You’re Not Broken: Why You People-Please, Feel Anxious, & Never Feel Good Enough – and How to Heal

Summary

The Mel Robbins Podcast

Episode Title: You’re Not Broken: Why You People-Please, Feel Anxious, & Never Feel Good Enough – and How to Heal
Host: Mel Robbins
Guest: Kelly McDaniel, Therapist & Author of Mother Hunger
Air Date: May 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Mel Robbins delves into the concept of “Mother Hunger” with therapist and author Kelly McDaniel, unpacking a rarely discussed but pervasive invisible childhood wound. Together, they explore how unmet childhood needs—especially within the mother-daughter relationship—manifest later in life as people-pleasing, burnout, addiction, anxiety, low self-worth, perfectionism, and challenging relationships. The conversation is candid, compassionate, and empowering, offering listeners validation, insight, and hopeful guidance toward healing these deep-rooted wounds.

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Key Themes & Points

1. Defining “Mother Hunger”

[04:08]

• Mel: Introduces the importance of understanding the mother-daughter relationship and the invisible wounds many carry.
• Kelly:
  • “Mother Hunger is a term for a yearning for a certain quality of love that a lot of times we confuse with romantic love.”
  • Three core childhood needs: nurturing, protection, and guidance.
  • If any (or all) are absent, “we’re probably going to feel some mother hunger.”
  • The need for these is not personal weakness—it’s human biology.

2. Not About Blaming Mothers

[07:38]

• The goal is not mother-shaming or placing blame, but understanding the invisible heartbreak so many women (and men) quietly carry.
• “This book isn't about blaming mothers at all. It's about an invisible heartbreak...” — Kelly [08:25]

3. How Mother Hunger Manifests

[09:42]

• Signs and Symptoms:
  • Burnout, difficulties concentrating, self-doubt, perfectionism, eating disorders, hyper-vigilance to others’ emotions, people-pleasing, and feeling responsible for others’ happiness.
  • “Whatever we did to earn her approval is who we become.” — Kelly [12:33]

4. The Biological Imperative of Attachment

[11:24]

• Kelly: “We are more biologically wired to attach to someone than to eat. That's how biological this is.”
• Attachment forms personality; efforts to secure approval become ingrained behavior.

5. Mother Hunger Beyond Childhood Memories

[16:41], [17:18]

• The wound isn’t always about a person, but the longing for an experience of being mothered.
• Effects are observed in men and women; many struggle without realizing the root cause.

6. Connection with Food & Addiction

[18:28], [20:32]

• “Food is our first experience of love, second to our mother's arms.”
• Overeating, undereating, or fluctuating between the two are all attempts to regulate the nervous system—a response to unmet needs.
• Generations of emotional dysregulation may be inherited.

7. Romantic Relationships & Mother Hunger

[22:05]

• In partnerships, Mother Hunger may show up as:
  • One partner doing all the nurturing and feeling depleted.
  • A persistent, insatiable need for emotional provision from the other that cannot be satisfied.
  • “The craving they’re experiencing is beyond you—it predates you.” — Kelly [22:56]

8. Family Dynamics and Coping Strategies

[24:28]

• Mel and Kelly discuss how daughters often revert to “doing whatever it takes” around their mothers, exhibiting freeze, fight, flight, or fawning behaviors.
• “When you were with your mom, I missed you. ... Did you feel that too?” — Mel, on approaching your partner with empathy [24:28]

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Healing Mother Hunger: Tools, Insights, and Hope

9. Facing Grief, Guilt & The “Apology Ache”

[52:45], [55:25]

• Grieving is an essential part of healing, including anger, blame, sadness, and numbing.
• “Apology ache” is the longing for a true apology, often unlikely to come, which is part of the grieving process.

10. Remothering Yourself

[58:23], [61:14]

• True healing involves learning to nurture, protect, and guide yourself.
• Example: If you crave an apology for always being left waiting, commit to not abandoning yourself—be on time for things that matter to you.

11. Intergenerational Patterns & Compassion

[35:05]

• Three generations share biological and emotional legacies; your mother was someone's daughter too, often carrying her own unhealed wounds.

12. Friendships & Emotional Safety

[45:06]

• Deep friendships with women can be healing, but require trust and prioritization.
• “Part of realizing you have [Mother Hunger] is to be very protective of yourself. … This is your first job as the mother of yourself.” — Kelly [64:44]

13. Forgiveness & Moving Beyond “Pathological Hope”

[66:52], [67:54], [68:06]

• Forgiveness is for your own health, but doesn’t mean forgetting or foolishly hoping for change.
• “True forgiveness is when you stop wishing things were different.” — Mel, quoting Oprah [67:54]

14. What Healing Looks Like

[70:48]

• Improved self-care, more balance with food and relationships, reduced addiction cravings, deeper friendships, and overall peace.
• “The more you can replace lost nurturing… your whole nervous system starts to settle down. You become more present.” — Kelly [69:42]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “It’s not about blame… it’s about growing up with an invisible heartache that’s running the show.” — Kelly [08:25]
• “Whatever it is you had to do as a child to get your mother’s attention and love becomes who you are.” — Mel [12:42]
• “If we didn’t have adequate nurturing around us, protection around us, that’s going to follow us into adulthood as a low-grade anxiety and a feeling of ‘I’m not good enough.’” — Kelly [18:12]
• “Unmet needs grow. That’s just biology. They don’t go away.” — Kelly [61:07]
• “When you do the work for yourself, you change. ... When I change, I’m a different parent, partner, and daughter.” — Mel [33:00]

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Practical Guidance & Action Steps

1. Acknowledge & Name the Hunger:
   • Recognize the old wounds for what they are; stop blaming or shaming yourself.
2. Be Selective with Whom You Share:
   • Seek support from therapists, coaches, or trusted friends who “get it” ([65:16]).
   • Siblings may have had a different experience; don’t assume mutual understanding.
3. Embrace Remothering:
   • Begin self-nurturance: “Please don’t abandon yourself by being late to things that matter—show up on time because you’re worth it.” ([58:23])
   • Practice self-compassion and protection—in thought, action, and boundaries.
4. Understand Grief Is Part of Healing:
   • Allow yourself to feel, grieve, blame, and even hope: it’s all a process.
5. Let Go of “Pathological Hope”
   • Accept that some relationships, especially with your mother, may never be what you desire.
   • Practice forgiveness for yourself, not to erase the past, but to unburden your present ([67:54]).
6. Prioritize Real Friendships:
   • Invest in nourishing, supportive relationships with peers and mentors.

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Memorable Moments & Quotes with Timestamps

• “This is the most primitive wound our body can sustain.” — Kelly [11:11]
• “We are more biologically wired to attach to someone than to eat.” — Kelly [11:28]
• “The mother wound isn’t even necessarily about a person. It’s about the desire to be mothered…” — Mel [16:01]
• “Attachment forms our entire personality.” — Kelly [12:33]
• “You just do feel your shoulders go, oh, that’s what I didn’t feel there. That’s why I act the way that I do.” — Mel [25:58]
• “The more you can replace lost nurturing… your whole nervous system starts to settle down. You become more present.” — Kelly [69:42]

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Closing Takeaways

• Give Yourself Permission to acknowledge any mismatch between what you needed and what you received.
• Take Responsibility Only for Your Part: You didn’t cause this pain, but your healing is your responsibility now.
• Share this conversation with those who feel safe and won’t add shame.
• Immediate Step: If you feel dysregulated after listening, “Go take a break. … You just paid attention to some really hard stuff.” — Kelly [73:49]
• Your Healing Empowers Future Generations and transforms every relationship in your life.

