If You Had Controlling Parents

by Dan Neuharth

  3. Distortions of Thinking

  If truths were denied, perceptions discounted, or blame and shame heaped on you, you may have inherited distortions of thinking. You may accept overcontrol from others, thinking that it is normal. You may chronically doubt your perceptions. You may leap to conclusions based on all-or-nothing reasoning. Distortions of thinking may lead you to avoid personal responsibility or to assume too much responsibility for others’ actions. Distortions of thinking can put you at risk for misreading others and yourself.

  4. Distortions of Relating

  If closeness was dangerous, or if you were infantilized for too long, or if you were thrust into the caretaker role too soon, you may have inherited distortions of relating. You may be unable to get close to others even when you want to. You may unwisely trust others or be unable to trust at all. You may see others as threats or as saviors—not simply as people. Distortions of relating can rob you of intimacy and pleasure.

  5. Distortions of Self and Identity

  If your intuition, initiative, or needs were devalued, you may have inherited distortions of self and identity. You may underrate your abilities, undercut your potential, or underplay your strengths. You may banish parts of your personality, present a false front to others, or see yourself as an object instead of a person. Distortions of self leave your primary relationship—that with yourself—underfueled.

  But remember: Knowledge is power. By recognizing these distortions in your life, you can heal them.

  How You Responded to Overcontrol

  While you had relatively little power as a child, you were not simply passive. You were a growing, coping being who did your best to survive. Controlled children generally seek one or more of the following coping strategies:

  Complying by doing what parents want

  Rebelling by opposing parental wishes

  Distracting through clowning around or emotional outbursts

  Dissociating by numbing out, escaping into addiction, or becoming virtually invisible

  Outdoing by trying to gain parental favor or by being more perfect than their parents

  Each of these strategies has both payoffs and costs:

  Compliant children avoid some parental wrath but may forfeit autonomy.

  Rebellious children gain autonomy but may adopt a negative self-image.

  Distracting children avoid negative attention but may lose stature.

  Dissociating children escape control but may lose a sense of self.

  Outdoing children gain parental approval but may internalize unhealthy values.

  Continued into adulthood, these coping strategies carry with them both assets and liabilities. For example:

  Complying: The ability and willingness to know and meet people’s needs and wishes can be valuable assets. But do you comply with others’ demands even when it’s not in your best interests?

  Rebelling: An independent, free spirit is a rare gift. But do you automatically rebel even though you lose more than you gain?

  Distracting: Being able to lighten up a situation is a special and needed talent. But do you find yourself distracting when it would be more helpful to face a situation head-on?

  Dissociating: Being able to turn inward and shut out stress can help in concentrating and relaxing. But are there times when dissociating makes unhealthy situations worse?

  Outdoing: Self-discipline and the drive to accomplish are powerful assets. But do your efforts sometimes feel compulsive or involuntary?

  As an adult, you have choices beyond these five coping strategies. Although they helped you survive the emotional minefields of your family, they were reactive. This book will show you how to create a healthier balance of power between you and your parents, both your actual embodied parents and your internalized parents—those inner critics who shape and shame. A healthier balance of power can help you fashion proactive rather than reactive coping strategies. For example, the following new directions may bring growth:

  If you tend to comply, you may want to find more opportunities to go your own way and make independent choices.

  If you tend to rebel, you may want to strengthen your ability to more readily accept unpleasant (though not abusive or destructive) people or situations.

  If you tend to distract, you may want to practice sticking with and observing uncomfortable (though not abusive or destructive) situations.

  If you tend to dissociate, you may want to work harder to focus on the here and now.

  If you tend to outdo, you may want to find new ways to ease up and relax.

  Controlling Family Loyalties: Ties That Blind

  People find it hardest to recognize problems in their own families.

  —TIPPER GORE

  As you read this book, feelings of family loyalties may become triggered. Such feelings, however uncomfortable, are perfectly normal.

  Healing from growing up controlled can be hard work. It’s troubling to acknowledge shortcomings in your parents and yourself. It’s painful to conclude that, if not for your parents’ limitations, you might have grown up happier, with healthier relationships and a less troubled life. Guilt, anger, fear, sadness, and love make relationships with our parents among the most complicated in our lives.

  The loyalties and inhibitions installed during your preverbal years can make it hard to explore your upbringing, even years later, as an adult. Many of us grew up in black-and-white, all-or-nothing families. The result, black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking, can be a form of denial, which exists to keep hurt away, at least temporarily. When you start to explore past pains and current problems, you break that denial. In so doing, you may feel sad, mad, disloyal, exhilarated, lonely, and free, in quick succession or simultaneously.

