If You Had Controlling Parents

by Dan Neuharth

  For Samantha, forgoing her unfulfilled hopes in favor of an acceptable reality helped balance the pain of her past.

  Healing in the Twilight: Margaret

  Margaret, the thirty-three-year-old family-law attorney raised in the shadow of the Smothering, Perfectionistic father who rewrote her college admission essays and never let her win arguments, found acceptance in the twilight of her father’s life. “In his later years my father was very apologetic for his excesses,” she remembers. “Prior to that, I distanced myself from him and would not forgive him. In his final years I tried to understand him. He became dear to me.”

  Her father grew more interested in listening to Margaret: “We’d talk and talk. I stopped being a Republican, like he was. He didn’t tolerate that well but at least he wanted to hear why. I really loved him and thought we were kindred souls.”

  By the time Margaret’s father died, she had reached relative peace with him. It has taken longer, however, to let go of the legacy of his control: “If you have controlling parents, they are still controlling even after death. I still feel accountable to him.”

  Potential Risks of Acceptance:

  If premature or forced, can emotionally reinjure or disempower you

  Can be a form of denial or rationalizing

  May bring disappointment when you let go of your hopes and accept reality

  Potential Benefits of Acceptance:

  Can lead to greater wholeness and peace

  Can create goodwill and a better relationship with your parents

  Can allow you to see different perspectives

  Can allow you to move on emotionally

  Exercises for Acceptance

  Walk in their shoes. Visualize your parents at two stages in their lives: when they were children and when they were young parents. Perhaps look at old photos of them. Seeing them as hurt children or scared young adults may offer you helpful perspectives.

  Reverse roles. Imagine you are a controlling parent and your parents are now your children. Imagine controlling them. Notice what feelings you have. You may get a glimpse of both the power and pain they may have felt when controlling you.

  21

  SHOULD I REDUCE OR BREAK CONTACT WITH MY PARENTS?

  My mother is not a part of my life anymore. I don’t keep my distance out of meanness to her. I do it to protect myself and my children.

  —ALICE, 42, A WRITER

  For some adult children of controlling parents, the most viable choice is to completely break or radically reduce contact with one or both parents—either for a period of time or indefinitely—because some parents are so abusive that contact with them is “like walking into a propeller,” wrote Victoria Secunda in When You and Your Mother Can’t Be Friends (308).

  Even when it’s your healthiest choice, a complete break with a parent hurts. In order to take care of yourself, you are saying good-bye to someone who created you. For some who grew up controlled, it can be helpful to know that you can someday resume contact if things change. For others, keeping alive such a possibility leaves the door open to too much second-guessing or fear.

  Stories of Reducing or Breaking Contact

  Here’s how some of the people I interviewed faced the question of reducing or breaking contact with a controlling parent.

  Makes Her Life Miserable: Caitlin

  Caitlin, the forty-one-year-old teacher whose navy officer father tyrannized his children with military-style discipline, has little contact with her father and anticipates less in the future. “He is in regular contact with my sister and makes her life miserable,” she says. “He never takes an interest in my life.” Caitlin reluctantly decided, after many demoralizing attempts to elicit her father’s interest, that she would no longer try to maintain contact: “My predominant feeling about my father is sadness. I have missed him my whole life. He was such an intelligent and talented person, yet so screwed up. Sometimes I’ll be watching a family-oriented TV show where they’re so bonded and there’s so much love and I get cynical. But really, I am feeling sad.”

  For Caitlin, balancing meant being willing to accept and live with her sadness instead of continuing to suffer by trying to reach her father.

  No Contact: Carolyn

  Carolyn, a thirty-five-year-old woodworker, no longer maintains contact with her Depriving, alcoholic father: “I’d always get off the phone feeling like a bad person just as I did as a kid. I keep thinking that somewhere inside my father is this loving, nurturing person who’ll say, ‘Honey, I know you had a hard life.’ But that is like Charlie Brown and Lucy, who pulls the football away from him year after year.

  “I don’t even give him my phone number,” she adds. “I can’t give him the tiniest piece of information about myself without a critique coming back. I feel sorry for him but I feel less sorry when I think about that little girl he slammed around and called lazy and stupid.”

  Becoming More Distant: Alice

  Alice, a forty-two-year-old writer, has increased both emotional and physical distance from her Using mother: “I send her cards and a Christmas gift, but I don’t spend much time around her. I’ve never confronted her, never said, ‘Change or I’ll leave.’ She’d never admit to doing anything wrong, so limited contact is the imperfect solution.

  “I know I’ll never get her approval,” Alice admits. “I try to live without being hurt by her and realize it’s okay that I don’t like her. My mother is not a part of my life anymore. I don’t keep my distance out of meanness to her. I do it to protect myself and my children. I have few regrets, though much sadness, about my choice. After she’s gone, I’ll probably be kinder in my memories.”

  For Alice, balancing has meant focusing on taking care of her own needs after a childhood of attending to her Using mother.