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For more, pick up Kelly McDaniel’s book Mother Hunger or share this episode with a friend.
“You’re not broken, and you can heal.” – Mel Robbins [74:26]

Transcript

[A]

Hey, it's your friend Mel. And welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Today, you and I are talking about the invisible childhood wound that explains why you may feel so lost, exhausted, or like you're never good enough. You're going to learn that there's actually a reason why you feel like everybody else comes first, that it's never good enough. Because today, therapist and bestselling author Kelly McDaniel is going to explain that there is this hidden childhood wound that you've been carrying for decades. And you're not alone. So if you've ever struggled with self worth or people pleasing or addictive patterns, anxious relationships or a sense of feeling broken, or, gosh, just that nagging feeling that you're not good enough, this conversation is going to be so illuminating because it will connect what you're feeling as an adult to all of these things that you may not even remember that happened when you were a kid. So if you've ever felt frustrated by the tension that you feel within your family, you just wish it could be peaceful, that everyone could get along, or confused by the behavior of your wife, your girlfriend, your sister, or your mom. Or maybe you personally are tired of constantly putting everyone else's happiness first, constantly trying to trying to overachieve, constantly trying to prove your worth. This episode is going to explain so much. It is going to make you feel so seen. And it's going to show you how to finally stop blaming yourself for the pain you didn't cause. Let's get into it.

[B]

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[A]

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[C]

It's a thrill to be here. The work you're doing is phenomenal, and I'm just thrilled that you're interested in talking to me about Mother Hunger.

[A]

Well, your work and this topic and digging into it both as a daughter and a mother has really changed my life and who I am. And I believe this is one of the most important topics when it comes to relationships that nobody's talking about because we're afraid to talk about it. And so where I want to start is can you define what Mother Hunger is for somebody that's listening right now that has never heard that term? What is it?

[C]

Mother Hunger is a term for a yearning for a certain quality of love that a lot of times we confuse with romantic love. We may look for this kind of love from partners, from our friends, and be frustrated that it's not ever really happening. So that's one piece of defining it. The other piece is related more to what we lost. So Mother Hunger means one of three things went missing, or maybe all three of them went missing in your formative years.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

We need nurturing to grow the brain. We need protection in order to flourish. We need to feel safe. And then as we get a little older, we need guidance. As daughters, we look for all of these things from our mother. We're already in love with her when we're born. We know her smell, we know her heartbeat. Her body is our first home. When we come into the world, we're expecting to stay close to her. Our Bodies are designed to be near hers. That's nurturing. Stay close to mom for breastfeeding, for holding, for sleeping. We're not meant to be separated. Protection is that we feel safe enough and she is safe enough to be close to us. If she's not safe, chances are we're not gonna feel very safe. So protection is a big issue. And then guidance as we grow into adolescence and then we start to think about who we gonna be when we grow up. Some of us are lucky enough to have a mom that we can look to for that inspiration, but a lot of us don't. And so maybe we had a nurturing mother, but we didn't have a good guide. Or maybe we had a very protective mother, but she was kind of cold. Or maybe we had a mother that was just laissez faire, go do whatever you want, and we didn't quite feel safe. There are just so many manifestations of if we missed one of those three things, we're probably going to feel some mother hunger.

[A]

You know, one of the things that I love in your bestselling book, Mother Hunger, is that in the introduction, you tell readers that as you're learning about mother hunger, which is this kind of quiet grief that you feel because you have a big mismatch with the way that you were mothered, I guess, is the word that you would use, right? Your relationship with your mom. You invite readers to really look at the topic of mother hunger through the lens of being a daughter. Why is it important to give yourself permission to look with fresh eyes at what it was truly like for you in your household growing up, what your relationship was truly like with your mother for the first time with fresh eyes through the lens of what you're about to teach us.

[C]

Well, I think it's difficult to look with fresh eyes if we read this book as a parenting manual. So if any of you out there, if you're a mom, it. The tendency to pick up this book and start to examine how you've been a mother or are a mother is. Is ripe. And we don't. That's not why I wrote this book. In fact, I almost didn't write this book because I didn't want women to have another thing beating them up about what to do as women, what to do as a wife, a mother. I didn't want to add to the movement that has already burdened women unfairly. This book isn't about blaming mothers at all. It's about an invisible heartbreak that has been until now, until we had a name Untouchable. When we know that we are yearning for a certain quality of love that just wasn't there. Not because we're needy, not because we're broken, but because we're human. And this is what little humans need to develop. Most of us didn't get it. Our culture is not set up for parents to provide this for their children. So it's not about lack of love. It's not about somebody doing something wrong. This is about growing up with an invisible heartache that's running the show. You didn't know it was there. You didn't know. That's why you undereat or overeat. You didn't know. That's why your relationships aren't working. You didn't know that's why you can't sit still. When we're sitting on a pile of heartbreak without words for it. We have to keep moving.

[A]

Well, you not only wrote the book Mother Hunger, you're the first person to coin the term Mother hunger, which is now a clinical term. It is used by therapists and licensed clinicians and medical professionals all over the world. When you're sitting across from somebody and they're talking to you about their life and they're talking to their other anxiety or their self doubt or their perfectionism or their hopes and aspirations, what are the signs that you see in an expert in this kind of longing and this kind of wound?

[C]

The first sign I see is a lot of burnout. Mother Hunger can touch our career aspirations or lack thereof, can touch our struggle with our bodies and our health. Long term stress like this of feeling maybe that something is just wrong with me impacts our immune system. A lot of us have trouble with concentration because our life energy growing up went to finding safety rather than figuring out who we are. All of our energy went into am I okay? How do I make these people around me? My caregivers love me. And we didn't really develop our own wishes, longings and our attention. Spanish really got short circuited. So a lot of us grow up with concentration difficulty.

[A]

So is it fair to say that perfectionism, being hypercritical, eating disorders totally add, adhd, ADD not being able to sit still, people pleasing, fawning people pleasing, monitoring the emotions of everybody, everyone in the room feeling like everybody's happiness is your obligation. Putting everybody else's needs ahead of your own. This all points back in your mind to this original wound of not being mothered in the way that you needed to be.

[C]

This is the most primitive wound our body can sustain. Because here's the thing tell me. We come here and the biggest biological drive in our body is our attachment system.

[A]

It is more for somebody like in like super simple ways, for somebody who doesn't know what that means, like just

[C]

bottom line it, we are more biologically wired to attach to someone than to eat. That's how biological this is. Our attachment system will trump every other system in our survival network. So we're, we're wired to eat, we're wired to drink water, we're wired to attach. It's the strongest drive there is. Which tells me that if, if we don't have a safe attachment person, it's going to have a large impact. So what's going to happen? As we're little ones and we become mobile and we start moving around the attachment figure that we have in front of us, we're going to do whatever we can to get that person to attach to us. It's not going to occur to us that that person, our mother or another caregiver, might be too busy, too depressed, too distracted, not well. That doesn't occur to us. Not at all. That person's perfect. We love that person. We love our mom so much that we will do whatever we can to get her to love us. We'll go through whatever psychobiological gymnastics we can that ends up forming our personality. Whatever we did to earn her approval is who we become.

[A]

That's the clearest definition. Whatever it is you had to do as a child to get your mother's attention. And love becomes who you are. And if you had a childhood where you were not nurtured, where you felt invisible, where you were not protected, you felt unsafe, whether that was because of physical violence or physical threats that were going on, or your mom just wasn't around, or that your mom was emotionally not safe, you never knew what mood she was gonna be in or what tone of voice she was gonna use, or what was gonna set her off, or you just can't go to your mom for any kind of guidance, cause she's critical or she's judgmental or dismissive or.

