If You Had Controlling Parents (18 page)

Controlling Parents' Early Trauma

Here are examples of how early trauma in the lives of the controlling parents of the people I interviewed may have translated into a controlling parental style. These admittedly simplified portraits list a parent's central trauma in childhood, her or his controlling style as a parent, and offer some hypotheses for
how
that trauma may have led to controlling behavior. Obviously, much more goes into personality development than a single trauma, and each parent's style is more complex than any thumbnail sketch. Still, I include these examples in the hope that they may help you develop your own hypotheses about why your parents may have needed to control you. From doing this, you'll gain a greater understanding of their actions and also better recognize and understand your internalized parents' ongoing negative messages.

Henry: Smothering Parent

Henry's Trauma: Death of a Father

Remember Sally, whose Smothering father greeted his daughter's coming out as a lesbian by ripping the pink triangle bumper sticker off her car and asking for years afterward when she was going to find a man and get married? When Sally's father, Henry, was four, his father died in a farming accident, so the boy was raised in an all-female home by his mother, grandmother, and aunt. In adulthood, Henry became a Smothering parent who micromanaged Sally's eating and bedtime habits.

Hypotheses

1. Henry may have grown up with unrealistic notions of his power and his duty to control everything. Henry's daughter Sally speculates, “As he was the only male in the home, I suspect they told my father, in a well-meaning way, ‘You're the man of the house.' But my father somehow took it all in as, ‘I am responsible for everything.'”
   
2. Perhaps Henry thought that if he kept everything in control, he could ward off future family tragedies.
   
3. Perhaps he was afraid that he, too, might die young and wanted to do all he could for his children while he was still around.
   
4. Perhaps, given that Henry was raised by a houseful of females, he was angry with women in general and transferred that anger onto his daughter.
   
5. Perhaps he never had a chance to develop his own sexual identity, and the idea of his daughter's homosexuality intimidated him.
   
6. Perhaps Henry was simply doing what he thought was best for his children in the hope of sparing them the pain he had suffered.
   

Nathan: Perfectionistic Parent

Nathan's Trauma: A Brother's Death

Remember Will, whose Perfectionistic father rode herd on him before swim meets but rarely praised his son's victories? Will's father, Nathan, was five weeks old when his older brother died, yet Nathan was not told of it and only learned of the loss years later when a relative brought it up. In time, Nathan became a Perfectionistic parent, rarely becoming emotional about anything, yet able to talk for hours in minute detail about the technical challenges of his work as an engineer. He raised his children to always be in control of their feelings.

Hypotheses

1. Even when a child is not directly aware of a family member's death, grief can hover, and unspoken grief becomes all the more terrifying by virtue of its mystery. Though Nathan almost certainly had no conscious memory of his brother, he was born into grief
   that was never spoken about and grew up in a harsh, controlled world of secrets. Some people who are terrified of feelings such as grief habitually intellectualize in order not to be emotionally overwhelmed.
   
2. Perhaps Nathan focused on technical details because they made sense, in contrast to an early loss and cover-up that made no sense.
   
3. Perhaps, even as a child, Nathan sensed that life was fragile and tried to be perfect so that he, too, wouldn't die.
   
4. Perhaps Nathan's early family cover-up induced in him such a suppression of emotionality that he never learned how to deal with feelings—his
   or
   others.'
   
5. Perhaps Nathan, aware that he'd lived when another being hadn't, was still trying to justify his existence by doing everything “by the book.”
   

Rita: Depriving, Perfectionistic Parent

Rita's Trauma: Emotional Abandonment

Rita was treated “like a princess” by her mother until she was five. Then a sister was born, and Rita was suddenly dropped from favor as her mother transferred her affection to the newborn. Two years later, Rita's mother did the same thing to Rita's sister when a third girl arrived. Rita grew up thinking her mother hated her, and consequently became a Depriving, Perfectionistic parent, living an emotionally barren life based on the philosophy, “You can't trust people.” Rita micromanaged her daughter's eating and dress habits and rarely praised her accomplishments. Her daughter never recalls seeing Rita cry.

