If You Had Controlling Parents (10 page)

Threats of violence force children to watch their step and feel under scrutiny even if a parent isn't around. While the sting or bruise from a blow eventually fades, the threat of violence does not. This can translate into a generalized fear that the world is not safe.

The most profound violence of abuse is the underlying message it sends to children:

The person who is supposed to protect me hurts me, and there's nothing I can do about it
.

Self-Assessment

My parent(s):

• Physically or sexually hurt or bullied me
  
• Insulted me or called me horrible names
  
• Severely overreacted to dissent or disobedience
  
• Lost control at the drop of a hat
  
• Seemed oblivious to or showed little remorse over the effects of their abuse
  

Next: Childlike Parenting

Abusing parents like Jorge's mom or Patty's dad often marry someone who does little to stop the abuse. Like alcoholics who find a codependent to subtly allow them to abuse liquor, Abusing parents, in part, are able to continue mistreatment because their partners allow it. Parents who stand idly by while their children are hurt characterize the final type of controlling parents, Childlike parents. Childlike parents seem fragile, mere shadows of human beings.

Key Characteristics of Childlike Parents:

• Control through inducing guilt in others
  
• Seem incapable of being adults or parents
  
• Receive caretaking instead of provide it
  
• Often seek Perfectionistic, Cultlike, Using, or Abusing spouses
  

Potential Consequences of a Childlike Upbringing:

• Few opportunities to be a carefree child
  
• A tendency to put others first
  
• Difficulty in expressing anger or resentment
  

When she was six, Evelyn, now a forty-six-year-old nurse, stood in line with her brother, mom, and dad at Disneyland's elevated Skyway ride. She could feel her mother's long skirt billowing against her back in the hot summer breeze as they neared the front of the line. When her father hopped in the first available car, Evelyn's mother shoved her in with him. The door clanged shut as Evelyn watched her mother and brother scramble into the next car. For the entire ride, Evelyn's father, who loved to taunt and scare others, swung the caged car back and forth, ignoring
Evelyn's tears and shrieks. Years later, she was able to understand what had happened: Her mother had sacrificed Evelyn because her mother was afraid to be in the cage with him
.

“
Life really terrified my mother,” Evelyn recalls. Her mother, who took Valium for years, would walk the three miles to town rather than take a bus because she didn't know what to say if the bus driver said “Good morning.” Once, when eight-year-old Evelyn wanted to play with her brother rather than accompany her mother to the store, her mother wept for three days
.

Evelyn's mother excused her father's abuse of Evelyn by saying, “He can't help it. He grew up with a drunk for a dad.” At ten, Evelyn wanted to write to Ann Landers for advice on how to cope with her father. Since her father read all mail coming to and going from the house, Evelyn asked her mother's help in mailing the letter. Her mother refused, telling her daughter to “pray to God.”

When Evelyn reached puberty, her father would come up and lift her blouse and make her stand in the living room while he ridiculed her “small tits.” When this happened, Evelyn's mother took two actions
.

First, she closed the living room blinds so the neighbors would not see
.

Then she left the room
.

 

Unfortunately, Evelyn's mother, Loretta, was not qualified to protect and nurture her children. From her daughter's description, it appears that Loretta was depressed and anxious for most of her life. In part, this may have resulted from Loretta's imprisonment from ages two to four in a World War II Japanese concentration camp, days away from death from malnutrition when she was finally freed. It's sad, because Loretta's moods and phobias could probably be successfully treated today with a combination of psychotherapy and medication.

Because Childlike parents are scared and needy, they often play a childlike role, leaving the caretaking to their children, a role reversal that robs children of their youth. While Childlike parents may not seem controlling, they play a crucial role in unhealthy family dynamics. For example, they often gravitate to a strong-willed spouse—frequently a Cultlike, Perfectionistic, Using, or Abusing personality. Drawn to the apparent strength and certainty of the stronger spouse, they feel secure with someone who will run interference, be certain when they are unsure, and act big when they feel small.

Like Evelyn, children of marriages between Abusing and Childlike parents are deeply deprived, assuming the blame for their abuse since they get no positive messages from either parent.

Rather than intervening when a spouse victimizes a daughter or son, Childlike parents forfeit their children to the spouse's control. On top of it all, many such parents demand sympathy for their own problems. “I'm sick,” they say. “I'm afraid.” “I'm lonely.” “I'm depressed.”

Evelyn's caretaking of her mother may have influenced her choice of nursing as a career. “I certainly had lots of experience taking care of others,” she declared. While we can have compassion for Evelyn's mother's depression and fears, we must regret the price Evelyn paid for her mom's limitations. For much of her life, Evelyn has tended to put others' needs before her own and has struggled with career burnout and one-sided relationships.

Terrified and Anxious

Molly is a thirty-three-year-old vegetable grower who recalls a recent visit during which her mother rocked back and forth with intense anxiety. “I know there's something I'm supposed to be doing,” her mother, Lucy, insisted. “I can't just sit here.” Lucy was terrified of her Cultlike, Abusing husband and lived like a slave. He monitored Lucy's phone calls, which she could only make and receive during specified hours. He dictated her errands and declared exactly how long it would take her to do them. He checked on her by phone several times a day
.

