If You Had Controlling Parents (11 page)

W
hen you solve a mystery, you destroy its power over you.

Discovering how a magician does a trick can clear up your bewilderment. Analyzing advertisements to uncover methods of persuasion is an eye-opening exercise for schoolchildren. Seeing how a con artist cheated you lets you protect yourself in the future. Former members of destructive cults often get their lives back by understanding exactly how they were recruited and indoctrinated.

The same goes for overcoming the effects of growing up in a controlling family. Understanding how and why a parent controlled you can disarm both past and ongoing controls.

Part Two will help you answer the following questions:

• How does parental control operate years later despite your best efforts to get free?
  
• How does your controlling-family background connect to problems in your life today?
  
• Why did your parents overcontrol you?
  

Parental overcontrol is a potent, pervasive process akin to brainwashing. Controlling-family brainwashing has three components:

1. Twelve kinds of unhealthy control I call the “Dirty Dozen”
   
2. Distortions of responsibility through “Truth Abuse”
   
3. Manipulations similar to the thought-reform techniques used by destructive cults
   

The result of controlling-family brainwashing: Children internalize their parents' judgments and biases in the form of harsh internalized parents—those inner critics who slow our efforts to heal and grow.

The point of exploring this “brainwashing” process is not to recite the litany of our fathers' and mothers' “sins.” Our parents had reasons for acting as they did. As we will see in Chapter 14, many controlling parents were emotionally wounded as children and received little compassion from their own parents. Because of that, controlling parents often have insufficient compassion to give themselves or their children.

Exploring controlling-family brainwashing is based on two paradoxes of healing:

1. To let go of a painful past, you may temporarily need to get closer to it.
   
2. To take greater control of your own life, you may need to revisit the days during which you had the least control.
   

Each of us has two sets of parents: our actual, physical parents and our internalized parents. An important part of healing from a controlling upbringing has to do with forging a healthier relationship with your actual parents. (Part Three, “Solving the Problem,” will show you many options for doing that.)

But an equal if not greater part of healing comes from forging a healthier relationship with your internalized parents. I use “internalized parents” as a construct to symbolize the negative self-judgments, self-image, expectations, and viewpoints we unwittingly adopted during our years of growing up controlled. Your internalized parents are psychic stowaways, roaming through your psychological and emotional hallways and creating havoc. The better you can identify your internalized parents, the more you can take charge of your present and control your future.

Just as our actual parents brainwashed us as children, our internalized parents put us in trances as adults. They whisper
You're no good
, and we believe it. They say
You can't
, and we don't try. They urge us to
Go ahead
; then, if things turn out badly, they tell us
You shouldn't have
, and we lose confidence.

You cannot change your actual parents nor can you change your past. But neither your actual parents nor your past history dictates your future. What can dictate your future is your internalized parents' judgments and expectations about yourself, others, and life in general. These judgments are nothing more than bad habits. Stubbornly rooted habits, perhaps, given the power of controlling-family brainwashing. But like any habit, they can be altered with work and time. The good news is that because they are inside you, changing your internalized parents is entirely up to you.

As we move farther into Part Two, some readers may experience that resurgence of family-loyalty feelings I mentioned earlier. Remember, by looking underneath the surface of your parents' control, you are unwrapping the myths and mysteries of your childhood. Controlling families tend to discourage such independent thinking. Even years after childhood, examining your family's overcontrol can trigger early injunctions and feelings of betrayal. For some readers, this may be the time to refer to the list of the Top 10 Guilt-Inducing Family-Loyalty Thoughts on page 10.

For other readers, exploring your family's early control may rekindle feelings of having little control over your destiny. But recognizing your internalized parents and understanding how they came to take up residence in your soul can give you the knowledge and power you didn't have as a child. Also keep in mind that your actual parents have far less hold on you today than when you were a child. There is a lot you can do to free yourself from unhealthy parental influence; much of it you have undoubtedly already done.

1. The “Dirty Dozen” Methods of Overcontrol

Parents can overcontrol their children in twelve powerful ways, some direct and obvious, others harder to spot. I call these the “Dirty Dozen” because when they are excessively applied, they run counter
to what children need for healthy development. The Dirty Dozen:

You might notice which of the Dirty Dozen listed in the following chart were prevalent in your upbringing.

The “Dirty Dozen” Methods of Unhealthy Parental Control

Some examples of the Dirty Dozen among those I interviewed:

1. Food Control

Controlling parents' styles are often reflected in how they approach food. Using parents, for example, see dinner as
their
hour. One Using father demanded that dinner be on the table at five with the TV rolled in so he could watch the news; nobody was allowed to talk. Another Using father talked incessantly about himself, his day, and who was trying to take advantage of him at work. His captive audience wasn't allowed to leave the table until he finished.

Cultlike and Perfectionistic parents often have dinner table rituals that must be followed to the letter. One woman recalls, “Every night we girls had to get food on the table on time. My father would be
shouting at us, sometimes hitting us.” By adolescence, she had developed anorexia: “I felt like a pawn on a chessboard. Refusing to eat felt like the last bit of control I had over my life.”

Smothering parents pressure their children to mimic parental tastes. One daughter remembers sobbing over her lawyer father's “litigation about what kind of breakfast cereal I was supposed to want.”

One Abusing father literally shoved unfinished food down his children's throats. Another maintained a standing rule that if his children didn't eat “enough” vegetables, they would be forced to eat twice the normal helping. “We never knew what the right amount was, so we always had to take enough to cover ourselves,” recalls his son.

2. Body Control

One Perfectionistic ex-marine father put his ten-year-old daughter on a calisthenics program of catching a football, boxing, casting, rowing, and shooting baskets—and became furious if she didn't excel.

One Abusing mother enforced a nightly ritual her son calls “the concentration camp of the dressing.” He was ordered to bring all his pants to her bedroom and lay them out on her bed so she could pick the pair he would wear the next day. Then shirts. Finally, shoes and socks. If he dawdled, she would hit him with her scissors.

One Abusing, Smothering mother cleaned her daughter's ears with a bobby pin wrapped in toilet paper, invariably poking and hurting her.

Several parents seemed fixated on giving their children enemas, holding them down as the children cried.

3. Boundary Control

One early-rising Abusing father would wake his children at five
A.M.
on Saturdays with blaring country music. If they didn't stir, he'd crash into their rooms and throw ice water in their faces.

One Cultlike, Using father removed all the locks from his children's bedrooms and the bathrooms so he could enter the rooms at will. He declared, “It's my house and I can open any doors I want.”