If You Had Controlling Parents
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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:
You aren’t responsible for what your parents did to you, they are.
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?
Control and trust are diametrically opposed and inextricably linked. We control to the extent that we mistrust the world. When we trust the world, we can feel safe enough to let go of much of our need to control. Controlling parents, by and large, do not trust. Parental overcontrol is nearly always a generations-old cycle, in place well before you came along. Most controlling parents, in fact, were themselves tremendously misused as children or were traumatized by family deaths, crises, or abuse. If they never got help for their hurts, they may feel alone in an untrustworthy world, and be desperately trying to control life rather than risk being savaged again.
I feel sad for such controlling parents’ deep hurt. Yet parents who ignore or hide their wounds may spend their lives running from the ghosts of the past. In the process, their children pay a tremendous price.
Unlike your parents, you have a choice. You can heal your wounds rather than ignore or hide from them. You can transcend the cycle of control rather than perpetuate it.
The Human Face of Unhealthy Control
As part of researching this book I conducted comprehensive interviews with forty adults ages twenty-three to fifty-eight who grew up controlled. Their experiences illustrate many of the points in this book, weaving a rich tapestry of sadness and hurt, wisdom and hope. You may discover that you have commonalities with many of these people’s early experiences as well as with the problems they inherited from unhealthy parental control. Participants ranged from:
An Arkansas preacher’s daughter to the California daughter of a Holocaust survivor
The daughter of second-generation working-class Italian immigrants to the adopted son of wealthy New England socialites
The son of Middle Americans whose ancestors fought in the American Revolution to the daughter of Chinese immigrants who barely escaped with their lives in the 1949 Communist revolution
The oldest daughter of seven children from an Irish-Catholic family to the only daughter of an African-American single mother
The gay son of a military officer father and fundamentalist Christian mother to the son of a Latin American father and a sadistic, abusive mother
The daughter whose mother barely survived her childhood in a World War II Japanese concentration camp to the daughter of a schizophrenic mother who could barely negotiate daily life.
Despite their different backgrounds, these people showed striking similarities in how they were controlled and how it affected them. You may discover emotional kinships with some of these people—and you may find that reading about their efforts to heal their difficult childhoods will validate the work you are doing to heal.
There Is Much You Can Do
If your parents were controlling, you saw control modeled as a strategy for living—but it’s not the only one. The more aware you are of how your parents controlled and of the fallout of their early control in your present life, the more informed the choices you’re likely to make about controlling your children, your mate, and yourself.
Despite an uptight upbringing, you can reclaim the most vital parts of your life, emotions, and dreams that may have withered in childhood.
Despite a childhood in which you had little say, you can discover a new richness to your voice in the world.
Despite growing up with unhealthy family ties, you can fashion more nourishing relationships with those close to you.
Despite your own painful childhood, you can significantly increase the chances that your children will not suffer the pains you suffered.
Despite a troubled past with your parents, you can develop a more realistic and satisfying relationship with them as they near the end of their lives, and with their
memories after they are gone.
It is possible to be yourself even if you had to be always “on” for your parents. It’s possible to use your feelings for your betterment, not against it. No matter what your age or how restrictive your upbringing, it’s possible to fulfill your personal promise and find the contentment that was derailed by parents who may not have known better or couldn’t have done things any differently.
All these things are possible by achieving greater individuation from a controlling upbringing—and it begins with emotionally separating from the hurtful and problematic habits of your parents and family system. Individuation also includes setting right what was knocked out of balance by overcontrol and redefining yourself and your life in your own terms.
By individuating you can better know the hero or heroine in you: the biggest and strongest parts of you that helped you survive when you were smallest and weakest. Precisely because your parents were so controlling, you had to develop many strengths to survive—resourcefulness, intuition, perseverance, and sensitivity, for example. Luckily, the skills you taught yourself in navigating a difficult childhood are yours to keep and can be quite useful in adulthood. You deserve to feel independent and whole, to have healthy boundaries, to have free speech and open emotional expression. You deserve to heal.
How This Book Is Organized
This book is organized in three parts:
Part One, “Naming the Problem,” will help you see the full extent of parental control by describing in detail eight styles of controlling parents. You’ll be able to determine which of these types—or combination of types—fits one or both of your parents. When you know your parents’ styles, you can better recognize the continuing effects of their early control on you.
Part Two, “Understanding the Problem,” will help you reckon with control’s lingering costs. You’ll begin to understand the complex, powerful process of overcontrol and find answers to major quandaries such as, “How did my parents do it?” and “Why do I feel the way I do?” You’ll gain clarity on your feelings as a child and discover connections between those feelings and your present-day problems. By exploring the aspects of yourself you had to disown or distort in childhood, you’ll pave the way for reclaiming your total self. And, you’ll get a clear sense of why your parents acted as they did, which will hasten your healing.
Part Three, “Solving the Problem,” helps you let go of a painful childhood and the lasting effects of unhealthy control so that you can emotionally leave home. We’ll explore a broad array of paths to healing, along with exercises you may find helpful. This section will help you design your own healing process, at your own speed, in a way that suits you best.
