How to handle a toxic mother without losing yourself

If recent TikTok videos about toxic mothers are anything to go by, many people are suffering in silence. But should we keep mum on this matter because we don’t want to hurt mum?

The maternal bond is traditionally viewed as the ultimate source of nurturance, yet, for some, this relationship is characterised by a pattern of psychological control, manipulation, entitlement and boundary violations.

She often operates from a position where her needs, emotions and image take precedence over her child’s autonomy.

Identifying this selfish dynamic requires looking past occasional conflict and recognising a persistent cycle of behaviour where the mother views her child not as an independent individual, even when they’re adults, but as an extension of herself or a tool for her own regulation and control.

Common indicators of a toxic mother include parentification, where the child is forced to act as the mother’s emotional caregiver and gaslighting, where there is systematic manipulation of the child’s perception of reality to maintain her dominance.

A perfect example of this occurs when a mother uses emotional blackmail to sabotage her own child’s external successes. Consider a daughter who receives a promotion or gets married and is required to move.

An entitled mother may respond not with pride, but by feigning a health crisis or accusing the daughter of ‘’abandoning’’ the family. This, in turn, creates a double bind where the child feels profound guilt for achieving a healthy milestone.

Another common example is the mother who has perfected the ‘’professional victim’’ role, perpetually centring her own struggles to deflect from her own bad behaviour.

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The effect on the adult child is often a chronic state of hypervigilance, a constant, exhausting analysis of the mother’s mood shifts, which frequently leads to complex post-traumatic stress, low self-worth and a fundamental inability to trust their own intuition.

The psychological cost of such entitlement is what Dr Karyl McBride, a leading expert on maternal narcissism, describes as the legacy of distorted love that teaches the child that their value is conditional upon their compliance.

Over time, this erodes their executive function as their mental energy is diverted toward managing the mother’s volatility rather than their own personal growth.

The adult child may struggle with fawning responses in other relationships, constantly overextending themselves to avoid perceived conflict, effectively recreating the toxic maternal dynamic in their professional and romantic lives.

Addressing such a situation requires a shift from seeking the mother’s approval to establishing what is called differentiated selfhood.

The first step is accepting that your parent may never possess the capacity for empathy or self-reflection.

Reacting to that toxic behaviour should involve a technique where the individual becomes as uninteresting and non-responsive as possible to the mother’s provocations, thereby starving the entitlement of the emotional ‘’supply’’ it craves.

Establishing firm, non-negotiable boundaries is also essential. Difficult as it might be, it means limiting contact or explicitly stating that certain topics are off-limits.

But ultimately, proper healing involves reparenting yourself, preferably with the help of a trauma-informed professional, to dismantle the internalised voice of the entitled mother and replace it with a narrative of self-compassion and autonomy.