I chased my mother’s approval all my life— but I only realized after she died that these 8 things had nothing to do with me in the first place

I stood in my mother’s bedroom, long after the funeral, just looking at her perfume collection, feeling unsettled. Of course, I was unsettled; my mother died, but the house was too quiet in a way that felt unfamiliar.

No sharp sighs from the hallway. No subtle inventory of what I’d done wrong that day.

For most of my life, I believed if I could just get it right—career, weight, tone of voice, holiday plans, how often I called, how little I disagreed—something in her would soften. I thought there was a finished version of me she was waiting for.

A final draft that would earn an unguarded smile, the kind that didn’t feel measured.

It took her absence for me to see the truth sitting there all along. The moving target. The rules that kept changing depending on her mood. The gold stars that never quite stuck, no matter how carefully I lined them up.

That’s when I realized it had nothing to do with me all along. It was about her own limits—her unmet needs, her unspoken disappointments, the things she couldn’t give because she didn’t have them to give.

I felt a giant weight lifted off of me when I finally discovered these things after she was gone.

1. I thought her emotional distance was something that I caused

I spent years assuming her coolness was a reaction to me.

If she seemed withdrawn or unimpressed, I scanned my last sentence for mistakes. I replayed conversations like game tape, convinced I had missed a cue or struck the wrong tone. Her sighs felt like verdicts, and I treated them like evidence.

There’s actually research showing that children naturally personalize a parent’s emotional unavailability. When a caregiver feels distant, kids tend to assume it must be because of something they did or failed to do.

It’s a survival instinct—if the problem is me, then maybe I can fix it and restore closeness.

I didn’t know that as a child. I just knew the room felt cold sometimes, and I wanted to be the kind of daughter who could warm it up.

I thought if I smiled more, achieved more, needed less, she might lean in instead of away.

2. I thought her standards were a roadmap, not a moving target

The rules kept shifting in ways I didn’t fully understand. One year she admired ambition and independence; the next, she warned me not to be “too much” or intimidate people.

If I was decisive, I was stubborn. If I compromised, I lacked backbone.

I kept treating her expectations like clear instructions I simply hadn’t mastered yet. I believed that once I decoded them—once I found the right balance between strong and soft, successful and humble—I’d finally arrive at the version of me she could fully love out loud.

It never occurred to me that the bar itself wasn’t steady, that it moved with her moods and fears rather than my behavior. So I kept adjusting, like someone trying to hit a target that wouldn’t stay still.

3. I let her negative remarks and offhand comments define me for years

I can still see the roast chicken, the too-bright kitchen light reflecting off the plates, the way she tilted her head when she said it. I was maybe sixteen.

She laughed lightly and told a story about how “sensitive” I’d always been, stretching the word just enough to make it sound inconvenient.

Everyone else moved on. I didn’t.

That word followed me into job interviews, friendships, relationships.

Every time I felt something deeply or reacted strongly, I heard it again. I filtered my own emotions through it, questioning whether I was overreacting before anyone else could.

So, for a long time, I constantly edited myself to make sure I wasn’t too sensitive. Don’t feel too much. Don’t react too fast. Don’t be the hardest person in the room to handle.

And I followed those rules so closely that I almost forgot what my unfiltered reactions felt like.

4. I confused her being anxious with her being disappointed in me

She worried constantly. About money. About what people thought. About whether things would fall apart if we weren’t vigilant enough.

Her mind seemed to scan for worst-case scenarios the way other people checked the weather.

I absorbed that tension like humidity in the air. If she was tense after one of my decisions—moving to a new city, dating someone unexpected, taking a professional risk—I assumed I had failed her somehow.

I read her furrowed brow as proof I’d disappointed her.

What I couldn’t see then was that she would have been anxious no matter what path I chose. Stability didn’t calm her; it simply gave her something new to worry about. Her fear had its own history, shaped long before I was old enough to make decisions. It didn’t start with me, even though I wore it like it did.

5. I believed her approval meant I was “good”

Somewhere along the way, her praise became currency. A compliment meant I was safe. A proud introduction to her friends felt like oxygen.

Silence, on the other hand, felt like a bill coming due—time to work harder, try again, improve.

Psychologists who study family dynamics have found that when validation is inconsistent, it can create a kind of emotional hunger.

Intermittent approval often keeps people striving longer than steady encouragement ever would. It turns effort into a chase because the reward feels rare and unpredictable.

That was me. I kept chasing, mistaking the occasional nod for confirmation that I was finally enough. I didn’t realize the race itself was the trap, and that tying my worth to her reactions would keep me running in circles.

6. I thought explaining myself constantly would make things better

There was a phase in my thirties when I thought that if I just explained myself better, she’d finally understand me. I wrote long emails clarifying my intentions. I rehearsed conversations in the car before visiting her, crafting thoughtful responses to criticisms she hadn’t even voiced yet.

One afternoon, sitting across from her at a café, I laid everything out. My reasons. My feelings. My hopes for how we could relate differently.

I spoke carefully, trying not to sound defensive, trying to sound mature.

She nodded politely and changed the subject to the weather. I drove home furious, convinced I hadn’t argued well enough or chosen the right words.

It never crossed my mind that she wasn’t interested in debating my worth in the first place. She had already decided who I was in her story, and no closing statement from me was going to reopen the case.

7. I assumed her criticism meant I was uniquely flawed

It felt personal every time. The comment about my weight disguised as concern. The raised eyebrow at my apartment decor. The subtle comparison to someone else’s daughter who seemed to be doing everything “right.”

I internalized each remark as proof that I was falling short in ways other people weren’t. I believed I required more correction than everyone else, that I had some invisible defect she could see more clearly than I could.

I didn’t notice the pattern. She critiqued waitresses, neighbors, relatives, strangers on television.

The world, to her, was a constant evaluation. Nothing and no one escaped assessment. I just happened to be close enough to receive it directly and more frequently. Her habit of scanning for imperfections didn’t originate in me. I was simply within range of it, and I mistook proximity for proof.

8. I thought if I healed myself, I could finally fix us

For a long time, self-improvement felt like the answer. If I became more patient, more successful, less reactive, and more articulate about my feelings, maybe our dynamic would transform. I treated my own growth like a lever that could lift the entire relationship into something softer.

Family researchers have documented something tender but hard to accept: one person changing doesn’t automatically reshape an old dynamic if the other person isn’t able or willing to shift too.

Patterns tend to persist unless both sides see them and participate in altering them.

That was the part I didn’t understand until after she was gone.

I could grow. I could soften. I could see things clearly.

But I was never the sole architect of what lived between us. I was only ever responsible for my side of the bridge, even when I tried to rebuild the whole thing alone.

Editor’s Note: This piece is part of our “As Told to Bolde” series where we share personal stories from individuals we have interviewed or surveyed. For more information on how we create content, please review our Editorial Policy.