Toxic Parents (30 page)

Writing confrontation letters is always an intense emotional experience. Before sending her letter, I suggested that Carol put it aside for several days, then reread it when she was calmer. As most people do, she wound up rewriting quite a bit when she came back to her letter. You may find yourself writing several drafts before you’re satisfied. Remember, you are not in an essay contest. The letter doesn’t have to be a literary masterpiece—it needs only to express the truth of your feelings and experiences.

Here is a portion of the letter that Carol read to me the following week:

Dear Dad,

I’m going to say some things to you that I’ve never said before. First of all, I want to tell you why I haven’t spent much time with you and Mother over the last several months. This may surprise and disturb you, but I haven’t wanted to see you because I’m afraid of you. I’m afraid of feeling helpless and being verbally attacked by you. And I’m afraid of relying on you and then being emotionally abandoned by you again. Let me explain.

[This is what you did to me.]

When I was a very little girl, I remember this father who loved, adored, and cared for me. But, as I grew older, all of that changed. When I was about eleven, you became very cruel to me. You constantly told me I smelled bad. You blamed me for everything that went wrong. You blamed me when I lost the scholarship. You blamed me when Bob [her brother] fell and hurt himself. You blamed me when my leg got broken. You blamed me when Mom left you for a while. When Mom left, I was left without any emotional support. You told me jokes that were too dirty, talked about how sexy I looked in a sweater, and either treated me like a date or told me I looked like a whore.

I had no parenting after twelve. I am sure you were having a terrible time yourself during those years, but you hurt me very much. You may not have meant to hurt me, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

When I was fifteen, a man tried to rape me and you blamed me. I really believed it was my fault because you said so. When I was eight months pregnant with my son, my husband beat me up, and you told me I must have done something terrible to make him so angry. You constantly told me all the terrible things that Mother did. You told me that she never loved me, that I was dirty inside, and that I didn’t have a brain in my head.

[How I felt about it at the time.]

I felt scared, humiliated, and confused. I wondered why you stopped loving me. I yearned to be Daddy’s little girl again and wondered what I had done to lose you. I blamed myself for everything. I hated myself. I felt unlovable and disgusting.

[How it affected my life.]

I was terribly damaged as a person. Many men have been quite brutal to me and I always thought it was my fault. When Hank beat me up, I wrote him a letter of apology. I’ve had a deplorable lack of belief in myself, in my ability, and in my worthiness.

[This is what I want from you.]

I want you to apologize for being such a cruel, lousy father. I want you to acknowledge that the harm you did to me caused me great hurt and pain. I want you to stop the verbal attacks. The last one happened when I saw you at Bob’s house and I asked for advice about my business. You yelled at me for no reason. I hated it. I submitted then, but I won’t anymore. I want you to know that I won’t tolerate that in the future. I would like you to acknowledge that good fathers don’t leer at their daughters, that good fathers don’t insult and degrade their daughters, that good fathers protect their daughters.

I’m sorry you and I didn’t have the relationship we could have. I missed a lot by not being able to give my love to a father I so wanted to love. I will continue to send you cards and gifts because that makes me feel good. However, if I am going to see you, you’re going to have to accept my ground rules.

I don’t know you very well. I don’t know what your pains were or what your fears were. I’m grateful that you were a hard worker, that you were a good provider, and that you took me on nice vacations. I remember you teaching me about trees and birds, people and politics, sports and geography, camping and skating. I remember that you laughed a lot. Also, you might like to know that I am doing much better in my life now. I don’t let men beat up on me anymore. I have wonderful and supportive friends, a good profession, and a son I adore.

Please write me and acknowledge my letter. We can’t change the past, but we can begin again.

—Carol

F
ACE-TO
-F
ACE

Many of my clients prefer the safety of writing letters, but many others need immediate feedback to feel that their confrontation was a success. For these clients, only a face-to-face confrontation will do.

The first step in planning a face-to-face, assuming you have already done the emotional work to prepare yourself, is to choose a place to do it. If you are in therapy, you might want to have the confrontation in your therapist’s office. Your therapist can orchestrate the confrontation, make sure you get heard, help you if you get stuck, and, most important, be supportive and protective. I realize this stacks the deck against your parents, but better against them than against you, especially at such a crucial point in your work.

If you have the confrontation in your therapist’s office, be sure to meet your parents
there.
No one can predict what will happen in the session. It is important for you to have your own means of getting home. Even if the confrontation ends on a positive note, you may still feel like being alone afterward, to deal with your feelings and thoughts in private.

You may prefer to do your confrontation on your own. Perhaps you don’t have a therapist—or, if you do, you may feel the need to show your parents that you can assert your independence without help. Many parents simply refuse to go to a therapist’s office. For whatever reason, if you decide to do it on your own, you have to
decide whether to confront your parents in their home or in yours. A public place, such as a restaurant or a bar, is much too inhibiting. You need total privacy.

If you have a choice, I advise you to set the confrontation in your own home. You will feel much stronger on your own turf. If you travel to another city for your confrontation, try to get your parents to come to your hotel room.

You
can
have an effective confrontation on your parents’ turf if necessary. But you will have to work hard to avoid falling victim to childhood fears, guilts, and feelings of helplessness. You should be especially wary of these childhood feelings if your parents still live in the house you grew up in.

I have no hard and fast rule about whether to confront your parents together or separately, though my preference is to do it together. Toxic parents set up family systems that rely on a great deal of secrecy, collusion, and denial to keep the family in balance. Talking to both parents at once cuts through a great deal of that.

