by Dan Neuharth
Hypotheses
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.
Perhaps he felt so afraid of being controlled that he tried to dominate everyone around him so they couldn’t control him.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Perhaps after the horrible deprivations of her childhood, she simply wasn’t able to nurture others.
Perhaps her abusive control of her own daughter was a way in which Helen expressed rage over her own abuse and abandonment.
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
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.
Perhaps they feared David might die, just as their mothers had done, and couldn’t bear to attach emotionally to him.
Perhaps they obsessed about order and routine in order to distract themselves from deep depression.
Perhaps George, who was given so little by his father, didn’t know how to give more to his son.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
Perhaps his head injury played a physiological role in his violent behavior and poor impulse control as an adult.
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.
Hypotheses
Lucy must have grown up feeling illegitimate in many ways. Her father had vanished; she was not only an outsider in her new family, but was also labeled a “thief,” then banished. Perhaps Lucy thought, being not legitimate, that she had no rights and deserved nothing good. Perhaps she covered her feelings of illegitimacy by seeking a stronger spouse who would make decisions for her, even if it entailed the abuse of her children.
Perhaps she sought a stronger
spouse as a father figure to replace the father who had left her. She may have been too terrified to question her husband’s abusive behavior for fear she would lose him also.
Given how much pain Lucy faced early in life, perhaps she assumed that suffering was just a part of growing up.
Perhaps she was depressed and overwhelmed and simply couldn’t cope with parental responsibilities.
Perhaps she never overcame the rejections of her youth and remained an emotionally abandoned little girl, looking for others to care for her in ways she’d never experienced as a child.
Perhaps Lucy overcompensated for her mother’s lack of interest in her by becoming intensely interested in her children, right down to their bodily functions.
Perhaps she felt ostracized because she felt somehow bad or flawed. Her obsessive attention to her children’s cleanliness may have been a misguided attempt to fix or cleanse herself.
Perhaps Lucy felt anger at her mother but could never express it directly; her children thus became unwilling substitute targets for her anger.
Lloyd: Perfectionistic Parent
Lloyd’s Trauma: Death of a Mother
Remember Chip, whose adoptive father, Lloyd, “dropped him” when he was found to have learning disabilities? Lloyd’s mother died giving birth to him after doctors had warned her that childbirth could be life-threatening. Saddled with the legacy that his mother had died so he could be born, Lloyd was raised by a domineering, stoic father and became an aloof, Perfectionistic father himself.
Hypotheses
How could Lloyd forget that his mother had died so he could be born? As a result, he may have felt guilty, bad, or cursed. Perhaps seeing his son’s “flaws” reminded him of his deepest fears about himself. Being close to his “flawed” son may have been too hard for Lloyd to tolerate.
Perhaps he felt at fault for his son’s learning disabilities just as he felt at fault for his mother’s death. He may have pulled away from his son rather than confront self-blame.
Lloyd’s life began with a catastrophe and proceeded with little warmth. Perhaps he was so afraid of losing another loved one that he couldn’t allow himself to get close to anybody in case they, too, left him.
Having grown up with little warmth from a manipulative father, Lloyd may not have known how to attach emotionally to another human being, especially a male.
Compassion
I can’t help but feel compassion for these anguished children who became controlling parents. Their little souls suffered stunning pain and loss. As misguided as their adult overcontrol became, it reflected deficits in their own childhoods.
Of course, it’s too easy to assume that traumatized children will inevitably become controlling parents. In fact, some controlling parents of the men and women I interviewed had no apparent notable childhood traumas. In addition, no parent is affected every minute of his or her life by childhood trauma. Traumatic effects wax and wane; they may be evident in some parts of a parent’s life and virtually invisible in others. While a parent may be a controlling tyrant in the family, he or she may show little overcontrol at work or at play, in some situations or at certain times. The Perfectionistic, Cultlike, or Smothering parent may be a model worker. The Abusive or Using parent may be a fierce competitor in sports or business. The Childlike or Depriving parent may be a brilliant researcher or bookkeeper. The Chaotic parent may be an artistic genius.
Furthermore, most parents, no matter how controlling, have moments of caring, grace, and a desire to see their children happy. Controlling parents may want to stop their children’s suffering, along with their own, but just don’t know how.
The long-term effects of trauma tend to be most prominent when people are stressed, in new situations, or in situations that remind them of the circumstances of their traumas. Unfortunately, being a parent is all three: stressful, new, and almost always the trigger for memories of their own childhood traumas. An intimate relationship like parenting is a fertile arena for control because intimate relationships are the settings for most traumas. In intimate relationships, we are most vulnerable, and vulnerability is unwelcome to children of trauma.
