Mother Wounds: Can A Man Be Scared Of Women If He Had An Abusive Mother?

What a man may find, if he was to take a step back and reflect on his life, is that he has the tendency to keep women at bay. Not only this, but when he is around them, he may find that he is usually anxious.

And, if he is not on edge, he could see that he loses touch with what is going on inside him. Irrespective of whether the former or the latter occurs, the outcome will be the same; he is not going to fully show up.

One Experience

This may mean that he hasn’t ever been in a relationship with a woman and has only had casual encounters with them. If so, as he will have only shared his body and perhaps his mind with these women, he will have felt more at ease.

But, this may have still been a time when he didn’t feel at ease and was, therefore, unable to fully show up. After having had these experiences for so long, he might be at the stage where he wants more.

Another

Then again, he might have had at least one relationship, with this being a time when he found it hard to stay present. During this time, he might have alternated between being on edge and not being able to connect to himself.

Connecting to his true feelings would then have been a challenge, and this is likely to have made it difficult for the relationship to progress. His partner might have been intimidating or he might have just felt threatened by her for no apparent reason.

One Conclusion

After thinking about how his life has been for perhaps as long as he can remember, he might wonder why he finds it so hard to feel at ease around a woman. He could be sick and tired of being on edge or losing touch with himself and shutting down.

Being this way will have deprived him of the human contact that he desires, so he will naturally be desperate for the pain that this is causing him to come to an end. What might enter his mind is that how he is behaving is irrational, with there being no reason for him to be this way.

The Solution

One way of looking at this would be to say that his life is this way because of his ‘negative’ thoughts and what he believes about women. By changing what is going on up top, so to speak, his life will change.

Nonetheless, this could be seen as a very disconnected approach as what is unlikely to be explored is why he has these ‘negative’ thoughts and beliefs. If he was to take a deeper look into why he is this way, he might soon see that how he experiences life is anything but irrational.

Going Deeper

For him to find out why he experiences life in this way, it will be a good idea for him to take a closer look at what took place during his formative years. Right now, he might not be able to remember a great deal about this key stage of his life.

He could just think that it wasn’t that bad and that it is all in the past now so it doesn’t matter what it was like. Yet, even if he says it wasn’t that bad and believes that as it is in the past it doesn’t matter, this doesn’t mean that this stage of his life wasn’t brutal or that it is not impacting his life.

A Closer Look

At this stage of his life, his mother may have been emotionally unstable, physically and verbally abusive, and emotionally unavailable. Instead of having a mother who was loving, he would have had a mother who was cold and cruel.

This would have deprived him of the love that he needed to grow and develop in the right way and this would have greatly wounded him. Throughout this stage of his life, he is likely to have felt fearful, scared, terrified, overwhelmed, worthless, and powerless and as though he was going to die.

A Helpless Position

The trouble was that as he was powerless and totally dependent, he wouldn’t have been able to do anything about what was going on. His only option would have been to disconnect from himself and go into a shut down, collapsed and frozen state.

The pain that he was in, along with his development needs, would have automatically been pushed out of his conscious awareness and repressed. Many, many years will have passed since he was a powerless boy but most if not all of the pain and arousal that he experienced will be held inside him.

A Natural Consequence

Additionally, his unmet developmental needs will cause him to unconsciously recreate scenarios that are similar to his early years in the hope that this time it will be different. This is why he will endlessly end up in situations where he re-experiences how he felt around his mother.

For him to truly put the past behind him and no longer look for what he missed out on, he will need to face and work through the pain inside him. This is something that will take courage and patience and persistence.
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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. 

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