Hypotheses

1. Perhaps Rita's Depriving philosophy of “You can't trust people” stems from her loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the most important person in her life—her mother. She must have grown up wondering:
   Did I really deserve the princess treatment? Did my mother really mean all the nice things she said about me? If so, why did she stop saying them
   ?
   
2. The sudden loss of her mother's affection was a striking deprivation: How could Rita hope for positive things in life when she'd
   been unable to trust something as basic as a mother's love? Like many who lose parental favor, she came to expect that life would continue to reject her.
   
3. Perhaps Rita could not provide constant love for her daughter because she had never known constant love in her own childhood.
   
4. Perhaps she was too depressed to see her daughter's needs.
   
5. Perhaps any show of independence by Rita's daughter made her feel that the girl was no longer part of her, which rekindled early feelings of abandonment.
   
6. Perhaps she could see her daughter only as an object, since she had herself felt cast off like one.
   

Larry: Chaotic Parent

Larry's Trauma: Manipulation and Disinheritance

In his teens, Larry worked three jobs to earn money for college, but his father—who insisted his son follow in his footsteps and join the military—appropriated the money and gave it to Larry's sister for college. With little financial support, Larry acceded to his father's wishes and joined the army, but he never forgave his father and refused to visit him on his deathbed. His father, in turn, left Larry a one-dollar inheritance, transferring his wealth to his grandchildren, who today are fighting over a substantial fortune. As a father, Larry had a volatile, Chaotic presence and always seemed on a vendetta against somebody. He repeatedly disowned his children when they disagreed with him.

Hypotheses

1. Larry was no doubt enraged by his father's manipulations and may have felt compelled to take his rage out on the world. Perhaps he was jealous and resentful of his children because they ended up with “his” inheritance.
   
2. Perhaps he felt so afraid of being controlled that he tried to dominate everyone around him so
   they
   couldn't control him.
   
3. Perhaps he never healthily separated from his parents, so when it came time to help his children emotionally separate, he didn't know how; disowning was his only model.
   
4. Disowning is a final act of control. Some battering spouses kill their mates because, if they cannot have their spouses under their control, they don't want anybody else to. Similarly, rather than acknowledge the reality that he had lost control of his children, perhaps Larry symbolically killed them by disowning them.
   

Helen: Using, Abusing Parent

Helen's Trauma: Assault and Banishment

Remember Ellen, who was coerced every night to tell her mother, Helen, how beautiful she was? In Europe during World War I, seven-year-old Helen was raped by a “friendly” soldier, then beaten by her parents for being raped. When she was thirteen, her father died, and she was sent to live with relatives, though her mother kept Helen's younger sister with her for reasons Helen never knew. Helen was physically abused by her relatives and never saw her mother again. In time she became a Using, Abusing parent, hypersensitive and depriving, coercing her daughter into a nightly ritual of doing Helen's hair and nails and hitting her if she made a mistake.

Hypotheses

1. As a parent, Helen seemed fixated on telling stories about the servants and household elegance of her childhood. “She glamorizes her past and idolizes her mother even though her mother abandoned her,” says her daughter Ellen. By idealizing her mother and her past, perhaps Helen skirted the horrible memories of her childhood abuse and powerlessness.
   
2. Perhaps Helen never integrated the recognition that others can be both nurturing and rejecting, so she could see her mother as only all good or all bad. Unfortunately, Helen also tended to regard her daughter as all bad and treated her accordingly.
   
3. After the trauma of rape, disfavor, and abandonment, perhaps Helen felt imperfect and unclean and, even years later, needed her nightly beauty ritual as compensation.
   
4. Perhaps after the horrible deprivations of her childhood, she simply wasn't able to nurture others.
   
5. Perhaps her abusive control of her own daughter was a way in
   which Helen expressed rage over her own abuse and abandonment.
   
6. After being treated as a child with little value, perhaps Helen could not see her daughter as having any value beyond that of serving her.
   