Exercise for Understanding Your Parents’ Roots
Think about what you know about your parents’ early lives. Did they face the loss of a parent, an attack, a family crisis, or long-term stress as listed earlier in this chapter (see page 130)? If so, did they get help? How might their traumas have colored their world views and affected their emotional lives? You might develop at least three possible hypotheses, then see how each fits. (The section “50 Reasons People Control in Unhealthy Ways” in the next chapter may help spark your hypothesizing.)
If you don’t know much about your parents’ early lives, you might want to get them talking about them. This can be a win-win situation: Your parents can validate their early existence and you can gain insight into your family’s roots. In addition, if your parents tend to focus attention on you in negative ways, asking them to tell their stories allows you to step into observing mode, shift the focus away from yourself, and feel less reactive to what your parents might say and do. Of course, you may not want to ask about your parents’ roots if you feel they’d become abusive during such conversations. If that’s the case, relatives can be extremely helpful in filling in the blanks about your parents’ early lives.
15
CONTROLLERS’ FEARS
It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
—ERIC HOFFER
Trauma engenders fear—a key commonality among controlling parents. Knowing the needs and fears your controlling parents carry within them, you’ll begin to understand why they controlled as they do or did. You’ll also be better able to grasp the source of the negative messages from your internalized parents. Both your actual parents’ behavior and your internalized parents’ critical messages, no matter how mystifying, are driven by five fears:
Fear of being seen as flawed
Fear of feeling powerless
Fear of feeling invalidated
Fear of feeling vulnerable
Fear of losing emotional control
One of the fascinating aspects of human behavior is that it often compensates in reverse. Someone who feels particularly small may strut around acting larger than life. Someone who feels adrift in an emotional rapids may become a stoic. Someone who fears rejection may reject others first.
In the case of controlling parents, these defensive actions become maladaptive. Feeling flawed, controlling parents pretend they are perfect. Feeling small, they act big. Feeling afraid, they frighten others. Feeling bad about themselves, they shame others. Feeling wrong, they insist on being right. Feeling doubt, they confuse. Feeling deprived, they withhold.
Controlling parents compensate in ways that cost both child and parent dearly. The need to feel powerful and worthy becomes a life-or-death crisis for such parents. Avoiding vulnerability is suddenly a matter of survival. Why? Because powerlessness, vulnerability, and unworthiness remind them of their desperate childhood days, when they felt flawed, full of doubt, helpless, out of control, and afraid for their lives. Controlling parents (and, for that matter, your internalized parents) will do anything to avoid recognitions we all must face:
There are forces and people more powerful than I am.
There are people who don’t need me or fear me.
Time, death, and illness will humble me; this is the price of being human.
Rather than face these realizations, many controlling parents chose childlike coping behaviors: denial, tantrums, bullying, running away, and/or playing take away. They become, as Elan Golomb wrote, “psychologically hard of hearing” (152). Unconsciously, they adopt myths about themselves: the self-made man, the perfect mom, the good provider, the in-control dad, the biggest son of a bitch in the jungle. These myths give parents the illusion that they are in total control of their destinies, masters of the universe after a childhood of feeling little mastery. To admit an
ything different would once more leave controlling parents feeling powerless. This may explain why some of them seem disconnected from the present, often unaware of their surroundings and feelings. Living in the moment risks loss of control and lacks guarantees—exactly how controlling parents felt as children.
Controlling parents are often unaware of why they act as they do. If they realized what lay underneath their maladaptive behavior, they’d have to face their painful childhoods, their dependency on others for their feelings of self-worth, and their desperate hunger for the symbols of success. They’d have to face the fact that they are as controlled as anyone else.
Controlling parents rarely learned as children that facing their feelings or admitting their limits can be healing. Because they try to control everything, they tend to think that others, including their children, are doing the same. Since most controllers want to be sure they are never dominated, they move to control others first.
In short, being a controlling parent is a defensive action. A combination of factors—how the controlling parent was raised, lack of knowing better, external events, internal needs, and the footprints of trauma—leave controlling parents, unless they get help, playing out a lifelong defensive drama. Even as adults no longer at the mercy of childhood trauma, most controlling parents dare not acknowledge how powerless they once felt. They may even deny that the trauma occurred. They may fear that exploring their memories will make them reexperience feelings as real and frightening as they were when the trauma occurred.
There is a certain logic to this behavior—the distorted reasoning of traumatized children whose sense of self splintered at an early age. Controlling parents are wounded children whose life was warped by dramas they didn’t create.