[C]

Or she was in her own life not safe in her primary relationships. And you could see that she wasn't safe, so you knew she couldn't protect you. Perhaps she never got the chance to develop her own aspirations so she couldn't really facilitate yours. She might even have been jealous of you. There's so many ways that this can get complicated, even in well meaning, loving families. Because the truth is, all of our families are part of a bigger system that's not really supporting the fact that the most important thing we're doing with our children is attaching.

[A]

So can you take us to kind of how you came to this insight that there's this invisible grief that the vast majority of women are struggling with as adults that most of us didn't realize there's a name for this.

[C]

So I started working with women primarily who were recovering from some process addiction or substance addiction. My focus was on love addiction. And so whenever a client would be facing withdrawal, which withdrawal from love addiction is probably one of the more painful processes a woman can go through. We need the relationship, yet we have to detox from it. It just is an impossible bind. Right. So each time a brave woman would get to the point where she's like, okay, I'm gonna stop this, and I'm gonna take some time off from. From romance. I would hear it over and over again. I want my mom. So there was something very tender, very primitive, very powerful happening in the therapy space when this would happen. It looked biological to me. It looked like a craving, like she could barely breathe. It's like she felt she's dying, which is what withdrawal feels like. And who did she want? Her mother. And then as we would unpack that and realize the reasons maybe she didn't have her mother. There were so many. Mother's dead, mother's mentally ill, mother's an addict, mother's not kind, mother's just unavailable emotionally because she doesn't know herself. There would be so many reasons why she knew she couldn't really go to her mom, but she really wanted to. So I learned it's not even about wanting that specific mother. It's needing to be mothered.

[A]

Okay, let's just stop and highlight that right there. The mother wound isn't even necessarily about a person.

[C]

Right.

[A]

It's about the desire to be mothered and the wound that is left inside you when you did not have the experience of being mothered in the way that you needed when you were really, really little.

[C]

Precisely. And in this way, we can talk about this, and we're not blaming any mom. This is about, what does a mother do that you needed because you're human, and it would have given you better brain development. What did you need? And most of us don't know because we don't know what a mother does. We don't have a definition of mothering until now.

[A]

Did you see this kind of wound and this craving to be mothered, to be nurtured, to be understood by, to be loved, to Be supported. All the things that kind of come to mind when you say that word mother. Did you see it in patients that were just going to therapy for things that were not that extreme as well, like somebody just coming to you because maybe they're struggling with self doubt in their job, or maybe they're going through something, you know, with a partner, or maybe they're struggling with perfectionism, so they come talk to you about this thing. What were you seeing in those kinds of patient relationships?

[C]

As soon as I would bring it up and kind of ask with them, do you think there's a possibility you might have missed out on some affection or affirmation as a child? Or do you think, did you feel unsafe as a child? Did you miss some protection? Or who guided you? Who inspired you? I would ask these three basic questions to just about everyone coming into therapy and get an instant, oh, yeah, no, I didn't have that. And then we can explore. And incidentally, that was gender neutral. Men felt this, women felt this. Mother. Hunger impacts everyone because we're all little human babies at one point. If we didn't have that foundation of knowing first of all that we are wanted, that we are accepted and that

[A]

we are safe, those are the two

[C]

most primitive needs, that we're loved and safe. If we didn't have adequate nurturing around us, protection around us, that's going to follow us into adulthood as a low grade anxiety and a feeling of I'm not good enough.

[A]

You know, one of the things that you also talk about in your research is that there is a connection between mother hunger and having a very difficult or disordered relationship with food. What is the connection between eating disorders and mother hunger?

[C]

Yeah, you may notice in the book, I don't really use the word eating disorder because I think that clinical term has created a whole movement about how we treat eating disorders that I found after working. Every woman I work with has some form of food trouble. I'll just leave it at that. It's so normal, I can't call it a disorder now. If it's hospitalization, okay, let's call it a disorder. But the truth is food is our first experience of love, second to our mother's arms. So we're going to feel love from being held as infants and having a full belly. That's what love feels like. Let's say, for example, mom didn't hold us much, or when we were in her arms, we felt her anxiety and we didn't know that, but we were restless, we squirmy. It just Wasn't a good place to be, but it felt really good when we had a full tummy with milk. For a lot of us, that's what we learned to attach to was a full tummy was food. And then we grew up learning to comfort ourselves. Food is so comforting, and it can fill in that hole where human connection isn't. The flip side of that, though, like, if we're. If we're hungry and we're feeding ourselves to kind of fill this void, soothe this broken heart, and go a couple of ways. If I've seen that go into the overeating spectrum of I need to stay numb, I don't want to feel anything, and food fills that, it numbs us out. It's great, feels good, feels like love, but it also is a powerful numbing agent. But then what do we do with folks that are depriving, that don't eat that restrict? And so I was curious about all this.

[A]

Like, what.

[C]

What is the template? What's the difference? Why are some of us starving and some of us are overeating? Some of us are so sophisticated we do both. So all of it is. Is a way we're regulating our nervous system. And if we're overeating, we're down regulating our nervous system. We need to calm down, we're anxious, we're afraid. If we're undereating, that's a stimulant, that's like caffeine. So some of us are undereating to give us fuel to do something. All of it is a nervous system reaction to never feeling safe and grounded. And chances are, our mother didn't feel it either. Chances are her mother didn't either. So what we're seeing is generations of emotional dysregulation, which makes sense, given that our ancestors grew up in times of stress and famine and war, and they didn't relax, they didn't have money, they didn't have some of the comforts we have. And our bodies are still reacting to that.

[A]

You know, you say that mother hunger is very evident in romantic relationships. So can you give us concrete examples of how it shows up? Because I know that there's going to be a lot of partners listening that will understand something about the person they love or they're in a relationship with better than they ever have because of the things you're about to list off? What do you see in relationships that go, oh, there's a person who is struggling with mother hunger.

[C]

Good, love this one. Okay, so one of the ways you might see it in a Relationship is the partner who comes in saying, I feel like I have a child I'm taking care of rather than a partner. I feel like I do everything for my partner. I'm nurturing and I'm there. And I do as much for my partner as I do my children, let's say, and I'm tired. I want a partner. That's one sign. That's one sign. The partner who's getting all that good treatment may not identify that he or she has mother hunger because he or she's being nurtured and cared for. But the other partner who's doing all the work, they know something's out of balance. Got it. So that's one sign. The other sign is, let's say your partner's coming to you routinely saying, I'm just not getting enough. I need more X, Y, and Z. I don't feel safe with you. I'm not feeling that we're having enough intimacy emotionally or physically. I want more. And you're like, okay, I'm in. And you all go and you do some work, and you really try to meet those needs. And everything you're trying is falling short. And you've made efforts, you've changed. You've really done some good soul searching and stretched your boundaries, and you hold your partner more and you create a safe environment for your relationship, which might mean we're not on our phones at certain times of day and we're living with these certain boundaries. It's not enough. Like, everything you do is not enough. That might be a sign that this injury, this. That your partner's going through, the craving they're experiencing is beyond you. It predates you. And it's your loving job to say, I love you, but I can't do anymore. So this might be your opportunity to go do some deeper work.

[A]

Let's say you're in a relationship with somebody and every time you go visit their family, you see your partner become the daughter. They change before your eyes. They are on edge, or they're bending over backwards. It's all about mom. The family dynamic is just overcompensating. To make sure mom's happy. How do you be a better partner in that environment?

