Of all the eight patterns of toxic maternal behavior I use in my work, the hardest to deal with is the unreliable mother, and it may well be the hardest to recover from. Why is that? The unreliable mother is someone who has trouble managing her own emotions; she swings from being unbearably present and intrusive, disregarding her daughter’s boundaries, to being absent, physically and emotionally withdrawn. She lacks the key thing an infant needs which is steady attunement—reading her child’s cues, responding to her consistently, using words and vocalizations, eye contact, and touch.

The problem is that the infant never knows which Mommy will show up—the one she has to push away with her hands because she’s encroaching on her or the one whose face looks like stone. Neither, by the way, is what the baby needs. This makes the baby what I call an “emotional Goldilocks,” always stuck with too hot or too cold and never just right. The baby is hardwired to seek out her mother’s attention, of course, but when she feels overwhelmed, she instinctively pushes back and looks away. According to attachment theory, these early patterns are internalized as mental models of how relationships work. The child of an unreliable mother will not only have trouble managing her own emotions but will be conflicted about whether love and connection are things she should seek because they never work out.