Notes from the Counselor on Approval Seeking

Dr Muriel's Notes chapter 2


Muriel had just received her bachelors’ degree and was eager to tell her mother. She just knew that this is one thing that would make a difference.

She graduated in the afternoon in Portland, Maine from the University of Southern Maine. All eight of her children were there to witness the event.

After having and raising eight children over a period of twenty years and over twenty five years as a wife and homemaker she was on her first step toward becoming a Psychologist. Her husband, her children and her brothers were very proud of what she had accomplished.

Now it was time to tell mom. After a short celebration with her children she was off to Augusta to tell mom. It is a bit over an hour’s drive to get there and she was nervous the whole way.

On entering her mother’s house she greeted her with a gentle hug. She showed off her new diploma. Her mother hardly took notice.

Muriel was crushed. It wasn’t the first time. It was perhaps the thousandth time. Nothing Muriel did would ever get her mother’s approval. Nothing!

Not her awards from Governor Brennan, not her meetings with the First Lady, not her children’s successes, not her activities in church affairs; nothing that she did would ever be enough to please her mother.

It was like that when she was a little girl and stayed that way through her whole life. Her mother had wanted sons and only sons. A girl was not in her plans. Even as a child her mother made sure that she knew that she had been born the wrong sex.

When her father and her mother became estranged when she was a teenager, she was left with her father while her mother and the boys went to Boston to live.

Approval came to Muriel from all around her but never from the two persons she most craved it from. When she married her husband, her father disowned her, leaving a lasting impression. Not many years later her father died without them ever having gotten back on good terms.

Her mother often offered her things only to withdraw them in a teasing fashion. And Muriel always went for the bait, her mother’s approval was that important to her.