Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: HeartofPilgrimage on January 05, 2010, 11:05:00 PM
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About mother-infant interactions ... Some of the newest research on mother-infant relationships go beyond the concept of mirroring to "marking." Marking is when the adult in the dyad shows the baby that his/her emotions are shared but does it in such a way that it is clear that it is the BABY's emotions and not the ADULT's emotions. This is a hard concept to put into words but most of us would understand it if we saw a video. It is also something that we might could learn if somebody taught us, but for the most part either you have the ability to both mirror and mark your baby's emotions or you don't, because you get it from your own infancy.
I just noticed something when watching my own mother try to sooth my granddaughter this weekend. While she was trying to sooth her, I was getting more and more nervous. Something about her style of soothing I found unnerving. And it occurred to me that I felt that way when she was with my own babies, and with myself when I was little. She was trying hard to be soothing but totally missing the mark.
I think that when babies get upset, she gets upset. So there was mirroring but no marking. She became nervous and upset when the baby became nervous and upset, which is not effective in soothing a baby. So even though it's not her fault she lacks this ability, I can still see how my own emotions became hard for me to manage.
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Heart: I think this point is fascinating. :shock: Please elaborate if you can. I know it's hard to explain but I "think" I understand but need an example if you have one.
Only 18 months ago, my daughter was an infant and when she got upset, I was happy to hold her and snuggle her to my shoulder and rub her back. She never fussed too long (unless really hungry or gassy, etc.) But I always felt extremely comfortable holding her, and in fact, never wanted to put her down. Is this mirroring? Or marking? :?
Also, when my daughter cried in infancy, I never hesitated to pick her up, even if I was too exhausted to breathe I managed to soothe her cries. I don't remember ever being upset when she cried to "mirror" her. Is that right? Should the mother be upset along with the infant or should she be the comforting one? I'm confused as to what mirroring entails and how we as mothers "mark" the emotion (?)
Sorry for all the questions Heart...I know you understand more than I do :?
Bear
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Hey Heart... I just posted something related on the book thread...
are you saying:
Mirroring = Mom feeling the same emotion that baby does?
Marking = acknowledging baby's feelings - but only feeling her own?
Or do I have this backwards?
And biggest question of ALL... how does Mom "know" what baby is feeling? What superhuman power is Mom is endowed with? And what if she gets it all wrong... and instead projects her OWN feelings onto baby - because she simply can't know what baby IS feeling, until baby can express itself? Is that "mirroring"?
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CB and PR, you both have this concept down very well. I can't really add much, but CB, you are very astute when you say that "marking" is the beginning of boundary-setting. And that the emotional management that a healthy mom does with her children is the precursor to both personality and the way that dyad manages their boundaries throughout the lifespan.
An example of mirroring and marking would be when a baby cries, you make sympathetic sounds (oh, it's OK baby, yessss, I know you are hungry ... in an appropriately sympathetic tone) but you can look into their upset face or cuddle their tense body and not feel yourself getting tense and anxious and upset in response. You remain calm, and radiate calm with your manner, even though you may stick out your lower lip like the baby and furrow your brows like he/she does. It's similar to when somebody "puts on" an upset facial expression but you can tell they are not really upset, that it is "put on." So, the baby sees that you see how he/she feels, and is mirrored (he exists), but his emotions don't cause you to get upset too. His emotions are his and yours are yours. The first rudimentary form of a boundary.
In my mom's case, she would sing to the baby and jiggle her a little, and her voice would begin to quiver a little if the baby didn't calm down immediately. She was getting anxious and it came out in her manner even though she was trying to do the right thing. I think this comes from her own infancy --- that time when we learn that just because someone else is upset, doesn't mean we have to be.
Allan Schore wrote a thick book on the neurobiology of the mother/infant attachment relationship ... I wish I could remember the name right now. It was a really hard read ... but basically he condensed down a lot of neurobiological research and said that the mother acts like an "external frontal lobe" for the infant, as his/her own frontal lobe is relatively undeveloped. The frontal lobe is responsible for "executive function" --- the control room of the brain. The mother has to regulate the baby's emotions because his brain is not yet developed enough. So when he is getting too upset (say, upset enough to spit up his milk), the mother --- or grandma, or dad --- must hold and soothe and reassure him that he is OK. Or when he is sluggish and inactive, the mother --- here it's more likely the dad or the grandma :)
--- comes into his field of vision and engages him in play that ramps up positive emotions.
More later, Pilgrim
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I am discovering something.*I* could not see myself. In my FOO, EVERYONE was a blank--the Blank Family.( I feel like I should be a writer for the Twilight Zone.)
When I asked my M for help cuz I was being abused, she sided with my abusive H against me. No matter how much I asked for help, they did not help me and instead kept siding with my H.
