The Emotionally Absent Mother: How to Recognize and Heal the Invisible Effects of Childhood Emotional Neglect, Second Edition

If this list describes you, then you must read this book. Then find a counselor and get some help to deal with it. It will hurt to read this book. You will have realizations that are mind-blowing and gut-wrenching. But you will find a lot of answers for why you are the way you are. This list is a quote from the book.* When you see a tender mother-child interaction, you are emotionally triggered. You may feel choked up and teary or push away the pain by becoming critical and dismissive. (It hurts to see what you didn't have.)* You would just as soon not look deeply into your relationship with your mother. Better to "let sleeping dogs lie."* When you visit your mother, you find yourself numbing or going into a trance state in which you are not fully present. Visits are always upsetting, and you find yourself back in painful childhood feelings.* You crave true closeness yet feel uncomfortable and afraid of it. It is unfamiliar to you.* You feel some core shame and suffer from feelings (often hidden) that there is something unlovable about you.* You avoid having children of your own, feeling somehow not quite like "parent material."Remember Bruce Willis's character in The Sixth Sense? The realizations I had were like when he realizes at the end that he's one of the dead people. His life flashes before his eyes in a wave of disbelief and suddenly everything makes sense. He looks back on all the times that things were not quite right but he couldn't explain them at the time.Now, there's an explanation.

I decided to go "no contact" with my mother after she tried to ruin my wedding and honeymoon. Heartbroken, I started to do research about mothers who seem to sabotage and hurt their daughters (I couldn't figure out what I must have done wrong), and I found this book.First, I have to say this was one of the hardest books I have ever read. Each chapter was a painfully accurate description of my mother and her effect on me. I had to process and grieve the mother I never had and accept the one I did.Despite the pain it helped me uncover, there was a very good outcome: I realized that there was nothing wrong with me. For years, she blamed me for everything, and I was taught having normal feelings was wrong. I am now working on recovering and avoid raising my children they way she raised me.

My my experience with this type of parent, I think this book should be required reading for all Midwestern parents of eastern European origin - especially those of Wisconsin, Chicago and Michigan (especially Michigan) where I was raised or spent time - that is, those cultures who, as a whole, raise children 'by hand' and follow the Prussian school of child raising . So many children are damaged by abuse and neglect, and this has to truly be cause of much personal unhappiness and societal social problems in the U.S.Ms Lee-Cori gives a thorough description of the problem in a way that's compassionate that is easily understandable to anyone who've experienced neglect and abuse at the hands of their parents. Then she goes on to describe practical solutions to how one might approach resolution in their adult years. This book gives hope and is worth studying.It's heartbreaking to think that we in the U.S. would treat our children and other individuals so poorly without addressing this problem as a social concern with a long-term plan aimed at resolution. Perhaps this is the case, as this book wasn't available years ago so slowly we are headed in the right direction. But better yet, just reading this book has given me an insight into problems we all face and a daily basis and has made me a better person in that I can communicate with other people in a compassionate and constructive way. That alone is worth ten times the price of the book.

I discovered this book a couple of years ago, and it has had a big impact on my life. Reading it was an eye- and heart-opening experience for more reasons than I can count. I'll share two of them here.Early on in the book, the author offers a bird's eye view of the essential archetypal roles a mother plays: mother as Source, as Place of Attachment, as First Responder, as Modulator, as Nurturer, as Mirror, as Cheerleader, as Mentor, as Protector, as Home Base. She then goes on to explain what each of these role actually involves. It was comforting to understand what my mother actually did superbly well (she was a phenomenal cheerleader).  And it was also helpful to discover what she was not able to provide, and which I had not even known to look for.  Suddenly I had a clear map of the developmental gaps in my life, as well as a way of noticing who had already showed up along the way to fill them.  It has helped me to appreciate how blessed I have been with the kind of motherly love and support I have received from so many women (and some men) over the years.Another one of the many things I love about the book is the list of essential "Good mother" messages.  I like to read and re-read them. I find them deeply healing.

My mother was there physically but not emotionally. I had a counselor tell me I had been emotionally abandoned as a child which is more crazy-making than being actually physically abandoned. If you felt like this, read this book.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has or had a mother without empathy or a mother who was emotionally absent, whatever the reason. I always have thought that it was my fault that my mother and I did not bond and that it was not a normal occurrence so it had to be me. Now I realize that I am not the only person that has gone through something like this. And maybe it is not me that caused it.I don't know that I can obtain what I never had or make up for lost time because it takes two people who want it to make it happen, However, at least now I have a better understanding of why I feel the way that I do.

Wow, essential reading for anyone who has always suspected that their mother seriously let them down emotionally. Ms Cori takes the view that if you feel she did, then you are probably right. Mine is in there to the life and I understand a great deal more now about what went wrong and why, and that indeed it wasn't my fault.

This book helped me to understand my relationship with my mother the type of attachment I formed giving me insight

For me personally, 90% of this book rings painfully true, and it is genuinely helping to finally understand why I am so screwed up. Hopefully, by the time I have finished reading it, I will learn how to unscrew myself.

I bought it as a daughter but finding this book very useful as a mother. All mother's should read this.

A very powerful book. This book may put you in touch with some very strong emotions of grief, anger, sadness and pain. I was grateful to have a counsellor to help me to process what needed to come out. It was very very intense.