If You Had Controlling Parents

by Dan Neuharth

  Others, however, may not want to directly confront their parents but instead find healing through symbolic confrontations such as: writing a letter to your parents that you never send; visualizing an imaginary conversation with a parent; or telling supportive friends what you would like to say to one or both parents. For example, one woman whose Abusing father terrorized her found healing in talking with female friends about her traumatic upbringing: “It was more helpful than formal therapy.”

  Some points about speaking out and confronting:

  Confronting Is Entirely Your Choice

  Confronting is a choice, made by you in your own best interests. It is not necessary to say a word to your parents about how they hurt you.

  As Susan Forward suggests in Toxic Parents, confronting parents is not designed to retaliate, punish, or get something positive back. Rather, confrontation is designed to overcome the fear of facing your parents, speak the truth, and determine the type of relationship you can have from now on (235).

  The purpose of confronting is to voice your truth. Once you have done that, consider the confrontation a success, no matter how your parents respond. “Changes in [parental] behavior are not the measure of whether you are making progress,” wrote psychiatrist Harold Bloomfield in Making Peace with Your Parents (112).

  Weigh the Risks and Benefits

  Add up the possible risks and benefits in advance of confronting a parent. Think about how your mother’s and father’s reactions might affect you. Ask yourself what you want, what you expect, what you fear, and what, if anything, you need from them. Be realistic in your expectations. Few people like to be confronted, and your parents may ridicule you, dispute everything you say, retaliate, display no reaction, or simply not recall their unhealthy behavior. After all, if they had a history of hearing and respecting you, you probably wouldn’t be confronting them in the first place.

  It’s true that the potential risks of confronting include a more contentious relationship, parental retribution, or, in some cases, the loss of active contact with a parent. But the potential benefits include greater individuation, self-esteem, and peace whether or not relations with your parents actually improve.

  Losing an active relationship with a parent can be a big price to pay. Yet allowing continued parental control and abuse, being stranded on a mountain of feelings, and accepting treatment from a parent you wouldn’t tolerate in any other relationship is costly as well. Only you can assess the potential costs and benefits and make your choice, realizing that all choices have risks.

  Plan Your Message

  Confrontation is a tool for healing, not a goal in itself, suggests therapist Mike Lew in Victims No Longer. You can confront in any way you want and change your mind about it at any time. However, many people who grew up controlled want at least three things from their parents:

  An acknowledgment of the unhealthy control and its costs

  An apology

  Some effort by parents to reduce or cease the overcontrol

  You may not get any of these, at least in the form you want, but it’s important to realize what you’re looking for. If your parents become abusive, end the confrontation. This doesn’t mean you have failed; when confronted, controlling parents frequently respond with the exact behavior you’re pointing out.

  You may never achieve a true dialogue with your parents. As controllers, they probably have little interest in your views, particularly if they’re negative. It’s maddening when controlling parents deny responsibility for their actions. “Don’t look at me,” they say. But who else could have had the impact on you that they did?

  It’s helpful to remind yourself of some basic truths before and after a confrontation:

  Your parents used unhealthy control.

  Their control hurt you and cost you.

  You have the right to voice all your feelings about being controlled.

  You aren’t responsible for what your parents did to you, they are.

  You are responsible for what you do with your life now, they aren’t.

  These truths sometimes get obscured during a confrontation, so it’s useful to seek additional sources of clarity. Have a supportive person standing by to “debrief” you after the confrontation. Susan Forward’s Toxic Parents is a helpful source as well. If you choose to confront your parents, the book offers a detailed discussion of just how to do so.

  Speaking out, regardless of the outcome, balances the distortions of so many years. People even find that, in confronting, their parental saber-rattling giants have faded into mild and friendly ghosts.

  Speaking up Is a Process, Not a One-Time Event

  As I’ve said, confronting has its own timing. Just as there are risks in rushing to forgive, so can there be risks in rushing to confront. You may want to confront your parents on your terms or turf to avoid replicating family control.

  Once you initially express yourself, new feelings or insights surface. Again, it’s up to you whether or not to express them. The benefits of a confrontation can take time to surface. Your parents may react positively and then backslide, or react negatively and then improve. You can’t make them listen if they don’t want to. Sometimes, when parents get sick, fear death, face losses, get lonely, or remarry, their denial does tend to break a bit, which allows them to hear you. Saying what’s most dreaded can kick off a transformation. If, as a result, your parents show a willingness to understand your pain and acknowledge their part in it, you may have the beginnings of a healthier relationship. If they show little desire to change, you may want to temporarily detach from them emotionally or physically, staying in contact only in ways or at times when little or no emotional sacrifice is required of you.

  By speaking honestly, you’ve done your part. Be wary of agreeing to anything that might rekindle the boundary-violation patterns of your childhood. Allow for the possibility of your feelings and your parents’ changing in ways you could never have conceived of.

  Telling people they hurt you can be an act of integrity. By speaking out, you give them an opportunity to hear specifically how they affected you. They may ignore your message, but at the very least, you’ve offered them a chance to take responsibility for their actions and make amends.

