Mommy Issues: What You Didn’t Get, and What You Can Still Give Yourself

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If one call with your mother can still knock you sideways, Figlet is an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, or right now, to help you find your ground before you call her back.

You’re a grown adult and one text from your mother can still take the legs out from under your day. Or you notice you’re trying to get her to be pleased with you, again, at thirty-five, at fifty. Maybe someone said you had mommy issues, half joking, and it stung. You love her. You’re angry with her. You feel guilty for being angry. And you can’t work out why something so old still has its hands on you.

“Mommy issues” is a jokey phrase for something that isn’t funny. It’s the ways the first bond of your life didn’t quite land, still running in you now. It isn’t a diagnosis, of you or of her. And it doesn’t mean your mother was a bad person. Mine wasn’t.

My mother carried what I call the Bull. The Bull never stops. She worked all day and did the work of two parents, and to this day I never have to worry about her disappearing into depression. I have to worry about her doing too much. When I was a boy, My Fair Lady would come on the telly on a Saturday afternoon, and all I ever wanted was for my mum to sit down with me. And rest.

When I was five, a teacher hit me in the face for daydreaming in class. I told my mother, and she laughed. I don’t think it was a cruel laugh. It was the nervous laugh of a person who has no idea what to do with what they’ve just heard. I went back to that classroom the next day. And somewhere in me a conclusion formed that took me decades to see.

What’s really going on

If something tightened just then and wanted to defend her, notice that. That’s loyalty, older than you can remember.

We’re born expecting to be met. Held, kept safe, made to feel we matter. When that doesn’t fully happen, the unmet-ness is the original wound, and it has two faces. Abandonment, where the message lands as “you’re too much, I can’t stay.” And rejection, where it lands as “you’re not enough, I don’t want what you are.” I think of them as two coins you carry in your pocket for life: too much, and not enough.

Then a child does something brilliant and costly. A child can’t survive believing the person keeping them alive is unreliable. So the child makes a trade: it must be me. Better to be a flawed child in a safe world than a fine child in a world with no ground under it. My mother provided for me, so it must have been something wrong with me that I didn’t get the hugs. That’s shame, the psyche choosing survival over the truth.

Here’s why it still runs your life. That structure doesn’t stay with your mother. The same questions, “are you there for me” and “am I enough for you,” get asked of everything you bond to afterwards. Your partner, your boss, your friends. So the old wound shows up as trying too hard to be liked, or never letting anyone close enough to let you down.

A parent is meant to give a child three things. When the child asks “are you there for me,” the answer is yes. When the child asks, out loud or silently, “am I enough for you,” the answer is yes. I learned the third one when our daughter started walking and kept grabbing at our dog Zephyr’s ears. I’m still here for you, and you’re still enough for me, and I can’t let you pull on Zephyr’s ears. The boundary happens inside the attachment bond. And the rules are the same tomorrow as they are today.

Most of what people call mommy issues is one of those three missing, or arriving unpredictably. The British paediatrician Donald Winnicott said a child doesn’t need a perfect mother. A child needs a good enough one. Good enough mothers still get it wrong. What makes them good enough is the repair: coming back and saying, of course I wasn’t there for you, and I care about you. You make sense. You learned exactly what your first world taught you.

What “mommy issues” actually means

The phrase gets thrown around as a joke, usually about a man who wants his girlfriend to mother him, or a woman who can’t stop trying to please older women. Its roots are older and more serious. The idea of a “mother complex” comes from Jungian psychology, and Freud built a whole theory around the son and the mother. You don’t need either theory to understand what’s happening to you.

No therapist will diagnose you with mommy issues. What a clinician looks at instead is your attachment pattern, any trauma, and how your nervous system handles closeness and distance. I call the thing underneath it the mother wound: the gap between what you needed from her and what actually arrived.