The other part was that my M loved to hurt me. She enjoyed seeing me suffer.She always has.
Anyway, *I* could not see myself so never really KNEW if I was being abused or just imaging it .So, I stayed with my H and stayed with a relationship with them cuz I could not see myself.
Ami
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Ami, It sounds like you didn't have either mirroring OR marking ... and either something traumatic happened to your mother to cause her to numb out that way, OR this terrible terrible deficiency goes back generations in your family. Sometimes you can trace it through family stories.
Have you ever known somebody that hurt themselves on purpose? And, if you ask them why, sometimes they will say, "So I would feel something, so I would know I am alive"? I wonder if your mother is so messed up, that she didn't see any difference between you and her, and when she hurt you, she was hurting herself ... so she would know she was alive by watching your reactions. A very sick thing to do to anybody, especially your own child, but then, you knew that she was messed up anyway.
I'm glad you survived. I'm glad you are still in the game (of life).
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That was BRILLIANT, Hop. I never thought of it that way. Thank you! Hang in there with the AD withdrawals Sweetie! xxoo Ami
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Thanks for the explanations CB & Heart. It is coming more clear. I'm curious to see what Dr.G's explanation of mirroring and marking would be...his working hypothesis if you will.
If I understand this here, then mirroring and marking really go hand in hand. The N can not possibly have one without the other which ultimately makes them the N. If you mirror the infant then you ultimately mark that they are separate beings by simply having empathy--you are different than me; you are upset and I understand that; my actions show you that you are worth understanding; I will love and comfort you despite myself.
If you have the healthy ability to mirror your infant then marking is not far behind or may just come naturally in the process of simply comforting your baby. You don't even know you're doing it. Like when an infant cries, I believe that it is not just because they are hungry, tired, gassy or fussy; babies have the instinct to cry when they want to be held for survival purposes which provides for crucial brain development. It is when a mother responds to each and every cry the same way, with love, comforting, holding and calmness that the baby realizes (at least my baby seemed to) that she can "trust" the mother. This "trust" feeling has to be from "marking" by the mother. Yes?
My NM did not mirror me nor does she now. When she would rage on us and my dad, which in turn made us as children upset, she couldn't fathom why or how we would EVER by upset, it was about her being upset. Period.
When I was an infant, I don't know what she did because I can't remember. I don't know if she picked me up each time I wanted to be held and made eye contact with me to let me know that she "knew" I was crying and upset. She fed me, obviously I didn't starve. She held me, obviously my brain developed and I survived. But what lacked was mirroring and marking and to the extent, I will never know.
The neurological impact on our brains by the N's gives for good research!
Bear
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I will always remember the confusing compliment my mother used to pay me. She'd tell me what long legs I had and I'd look down at my perfectly ordinary legs and try to figure out where they were long. It seemed to be such a harmless statement that I couldn't imagine anyone lying about it. I later realized that had studied dance in college and always wanted longer legs.
I agree that they can't market or mirror. I spent a lot of my childhood looking for the things she said I had and feeling inadequate because I couldn't find them. It made the world that much more difficult to fathom.
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I have a question. I have a tendency to copy other people's emotions when I am around them. If someone is friendly and outgoing, then I am. If someone is reserved, then I am. Is this related to mirroring? This is such an interesting topic.
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Hi bearwithme,
I see these issues in terms of empathy and positive differentiation. Empathy—meaning that I can feel what you are feeling: you have communicated it to me, and therefore you are not alone, and I will be able to respond to your emotional needs. And positive differentiation—we don’t have to feel the same thing/way for me to value you (and, therefore, ensure your survival). Narcissistic parents fail at both.
Best,
Richard
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Wow, Dr. G! That hits it home! :D Thank you for your feedback.
Regards,
Bear
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I always ask people"Do you know what I am feeling?" It is like I am desperate to know that I am not alone in my feelings. It must come from this. Thanks Dr G. Ami
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I think my mom, as I described in my first post, can mirror but the marking part doesn't come as easily. If I don't get upset when she does, or even if I am not AS upset as she is, she feels like I don't understand. It hurts her feelings for me to remain detached from her upset. When my son got his girlfriend pregnant and they were preparing for a "shotgun" wedding, so to speak, my mother stated that he had ruined his life. When I could not leave it like that, and stated calmly that I don't think he has ruined his life, then later she accused me of "not thinking there is anything wrong with what he did." I asked her how she came to that conclusion, and she said well, you said he had not ruined his life. I (for once!) stayed calm and asked how did she jump from "no he has not ruined his life" to "everything he has done is OK." She kind of conceded that the two were different, but you could tell that emotionally she hadn't changed. In other words, if I did not join her in her emotional overreaction (catastrophizing the pregnancy), then I must not be upset at all. And she also reamed me because I talked to other people about the situation but not her ... but I didn't talk to her because she makes everything into "the world is ending". Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
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Hi Pilgrim,
This is a very interesting thread.
