Loving Without Losing Me: Healing the Mother Wound

The Angry Therapist Podcast

John Kim

Mental Health, Health & Fitness

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, licensed therapist John Kim gets personal about the mother wound - how it quietly shapes our self-worth, love life, and sense of safety. From a surprising MDMA journey insight to stories about his Korean-American upbringing, John unpacks what it’s like to grow up without emotional warmth from mom - and how this absence leaves lasting imprints on both men and women. You’ll learn: Why the mother wound isn’t just a “women’s issue” How emotional absence can be just as impactful as physical absence The different ways the mother wound shows up in men (approval seeking, caretaking confusion, fear of intimacy) and women (perfectionism, chronic self-doubt, boundary struggles) How it fuels unhealthy patterns like codependency, attachment insecurity, and emotional projection Practical steps for healing: naming the wound without blame, reparenting yourself, rewriting old relationship scripts, and doing inner child work Join the conversation! Have you noticed the mother wound in your own relationships or self-image? What has helped you start to heal? Share your story with us. Like this episode? Please LIKE & FOLLOW for more unfiltered conversations about love, identity, and the work of healing yourself from the inside out. Order John's new book, Break Up. On Purpose,⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Jump into John’s new Single. On Purpose app⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow John on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find out more about John⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	All right. Most people think the mother wound only belongs to women. It doesn't. It belongs to anyone who grew up feeling unseen, unsafe, or not enough in the presence of the one person who was supposed to love them unconditionally.
0:16.6	This episode isn't about blaming your mom. It's about naming the egg that shaped you.
0:22.4	So it stopped shaping your relationships.
0:28.6	I'm John Kim, a licensed therapist who used to be a miserable fuck before going on a hero's journey and turning expired relationships into revelations.
0:37.1	I use my story to help others come
0:39.2	with you instead of at you, unrehearsed on purpose, because self-health doesn't have to be
0:45.0	polished or complicated. Just honest. On today's episode of the Angry Therapist podcast, mother wounds.
0:57.2	You know, I never thought I had any mother wounds because my mom was always there.
1:01.1	I mean, she wasn't home much, but she was ever abusive.
1:04.6	My mom and I also rarely fight and I have a great relationship with my mom.
1:10.4	That being said, very little emotional
1:13.8	milk growing up. What I mean by that is not a lot of I love you. My mom's not a touchy-feely mom.
1:20.5	She pulled from her left brain. She's in survival mode. She bought me a lot of things. And I know me
1:27.0	being the youngest, me being the baby of the family,
1:31.5	my mom would do anything for me, right?
1:33.3	But I think I have a wound.
1:35.5	I realized this when I was doing my MDMA journey and it was like four hours in.
1:42.3	And I had this like strange feeling of wanting to be held by a woman
1:49.0	not like in a sexual way I just wanted a woman's touch I just wanted a woman to hold me and specifically
1:55.1	it was this feminine energy that I was craving and after I had that that feeling, I thought to myself, my mom has never
2:02.9	helped me. And I know it sounds like an exaggeration, but it's not. My mom has never willingly
2:09.0	held me. I'm sure she has when I was a child a little bit, right? I'm sure just as a mom,
	...

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