Here’s how I’d say it plainly. Your first relationship wasn’t with a partner. It was with your primary caregiver, very often your mother. In that relationship your nervous system was learning the answers to two questions that would shape the rest of your life: are you there for me, and am I enough for you? The answers you got became the blueprint for every close relationship you’d ever have.

Where mommy issues come from

It’s rarely one dramatic event. It’s usually a climate, the same answer given a thousand times before you could speak. These are the patterns I see most often. Most people recognise more than one.

• The mother who wasn’t there. Absent through work, illness, depression, addiction or her own grief. Sometimes in the house but not in the room. You learned that reaching out didn’t work, so you stopped reaching.
• The cold or distracted mother. She made sure you were fed and dressed, but when you came to her with a feeling, the answer was some version of “you’re fine.” You learned that your emotional needs were a burden and that the safest thing was to be low-maintenance.
• The smothering or enmeshed mother. Her moods became your moods. Your separateness felt like betrayal. Over-involvement can look like devotion from the outside; if that was your mother, I wrote about what a helicopter mom does to a child’s sense of self.
• The critical mother. Love arrived when you got it right and went cold when you didn’t. Her voice became the one inside your head.
• The self-absorbed or narcissistic mother. Her needs, image and feelings filled every room. You were her mirror, her audience or her trophy, and your own feelings were too much.
• The mother who leaned on you. This is the parentified child: the one who became her confidant, her comfort, the one who kept her okay. It gets praised as maturity. It costs a childhood.

That last one is mine. When I was a boy, I had a job in my family that nobody gave me out loud. My mother had been abandoned, and I believed I could heal her. If I were funny enough, entertaining enough, special enough, I could stop her from feeling alone. That’s the magical thinking of a wounded child. I hid inside humour so nobody would see how frightened I was. Getting the laugh. Being the one who made it all okay.

None of this requires a villain. Most of the mothers behind these patterns were doing their best with the wiring their own mothers handed them. That doesn’t make the wound less real. It just tells you it was handed down, not made in you.

When the closeness was too much

People tend to picture mommy issues as not getting enough. Some of the deepest ones come from getting too much of the wrong thing. My own family of origin had a high degree of enmeshment, a real emotional fusion between my mother, my sister and me. If my mother was sad, I didn’t experience her sadness as separate from me. I experienced it as evidence that I had failed. The family therapist Murray Bowen had a name for this kind of system, where there’s no “I” inside the “we.” If that sounds like home, my piece on the signs of enmeshment and why it feels like love goes further.

Signs of mommy issues in adults

Gender isn’t a rule here. In the research summaries you’ll find online, men are more often described as pulling away and women as fearing abandonment, but I see both in both. Read these as patterns your protector parts may have built, not as a verdict on you.

Signs of mommy issues in men

• Being the good boy everywhere: the reliable one, the fixer, the one who over-functions and then quietly resents it.
• Going cold, quiet or busy when a partner is upset, because her disappointment lands like a verdict.
• Calling his mother first in a crisis, or letting her opinion carry more weight than his partner’s.
• The opposite: cutting her off completely and refusing to talk about her at all.
• Needing a partner to look after him, then feeling smothered when she does.
• Sometimes, contempt or suspicion toward women, which is usually old hurt wearing armour.

Signs of mommy issues in women

• People pleasing and apologising for taking up space.
• Perfectionism, and a harsh inner critic that sounds a lot like her.
• A fear of being left that makes every quiet evening feel like the start of the end.
• Trouble trusting women, or few close female friendships.
• Trouble saying no to her mother, or to anyone who rhymes with her.
• Becoming everyone’s caretaker and never being taken care of.

Signs that show up in anyone

One phone call can wreck your week. You can read a room before you can read your own feelings. Disagreement feels like abandonment. You can give care all day but you can’t receive it; when someone offers comfort, you deflect it. And underneath, you’re still waiting for someone to finally be pleased with you.

How mommy issues show up in relationships

This is where most people finally notice them. Your nervous system can’t tell the difference between a threat that happened when you were six and one happening at your kitchen table right now. So the fights feel far bigger than the moment. You’re fighting the mother who couldn’t soothe you through the person who forgot to text back.

