Toxic Parents (31 page)

Your response:
“I appreciate your apology, but that’s just a beginning. If you’re truly sorry, you’ll be available to me when I need you and you’ll work through this with me to make a better relationship.”

“We did the best we could.”
Those parents who either were inadequate or were silent partners to abuse will frequently deal with confrontation in the same passive, ineffectual ways as they’ve traditionally used to deal with problems. These parents will remind you of how tough they had it while you were growing up and how hard they struggled. They’ll say such things as, “You’ll never understand what I was going through,” “You don’t know how many times I tried to get him/her to stop,” or, “I did the best I could.” This particular style of response may stir up a lot of sympathy and compassion for your parents. This is understandable, but it makes it difficult for you to remain focused on what you need to say in your confrontation. The temptation is for you once again to put their needs ahead of your own. It’s important that you acknowledge their difficulties without invalidating yours.

Your response:
“I understand that you had a hard time, and I’m sure you didn’t hurt me on purpose, but I
need you
to understand that the way you dealt with your problems really
did
hurt me.”

“Look what we did for you.” Many
parents will attempt to counter your assertions by recalling the wonderful times you had as a child and the loving moments you and they shared. By focusing on the good things, they can avoid looking at the darker side of their behavior. Parents will typically remind you of gifts they gave you, places they took you, sacrifices they made for you, and thoughtful things they did. They’ll say things like, “This is the thanks we get,” or, “Nothing was ever enough for you.”

Your response:
“I appreciate those things very much, but they
didn’t make up for the beatings [constant criticism, violence, insults, alcoholism, etc.].”

“How can you do this to me?”
Some parents act like martyrs. They’ll collapse into tears, wring their hands, and express shock and disbelief at your “cruelty.” They will act as if your confrontation has victimized
them.
They’ll accuse you of hurting them or disappointing them. They’ll complain that they don’t need this, they have enough problems. They’ll tell you they’re not strong enough or healthy enough to take this, that the heartache will kill them. Some of their sadness will, of course, be genuine. It
is
sad for parents to face their own shortcomings, to realize they have caused their children significant pain. But their sadness can also be manipulative and controlling. It is their way of using guilt to try to make you back down.

Your response:
“I’m sorry you’re upset. I’m sorry you’re hurt. But I’m not willing to give up on this. I’ve been hurting for a long time, too.”

S
OMETIMES
I
T’S
R
EALLY
I
MPOSSIBLE

The typical reactions and suggested responses given above can help you avoid some emotional quicksand during confrontation. However, there are some people with whom you can’t communicate no matter how hard you try.

Some parents escalate the conflict so intensely during confrontation that communication becomes impossible. No matter how reasonable, how kind, how clear, how articulate you may be, their behavior may require you to cut short the confrontation. They will twist your words and your motives, will lie, will constantly interrupt when they agreed not to, will accuse, scream, break furniture, throw dishes, and make you feel at best crazy and at worst homicidal. So, just as it is important to push past your fears and make every effort to say what you need to say to your parents, it is also important to
know when that is impossible. If you have to cut short your confrontation because of their behavior, it is
their
failure, not yours.

A Quiet Confrontation

Not many confrontations get out of control, even if they get stormy. In fact, many are surprisingly calm.

Melanie—who kept trying to rescue inadequate men and who, as a child, wrote to Dear Abby because she was forced to comfort her depressed father during his frequent crying jags—opted to bring her mother, Ginny, into my office for her confrontation (her father had since died). She began with the words we had rehearsed together, and her mother agreed to hear her out.

MELANIE:
Mom, I need to talk to you about some things in my childhood that still hurt me. I realize how much I blamed myself when I was a little girl . . .

GINNY (interrupting):
If you still feel that way, honey, then your therapy must not be doing much good.

MELANIE:
You agreed to hear me out and not to interrupt. We’re not talking about therapy now, we’re talking about my childhood. Do you remember when Daddy would get so upset with me for fighting with Neal [her brother]? Daddy would burst into tears and tell me how good Neal was to me and how awful I was to him? Do you remember all the times you would send me to Daddy’s room when he was crying and tell me that I was supposed to cheer him up? Do you have any idea how much guilt you put on me to be Daddy’s caretaker? I had to take care of him when I should have been being a little girl. Why didn’t you take care of Daddy? Why didn’t Daddy take care of himself? Why did I have to do it? You were never there even when you were there. I spent more time with the housekeepers than I spent with you. You remember when I wrote that letter to Dear Abby? You just ignored that too.

GINNY (quietly):
I don’t remember any of this.

MELANIE:
Mom, maybe you choose not to remember, but if you want to be helpful you’ve got to hear me out. Nobody’s attacking you, I’m just trying to tell you how I feel. Okay, this is how I felt about all this stuff while it was going on. I felt totally alone, I felt like an awful person, I felt really guilty and very overwhelmed because I was trying to fix things I couldn’t fix. That’s how I felt. Now let me tell you how it affected my life. Up until I started working on this stuff I felt very empty. I feel better now, but I’m still scared of sensitive men. So I keep hooking up with these cold, unresponsive guys. I have a horrible time trying to figure out who I am, what I want, or what I need. I’m just beginning to figure it out. The hardest part is for me to like myself. Every time I try, I hear Daddy telling me what an awful kid I was.

