*If you don’t have a mother or if you feel this topic better relates to your father, that’s totally cool! It can easily be applied to any parent/s.

One of the MOST common conversations I have in my practice centers around moms.

I have one, you probably have one, they’re pretty common.

Unfortunately, our past as women hasn’t been great to body image. And usually our mothers hold a TON of baggage and trauma around their bodies and relationship to food; often waaay more than you think. 

Unless they themselves had A) a super rare mom/family that was body positive (if you knew your grandma, do you think she was?) or B) did a ton of their own work around food and body, it’s going to be preeeetty hard for them not to pass their own trauma onto their children.

So, the first thing I help my clients understand when they feel judged, anxious, and shamed around their moms, is that it actually isn’t about you.

Crazy, right?

I know it feels intensely personal--in fact mother-daughter relationships are often fraught with what feel like super personal moments of “not-good-enoughness”. 

But, if you take the time to work through what’s actually happening, you’ll see that your mom is just so afraid (like, deeply afraid) of her own body and food trauma, and she believes, ironically, that by policing you she can somehow protect you from this pain.

It’s pretty wild, but in my experience, all too true.

Once you understand where it’s coming from (and even if you’re not sure of the details, you can understand through basic human psychology that we only judge others where we are in judgement of ourselves), you can begin to develop a sense of how to respond to it.

There are many options that I help my clients work through from there, and here are the main two:

1. Confront your mom directly. Share with her, whether in person, on the phone, or via letter that you are uncomfortable with the way she speaks to you around food and body, and you no longer will accept this as part of your relationship. (This can look really different depending on the relationship, but I find that the more you stand in your power and confidence here, the better the results :) )

2. Create physical boundaries. Remove yourself from your mom’s energy by speaking less on the phone and seeing her less in person. This can be really helpful even for a short period of time, so you can have space to reflect and collect your thoughts to then confront her. 

3. A combination of the two.

I’ll share that for me it took some trial and error to understand what I really needed from my mom, and from my whole family.

It wasn’t until I spoke up with power and conviction, telling every member of my family that for the “rest of my life”--this is key, because it conveyed finality and assuredness--I never want to hear a comment about my body, OR about the food type or quantity I was eating, that I felt a huge shift from anxiety to relaxation around them.

Every family has its “food stuff”, and working through that is one of the most powerful, life changing things you can do for your own relationship to food. 

And, if you are a mom, read my blog post entitled: Dear Moms.