You pick partners who feel familiar

If your childhood home was chaotic, calm can feel like the moment before something terrible happens, and you may pick partners who match the chaos, because chaos feels like home. If your mother was cold, warmth can feel suspicious and distance can feel like love. It isn’t bad judgment. It’s the nervous system choosing what it recognises.

The pursuer and the withdrawer

In couples I see two protective moves over and over. The pursuer, the one I call the Protester, learned that love disappears if you don’t fight for it, so when the bond wobbles they reach, push and protest. The Withdrawer learned that they were a disappointment, so when the bond wobbles they go quiet to avoid failing again. These two almost always find each other. The more one chases, the more the other retreats, and each confirms the other’s oldest fear.

Fear of abandonment, or fear of being swallowed

If your mother wasn’t there, closeness may feel like the thing that will be taken away, so you hold on tight. If your mother was everywhere, closeness may feel like being swallowed, so you keep one foot out the door. Many people carry both: they want someone close and then panic when they get it.

When your partner is still in a relationship with their mother

As we grow up, the primary attachment figure is meant to shift. Fingers crossed, your person is no longer your mom. It’s your wife, your husband, your partner. When a mother stays the one who’s called first in a crisis, the one whose approval still organises everything, the partner ends up competing with a ghost. You can love your mother deeply. Your partner’s nervous system still needs to know: when it matters most, you’ll choose me.

What it looked like in my own marriage

I don’t write about this from the outside. At forty I was walking on Ocean Beach in San Francisco with my mother, and I felt I had to tell her: “Look, I cannot make relationships work. I’m sorry, I’m just never going to make you a granny.” The most important goals in my whole life were to be a husband and a dad, and I grew up feeling less-than and broken in terms of love.

When I met my wife Teale, the old pattern came right along with us. She would see me as uncaring, become disappointed and criticise me. I would see her as mean, get frustrated and withdraw. I felt so deeply not enough, and she was so convinced she was too much. What changed it wasn’t more insight. I already had insight. It was learning Emotionally Focused Therapy and living it: turning toward the hurt instead of away from it, again and again, until my body had new evidence.

Mommy issues vs daddy issues

They come from the same place: the three things a child needs from a parent, and which of them went missing. The difference is usually in the flavour of the wound. With my father, the wound was that he never really saw me. With my mother, it was about being held, about whether she could sit down with me and rest. Mother wounds tend to live in how safe closeness feels. Father wounds often live in whether you feel seen and approved of. Plenty of people carry both, and they rhyme.

How to work on mommy issues

You can’t go back and get a different mother. You can give yourself, now, the experience that went missing then. This is the order I see it happen in.

1. Name it without making her the villain

Naming it doesn’t mean hating your mother. It means seeing the system clearly: a child shouldn’t have carried what you carried, even if the adults around you didn’t have the capacity to do it differently. Two things can be true. She loved you. And something you needed didn’t arrive.

2. Grieve what you didn’t get

If you were the little adult, the caretaker or the entertainer, you lost part of a childhood. That’s a real loss and it deserves grief. Grief is what lets the longing move instead of running your life from underneath.

3. Give the shame back

You can say, quietly, inside: this was your failing, probably from your own wounding, and I’m not going to carry it as an inadequacy in myself anymore. You don’t have to say it to her. It’s for you.

4. Reparent yourself with the three things

With one hand you give the shame back. With the other you become, for yourself, the parent who says yes, I’m here for you; yes, you’re enough for me; and the rules are the same tomorrow as today. Attachment research calls the result earned security: adults who started out insecure and became secure through new relationships. If you want the science behind it, I wrote about what earned secure attachment is and how people get there.

5. Set boundaries with your mother from ground

A boundary happens inside the bond. It sounds like: I love you, and I’m not going to talk about my weight with you anymore, and if it comes up, I’ll get off the phone. A sign you’re getting stronger is that you can hold a boundary like that without leaving the relationship. And if staying close keeps hurting you badly, distance can be the most loving thing you do for the child you were.

6. Let it heal in relationship

The wound was made in a relationship, and it heals in one. Reading helps you see the pattern. Changing it takes another nervous system staying with yours while the old alarm fires: a partner, a trusted friend, a coach, or a therapist. If you want therapy, look for attachment-based work. Emotionally Focused Therapy, developed by Sue Johnson, works directly on the bond and is the backbone of my own practice. Internal Family Systems, developed by Richard Schwartz, helps you meet the parts of you, the inner critic, the people-pleaser, the one who goes cold, with curiosity instead of shame. For trauma, approaches like EMDR and Somatic Experiencing work with what the body still holds.

And you don’t need her apology to heal. Some mothers soften and some never do. Healing doesn’t wait on her.

How to support a partner with mommy issues

If it’s your partner who carries this, here’s what I’d want you to know.

• You can’t fix it for them. Explaining it away or reassuring them over and over and getting frustrated that they won’t believe you usually makes it worse. The part of them that’s scared needs to be witnessed, not solved.
• Don’t take it personally when it shows up. When they shut down or flare up out of proportion, you’re bumping into something much older than you. Their protector isn’t about you, even when it’s aimed at you.
• Don’t make them choose between you and their mother. Speak to the fear underneath instead: “When your mum’s opinion lands before mine, I feel alone. I need to know I’m your person.”
• Show up when they risk trusting you. Each time they reach and you’re there, their body writes a new entry. Over time, new entries change the ledger.
• Look after your own ground. If you’re the one who pursues, slow down. If you’re the one who withdraws, stay one minute longer than feels comfortable.

The loop, on your situation

The practice I use is one I learned from Aftab Omer, reflexive participation: what am I noticing now, how am I affected, and what creative action is being called for? We start in the present. Pick one recent moment with your mother, or with anyone, where the old feeling showed up.

Get ground in your body first

Feel your feet on the floor. Let one breath out, slower than the one that came in. Look around and name three things you can see. You’re an adult, in your own room.

What happened

Just the facts, present tense. “She says she’s disappointed I’m not coming home for Christmas. I say sorry three times.” No verdict on her, none on you.

Where it lands in the body

Go back to the second it hit. A lump in the throat? A collapse in the chest? Heat in the face, like you’re seven? Find it and stay with it for one breath. And now what do you notice?

Who’s driving

Name the part. The Good Child who keeps her happy. The Caretaker who still believes it’s your job to make her okay. The one who goes cold before you can be let down. Which coin is it: too much, or not enough?

Trace it

Only as far as today needs. When did you first feel exactly this with her? Then widen the lens. What was happening for her? What did her own mother give her? What was her culture asking of women? None of that excuses anything. It just shows you the wound was handed down, not made in you.

Feel it and tell someone

Shame feeds on aloneness, and the antidote is company. Say the true sentence to someone safe, a friend, a partner, someone who’s on your side: “I still want her to sit down with me. I’m forty and I still want that.”

One creative action

Choose one small thing you can do from ground instead of from the wound. A kinder sentence to yourself. A boundary held calmly on the next call. Or you can give the shame back, quietly, inside: this was never mine to carry.

What to do tonight

Small is the point. Pick one or two of these, not all of them.

1. Write down the three things a child needs to hear: I’m there for you, you’re enough for me, and the rules are the same tomorrow as today. Next to each one, write whether you got it from your mother.
2. If a call or text from her is waiting, don’t answer it tonight from the old place. Feel your feet, let one long breath out, and answer tomorrow if you need to.
3. Write one sentence you’ll never send. Start it with “What I needed from you was…” and read it back slowly.
4. Tell one safe person one true sentence: “I still want her to be pleased with me.”
5. Then do the practice below before you sleep.

