Toxic Parents (32 page)

If a parent does react angrily after the confrontation, you may feel a great temptation to counterattack. Avoid inflammatory statements like, “That’s just like you,” or, “I can never trust anything you say.” It’s very important that you stick to your nondefensive guns, or you’ll hand your newly won power right back to your parents. Instead, say things like the following:

• I’m willing to talk about your anger, but I’m not going to let you yell at me or insult me.
  

• I’ll come back and talk about this when you’re calmer.
  

If your parents express their anger by giving you the silent treatment, try something like this:

• I’m ready to talk to you whenever you’re ready to stop trying to punish me with your silence.
  

• I’ve risked telling you what’s on my mind. Why aren’t you willing to risk the same thing?
  

One thing is absolutely certain: nothing will ever be the same. It’s important that you pay attention to the ripple effects of your confrontation in the weeks, months, and even years afterward. You must remain clear-headed and clear-eyed as you assess your changing relationship with your parents and with other members of your family.

Your job is to hold on to
your
reality and not get pushed back into your old reactive and defensive patterns, regardless of what your parents do.

T
HE
I
MPACT ON
Y
OUR
P
ARENTS’
R
ELATIONSHIP WITH
E
ACH
O
THER

In addition to dramatic changes in your relationship with your parents, you must expect changes in their relationship with each other.

If your confrontation involves telling the truth about a family secret that one parent has been keeping from the other, such as incest, the impact on their relationship will be profound. One parent may ally with you against the other. Their relationship may even fall apart. If your confrontation involves speaking the unspoken that everyone knew but never faced, such as alcoholism, the impact on your parents’ relationship may not be as extreme, but it can still be powerful. Their relationship may become extremely shaky.

You will be tempted to blame yourself for problems your parents develop in their relationship. You will wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to have left things alone.

When Carla—who gave up her trip to Mexico to visit her needy, alcoholic mother—confronted her mother’s drinking and her father’s co-dependency, her parents’ marriage suffered a harsh blow. When her mother went into recovery, her father fell apart. His self-worth had depended largely on his playing the powerful adequate parent. With his wife no longer leaning on him, his role in the family lost its meaning. Their marriage had been built on a certain pattern of interrelating that no longer applied. They didn’t know how to communicate, they had no balance, and they’d lost their common ground. Carla had mixed feelings about this.

CARLA:
Look what I started. I upset the whole family.

SUSAN:
Wait a minute. You didn’t start anything.
They
started it.

CARLA:
But if they get a divorce, I’m going to feel terrible.

SUSAN:
There’s no reason for you to feel guilty. They’re reevaluating their relationship because they’ve got new information. You didn’t invent that information, you just turned the light on.

CARLA:
Well, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. They had an okay marriage before.

SUSAN:
No, they didn’t.

CARLA:
Well, it looked okay.

SUSAN:
No, it didn’t.

CARLA (after a long pause):
I guess what feels so scary is that I’ve finally decided I’m not willing to sacrifice myself for them anymore. I’m going to let them be responsible for themselves for a change. And if that upsets everybody then I’ll just have to deal with their unhappiness.

Carla’s parents did not divorce, but neither did their marriage ever regain peace. However, though they continued their struggle with each other, it was a struggle that no longer contaminated Carla’s life. By telling the truth and by not getting reenmeshed when her parents started acting out their long-smoldering conflicts with each other, she achieved a freedom for herself that she had always believed impossible.

Y
OUR
S
IBLINGS’
R
EACTIONS

While this book focuses primarily on your relationship with your parents, confrontation doesn’t occur in a vacuum. You are part of a family system, and everyone else in that system will be affected. Just as your relationship with your parents will never be the same after confrontation, your relationship with your siblings will change as well.

Some siblings have had experiences similar to yours and will validate your memories. Others have had similar experiences but because of their own enmeshment with their parents will deny or discount even the most horrendous abuse both of you and of them. Still others may have had different experiences and will have no idea what you’re talking about.

Some siblings will feel extremely threatened by your confrontation and may become enraged at you for upsetting the precarious balance of the family. This is the way Carol’s brother reacted.

After Carol’s father received his letter, he called and gave her some unexpected support. He told her that he didn’t remember the things she had written about in her letter as she remembered them, but he apologized for any pain he had caused her. Carol was deeply touched and excited about the possibility of a new relationship
with her father. Within a few weeks, however, she was devastated by a second conversation with him, in which he not only denied the experiences she had written about but denied having apologized as well. Then, to add insult to injury, Carol’s younger brother called and verbally attacked her for daring to “spread disgusting lies” about their father. He told her she had a “sick mind” for accusing their father of having been abusive with her.

If your siblings react negatively to your confrontation, they may put a lot of energy into letting you know how much you’ve upset the family. You may receive many letters, phone calls, or visits from them. They may become your parents’ emissaries, delivering messages, pleas, threats, and ultimatums. They may call you names and do all they can to convince you that you’re either wrong, crazy, or both. Once again, it is essential that you use nondefensive responses and stand by your right to tell the truth.