[C]

That really works for some couples, and they can do that for years, and it's just not a problem. When it does become a problem, I like to invite the partner who is not in the immediate family after the holiday's over, time to get home and rest, to just kind of gently bring it up when it's not a loaded Time to say, you know, when you were with your mom, I missed you. I didn't get any of you, and I feel like I didn't get to have a holiday with you. And I'm sad about that. Did you feel that too? It's always best to approach from the heart rather than, I can't believe the way you act with your mom or who did you become? I mean, that's just not going to work. But to really approach from a place of curiosity and love of like, what was that like for you? Because you just disappeared. You became another person.

[A]

You know, what's interesting about that approach is that if you have mother hunger, you're so used to either being criticized typically, or judged, or you're the doer, doer, doer, or you're so busy monitoring that the slower drop into the heart and have somebody be nurturing, have somebody like, be safe and notice. Have somebody offer love and guidance like that.

[C]

Yeah, it's pretty rare.

[A]

You just do feel your shoulders go, oh, that's what I didn't feel there. That's why I act the way that I do.

[C]

Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

You're in defensive mode. You're in a freeze. You're in a fear response, which could either be a collapse and you're kind of on your phone the whole time and not being.

[A]

Can we unpack those three things? Let's do so if you. You can recognize mother hunger in yourself, let's just say again, you're listening as a daughter or you're listening as the brother or the partner and to. Or the whom or the dad who is worried about someone in your life and now you're starting to go, I think this is it. Like, this is really explaining a lot. So you're listening from that angle. I want you to imagine you go home to visit, or your parents are coming to visit you, or you're all on some big cruise or something or whatever. You're around your mom, you might even be on the phone with your mom, and it just shifts. What does the freeze mode look like in terms of the behaviors that you would see in the daughter?

[C]

Let's say it's a few days, so it's an extended holiday together. Eating is going to get out of whack. That's going to first go. Relational capacity will be slowing down. Like, there's nothing I can do right here, so I'm just not going to do anything. That's a freeze response. Gotcha. Fight and flight would be, we're out of here or arguments. So there are Plenty of families where they just have out the argument, they just start yelling at each other. So that's one way. There's the dissociative. I'm out of here. I'm going to take a nap. I'm going to eat a lot. I'm going to drink a lot.

[A]

Better eat a gummy.

[C]

There you go. So that's one reaction. And then there's the constant fawning, which

[A]

is whatever I need to do in order to keep you happy and have you not be in a bad mood and keep the kids out of your way and do this. And like, okay, yep, yep, yep, okay. You're describing every family and every daughter, in my opinion. And you're describing the experience of every mother when she was a daughter. And I don't think there's any way to get around this because of the science related to the first thousand days of somebody's life and the fact that you are hardwired to be attached to your mother, not your father, your mother, and what that sets everybody up for and the fact that nobody's talking about it. And you know, I love that we started by saying this is not an indictment on moms. Look, your mom may have been a fricking monster. Your mom may be somebody that you should cut out of your life because it is too abusive or what happened was just. There are very valid reasons that people do that. But I think for the vast majority of people, Kelly, there is a deep desire for connection, there is a deep desire for safety, there is a deep desire for love and support. And there is a major gap and a lot of guilt on how you go about talking about this and recognizing that this is a thing that you are experiencing. Recognizing that it has a biological and a very profound research back set of proof. Recognizing that it is very, very universal that people experience this. And it's also very universal that nobody talks about it. So if you're thinking about someone as Kelly is talking, I want you to send them this conversation, give them the space to, to really consider everything that Kelly is teaching us today and make sure to tell them when you share this with them. I'd love to talk to you. I would love for you to listen to this. I got so much out of it. And when you're done listening, let's talk about it and share the different things that are coming up, because I'd love to have a friend to talk to about this. And do not go anywhere. There's so much more we're going to dig into, including. Okay, so, so what are some steps that I can do now that I know about this? To make my life better, to make my relationship with my daughters or my mom or myself better. And that's what we're going to talk about when we come back. So stay with me. Here's the thing when it comes to investing, who doesn't love having options? Some days you might want a little more control. Hey, it's only human. And other times you may want a teammate in your corner. Well, with Schwab you get all the things all in one place. Like self directed investing when you're thinking, hey, I got this or full service wealth management when you're like, you know what, maybe I need some help handling things. You also have investing, trading, college planning and more. Whether you're mapping out long term goals, building a diversified portfolio, or just getting started and learning the ropes, there's support when you need it and independence when you want it. Whatever the approach, Schwab can help you invest your way. Because if you're gonna do this whole money thing, you might as well choose a firm that lets you do it your way, right? Visit schwab.com to learn more. That's s c h w a b dot com as we all know, care feels really different when it's personal. That's why UnitedHealthcare is all about putting care at the heart of your health insurance. Behind the phones, screens and services are real people who care about helping when it matters most. That human connection is what makes UnitedHealthcare different. They make benefits, costs and care options easier to understand while helping you connect to doctors, clinics and specialists in your community. Learn [e-mail] care support for this podcast

[C]

and the following message come from MITIhealth. Women's midlife health issues have been trivialized and ignored. It's time for a change. It's time for midi. MIDI is covered by major insurance making expert care accessible. Clinicians provide one on one consultations, listen to your unique needs and offer tailored data driven solutions. Mitti works to make you feel seen, heard and prioritized. Visit join MIDI.com to book your virtual visit the Care Women Deserve.

[A]

Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for staying with us. I wanna pick right back up where we left off with therapist Kelly McDaniel. So Kelly, I wanna make sure that somebody who's listening who does have a good relationship with her mom, but they're a perfectionist and they have disordered eating and they're burnt out at work can actually look at this gap and say, that is me. And I still love my mom and she is who she is.

[C]

Like I said, we never stop loving our mom.

[A]

Yes. And I'm not even gonna ask her to change.

[C]

No.

[A]

I'm gonna look at healing this for myself. Because if I do the work for myself, I change.

[C]

That's right.

[A]

And when I change and I see that I need nurturing and safety and I need protection, and I am honest with myself that I just didn't get it for lots of reasons, and I recognize that, and I am going to accept that. But I'm gonna look to myself for the nurturing and for the protection and safety and for the guidance. I think that's the invitation here. Because when you do that now, you're a different parent, you're a different partner, you're a different daughter, you're a different you.

[C]

That's right.

[A]

Well, what I also like about this. Cause I'm sharing this conversation immediately with my two daughters. I am. I am. I want to know, like, what actually, where was there a mismatch?

[C]

Sure.

[A]

But I. What I think is very hopeful is that if you have a word for it, you can talk about it.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

But.

[C]

But it's more than that, Mel.

[A]

Tell me.

[C]

Not only do you have a word for it, you have an open, willing, humble heart. And I think a lot of people listening to this will not have a mother with an open, willing, humble heart. So I think the risk is you hear this, you think, oh, good, I've got mother hunger. I'll go talk to my mom, and we can read the book together and we can have this discussion and it'll all be good. And I would really put up a caution with that. Most mothers, if they're not doing their own work, are not going to hear this with open arms. They're not ready to hear that they did something wrong. Because everything. I'm sure they did, they did their best.

[A]

And.

[C]

And for us to kind of think that, oh, I've got a name now, and I bet my mom will be really excited to go through this with me might be unrealistic. And if we keep in mind that every mother, You, Mel, me, we're first daughters, we had to live with our own mothers. She had to live with her mother. And this is an intergenerational inheritance. When your mother got pregnant with you, in her body were the eggs that are now in your daughters.

