Toxic Parents (39 page)

I insisted that Holly attend weekly meetings of Parents Anonymous, an extremely supportive self-help group for abusive parents. At P.A., Holly found a “sponsor”—someone to call if she felt she was in danger of hurting her son. The sponsor could then intervene by calming Holly, by offering advice, or even by coming over to help defuse the situation.

As Holly worked with P.A. on controlling her tendency to strike out under stress, we took a different but parallel approach in her therapy sessions. The first thing I wanted Holly to learn was to identify those physical sensations that preceded her angry or abusive outbursts. Anger has a lot of physiological components. I told Holly that her body was a barometer that would tell her what was going on if only she’d pay attention. As Holly began to tune in to the body sensations that she typically experienced before she became violent, she was surprised to discover how many she could identify:

I didn’t believe you when you told me, Susan, but it’s true! When I get mad, I can feel my neck and shoulders getting real tight. A lot of grinding and gurgling goes on in my stomach. My jaw clenches up. I breathe real fast. My heart pounds like a sledgehammer. And I get hot tears behind my eyes.

These physical sensations were Holly’s storm warnings. I told her that it was her responsibility to heed the warnings and avoid the storm. In the past, she would either yell or hit her son to release the enormous tension inside her. She had to find alternatives to these automatic reactions if she was going to break her family cycle of abuse.

Once Holly learned to recognize the physical signs of her rising anger, it was time to come up with specific alternative
responses
to those feelings. We talked a lot about the difference between response and reaction, but Holly had been on automatic pilot for so long that she had a very tough time thinking up new behaviors. To help get her started, I asked her what she wished her parents would have done instead of acting out their violence against her. She replied:

I wished they had just walked away until they were calm. Walked around the block or something.

I suggested she could do just that the next time she got angry. Then I asked her what other things she wished her parents had done that she could apply to herself.

I could count to ten . . . knowing me, I’d better make that fifty. I could tell my son I don’t want to hurt him and tell him to go to another room for a while. Or I could call my sponsor and talk to her until I got it together.

I congratulated Holly on coming up with some excellent behavioral strategies. Over the next several months she was very excited about
the changes she was making in managing her feelings and impulsive behavior. Once she saw that she could control herself, that she wasn’t doomed to behave like her mother, she was ready to tackle the difficult task of dealing with her own pain as an abused child.

“I W
ON’T
L
EAVE
M
Y
K
IDS
A
LONE WITH
M
Y
F
ATHER
”

Janine—who was molested by her father and spent the next twenty years trying to recapture his love—came out of her confrontation with a new sense of confidence. One of the members of her group asked her how she was handling her parents’ relationship with her eight-year-old daughter, Rachel. Janine told the group that she had set very strict ground rules for how her parents could spend time with their granddaughter.

I told them that there was no way I would leave Rachel alone with them. I said, “You know, Dad, nothing’s changed. You haven’t gotten any therapy. You’re still the same person who abused me. Why should I trust you with my daughter?” Then I told my mother I had no faith in her ability to guarantee Rachel’s safety. After all, she was in the house when he molested
me.

Janine recognized what many incest victims do not—that breaking the cycle also means protecting other children from the abuser. Incest is a mysterious compulsion. The aggressor who molests his own daughter often goes on to molest his grandchildren or any other children who are available to him. Janine had no way of predicting whether her father would repeat his incestuous behavior, so she wisely chose to be cautious.

Janine also went to her local bookstore and bought her daughter a number of books written to help children learn the difference between healthy affection and inappropriate sexual behavior. There are also videotapes available on this subject. The object of these materials is not to scare the child but to calmly teach him or her
about a subject that most parents find uncomfortable but that all children need to be aware of.

At my insistence, Janine took one more brave and healing step:

I’m telling everybody in the family. You convinced me that I’m not only responsible for protecting Rachel, but all the other kids in the family, too. I mean, my father has access to all of them. Not everybody’s thrilled with my decision, especially my parents. But they’re going to have to deal with that. For years I kept my mouth shut because I thought I was protecting the family when I was really protecting my father. But by not telling, I was endangering the kids in the family.

Even though Janine acted responsibly and courageously, not everyone was grateful for the information. In a typical incest family, some of your relatives will thank you for telling, others flat-out won’t believe you, while others may become enraged and accuse you of lying or of betraying your parents. As with confrontation, the response of other family members determines to a large extent the nature of your future relationship with them. Some of your family relationships may suffer, but sometimes that’s the price you have to pay to protect children. Incest can exist only in a conspiracy of silence. Breaking that silence is a vital part of breaking the cycle.

“I’
M
S
ORRY
I
HURT
Y
OU
”

One of the hallmarks of toxic parents is that they rarely, if ever, apologize for their destructive behavior. That’s why apologizing to the people you may have hurt—especially your own children—is an important part of breaking the cycle. You may find this embarrassing or may see it as a sign of weakness. You may even be afraid that apologies will diminish your authority, but I’ve found that children will respect you all the more for it. Even a child can sense that a volunteered apology is a sign of character and courage. A heartfelt apology is one of the most healing, cycle-breaking actions you will ever take.

