Toxic Parents (38 page)

This will be a sad but exciting time for you, for the other members of your group, and for your therapist. You will have to say goodbye to the only good family you have ever known, though many of my group members maintain close friendships long after they have left group. These friendships from group, based on having shared powerful emotional experiences, tend to be extremely strong and provide ongoing affection and support to help alleviate the sense of loss when you leave therapy.

The timing of your graduation will be guided by your needs. Most of the incest victims in my groups take a year to a year and a half to work through the treatment cycle. If your parents are unusually supportive, as Dan’s mother was, that time may be shorter. If you elect to cut off your relationship, as Connie did with her father, you may need to stay in group somewhat longer to avoid piling one loss (of your group) on top of another (of your parent). I never cease to be amazed at the dramatic changes that occur in this relatively short period of time, especially when you consider how extensive the original damage was.

A N
EW
P
ERSON

From time to time clients who have graduated contact me to let me know how they are doing in their lives. I was especially delighted and touched by a letter I received recently from one of my first graduates, a young woman named Patty.

Patty was in one of the first incest victims’ groups I conducted. She was then 16 years old. I mentioned Patty briefly in
chapter 7
; she was the little girl whose father threatened to put her up for adoption if she didn’t submit to him. I had not heard from her for many years, but I remembered that she had been unable to confront her father because he had disappeared several years before she started treatment. Here’s what she wrote:

Dear Susan,

I wanted to write and thank you again for helping me become a new person. Thanks to you and to the group, I am really okay.

I am married to a great guy, we have three kids, and I have learned to trust again. I think because of what I went through I am a better mom. My kids know not to let people touch them in the wrong places and they know if it happened they could tell me and I’d be on their side.

I finally did confront my dad. It took some doing, but I tracked him down and told him how I felt about him. His only answer was, “I am a sick person.” Never once did he say he was sorry. But you were right, it didn’t matter. I just needed to put the blame where it belonged and I felt better. Thank you for your love. I owe my life to you.

Love always,
Patty

Patty is not unusual. Though life may look grim from the perspective of an incest victim, therapy
does
work. No matter how low you feel, there is a better life for you, a life of self-respect and freedom from guilt, fear, and shame. All the people you’ve met in this chapter have moved from despair to health. You can too.

15 |
Breaking the Cycle

S
hortly after the publication of
Men Who Hate Women & the Women Who Love Them
, a woman named Janet wrote to say that she had just read my book:

I recognized my husband and myself on every page, and what I realized was that not only was my husband abusive but that I had come from several generations of victimized women and abusive men. Your book gave me both the courage and the conviction to make it stop here. I’m not sure my husband is willing to change and I’m not sure whether I will stay with him. But I
am
sure that from now on, my children will see a mother who will no longer accept abuse of any kind and who will not allow them to be verbally abused either. My sons will not grow up believing that it’s okay to be abusive to women and my daughter will not be programmed to be a victim. Thank you for leading the way.

Even though the cast of characters may change, the repetitive cycle of toxic behavior can remain for generations on end. The family drama may look and sound different from generation to generation, but all toxic patterns are remarkably similar in their outcome: pain and suffering.

Janet was bravely confronting the long-established patterns of abuse and passivity in her family. By changing her behavior and setting limits on her husband’s emotional abuse, Janet had taken a giant step to ensure that her children would be freed from the power of the family legacy. She was breaking the cycle.

The phrase “breaking the cycle” was originally coined in relation to child abuse—preventing a battered child from growing up to beat his own children. But I’ve expanded the term to include
all
forms of abuse.

For me, breaking the cycle means to stop acting like a victim, or to stop acting like your abusive or inadequate parent. You no longer play the helpless, dependent child with your partners, children, friends, colleagues, authority figures, and parents. And you get help if you find yourself striking out at your spouse or children in ways that make you ashamed. Though the changes you make begin with yourself, you will find the effects to be much broader-reaching. By breaking the cycle, you are protecting your children from the toxic beliefs, rules, and experiences that colored so much of your childhood. You may be changing the nature of your family interactions for generations to come.

“I C
AN
B
E
T
HERE FOR
M
Y
C
HILDREN
”

One of the most effective ways of breaking the cycle is to make the commitment to be more emotionally available to your children than your parents were to you.

Melanie realized that just because she didn’t get love and nurturing from her parents didn’t mean she couldn’t give it to her children. Even though it was a struggle for her to remain vigilant against old habits, her commitment was firm:

I was so scared to have children. I just didn’t know what kind of mother I was going to be. It’s been really hard. There were a lot of times I screamed at them and told them to go to their rooms and leave me alone. I mean how dare they be so damned needy and demanding. But since I’ve been in therapy, I realize that’s exactly how my mother treated me. So when I’m feeling low, I really make an effort not to shut them out. I have to reach way deep inside myself, but I do it. I’m not perfect, but at least I’m doing something to be better. Dammit, the buck’s got to stop here!

