If You Had Controlling Parents (24 page)

   
Potential Benefits of Forgiveness:

• Can help you let go of hurts and emotionally move on
  
• Can lead to greater peace, energy, and freedom
  
• May open the way for a better relationship with your parents
  
• Can lead to greater self-acceptance
  

A
cceptance is another choice in relating to controlling parents. This doesn't mean accepting continued control, nor does it mean forgiving past parental hurts. But none of our relationships in life is perfect; all have limitations. Acceptance means seeing your parents accurately, honestly viewing the positives and negatives in your relationship, and choosing to continue the relationship.

Part of acceptance is understanding how different your parents' viewpoints may be from yours. Monica McGoldrick in
You Can Go Home Again
imagined how even Cinderella looked from her stepmother's perspective—“her Goody-Two-Shoes behavior could drive you to drink”—or from the perspective of Cinderella's stepsisters—who didn't match cultural dictates that women be “small, beautiful, gentle, long-suffering and unassertive” like Cinderella (279). You may not agree with a parent's perspective, but it is helpful to understand it.

As with confronting and forgiving, accepting tends to be most powerful when done primarily for yourself. For some people, acceptance can bring peace, since most of us want to honor, love, and esteem our parents. Casting parents out of your life may thus leave you feeling less than whole. For others, however, accepting or honoring an abusive person may feel like it repeats the abuse. Like confronting and forgiving, accepting is optional.

Events can facilitate acceptance: You become a parent; one of your parents dies or becomes ill; or there is a confrontation or rapprochement. Forging a better-defined sense of yourself can expedite a trans
formation. Yet events and time don't always make acceptance easier. Your relationship may get worse as your parents edge closer to death—the ultimate reminder of their lack of control. “Age is not renowned for improving the personalities of rigid, unhappy people,” Steven and Sybil Wolin write in
The Resilient Self
(104).

Accepting often includes multiple recognitions: Your parents are flawed; you are flawed; your parents have hurt you; you have hurt your parents; you sometimes resent them or feel angry with them; and you sometimes feel love or closeness with them. Holding all these feelings and denying none can be a healing balancing act, especially for those from families in which conflicting feelings were not tolerated.

As I've said, no parent is all bad. Every mother or father, no matter how controlling, had moments of courage, sacrifice, responsibility, and love. Many controlling parents, despite the incredible damage they may have inflicted on you, also gave you a great deal. If nothing else, they gave you your life. It may be difficult to see your parents as both hurtful and caring rather than as seeing them as only hurtful, but a full-palette view of others tends to make
you
feel more whole as well.

It can be hard to accept that you cannot change your parents or their ways. If they are depriving or critical, you may be tempted to try and beat them at their own game. Yet trying to change them or beat them at their own game is a losing proposition for you since their game is one of winning, controlling, and not needing others. You can't change them, you won't beat them, and you probably won't get them to see the “error of their ways.” But you can individuate, and this may open the way for greater acceptance of your parents just as they are.

Acceptance is based in reality, not on wishful thinking. Remember: Many controlling parents cannot maintain a stable sense of their own or their children's identities. Expecting a Using parent to be wholeheartedly generous without strings attached—like expecting a Smothering parent to respect your differences or expecting a Perfectionistic parent to have compassion when you are less than perfect—is like expecting a hungry grizzly bear not to eat you. Sometimes the bear will pass you by, just as your parents may sometimes pleasantly surprise you, but this is not the norm. Part of acceptance comes from having realistic expectations and protecting yourself accordingly. It's best to assume that bears will be bears.

Stories of Acceptance

Here's how some of those interviewed faced the issue of acceptance.

A New Understanding: Celina

Celina, the thirty-seven-year-old teacher whose schizophrenic mother raised her in a terrifying, chaotic home, reached a new understanding in her late thirties about her mother, whom she had not seen for years. Teaching, working in a psychiatric hospital, and doing magic shows for children helped Celina heal from her nightmarish childhood. Especially helpful was a women's support group. Through the women's group, Celina found “my heart began opening to my mother.”

At about the same time, Celina gave birth to a daughter, and became a single parent like her mother: “When I was pregnant, I realized how much my mother must have loved me. That was a turning point. I was alone with my baby and I could see how hard it must have been for my mother with two kids, no husband, and mood swings—and they didn't talk about mental illness then.”

When Celina finally located her mother on the New York streets through homeless advocates, “She wouldn't even look at me at first. She pushed me away. But the killer control she'd had was gone. She had softened. She had lost that vicious, I'm-going-to-force-you manner.”

Celina spent twenty-two hours with her mother, taking pictures, making tape recordings, staying up all night talking. Her mother sent her away with a bag of flyers on UFOs that she'd been collecting. Recalls Celina, “I felt this great love and forgiveness. I tried to get her to go to a shelter or senior housing but she refused. It was so heartbreaking.”

Celina created a dance piece from her visit with her mother: “I found a respect for her lifestyle and choices. She was going through life in a way that made sense to her.” Sometimes when Celina thinks of her mother, she dances. It brings her a measure of peace.

In Her Best Interests: Samantha

After years of estrangement, Samantha, the forty-year-old artist whose Depriving, Abusing mother threatened to leave her behind in stores for asking to go to the bathroom, decided that it was in her best interests to resume contact. “I realized I'd never have a successful relationship with a man until I reestablished a relationship with my family, so for selfish reasons I began writing letters to them,” she says.

In recent years Samantha has begun visiting her parents: “They take me to dinner and we actually have fun sometimes. My mother is no more nurturing than she ever was. She's still overcontrolling. But she's not mean anymore. There is a definite wall there, but my parents
are trying. They say, ‘I love you,' and I don't really care if they mean it or not. It's nice to hear it.”

Part of Samantha's acceptance has come from letting go of her hopes of having nurturing parents: “There's always going to be a little girl in me who wants loving parents, but I know it's stupid to try and get nurturing from them. I would never call my mother and say, ‘Mom, I don't feel well.' I'd be inviting her to abuse me once more.”

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

1. 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.
   
2. 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.
   

F
or 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 con
trolled, 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.