  Separating from our parents in order to define our own identities is the chief task of adolescence. It’s no surprise that the teenage years are so tumultuous; that goes with the individuation territory. In controlling families, however, individuation rarely takes place in the teens because controlling parents tend to hold on too tightly or push too hard. Many controlled teenagers feel too loyal, confused, afraid, or wounded to make the break. The good news is that individuation in our twenties, thirties, forties, or fifties takes place on a deeper level, with more balance and greater growth, than is possible during adolescence.

  As you read on, you might notice your inner dialogue. Thoughts like “Don’t blame others” or “It’s all in the past” may actually be the internalized voices of your parents. These thoughts may feel like warnings to stop exploring, but they offer you valuable information. Observing these messages can show how voices from your past reach into your present to dictate behavior. If you occasionally feel awash in “wrong” or conflicting feelings, questions, or insights, I suggest that you’re not doing something “wrong”—you’re making progress. By exploring the paradoxes of your feelings and your relationship with your parents you are embracing more than the either-ors you grew up with. You are gaining freedom from overcontrol.

  Top 10 Guilt-Inducing Family-Loyalty Thoughts

  Several concerns commonly occur at various stages of individuating and healing among adults who grew up controlled. For readers who may feel ambivalent about revisiting their family’s control, the following ten concerns and responses may help you sort through your feelings and decide how deeply you want to explore.

  If you’re ready to plunge forward, skip this list. If at some point later on you feel bogged down in your growth and healing, that’s the time to refer back to this section.

  1. “I owe my parents respect, loyalty, and gratitude. They made a lot of sacrifices for me and I wouldn’t be here if not for them.”

  Confronting what was unhealthy in your upbringing doesn’t make you disloyal to your parents, and it doesn’t indicate that you’re downplaying their contributions. Rather, it means you’re being loyal to yourself. There’s nothing disrespectful about asking honest questions when they’re in your own best interests. If you came from a
controlling family, developing a flexible sense of family loyalties—that doesn’t diminish your sense of yourself or exist in all-or-nothing terms—can allow you to see both the good and the bad in your past and in your parents. It’s both helpful and healing to study how unhealthy loyalties may have been instilled in you and whether you are trapped by them even today.

  2. “What if exploring this makes me feel anger, pain, fear, or grief?”

  You don’t have to explore your childhood. It’s never easy, particularly if your childhood wasn’t easy. Yet it can be freeing.

  As you delve into your past, emotions can be intense because they often include leftover emotions you couldn’t fully experience as a child. If you had controlling parents, they were probably terrified of being overwhelmed by feelings. That’s a major reason for why people control. If your parents feared feelings, they probably tried to avoid, alter, or block all family members’ emotional expressions.

  Reclaiming your independence may mean connecting with anger, sadness, hurt, rage, loneliness, desolation, or anxiety. As strong as these feelings are, they will eventually pass. By examining and embracing your feelings, you strengthen emotional muscles that were underused in childhood.

  3. “It’s all in the past, so what good does it do to go over it?”

  While exploring a painful childhood can initially seem to make your life more difficult, it will eventually help you to enjoy a healthier present and future. Your sense of self can change. Your relationship with your parents can change. Your willingness to be yourself despite others’ disapproval can change.

  For many years I downplayed my parents’ influence on me. Looking back, I can see why: It was painful to admit that they had let me down, even if unintentionally; it hurt to face my desperate attempts to be accepted, hiding my needs and weaknesses, yet still never feeling accepted; and, most of all, it grieved me to realize that I, like all children, was powerless to stop my parents from hurting me.

  It can be hard to accept the idea that parents have so much of an impact on us. It may be hard to remember that as children we were relatively helpless and dependent. It can be terrifying to admit that your parents muffed one of the biggest jobs of their lives—raising you. It can be so threatening, in fact, that many of us tend to rationalize away that hurt. Freedom lies in seeking a balanced view that neither minimizes nor overstates.

  4. “What if my parents die before I sort all this out?”

  Watching a parent age and die is always tremendously difficult. If your parents were abusive or controlling, their aging can bring a special set of emotional challenges.

  Few of us have “finished” relationships with the dead. It can feel devastating if a parent dies before you have had a chance to say your piece or make your peace. But you can still say what you have to say in a letter, meditation, or poem even after a parent is gone. Part Three, “Solving the Problem,” will offer help in coping with the aging and death of controlling parents.

  5. “It wasn’t that bad. Lots of other children had it much worse.”

  One forty-year-old woman whom I interviewed told me, “My parents never hit me and they certainly gave me food and shelter and an education, so I guess I don’t have much to complain about compared to children who were hit or molested.” Yet she was ruthlessly controlled by her parents. The pain of emotional maltreatment can be as deep and long-lasting as that of physical abuse. A slap, shove, insult, or look all hurt equally deeply. In fact, many people who were physically abused say it was the words, not the blows, that hurt most.

