Toxic Parents (11 page)

You Can’t Trust Anybody

Because their first and most important relationship taught them that the people they love will hurt them and be terrifyingly unpredictable, most adult children of alcoholics are terrified of becoming close to another person. Successful adult relationships, whether between lovers or friends, require a significant degree of vulnerability, trust, and openness—the very elements that an alcoholic household destroys. As a result, many adult children of alcoholics are drawn to people who are emotionally unavailable because of deep conflicts of their own. In this way, the adult child can create an illusion of a relationship without confronting his or her terror of true intimacy.

Jody’s Jekyll and Hyde boyfriend was a repeat of her father—sometimes wonderful, sometimes terrible. By picking a volatile and abusive man, Jody was both repeating the familiar experiences of her childhood and guaranteeing that she would never have to risk entering the uncharted waters of true intimacy. She clung desperately to the myth that her father was still the only man who really understood her. Her unwillingness to confront this myth contaminated her relationships not only with her friends but with me and with other members of her therapy group. In fact, the myth was so powerful that she eventually gave up on herself.

I still remember the sadness I felt the night she announced she was leaving group. I reminded her that she knew this work was going to be painful, that pain was part of the process. For a split second, she looked as if she might reconsider, but then:

Look. I don’t want to give up my dad. I don’t want to get angry with him. And I don’t want to keep defending him to you. My dad and I really need each other. Why should I trust you more than him? I don’t think you or anybody in this group really gives a shit about me. I don’t think any of you will really be there for me when I get hurt.

Jody’s group was composed of other adults who had been abused as children, and they understood what she was going through. They were extremely supportive and loving with her, but she couldn’t accept that. To Jody, the world was a devious place full of emotional vandals. She was convinced that if she let anyone get too close, they would hurt her and let her down. The irony is that these beliefs would have been very accurate in regard to her father.

Jody’s inability to trust was a major casualty of her father’s alcoholism. If you can’t trust your father, whom can you trust? Trust is like the runt of our emotional litter; under harsh conditions, it’s usually the first to die.

Trust is a common casualty among adult children of toxic parents. Listen to Glenn:

I was always scared when my wife would want to do anything without me—even just going out with the girls for dinner. I was afraid she’d abandon me. I just didn’t trust her. I was afraid she would find somebody better than me and leave me for him. I wanted to control her so she’d always be around and I wouldn’t have to worry all the time.

Jealousy, possessiveness, and suspicion are recurrent themes in the relationships of many adult children of alcoholics. They learned early that relationships lead to betrayal and love leads to pain.

“B
UT
Y
ESTERDAY
Y
OU
S
AID
I
T
W
AS
O
KAY
”

Carla, a tall, soft-spoken, dental hygienist, came into therapy at the recommendation of her physician, who suggested that her recurrent headaches might have a psychological basis. Since headaches are so often a symptom of repressed rage, one of the first things I asked her was, “What are you angry about?” My question took her by surprise, but after a moment she answered:

You’re right. I
am
angry. At my mother. I’m forty-seven years old and my mother’s still running my life. Like last month. I was all set to go on this terrific trip to Mexico. I was really excited about it, but three days before I was supposed to leave, I got a call from Mom. Right on cue. I wasn’t even surprised. I could tell she’d been drinking because her speech was real slurry, and she sounded like she’d been crying. She told me my dad had gone on a two-week fishing trip, and she was real depressed . . . and could I just stay with her for a few days. I told her I had this vacation planned and she started to cry. I tried to talk her into visiting my aunt, but she started saying how I didn’t love her, and one thing led to another and before I knew it I promised to cancel Mexico and come out. I wouldn’t have enjoyed myself anyway knowing she was in the pits again.

I told Carla that this sounded as if it was an old story for her. She agreed:

Yeah, it happened all the time when I was a kid. I always had to take care of her. And she never appreciated it. She was always ragging at me. I never knew which of my mother’s many faces I was going to see at any given time, and I could never figure out what would please her from day to day. I remember getting a D in history and being afraid to come home. A D was good for about four hours of being told that I was a worthless, ungrateful failure, and no man would ever want me. When I finally got home, it turned out she was in a good mood. She just signed my report card and said, “You’re smart; you don’t have to worry about grades.” I couldn’t believe it. But then she had her usual four cocktails before dinner that night. I set the table and forgot to put out the salt and pepper. When she sat down, she exploded as if I’d caused a world war or something. I couldn’t understand how she could stop loving me just because I forgot the salt and pepper.

Carla’s mother’s behavior ranged from smotheringly loving to excruciatingly cruel, depending on her mood, her alcoholic consumption, or, as Carla put it, “the phase of the moon.” Carla told me there was rarely any normal, everyday middle ground with her mother. So Carla was constantly trying to second-guess how to get her mother’s approval. Unfortunately, the floor kept shifting beneath her feet; the same behavior would please her mother one day and set her off the next.

