The enmeshed mother expects her daughter to mother her.

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]The parentified daughter is an unmothered daughter.

[00:00:03]A mother to her mother and everyone else but never to herself.

[00:00:11]The parentified daughter was never allowed to be a child. She had to monitor, soothe, manage, anticipate, hold things together, be mature, be useful, be good, be less demanding, be more helpful.

[00:00:28]Uh and then what happens?

[00:00:32]This child that wasn't allowed to be a child and had to do all of these things turned being a mother into her whole personality. And so the parentified daughter shows up in every relationship that she has like a mother.

[00:00:50]Yet there she is still unmothered herself.

[00:00:57]So who is the parentified daughter? The parentified daughter is the daughter raised by parents that didn't show up to parenthood enough for her to just be a child through her through her childhood.

[00:01:12]So these parents would have expected her to do more grown-up things very early on. So riddle her with adult expectations when she was still a child.

[00:01:25]Expectations like take care of your siblings, clean the house, cook for us.

[00:01:31]Don't be like that. Your brother is X doing whatever. Um expected to listen to her parents' issues. Expected to be a little mother of the house.

[00:01:46]So this parentified girl learns how to mother everyone.

[00:01:51]And then what happens?

[00:01:54]She remains unmothered.

[00:01:57]So today I want to explore. I want you to explore with me how it happened and you became a parentified unmothered daughter.

[00:02:07]Basically, I want to walk you through how you were robbed of your childhood.

[00:02:13]So follow along the story that I'm going to tell you today and see what comes up for you. All right?

[00:02:20]So you're raised in an environment and something is missing.

[00:02:24]You have first of all definitely emotional maturity, there's some instability.

[00:02:29]There's a parent who is needy or too toxic, too narcissistic. There's no consistent and safe adult presence.

[00:02:37]So what do you do? You start noticing all these things that are happening and you're realizing that the environment cannot meet you.

[00:02:48]So you're like, "Uh-oh, I I the I don't really have parents here. I have these people who look like parents, but it doesn't feel like they can parent me, right?" Because you can see that your needs are not going to be met consistently. You're going to be ignored. They're all over the place.

[00:03:03]They're struggling with their own stuff.

[00:03:05]So what are you going to do? You're like, "Okay. Well, first of all, the first thing I need to do is stop having those needs because having those needs is inconvenient when I'm being raised by people like that. I'm just going to put those needs aside and I'm just going to be as inconsequential as possible so that I first of all stay off the radar and not be abused, whatever is happening in the home.

[00:03:29]And also I don't want to add a burden to them cuz they'll be even worse parents if I make them struggle somehow.

[00:03:36]So suppress yourself. Suppress yourself.

[00:03:39]You become easy, good, understanding.

[00:03:42]And then you're realizing that the parents are not really able to handle themselves in general, right? So first step, remove the needs, adapt so that you're safe in the environment and then you're like, "All right. I'm looking at this parent and they're very overwhelmed. They're fragile. They're explosive. They're dependent, whatever they are.

[00:04:01]And okay, I'm going to step in and I am going to do something about it."

[00:04:07]It's like, "Let me just figure out how to how to to get this done, this parenting thing done in the hope that if I do it sufficiently to them, they will do it to me."

[00:04:21]So you will step in and try to, you know, listen to the parent, you're going to comfort them, you're going to take care of them.

[00:04:28]And then you'll see something. You're like, "When I do that with my mom or my dad, when I'm being sort of there for them, when I'm doing things for them, they seem to acknowledge me more.

[00:04:41]Wait a minute.

[00:04:43]Maybe all I've had to do this entire time is become useful.

[00:04:49]Become needed, necessary to these people.

[00:04:53]And this way, now that I felt very unworthy to even be looked at, I feel worthy because look at that, they're responding to me. So what will I do?

[00:05:05]I will become so hyper-attuned to my environment and to other and you know, around other people, so I will always know what people are needing and wanting and I'm going to do that.

[00:05:22]So as a result, I'm just going to overfunction for the rest of my life to make sure that others are taken care of.

[00:05:31]But when I do that, I'm going to feel worthy because then they will notice me.

[00:05:39]So then you just grow to be that person who naturally overgives.