  You don’t have to be hit or molested or left without food or clothes to be left with the effects of long-term abuse. Overcontrol, neglect, and cruelty are all painful—and all wrong. I’ll be sharing stories from a wide variety of difficult childhoods in the hope that you will find, rather than invalidate, yourself.

  6. “I don’t want to be a victim and blame others for my problems.”

  Self-help books and groups are criticized for turning us into a nation of “whiners” who blame others for our own issues and take no responsibility for seeking remedies. To be sure, some people do get stuck in the “victim” stance. Yet in my experience, most people read self-help books or participate in self-help groups because they care about the quality of their lives. In working with women and men who grew up controlled, I’ve found that most have trouble blaming anybody but themselves because they tend to accept their parents’ points of view at the expense of their own.

  Children of controlling families aren’t trained to act in their own best interests; they’re trained to serve and take care of their parents. Questioning your parenting and discovering connections between your current problems and your upbringing is acting in your own best interests—although initially it may feel awkward. It’s important to remember that even if your parents loved you, their control cost you a great deal. This book is not about blaming parents for their mistakes, but it is about understanding their mistakes so you no longer suffer the consequences.

  7. “My parents were only doing what they thought was right. Better to forgive and forget.”

  Many controlling parents do what they think is right, but it doesn’t mean it was right for you. Vengeance is the last thing this book is about. However, in my experience, forgiving another’s transgressions before you’re ready to can be as destructive as vengeance. In Part Three we’ll explore forgiveness in depth.

  8. “I don’t remember much of my childhood. How do I know if I was controlled?”

  It’s not specific memories of childhood experiences that need to be healed. Rather, it’s the emotional experience of growing up controlled and the decisions you may have unwittingly carried into your adult life that do the harm. Powerful, unseen injunctions often serve as barriers to seeing your past for what it was. Matching your experiences against those of the people you’ll read about can help clarify your past.

  9. “My parents, family, or friends might ridicule or reject me if I explore this.”

  A message like this is a signal that even the thought of others’ disapproval has the power to stop you cold. Yes, some might disapprove. But a big part of individuation is seeking your truth even when others disagree. If you have parents or friends who attack you for striking out in your own best interests, exploring those relationships may be all the more compelling.

  Investigating your past can be as private a process as you choose. It’s possible to let go of past limits and achieve new freedom with your parents without saying a single word to them. Lots of people have.

  10. “It’s hopeless to think that I can change, given how long I have been this way. It’s hopeless to think my parents will ever change.”

  This statement reflects the perfectionistic, all-or-nothing thinking common in controlling families. Psychological change can be difficult and slow, but it is not all or nothing. While your parents may never change, your healing is not dependent on what they do. Your healing depends on what you do. Even a minor adjustment in your feelings, behaviors, and relationships can bring you huge payoffs.

  Identifying Your Parents’ Styles

  Nearly all controlling parents embody one or more of the eight “styles” of controlling parenting. These styles provide a “You Are Here” point on the map of unhealthy control.

  Identifying your parents’ styles can help you make sense of what didn’t jibe in your family. Remember the series of lenses an eye doctor alternates before your eyes until you find the ones that enable you to see most clearly? Recognizing your parents’ styles offers the right lens to bring into focus the underlying values and themes with which you were raised. The more clearly you view your family’s themes, the more readily you can become your own person.

  You may find elements of one or more of these styles present in either or both of your parents:

  Smothering. Terrified of feeling alone, Smothering parents emotionally engulf their children. Their overbearing presence discourages independence and cultivates a tyranny of repetition i
n their children’s identities, thoughts, and feelings.

  Depriving. Convinced that they will never get enough of what they need, Depriving parents withhold attention and encouragement from their children. They love conditionally, giving affection when a child pleases them, withdrawing it when displeased.

  Perfectionistic. Paranoid about flaws, Perfectionistic parents drive their children to be the best and the brightest. These parents fixate on order, prestige, power, and/or perfect appearances.

  Cultlike. Distressed by uncertainty, Cultlike parents have to be “in the know,” and often gravitate to military, religious, social, or corporate institutions or philosophies that allow them to feel special and certain. They raise their children according to rigid rules and roles.

  Chaotic. Caught up in an internal cyclone of instability and confusion, Chaotic parents tend toward mercurial moods, radically inconsistent discipline, and bewildering communication.

  Using. Determined never to lose or feel one down, Using parents feed off their children emotionally. Hypersensitive and self-centered, Using parents see others’ gains as their loss, and consequently belittle their children.

  Abusing. Perched atop a volcano of resentment, Abusing parents verbally or emotionally bully—or physically or sexually abuse—their children. When they’re enraged, Abusing parents view their children as threats and treat them accordingly.