“I
T’S
A
LL
Y
OUR
F
AULT
”

All parents are inconsistent to some degree, but the “it’s right one day and wrong the next” syndrome is dramatically intensified by alcohol. Because the signals and rules change so often and unexpectedly, the child always falls short. The parent uses criticism as a means of control, so no matter what the child does, the parent will find something to criticize. The child becomes an outlet for frustration, a scapegoat for all that is wrong with his parents. This is an insidious way for alcoholic parents to justify and ventilate their own inadequacies. The message becomes: “If you wouldn’t do everything wrong, Mommy wouldn’t have to drink.” As Carla put it:

I remember when I was about seven, my mother had been going at the bottle pretty heavy one morning, so I invited a friend over after school. I usually didn’t invite people over because I never knew just how drunk she’d be, but this time I figured she’d be sleeping off breakfast by midafternoon. My friend and I were playing dress-up, wearing her shoes and putting on her lipstick and stuff, when suddenly the door banged open, and my mother lurched out. I was so scared I almost wet my pants. Her breath could’ve knocked us out. She went crazy when she saw us touching her things and started screaming, “I know why you brought your little friend over here . . . to spy on me! You’re always spying on me. That’s why I have to drink all the time. You could drive anyone to drink!”

Carla’s mother was totally out of control. In addition to humiliating her daughter, she blamed her for her alcoholism. Carla was too young to see the holes in her mother’s logic, so she accepted the blame.

Unconsciously, Carla still thinks she’s responsible for her mother’s drinking. That’s why she’s willing to go to such lengths to atone. She canceled a long-awaited vacation just to make a futile stab for her mother’s approval.

The family scapegoat is an all-too-familiar role for children in alcoholic families. Some try to fulfill their negative self-image by resorting to self-destructive or delinquent behavior. Others unconsciously find ways to punish themselves with various emotional and even physical symptoms—such as Carla’s headaches.

T
HE
G
OLDEN
C
HILD

While some children of alcoholics are forced to be the scapegoat, others are cast in the role of the family hero—the “golden child.” This child is showered with approval from both parents and the outside world because of the enormous responsibility he or she is forced to assume. On the surface, this approbation would seem to put the heroic child in a much more positive environment than that of the family scapegoat, but in reality, the deprivation and the personal demons are very much the same. The golden child drives himself mercilessly to achieve unobtainable goals of perfection both in childhood and in adult life.

A few years ago I received a call on my radio show from a research chemist named Steve, who told me:

I’m just immobilized. I’m forty-one years old and I’m successful in my career. But lately I can’t make a decision. I’m in the middle of the biggest project of my life and I just can’t concentrate. A lot of people are depending on me. I’m petrified. All my life I’ve been such a high achiever . . . you know . . . straight-A student, Phi Beta Kappa . . . I was always a self-starter. But now I feel paralyzed.

I asked him if there was anything going on in his life that might account for these changes. He said that his father had just been admitted to intensive care with severe liver damage. Taking my clue from that, I asked Steve if his father was an alcoholic. After a moment, he replied that both his parents were. Steve had grown up coping with the uproar at home by burying himself in schoolwork and becoming a superachiever.

Everybody thought I was Superkid . . . my grandparents, my teachers, even my parents . . . when they were sober. I was the perfect son, the perfect student, and later on, the perfect scientist, husband, and father. [At this point, his voice broke.] I’m getting so tired of being perfect all the time!

As a child, Steve earned approval by assuming burdens beyond his capacity and managing them with a maturity beyond his years. Instead of building a core of self-esteem by being treated as an innately worthwhile human being, he had to prove his worth through external achievement alone. His self-esteem became dependent on accolades, awards, and grades instead of inner confidence.

His drivenness may also have involved an element of compensation. By becoming superadequate himself, Steve may have unconsciously tried to balance out his parents’ inadequacy.

I told Steve that his father’s illness had obviously stirred up a lot of unfinished business for him, and that while I knew he was in pain, it was also a wonderful opportunity for him to start to deal with some really crucial issues. I asked him to look at the fact that becoming the family hero was his special way of coping with a horrendous childhood. The role provided a certain amount of safety and structure to his life. Unfortunately, he never learned to go easy
on himself. Now, many years later, his search for perfection in all aspects of his life was, as is common with most perfectionists, paralyzing him.

At my urging, Steve agreed to seek counseling both to help him through his current situation and to deal with the deprivation of his childhood.

“I H
AVE TO
B
E IN
C
ONTROL AT
A
LL
T
IMES
”

Children growing up in alcoholic homes are buffeted by unpredictable and volatile circumstances and personalities. In reaction, they often grow up with an overpowering need to control everything and everyone in their lives. Glenn reacted to the helplessness he felt as a child by finding his own way, despite his timidity, to become a controller:

Whenever I had a girlfriend, I always seemed to dump her while the relationship was going well. I guess I was afraid if I didn’t dump her, she’d just wind up dumping me, so it was a way to stay in control. Today, I’m always telling my wife and kids how to do everything. I can’t help it, I have to be in control. I run my business the same way. I mean, I still can’t yell at anybody, but my employees always know when I’m unhappy. They say I put out vibes. It drives them crazy. But it’s my business, right?

Glenn believed that by taking control of all aspects of his life, he could avoid reexperiencing the topsy-turvy craziness of his childhood. Of course, having problems with assertiveness forced him to find other means of control, so he fell back on manipulative techniques such as sulking or nagging, which he learned to use quite effectively.

Unfortunately, his manipulative behavior created distance and resentment between himself and the people he cared about. Like many adult children of alcoholics, Glenn’s need to control people
resulted in what he feared the most—rejection. It’s ironic that the defenses he developed against loneliness as a child were the very things that brought him loneliness as an adult.