Dear Vicki: I need help relating to my mother. When I was growing up, she never acted like my friend’s moms; we had no cookies, no cuddles, nothing warm and fuzzy. Instead, we had rules and order in a well-run household of five (she had three children). But now that I’m grown, she treats my children very differently. They get cookies and treats! Honestly, if I wasn’t so busy at my accounting firm, I’d be a little worried she is spoiling them. And where was this side of her when she was raising me? Signed: Daughter of a Changed Mom
Dear Daughter: This is an excellent question because it offers an opportunity to discuss an aspect of the Five Elements personalities called “lacking.” As we have said in this blog many times, we are born with all five elements in our personality make-up. But one of the elements takes center stage as our primary element and it’s through the filter of this element that we live and interact with the world around us. Sometimes, however, even though we are born with an element in a primary position, something in our life can make it unsafe or undesirable for us to express that elemental personality. Then as we age, life shifts enough for us that we can eventually begin expressing the suppressed element. When that happens, it can look like we’ve experienced the mother of all personality changes (pun completely intended).
I suspect that your mother might have been born a primary Earth personality and for some reason in her childhood, it became necessary for her to suppress it. Perhaps her parents were concerned that she was a clingy child (Earths usually need close relationships more than other elements) and chastised her for that behavior. Or maybe organization and process were so highly valued in her family that she worked to manifest those traits, which are attributes of a Metal personality, to win the approval so desired by her Earth. If that structured behavior was sufficiently reinforced for her, she well might have carried her Metal approach to life into her mothering since raising a family the “right” way would be very important to both a Metal and an Earth (lacking or not).
Now that you’re grown and are a mother yourself, your mother might feel it’s safe to venture into the “warm and fuzzy” Earth arena with your children because you are providing structure for them. I say this because, as an accountant, you likely have a true Metal personality style yourself and Metals believe structure is very important. In a way, your easy ability to create the well-run household she tried to create as a mother might be allowing her to explore her natural Earth personality.
Of course, this will feel very odd to you. As a Metal child, you would have naturally expected Earthy mothering from your mother because Earth and Metal relate on the Nurturing Cycle of the Five Elements model with Earth feeding Metal. You might have resented the lack of...
20 September, 2018
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