[A]

Wait, say that again.

[C]

Exactly. Three generations at least. And it's. It could be more. But I I have the science on. Three generations of eggs are all in the same female body, so that's getting carried down the line, which is why sometimes we'll have a movement that's just like our mother. We are her body.

[A]

That makes so much sense. Before we go deeper, here's what I actually want to know. Why are we more irritated with our moms? Like, it burns me up that Chris can do no damn wrong, but I am always the one that drives everybody crazy. What is this? Is this me, or is this like a normal thing that most moms feel like?

[C]

Yeah, very universal. Because, I mean, the fact is there's no one that can really take the place of a mom.

[A]

Oh, my gosh. I think I just got something. If you're actually biologically wired to attach to mom because you were fashioned inside in her body, created in her body, and then you are also drawn toward her, when you go through that phase naturally of starting to push away from your parents and separate, she's the one you have to actually push away more.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Whoa. I cannot wait to talk to my daughters about that, because I really think it's important that we lean into this sense of guilt and betrayal that we feel when we look with clear eyes at our childhood and the way that we feel about our relationship to our moms. Okay, so this is page 13. No one loves you like your mother is a section mother hunger. Yearning for maternal love can come from, well meaning mothers who could not be there, or from mothers who were there and wanted to love but did not have the proper infrastructure for attachment programmed into their own psyches. Mother hunger does not discriminate based on race or class because infant needs are universal. The kind of care we received as infants and toddlers teaches us whether we are worthy, lovable, and safe. Truly, what I've found is that having an unkind or neglectful mother can be just as damaging as having no mother at all. I want to hover there. How does having an unkind mother, somebody very critical of you, of your weight, of your looks, of the things that you do, somebody not supportive of the things that you're interested in, how is that as damaging as having no mother at all?

[C]

Because that creates shame and rejection. If your mother, let's say, is dead, that hurts, but you don't take it personally. She didn't shame you or rejected you. She died, which is horrible. And that does create mother hunger. But mother hunger that comes from a critical, unkind mother creates shame and rejection to the worst things we can feel in our lives as Humans. And when we feel that from our first love, it is hard to recover from that.

[A]

What does an unkind mother look like?

[C]

A mother who would look at your developing body, let's say, and say something really cruel about your body. You're too fat to wear that. Or a mother who would purposefully pit your siblings against each other in service to her. A mother who routinely wasn't there to pick you up, and when you got home and you were upset, she would yell at you. A mother who, when you came home from school, let's say you're in second grade, you're a little girl, and you've had a rough day at school, the teacher criticized you. Or maybe your best friends all sat in a different table and you weren't invited. And you go to your mom wanting comfort, and she says, well, who would want to be your friend anyway? You're such a mean little girl. I don't know how you have friends. That's what I mean. A mother who literally cannot attune and will be critical. That kind of abuse. Every daughter that I've worked with, that has grown up with that, will have an addiction.

[A]

Why?

[C]

Because an addiction gives us a sense of connection. If you think about the signs of early addiction, here are the symptoms. Well, there's a dopamine hit, so you feel higher, you feel happier. Connection does the same thing. When you connect with someone who likes you. You feel a little bit higher for that moment. You get energy from it. You get energy from an addictious addiction as well. And then you get more clarity, like an addiction early on, before it becomes a problem, you're thinking more clearly. You feel like, oh, I got this now. I understand, and I've got a goal. Same when you're in connection with someone who likes you, who's tuning in after that connection, you don't feel depleted. You'll have lunch and you'll come out energized. You know yourself better, you know where you're gonna go next. That's connection. Every substance in its original form feels like connection. It takes the place of a human connection. It works. It's working on the same doping genetic kind of synapses in our brain that a good friend would, that a good partner would. But then we want more and we go get more. And addiction is meant to cause a craving, and we have the craving anyway if we have mother hung right. So we're going to go get more, and eventually addiction's going to start kicking our butt. And that's usually when they end up in my Office and. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So what about a lot of people that I see that write in talk about tension with their mom? Because there's a lot of loyalty owed. I gave up this for you. I expect you to be this. There's this sort of subtle thing that if you're not exactly like your mom, there's a betrayal. If you have different interests, if you have a different style, if you have a different sexual orientation, that there is this tit for tat loyalty thing underneath it. Is that also in the lane of unkind?

[C]

It can be. Doesn't have to be, but it can be. It can go to unkindness. If a mother has that capacity to punish you for not being like her, for not building her resume, for not being the daughter she needs to make herself look good, she might punish you. Some others won't become punitive, they become martyrs.

[A]

Give me an example.

[C]

Poor me. My daughter doesn't X, Y or Z. And then she needs you as the daughter to make her feel better. Or she goes to complain about you to everyone else in the household or to her own mother or you hear her complain about you with her friends. That's a really tough spot for a daughter to find herself. That if I am not my mother's twin, then she's unhappy or if I

[A]

don't do as she pleases. Exactly. She is not happy.

[C]

Right. And I think that for daughters who had mothers that needed a best friend, and rather than go get her own best friend, she used you. You became her best friend. She needed you to hold her secrets. She needed you to fluff up her well being, make her feel good. A lot of times women with mothers like that develop a certain avoidant approach to life because they've been used. So they don't necessarily do some of the things that a more anxiously attached person would do. Who's hungry for more of Mom? They've had enough. They've maybe had a little much. They're a little suffocated. They feel a little icky sometimes around their mother and they're ashamed. They love her, but no, it's my turn now to have a life. And I see with these daughters, mother hunger really creeps up on them. Like, you mean I really needed mothering. I thought I had too much, but too much is almost like a blindfold because it looks like you're being nurtured

[A]

and it looks like your best friends.

[C]

Your best friend. I mean, look, our Hollywood loves this. We got the Gilmore Girls and we have Jenny and Georgia. Yeah. So we have kind of Hollywood romanticizing this best friend type thing, minimizing that what's happening is the daughter, in having to kind of grow up to either be her own mother or be her mother's mother or be her mother's best friend, doesn't get to be a little girl. And so those needs that are developmentally appropriate at 3 and at 5 and at 7 and at 9 aren't getting met. A mom is not our friend. A mother is our mother. She's our guide, our inspiration, she's our nurturer, and she's our safety net. If we expected our friends to do that, I don't think we'd have any friends. We might pick a friend who's nurturing, a friend over here who's inspiring, and a friend over here that we feel really safe with, but that all in one person. No. A mother's job is big enough. She doesn't. She's not also our friend if she's trying to be our friend. Sometimes she's taking a shortcut. She doesn't know really what else to do. So. And she maybe had a mother that was so cold that the flip side of that is, I'm just going to be my daughter's everything. I get it. But it's not the same as mothering. I think with our daughters, we don't always get back what we're putting in. We go get that from our girlfriends, our therapists, our partners. We don't look to our daughters to necessarily put it back in.

[A]

That is a beautiful distinction. I've never heard anybody explain that, that there's a huge difference between your role as a mother and the nurturing and safety and protection you provide. You're the only person that's their mom.

[C]

That's it.

[A]

And I shouldn't have the expectation that they have to give me back everything I'm giving to them.

[C]

Exactly.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

Maybe the most important piece of this is how critical our friendships are. And I think as women, too often we put our girlfriends on the back burner. While we raise our kids, while we're wifing, while we're daughtering, we're gonna need our friends more than anything. And we haven't necessarily been given the skill set to prioritize our friends. Part of that is inherited misogyny and our own internalized feelings about women. It takes us a while to grow up and learn how valuable these relationships are. And if we grow up with mother hunger, we don't always trust women right away. We have to learn that we have to start to trust ourselves. So that we can trust other women and that's part of the work. But yeah, wow.