When I get back to my digs, I will be reading and absorbing it all.
Thanks...
tt
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That is a VERY elucidating interchange, Heart. Ami
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It's interesting how God guides your journey. I adopted my daughter from a Romanian orphanage when she was only 14 months old, and her developmental problems were so profound that I started desperately reading and researching to try to help her (really, to try to help US --- I was drowning). And then I discovered I loved psychology, and after all these years, I come around to figuring out what was going on in myself and in my mother. So I started out trying to figure out how to help my daughter, and ended up helping myself too.
Here is a link to a famous researcher ... this is his short bio (in this link) but once you know who he is, you can look out for his work. He has generated a lot of the research on mirroring and marking that I have referred to in this thread.
http://www.childrenshospital.org/cfapps/research/data_admin/Site440/mainpageS440P0.html
I have been reading Understanding the Borderline Mother by Christine Lawson. I believe that it is probable that my granddaughter's maternal grandmother has borderline personality disorder, and I'm suspicious about her (my grandbaby's) mother as well. So, I got this book to try to figure out how to best help my grandbaby NOT turn out to have this or some other related disorder. But, as fate would have it, I recognized my own mother in the "Hermit" persona the book describes. Freaked me out.
My mom's problems for the most part probably wouldn't rise to the level of a diagnosis. I feel that an almost 50 year relationship with my very stable dad is the major reason for her symptoms staying low-level. I have said on this forum before that after he died she seemed to become the very worst version of herself.
If any of you know your mom has BPD or even suspect it, I definitely recommend this book. There is a whole section dedicated to telling adult children how to best handle a relationship with your BPD mother. The advice is based on your mother's primary persona --- there are four described in the book. It talks about limit-setting and how to handle common crises (like holidays!).
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Just popping in for a sec...
Heart: Daniel Schore has several essays posted online; they're still lengthy and very scientific! But it is possible to glean the important stuff - I found lots of bells clanging in my head as I read them; much that was extremely familiar to me and explained so much...
Somewhere on here, I started a thread on attachment referencing an earlier thread that started my search and I posted the links to the essays.
Very very busy this week and not thinking too coherently... but this issue is the crux of how thing "go wrong" (or right) for children who grow up with these very different ways of "being" and relating to others. It is, quite fortunately, not a life sentence... what we experienced, you know. It does create a predisposition... but every jot of awareness and understanding we gain helps us overcome that predisposition and we form new, more wholesome and rewarding ways of "being".
Thanks for bringing this up for discussion! Clarity on this topic is fundamental to healing, imho.
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Bear's earlier words said almost what I wanted to: "If you have the healthy ability to mirror your infant then marking is not far behind or may just come naturally in the process of simply comforting your baby. You don't even know you're doing it."
As I was reading all the thread, I was thinking "isn't this obvious? Isn't this what normal people do without even thinking about it?" - a bit like what George Kelly says in his hostility piece ("It will take longer to say the same thing" etc).
Someone falls on the ice in front of me, I say "Ow!" immediately followed by "Are you okay?". It's not just for infants, it's human. I knew that my primary caregivers didn't have it and that they were different, because I knew that others did have it. I can only guess that as a baby I spent a lot of time with the others. I must have done. I learned at some early age to be wary of the primaries. Interesting.
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About mother-infant interactions ... Some of the newest research on mother-infant relationships go beyond the concept of mirroring to "marking." Marking is when the adult in the dyad shows the baby that his/her emotions are shared but does it in such a way that it is clear that it is the BABY's emotions and not the ADULT's emotions. This is a hard concept to put into words but most of us would understand it if we saw a video. It is also something that we might could learn if somebody taught us, but for the most part either you have the ability to both mirror and mark your baby's emotions or you don't, because you get it from your own infancy.
I just noticed something when watching my own mother try to sooth my granddaughter this weekend. While she was trying to sooth her, I was getting more and more nervous. Something about her style of soothing I found unnerving. And it occurred to me that I felt that way when she was with my own babies, and with myself when I was little. She was trying hard to be soothing but totally missing the mark.
I think that when babies get upset, she gets upset. So there was mirroring but no marking. She became nervous and upset when the baby became nervous and upset, which is not effective in soothing a baby. So even though it's not her fault she lacks this ability, I can still see how my own emotions became hard for me to manage.
