Episode 9: From Mother to Smothering

Welcome to My Mother's Trauma, a podcast exploring feelings about families, what to do with what's passed down to us, and how to break the cycle for more justice and liberation. I am your host, Kim Loliya. Let's take a moment to breathe.

Greetings everyone. Welcome to a new year for those who follow the Gregorian calendar. And I also want to honour those who don't follow that calendar because in many cultures, as well as historically, we haven't really marked the new year on the 1st of January.

And as it's a new year for many of us who live in Western countries, I've been tussling with New Year's resolutions culture and the promises that we're pressured to make to ourselves, to our bodies, the promises around losing weight, exercising, doing self-care,

or suddenly morphing into this version of ourselves that isn't quite authentic.

This culture is so dangerous and toxic and there's so much pressure to be different at the beginning of the year within our collective. There's pressure to be a different version of ourselves and when we think about it systemically

So much of that is colonial, patriarchal, ableist and capitalist.

The capitalism is really strong right now given that gym memberships skyrocket in January, often tying people up into multi-month or even multi-year contracts. It's a tough time to exist in a femme body, a non-binary body, as well as for other genders.

due to the pressure of all these systems to change how we look and how we are. In all of this, I've been thinking about how we hold our desires for change, our desires to have a fresh start in life in a way that is liberation focused for us and for other people as well.

I guess it's the politics of decolonizing desire.

How do we hold who we are right now and why we do what we do, including our unhealthy coping strategies, while also making space for the new version of ourselves that's emerging. And like butterflies emerging out of a chrysalis, that process of change is messy and full of struggle.

and that's okay.

It's natural to struggle with change, but there's also a way of being with change that doesn't involve the pressure of New Year's resolutions and the expectations that they create and the shame when we inevitably fail.

I really hope we can all get more free in 2025, free to embody ourselves and who we hope to become.

and that we can exist in solidarity with our community as well as the planet as we journey throughout the year and that's all I'm going to say on the new year folks I don't love this topic so I'm gonna move on and I'll stay with what feels alive within me although I'll

probably go back to exploring how we can decolonize our desire because in these times where our desires are co-opted by so many systems it feels really precious to explore what that looks like and what the anchors are that make that possible.

Before I dive into the episode I have a couple of black psychotherapy updates that I wanted to share.

We have a lecture series on decolonizing therapy coming up this month in January and February and that will be virtual and free to attend. Each lecture will be covering different aspects of Black, African-centered and liberation psychology, so if you're interested feel free to join.

The links to register are in the show notes.

I'll also be closing the series with a lecture on intuition, which I'm really excited to offer into the world because I love this topic and it feels like it's deeply tied into decolonial and liberatory work. We also have the super warm and wonderful Paulette Henry from Black Rootz.

who will be joining us virtually for a free interactive talk on food sovereignty. And that is going to be amazing as well. Land and food justice are such an integral part of surviving the apocalypse. We really need decolonial ways of reimagining our relationship to food and where it comes from.

So between Paulette and our lectures we have a couple of months packed with learning and I look forward to seeing some of you in some of those spaces. In the meantime let's dive into our topic for the episode which is mothering and smothering. I'm obviously going to be talking about mothers and mothering quite a bit

the episode so feel free to substitute any language that feels more appropriate for you if those terms aren't useful or don't reflect your experience. And of course smothering can happen in any relationship including friendships and intimate relationships so if you can't relate

the topic within the context of mothering or being mothered it might be helpful to think about it more broadly.

So this topic has been on my heart since the very start of the episode because I feel like whenever we talk about our mother's trauma it's either a kind of mothering that was absent, avoidant, neglectful or distracted or it's a kind of mothering that was smothering, overbearing

controlling or just too much. It's like there are two opposite poles and parenting that's caused pain either exists in one camp or the other.

As a starting point I wanted to explore how we get to smothering. If we look at nature and mammals in particular, unless an animal has been in captivity, we tend not to see a lot of smothering going on. I remember being shocked at how mothers in the animal kingdom

seem to ditch their young or shove them out of nests when they're still so tiny and vulnerable and these animals have a really embodied and instinctual sense of when to do that and that clearly works otherwise the entire species would be extinct so it clearly makes sense on some level

But it's a bit more complicated, unfortunately, for human mothers, especially black, brown and indigenous mothers who live in oppressed bodies that have so many expectations put onto them.