[A]

You know, thank you for saying that. I feel like this is a good moment to hit pause. I want to give you a chance to just let that sink in. There's so many more things I want to ask you, Kelly, but I also want to give our amazing sponsors a chance to share a few words. So while you're listening, I encourage you to share this. I'm going to be sharing this with my daughters. I'm sharing this with my sister in law. I'm sharing this with a couple close friends of mine. And don't go anywhere because we're just starting to scratch at the surface and consider this topic and Kelly has so much more to unpack. I have so many more questions I want to dig into and we're going to be waiting for you after this short break. So stay with me. When it comes to investing or really anything, don't you think it's important to choose a company that you can trust? One where you have the freedom to do things your way with confidence? Because some days you might want a little more control and flexibility and other times you may need a specialist in your corner to help out? Well, with Schwab you get all that and more all in one place. Schwab has everything from self directed investing when you're thinking, hey, I got this all the way to full service wealth management when you're like, you know what, I'm going to need to get some help. That includes planning for big goals too, like college, buying a house, retirement planning and more. Because if you're going to do this whole money thing, you might as well choose a firm that lets you do it your way, right? Visit schwab.com to learn more. That's schwab.com when it comes to your health and wellness trust matters. Whether you're working toward fitness goals, building a wellness routine, or just stocking up on everyday essentials for your family, where you shop really matters. And that's why I want to tell you about our new sponsor, iHerb. It's your one stop shop for vitamins, supplements, sports nutrition, personal care and even grocery, baby and pet products. For nearly 30 years, Iherb has delivered wellness products sourced directly from trusted brands to more than 15 million customers around the world. And here's what sets them apart. There are no third party sellers on Iherb's website or app, so you can shop confidently knowing that for supplements and sports nutrition products, brands provide certificates of analysis and select products are independently verified through the I Tested Lab program, too. And if something doesn't meet your expectations, iHerb makes it right with easy returns and simple refunds. Visit iherb.commel and use code MELTWENTY for 20% off your order. That's iherb.commel with code MEL20. Work can be a little weird sometimes. You know, you're constantly in meetings all day. That probably could have just been an email. And especially when you've gotten to that point in your job where you're like, huh, I feel like I want more, but I'm not sure what more is. That's why LinkedIn exists. It is there so you can get ideas and insights from experts in your field, make professional connections, grow your network, and access tools designed to help you discover what's new next. Because LinkedIn is the network that works for you. Visit LinkedIn.com Melrobbins to learn more. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for staying with us. I want to pick right back up where we left off with therapist Kelly McDaniel. So, Kelly, what about somebody who is listening going, well, I have a great relationship with my mom and my childhood was great. Can you still have mother hunger even if you have a great relationship with your mom or you don't remember anything

[C]

or, well, okay, so there's a bigger context. I would want to ask someone who's saying, because I hear this a lot.

[A]

What do you hear? Oh, it was great. It was great.

[C]

I had a great childhood, great relationship, a month. And yet they're in my office because of addiction. And relationships have all fallen apart. Work, nothing's working. But my life was great growing up. To me, that's a disconnect. And I might just gently suggest that would, I would ask somebody, are you willing to explore that? Because some are not. And I'm not going to push that. Mother hunger is. And it doesn't impact everyone, like I said. But if you do say my childhood was idyllic and yet nothing is working in your adulthood, that's incongruent. Here's what happens when the little brain gets stressed, when your infant brain gets stressed, when your toddler brain gets stressed. The body is not developed enough to handle cortisol and norepinephrine. Those come in much handier when we're older. What they do is they damage the memory center of the brain. So if a, if an adult's telling me, oh, I don't have any Memory. But I think it was all good. I'm thinking this child was completely stressed out. This adult now has amazing resources for coping that are starting to not work. But the memories literally are not encoded into the memory center because there was too much toxic anxiety going on in childhood. It doesn't mean the body doesn't have the story. The body will have it. But the body's waiting for the right guide, the right care, the right environment to open up and tell the story. So if someone hasn't had that, the story's not gonna come out. The body knows it's not time, it's not safe. Our body's protecting us. That's its only design, is to keep us alive. That's our body's design. Attach, stay alive. So we're not gonna have memory until we're safe enough. And that's the good news. Our body's not gonna flood us with information that we're not supported enough to have.

[A]

How common is it to have no memory? Yes, very.

[C]

Extremely common.

[A]

And it sounds like that's a very big signal to you as a therapist that somebody is struggling with mother hunger and yearning for mothering and safety.

[C]

Somebody was not safe as a child is what that's gonna tell me.

[A]

And you're not necessarily saying safe physically, you're saying safe emotionally.

[C]

Yeah, the body doesn't really differentiate danger. A threat is a threat, and the body is going to send in the protective mechanisms regardless.

[A]

Now, I got a question, because you sharing that I've heard almost every one of my friends say I don't have a lot of memories from childhood. What immediately happens when you start to consider your experience as a child is that you feel like you're betraying your parents. You feel guilty. I would love to just talk about the grief.

[C]

Good. I was going there because we touched on blame for just a moment.

[A]

All right, well, let's touch on blame and grief.

[C]

You kind of beautifully said. This isn't about blame. No, and I really wanna pause that because blame is a stage of grief. It's a necessary stage. We have to kind of get angry for a little while and blame someone for a little while. We've been carrying it as if something's wrong with us our whole life. So when we first realize, oh, wait, maybe it's not just me, blame will be part of it. We just don't want to get stuck there. But I give a client a lot of room to have some time to blame, and then we move on.

[A]

So let's talk about the grief. When you really can see yourself in this.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Or you see your daughters in it, or you see your mother in it. You see your sister or your partner in it. Suddenly, this explains all of the emotional monitoring. It explains the people pleasing. It explains the critical nature of how somebody feels about themselves because they mood outbursts.

[C]

I mean, it explains.

[A]

Yes, oh, my God, that was me. I've worked so hard on this. Just. I used to be like a walking volcano.

[C]

Oh, it's so hard.

[A]

Oh, yeah. But once you see this and you start, you. You do experience grief. You experience grief for what you didn't receive.

[C]

That's exactly right. So we didn't know, so we couldn't grieve it. That's what's hard. Like, if you get a cancer diagnosis, you know, it's time to grieve and you go find a support group. You lose a parent or a child, we culturally sanction that grief. So you can tell your friends, and they're going to bring you food, and they're going to bring you coffee, and they're going to hold you, and you can go to support group. What do you do with mother hunger? We haven't talked about it. There's no place to take the grief. So first of all, the body freezes. It. It's literally frozen in the body. This is why we have lots of autoimmune problems as women. Because that grief, if it's not acknowledged, just waits. It freezes. It's in your cells, in your bones, it's in your joints. But as soon as someone names it and you're like, oh, well, the first reaction is going to be this overwhelming sense of sadness because it's going to start to thaw. That grief is going to thaw. And grief has its own timing, its own rhythm. There are no perfect stages. But parts of grief can look like rage and anger, parts can look like blame, parts will look like sadness. Parts will be numbing out. Um, because we can't feel it all day, we're gonna have to pull away from it. This is where the apology ache comes in.

[A]

What is the apology ache?

