Artwork by Roberto Ferri
The Toxic Father is:
“DO WHAT I WANT OR I’LL BEAT YOU”
Or sometimes it is simply him brutalizing you no matter what you do.
The trauma this creates is by no means small.
However, when working with people with this kind of wounding, the approach is relatively straightforward (which isn’t the same as ‘easy’).
The healing is straightforward because the crime is straightforward.
When the Toxic Father abuses in this way, it is an immediate and obvious emotional abandonment of the child. In that moment, his love is gone and the child is emotionally without a father. It is intensely painful and very often (though not always) immediately obvious to even the child that their dad is a dick.
The crime is explicit. And the healing process, therefore, is relatively direct.
The Toxic Mother, on the other hand, is:
“IF YOU LOVE ME, THEN YOU WILL ________”
What makes this so deeply damaging is that whereas the Toxic Father’s brutality marks him out immediately as brutal and unloving, the Toxic Mother’s approach doesn’t appear as unloving at first glance. If anything, it almost feels loving. And so, instead of marking her out as doing wrong, you look only at yourself as the wrongdoer.
You don’t ask, “Why am I so unloved?”
You ask yourself, “Why am I so unloving?”
The abuse here is deeply insidious. And just like with the Toxic Father’s brutalization, the Toxic Mother has also instantly abandoned the child by simply taking the position of “If you loved me....”. Except that it doesn’t look like abandonment on the surface. It feels like you still have a mother in that moment.
It makes you question only yourself.
And this is the theme that we see play out the on the level of the individual and collectively – Don't question mother’s love.
She carried you and kept you alive for 9 months after all. So she must love you deeply.
Whereas dad had to do little more than sneeze to do his part.
With my clients, and even in my personal circles, I’ve seen it time and time again – being angry at Him is generally so easy. And doing the work around it relatively simple; the person has to learn that they did nothing to deserve what happened to them, and then they must go about becoming a ‘stronger’ person than their dad. Roughly speaking.
But even acknowledging that She failed them on some level? I’ve seen people go an entire lifetime without being able to shine a light on what from the outside is clearly a failure in parenting or even outright abuse from their mother.
Abusive stepdad?
OK, let’s work on that.
But how do you feel about the woman who let him in the house?
*Tumbleweeds*
In myself, I didn’t know about my own experience in this dynamic until I was 31 years old. And that was after a decade or more of self-work.
It’s important to note, that of course, a father can exhibit these insidiously abusive behaviours and a mother can brutalize. And the truth is, these dynamics are more accurately described as toxic ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ (which isn’t the same as ‘male’ and ‘female’).
But that’s a bigger topic and in reality, the generalization *generally* holds true.
THE SONS OF THE TOXIC MOTHER
While the Toxic Mother has caused invisible damage to both men and women, as far as I can tell from the clients I’ve had and as I look out at the world as a whole, the negative effects of the Toxic Mother show up most in men.
[Just for transparency, I was going to say that ‘men have been hurt the most by the Toxic Mother’, but I quickly deleted and re-phrased it as I suddenly envisioned dozens of angry comments from women who literally cannot hear that men are also the victims of abuse, which I've experienced online before – consider that for a moment, and see if that isn’t also an example of the Toxic Feminine at play]
How it shows up in a man depends on whether his inner infant or inner teenager is the more prominent unconscious force.
If he’s ruled by the child part of him, he will become a people-pleaser; the Mr. Nice Guy and/or White Knight. He will have a floppy spine as the abusive poison seeps into his nervous system. He will seek Woman’s love by trying to convince her that he’s a good boy.
If his inner teenager is at play, it will show up as misogyny, resentment towards women and arrogance. His heart will be hardened as he tries (and fails) to fight against the inner dialogue that says he’s not good enough. He will pretend to himself and the world that he doesn’t need Woman.
I could write a piece on the daughters of the Toxic Mother, but will save that for another time, perhaps for my ‘Loving the Unhealed Man’ FB group (check it out!).
But if you are, or know, a son of the Toxic Mother, I’ll be teaching at a special weekend bootcamp for men, hosted by Rowan Andrews in the London area on the 25th and 26th July 2020. Where men will be having their spines lengthened and their hearts softened. Gently, but firmly. With love. Message me for details.