Molly recalls seeing stark terror on her mother's face if a spot of grease splattered on the stove in the middle of cooking. If her father saw one grease spot, he'd launch into a tirade
.

When she was in her twenties, Molly brought her mother the book
Men Who Hate Women & the Women Who Love Them,
hoping her mother would get some insight into her marital relationship. Lucy's response was to beg Molly to take the book away before her husband found it
.

 

After Molly was born, Lucy suffered severe postpartum depression, sobbing constantly. She was also so sensitive that if Molly or her siblings said they didn't like her cooking, she'd burst into tears. Since Lucy couldn't deal with disciplining Molly or her brother, and her husband relished inflicting punishment, she turned the disciplining over to him.

Terrified of strong emotions, especially anger, sadness, fear, and joy, Lucy discouraged Molly from expressing feelings loudly or strongly. Molly never knew whether it was because strong emotions scared her
or because Lucy was afraid they would trigger Molly's father's explosive temper. Perhaps both.

Lucy carried her self-effacing ways to her deathbed—succumbing alone in a hospital at age seventy-two after sending Molly away because she didn't “want to be a burden” to her daughter.

Fail to Protect Their Children

By no means is every husband or wife of an abusive parent a Childlike parent. Healthier parents stand up to an abusive spouse and succeed in deflecting the maltreatment, often at their own expense when the abuser turns on them. Others take their children and leave. Some spouses of abusers, while feeling powerless to leave or stop the abuse, at least tell the children that the abuse is wrong. It can make a world of difference to abused children if a parent tells them that they are not bad, that they do not deserve to be hurt, and that the abusive parent is the one with the problems.

Childlike parents, by contrast, rarely stand up to the abuser or try to undo it. Some even agree with the spouse's abusive punishment but don't want to have to deliver it themselves. Others make excuses for the abusive spouse. Still others simply opt out, vanishing in spirit or body, leaving their children alone.

Coming to grips with the culpability of a Childlike parent can be difficult because it's often easier to feel anger toward the more dominant parent. When grown children take stock of their upbringing by a Childlike parent, they may feel angry that they weren't protected but express guilt because of their anger. Childlike parents seem so weak, after all; how can you be angry with them? It is indeed tough balancing compassion for your parents' limitations with the recognition that you suffered because of their limitations.

 

Jack, a thirty-five-year-old salesman, can still feel the flush on his face from his father's insults and his sore bottom from his beatings. Jack's dad was an Abusing, Perfectionistic parent who seemed to delight in tormenting his son. But when the boy would seek comfort from his mother, she would invariably tell him, “Your father's feeling a lot of pressure. He's under stress and he wants the best for you. He's just trying to make you understand
.”

 

Remembers Jack, “I think I knew that my mother could never stand up to him. In a curious way, I didn't want her to. If she stood up
to him, he'd win, and I would risk losing the only supportive person I had.” Jack, like many children of Childlike parents, ended up protecting his protector.

In abusive families, it can be frightening to speak the truth—that the abuse is wrong. In order to avoid a confrontation, Childlike parents make excuses for their Abusing spouses and the children accept the excuses so they can maintain some kind of lifeline—even an inadequate one.

Self-Assessment

My parent(s):

• Lived “under the thumb” of a mate or others
  
• Rarely stood up for themselves or me
  
• Feared strong emotions or new situations
  
• Needed me to take care of them
  
• Engendered guilt or pity in those around them
  

I
n reading about the eight styles of controlling parenting and reviewing your self-assessments, you may have found that one or both of your parents have characteristics of several of the eight styles. Most controlling parents are a combination of styles, usually with one, two, or three styles predominating. To review:

Certain style combinations tend to cluster. Parents who are predominantly:

Splintering of Self

Unhealthy control can fracture a child's psyche, just as too much force can fracture bones, because it causes a splintering of self—chasing away some parts, jailing others, and inflating still others. If you grew up controlled, you didn't have any way to stop the hurts and losses. That these hurts and losses came at the hands of those who said they loved you only tends to deepen your grief.

In the interviews with those who grew up controlled, I listened to so much hurt. I remember Robin, whose solace from her Using, Depriving mother came from pretending that a floor mop was a twin sister. I remember sitting with Jorge as he recalled, through tears, being locked in a small room by his Abusing, Chaotic mother, with only a little barred window through which he could see other children playing outside. I remember Roberta, toilet trained at ten months and denied naps as a child by her Depriving mother, describing how each night in bed she hummed Perry Como tunes, struggling to stay awake for her father's good-night kiss when he came home from work.

Growing up controlled brings so much trauma…

“I had this holocaust at both ends,” said Shirley, daughter of an alcoholic father and fundamentalist Cultlike mother who banned Christmas presents after realizing that “Santa” had the same letters as “Satan.” “My father was always yelling, ‘The economy is failing and you're gonna die. Work, work, work!' And my mother with her hellfire and damnation.”

So much sadness…

Rosemary, the daughter of the severely Abusing, Using mother,
who has battled obesity most of her life, remarked, “People say to me, ‘Rosemary, why do you have such sad eyes?' and I want to say, ‘Have you ever met my mother?'”

