When I began to think about mother-daughter relationships, I recalled my seventh-grade lunch table. One of my schoolmates, June, would often say, after slowly unfolding the foil wrapped around her sandwich and peering inside with what seemed like dread, "Damn, my mother gave me shit on rye again." Each time, I would think, "How could she say that about her mother? She must not love her mother. I’d never say that about my mother."

It wasn’t until I was an adult in therapy that I discovered I did have some anger toward my mother, which I’d hidden under positive feelings. I came to see that June and I were two sides of the same coin. June’s "shit on rye" comments probably covered a love for her mother. Expressing feelings at one extreme often means that opposite ones lurk beneath the surface.

Mother-child attachment patterns start getting ingrained from the day of birth. Researchers are observing more and more about how those styles get set into mind and body, particularly during the time before we can speak, because we’re genetically programmed for survival. Due to the unique female bond, mother-daughter relating includes complex patterns from those early days. (Many mother-daughter relationships are simpler, but those that lead to the issues discussed here tend to be the more complex ones.)

Excerpt from My Mother, My Mirror: Recognizing and Making the Most of Inherited Self-Images by Laura Arens Fuerstein, Ph.D.