[C]

So part of the pathological hope, the hoping someone will change. I think also what I found with that my clients taught me is there's this craving for an apology that mom will one day kind of say, I'm so sorry, and not just say, I'm sorry, forgive me, and then keep doing

[A]

the same thing, or I'm sorry you

[C]

feel that way, or, well, that's gaslighting. Yeah, exactly. But apology is I'm sorry I did that, and I'm actually going to do something different now. That's pretty rare that we get that kind of apology. Any other kind of apology is not really an apology. So most of us as grown up women are walking around wanting this apology. I call it an ache because it's almost as biological as the hunger. Please just recognize what happened and then I'll be okay. All of us, I think when we're waiting for an apology, for a recognition of this is why you're hurting, before we know where that comes from, we want our partners to apologize. We want our best friends to apologize. We want our kids to. We need someone to apologize for the fact that our feelings are hurt.

[A]

You know, if the apology's never coming, is it possible to move on? Because I think we seek the apology because we ourselves don't actually honor the truth of what our own experience is.

[C]

Exactly.

[A]

And so you're looking for the validation from somebody to say, well, it's okay, I still love you. And yes, that did happen. I mean, for me, I've said that so many times to Mike. It is liberating to say to my daughters in particular, I was dysregulated. I was under so much financial stress. I had postpartum when you were a baby and couldn't attach to you. If I could change it all, I would.

[C]

Right?

[A]

I am responsible for that. Like, tell me how to change. Like, it is liberating to say that. At least it has been for me

[C]

and probably for them as well. What a gift.

[A]

But I think you'll have to ask them. I think it is, but I don't want to presume, you know, I think

[C]

it's been still in process, but yes,

[A]

it's always going to be in process. But is it really possible? You said you've got to recognize that this is a thing. You've got to honor the fact that this is your experience and you're not being disrespectful by saying it. You're telling the truth to yourself.

[C]

I named apology ache because it's. It is a name that I'm giving one of the stages of grief. So it's actually a form of grief, just like blame is just like rage is. Apology ache is a form of pining. When we lose something we love, we pine for it. That's normal. An apology ache is a form of pining. It's going to be a. It's going to be a phase we go through. We got to go through it. And I think if we know that there may not be an apology coming. We can work with that grief and make amends to ourselves. And the way we do that, yes, we remother.

[A]

We.

[C]

We have to nurture, protect, and guide ourselves. One of the basic ways we do that is when we realize. Here's what I would like an apology for. I want an apology for I'm going to do something fairly benign. That she was never on time to pick me up from school. And I always felt like an orphan waiting on my mother to come pick me up from school. Well, then here's one way you make amends to yourself. Please don't abandon yourself by being late to things that you value. Show up on time because you're worth it. You're important. So whatever you're wanting that apology for sometimes informs what it is you need to give yourself.

[A]

Oh, that's beautiful. That's really beautiful. How do you navigate a relationship where you recognize that this is an issue? You even can hold space for understanding that it's not even intentional? Because I do think that there's a huge mistake that society makes in thinking that somebody that has a challenging personality is doing it intentionally. I've come to believe more that, no, it's just all reactive. They're just in their own reactive traumatic cycle. They've got their own longing for mothering they never got. And they're just reacting, reacting, reacting. There's no thinking at all. It's all emotion. You're just at the, like, mercy, mercy of it. So if you're in a situation where you've already said you might not want to have this conversation with your mom, because unless they're doing the work, it's a very confronting thing to say to somebody.

[C]

It is.

[A]

And I felt that, like, oh, my God, I've caused this. I'm the world's worst, like, blahbity, blahbity, blahbity. The defensiveness is real.

[C]

It is.

[A]

When you look at it, the sense of guilt and betrayal as a daughter is real. And I think it's easier for most daughters to do the work to hold space to understand what their mom might have been dealing with. But it's harder to also hold space for yourself and the truth of what you didn't receive.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And what you needed then and what you probably still need now.

[C]

Exactly. Those needs don't go away. They just grow in intensity.

[A]

So say that again. What do you mean those needs don't go away? And those needs being. You need nurturing, you need to feel safe and be protected, and you're looking for guidance.

[C]

That's Right.

[A]

And if you didn't get one of those things or all of those things, and you don't even remember it because this happens in the first couple years of your life when this attachment is established or not that if you didn't get those things. What do you mean? They keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

[C]

Unmet needs grow. That's just biology. They just grow. They don't go away. Yeah.

[A]

It's like you don't feed yourself. You get hungry.

[C]

What's going to happen, Right? You don't drink water. What's going to happen? You don't just suddenly learn how to cope without water. It's the same with emotional attachment needs. The same with protective needs. It is a horrifying epiphany at times because the reality is, no matter how, depending on how long you've lived with this injury, the craving doesn't go away overnight. It will require that now you become your own mother.

[A]

But I don't want to be my own mother.

[C]

Okay, See, this voice is so good. This is great, Mel. So what I would suggest, because I've had this, like, where I'm trying to mother myself, right? And I'm thinking, I don't have time to make a good meal, or I'm just irritated with my. Whatever. That's how my mother felt. It's in my body. So we have to come up against that voice that says, I don't want to do this. And really think, whose voice is that? Because chances are, when we were really tiny, our mother had other things she would rather be doing because she's human and the world's an exciting place. And being a mom sometimes isn't all that exciting. So we're gonna hear that voice as we try to mother ourselves and we come up with resistance. That's a story for probably what it was like when we were little.

[A]

You know, one other thing that you write here? Daughters of compromised mothers cling to hope. Hope that the mother they have will become the mother they need. Enduring hope creates a pathological fantasy that keeps women trapped in cycles of disappointment and grief. Choices feel more like compulsions. Decision making is based on external pressures rather than internal values. Talk to me about that hope that things are going to change and that cycle that you get into of bending over backwards, hoping that it will.

[C]

I think most of us can relate to pathological hope around something, whether it's wishing or hoping for our mother. It may be wishing or hoping that a lover returns or that a boss would finally be kind, or that we can finally Understand our own child. I think hope is wired into us. Where it becomes pathological is when the hope we get all this evidence that it's not happening. It's just not happening. We may have done decades of research to try to have someone's approval or care or love. It's not happening. It becomes pathological when we keep on trying, expecting that if we just try it this way or that way, that it'll work this time. That's where I really like to help people let themselves off the hook, relax, quit trying, see what happens. Where else could we put your energy? It sounds like you could use the care that you're trying to put out in the world.

[A]

So the assignment here is share this with your best girlfriends and your partners and your sisters.

[C]

Not about this. No, no. Let me be clear. Siblings in a family are all going to have a different mother, even if it's the same mother. So you cannot always trust going to your sibling because you've had an aha and you realize you have mother hunger to talk about it. Because they may still be thinking mom's great or they've got a whole nother perspective on their life and they don't want to hear it either.

[A]

Or they don't have a mother wound because they were mom was in a different place.

[C]

Could be very, very much the case.

[A]

Yes. You might have been number two in line and your sister's number seven. And by then there was money and things were stable and mom had more. Like, who knows, who knows? Parents are different parents for every single child. It's absolutely true.

[C]

So you may not be able to go to your siblings to talk about this. You may not even be able to go to your girlfriends to talk about this. If they don't understand it, they could add more shame. Part of realizing you have it is to be very protective of yourself. Now, this is your first job as the mother of yourself. Protect yourself. Be careful who you talk to.

[A]

How do you know who to talk to?

[C]

Well, first, one of the safest places is to try a coach or a therapist and give them the book. If they don't already have it, give it to them. Say, I need a place to talk about this. And if they're unwilling to do it, that's not who you want to talk to. But any therapist worth their salt or coach is going to say, okay, I'm here for that. That's a safe place. If you have a friend that's reading the book with you or start a book group, start a book group with your friends. So that everybody reads it, everybody underlines what they want to talk about and you bring it in that's free. You could even make a meal while you're doing it. So you might have to create your own safety net to protect yourself.

