Laura's Note: Though most of author Peg Streep's work focuses on mother-daughter relationships, the ideas in the following article could work well for anyone.
How to bolster and support recovery with simple steps.
For the last two decades, I’ve turned my attention to the mother-daughter relationships in all of its iterations but with a specific focus on the damage done to a daughter when a mother is unloving, emotionally distant, self-involved, controlling. hypercritical, or dismissive. At a glance, this work looks very different from the spiritual books I wrote before but it actually isn’t as different as you’d think.
Most of these daughters emerge from childhood scarred in places; they have trouble managing and identifying their feelings and, while they are emotionally needy, they either tend to pick partners and friends who treat them as their mothers did or, alternatively, they wall themselves from close connections. (These scenarios reflect different styles of attachment, anxious-preoccupied, fearful-avoidant, and dismissive-avoidant.) They have difficulty recognizing the kind of boundaries that permit relationships to grow and thrive; they lack a true sense of self. These are psychological problems that require recognition of unconscious patterns and behaviors and then a concerted effort to dismantle old ways of reacting and behaving. Finally, recovery is accomplished by learning new behaviors. It is a long journey as I explain in my book, Daughter Detox.
And while the work is largely psychological, it’s important to remember that the word "psychology" is derived from the Greek words psyche (soul or breath) and logos (word or reason). I’m neither a therapist nor a psychologist but I have found these spiritual ideas personally useful as have others. Some soul work can support and aid the healing process, and the following are suggestions for exercises you may want to incorporate into your recovery.
[To read the rest of this article by Peg Streep, click here.]
[Photo: by Jessica Arends. Copyright Free. Unsplash.]
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