Elizabeth Gessel, MFT

Are you dealing with mother issues? Did you grow up with a mentally ill or unstable mother? This can have profound effects on your sense of self, responsibility and capability. These issues can show up for you in numerous ways.  For men, you may find your role in relationships is to continually rescue women. This role leaves you wondering if your needs are worthwhile or if this cycle will ever stop. For women, you may see evidence of your experience in how you are overinvolved in your children’s lives to the exclusion of your partner. You find it hard to be vulnerable because you were the one that always had to take care of things and pick up the pieces. Regardless of gender, you find you’re depleted and experience great difficulty in taking care of yourself in meaningful ways.

Having had a mother who was chronically anxious, depressed, bipolar, schizophrenic or had a personality disorder can create unstable attachments. This can manifest later in your adult relationships as an unclear or unstable sense of self. You may find it hard to define who you want to be and question your worth in relation to your family, friends and coworkers. You may suffer your own depressed or anxious feelings that seem unmanageable and never fully go away.

Your relationships with your parents are the building blocks to the foundation of your life. If your mother is unstable, it’s natural to have that instability shake you to your core. You can feel the cracks all the way through your family, social and professional relationships. In essence you feel cracked and in need of repair. You want to better withstand the challenges of life and more easily trust your enjoyment of the good things life offers rather than always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Because this is a transformative process I utilize a variety of approaches from practical problem solving advice and clear boundary setting to creative symbolic dream work and journaling. In a safe, comfortable and respectful environment I work with you to sort through your history, uncover how unconscious decisions got made and explore your true self.