PART ONE
Naming the Problem
1
HEALTHIER PARENTING VERSUS CONTROLLING PARENTING
If you bungle raising your children, nothing else matters much in life.
—JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS
Healthy parenting is simple: Raise children well and set them free. Being a healthy child is also simple: Play, learn, grow up, and leave home.
But while both job descriptions are simple, neither is easy. The primary difference between healthier families and controlling families is that the parents in healthier families allow their children to grow up as persons in their own right.
Controlling parents fail to protect and nurture, robbing their children of playtime by using harsh or erratic discipline. They model unhealthy habits and hamstring their sons’ and daughters’ efforts to individuate. That’s why people who grow up controlled sometimes struggle to emotionally leave home well into their thirties, forties, or fifties.
The following chart shows eight major differences between healthier families and controlling families. You might notice which side of the chart most closely parallels your childhood experience.
Characteristics of Healthier Vs. Controlling Families
Healthier Families
1. Nurturing Love
• Parental love is relatively constant
• Children get affection, attention, and nurturing touch
• Children are told they are wanted and loved
Controlling Families
1. Conditional Love
• Parental love is given as a reward but withdrawn as punishment
• Parents feel their children “owe” them
• Children have to “earn” parental love
Healthier Families
2. Respect
• Children are seen and valued for who they are
• Children’s choices are accepted
Controlling Families
2. Disrespect
• Children are treated as parental property
• Parents use children to satisfy parental needs
Healthier Families
3. Open Communication
• Expressing honest thought is valued more than saying
something a certain way
• Questioning and dissent are allowed
• Problems are acknowledged and addressed
Controlling Families
3. Stifled Speech
• Communication is hampered by rules like “Don’t ask why” and
“Don’t say no”
• Questioning and dissent are discouraged
• Problems are ignored or denied
Healthier Families
4. Emotional Freedom
• It’s okay to feel sadness, fear, anger and joy
• Feelings are accepted as natural
Controlling Families
4. Emotional Intolerance
• Strong emotions are discouraged or blocked
• Feelings are considered dangerous
Healthier Families
5. Encouragement
• Children’s potentials are encouraged
• Children are praised when they succeed and given compassion
when they fail
Controlling Families
5. Ridicule
• Children feel on trial
• Children are criticized more than praised
Healthier Families
6. Consistent Parenting
• Parents set appropriate, consistent limits
• Parents see their role as guides
• Parents allow children reasonable control over their own bodies
and activities
Controlling Families
6. Dogmatic or Chaotic Parenting
• Discipline is often harsh and inflexible
• Parents see their role as bosses
• Parents accord children little privacy
Healthier Families
7. Encouragement of an Inner Life
• Children learn compassion for themselves
• Parents communicate their values but allow children to develop
their own values
• Learning, humor, growth and play are present
Controlling Families
7. Denial of an Inner Life
• Children don’t learn compassion for themselves
• Being right is more important than learning or being curious
• Family atmosphere feels stilted or chaotic
Healthier Families
8. Social Connections
• Connections with others are fostered
• Parents pass on a broader vision of responsibility to others
and to society
Controlling Families
8. Social Dysfunction
• Few genuine connections exist with outsiders
• Children are told “Everyone’s out to get you”
• Relationships are driven by approval-seeking
The Consequences of Unhealthy Parenting
Healthier parents try, often intuitively and within whatever limits they face, to provide nurturing love, respect, communication, emotional freedom, consistency, encouragement of an inner life, and social connections. By and large they succeed—not all t
he time, perhaps not even most of the time, but often enough to compensate for normal parental mistakes and difficulties.
Overcontrol, in contrast, throws young lives out of balance: Conditional love, disrespect, stifled speech, emotional intolerance, ridicule, dogmatic parenting, denial of an inner life, and social dysfunction take a cumulative toll.
Controlling families are particularly difficult for sensitive children, who experience emotional blows and limits on their freedom especially acutely. Sensitive children also tend to blame themselves for family problems.
The more your experience mirrored the “Controlling Families” side of the preceding chart, the greater your risk of inheriting distorted views. You might note whether one or more of the following five distortions causes problems in your present life:
1. Distortions of Power and Size
If one or both parents demanded absolute control and dependence or treated you in ways that made you feel small, you may have inherited distortions of power and size. You may automatically view yourself as less capable than others or, alternatively, as so big and powerful that you have to protect others from yourself. You may feel you lack permission to do things that are within your perfect right. You may feel intimidated or, conversely, contemptuous in the presence of authority figures. Distortions of power and size can handicap you at work, as a parent, and in your other intimate relationships.
2. Distortions of Feeling and Wanting
If emotions were banned, inflated, or feared, and your desires shamed or thwarted, you may have inherited distortions of feeling and wanting. You may regard emotions such as anger, fear, sadness—even joy—as life-threatening and overreact to them. You may be unable to tolerate a loved one’s strong feelings. You may deprive yourself of legitimate yearnings or live with unrealistic hopes. You may unconsciously expect life to be painful and, as a result, you may automatically become uncomfortable whenever good things happen. Distortions of feeling can lead you to fear or ignore your emotions and misinterpret the emotions of others. Distortions of wanting can leave you feeling deprived.