  Stories of Confronting

  Here are some ways in which the people I interviewed chose to confront their parents. In so doing, they balanced some of their childhood control.

  A Turning Point: Ellen

  Remember Ellen, the forty-nine-year-old volunteer worker whose Using, Abusing mom blamed her for the C-section scar from Ellen’s birth? A turning point came when her mother began screaming at Ellen’s five-year-old son because he moved Grandma’s figurines. Ellen gathered up her three children and stormed out of her mother’s home with the warning, “Don’t ever scream at my children again.”

  Ellen had never before stood up to her mother so boldly. From then on, she felt empowered to demand civil behavior from her mother and to leave when she didn’t get it. By protecting her children, she balanced a childhood in which no one was there for her.

  First-Name Basis: Caitlin

  Sometimes even a subtle change can have a profound impact. Remember Caitlin, the forty-one-year-old teacher whose Cultlike, Perfectionistic mother wouldn’t answer questions without the preface, ‘Mom, may I speak?” Recently, Caitlin began calling her mother, Patricia, by name.

  “It was a conscious choice,” Caitlin says. “It helped me see her more as a peer than a parent.” Caitlin’s commitment to telling the truth around her mother, no matter what the consequences, has balanced the speech control with which she was raised and has made honest communication possible.

  Wrote to Her Father: Sharon

  Thirty-one-year-old graduate student Sharon, in a letter, told her Smothering, Holocaust survivor father that he had failed to protect her against her stepmother’s emotional abuse. “I wrote my letter over and over, read it to my friends, and kept revising it,” she says. “I wanted to tell him I l
oved him but that I didn’t like his behavior. I just wanted an apology.” Her father wrote back, “How dare you question me! How could you do this to me? This is going to hurt my marriage.”

  “His tone was like God coming down from the sky,” Sharon insists. Despite her father’s reaction, she has stood her ground. In so doing, she’s begun to balance years of emotional control: “Sometimes it’s better to oppose and be angry, especially when a view of yourself has been imposed on you.”

  Confronting Abuse: Tess

  Tess, a thirty-eight-year-old flight attendant, confronted her Depriving, Abusing mother on the physical and sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of relatives by placing a note on her mother’s kitchen table reading: “Physical Abuse. Whippings. Molestation.” When her mother saw the note “she just acted confused. She said that I had had a wonderful childhood. She painted some rosy picture of a middle-class upbringing. The abuse doesn’t exist for her.”

  Though Tess’s mother didn’t acknowledge the extent of Tess’s abuse, voicing her truth helped Tess feel she had honored her past and had defended herself: “It took me a long time to figure out that not everyone grew up like I did, with disapproval all the time, excessive discipline, and never being told they did anything well.”

  “Saw Fear in His Eyes”: Will

  Much of controlling parents’ power is based on maintaining an exaggerated sense of size over their children. When adults visit bullying parents after a long absence, their parents often seem shorter, smaller, or less capable. The realization that their parents can no longer physically abuse them begins to reverse years of bullying.

  Will, the twenty-eight-year-old teacher whose Perfectionistic father terrorized him for years, found freedom at age nineteen when he realized that his father could no longer beat him up. During a heated argument, Will raised his fist in his father’s face. Although no blows were exchanged, Will recalls, “I felt ecstatic. It was freeing. He had absolute physical and economic power over me for so long. For the first time, I saw fear in his eyes.”

  “You Broke My Soul”: Jorge

  Sometimes a confrontation with a parent happens spontaneously. Jorge, the thirty-two-year-old psychiatric aide raised by an Abusing, Chaotic mother who whipped, kicked, and burned her children, turned a corner at age twenty-two when he saw his mother chasing his younger sister with a stick. He grabbed his mother’s arm and said, “You just don’t do that, that’s inhuman.” His mother struggled to get free and screamed at Jorge but he held tight. Jorge looked in his mother’s eyes and said, “I know this tune, Mother, and you can scream insults as loud as you want, but nothing will take my hand away.”

  By standing up to his mother, Jorge achieved equal footing with his childhood tormentor. By preventing abuse of his sister, Jorge began to balance the lack of having anyone to intervene on his own behalf.

  Coping with Anger: Samantha

  Sometimes a confrontation isn’t with one’s actual parents but with one’s anger over parental sins or omissions. Samantha, the forty-year-old artist who was physically abused by her Depriving mother and molested by a relative, testifies that much of her initial healing involved expressing anger: “A big step was in realizing how much rage I held in my body. It was making me depressed. I had a punching bag in my living room. I’d hit my tennis racket on pillows. I’d hit branches against trees or hit an aluminum garbage can with a baseball bat. I remember one day I took a two-by-four and hit it with a hammer until it was virtually toothpicks.”

  At first Samantha felt scared by her anger. “It felt bottomless,” she admits. Then she went through a “they-did-this-to-me” stage. Later, with the help of her therapist, she realized, “My parents cost me a lot, but part of me still wanted to have some sort of relationship with them.” In time, she found additional channels: writing, dancing, singing, painting, and sculpting.

