Dear Wisegal,
My mother treats me like an adolescent, even though I am a middle-aged man. She is a bigoted, opinionated, hard-core Republican and Catholic, and she equates success in life with having a lot of money and material possessions. She showers me with her misguided “wisdoms and insights”, yet she’s never ever wanted to hear about my opinions, my insights, or my hopes and dreams. She does not support me in anything I do that may be based on values different than her own. She is my mother, and I love her, but I don’t like or respect her. And I often feel frustrated and upset after any contact with her. Can I ever get through to her? Should I even try?
Estranged Son
Dear ES,
The psychological tasks that we all face in the second half of life are concerned with the recovering or reestablishing of a personal authority and personal spirituality. In other words, we are to summon the courage to be who we are, to live by our own values, to be in charge of our own whys and wherefores. And we are also to establish a more personally resonant and meaningful spirituality, a connection to ourselves and others, as well as to a deeper purpose or higher power.

You sound like you have begun to work on these tasks, and can differentiate between the values your family and upbringing have taught you and what you personally embrace now. The test for adulthood and more importantly, the psychological task of individuation is, of course, our ability to stand alone and apart from our parents (their histories, values, life choices and actions). Certainly, we may end up embracing some of those values and continuing the family’s legacy, but by choice rather than by inheritance or obligation.

As Carl Jung once observed, we cannot grow up until we can view our parents as other adults who did or did not take on the largeness of their own journeys. This implies that we must also see ourselves as adults, viable and capable of functioning as autonomous entities, free (or mostly free) to live our lives in whatever expression we can achieve.

You say that your mother treats you like an adolescent; yet you did not say how you respond to this. Do you react in ways typical of adolescents, say either in rebellion or sulky withdrawal? Do you suffer silently and passively with unspoken resentment, anger, or disappointment? Or do you speak to her about your life, regardless of her judgment, asking for respect, and challenging her respectfully with your assertive stance.

You are not likely going to change your mother’s point of view or her prejudices, but in speaking your truth in front of her, you may change yourself by transcending the frustration and anger you feel, and thus become free of them in your life. You may accept and forgive her limitations, yet feel uncompromised in your relationship with her when you are able to stand up for yourself and your life choices in front of her. In doing so, you also give her an opportunity to change herself.

Here’s what I mean. It isn’t necessary to confront our parents with their limitations, because after all, if they have failed to grow beyond them, then that’s the reality you must face. However, I believe that as adult children we can and must stand up for our adulthood, and that is, to insist that we are not treated as children. There are things we must say, lines we must draw that define who we are. Our parents may not hear, acknowledge or respect those words or boundaries, but it is important for us to speak and set them as they are more a declaration of what we are about and how we want to be treated. “My values are clearly different from yours, and I do not appreciate you criticizing mine.” “I love you, but I can’t respect your____ attitudes towards____.” “I disagree with you on that matter.”

And then, there is the feedback that we must give our parents when they treat us as children or harshly criticize our life choices, saying for instance, “ I wish I could tell you about the important things that happen in my life, but every time I do, you put down my choices in some way. This makes me feel frustrated and angry at you. I want and deserve your respect.”

A friend of mine once said that what is unspoken can shape us, while “with smoldering madness”, we can shape what we name. This may not be true for you if you’ve been doing the work of discovering who you are, defining yourself and living by your own values. But there are some who are unable to achieve these tasks of individuation, and live their lives in misery, being controlled by the strong forces of their family histories, and by what they themselves haven’t or couldn’t say or choose. The silence and passivity hold them back in life, compromising their integrity and self-respect.

With regards to your mother’s prejudices and limited viewpoints, well-known Jungian analyst and author, James Hollis suggests that fundamentalist pieties reflect an inability to hold the tension of opposites. In other words,"racism, dogma and fundamentalism essentially are mechanisms designed to contain anxiety – by promoting fear and powerlessness, they sell the delusion that purchasers can avoid the three As (anxiety, ambivalence, ambiguity) of life (and thus, avoid growing up, and staying infantile) by obedience to their rigid and unquestioned dictums.

Your mother comes from a tradition of fundamentalist pieties, and as such is severely limited by the paradigms she has unquestioningly embraced and absorbed. You sound like you have rejected many of these values, and may be suffering as a result of that. The Jungians believe in the transformative suffering of depth, as opposed to the Catholic insurance policy of the depth of suffering!

Self-referential systems such as these fundamentalist traditions cannot grow or evolve – they remain the same, forever justifying rather than changing themselves. And they are legacies that are passed on through generations. It is only through thinking for ourselves and separating from them that we can achieve our own personal authority and spirituality.

The effects of our family history and upbringing are powerful, and become vectors that can determine the trajectories of our lives and the course or our relationships with others as adults. What we do not face can hold us back, whereas what we challenge frees us to be more our true selves.

It is up to you to decide if you want to try and get through to her, but I believe it’s more about standing up for yourself than it is about changing her. It’s about sending a message that clearly says “You cannot treat me as an inferior. I want to be treated as an equal.” You can certainly live with your frustration and upset, and find some means to discharge them in your life; yet, if they at some point become intolerable, then you must change yourself by how you relate to your mother. Otherwise, they will change you, and not in ways that are favorable to your own well-being.

Ultimately, the choices are yours to make, as the consequences are yours to endure or enjoy.