Karyl McBride

These incessantly disapproving voices never gave me a moment’s peace. They harangued, nagged, and demeaned me with the overall message that no matter how hard I tried, I could never succeed, could never be good enough. They created such an extreme sensitivity in me that I constantly assumed others were judging me as critically as I was judging myself.

I had treated scores of women who shared many of the same symptoms I was finally recognizing within myself: oversensitivity, indecisiveness, self-consciousness, lack of self-trust, inability to succeed in relationships, lack of confidence regardless of our accomplishments, and a general sense of insecurity.

It became clear to me that the crucial element missing in my own life and in the lives of my insecure, unfulfilled female clients was the nurturing and empathetic love that we all desperately needed—but didn’t get—from our mothers. And our mothers probably hadn’t gotten it from their mothers, either, which means that a painful legacy of distorted love was passed from generation to generation.