On the other hand, if your parents have greatly differing dispositions, perspectives, or defenses, you may be better able to communicate by taking them on one at a time.

Some people are concerned about rehearsing too much and losing their spontaneity before the confrontation. Don’t worry. You’ll have enough anxiety to ensure plenty of deviations from what you’ve prepared. No matter how much you’ve rehearsed, the words won’t come easily. In fact, it’s essential that you know ahead of time that you will be very, very nervous. Your heart will pound, your stomach may knot, you may sweat, you may have a hard time catching your breath, and you may get tongue-tied and forget your lines.

Some people’s minds just go blank under extreme pressure. If you’re worried about this happening, you can avoid the added anxiety by writing a letter to your parents and then reading it aloud to them in your confrontation. This is an excellent way to defeat opening-night jitters and assure that you’ll get your message across.

Preparing for Opening Night

No matter where you decide to have your confrontation, and no matter whether you confront your parents separately or together, you must carefully prepare what you want to say. Rehearse your lines out loud, either alone or with someone, until you know them cold. A face-to-face confrontation is like opening night on Broadway: would you go on stage without learning your lines and understanding your motivation? Before making your confrontation, you need both adequate rehearsal and a clear sense of what you wish to accomplish.

You’ll want to start your confrontation by setting the rules. I suggest something like this:

I’m going to say some things to you that I’ve never said before, and I want you to agree to hear me out until I’m done. This is very important to me, so please don’t contradict me or interrupt me. After I’ve said what I need to say, you’ll have all the time you want to say what you need to say. Are you willing to do that?

It is essential that your parents agree to these terms at the outset. Most parents will. If they are not willing to do even this much, it is probably better to reschedule the confrontation. It is important for you to say what you have rehearsed without getting sidetracked, interrupted, or otherwise diverted from your goals. If they refuse to hear you out, you may have to confront them by letter instead.

W
HAT TO
E
XPECT

Once you get going, most toxic parents will counterattack. After all, if they had the capacity to listen, to hear, to be reasonable, to respect your feelings, and to promote your independence, they
wouldn’t be toxic parents. They will probably perceive your words as treacherous personal assaults. They will tend to fall back on the same tactics and defenses that they’ve always used, only more so.

Inadequate or deficient parents may become even more pathetic and overwhelmed. Alcoholics may deny their alcoholism more vehemently, or if they are in recovery they may use that fact to try to undercut your right to confront them. Controllers may escalate their guilt-peddling and self-righteousness. Abusive parents may become enraged and will almost certainly try to blame you for your own abuse. All of these behaviors are in the service of regaining family balance and returning you to a submissive status quo. It is a good idea to expect the worst—anything better is a bonus.

Remember, the important thing here is not their reaction but your response. If you can stand fast in the face of your parents’ fury, accusations, threats, and guilt-peddling, you will experience your finest hour.

To help yourself prepare, envision the worst possible scenario. Visualize your parents’ faces, furious, pitiful, tearful, whatever. Hear their angry words, their denials, their accusations. Desensitize yourself by saying out loud whatever you think your parents will say, then rehearse calm, nondefensive responses. Ask a partner or friend to play the role of one or both parents. Tell him or her to pull out all the stops and say the worst things imaginable to you. Have your substitute parent scream, yell, call you names, threaten to cut you out of the family, and accuse you of being horrible and selfish. Practice answering with such lines as:

• I’m sure you see it that way.
  

• Name calling and screaming won’t get us anywhere.
  

• I’m not willing to accept your labels.
  

• This is a good example of why we need this meeting.
  

• It’s not okay for you to talk to me that way.
  

• You agreed to hear me out.
  

• Let’s do this some other time, when you’re calmer.
  

Here are some typical parental reactions to confrontation, along with some key responses that you may want to study:

“It never happened.”
Parents who have used denial to avoid their own feelings of inadequacy or anxiety will undoubtedly use it during confrontation to promote their version of reality. They’ll insist that your allegations never happened, or that you’re exaggerating, or that your father could never have done such a thing. They won’t remember, or they’ll accuse you of lying. This reaction is especially common for alcoholics, whose denials may be reinforced by drink-induced memory lapses.

Your response:
“Just because you don’t remember doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

“It was your fault.”
Toxic parents are almost never willing to accept responsibility for their destructive behavior. Instead, they’ll blame you. They’ll say that you were bad or that you were difficult. They’ll claim they did the best they could but you always created problems for them. They’ll say that you drove them crazy. They’ll offer as proof the fact that everybody in the family knew what a problem you were. They’ll offer up a laundry list of your alleged offenses against them.

A variation on this theme is to blame the confrontation on current difficulties in your life. “Why are you attacking us, when your real problem is that you can’t hold a job, control your child, keep a husband, etc.” This may even come disguised as sympathy for the turmoil you are experiencing. Anything to deflect the focus from their behavior.

Your response:
“You can keep trying to make this my fault, but I’m not going to accept the responsibility for what you did to me when I was a child.”

“I said I was sorry.”
Parents may promise to change, to become more loving, to be more supportive, but that’s often just a carrot on a stick. Once the dust settles, the weight of old habits takes over and
they pull the stick back, reverting to their toxic behavior. Some parents may acknowledge a few of the things you say but be unwilling to do anything about it. The line I hear most often is, “I’ve said I’m sorry, what more do you want?”