Happiness: Can Someone Find It Hard To Be Happy If They Had An Emotionally Unstable Mother?

What someone may find, if they were to reflect on their life is that it is incredibly difficult for them to be truly happy. In general, this can be seen as something that is just outside of their reach.

And, if they are happy, it might not be long until they go back to how they were before. Due to how rarely they feel happy, then, it might often be a challenge for them to embrace the moments when they do feel happy.

Resistance

The reason for this is that they could be focused on the fact that based on past experiences, this won’t be something that lasts. So, to avoid going up and then coming back down soon after, they could do their best to not be too absorbed in what is going on for them.

Now, this won’t allow them to make the most of what is taking place but it will stop them from having to go through the pain of rising up and then coming down before long. Still, living in this way will still cause them to experience pain; it will just be more manageable.

The Meaning

If they were to talk about what it means for them to be happy, they are likely to say that it is more than just feeling good. For them, it could also relate to being able to make progress and feel good about their life.

With this in mind, it could be as though there is someone or something ‘out there’ that is holding them back. They could believe that they are doing all the right things, yet this won’t allow them to live a fulfilling life.

A Low Place

Thanks to how they typically experience life, they could often feel down and depressed. At times, they could feel like a victim and wonder if they have the will to carry on living.

If there are people in their life who are generally happy and are able to move forward, they could believe that these people have something that they themselves don’t have. They will be like a car that is able to seamlessly go from one destination to another, whilst they will be like a car that is constantly breaking down.

A Block

If it was put forward to them that their life is this way due to what is taking place inside them, they could find it hard to accept. As far as they are concerned, they will want to be happy and to move forward.

Even if they were to reflect on this, they might not be able to see how they are playing a part in what is going on. They could say that they desperately want their life to change, so it is not possible that they are holding themselves back.

Two Levels

What needs to be acknowledged at this point is that they have both a conscious and an unconscious mind. Therefore, while the former can want one thing, the latter can want something else entirely.

Considering this, there is a strong chance that these two parts of their being are not on the same page, so to speak. If they were, there would be no reason for them to experience life in this way; their life would reflect what their conscious mind wants.

Confusion

In order for them to understand why this other part of their being, a part that has a far great impact on their life than their conscious mind, is not in harmony with the rest of them, they will need to look back on their life. The stage of their life that is likely to be the most important is their childhood years.

If they were able to connect to what this stage of their life was like, it might soon become clear why they sabotage their own happiness and fulfilment. This will be a time when they are able to connect the dots.

Going Deeper

What they may see is that they were brought up by a mother who wasn’t very emotionally stable or happy and this would have meant they had to walk on eggshells. Tuning into her needs would then have been their priority and they would have done their best to please her, losing touch with themselves and being deprived of the emotional nutrients that they needed in the process.

This probably would have meant that they automatically mirrored her mood and did their best not to be happy. If they were happy or joyful, their mother may have withdrawn her love from them and made it clear that, both directly and indirectly, that this would cause them to be isolated.

A Brutal Time

A stage of their life when they needed their mother’s love to be able to grow and develop would have been a time when they had to act like a parent and abandon themselves. The attention and acceptance that they did receive would have been for the false self that they were forced to develop to survive; it wouldn’t have been for who they really were – their true self.

Most likely, they were often rejected and abandoned and ended up being isolated for not doing what their deeply wounded mother wanted. At other moments, this is likely to have taken place even though they did do what she wanted.

The Wound

If this or something similar is what happened, being happy and moving forward is likely to be seen as something that would cause them to be abandoned, alone and for their life to come to an end. Ultimately, what they fear will happen, will be what has already happened, not just once but many, many times throughout their early years.

What they will really fear is coming into contact with the pain that they experienced when this did take place. To handle this stage of their life they would have had to repress this pain; they had no other option.

Awareness

To freely express themselves and to raise both their happiness and success set point, they will most likely need to work through this pain; pain that is now held in their unconscious mind/body. This is unlikely to happen overnight but the sooner they start, the sooner their life will change.

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

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