Put a hand on your chest and say, slowly, the three things a child needs to hear, to yourself: I’m here for you. You’re enough for me, exactly the way you are. And I’ll be the same tomorrow as I am today. Notice which one is hardest to say. That’s the one you didn’t get enough of, and it’s the one to keep practising.

Would therapy help with this?

Coaching is how we go from where you are now to where you want to go, and we only address the past when it emerges in the present. If your relationship with your mother keeps pulling you back into old feelings, coaching can help you meet those moments from ground.

But if what happened with your mother included violence, neglect that left you unsafe, or memories that flood you when you go near them, that’s more than coaching can hold. Please talk to a licensed therapist where you live.

The path

What I’ve just walked you through is the Empathi Method. For an individual, it’s built on my Proof of Work of Being Human protocol: building sovereign ground inside yourself. With one hand you give the shame back to where it came from. With the other you become, for yourself, the parent who says yes, yes, and keeps the boundary. You don’t have to hate your mother to do any of it.

There are two ways to keep going. You can work with Figlet, an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, on the Family ground. It’ll help you catch the moment a call with your mother turns you seven again and find one response that comes from you. Or you can get on the list for the book and the live program with me, where we do this work together.

And one more thing. You repair this wound partly by not passing it on. Every time you tell someone you love “I’m here, and you’re enough,” including the child you were, you’re closing a door your family left open.

I go deeper into this in my book, Proof of Work (Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027).

Common questions

What do mommy issues look like in men?

Often like trying to be the good boy everywhere, or the opposite, keeping everyone at arm’s length. A man who believed he had to make his mother okay can grow into a man who over-functions for everyone, then resents it. Underneath it’s the same two questions: are you there for me, and am I enough for you.

Do I have mommy issues?

Probably some, because everyone does. No mother meets every need. The more useful question is whether the old pattern is running your life now: whether one call can wreck your week, or you keep needing someone to finally be pleased with you. If so, it’s worth working with.

What causes mommy issues?

Usually not one dramatic event. It’s the provisions that were missing or unpredictable: not enough “I’m here,” not enough “you’re enough,” or boundaries that changed with her mood. A child fills those gaps with the belief that it must be their fault, and that belief keeps running long after childhood ends.

What does “mommy issues” mean?

It’s an informal term for the ways a difficult relationship with your mother or mother figure shows up in adult life: how you love, trust, set boundaries and see yourself. It isn’t a diagnosis. Underneath it is usually an attachment pattern formed in that first bond.

What do mommy issues look like in women?

Often like people pleasing, perfectionism, a harsh inner critic, a fear of being left, and trouble saying no, especially to her mother. Some women become everyone’s caretaker and can’t receive care themselves. It’s the same two questions underneath: are you there for me, and am I enough for you.

Can you have mommy issues with a good mom?

Yes. A loving mother who was overwhelmed, anxious, depressed or simply doing the work of two parents can still leave a child unsure whether they were held. It isn’t about blaming her. It’s about naming what didn’t land so you can give it to yourself now.

What’s the difference between mommy issues and daddy issues?

Both come from missing pieces in the first bonds. Mother wounds more often show up in how safe closeness feels, and father wounds in whether you feel seen and approved of. Many people carry both.

Can mommy issues be healed?

Yes. Attachment patterns aren’t fixed for life. Through new experiences of safety, with a partner, a friend, a coach or a therapist, people move toward what researchers call earned security. The old feeling may still visit, but it stops running the show.

Can I heal without confronting my mother?

Yes. Healing doesn’t wait on her apology or her understanding. Some people choose a conversation with their mother, some choose a boundary, and some choose distance. The work is in you, not in getting her to change.

How do I support a partner with mommy issues?

Stop trying to fix it and start witnessing it. Don’t take the old reactions personally, don’t make them choose between you and their mother, and show up when they risk trusting you. Each time they reach and you’re there, the old pattern loosens a little.

Reflexive participation comes from the teaching of Aftab Omer at the Institute of Imaginal Studies, where I trained.