As I read this I was imaging my NM, the way that I and my sister have watched her over the years try to sooth her grandchildren. It is almost the same thing as your mom. Our mom gets upset with their feelings of discomfort, as if any negative emotions from a child are a reflection on her, the caregiver, causing her nerves and a need to quickly sooth the discomfort rather than how you or I perhaps would respond with a heart that simply just acknowledges, REALLY acknowledges the babies discomfort with sweetness and acceptance as well as the empathy to understand what they may perhaps need to be comforted?
Just rambling.
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Hi bearwithme,
I see these issues in terms of empathy and positive differentiation. Empathy—meaning that I can feel what you are feeling: you have communicated it to me, and therefore you are not alone, and I will be able to respond to your emotional needs. And positive differentiation—we don’t have to feel the same thing/way for me to value you (and, therefore, ensure your survival). Narcissistic parents fail at both.
Best,
Richard
Reading this helped me in seeing that my mom cannot positive differentiate between herself, her feelings and another's. If I am feeling sad and she is happy she has to make me wrong for my sadness, change it or fix it, as if my different response in life or state of heart or mind does not mirror what she is feeling or thinking, therefore it invalidates her reality because she bases reality so much on image and others opinions. She needs a constant mirror that affirms her, a constant steady stream of affirmation that she is OK, without it she rages. If I am different than her it triggers her shame/belief system that perhaps she is wrong, therefore she has to fix it back to normal, her way.
Does this make sense?
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Yes it makes total sense. If I don't get upset when my mother does, she feels betrayed. She doesn't seem to have much conception of empathy that happens despite the fact you are not upset.
On the other hand, it has occurred to me that for the most part our mothers must have done better than their own mothers ... because somehow we as a group developed empathy and they as a group didn't do so well there.
The rest of you may live in parts of the world where civilization has been around a long time ... but my grandparents grew up literally on the Texas frontier. My own mother remembers when their community got electricity. Farm women had to work in the fields, and babies were left at the end of the row of cotton, and toddlers were staked out like goats to keep them from wandering away. Life was really hard, and physical survival took up most of their attention. Infant mortality rates (and maternal mortality rates, during childbirth) were high. My mother's father had 14 siblings, and miraculously all 15 kids grew up to adulthood ... but his mother went blind from a congenital optic nerve disease in her 20s ... what's really miraculous is that anybody in this kind of situation ends up with their emotional needs met!
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Farm women had to work in the fields, and babies were left at the end of the row of cotton, and toddlers were staked out like goats to keep them from wandering away. Life was really hard, and physical survival took up most of their attention.
I think that perhaps those that grew up in that generation are the more tough talking, thick skinned abled to face hardships without so much emotional response, just a get through it and do what you have to kind of mentality, a kind of life is hard deal with it song.
Infant mortality rates (and maternal mortality rates, during childbirth) were high. My mother's father had 14 siblings, and miraculously all 15 kids grew up to adulthood ... but his mother went blind from a congenital optic nerve disease in her 20s ... what's really miraculous is that anybody in this kind of situation ends up with their emotional needs met!
Yeah, I have often wondered how people from large families get their emotional needs met in childhood from the parents. One thing I have noticed is that the younger siblings of the large families seem the most well adjusted, this observation is from my two family study over a period of my lifetime so I can only make generalizations. My aunt and uncle have 7 kids and their youngest is the most well adjusted happy go lucky with a big heart. I think that his siblings raised him, that was a lot of attention and mirroring that was constant in his youngest adorable baby years.
A guy I once dated was 10th of 10 kids, he too was of the same dispostion of my cousin, happy go lucky big warm heart open and understanding and better able to articulate his emotions that most I knew. He said that he was raised by his siblings and there was hardly ever a moment when he was not getting loved and held, and played with and cared for.
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Hi bearwithme,
I see these issues in terms of empathy and positive differentiation. Empathy—meaning that I can feel what you are feeling: you have communicated it to me, and therefore you are not alone, and I will be able to respond to your emotional needs. And positive differentiation—we don’t have to feel the same thing/way for me to value you (and, therefore, ensure your survival). Narcissistic parents fail at both.
Best,
Richard
Reading this helped me in seeing that my mom cannot positive differentiate between herself, her feelings and another's. If I am feeling sad and she is happy she has to make me wrong for my sadness, change it or fix it, as if my different response in life or state of heart or mind does not mirror what she is feeling or thinking, therefore it invalidates her reality because she bases reality so much on image and others opinions. She needs a constant mirror that affirms her, a constant steady stream of affirmation that she is OK, without it she rages. If I am different than her it triggers her shame/belief system that perhaps she is wrong, therefore she has to fix it back to normal, her way.
Does this make sense?
This says it all. Lise. How well said. Thank you!!! xxoo Ami