Toxic Parents (33 page)

Deciding What Kind of Relationship You Can Have with Them Now

Once the dust begins to settle and you have a chance to take a look at the effect of your confrontation on your relationship with your parents, you will discover that there are three options available to you.

First, let’s say that your parents have shown some capacity for understanding your pain and have acknowledged even a small part of their responsibility for the conflicts between you. If they indicate some willingness to continue to discuss, to explore, and to share feelings and concerns with you, there is a good chance that you will be able to build, together, a less toxic relationship. You can become your parents’ teacher, instructing them in the fine art of treating you as an equal and communicating without criticism or attack. You can teach them how to express their own feelings without fear. You can teach them what does and does not feel good to you in the relationship. I won’t pretend that this is what happens most of the time, or even much of the time, but it
does
happen some of the time. You can’t know what their resources are until you push them to the crucial test of confrontation.

Second, if your parents show little capacity for change in your relationship, if they go right back to “business as usual,” you may decide that the healthiest thing for you to do is to stay in contact with them but on significantly less demanding terms. I’ve worked with many people who were unwilling to totally cut off their parents but were equally unwilling to return to the status quo. These people chose to pull back, establishing a cordial but somewhat superficial relationship with their parents. They stopped exposing their innermost feelings and vulnerabilities; instead, they limited their conversations to emotionally neutral topics. They established new ground rules about the nature of their contact with their parents. This middle position seems to work well for many of my clients and
it might work well for you. It’s okay to stay in contact with toxic parents as long as the relationship does not require you to sacrifice your mental health.

The third and final option is to give up your relationship with your parents altogether, for the sake of your well-being. Some parents are so relentlessly antagonistic after confrontation that they escalate their toxic behaviors. If this happens, you may be forced to choose between them and your emotional health. You’ve been shortchanging yourself all your life; now it’s time for a new accounting system.

There is no way to face this third option without a considerable amount of pain, but there is a way to manage the pain: trial separation. Take a break from your parents. No contact for at least three months. That means no meetings, no phone calls, no letters. I call this “detox” time because it gives all involved a chance to get some of the poison out of their systems and to evaluate how much the relationship means to them. This moratorium on contact may be difficult, but it can be a time of enormous growth. Without the need to expend large amounts of energy on your conflicts with your parents, you’ll have much more energy available for your own life. Once you have gained emotional distance, you and your parents might even rediscover some genuine positive feelings for one another.

When the moratorium is over, you need to assess whether your parents have softened their position. Ask them for a meeting to discuss it. If they have not changed, you can either try another moratorium or make the ultimate choice to break off from them completely.

If you decide that a final break is the only way you can preserve your well-being, I urge you to get professional counseling to help you through. During this time the frightened child inside you will need a lot of reassurance and calming. A sympathetic counselor can help you nurture that child while at the same time guiding the adult through the anxiety and pain of saying goodbye.

J
OE’S
D
ECISION

Joe’s father, Alan, remained furious long after the confrontation. He continued to drink heavily. After several weeks, he had his wife, Joanne, deliver a message to Joe: if Joe wanted to see his father again, Joe needed to apologize. His mother called almost daily, pleading with Joe to acquiesce to his father’s demand so that, in her words, “we can be a family again.”

Joe sadly realized that the distortions of reality in his family would continue to impair his mental health. He wrote his parents a brief letter telling them that he was taking a ninety-day vacation from the relationship, during which time he hoped they might reconsider their positions. He offered to meet with them again after the ninety days to see if there was anything worth salvaging.

After delivering the letter, Joe told me he felt ready and willing to accept the possibility of a final and permanent goodbye:

I had really hoped I’d be strong enough to keep up a relationship with them and not get so bent out of shape by their craziness. But right now I know that that’s asking too much of myself. So, since it seems to be a choice between them or me, I choose me. This is probably the healthiest thing I’ve ever done, but understand what’s going on: one minute I feel proud of myself and really strong, and the next minute I feel really empty inside. God, Susan, I don’t know if I can handle being healthy—I mean, what’s that going to feel like?

Though it was painful for Joe to break off from his parents, his demonstration of resolve gave him a new sense of inner strength. He began to feel more self-assured when he met women, and within six months had developed a love relationship that he told me was the most stable he had ever had. As his self-worth continued to improve, so did his life.