Melanie took specific steps to heal herself. After she confronted her mother, the two women were able to talk much more openly about their feelings and experiences. Melanie learned that she was the product of several generations of distant, helpless mothers. It was exciting to see her take personal responsibility for not repeating those patterns with her own children.

In addition to her work in therapy, Melanie enrolled in a parents’ support group. She had made a commitment to be a better parent, but because her only role models—her parents—were so inadequate, she wasn’t sure what being a good parent entailed. She had never seen how a good parent acts. The parents’ group helped ease many of her understandable fears and helped her deal with everyday domestic crises without either withdrawing or becoming panicked by her children’s neediness.

Melanie also found new ways of taking better care of herself and of combating her inner emptiness. She made new friends, both from her parenting group and in a folk-dancing class that I suggested she join. She became much less vulnerable to her old pattern of attaching to troubled men and becoming their self-sacrificing caretaker.

“I S
WORE
I W
OULDN’T
B
E
L
IKE
M
Y
F
ATHER
”

We began this book with Gordon, the physician whose father had beaten him with a belt. After six months of therapy, he had fully accepted the fact that he had been an abused child. He had done his letter writing, his role playing, and his confrontation with his parents. As he gradually released much of the pain from his past, he began to see how he had perpetuated the cycle of abuse in his own marriage.

GORDON:
I swore a hundred times over that I wouldn’t be like my father, but when I look back, I guess I treated my wife just like he treated me. I had the same training and got the same results.

SUSAN:
Love and abuse were linked for you as a child. Your father represented both, sometimes at the same time. It makes sense that you should get them mixed up.

GORDON:
I really thought I was different because I didn’t physically abuse my wife. But I abused her with words and I punished her with my moods. It’s like I left home but I took my father with me.

Throughout Gordon’s life, he had denied the fact that his father had been abusive; throughout Gordon’s marriage, he had denied the fact that he himself was abusive. But in fact, Gordon had merely substituted one kind of abuse for another. Gordon’s father had controlled him through physical violence and pain; Gordon had controlled his wife through verbal violence and emotional pain. Gordon had become a rationalizer, a victimizer, and a tyrant just like his father.

As long as Gordon denied that he was, in a way, repeating his father’s abusive behavior, he was not aware that he had a choice to make. If you don’t see the cycle, you can’t choose to break it. It took Gordon’s wife’s departure to make him face the truth.

Gordon was fortunate in that his hard work paid off. His wife, seeing the difference in him, recently agreed to a trial reconciliation. He has stopped intimidating and belittling her. He has dealt with his anger at the source instead of displacing it onto his wife. He is able to talk openly to her about his fears and abusive childhood. The cycle has been broken.

“M
Y
K
IDS
W
ON’T
H
AVE TO
G
ROW
U
P WITH AN
A
LCOHOLIC
”

Glenn—who made the mistake of taking his alcoholic father into business with him—swore that he would never have anything to do with another alcoholic. Nonetheless, he found the cycle of alcoholism continuing in his own family. He had married an alcoholic, and his teenage children were in danger of becoming alcohol and drug abusers.

I didn’t think my kids were going to have the same problems I did, because I don’t drink. But their mother drinks a lot and she refuses to get help. It really scared the hell out of me when I came home from work one night and found Denise sharing a case of beer with our two teenage boys. The three of them were loaded. I found out this wasn’t the first time. My God, Susan, I don’t drink and I still can’t get alcohol out of my life. This has got to stop!

Glenn was no longer the timid, nervous man I had first met. He was willing to be far more confrontive with his wife, Denise, than he had ever been before. He knew he had to take forceful action if he was to break the cycle of alcoholism before it ensnared his children. He finally threatened to leave his wife—a threat he was prepared to carry out—unless she agreed to get help. As a result, Denise enrolled in Alcoholics Anonymous and their two children enrolled in Alateen, the Twelve Step program for young people.

If you are the adult child of an alcoholic, you are at significant
risk to perpetuate the cycle of alcoholism in your own family. Even if, as in Glenn’s case, you don’t abuse alcohol yourself, you may very well gravitate toward a partner who does. When this happens, your children will grow up with the same alcoholic/enabler role models as you did. Unless you break the cycle, there is a strong likelihood that they in turn will become either alcoholics or enablers.

“I D
ON’T
W
ANT TO
H
URT
M
Y
C
HILD
”

In
chapter 6
I introduced Holly, who was referred to me by the courts after having been reported for physically abusing her young son. I knew that to truly break the cycle, Holly would have to work on two tracks: the past and the present. But in her first few sessions I focused almost exclusively on techniques that would enable her to achieve the impulse control she so desperately needed. She had to regain control of her day-to-day life, which meant gaining control of her anger, before she’d be ready to begin the lengthier process of dealing with the pain of her childhood.