The saying that when you're black you need to work ten times as hard also applies to mothering. You need to work ten times as hard for your mothering to be seen as good enough in society's eyes. And what's defined as good mothering also includes having successful high-performing children.

So mothers are forced to become so invested in how their children behave and whether that behavior is judged as conforming to the norm or not.

The stakes are really high. And then smothering comes in as a fear response. When we feel safe, we don't need to be overbearing. We can give each other space without encroaching.

But many racially minoritised mothers don't feel safe and live in a permanent state of anxiety.

so it makes sense that these overbearing traits might develop. Black mothers are terrified their boys might not come home because of police brutality, which is a whole other layer on top of being worried that your child is out with their friends. We're talking about being terrified.

and that's an overwhelming emotion to feel and that terror comes out in different ways for different people including smothering behaviors or trying to cope in a different way when you're resisting the urge to smother your children. When I was growing up there was a saying that was used a lot in my family and

it doesn't translate very well into English but I'll say it anyway.

and it's essentially that only children are the children of fear and that saying came about because parents who only have one child can be more fearful of losing that child and so they become overprotective and overbearing

It's a saying that basically explains and perhaps even justifies smothering and it's quite problematic because that's a lot to put on a child and smothering also happens in families with multiple children.

Sometimes it's the youngest who are smothered because they're seen as the baby, but it can also be the eldest because they're parentified and adultified. Or maybe parents are overbearing towards their middle child because they're the mediator. If your mother has smothering tendencies,

Having siblings or a particular birth placement doesn't necessarily insulate you from these behaviours. But having siblings can help because these dynamics can be less intense or they can be easier to cope with.

If you're a mother or you're someone who's been mothered you might be wondering how do I know if I'm smothering or being smothered or whether it's healthy caring mothering and what's difficult is that there's no one rule book that we can use

and apply across all families and all situations. But there can be some common traits that come up that can feel like smothering.

first of all it's the pushing of boundaries

If you have an adult child that could look like expecting to see them more than they have capacity for and not taking no for an answer. It could also be overstaying your welcome or calling or texting excessively.

And what tends to be complicated is that it's not necessarily the number of times contact happens because sometimes parents and children are in touch because they need to be, because they want to be and it's a really healthy dynamic.

But smothering is the expectation that a child should drop everything and interact with their parent. And it usually comes with a resentment that starts to build if the child doesn't comply.

If you have young children, smothering can look like being a helicopter parent.

And helicopter behavior is micromanaging and becoming overly involved with how your child interacts with other children in the playground. It goes over and above protecting a child from harm.

It can look like stepping in and saying no on behalf of a child so that they never learn how to do that for themselves. This kind of smothering can build codependency where children become overly reliant on their parent to regulate their emotions and soothe them and this can be a painful dynamic

both in childhood, the teenage years and throughout adulthood as well. And thinking about this through a cultural lens, a lot of smothering behaviours are ingrained and reinforced by culture. This can look like a mother piling more food onto your plate after you said no.

which is a smothering behaviour because while it comes from care it's also overstepping a boundary and not hearing your no but at the same time it's also a behaviour that is situated at the heart of many cultures in the global south as a way of showing love and care for your family.

so it's really hard to offer feedback or try and correct this behaviour because it's so embedded and normalised within culture. Some parents believe that if they're not smothering it's a lack of love. So we're dealing with different views emerging out of different generations and having to build a bridge between the two.

Once we've realized that we're being smothered or that we're doing the smothering, how do we journey back to engaging with mothering? Whether that's as a mother or as a person being mothered. I guess it's not always possible to get back or to even get to healthy mothering.

but sometimes that journey does happen and

it's generally worth exploring whether some movement towards healthier mothering is possible. For the person smothering, realizing that what you thought was care is actually harmful to someone you love can be shocking, disorientating, or shame-inducing. It can feel like your world

is suddenly turned upside down.