  “Couldn’t Live There”: Colleen

  Colleen, the thirty-three-year-old graduate student who was the oldest of seven in a Smothering family that insisted on utter conformity, left home for good at seventeen. Like many who grew up controlled, Colleen vividly recalls the moment she decided to leave.

  “After Dad slammed me against a wall and broke my necklace, I couldn’t live there anymore. I went to a friend’s house whose mom cosigned on an apartment for me,” she says. “I became dead to my father. He would never discuss me. He took me off insurance policies.” Her only lifeline to her family came when her washing machine broke and her mother secretly took Colleen’s laundry to their house, then sent it back with one of her sisters along with some lemon meringue pie.

  In retrospect, the break made it easier for Colleen to individuate. “When a parent says you are dead and off the insurance policies, there’s less of a hold on you,” she advises.

  For Colleen, balancing meant confronting her fears about economic survival.

  “Jesus Loves You”: Shirley

  Remember Shirley, the forty-four-year-old artist whose fundamentalist mother banned Christmas after realizing the word “Santa” had the same letters as “Satan”? Shirley fell into years of addictive drug use that started in her twenties, and lived on the streets until she got treatment. In hitting bottom, she realized there was a connection between her problems and her upbringing. After six years clean and sober, Shirley began setting limits on phone conversations with her mother by insisting she would hang up if her mother tried to proselytize: “When I told her no witnessing and no preaching, my mother lost it and screamed, ‘You are just a junkie. God knows what is good for you. You don’t know.’”

  Shirley realized that the “good mommy” she wanted was never going to be there: “Every once in a while I feel really sorry for her. She is a three-year-old trapped in an adult body. I see her fear. I see how lost she is in life. But she was the mother, not me. I didn’t bring a child into the world and punish it its whole life and expect good things to come of it.”

  Shirley feels she gave her mother a chance to make amends. Since her mother chose not to, Shirley feels finished with the relationship: “I feel
at peace about not talking to her. It is a service to both of us.”

  Potential Risks of Breaking Contact:

  Can lead to an “emotional cutoff” that may leave you feeling less whole

  Can lead to retaliation from your parents

  Can bring feelings of guilt, disloyalty, grief, or loss

  Potential Benefits of Breaking Contact:

  Can offer protection from further control

  Can provide a safe distance for healing

  May be the least costly among imperfect choices

  Exercise for Saying Good-Bye to a Parent

  Sit somewhere peaceful where you won’t be disturbed. Envision your parent and yourself in a place where you feel safe, so that you can bring closure to the relationship. Unlike what happens in an actual encounter, your envisioned parent hears what you say and does not speak unless you want her or him to do so. Say everything you want to say so that you’ll feel closure even if you never see your parent again. You might tell your parent how he or she hurt you and/or thank your parent for how she or he helped you. Fully confess your feelings. Then tell your parent good-bye.

  If during this exercise you need time to compose your thoughts, imagine having your parent step outside. The point of this exercise is not to do or say it “right” or to worry about a parent’s reactions. This encounter is for you. The exercise may allow you to find peace with both your actual and your internalized parents, who wield great influence even if you no longer have contact with your actual parents.

  You can prepare for this exercise by writing in a journal or discussing with a trusted friend or therapist what you would want to say to your parents. During and after this exercise you may experience many emotions: grief, relief, anger, regret, resentment, freedom, and/or peace. Be compassionate with yourself about your reactions and acknowledge your courage in working to free yourself.

  Next: Quandaries

  Certain issues—parental aging, money, siblings, and holidays—can be especially challenging in balancing. The next chapter offers guidance on handling them.

  22

  FAMILY QUANDARIES

  The family spirit has rendered man carnivorous.

  —FRANCIS PICABIA

  Certain issues can be especially challenging in balancing your relationship with controlling parents:

  Facing your parents’ mortality

  Adult-life relationships with siblings

  Financial ties with parents

  Holidays and family rituals

  Facing Parental Mortality

  Faced with the awareness of parents’ aging, many feel a pressure to get problems with their parents worked out before it is “too late.” Such pressure can make setting new boundaries or reducing contact evoke feelings of disloyalty, even if it is the healthiest move.

  It’s important to avoid duplicating your role as a controlled child—that of satisfying your parents’ needs before your own in order to avoid their wrath. If you want contact with a parent and can figure out a way to do it so that you gain more than you lose, your path is clear. If you don’t want contact with a parent, or if you want contact but can see no way to be in contact without losing more than you gain, hold your ground. If you cannot yet resolve the dilemma, your best choice may simply be to have an awareness of the dilemma and proceed with your life until clearer options evolve.

  You can only make choices based on what you know and feel now. The key is to do or say what you must, regardless of the response. It can be upsetting if a parent dies before you’ve worked it out or had a chance to say your piece. But, even after they’re gone, you can still say what you have to say in a letter, meditation, or poem to them.

