If You Had Controlling Parents (2 page)

DID YOU GROW UP WITH UNHEALTHY CONTROL?

I
f your parents controlled you in unhealthy ways, they may have unwittingly planted land mines in your psyche. As a result, you may tiptoe through life expecting buried danger, not treasure, in your path. You may wait…and wait…for permission to love, succeed, and feel content. Permission you're not sure how to get. Permission you may have difficulty granting yourself.

Well, you are not alone. An estimated one in thirteen adults in the United States has grown up with unhealthy control. That's more than 15 million people. (See Notes on Research on pp. 239—240.)

Unhealthy control has lasting costs. Such an upbringing can put you at risk for depression, anxiety, poor self-image, addictions, self-defeating behaviors, and stress-related health problems. Lacking a protective sense of self, you may live with too little freedom, too little meaning, and, most of all, far too little self-love. Growing up controlled means inheriting habits and beliefs that complicate relationships, decision making, spirituality, and emotional development. As one thirty-seven-year-old teacher raised in a white-knuckle household said, “I feel like I'm missing a couple of big chunks on how to be a person.”

An unexamined upbringing may lead us unwittingly to replay old patterns with our mates so that our mates come to remind us of our parents. We may misread friends, neighbors, or coworkers who remind us of our parents. We may inadvertently use our children as vehicles to work out unfinished business with our parents. We may unintention
ally inflict suffering on ourselves and those around us as we act out old, controlling ways.

After we're grown, our controlling parents may still treat us as children. More frustratingly, we may feel as helpless as children when we're around our parents. We may struggle to get closer to—or find greater distance from—a controlling parent. We may even come to understand their motivation for controlling us, yet be at a loss about reconciling that knowledge with our lingering hurt, disappointment, or anger.

If you have problems or habits that stubbornly resist change, these may be, in fact, symptoms of unresolved issues with your parents or upbringing. For example, we may grow bored with our jobs or relationships when what we may really need is to cut the apron strings with a parent; we may push ourselves mercilessly to do more when what we really need is to slow down and heal old wounds; or we may overeat when what we may really need is to attend to frustrations inherited from childhood. By looking deeper, we can solve these problems at the source so that they don't merely crop up a few months later in a different form.

This book can help you or someone you love to recognize and disarm the emotional land mines that linger from unhealthy family control. I'm here to tell you that many adults who grew up controlled have worked successfully to create happier adulthoods. You'll meet some of them shortly and may find them not all that different from you.

Look at your personality like a puzzle. This book can help you figure out how much of the puzzle was assembled for you by your parents and how many pieces were forced together, whether they fit or not.

How Do You Know?

How do you know if you grew up controlled? Many adults raised with unhealthy control have only a vague sense of it. Others remember excess control but can't explain how it worked. Without something tangible to point to, many who grow up in controlling families come to believe unhealthy control to be normal.

Said a forty-six-year-old designer, “I don't know how to explain it, but my mother had this powerful presence and control. To this day I don't understand how she held so much influence over me or how I took on so many of her values despite my best efforts not to.”

Overcontrol takes many forms. The most obvious is authoritarianism, but unhealthy control also occurs in a wide variety of families that are anything but strict. The common factor is this:

 

Controlling families are organized to please, protect, and serve one or both parents, not to foster optimal growth or self-expression among family members
.

 

This book is for you if you or someone you care about came from a family that could be described as one or more of the following:

• Perfectionistic
  
• Overprotective
  
• Dictatorial
  
• Confusing
  
• Strict
  
• Belittling
  
• Authoritarian
  
• Manipulative
  
• Harsh
  
• Smothering
  
• Reserved
  
• Overbearing
  
• Unyielding
  
• Tense
  
• Irritable
  
• Stifling
  
• Unemotional
  
• Pushy
  

Overcontrol can just as easily exist in a “model” family as in a family having a climate of deception and chaos. Too much control thrives when family members cling to a myth that everything is perfect when
it's not. Excessive control can exist when a parent demands too much adulation or insists on iron-clad dos and don'ts. The parent who is too aloof exerts control through deprivation. The parent who is an emotional loose cannon dominates through unpredictability. Overcontrol is fostered by parents who emotionally smother other family members, bully with verbal abuse or physical or sexual violence, or who are too self-absorbed to see their children's needs.

This test will help you measure the prevalence of control in your childhood and identify whether you may be facing adult-life problems because of it. Check all that apply:

GROWING UP, did you often feel
…

• Forbidden to question or disagree with a parent?
  
• Pressured by excessive expectations or unattainable standards?
  
• Tense when one or both of your parents were around?
  
• Confused by parental mixed messages or unclear rules?
  
• Criticized more than you were encouraged or praised?
  
• Afraid to express anger, fear, or sadness around a parent?
  
• Intimidated or belittled by a parent?
  
• Manipulated into doing things you didn't want to?
  
• Sad, anxious, hurt, deprived, or angry?
  
• That physical and emotional affection were scarce in your family?
  
• That pleasing your parents was rewarded more than being yourself?
  

__of 11 checked

In RETROSPECT, did either or both of your parents often
…

• Try to dictate your thoughts, speech, or morals?
  
• Overscrutinize your eating, sleep, dress, or personal grooming habits?
  
• Interfere with your choices of school, career, friends, or lovers?
  
• Violate your privacy?
  
• Threaten to disown you for opposing their wishes?
  
• Withdraw love or affection when you displeased them?
  
• Use words like “lazy,” “stupid,” “ugly,” “selfish,” or “crazy” to describe you?
  
• Physically or sexually abuse you and/or allow others to do so?
  
