Chapter 5. Further Discussions on the “Relational stress” (8)

We will examine this inhibitory process in the patients’ families of origine from the perspectice of daughters and mothers respectively.

Inhibition of self-expression in the face of traumatic stress

1. Factors on the daughters’ side

Inhibitory factors observed among my patients in traumatic situations involve fear, awkwardness, shyness, and reservation in expressing themselves to their parents. Many of them had various thoughts and feelings that they could not express while being disappointed that they are not undertood and paid attention by their parents.
However, there are patients who are not even aware that they have their own thoughts and feelings. They readily identify themselves with their parents, including how they feel their daughters shoud think and feel, while their own thoughts and feelings are isolated and dissociated in their mind.
We can conclude that one of the major inhibitory factors of self expression in the patients’s childhood might be their extreme sensitiveness and strong identificatory capacity with their parents’ mind. Children’s identification with their parents resulted in their feeling that they are emotionally dominated by their parents.
One of my patients stated that every word that her mother uttered sounds like a command or an order. She remembers that when she was a child her mother told her “You are always a good girl.” Now she is enraged and says “What a terrible mother who demands that her daughter be always a perfect girl!”. Behind her mother’s command-like statements was her image that is constantly devaluing or at least measuring up her daughter.