Early Derivation: Can A Man Find It Hard To Assert Himself If He Had An Emotionality Unstable Mother?

If a man were to step back, what he may find is that it is often hard for him to share what he thinks, to make it clear when he doesn’t want to do something, and to say no. Now, he can see that it doesn’t matter if he is with friends, family or with a woman, as it’s the same.

However, he may find that it is easier for him to do this when he is around friends or family members but harder when he is with a woman. There is even a chance that he is currently dating a woman, so he won’t need to think back on his life to get a sense of how he behaves when he is in this position.

Looking Back

What he can see is that, when they are together, he seldom shares what is going on for him, with him acting as though he is fine. Also, he can see that he goes along with things that he doesn’t really want to do and says yes when he wants to say no.

He might see that he behaved in this way when they first started spending time together, and he has then continued to behave in this way as the weeks and months have passed. But, although behaving this way didn’t really affect him in the beginning, this might no longer be the case.

Weighed Down

Assuming that this is the case, it can be as though he has signed up for something that he didn’t want to sign up for. In the beginning, it would have been easier for him to ignore himself, but as time has passed, it has gotten harder and harder.

He can then spend a lot of time feeling not only angry, frustrated and drained, but also trapped and as though he has lost himself. What he can see is that it is not that he doesn’t want to be with the woman; it is that he wants to speak up when he has a different view or disagrees with her, to not always do what she wants, and to be able to say no.

Another Scenario

Then again, he might find that he doesn’t have much in common with her and didn’t want things to progress in the direction that they have. He will then have ended up with a woman who isn’t right for him and be in a position that he doesn’t want to be in.

Conversely, he can be with a woman who is fairly self-absorbed and doesn’t treat him like an individual who has his own needs and feelings, which is likely to mean that he just wants to cut his ties with her. By not standing his ground then, he would have ended up with a woman who is doing what she can to undermine him.

What’s going on?

If he is in a position where he is with a woman who he wants to be with, he can wonder why he finds it so hard to freely express himself around her. Part of him could say that he is just weak or lacks courage.

But even if a voice in his head says this, he is likely to find out what is really holding him back if he were to use his imagination. So, he can imagine that when he is with the woman he is dating or in a relationship with, he freely expresses himself.

At first, he can feel free, powerful and alive, and he can then feel relieved and grateful. Yet if he were to stay with this mental creation, he can find that he starts to feel anxious and even terrified, and has the need to go back to how he was before.

Confusion

If he were to stay with this anxiety, what might enter his mind is that he expects her to lose control and leave him. He might see that this is seen as something that will cause him to be overwhelmed and for his life to end.
After this, he could conclude that even if she were to lose control and leave him, he would be able to handle it, and his life wouldn’t end. He can conclude that what he fears when it comes to freely expressing himself is irrational.

A Deeper Look

But, if he were able to go back in time and observe his early years, he might gradually realise why he is this way. This may have been a stage of his life when his mother was emotionally unavailable and out of reach, and she was often all at sea emotionally.

Due to this, he wouldn’t have been able to securely attach to her and receive the emotional nutrients that he needed to grow and develop in the right way. Being criticised by her, rejected and abandoned would have been normal.

One option

To handle what happened and to keep it together and function, his brain would have repressed how he felt and a number of his needs. This would have involved him losing touch with his embodied, connected, fully feeling and inner-directed false self and forming a disembodied, disconnected, not fully feeling and outer-directed false self.

In other words, he would have had to lose touch with both his desire to freely express and his connection to himself and become extremely attuned to his mother. This would have been a way for him to try not to unsettle her, soothe her when she was unsettled, and to ensure that she didn’t leave him, which would have allowed him to maintain his connection to her.

Moving Forward

This stage will now be over, of course, but thanks to how he developed and the pain and unmet developmental needs that he is still carrying, a big part of him won’t realise that this stage of his life is over and another woman or another person is not his mother. For him to no longer project the mother that he had onto others and to reconnect to and freely express himself, he will have a number of steps to take.

There will be beliefs for him to question, pain to face and process, and unmet developmental needs to experience. This will take courage, support, patience and persistence.

Awareness

If a man can relate to this and he is ready to change his life, he may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.

---

​If you feel this has been of value, please leave a comment, like or get in touch. And feel free to share this article, as many others have.

• Join my Facebook Page.
• Follow me on Twitter.
• The books I have written.

Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk