If You Had Controlling Parents (25 page)

C
ertain 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 emotionally 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.

Holidays and Family Rituals

Holidays and family rituals are laden with emotional tugs. Parental birthdays and Mother's and Father's Days are supposed to honor par
ents, but how can you feel good about honoring someone who dishonored you? Year-end holidays may feel like a time for families to be festive, but how can you feel festive coming together in an environment of control, dishonesty, or manipulation?

Despite the roadblocks, holidays offer opportunities for you to observe your level of individuation and act in healthier ways. For example, deciding how much and what kind of contact you want with your parents at holidays—based on what is healthiest for you rather than on historical practice—can be an empowering step. One woman and her mother have agreed on a “Christmas truce” from Thanksgiving to mid-January, during which they don't talk about family issues or emotionally laden subjects.

It may help to
expect
that a visit to your parents will be stressful so you'll be less disappointed if you feel pressured. And if the visit isn't stressful, you're bound to be pleasantly surprised.

Exercise for Holiday Angst

Choosing cards for parental birthdays and holidays can be tough. It's hard to buy the ones that say “You were always there for me” if your parents weren't. Humorous cards might be misinterpreted. Buying a flowery, bland card may feel like selling out. You have so much you were never allowed to say, so why say something without any meaning?

One solution is to create and even send a more honest controlling-family card. Perhaps something like: “Even Though You Hurt Me, Thank You for What You Gave Me,” or “Overall, It Was Still Better Than Being in an Orphanage.”

Resources for Balancing

Bloomfield, Harold.
Making Peace with Your Parents
. New York: Ballantine Books, 1983.

Cocola, Nancy, and Arlene Matthews.
How to Manage Your Mother: Skills and Strategies to Improve Mother-Daughter Relationships
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Cohen, Susan, and Edward Cohen.
Mothers Who Drive Their Daughters Crazy: Ten Types of “Impossible” Moms and How to Deal with Them
. Rocklin, CA: Prima, 1997.

Engel, Beverly.
Divorcing a Parent
. New York: Ballantine Books, 1990.

Engel, Lewis, and Tom Ferguson.
Hidden Guilt: How to Stop Punishing Yourself and Enjoy the Happiness You Deserve
. New York: Pocket Books, 1990.

Farmer, Steven.
Adult Children of Abusive Parents
. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989.

Secunda, Victoria.
When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends
. New York: Dell Publishing, 1990.

E
motionally leaving home and balancing your relationship with your parents can help lay the groundwork for Step Three:
Redefining your life
in terms of who you are and where you want to go, not in terms of your parents or your past.

Here are nine paths to growth and healing that I have found particularly valuable for those who grew up controlled. They focus directly on undoing the distortions of power, size, feeling, thinking, relating, and identity that come with controlling territory. For each path, I offer exercises that my clients and I have found helpful, along with suggestions for further reading. You might test one or two paths and see if they benefit you. And, please, don't fall into the perfectionistic trap of thinking that you must do all nine or that you have to do them perfectly!

The nine paths:

1. Identify and pursue your passions.
   
2. Make a place for yourself in the world.
   
3. Use your feelings as allies.
   
4. Deepen connections with others without losing your sense of self.
   
5. Identify and change thought patterns that limit you.
   
6. Pursue greater self-acceptance.
   
7. Live in the present.
   
8. Seek peace with your body.
   
9. Reduce your need to control life and others.
   

1. Identify and Pursue Your Passions

We are fluid, not static, beings. At any given moment each of us is either growing, maintaining, or shrinking in terms of our sense of self and personal power. One helpful measuring tool is a simple self-assessment you can use anytime, anywhere, particularly when you are feeling confused, self-blaming, or under assault. Ask yourself, “Right now, am I growing or shrinking?” Notice what makes you grow. Growth generally comes from facing challenges; feeling seen and heard; giving to others in a balanced way; meeting or exceeding your expectations; being creative; and, perhaps more than anything, pursuing what you are passionate about. Notice what makes you shrink. Noticing can help you identify and alter constricting behavior or situations and open the door to growth-oriented behaviors.

