Toxic Parents by Susan Forward Read Free Book Online Page B

conversation between an adult child and one of his controlling parents. I can guarantee you this conversation would never take place, but if these two people were capable of honestly expressing their deeply hidden feelings, they might say the following.
ADULT CHILD: Why do you act the way you do? Why is everything I do wrong? Why can’t you treat me like an adult? What difference does it make to Dad if I don’t become a doctor? What difference does it make to you who I marry? When are you going to let me go? Why do you act as if every decision I make on my own is an attack on you?
CONTROLLING MOTHER: I can’t describe the pain I feel when you pull away from me. I need you to need me. I can’t stand the thought of losing you. You’re my whole life. I’m terrified that you’re going to make some horrible mistakes. It would rip me apart to see you get hurt. I’d rather die than feel like a failure as a mother.
    “It’s for Your Own Good”
    Control is not necessarily a dirty word. If a mother restrains her toddler instead of letting him wander into the street, we don’t call her a controller, we call her prudent. She is exercising control that is in tune with reality, motivated by her child’s need for protection and guidance.
    Appropriate control becomes overcontrol when the mother restrains her child ten years later, long after the child is perfectly able to cross the street alone.
    Children who are not encouraged to do, to try, to explore, to master, and to risk failure, often feel helpless and inadequate. Over-controlled by anxious, fearful parents, these children often become anxious and fearful themselves. This makes it difficult for them to mature. When they develop through adolescence and adulthood, many of them never outgrow the need for ongoing parental guidance and control. As a result, their parents continue to invade, manipulate, and frequently dominate their lives.
    The fear of not being needed motivates many controlling parents to perpetuate this sense of powerlessness in their children. These parents have an unhealthy fear of the “empty nest syndrome,” the inevitable sense of loss that all parents experience when their children finally leave home. So much of a controlling parent’s identity is tied up in the parental role that he or she feels betrayed and abandoned when the child becomes independent.
    What makes a controlling parent so insidious is that the domination usually comes in the guise of concern. Phrases such as, “this is for your own good,” “I’m only doing this for you,” and, “only because I love you so much,” all mean the same thing: “I’m doing this because I’m so afraid of losing you that I’m willing to make you miserable.”
    Direct Control
    There’s nothing fancy about direct control. It’s overt, tangible, right out in the open. “Do as I say or I’ll never speak to you again”; “Do as I say or I’ll cut off your money”; “If you don’t do as I say you’ll no longer be a member of this family”; “If you go against my wishes you’ll give me a heart attack.” There’s nothing subtle about it.
    Direct control usually involves intimidation and is frequently humiliating. Your feelings and needs must be subordinated to those of your parents. You are dragged into a bottomless pit of ultimatums. Your opinion is worthless; your needs and desires are irrelevant. The imbalance of power is tremendous.
    Michael, a charming, sweet-faced, 36-year-old advertising executive, provides a good example of this. He came to see me because his six-year marriage to a woman he deeply loved had become extremely shaky as a result of a tug-of-war between his wife and his parents.
The real problems didn’t start until I moved to California. I think my mother thought it was a temporary move. But when I told her I’d fallen in love and planned to get married, it hit her that I wanted to settle down here. That’s when she really started turning on the pressure to bring