So much loneliness…

“If I'd gotten a few hugs and a few moments of conversation in my childhood, it might have changed a few things,” said David, the son of the Depriving parents who forbade his pursuing his great love of photography. “Eventually, I built a wall around myself and shut down.”

So much weariness…

“In my family, I felt like an alien,” recalled Sharon, the daughter of the Smothering Holocaust-survivor father. “I felt like I got beaten down again and again. I eventually got the fight beaten out of me.”

So much deprivation…

“I feel cheated out of a basic intimacy I craved but couldn't ask for,” said the daughter of a Depriving mother.

So much time feeling unloved…

“I was convinced that my mother didn't love me. I always felt I was some sort of accident or mistake,” recalled Shari, the gifted daughter whose Depriving, Abusing mother never came to her academic award ceremonies.

“I felt as if I was taking up their time. I felt I shouldn't have been born,” said Samantha, whose Depriving, Abusing mother had banished her daughter's first bouquet of roses to the garage.

“My mother's attitude was, ‘If you try hard, someday you will be worthy—perhaps—of my love,'” remembered Tina, whose Smothering mother had made her wear a sign reading, “Please Do Not Feed Me.”

“My father seemed to love me only when I did what he wanted,” mused Herb, the son of a Cultlike, Perfectionistic corporate-climber father.

So many What-ifs and If-onlys…

“Would I be so timid today if my father had seen a doctor and gotten a tranquilizer?” wondered the daughter of a tense, Perfectionistic father.

The daughter of a Chaotic mother mused, “I wish Mom could have loved me and set me free instead of her weird back-and-forth love.”

One man raised in a Chaotic home said, “I wish someone had told me, ‘You are going to grow up, make it through this, and you are going to be okay.'”

Growing up controlled means a million moments of hurt. Since children who grow up controlled are…

1. Not given many essentials for a healthy development
   
2. Deprived of resources for healthy coping
   
3. Confronted with forces as powerful as “brainwashing”
   

…it is to your credit that, if you grew up controlled, you came through your childhood as intact as you are.

The Price Parents Pay

While control has clear motivations and rewards for parents, they, too, pay a price:

• Smothering parents mask their aloneness by stressing conformity, yet live one step from emotional annihilation.
  
• Depriving parents gain power over others by loving conditionally, yet subsist on a coldness of spirit.
  
• Perfectionistic parents hide their flaws by coveting superiority, yet can never cease their eagle-eyed search for flaws or for anyone who may be superior to them.
  
• Cultlike parents avoid doubt and invalidation by proclaiming their certainty, yet cannot escape their gnawing fears that they will be proven wrong.
  
• Chaotic parents keep others off balance by being volatile, yet live without a safe emotional harbor.
  
• Using parents try to escape their emptiness by feeding off others, yet never fill their emotional void no matter how much they take from others.
  
• Abusing parents temporarily discharge the emotions they cannot handle by attacking others, yet sit atop a barely contained volcano of rage and guilt.
  
• Childlike parents escape others' demands by lowering others' expectations of them, yet feel tiny in a world of giants.
  

How to Accelerate Your Healing

For many children of controlling parents, a valuable step in healing is to talk about what happened to you. By telling your story, you air long-suppressed feelings and give meaning to experiences that may have left you feeling meaningless.

The stories in the preceding chapters that struck a chord in you can serve as starting points in helping you discuss your own experiences. After a childhood of not being able to speak up, it's important to find safe environments in which to talk about what happened. By doing this, you give yourself what your childhood lacked: the chance to talk without interruption, the experience of being seen and heard as you really are, and the opportunity to feel validated. Here are some possible ways in which to tell your story:

1. With a trusted friend or partner, find an hour or so when you can comfortably talk. Ask your friend to just listen. Tell them that you don't need them to solve a problem for you; rather, you'd just like to get something off your chest. Tell them to save any comments until you've finished talking. Start off by answering the question: “What makes me say I grew up controlled?”
   
2. Write down your experience of growing up or record it on audio-or videotape. Then read or listen to it without judgment and with compassion.
   
3. Find a therapist or counselor you trust and tell them you'd like to talk about your childhood.
   

Resources for Naming the Problem

Forward, Susan, with Craig Buck.
Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
. New York: Bantam Books, 1989.

Golomb, Elan.
Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in Their Struggle for Self
. New York: William Morrow, 1992.

Love, Patricia.
Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to Do When a Parent's Love Rules Your Life
. New York: Bantam Books, 1991.

Miller, Alice.
The Drama of the Gifted Child
, rev. ed. New York: Basic Books, 1994.

Shengold, Leonard.
Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation
. New York: Fawcett, 1989.

Next: Part Two—Understanding the Problem

The first part of this book, “Naming the Problem,” described the many forms of unhealthy parental control. Part Two, “Understanding the Problem,” can help you break the cycle of overcontrol by understanding exactly how it works and why it can have lasting consequences. Part Two will also explore the connections between childhood control and problems in adulthood. Making these connections can allow you to break the “trance” inherited from growing up controlled.