a>\u2014not only about her physical appearance, but about what people thought of her. Then, about eight months into therapy, Teri began to sob: \u201cThe worst thing right now, maybe worse than my gaining two pounds, is \u2026 she hates me. My daughter Marni hates me. She should. I\u2019m a terrible mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Teri hadn\u2019t spoken much about her 15-year-old daughter. It certainly isn\u2019t unusual for mothers and daughters to be fighting as daughters try to separate during adolescence. I wondered if this was typical mother-daughter separation dynamics, if this was more of Teri\u2019s intense need for positive response, or if something else was going on. I asked Teri to tell me more about why she thought she was such a terrible mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t get it right,\u201d Teri said. \u201cI think Marni is depressed. She always looks unhappy. She\u2019s alone on the computer or watching TV a lot. She goes to a great private school with really great kids from good families. But her friends are so nerdy. She doesn\u2019t care about joining teams or clubs or about much of anything. I can\u2019t believe my<\/em> daughter doesn\u2019t care at all about what she looks like or how other people think about her. We fight about everything: where she goes, her spending, her friends, what she eats, what she wears. She\u2019s getting fat. I can\u2019t stand it. I don\u2019t like my feelings; mothers shouldn\u2019t feel this way. But Marni isn\u2019t the daughter I imagined I would have.\u201d<\/p>\n

I responded to Teri\u2019s distress: \u201cThis sounds so painful for you. I can see how difficult it is for you that Marni isn\u2019t interested in what is so important to you: to have a particular appearance and to be well liked by everyone. Since childhood, nothing has been more vital to you than being thin and popular. Marni is rejecting this as having value for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teri responded: \u201cIt\u2019s true. It\u2019s scary that she doesn\u2019t understand the trouble she\u2019ll have if she doesn\u2019t make herself socially desirable. You know my family didn\u2019t have much money. Thank goodness my husband and I do well enough. I thought that I could make my daughter happy if I bought her nice clothes, sent her to a prestigious school, and gave her advantages. But somehow it doesn\u2019t matter. I think she\u2019s miserable.”<\/p>\n

It made sense to me that Marni, like her mother, hadn\u2019t developed a positive sense of herself. I believed that she experienced Teri\u2019s worries about her as statements about how she wasn\u2019t measuring up to Teri\u2019s standards. This could affect her self-esteem<\/a> and self-confidence<\/a> and make her anxious about asserting herself in the world. She was also probably struggling with separation and individuation<\/a>, trying to be different from her socially anxious mother.<\/p>\n

I was concerned about Marni, but I was also concerned for Teri, who loved her daughter and whose anxieties about her mothering were causing her to become more depressed. Knowing that Teri had been ridiculed and had a lot of social anxiety<\/a> from elementary school on, I thought it would be helpful if she could connect her early experiences with the feelings she was having about herself and her relationship to Marni.<\/p>\n

It certainly isn\u2019t unusual for mothers and daughters to be fighting as daughters try to separate during adolescence. I wondered if this was typical mother-daughter separation dynamics, if this was more of Teri\u2019s intense need for positive response, or if something else was going on.<\/span><\/p>\n