• Need to be the center of attention or try to dominate most situations?
  
• View the world in right-or-wrong, black-and-white terms?
  
• Treat emotions as things to be changed, avoided, or ignored?
  
• Seem perfectionistic, stoic, or driven?
  
• Seem unwilling to admit they were wrong?
  
• Seem obsessed with cleanliness, order, details, rules, or schedules?
  
• Seem hypersensitive to criticism?
  
• Seem unaware of the pain they caused you and others?
  

__of 16 checked

Did either of your parents
…

• Experience major trauma in their childhood?
  
• Have a family history of physical or sexual abuse, mental illness, or substance abuse?
  
• Feel overcontrolled by their parents?
  

__of 3 checked

As an ADULT, have you often felt
…

• Perfectionistic, driven, or rarely satisfied?
  
• Like you are under scrutiny even when no one else is around?
  
• Intimidated or easily angered around controlling people?
  
• Terrified of being overly dependent in relationships?
  
• Strong reservations about having children because of how you were raised?
  
• Melancholy, empty, or deprived?
  
• Like few people know the real you?
  
• Afraid of strong feelings or losing control?
  
• That you missed out on large parts of normal childhood experiences?
  
• Extrasensitive to criticism?
  
• Confused about what your feelings are or should be?
  
• Overly judgmental of others?
  

__of 12 checked

In your ADULT LIFE, have you often
…

• Worried or ruminated over confrontations with others?
  
• Found it hard to make decisions?
  
• Lost yourself in relationships by putting another's needs first?
  
• Had trouble finding a spiritual belief that feels right?
  
• Found it difficult to relax, laugh, or be spontaneous?
  
• Had difficulty with sex, touch, or intimacy?
  
• Had trouble accepting compliments?
  
• Had an eating disorder or addictive behavior?
  
• Suffered from stress-related illnesses, “burnout,” or chronic pain?
  
• Undermined yourself in work or relationships?
  
• Assumed others have the confidence you lack?
  
• Tested the love of those close to you?
  
• Been abusive, controlling, or disrespectful to friends or a mate?
  
• Expected that others will try to hurt or take advantage of you?
  

__of 14 checked

As an ADULT, do you often feel
…

• That it has taken a long time to emotionally separate from one or both of your parents?
  
• That you visit or talk to a parent more out of obligation than choice?
  
• That one or both of your parents don't know you as you really are?
  
• That one or both of your parents romanticize your childhood to downplay problems?
  
• That you cannot fully please your parents?
  
• That your parents just don't get it about their impact on you?
  
• Tense when you think about a parent coming to visit?
  
• Horrified when you notice yourself acting like one of your parents?
  
• A desire to temporarily reduce or sever contact with a parent?
  

__of 9 checked

Total Questions: 65

Total Number Checked:__

If you answered positively to twenty-two or more questions (more than one third the total), you most likely came from a controlling family. Even people from relatively healthy families are going to have some yeses. The difference is that in controlling families, the above tendencies are present more often, to a greater degree, and with greater emotional costs.

However, if you did answer yes to many of the questions, it doesn't mean that you're “damaged goods.” It simply means that you faced—and survived—a difficult set of early circumstances that may still affect you. Recognizing this, of course, is the first big step toward healing.

Placing Responsibility

Controlled children rarely have the option of acknowledging, “Something is wrong here. I don't like the way this feels.” Because they're trained not to recognize their feelings, controlled children may
have only a vague sense of constriction or emotional numbness.

If your parents exerted unhealthy control, something
was
wrong in your family. Healing from such an upbringing often requires that you peek behind the curtain of familial loyalty to examine family rules and beliefs.

Psychoanalyst Alice Miller has written that healing from a painful childhood begins with allowing yourself to express all the feelings and opinions that arose from years of abuse and control; in effect, speaking out after so many years of not being able to.

In so doing, it's important to place responsibility where it truly belongs by acknowledging that:

1. You aren't responsible for what your parents did to you, they are.
   
2. You are responsible for what you do with your life now, your parents aren't.
   

Exploring a pattern of control that was handed down for generations in your family isn't passing the buck; it's the first step in stopping the buck. By seeing unhealthy family patterns, you can avoid passing them on—a choice your parents may have been unable or unwilling to make.

This exploration is not designed to blame or bash parents. Being a parent is tough. There is no harder or more important job. Parenting is immensely demanding physically, emotionally, financially, and mentally. No parent gets training in being a parent until she or he becomes one. There are no perfect parents. All parents make mistakes, sometimes big mistakes, and still many children grow up relatively happy, well-adjusted, and able to meet life's challenges.

I do not advocate excessively “permissive” parenting. Appropriate control and limit setting are crucial to child raising. Children test parental control with petulance, sarcasm, deception, and a host of other techniques, some conscious, most instinctive. The lack of adequate limits in permissive households can cause problems no less troubling than the harsh limits in authoritarian families. Yet this book isn't about appropriate control and limit setting, it is about households with
unhealthy control
—too much or the wrong kinds of control for too long.

For most of history, governments have been organized on a patriarchal, authoritarian model. Only recently has democracy, functioning on the consent of the governed, offered an alternative to patriarchal authoritarianism. The first year in which a majority of nations had democratic governments was 1992.

Similarly, most families historically have been based on patriarchal authoritarianism. Of course, a family is not a democracy; children are not yet adults and cannot govern. But I believe both children and parents thrive in “democratic families”—in which both children and adults have the right to speak, think, feel, and trust, free from unhealthy control. As democratic governments become the norm worldwide, how can we expect our children to grow up and live in democracies when they have known only unhealthy control, not democratic ideals?