And for the person on the receiving end of smothering, it can also feel shocking, disorientating, rage or shame-inducing. So it's hard on both sides. And on both sides it's something to grieve. Because in the anxiety that was so oppressive, maybe there wasn't enough space for joy.

space to explore or form your own opinions. Maybe there wasn't enough space to rest and it's hard to acknowledge all of those unmet needs. Like any wound smothering is likely to need some repair or at least a resetting of boundaries.

so that things can move forward.

For some people, this can also look like a period of estrangement.

and that's because it feels necessary to detox from smothering.

and distance might also be needed to fully rediscover who you are because smothering can overshadow identity and how we develop our identity especially when we're children and throughout our teens. If there's been enmeshment, a period of individuation can be helpful not just

to sense who you are, but also to sense what kind of relationships you want to have with the world.

and all of this can be really emotionally taxing.

so it's a lot on all fronts.

And for mothers who are looking to reduce their smothering behaviours, it might help to explore this through the lens of anxiety.

If you're not smothering, what are you doing to soothe your anxiety instead? How are you processing the anxiety in your body? Because nature abhors the vacuum and it's really hard to stop any behaviour and do nothing instead. So perhaps you can have a think about other strategies to help you manage these feelings.

And while therapy can be a useful place to unpack some of this, also having the support of elders, friends, faith leaders, community leaders can also be so healing and precious on this journey. And if smothering is embedded in our culture, then choosing something different

also requires everyone to be a part of that process. It really isn't just one person's job. There are many things that happen in marginalised communities where people say, it's just culture, in a really hopeless way, as a way of justifying

that nothing can be done to change something. And I think that's really sad and disempowering. There are plenty of things that used to be part of our culture that we no longer do.

A random example that I read about on social media is that many, many years ago, folks in the US used to mail their children soon after the postal service was set up.

And that went on for years, until it was eventually banned.

Apparently it was cheaper to male children as opposed to travel with them.

But despite the price difference, what happened over time is that there was a cultural shift.

And now it would seem so unthinkable to take a child to the post office and try to mail them. It seems almost unbelievable that we would do that. Apart from the cruelty and the danger of it, it's countercultural.

And so, when we think about smothering that's culturally induced, if we wanted to change it, maybe we could over time. It's not always safe to have conversations about smothering with a parent, but in some cases, being able to say how you feel can bring consciousness to a behaviour

that might not be conscious and this could reduce the frequency of it.

Talking about these feelings might also reduce passive aggression and resentment.

that could be affecting the relationship between a parent and an adult child.

But while communication can be helpful, it can also feel really dangerous for trauma survivors and people pleasers or if staying silent was a protection mechanism that helped you survive systemic violence. In those cases, it might be necessary to have the support and solidarity of someone who can mediate.

perhaps even advocate and be a general buffer for big emotional reactions. For adults who have been smothered, doing inner child work isn't always an option because even thinking about parenting could be triggering even if it's just parenting yourself. And after being smothered,

it might be hard to find the capacity to parent yourself.

It can take time and active work to come out of the anxiety of being smothered.

and that perhaps is a process in and of itself. It feels like there's a natural time connected to doing inner child work for survivors of these types of behaviour. So if the opposite of smothering is space, then how can we give ourselves and each other

the space to be in relationship while also honouring our needs for closeness and intimacy. It's definitely not something that we're always going to get right, but being in this question and self-correcting along the way is a start towards more liberatory relationships.

and it then becomes possible for children to have agency where they can become themselves to be human and to experience the discomfort and growth that comes with being autonomous and this brings me to the end of the episode

A lot was said and maybe unsaid as well. So if this conversation has brought up some feelings or memories for you, I hope you find the space, time and support to be held and that you can get back to safety in whatever way that looks for you.

If you'd like to learn more about intergenerational trauma, as well as decolonial and anti-oppressive ways to heal, check out blackpsychotherapy.org. We offer classes, programs and talking therapy for individuals, couples and groups. If you'd like journal prompts, decolonial musings and special discounts,

You can sign up to our newsletter via the link in the show notes, where you can also find a link to submit a question for me to answer in a future episode. I super look forward to connecting with you again and take care.