As Holly worked through the pain of her abusive childhood, she realized that she wanted to apologize to her son. But she was afraid to. She couldn’t figure out what to say. I used role playing to help her. In our next session, I moved my chair close to hers and took both her hands in mine. I asked her to imagine that she was her son, Stuart. I would play the role of Holly. I asked “Stuart” to tell me how the abuse made him feel.

HOLLY (as Stuart):
Mom, I really love you, but I’m really scared of you, too. When you get crazy and start hitting me, I feel like you must really hate me. Half the time I don’t even know what I did. I try to be good, but. . . Mom, please don’t hit me anymore.. . .

Holly stopped, fighting off tears. She was experiencing her son’s pain as well as her own. She would have liked to have said to her mother the things she imagined her son saying to her. She determined to go home and apologize to Stuart that night.

The following week, she came in glowing. Apologizing to Stuart hadn’t been nearly as hard as she had expected. She just thought of the things she had always longed to hear from her own parents. She explained:

I told him: “Baby, I’ve done some things that hurt you a lot and I’m really ashamed. I had no right to hit you. I had no right to call you bad names. You didn’t do anything to deserve that. You are a terrific kid. It was me, honey, all me, but I’m finally getting the help I should have gotten a long time ago. See, my parents beat up on me real bad and I never knew how much anger I had inside of me. I’ve learned a lot of new ways to behave when I get mad and you’ve probably noticed that I don’t lose it so bad anymore. So I honestly don’t think I’m going to hit you anymore. But if I do, I want you to go next door and get help. I don’t ever want to hurt you again. It’s bad for both of us. I really love you, honey. I’m really sorry.”

When you apologize to your children, you are teaching them to trust their feelings and perceptions. You are saying, “The things I did that you thought were unfair
were
unfair. You were right to feel that way.” You also show them that even you can make mistakes, but that you are willing to take responsibility for them. The message there is that it’s okay for your children to make mistakes, too, as long as they take responsibility as well. By apologizing, you are truly modeling loving behavior.

You have within you the power to change your children’s destiny. When you free yourself from the legacy of guilt, self-hatred, and anger, you also free your children. When you interrupt family patterns and break the cycle, you give a priceless gift to your children, and to their children, and to the children who will follow. You are molding the future.

Epilogue

Letting Go of the Struggle

I
n the movie
War Games
, a U.S. government computer was programmed to start a global nuclear war. All attempts to alter the computer’s program were futile. However, at the last second, the computer stopped itself, saying: “Interesting game. The only way to win is not to play.”

The same could be said of the game that so many
of us
continue to play: trying to get toxic parents to change. We struggle to do whatever it takes to get them to become loving and accepting of us. This struggle can drain our energy and fill our days with turmoil and pain. Yet, it’s futile. The only way to win is to not play.

It’s time to stop playing, to let go of the struggle. This does not mean you have to let go of your parents; it
does
mean you have to let go of:

• trying to get your parents to change so you can feel better
  

• trying to figure out what you are supposed to do to get their love
  

• being so emotionally reactive to them
  

• the fantasy that one day they are going to give you the caring support you deserve
  

Like many adult children of toxic parents, you may know, on an intellectual level, that if you haven’t gotten emotional nurturing from your parents by now, chances are you’re not going to get it. But this understanding rarely filters down to the feeling level. The striving child within you probably still clings to the hope that someday your parents—no matter how limited they are—will see how wonderful you are and will give you their love. You may have a heartbreaking determination to make up for your crimes even if you’re not sure of the charges, but when you go back to your toxic parents for the nourishment and validation that you missed as a child, it’s a lot like going back to an empty well for water. Your bucket is going to come up dry.

Letting Go and Moving On

For many years, Sandy—whose religious parents relentlessly harangued her about her abortion—had been locked in the typical determined struggle to get her parents to change. It took great courage for her to recognize the hopelessness of her hope that she might somehow unlock her parents’ love and acceptance.

All these years, I believed that I had really wonderful parents and that I was the problem. It was really hard for me to admit that my parents don’t know how to love me. They know how to control me, they know how to criticize me, they know how to make me feel guilty and bad, but they don’t know how to let me be me, how to respect me. They give or take back their love depending on whether or not they think I’m a good girl. I know that that’s not going to change. They are who they are, and I have better things to do than to keep trying to get them to be different.

Sandy had come a long way from her need to deify her parents. She had confronted them about their reaction to her abortion and had received some minimal acknowledgment from her mother that they were not as supportive as they might have been. However, they continued to make excessive demands on her time and her life.

Sandy asked me to help her work out some things to say that would allow her to set limits on her parents’ visits, her availability to them, and their attempts to control her with guilt and criticism. Here are a few of the statements that Sandy and I came up with:

• Mom and Dad, I know that it means a lot to you to spend time with me. But I have my own life now and I’m not willing to make myself available to you whenever you want.
  

• I’m not going to let you attack me anymore. You have a right to your opinions, but you don’t have a right to be cruel or belittling to me. If you start, I’m going to stop you.
  

• I can appreciate that this will upset you, but I’m going to be saying “no” to you a lot more than I have in the past. I’m not going to spend every Sunday with you. And I’m no longer willing to have you come over without calling first.
  

• I know that all this means there are going to be a lot of changes, and I know changes are scary. But I believe that they’re healthy changes. I know we can come out of this with a better relationship.