by Dan Neuharth
One in five children who later became a controlling parent had a parent die during their childhood—four times the national estimate of one in twenty.
One in three children who later became a controlling parent had a parent who abused alcohol or was alcoholic—twice the national estimate of one in six.
One in three children who later became a controlling parent had a parent who suffered serious depression or mental illness—more than twice the national estimate of one in seven.
One in three children who later became a controlling parent was physically or sexually abused—nearly twice the national estimate of one in five.
One in two children who later became a controlling parent grew up highly controlled—nearly seven times the national estimate of one in thirteen.
These little souls who grew up to be controlling parents faced stunning pain and loss. Many were children of a world war, the Depression, or the Holocaust. Several were cruelly cut out of their parents’ hearts, homes, or pocketbooks. Many faced grave illnesses or life-threatening physical injuries. Some were simply children of bad luck and damaging happenstance.
The optimal recovery from trauma involves adequate time and a safe setting in which to talk about a traumatic event and the feelings that come with it. That’s why many people intuitively want to talk about their accident or hospital operation in endless, repetitive detail, as if it is essential that they tell the whole story. It is essential because sharing can allow trauma survivors to relive the trauma at their own pace, which allows them to regain control after having had normal control of their lives taken from them.
Paths to recovery from trauma, however, are invariably missing among the childhoods of those who become controlling parents. Well-meaning but misguided adults tell them to “Keep a stiff upper lip,” depriving them of the chance to grieve over their losses. In socially isolated families, children lack anyone to talk with about their traumas, robbing them of the opportunity to receive compassion. In families that stress being perfect or avoiding showing weakness, traumatized children are blocked from working through the trauma. Among children with anxious or melancholy temperaments or who lack help in developing a sense of self-worth, trauma can take an even greater toll.
Underneath it all, trauma is about loss: loss of safety; loss of possessions; loss of love; loss of self. To a child, traumatic loss says:
People and things I need come and go unpredictably, and there is nothing I can do about it.
I can be attacked at any moment for reasons I don’t understand, and there is nothing I can do about it.
Trauma victims who can’t get help lose trust in a world in which people they care about are taken from them, in which people they depend on betray them, or in which disasters strike without warning. Controlling parents learn as children that it is risky to care about others because those they care about leave them or hurt them.
Lacking trust and expecting further losses, traumatized children’s emotional growth may be stunted, leaving them with only a child’s feelings and behaviors. As these children grow up, they may develop a philosophy of life that explains why they must control.
To an infant, the primary caregiver seems the source of everything: pleasure and pain, gratification and delay of gratification. As children mature, they require a parental balance of autonomy and closeness in order to learn that they can have an impact on the world and not be at the mercy of it. When a chief caregiver doesn’t do a good job or traumatic circumstances interfere, children can grow up feeling that they will be annihilated by any form of abandonment or smothered by too much closeness.
Even as adults, our relations with others can be deeply influenced by what we didn’t get, or got too much of, as children. We may tend to see the key people in our lives with the same distortions as our chief caregivers. If we felt deprived as children, our lives may be driven by striving for gratification from those around us. Alternately, we may give up and remain aloof because we are convinced we won’t get any gratification at all. If we felt repeatedly threatened as infants, we may view those closest to us—spouse, children, boss, and/or friends—as potential annihilators.
Thus, parents who never felt seen as children may compel themselves to replay childhood dramas, insisting on being the center of attention, growing furious if admiration is not forthcoming. Parents who as children were smothered with malignant attention may find intimacy life-threatening. Parents who as children felt overridden may be terrified of being controlled as adults and, consequently, may adopt a stubborn, unreachable posture. They are likely, in any event, to experience difficulty in tolerating their own children’s efforts to individuate.
Hellos and good-byes can be particularly difficult for some controlling parents. They may shake hands or hug awkwardly, if at all. Their first words when seeing you or others may be a sarcastic remark or a question that puts you on the defensive. Their demeanor may be strangely distant, happy-faced, or otherwise “out of synch” with the occasion—all reflecting their fear of losing their sense of self as others draw near or move away. Such controlling parents, gripped by the losses of their youth, may move into a world of projections and non-reality. They’ll perceive others in a limited range of roles, such as threat, servant, or object. They’ll remain constantly on guard and react to stress primarily with a child’s emotional repertoire: tantrums, sulking, bullying, or selfishness. They’ll do anything to avoid recognizing what healthier adults realize: Life offers no guarantees of safety or happiness; wanting something doesn’t necessarily mean you will get it; fearing something doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen—and they will live their lives and raise their children as if none of these realities exist.
Misguided Beliefs
Because they were traumatized and need to dominate, many controlling parents, consciously or unwittingly, tend to hold two beliefs:
I own my children.
My children owe me.
Of course, these beliefs aren’t confined just to controlling parents. Many of us believe that children owe their parents respect, loyalty, and gratitude. Societies and religions foster these beliefs. Most of us were raised with them.
I offer a different view for your consideration:
Children owe their parents nothing simply because they are their parents.
