Fear of Mommy Love

                             

by Joe Soll 조 살 , LCSW, Author of Adoption Healing… a path to recovery;

Co-author of Evil Exchange and Fatal Flight

 

Years ago, a 60 year old adopted woman joined my weekly support group meeting. Her first words were, “I want to search for my mom... I know how to deal with “rejection” but what if she accepts me?  I don’t know if I could handle that.”  And she started to sob.

 

What is this really about?  Over the years I’ve heard so many adoptees express, directly or indirectly that they were afraid of being loved, especially by their natural moms.  How could this be so?  Why would anyone be afraid of being loved by anyone?  And by their own mother?

 

I remember when my own therapist said she loved me. I wanted to crawl inside the couch in terror.  Thank God she understood and helped me understand.

 

We adoptees lost the most sacred and intense love relationship in the world.  The reasons why don’t matter. What does matter is that we lost what we needed the most both psychologically and physiologically. On some level we always knew it was missing and always longed to have that love. 

 

As a child it would have been easy to “re-connect” and feel it.  However, if as an adult if I allow myself to feel the love of my mother, I have three (usually unconscious) problems.

 

1.  Recognizing this as an issue can be terrifying in and of itself.

 

2.  If I let myself feel it, I will feel what I always wanted and what was always missing and the pain of that thought can be terrifying.  Terrifying as well is the anger that surfaces when I see what I lost. I fear I will either explode in rage or die from the pain.

 

3.  Trauma victims (the loss of the mother/child relationship is a trauma of the highest order) always believe the trauma will repeat so, if I let myself feel it, my mother will leave again and I will die.

 

This fear of mommy love can sabotage a reunion in the blink of an eye without anyone being aware of what is really going on under the surface.  Moreover, if I am afraid to be loved by my own mother, I may well have difficulties letting anyone truly love me.

 

This is not a message of doom. We can overcome our fears.

 

My method of doing this kind of work is Inner Child work. (IC)

 

1. We must help our IC understand that she/he was and is lovable. 

 

2. We must help our IC grieve the loss of the mommy/child relationship.

 

3. We must help our IC understand that she/he will not die from feeling mommy love, even though it “feels” like it.

 

4. We need to trust that our mothers will not leave again and that they do not want to experience this trauma again any more than we do.

 

5. We need to realize that even if our mothers leave again, we will not die. We are not babies anymore, we are adults and will survive. We survived that loss as a baby without any help from anyone so surely we can survive as mature adults.

 

This work takes time and effort and commitment, however, if we can do the work, we will be more able to let the important people in our lives truly love us and we will come alive in a ways that we never thought possible.

 

We will be able to live our lives in happy healthy ways.

 

Spring is here, time for renewal.  How about giving yourself this gift of feeling loved?