Here are some examples of things you might say to your siblings:

• I’m willing to talk to you about this, but I won’t let you insult me.
  

• I can understand your wanting to protect them, but what I’m saying is true.
  

• I’m not doing this to upset anyone, but this is something I have to do for myself.
  

• My relationship with you is very important to me, but I won’t bury my own needs to maintain it.
  

• Just because it didn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it didn’t happen to me.
  

Kate—whose banker father battered both her and her sister, Judy, often at the same time—was convinced that her sister would despise her for bringing up their painful past. However, Kate chose to take that risk.

I’ve always felt very protective of Judy. A lot of times she got it worse than I did. The night I sent my letter to my parents, I called her because I wanted her to know what I was doing. She said she’d be right over, and we needed to talk. I was sure she was going to be furious. I was an absolute basket case. When I opened the door I could see she’d been crying. We threw our arms around each other and just held each other for a long time. We talked and we cried and we hugged and we laughed and we cried some more. We went over all of it. Judy remembered some things I’d totally forgotten and she was really glad to be talking about it. She told me if it weren’t for me she might have kept all this inside for God knows how long. She felt so much closer to me. She didn’t feel so alone with all of this garbage. She really admired my guts, and she wanted me to know she was with me all the way. When Judy said that, I just melted.

By telling the truth, both Kate and Judy were able to enrich their relationship and give each other strong support. Kate’s courageous actions also inspired her sister to get some counseling to deal with the pain of her own abusive childhood.

O
THER
F
AMILY
R
EACTIONS

Confrontation affects everyone to whom you are emotionally connected, especially your partner and children, who are secondary victims of your toxic parents. After confrontation, you’re going to need all the love and support you can get. Don’t be afraid to ask for it. Don’t be afraid to tell them that this is a very difficult time for you. But remember, they won’t be experiencing the same intense emotions, and they may not fully understand why you had to do what you did. Because this may also be a difficult time for them, if they are not as supportive as you’d like, it’s important that you try to show some understanding for their feelings.

Your parents may attempt to involve other family members as allies in their continuing campaign to absolve themselves and make
you the villain. This may include relatives to whom you are very close, such as a grandparent or a favorite aunt. Some of these relatives may deal with the family uproar by becoming protective of your parents. Others may side with you. As with your parents and your siblings, it is important to deal with each family member on his or her own terms and remind each one that you are taking positive steps for your own well-being and that they should not feel compelled to take sides.

You may even hear from such unexpected sources as your mother’s best friend or your minister. Remember, you don’t owe detailed explanations to nonfamily go-betweens. If you choose not to give them, you might say something like the following:

• I appreciate your concern, but this is between my parents and me.
  

• I understand that you’d like to help, but I don’t want to discuss this with you.
  

• You’re making a judgment about something you don’t have full information about. When things calm down, perhaps I can talk to you about it.
  

Sometimes a relative or close family friend simply can’t understand why you had to confront your parents, and your relationship with that person may suffer as a result. This is never easy; it may be one of the more painful prices you must pay for emotional health.

T
HE
M
OST
D
ANGEROUS
T
IME

Far and away the most dangerous reaction you should be prepared for after confrontation is that your parents may make a last-ditch attempt to undo what you’ve done. They may pull out all the stops to punish you. They may harangue you about your treachery or, alternatively, stop speaking to you. They may threaten to cut you out of the family or out of their will. You have, after all, broken the family
rules of silence and denial. You have destroyed the family myth. You have defined yourself as separate, striking a blow against hopeless enmeshment in the family craziness.

In essence, you have dropped an emotional atom bomb; you can expect repercussions. The angrier your parents become, the more you will be tempted to renounce your new strength and seek “peace at any price.” You’ll wonder whether what you’ve gained is really worth the uproar. All of your doubts, second thoughts, and even the yearnings to return to the status quo are common. Toxic parents will do almost anything to regain the familiar and comfortable family balance. They can be incredibly seductive when they sing their siren songs of guilt, pity, or blame.

This is when your emotional support system becomes especially important. Just as the Greek hero Ulysses had his crew lash him to the mast so that he could hear the Sirens sing without succumbing to their irresistible but fatal attraction, your friend, therapist, partner, or some combination thereof can lash you to a protective emotional mast of your own. He or she can give you the caring and validation you need to retain your faith in yourself and in the important choice you have made.

In my experience, toxic parents rarely follow through on their threats to excommunicate their children from the family. They are much too enmeshed and tend to resist drastic changes. However, there are no guarantees. I have seen parents who have cut their children out of their lives, who have made good on threats to disinherit them or stop whatever financial help they were providing. You must be emotionally and psychologically prepared for this or any other reaction.

It is not easy to hold your ground while your family adjusts around you. Facing the consequences of your new behavior is one of the bravest things you will ever ask of yourself. But it will also be one of the most rewarding.