George and Paula: Depriving, Perfectionistic Parents

George's and Paula's Traumas: Death of Their Mothers

You may remember David, whose Depriving, Perfectionistic parents didn't let him have film for his Brownie camera because they were trying to discourage his artistic interests. As David told me about his bleak childhood, I began wondering if his parents grew up feeling deprived and joyless, which was exactly how they raised David. It turns out that both David's father, George, and mother, Paula, lost their mothers at an early age.

George lost his mother before age five, at which point George's father sent him off to boarding school. As George grew up, his distant father made him work in the family business, paying him the minimum wage. As an adult, George rarely talked about his feelings or his childhood. He developed hardening of the arteries and died at forty-six.

Paula lost her mother when she was four. Following her mother's death, her father sent Paula to live with another relative and moved away. Paula was raised by an aunt who treated her like an intruder; she didn't see her father again until she was fourteen. When the aunt's husband died in World War II, the aunt developed phobias and depression. As a parent, Paula became a “severe worrier” who obsessed about order.

Hypotheses

1. When a parent dies, children are especially vulnerable to others' treatment of them. Deprived of their mothers, George and Paula grew up virtual prisoner-orphans, George at boarding school and Paula, who felt like an intruder, with her unstable aunt. Lacking the nurturing a mother can provide, both George and Paula grew up with something warm and vital missing from their lives. As parents, though they may have done their best, they couldn't help but raise David with that same emptiness.
   
2. Perhaps they feared David might die, just as their mothers had done, and couldn't bear to attach emotionally to him.
   
3. Perhaps they obsessed about order and routine in order to distract themselves from deep depression.
   
4. Perhaps George, who was given so little by his father, didn't know how to give more to his son.
   
5. Perhaps Paula's years of watching her depressed and phobic aunt convinced her that the world was unsafe, thereby leading her to be an anxious, rigid mother.
   

Mike: Using Parent

Mike's Trauma: Injury and Abuse

Remember Magda, whose immature, Using father, Mike, bought her birthday gifts, only to play with them himself? When Mike was six, his mother gave him a yard of rope from the family store to make a jump rope. When his father discovered Mike jumping rope, he cut the rope into one-inch pieces, threw them into his son's face, then beat him. At age nine, Mike suffered brain damage from a car accident but apparently received little or no treatment or neuropsychological testing. As an adult, Mike, in charge of quality control at a large corporation, became a Using parent who frequently beat his children.

Hypotheses

1. Mike probably got emotionally stuck very young. When children become emotionally stuck, immense grief and anger get locked up inside them. Some controlling parents never move past that stage of dramatic, childlike feelings, never learning how to have perspective on their emotions. They only know how to act out their feelings as a young child would.
   
2. Themes of violence and scarcity are reflected in Mike's childhood. Since abuse and control were all he knew, perhaps all he could do as a parent was follow that model.
   
3. Perhaps Mike had a deep need for power over others. What more appropriate job for someone powerless as a child than to oversee everyone else's work as the head of quality control?
   
4. Mike saw violence modeled and may have grown up full of rage at his deprivation. Perhaps his abuse of his children served as revenge against his father.
   
5. Perhaps his head injury played a physiological role in his violent behavior and poor impulse control as an adult.
   
6. Perhaps he needed to be the center of attention as an adult because he had felt so deprived as a child.
   

Lucy: Childlike Parent

Lucy's Trauma: Ostracism

After Lucy's father skipped town when she was five, her mother, because of finances, felt she had to quickly remarry, eventually marrying a man with whom she had four children. Lucy, the oldest child, felt like the black sheep of the family because she was the only sibling with a different father. When, at thirteen, she was caught stealing a neighbor's milk, her mother sent her to reform school, claiming she'd get an education, and more food than she would get at home. Her mother also told Lucy that she was a “thief” and deserved to be sent away. Lucy in time became a frail, Childlike parent, repeatedly sacrificing her daughter Molly to her husband's wrath. Lucy lived under her husband's thumb, doing errands and making phone calls only at the times he permitted. She was also overinvolved in her children's bodily functions, giving enemas, douches, and medications.