Most of us love and respect our parents. It’s natural to be thankful to the people who created and raised you, to be loyal to, approve of, and admire them. But while these feelings are natural, they are not debts. It’s not a child’s responsibility to pay in emotional currency for the right to exist.
Parents choose to be parents. Perhaps that choice is not thoroughly thought out or is made for the wrong reasons, but it’s a choice nonetheless. Children, on the other hand, don’t choose to be born.
Parenting, for all its hardships, has plenty of built-in rewards. Parents get to love deeply, receive love, express affection, and learn about themselves, life, and the world. Parents help a being come from nothingness to become a successful human. Parents can laugh, enjoy, play, revisit their childhood interests, and contribute to the world. Loving a child is its own reward. Being loved by a child is a special gift unlike any on earth. But with the choice of parenting comes the responsibility of learning how to raise children well.
All parents want to be appreciated by their children. Healthier parents recognize that appreciation is a gift their children may give, not something they must give. Healthier mothers and fathers may crave their children’s love, respect, approval, and loyalty, but generally recognize that things like respect and approval must be earned by parents as well as by children.
Controlling parents, however, don’t seem to know that truth. If they felt they had to earn their own parents’ love, they may feel entitled to their children’s love. In controlling families, need is stronger than love. Controlling parents need, expect, even command their children to love, appreciate, admire, listen to, and reflect well on them. Because controlling parents believe they
own their children, they feel justified in such expectations.
Discovering Why Your Parents Controlled You
By better understanding your parents, you may achieve even more insight into their actions and character than they have about themselves. Granted, there is something inherently uncomfortable about having access to information our parents don’t; it reverses the normal family roles in which parents know much that children do not. However, knowing more about your parents’ pasts and deeply understanding them will benefit you in two ways:
It will allow you to deconstruct any larger-than-life or all-or-nothing beliefs and illusions you have unwittingly adopted about your parents or family.
It will help you actually see the roots of the distorted messages about yourself and others that your internalized parents send you.
As a family therapist, one of my first tasks is to generate hypotheses about why each family I see has the problems its members are seeking to fix. Part of my crucial and creative early work, then, is to gather enough information to generate these hypotheses, which often contradict each other. However, over time, one or more of these hypotheses will become especially compelling.
For example, when a family comes in with a child who is suddenly getting poor grades in school, I contemplate several factors. Did a recent change in the family upset the child? Are the parents getting along? Is the child getting clear limits along with positive attention? Is there drug or alcohol abuse, physical or sexual abuse in the home? Does the child suffer from a medical condition or learning disability? How are the parents reacting to the bad grades? How did the parents themselves do in school? How are siblings performing academically? Did something upsetting happen at school or among the child’s circle of friends? Is the child or any family member depressed?
To explore these questions, I adopt a pose family therapists describe as “joining,” in which I become a temporary member so I can see the family’s world as they do. You may similarly find it useful to join your parents’ world in order to generate hypotheses about why they controlled you. Of course, the idea of joining your parents’ world may spark mixed feelings. You may want to know the reasons behind their confusing behavior. Yet after years of trying to make sense of your parents’ actions or making allowances for them, you may feel ambivalent about continuing to do so. But remember, joining your parents’ world is only temporary; it’s a visit, not a merger. Visiting their world doesn’t mean you condone their damaging control nor does it take away your right to feel angry, sad, or frustrated. But by joining, you may discover insights about your upbringing that can help you heal the wounds created there.
Seeing how your parents suffered as children may make you feel guilty for any feelings of anger about how you were controlled. This may not be rational, but it’s a common feeling. Our parents did suffer. They were wounded as children. It wasn’t their fault. Their unhealed wounds left them to parent in ways that wounded us. That wasn’t their fault either.
At the same time, knowing that your parents suffered doesn’t minimize what they did to you, how it made you feel, and what it may still be costing you. Just because your parents suffered doesn’t mean your anger isn’t justified. You may also feel compassion, sympathy, and grief for them even though they hurt you. By seeing how your parents were wounded as children, as well as seeing how they may have wounded you, you expand your ability to hold more than one “truth.” Holding both truths and denying neither can be one of the most difficult dilemmas facing those who grew up controlled. It violates the all-or-nothing thinking of controlling families. It opens the door to questions and uncertainty. And it will make you stronger.
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
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.’”
Perhaps Henry thought that if he kept everything in control, he could ward off future family tragedies.
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.
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.
Perhaps he never had a chance to develop his own sexual identity, and the idea of his daughter’s homosexuality intimidated him.
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
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.
Perhaps Nathan focused on technical details because they made sense, in contrast to an early loss and cover-up that made no sense.
Perhaps, even as a child, Nathan sensed that life was fragile and tried to be perfect so that he, too, wouldn’t die.
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.’
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 gir
l 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
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?
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.
Perhaps Rita could not provide constant love for her daughter because she had never known constant love in her own childhood.
Perhaps she was too depressed to see her daughter’s needs.
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.
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.