[00:05:45]Fixer, caretaker, carrying every relationship.

[00:05:51]And at the end of it all, you're realizing that all of this overfunctioning and overmothering others has left you no energy to even take care of yourself at all.

[00:06:09]You don't know your needs. You don't know your wants. You don't even know that you have them or that they're worth being met.

[00:06:17]All you know is that if you want to feel worthy, you have to somehow figure out how to be necessary.

[00:06:28]Because you've learned that being loved is the same thing or feels the same as being needed.

[00:06:39]So you're leading with being needed by mothering others and showing up for them when they don't.

[00:06:49]And in that sort of space of you doing that, you're feeling that you are loved. It's an illusion of love, but that's all you know love to be.

[00:07:00]Because that parent that you first started attuning to started noticing you as you were becoming someone they could somehow lean on.

[00:07:15]So the parentified daughter remains unmothered as she continues throughout her life mothering everyone.

[00:07:24]But at the same time she's starved for someone to mother her.

[00:07:30]And you probably know this by now, but all of the mothering that you're doing to others is never going to be something that will be returned to you even though that's the hope. The unmothered daughter hopes that one day she will mother everyone enough or someone enough that they will also mother her.

[00:07:52]But they won't.

[00:07:55]And in a way it's good that they don't.

[00:07:58]Because what would life look like if we really found surrogate parents left and right throughout our lives even though we're adults?

[00:08:07]That would mean we're still children and if we're still still children, it means we're still only craving for a mother.

[00:08:16]And if we're just craving for a mother, it means that we're not really open and fearless enough to expre- experience the world for what it is and what it can give us.

[00:08:29]If we're so fixated on finding a mother, it means like we want to go back into our mother's womb rather than go ahead and live our lives.

[00:08:41]So the unmothered daughter will unhook from her need to mother everyone once she firstly accepts that her mother can never show up to mothering her sufficiently. That's done.

[00:08:58]It's over.

[00:09:00]And also accepts that however much she tries to mother others to mother her, again, not going to work.

[00:09:08]But what would set her free from this pursuit of mothering others is not only this acceptance, but the feeling of mothering herself.

[00:09:18]Putting all of that effort back into herself. This is what I keep saying and I will always be saying.

[00:09:25]The most restorative and healing experience is not a thought that we have, a mantra that we repeat, some sort of plan that we follow on how to do things in life.

[00:09:40]Because these things can help us, you know, these tools can help us.

[00:09:44]But what really transforms us is an inner movement that can be experienced as we sit with ourselves.

[00:09:56]And that's the corrective experience that we seek. There's no easier way to do this and there's no way more accessible because this is us with ourselves. It's doing inner child work.

[00:10:11]If you want a blueprint that is just ready-made and you just listen to the sessions and let your system re-parent itself and have heal, you can check it out.

[00:10:24]But no matter how many things others tell you, "Do this. Do the other.

[00:10:29]Say this. Say the other. Stop mothering them. You're not their mother." Sure.

[00:10:34]But your life will transform and your inner world will transform as an effect.

[00:10:39]Your life will transform as an effect of your inner world transforming when you do inner work and mother yourself. So, the inner mothering will help you restore your system back into a space where, "Okay, I've been mothered enough. I've had some type of mothering." So, you're not going to go out in the world starved and try to mother everyone.

[00:11:05]And also, you're going to stop because through this journey you're going to grieve a lot. You're going to stop trying to get your mother to show up for you.

[00:11:14]And also, eventually you will move on from the fact that you're unmothered because it is what it is. End of the day, it's going to be the thing that brought you to having to do this work that you're doing.

[00:11:27]And then that in itself will open up different doors for you.

[00:11:31]And that's the thing, right? We may not have been dealt with the best cards and we may have not had the privilege of exceptional parenting or even good enough parenting or even not abusive parenting, right?

[00:11:45]But eventually, there's a lot of areas in which we can catch up, right? And may maybe maybe there's some privileges that we can't access. Maybe there's some emotional disabilities that we can't overcome.

[00:11:58]But the inner process of re-parenting is 100% something we can all access and do provided that we find the willingness and the passion to mother ourselves in the same way that we had the willingness and the passion to mother others.

[00:12:20]I'll see you soon.