We spent a great deal of time talking about her memories and associations to this time in her life. She spoke about how her mother was an anxious woman with no friends: “I was the center of her world. My father was away a lot, traveling for work. Mom had very little life of her own. She hardly ever left the house. She was always scared of people. I remember when I first went to school, I cried and cried. She told me I would be OK, but I have a very clear memory of her crying and looking scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you eventually settle in and get comfortable?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Teri said, \u201cI was always scared and the other kids knew it. They tortured me. They would hide my books, call me \u2018fatty\u2019 and be mean. I would tell my mother about it, but it would upset her so much, so I eventually stopped talking to her about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat would she say to you?\u201d I wondered.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t exactly remember,\u201d Teri said, \u201cbut I know she always told me that I had to smile, make friends, and be nice to people. She said I wasn\u2019t fat and that I looked fine, but I knew I was fat and that I didn\u2019t dress like the other kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teri began to cry: \u201cYou have no idea what it was like. I was always left out of things. I never had the right look, never got chosen for the team until the end. I finally just became a loner. I was pretty miserable. I guess I was depressed. Wow, I so don\u2019t want Marni to have to go through these things. I\u2019ve never quite put it together before. Of course, I knew I didn\u2019t want Marni to be fat or unpopular because people make fun of you. But as I\u2019m remembering how terribly painful it was for me, maybe I have gotten crazy about how I don\u2019t want it to be that way for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I listened, I realized that I didn\u2019t know what Teri actually knew about Marni\u2019s experiences. I asked: \u201cDo you think she has been ridiculed like you were?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose not,\u201d Teri said. \u201cShe has more friends and isn\u2019t really fat like I was, just a little overweight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre there other differences that you can see between your childhood experiences?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou, know, I\u2019ve never thought of this before,\u201d Teri said, \u201cbut I complained to my mother all the time until I realized she couldn\u2019t help me. But Marni never complains about how she is treated by her peers. Hmm \u2026 maybe she is having a very different experience than I did. She does seem more OK with her relationships at school than I was. I don\u2019t think she gets mistreated, but I do think she\u2019s depressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you had to guess, what do you think she is depressed about?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I get depressed when I feel bad about myself,\u201d Teri replied. \u201cI suppose she could be feeling bad about herself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you think could be going on that she would have bad self feelings?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t know,\u201d Teri said. \u201cShe never puts herself out there so she can receive special good attention or notice or recognition. She does get very good grades.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat about negative attention?\u201d I asked. \u201cDoes she ever feel criticized?”<\/p>\n

Teri became silent and started to cry again: \u201cOh, no. It\u2019s me. I\u2019m her biggest critic! I\u2019m always on her, telling her what\u2019s wrong with her. I knew it; I have been a terrible mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teri\u2019s sobbing increased, and then, amid sighs, she asked, \u201cWhat do we do now?”<\/p>\n

This was a turning point in Teri’s therapy experience<\/a>. She was becoming emotionally related to her traumatized child self. As she became increasingly able to emotionally remember her painful experiences, she could consider that the way she related to Marni was intended to protect her daughter from having similar traumatizing experiences<\/a>. This realization allowed Teri to begin to let go of her \u201cbad mother\u201d feelings and accept that she had tried to be a good one.<\/p>\n

Slowly, Teri began to feel less anxious for Marni and more able to see her daughter as someone with her own ways of being in the world. The more she could distinguish her own history and anxiety from Marni\u2019s experiences and feelings, the less anxious each felt. Teri began to see Marni’s relationship with her friends differently. She noticed that, although Marni was alone, she was often on her cell phone or computer talking and laughing with friends. Now Teri could consider that being a good mother meant being attuned to her daughter’s life from her daughter’s point of view. When Teri could distinguish her own subjectivity from Marni\u2019s, she had fewer critical thoughts and was more open to seeing Marni\u2019s experiences as different rather than bad. This meant Teri was projecting less of herself and was beginning to see Marni as a more separate person with her own subjectivity.<\/p>\n

Growing up, Teri\u2019s family had not provided her with a view of herself that gave her the internal resources to develop a positive, confident sense of self. She needed to look to externals for positive reactions in order to feel good about herself. Recognizing this, Teri could appreciate how important it is to express positive feelings to Marni about whom she was and what she did in the world.<\/p>\n

Teri understood that she had been projecting her standards for popularity and appearance on Marni, and now she had to give Marni the emotional space to develop her own thoughts about how she looked and appeared to the world. This facilitated Marni\u2019s separation-individuation process, as the absence of her mother\u2019s critical projections left more room for Marni to develop her identity<\/a>, self-esteem, and confidence.<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong>\u00a0To protect privacy, names in the preceding article have been changed and the dialogues described are a composite.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People who grew up in traumatizing environments sometimes take the unhealthy values instilled in them into parenthood, passing the trauma to their own children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1777,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[542,623],"tags":[31,434,450,51,25],"class_list":["post-27401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-articles","category-issues-treated","tag-psychotherapy-practice","tag-identity-issues","tag-individuation","tag-healthy-parenting","tag-psychotherapy-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1777"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}