Exercises

1. Unlock your psychological clamps.
   Spaceship launching pads have powerful clamps that hold rockets down for a few moments even after ignition until a critical launch force is built up. If these clamps ever malfunctioned and didn't let go, the spaceship would blow up or burn up. Perhaps many of your hesitancies and fears about why you can't or shouldn't follow your dreams are nothing more than psychological safety devices that have been holding on for too strongly or for too long. List the fears, beliefs, and expectations that keep you from exploring your dreams or passions. Then ask yourself, “If all of my fears disappeared, what would I pursue?”
   
2. Learn from your heroes.
   Pick out a real or fictional character whom you've always admired or envied. What part of the character's life intrigues you? What aspects of them do you want to emulate?
   
3. See the deeper purpose of your actions.
   Each of us can benefit from discovering a purpose larger than personal concerns to motivate us in the face of life challenges. In fact, you can discover a greater purpose from even your smallest tasks. Once a day, at work or elsewhere, pause and ask yourself: “What am I creating?” Answer at least seven times, each time responding with a larger definition of what you are creating.
   For example, when going to work: 1) I am creating a fresh workday; 2) My work creates rewards for myself and others; 3) Rewards create energy for health, happiness, intimacy, and play; 4) Health, happiness, intimacy, and play create more fulfillment; 5) Living as more fulfilled creates the impetus to nurture others; 6) Nurturing others creates success and expansion in others' lives; 7) Success and expansion in others' lives benefits the entire community both now and in the future
   And so on.
   
4. Take a risk.
   List some intimidating adventures you have thought about but never done, such as skydiving, bungee jumping, river rafting, horseback riding, taking a helicopter trip, or scuba diving. Pick one, find a safe, reputable company, and take the risk.
   
5. Live your dreams.
   List twenty-five things, big and little, that you have always wanted to accomplish or experience. Prioritize them and begin to execute them.
   
6. Envision ideal days in your life five, ten, and twenty-five years hence.
   Notice the key activities and experiences that would make those days ideal. Then draw up a plan for making these key elements part of your everyday life in some form.
   

Resources

Anderson, Nancy.
Work with Passion: How to Do What You Love for a Living
. San Rafael, CA: New World, 1995.

Bolles, Richard Nelson.
What Color Is Your Parachute
? Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1997.

Sher, Barbara, and Annie Gottlieb.
Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want
. New York: Ballantine Books, 1986.

2. Make a Place for Yourself in the World

If you grew up controlled, you grew up without a Bill of Rights. Now's the time to assert your rights in the world.

If you felt small and powerless around your parents, you may feel small and powerless around others in your work or personal life—especially authority figures or controlling people. Exercises one through five below can help you develop more assertiveness.

Making a place for yourself in the world also includes giving yourself permission to express yourself in new and different ways. Exercises six and seven give you ideas on how to do this.

Exercises

• 1.
  Develop your arsenal of self-defense.
  If another person abusively criticizes you, you have several options:
  

• 2.
  See bullies or critics as caricatures.
  Visualize a person who unfairly criticizes you as a bantam rooster strutting about, a brat throwing a tantrum, or a scared rabbit huddling in the corner. Visualize responding. With each word you say, the critic becomes
  smaller and fainter, as if you were turning a light-switch dimmer, until he or she vanishes. These techniques can balance power and size distortions you may have held since childhood.
  
• 3.
  Make at least one mistake a day.
  Pick something that isn't dangerous or crucial and intentionally flub it. Pass a great parking spot and find one farther from your destination. Park crooked. Mispronounce a word in a meeting. Say “I don't know.” By deliberately making mistakes, we see that the consequences of failing are generally benign or far less dire than we fear. Realizing this affords greater freedom to risk and persevere.
  
