My Mom Talks Behind My Back: 4 Reasons and How to Deal with Her

It may mean many things if your mother talks behind your back about you. 

Still, you can be absolutely sure this kind of parent’s behavior is bad and has nothing to do with you. Nothing you did can justify your mom talking behind your back. 

As a child, you have every right to make mistakes and learn from them. 

Your mother is responsible for supporting you emotionally and providing moral guidance. 

How can she guide you morally if she sets you a bad example? 

A mother should be a refuge, a shoulder to cry on, and a source of the greatest security and self-confidence for you. 

When the mother is not emotionally stable and mature, the child faces various life problems and may have many emotional difficulties. 

A child’s brain develops and matures over a long period. 

Parents often forget that children do not have the capacity of an adult to face and deal with unpleasant emotions but treat their reactions as if they come from whims and pampering.

For a mother to be a good mother, she also needs support. 

But that support cannot come from the child the mother has to take care of, but from the partner or extended family. 

Women today have the thankless task of being successful at work, financially independent, and beautiful wives and mothers. 

It is often assumed that, for some reason, it is easy for them to manage the role of parents. 

Due to imposed social expectations, women often neglect to seek help, allow anger to build up, and unknowingly lash out at children.

4 Reasons Why Your Parents Talk About You Behind Your Back

 In an ideal situation, your parents would be good friends with each other in addition to being spouses. 

Like good parents, they would talk about you with each other. And it’s perfectly normal for your mom to talk to your dad about you. 

However, if they do it in front of you, behaving as if you are not there or as if you are small and do not understand, it may be a consequence of inertia. 

Even though it seems like disrespecting your personality, and even though it is disrespecting your personality, parents are often not aware of it simply because they still see a small child in you and not an adult person who understands everything.

However, suppose your parents talk about you behind your back with other people. In that case, this also often indicates a lack of intimacy in their marriage. 

For you to understand how what they say behind your back has nothing to do with you, we will explain to you some of the most pressing reasons why parents do it.

1. Your Mother Is Lonely 

Sometimes, when a mother is in an unhappy marriage, where closeness is long lost, she may feel the need to talk about what matters to her the most, which is you, with someone. 

And when she has been feeling lonely for a very long time, she may be so overwhelmed with loneliness that she completely loses focus on what she should and should not talk with others about. 

Lonely mothers feel unheard and unseen and often use every opportunity to relieve their emotional burden. 

It is hard to raise a child when you are emotionally left on your own. 

Suppose your mother feels this way and does not find the courage to ask for help or does not even recognize she needs help. 

In that case, she is undoubtedly completely incapable of understanding that she is also hurting you. 

What to Do: 

It is not your job to save your mother, nor can you answer her needs. 

You have every right to have a warm, loving, and supportive mother, and it is not your fault if your mother cannot be the mother you need. 

It is hard, but you mustn’t take everything she says personally. 

Seek support elsewhere and acknowledge, as hard as it may be, that your mother is not there for you. 

2. Your Mother Is Immature 

It is especially traumatic for a child when he has a mother who behaves like a child. 

Instead of having a parent who takes care of and protects him, the child, in this case, has a rival with whom he has to fight for attention. 

It is not natural for a child to perceive a parent as a friend with whom he should compete. 

In this situation, the child will most likely step back and let the parent win because every child has a need to make the parent happy. 

An immature mother simply does not behave protectively toward her child. 

To her, the child is either a nuisance or a rival in life, and that is how she will talk about such a child. 

She doesn’t even feel like she’s doing something wrong. She’s often angry that she can’t play and have fun in life but has to take care of someone. 

And that someone, in this case, you, has to be absolutely obedient, silent, and undemanding so she could be satisfied. 

The biggest problem with infantile mothers is that they are unaware of their behavior.

What to Do:

Your mother will not grow up into a mature person overnight. Nothing you say can change her. 

In this kind of situation, it is essential that you protect yourself from her, seek help and support from people who love you outside your family, and subtly distance yourself from her. 

Seeking the professional support of a mental health expert will also be very beneficial. 

3. Your Mother Is Narcissistic 

Much like the infantile mother, the narcissistic mother does not have the capacity to act as a parent to her child. 

However, she does not act much better than the infantile mother. This kind of mother does not see the child as a separate person but as an extension of herself. 

As long as the child serves to complete her image of perfection, she can behave in an acceptable manner toward the child. 

A child who grows up with this kind of mother learns how to please and be around her from an early age, but as a rule, significant problems arise in puberty. 

Generally, from the moment a narcissistic mother sees that the child has no intention of playing the role she intended for him, she turns against him and does not choose any means. 

The wounds such a mother inflicts on her child are extremely painful, and it takes great strength to overcome them.

What to Do:

It is very challenging to understand who you are when you grow up with a narcissistic mother. 

Don’t let her guilt trip you, and don’t fall for her mind games. 

You have every right to feel whatever you may be feeling, and you have the right to distance yourself from her as much as you need. 

4. Mothers Who Talk Bad About Their Daughters

Mothers who talk badly about their daughters are the victims of generational trauma. 

Many times, these mothers have internalized society’s misogyny, and their badmouthing of their daughters is just a consequence of environmentally conditioned behavior. 

Sometimes they are just jealous of their daughters, who live a more free and joyous life. 

What these mothers fail to understand is that by talking badly about their daughters, they are actually informing others how bad parents they are. 

Sometimes the environment is such that it encourages mothers to talk badly about their daughters. 

It becomes a kind of social pastime – a way to connect with other mothers. 

What to Do:

If your mother never stops talking badly about you, you have every right to stop communicating with her. 

If that would be too much for you, you can at least carefully plan all your encounters, limit the amount of time you spend with her, and limit what you share with her. 

Quick Tips on How to Handle a Mother Who Talks Behind Your Back:

• Set clear boundaries. You are not obliged to share anything with her unless you want to.
• Show her that you know how she talks about you and that you disapprove of that. Don’t get into a fight; just let her know you are aware. 
• Always plan encounters with her, don’t let her catch you unguarded. 
• Limit your time with your mother. 
• Understand it is not your fault that your mother behaves in such a way. Nothing you can ever do can justify her behavior. 
• Congratulate yourself for recognizing her toxic behavior. This is the most important indicator that you won’t behave in such a way towards your children. 
• Don’t hesitate to seek a counselor. When you weren’t lucky enough to have had a great mother, you can choose to have a great counselor or a psychotherapist. There’s nothing wrong with taking care of yourself.