GINNY
(beginning to cry): I honestly don’t remember those things, but I’m sure if you say that happened they must have. I guess I was so wrapped up in my own unhappiness . . .

MELANIE:
Oh, no. Now I’m feeling guilty because I’ve hurt your feelings.

SUSAN:
Melanie, why don’t you tell your mother what you want from her now?

MELANIE:
I want an adult-to-adult relationship. I want to be real with you. I want to be able to tell you the truth. I want you to listen to me when I talk about my experiences from the past. I want you to be willing to remember and to think and feel about what really happened. I want you to take responsibility for the fact that you didn’t take care of me and you didn’t protect me from Daddy’s moods. I want us to start telling each other the truth.

Ginny made some genuine efforts to hear her daughter out and to validate her. She also showed some capacity for sane, rational communication.
Ultimately, she agreed to try her best to comply with Melanie’s requests, though it was clear that she found them somewhat overwhelming.

A
N
E
XPLOSIVE
C
ONFRONTATION

Joe’s parents were not so understanding. Joe was the graduate student in psychology whose father had beaten him. After much persuasion Joe finally got his alcoholic father and his co-dependent mother to come into my office. Joe had been eager for this confrontation for some time. It turned out to be far more volatile than Melanie’s.

Joe’s father, Alan, strode into my office fully expecting to take charge. He was a large, sandy-haired man who looked every one of his 60-plus years; decades of anger and alcoholism had taken a significant toll on his appearance. Joe’s mother, Joanne, seemed like a gray lady—gray hair, gray complexion, gray dress, gray personality. Her eyes had that haunted look that I’ve seen so often in battered wives. She came in behind her husband, sat down, folded her hands, and stared at the floor.

A great deal of our first half hour was spent trying to establish some kind of atmosphere in which Joe could say what he needed to say. His father constantly interrupted, yelled, swore—anything to intimidate his son into silence. When I’d step in to protect Joe, Alan would turn and bad-mouth both me and my profession. Joe’s mother barely spoke at all, and when she did it was to plead with her husband to calm down. What I saw was a microcosm of forty years of misery. Joe did surprisingly well under almost impossible circumstances. He managed with great effort to stay calm, although I could see he was seething with rage. Alan’s final outburst occurred when Joe brought up his father’s alcoholism.

ALAN:
Okay, you little shithead, that’s it. Just who the fuck do you think you are? The trouble with you is that I was too easy on you. I should have made you earn everything you got. How dare you call me a drunk in front of a total stranger. You son of a bitch, you won’t be happy until you tear this family apart, will you? Well I’m not going to sit here and let some miserable, ungrateful little bastard and his goddamn shrink tell me what to do.

At this point Alan stood up and headed out. He turned around at the door and asked Joanne if she was coming. Joanne pleaded with him to let her stay for the rest of the session. Alan told her that he’d be downstairs in the coffeeshop and if she wasn’t there in fifteen minutes she could figure out her own way to get home. Then he stalked out.

JOANNE:
I’m so sorry. I’m so ashamed. He’s really not like this. It’s just that he’s a very proud man and can’t stand to lose face. He really has a lot of wonderful qualities.. . .

JOE:
Mom, stop! For God’s sake stop! That’s exactly what you’ve been doing my whole life. You lied for him, you covered up for him, you let him beat both of us, and you never did anything about it. I used to have fantasies that I was going to rescue you from all of that. Did it ever occur to you to rescue me? Do you have any idea what it felt like being a little kid in that house? Do you have any idea what kind of terror I lived with every day? Why didn’t you do anything about it? Why don’t you do something about it now?

JOANNE:
You’ve got your own life. Why can’t you let us be?

Joe’s confrontation was explosive and frustrating, but it was actually a great success. He finally accepted the fact that his parents were beset by their own demons and overwhelmingly locked into their toxic behavior patterns. He was finally able to renounce his hopeless hope that they would change.

What to Expect After Confrontation

Y
OUR
R
EACTION

Immediately after your confrontation, you may experience a sudden rush of euphoria from your newfound courage and strength. You may be flooded with relief at having finally put the confrontation behind you, even if it didn’t go exactly the way you had hoped. You may feel a lot lighter for having said many of the things you were holding in for so long. But you may also feel severely off balance or disappointed. You will certainly continue to feel anxious about what’s going to happen next.

Regardless of your initial reaction, it takes some time to feel the full and lasting benefits of confrontation. You’ll need several weeks or even months to begin to experience the real empowerment that confrontation can give you. And you
will
experience it. Ultimately, you’ll feel neither the extremes of euphoria nor disappointment. Instead, you’ll enjoy a steadily increasing sense of well-being and confidence.

Y
OUR
P
ARENTS’
R
EACTIONS

The nature of your confrontation will not necessarily indicate what the ultimate outcome will be. It takes time for all parties to process the experience and to deal with it in their own ways.

For example, a confrontation that appears to end positively can turn around once your parents have time to think about it. They may experience delayed reactions. They may have been relatively calm during the confrontation, only to start in with angry recriminations later on, accusing you of creating destructive upheaval in the family.

On the other hand, I’ve seen confrontations that ended in anger and turmoil eventually lead to positive changes in clients’ interactions with their parents. Once the initial uproar settles down, the
fact that you’ve pried the lid off the past may result in more open, honest communication between you and your parents.