• 4.
  Be a controller too.
  If your parent was a bull in a china shop when it came to recognizing nuances in life, temporarily adopt that role in an exaggerated way. Find a cooperative person or situation where nothing is at stake and practice being obstinate, bullheaded, and simplistic. Notice if it gives you more energy than worrying and second-guessing yourself. Notice, too, if it drains energy from those around you. Ask others how it feels to be around such a controller. Let their responses validate how stressful it was for you as a child.
  
• 5.
  You're entitled.
  When your rights are violated, imagine that the violation is happening to your best friend or an innocent child. If you could intervene for them, wouldn't you? If so, give yourself the same benefit of the doubt.
  
• 6.
  Try new forms of self-protection.
  Try martial arts, tai chi, self-defense training, or assertiveness training.
  
• 7.
  Try new forms of self-expression.
  Pursue classes or hobbies in the expressive or creative arts, such as singing, dancing, painting, pottery, acting, public speaking, writing, or poetry.
  

Resources

Butler, Pamela.
Self-Assertion for Women
. San Francisco: HarperSF, 1992.

Evans, Patricia.
The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond
. Holbrook, MA: Bob Evans, 1992.

Napier, Nancy.
Getting Through the Day: Strategies for Adults Hurt as Children
. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.

Smith, Manuel.
When I Say No, I Feel Guilty
. New York: Bantam Books, 1985.

3. Use Your Feelings as Allies

Since many controlled children had their physical needs better taken care of than their emotional ones, feelings can be one of the most important areas in which to seek balance. Your parents may have lopped off some of your emotional limbs. By letting your feelings branch out, you'll grow stronger.

Emotions give you physical clues as to their identity. You may feel a pulsing in your ears as you get angry; a tightness across your jaw or chest when you are afraid; quickened or slowed breathing when you are worried. Use these “hints” to alert you to oncoming feelings so that you can attend to them rather than shutting them off.

It's also important to honor your sensitivity, especially if it was squashed or ridiculed by a controlling family. Controllers tend to be uncomfortable with others' sensitivity and send messages that sensitivity is a flaw or a sin. Yet sensitivity to feelings, to others, and to yourself is truly a gift. Accepting and promoting your sensitivity can be healing after a lifetime of being shamed for it.

Exercises

1. Take the lid off.
   Since controlling parents often forced you to bottle up your anger, sadness, grief, rage, and joy, you may find it helpful to take off your emotional lid. Even if it seems forced or “pretend” at first, find a safe setting and scream, sing loudly, hit pillows, bang garbage cans. (Be sure to warm up your voice or body prior to this so you minimize the chances of strain or injury.) Taking the lid off extends your emotional range.
   
2. Name that tune.
   Recall a recent situation in which you felt strongly, such as a reaction to a movie, TV show, or book. Pause for a few moments and notice as many subtle variations in your feelings and sensations as you can identify. Take your time. Don't worry if it seems like several feelings are bound together. Observe each of those feelings, sitting with each one for a full minute.
   
3. Expand your emotional range.
   Avenues include acting classes, rebirthing and holistic breath work, various types of body work, journal or poetry writing, painting or drawing.
   
4. See what new environments can evoke in you.
   Watch children or animals playing, or a good movie. Volunteer to help feed the homeless on a major holiday. Notice the range of emotions you see in those around you. Take stock of what that evokes in you.
   

Resources

Aron, Elaine.
The Highly Sensitive Person
. New York: Broadway Books, 1996.

Goleman, Daniel.
Emotional Intelligence
. New York: Bantam Books, 1997.

Lee, John, and Bill Stott.
Facing the Fire: Experiencing and Expressing Anger Appropriately
. New York: Bantam Books, 1995.

Lerner, Harriet.
The Dance of Anger
. New York: HarperPerennial, 1985.

Rubin, Theodore.
The Angry Book
. New York: Collier, 1993.