[A]

So as you're kind of waking up and recognizing how this need for nurturing and safety and guidance was missing and that you long for it and it's impacting you as an adult, you recognize the signs. You're lonely, you're burnt out, you, everybody's needs come before yours. You are a people pleaser, you're a perfectionist, you're super critical of yourself. Or you have destructive habits like you write about in the book how addiction can become a replacement for your mom. Once you have the self awareness and you can recognize that this hunger for mothering, for nurturing, for protection, for guidance is there, where do you begin? Like, do you need to forgive your mom?

[C]

A couple things about forgiveness. When we forgive someone, mother or anyone for causing us harm, sometimes we do that to stay in the relationship. Sometimes we do that and we still decide to leave the relationship. We forgive so that we are not bitter. We don't get stuck in anger, we. We don't get stuck in blame because those toxic feelings will make us sick. So we forgive for our own wellbeing and our own health. If that forgiveness somehow brings us to a place that we can be in the relationship, great. But forgiving is not forgetting. We don't want to forget what this person's capable of doing. We can forgive it, but if we also forget it, then we're being pathologically kind of going right back into the storm, expecting that we're going to have the sun come out.

[A]

That goes right along with my favorite definition of forgiveness that I heard Oprah say, which was true. Forgiveness is when you stop wishing things were different.

[C]

There you go.

[A]

And that helps you also, in this case, not forget.

[C]

That's right.

[A]

You just stop that sort of toxic, pathological hope.

[C]

Pathological hope, exactly.

[A]

You forgive the moment you say, yes, I'm going to stop wishing things were different and accept them as they are. One of the things that I think is really exciting about the conversation, frankly, is that once you see it and you can name it now, you can do something about it.

[C]

Exactly.

[A]

And the more that you really allow yourself the space to process your grief and your sadness, the more that you accept what didn't happen and what did happen, the more you look at your own mother through compassionate and understanding eyes, but you still protect yourself. The more you Realize an apology's not coming if she's not doing the work and doesn't want to. And you stop wishing things would be different and you accept them as they are. I think the more empowered you are to say, I don't have to repeat this, and that's what's exciting, is that you get to decide now that this thing isn't invisible. Maybe this insight gives you the access to stop criticizing yourself. Maybe this insight gives you the access to stop overextending yourself, making everybody else's happiness more important than your own. Maybe this insight gives you the insight to at least see from a distance when the guilt is coming, to at least see from a distance when that mood shifts. And to recognize that is not your responsibility to manage. It's your responsibility to see it and protect yourself from it.

[C]

Exactly what Mother hunger healing is actually about. That you're saying is an invitation to be, not do. You've been doing plenty. But to be that. The more you can replace loss nurturing, the more you can replace loss protection, your whole nervous system starts to settle down. You become more present. And what is it our kids want from us more than anything? Our full presence. So as we become as daughters more present to ourselves, we are naturally becoming the mother they need and want, even if we never have the children. Doing this work makes us a better mother to ourselves and to our children. That's right.

[A]

What does this look like? When you have somebody who has a huge epiphany and they really start being kinder to themselves and nurturing themselves and what is available, what do you see transforming people's lives?

[C]

There is going to be a lot more ease and comfort around how you feed yourself. It's as basic as recognizing hunger cues. Some women have lost their hunger cues. They will come back. You'll know when you're hungry. You'll know when you're full. So I see eating leveling out. I noticed that women, as they start to do better, have a larger capacity to love everyone who's in their life currently and attract relationships that are more nourishing, that aren't just a cocktail party friendship or aren't just a work kind of superficial relationship, but relationships that you can call somebody at 2 in the morning and say, I just need to talk. Those start to happen. I've seen some people decide they don't want to be in the marriage they're in because it's too triggering every single day. It's okay if you're triggered periodically. We're going to be. That's the beauty of why we connect is we're going to grow. But every day, I've seen people wake up and say, no, I can't do this anymore. And then on the flip side, some have said this marriage that I thought that was so broken really isn't. I just need to quit expecting this partner of mine to be my mother. So relationships get better. Food gets easier. Addiction and cravings get a little smaller. That's not to say addiction doesn't need its own treatment, though. I'm not saying that if you treat mother hunger, your addictions are gonna go away. They may need some specific care, but all of the frenetic kind of adrenaline that fuels our life starts to get less. We are not flooded with those hormones all the time. We get more peace. We sleep better.

[A]

Yeah, it sounds pretty good.

[C]

It's. It's. It is.

[A]

It is. If the person listening does just one thing, after everything that you've taught us today, what is the most important thing that you should do after this conversation?

[C]

The most important thing to do after this conversation? I have a feeling that if you've been listening to this and you have mother hunger, you could feel pretty dysregulated after this conversation. You might feel emotionally strung out or

[A]

like you need a drink. I'm just speaking for myself right now.

[C]

Yep. Which is what I was basically saying. You will want to dissociate. And you may do that with alcohol. You might do that with Instagram. You might do that with hdd. Go bake some bread. However you go offline, you may need to do that right now. And let's not pathologize it. Let's just say you might need to go offline for a little while. You just paid attention to some really hard stuff, tender stuff, primitive stuff. And you, sweet little thing, go take a break.

[A]

Kelly McDaniel, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the profound and important work that you're doing. Thank you for giving us a name for the ache that so many women feel. Thank you for explaining to our partners and our fathers and our kids why we may be the way that we are. And thank you for doing this through a lens of compassion for our grandmothers and our mothers and for us. Because none of us want to be doing this.

[C]

No.

[A]

We're caught in a cycle of doing it to ourselves and each other.

[C]

And when a system doing it to

[A]

us and a system doing it to women.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And there is something you can do about it. And the first step, you've already done, you've listened to this yeah. And I would invite you to share it. I would invite you. There are people in your life that need to hear this. There are people in your life that you feel safe with, that you can talk about this with. I think it is important that we destigmatize this conversation, and we give ourselves permission to tell the truth about our experience, and then we take responsibility for how we respond to the truth that we see. And that's how you change your life. And I also wanted to say, as your friend, that I love you and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to change your life. And I know firsthand that healing this inside yourself is the single most powerful way as a daughter that you can do that. And it has unbelievably powerful ripple effects through absolutely every aspect of how you live. So thank you for being here, and I can't wait to see you and talk to you again. I'll be waiting for you in the very next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play. I'll see you there.

[C]

All right.

[A]

Is Tracy in here? Brian, let's go. All right. What?

[C]

This is so good. I'm gonna have to get serious.

[A]

No, you don't. No, you don't. I think that's part of the problem, is the topic is so heavy.

[C]

That topic is heavy. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, it is. But that's. We doesn't. We don't have to. No.

[C]

I appreciate your levity.

[A]

Oh, no, I. Here we go. She is a licensed professional counselor and a national certified counselor. She's a licensed professional counselor. And there you go. Perfect. And then get rid of that. Okay, great. That's gotta be really loud.

[C]

The siren. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Welcome back. It's your buddy, Mel Robbins. Welcome back. It's your friend, Mel Robbins. And today you are learning. Today you and I are learning about the invisible childhood wound that so many of us carry that we didn't even realize was there. And we're learning about, which I say. Amazing. I think that nails it.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Perfect.

[C]

Cool.

[A]

Great. Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it?

[C]

Good.

[A]

I'll see you in the next episode.

[C]

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[A]

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