  I’ve found people who grew up controlled worry that if there is going to be a rapprochement, it’s entirely up to them. This may be a disempowering double standard. There is no “have to” or “should” about your relationship with your parents. Few people die with finished relationships. If you act in your own best interests and later come to feel you acted mistakenly, you may be sad. Yet if you’re not acting in your own best interests, you’re probably already sad. Have compassion for yourself. It won’t help to add self-blame to what is one of the most difficult issues of your life.

  A handful of those I interviewed said they expect to feel relief when a parent dies but expressed guilt for these feelings—a not uncommon dilemma. On the one hand, you may need time and distance from one or both of your parents or realize that reaching out would only invite further abuse. On the other hand, you may wish for more contact. Feeling unable to give up hopes of connection with parents but also feeling unwilling to return to a relationship where you will be hurt, you wait. In this situation, the prospect of a parent’s eventual death can bring a sense of relief—along with grief, guilt, and loss—because it promises to end this state of limbo.

  It was not until her parents died—her father seven years ago and her mother four years ago—that Patty, the fifty-three-year-old counselor, allowed herself to come to grips with her father’s physical and verbal abuse: “When my father died, I felt relief. Yet he did love me as best he could. When he died, it was one less person on earth who loved me, and that was sad.”

  Exercise for Facing a Parent’s Mortality

  Visualize giving your parent’s eulogy or writing his or her obituary. For those who fear parents dying with “unfinished emotional business,” this exercise can crystallize your feelings. Say exactly what you feel about your parent and how she or he affected you. Tell your whole truth, good and bad, including what your parent did badly and what he or she did well. By writing or privately speaking what you’d like to say or wish you had said at your parent’s funeral, you can better clarify what you might want to say to your parent while she or he is still alive—or find greater peace with your parent’s memory if he or she is no longer living.

  Financial Ties to Controlling Parents

  Some controlling parents use money or gifts as a way to express approval and love. If you separate from your parents and their gifts stop, you will probably feel as if their approval and love has also stopped, and on some level it probably has.

  You may have conflicting feelings about financial ties to your parents. One woman, for example, recounted her mixed feelings when she gets an occasional twenty or fifty dollars from her mother. She admits, “I want to send it back but I can use it.”

  Another woman said of her Using mother, “She controls a substantial amount of money and I don’t want to be disinherited. I’ve earned it. I figure I’m making her happy. I’m pretending to be a dutiful daughter by having dinner with her once a month. Even though I know I’m not a dutiful daughter, she’s happy with it.”

  At the other extreme are people who grew up controlled but get no financial help from their parents and expect none. Rather than strings-attached control, people with this experience may struggle with a sense of deprivation. For example, a woman whose parents lived lavishly but shared little of it with the children feels hurt each time her father visits. He expects her to pay for dinner even though he is well off and she’s struggling financially: “His narcissism really hurts. It reminds me of all I didn’t get growing up.” In some ways, her father’s detachment has made it easier for her to separate emotionally, though the pain of deprivation is still great.

  Family financial ties can be supercharged with guilt, secrecy, and anxiety, and everyone’s situation is unique. Some people who grew up controlled may desire financial support from their parents or expect an inheritance and don’t want to jeopardize it. Others may feel phony by disguising their true feelings about their parents in order to gain financially. Hiding your true feelings from parents in order to retain an inheritance isn’t “wrong” any more than is refusing to take anything from parents to avoid feeling compromised. The key is to make a choice based on your values and find the solution that, however imperfect, honors your needs and standards.

  Relationships with Siblings as Adults

  As you em
otionally separate from your parents, you may find that relations with brothers or sisters can be healing or upsetting—or both. If a sibling also felt controlled, you may be able to compare notes and validate each other’s experiences. If a sibling loyal to your parents gets mad at you for “making trouble” or tries to convince you to deny your reality, it can exacerbate your wounding.

  Your siblings cannot emotionally separate from the family before they are ready, just as you could not. Brothers or sisters may have had a different experience than you did while growing up. They may not want to give up illusions about the family. They may be afraid of one or both parents. They may fear validating your position because they would feel unbearable guilt about not having protected you. If you were the child most targeted by parents, your siblings may feel guilty for receiving less abuse than you did.

  If you have broken or reduced contact with a parent, it may be hard to listen when a sibling talks about a birthday party or holiday visit to Mom or Dad. So remember, it’s normal to feel left out—even when you choose not to participate. If a sibling sees visiting a parent as a privilege, and you see it as a trauma, it’s hard not to feel estranged.

  You may be able to talk with a sibling about this. Ideally, you both can feel heard and “agree to disagree.” But this may not always be possible. Part of emotionally leaving home may include emotionally separating from a sibling.

  Sometimes connecting with siblings can aid healing in surprising ways. One woman whose mother pitted her against her brother in childhood had no contact with him for twenty years. When she reestablished contact, she found him even more controlling than her mother: “That set to rest any doubts that I grew up in a dysfunctional family.”

  By contrast, another woman was astounded when her younger sister told her how her emotional support had kept her alive years earlier when the younger sister had been a suicidal teenager. Until the revelation, the woman had never known the extent of her sister’s pain or how supportive she herself had been. Since then, the two have become closer.