4. Deepen Connections with Others Without Losing Your Sense of Self

Intimate relationships can be difficult if you grew up controlled. Just as your parents' control strategies came one relationship too late—they controlled in response to how they were raised, not in response to you—your strategies to avoid control may not be helpful with your friends and loved ones.

Growth lies through balance: keeping a healthy sense of self, reality-testing your fears and perceptions, and allowing yourself to recognize that your childhood was then and this is now. If you grew up in social isolation, even a single, corrective relationship based on trust and respect—whether it is with a mate, friend, therapist, or coworker—will help you make great strides in undoing a lifetime of control.

Exercises one through five offer ways to maintain your sense of
self in relation to others. Exercises six through nine offer ways to reach out and touch others.

Exercises

1. Practice saying no.
   Say no at least three times a day, particularly to offers, requests, or situations that don't benefit you. There are many ways in which to say no, ranging from polite but firm (“Thank you but I'd rather not”; “I'm sorry, I cannot”; “I'm afraid not”; “No thank you”) to emphatic and resolute (“No”; “I'm not interested”; “That doesn't work for me”). Each time you say no, you put in a boundary that was violated when you were a child.
   Then practice saying yes. Say it at least once a day in situations that are safe but in which you might normally say no—particularly about things you've wanted but haven't felt entitled to.
   
2. Not just smokers can step outside.
   If you feel yourself becoming lost, small, or depressed in the company of others, take a break. Stepping outside, taking a brief walk, or finding someplace to sit quietly and tune into yourself helps restore a balanced sense of self.
   
3. Be “disagreeable” from time to time.
   In conversations with others, allow yourself to uphold an opposing opinion if it reflects your beliefs. Don't allow yourself to grow quiet or withdrawn simply because you are the only one voicing a certain view.
   
4. Break the cycle.
   Family therapist Virginia Satir suggests visualizing three families: your parents' families when your parents were children; your family when you were a child; and your own children when they were (or may someday be) born. What's different among the three families? What's the same? What do you want to make sure does and does not get passed on? What do you hope your descendants will say about you?
   
5. Tally your boundary setting.
   Notice each time you do not allow abusive or controlling people to abuse or control you. Each victory validates your progress. Even returning a defective purchase to a store for a full refund can be an instructive exercise.
   
6. Acknowledge our interdependence.
   We carry within us all the teachers and friends who taught us and loved us; the animals we have befriended; the plants and animals we eat, wear, and use; the thou
   sands of craftspeople, food growers, businesspeople, researchers, caregivers, entertainers, news gatherers, government employees, and so many others who make our lives easier and safer. While you may have had controlling parents who did you damage, you also carry within you the gifts of thousands of people who bear you no ill will and some of whom genuinely loved you. It may help to remind yourself of the interdependence we all carry as humans and visualize or thank those who have helped make your life easier and more fulfilled.
   
7. Cultivate nurturing surrogate family members.
   It is normal to hunger for connections to older people and earlier generations; they give us a context for our lives. If you can't connect with your own parents, you may be able to connect with relatives. If not, you can volunteer at a senior center or “adopt” a friend's parents or a neighborhood elderly person. These elders can be the parents or grandparents you wanted but without the controlling baggage. In turn, you'll be providing the elderly with company and nurturing. Other avenues include volunteer work at hospices, hospitals, Big Brothers or Big Sisters, or community centers.
   
8. Touch.
   If you have difficulty expressing physical affection, start slowly and build on it. Hold or hug objects, then animals, then perhaps children, then yourself, then others. Next, practice receiving touch from each of these (Farmer, 141). Yes, even trees can hug back, even if only in your imagination. Try this a few minutes a day for a week.
   
9. Experiment with giving and receiving.
   Allow yourself to ask for something from a trusted person. Let yourself experience the out-of-control feelings that can accompany wanting, asking, and receiving. Likewise, do a favor for someone and note any controlling and out-of-control feelings the act produces in you. Balancing giving and receiving helps avoid your always being the one in control.