  Potential Risks of Confronting:

  Can be emotionally stressful

  May inflame relations with your parents

  May lead to retaliation from your parents

  May lead you to feel disappointment or grief, depending on the reaction you receive

  Potential Benefits of Confronting:

  Can free you of the energy drain from carrying around unexpressed feelings

  Can clarify your options for relating to your parents

  May lead to positive changes in your relationship with your parents

  Can empower you by balancing a childhood of speech control

  Exercises for Speaking up and Confronting

  There are countless ways in which to speak out. Confrontation can be actual or symbolic. You may find that one or more of the following forms of symbolic confrontation can help you clarify what, if anything, you want or need to say to your parents.

  Write it down. For those who had little freedom of speech growing up, writing your piece can heal by allowing you to freely express your grievances in a letter you do not send or in a conversation with a trusted friend or therapist. List what your parents did, what you wanted from them, how their control affected you—and how it may still affect you and those around you.

  Do a parental report card. Remember how you had to show your school report cards to your parents for their signatures? Grade your parents on how well they: Granted you emotional freedom

  Saw you as a unique person and encouraged your potential

  Fostered open communication

  Modeled healthy boundaries and provided consistent limit setting

  Bestowed affection, acceptance, and physical touch

  Fostered an awareness of your inner life and encouraged connections outside the family

  Loved you, encouraged you to individuate, and set you free

  Have your day in court. Visualize, write, draw, or role-play suing one or both of your parents. Imagine your lawyer cross-examining them about how they raised you, or cross-examine them yourself. You can do this exercise on your own or role-play it with a friend or therapist. The judge or jury (of your friends, if you like) then renders a verdict. In your closing statement, review the tactics your parents used and what they cost you. Demand an apology or any other compensation you choose.

  Have your day on Oprah. Visualize, role-play, write, or practice with a friend or therapist being with your parents on Oprah or any other talk show. You are the focus of attention as you review your childhood. Your parents may be as controlling as ever, but you stick to your truth—and are applauded for it.

  Preach hellfire and brimstone. You are the guest speaker at the First Church or Temple of the Controlling Parent. Show the congregation of controlling parents the error of their ways. Allow yourself to be as Bible-or Torah-thumping as you want. Visualize the congregation being attentive, afraid, persuaded, or whatever you choose.

  Stand-up comedy. Envision doing a routine about your parents at a comedy club. Mimic their sayings and controlling behaviors as the audience roars and cheers.

  19

  CAN I FORGIVE MY PARENTS?

  People go too fast into forgiveness. Having enough time to feel angry was important to me. I had to blame. I had to feel like a victim.

  —EVELYN, 46, A NURSE

  I forgive my father because I understand him.

  —SALLY, 31, A COMPUTER PROGRAMMER

  Few issues cause more concern and confusion for those who grew up controlled than forgiveness.

  I believe forgiveness is optional. Forgiving may aid healing or it may slow it down. For some, forgiving—and, more important, letting go—is freeing and healing. Others never forgive and still heal.

  It takes courage to forgive, because it means letting go of part of your identity as a wounded person—a role that may have served to break denial and start your healing. Forgiving, then, may feel like you’re abandoning hard-fought recognition of how you were wounded and what it cost you.

  Yet it also takes courage not to forgive, if done consciously, in order to explore your feelings so that you can set them free. Doing this may m
ean that you have to tolerate many difficult feelings on your way to a resolution.

  Many myths surround our conceptions of forgiveness.

  Myth #1: Forgiving means forgetting.

  Reality: You will probably always remember abusive

  parental control.

  Forgiveness does not mean forgetting or excusing, nor does it mean denying your wounds. It means acknowledging a wrongdoing, experiencing the feelings connected with being wronged, and, after a period of time that only you can determine, letting go of actively holding the wrongdoing against the wrongdoer. Forgiveness includes letting go of a belief or illusion that things “should” or “could” have been different. Forgiveness can restore your general sense of trust and love to what it was before you were hurt, though you may never again fully trust the specific person who hurt you.

  You may find it helpful to distinguish between the content of what parents said or did and the intent behind their actions, as Cocola and Matthews suggested in How to Manage Your Mother. Even though your parents may have hurt you, it’s possible that their intent was to protect you, as an act of love.

  Myth #2: Forgiving is the answer in any troubled relationship.

  Reality: For some, forgiveness is unwise or impossible.

  Forgiveness can be a trap, Forward writes in Toxic Parents. While it is important to let go of a desire for revenge, which can work against emotional well-being, you never have to forgive or absolve someone who betrayed you. Forgiveness often does not enhance healing and can even be a form of denial, writes Forward, who suggests forgiving only if the person who wrongs you does something to earn forgiveness, such as acknowledging what happened and seeking to make amends.

  Myth #3: The sooner you forgive, the better.

  Reality: Premature forgiveness can reinjure you.

  Premature forgiveness can be especially injurious if it leads you to dishonor your feelings, ignore the truth, or do things for others that hurt your own best interests. These may be the very things you were forced to do in childhood.