The “Weighted Vest Effect” of Having a Difficult Mother
Ever feel like you’re moving through the world with an invisible weight strapped to your shoulders?
You might be doing all the things: showing up for work, family, responsibilities—handling what needs to be handled.
But under the surface, there’s a low hum of effort. The mental load. The emotional load. The second-guessing. The way you’re tracking, managing, navigating… even when no one else sees it.
Early adaptations can cast a long shadow
If you grew up with an emotionally immature, difficult, or narcissistic mother, what you’re feeling might not be random. It may be the long-term impact of early adaptations. What protected you then can end up weighing you down—or holding you back—in adulthood.
If that resonates, I think you’ll appreciate a short article written by a colleague of mine. It names 8 patterns that might help you recognize what you’re still carrying.
Before I share the article, I want to offer a bit of context—because it speaks to why this piece felt so worth sharing. When I began reMothering.org in 2021, I used to describe remothering as a rite of passage—one we step into if and when we’re ready to live in greater self-alignment and lean into our personal power more deeply.
And I still believe that.
But I’m also beginning to notice something else.
If we didn’t learn then, we can learn now
Many of the skills I teach here—and that our guest faculty teaches—are actually skills that some people learned in childhood.
But for those of us who had emotionally immature, narcissistic, or difficult parents, we learned a different set of skills. And while those adaptations can become our hard-earned wisdom, until we find our way to the resources that help us heal and rebuild our inner scaffolding on a sturdier foundation… it can feel like we’re walking through life wearing a weighted vest.
Because, in a very real sense, we are.
So that’s the lead-up to sharing this article. But rather than use its actual title (which, while accurate, doesn’t fully capture why I wanted to pass it along), for purposes of this blogpost, let’s call it:
8 Things That, If They Resonate, Might Be a Clue You’re Wearing a Weighted Vest
by Dr. Amanda Robins
The good news? That weighted vest is removable.
You can take it off—if you know how.
And one of the ways to do that?
This work. The remothering work.
May the harmony we are each learning to cultivate between our own two ears ripple out into the world in positive and meaningful ways.
If you’re parenting while carrying your own weighted vest…
…and you’re realizing that some of those early adaptations leaked into your parenting—I want you to know:
- You are not the only one, and you are not alone.
- Neuroplasticity is on your side (and on your children’s side, too). Growth is always possible.
If you’d like support with that, I’d love to invite you to a free workshop designed for parents of older teens and young adults:
👉 Learn more here.
MORE FROM THE BLOG
Related Articles
- Why Hard Conversations Are Hard—and What to Do When You’re Not Heard
- 5 After-Effects of Emotionally Immature Parenting
- Ever get caught in the vortex of harsh self-talk?
Articles about Remothering
- What is Remothering
- Remothering Roadmap
- Stop Barehanding Emotional Turds (& other remothering wisdom)
