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"My Mother is Suffocating Me: When the Weight of Transgenerational Trauma Threatens a Couple's Harmony"

Agnès, 29, lives in the Paris suburbs. As a mother of three children—6-year-old twins Cynthia and Luna, and 2-year-old Benjamin—she struggles to balance her family responsibilities, her relationship, and an overwhelming connection with her mother, Corinne.

 

Exhausted, Agnès yearns to understand this relationship with her mother, but above all, she wants to break free from it. She can no longer bear the crushing weight of Corinne on her shoulders. Her mother calls her five or six times a day, often for trivial matters that drain precious time and energy. Yet Agnès, paralyzed by the fear of hurting or upsetting Corinne, never finds the courage to say stop.

 

This situation increasingly weighs on her relationship with Fabio, her partner. Unable to express her frustration to her mother, Agnès turns to Fabio, who quickly becomes the target of her anger. "You don't help me, I'm managing everything on my own, I can't take it anymore," she constantly tells him. Powerless, Fabio watches the slow degradation of their relationship. Gradually, distance settles between them, and the idea of separation begins to take root, quietly but surely. Meanwhile, Corinne, who lives alone, desperately clings to her daughter, unaware of how much she is suffocating her.

 

During our first session, Agnès arrived in tears, on the brink of despair. Torn between the love she feels for her mother and her vital need to regain balance, she recounted what seems to be a real ordeal. We worked on recreating dialogue with Fabio, setting boundaries to ease the tensions. But I sensed that the issue extended far beyond the conflict with Fabio or the mother-daughter relationship alone. I encouraged Agnès to explore her family history more deeply, and we highlighted a significant transgenerational blockage.

 

In the following session, Agnès's tears flowed freely. A heavy family story gradually emerged, revealing a lineage of broken women—women abandoned by absent husbands, forced to bear alone the weight of children, home, and daily survival.

 

After an hour and a half of intense work, an image forms on the energetic level: a carefree, lively 16-year-old girl. But soon, the sky darkens. She recounts, with palpable pain, her nightmare. Abused, raped by a 75-year-old family friend, she becomes pregnant. Overwhelmed by shame, she dares not reveal her misfortune. Deep inside her, resentment grows. She engraves a deep conviction within herself: men are liars, cheaters, always ready to take advantage of women's kindness. Rejected by her own, she desperately clings to the only thing she has left to survive in this cruel world: her daughter. Broken and forgotten, this ancestor silently carries a painful secret. Gradually, this suffering erects an invisible barrier against romantic relationships, creating a bond of dependency between mother and daughter that will be passed down from generation to generation. It is through her own despair that she implanted the belief that men have no place in the lives of the women in her lineage. This burden has been passed down from mother to daughter, from Corinne to Agnès.

 

Today, by retracing this painful story, Agnès finally understands the underlying dynamic between her and her mother. Together, we worked to ease this bond and to free Agnès and Corinne from this burden that did not belong to them. Breaking this cycle has been a true liberation for both mother and daughter. Agnès has regained control of her life, breaking free from this family pattern to reclaim her freedom. She now maintains a balanced and harmonious relationship with her mother.

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