Whether you negotiate with your parents for a better relationship,
pull back to a more superficial relationship, or sever your relationship altogether, you will have taken an enormous step toward disconnecting from the power of the past. Once you break the old, ritualistic patterns with toxic parents, you’ll be much more open and available for a truly loving relationship with yourself and others.

Confrontation with Sick or Old Parents

Many of my clients find themselves in a painful dilemma about confrontation when their parents are very elderly, frail, or disabled. They are often caught up in powerfully conflicting feelings of pity and resentment. Some feel a strong sense of basic human obligation to care for their parents coupled with hypersensitivity to their demands. “What’s the use,” they say. “I wish I had done it years ago. They can’t even remember.” Or, “Mom would have another stroke if I confronted her. Why don’t I let her go to the grave in peace?” And yet, without a confrontation, they know it will be harder to find peace for themselves.

I do not want to minimize the difficulties involved, but the fact that a parent is old or has a chronic illness does not necessarily mean that confrontation is out of the question. I do advise my clients to discuss the ramifications of emotional stress with their parent’s physician to determine whether there is any significant medical risk. If so, there are alternatives to direct confrontation that still enable you to tell your truth, even if you have chosen not to tell it to your parent. You can write confrontation letters that you don’t mail, you can read these letters to photographs of your parent, you can talk to siblings or other family members, or if you are in therapy, you can confront your parent in role-playing. I will discuss these techniques in more detail in the following section on “Confrontation with a Dead Parent.”

These techniques have also proven effective for a handful of my clients who are full-time caretakers of one or both parents. If your
parent is living with you and is dependent on you, your efforts to deal more openly with your relationship may diminish the tensions between you, making your caretaker role easier. But it’s also possible that confrontation may create such discord that your living situation becomes intolerable. If your current living arrangements make it impossible for you to get some distance from your parents should your confrontation alienate them further, you may choose some of the alternatives to direct confrontation.

“I C
AN’T
D
O
I
T
, S
HE’S
N
OT
W
ELL
E
NOUGH TO
H
ANDLE
I
T
”

Jonathan, whom we met in
chapter 4
, avoided involvement with a woman because he was still rebelling against his mother, who continually pressured him to marry. After a few months of therapy, he decided that there were many things he would like to say to his mother, who was eighty-two. Since her heart attack a few years earlier, she had been frail, but she nevertheless, continued her intrusive phone calls and letters. His visits with her were painful charades.

I feel so sorry for her, yet I get really angry at the power she has over me. But I’m afraid that if I say anything now, it will kill her, and I’m not willing to have that on my conscience. So I just put on my good-boy act. Why couldn’t I have spoken up fifteen or twenty years ago when she was a lot stronger? I could have saved myself a lot of pain.

At this point I reminded Jonathan that confrontation doesn’t mean blasting the other person. If we could find a way for him to release some of his hurt and angry feelings in a controlled and gentle way, he would discover that there is always more peace to be found in truth than in avoidance. I didn’t want to push him to do something that could have consequences he couldn’t live with, but there was a very real chance that an honest interchange with his mother would enrich the quality of their relationship.

I told him about current work being done with ill and dying
parents and their adult children that indicates that an honest exploration of the relationship not only doesn’t harm the parents, but often provides closure and comfort to all involved.

Jonathan’s alternative was to ignore his feelings and pretend there was no problem. I told him I thought this would be a terrible waste of their remaining time together.

Jonathan struggled with this for several weeks. At my urging he talked to his mother’s physician, who assured him that her medical condition was stable.

I got the ball rolling by asking her if she had any idea how I felt about our relationship. She said she wondered why I always seemed so irritable around her. That opened the door for me to quietly talk to her about how her need to control me had affected my life. We talked for hours. I said things I never thought I’d be able to say. She got defensive . . . she got hurt . . . she denied a lot . . . but some of it got through. A couple of times her eyes filled with tears and she squeezed my hand. The relief was unbelievable. I used to dread seeing her, but she’s just a frail little old lady. I can’t believe how many years I was afraid of expressing myself to her.

Jonathan was able to be honest and real with his mother for the first time in his life and to effectively change the tone of their relationship. He felt as if he’d finally put down a heavy burden. He was also able to see his mother in the present, rather than being driven by memories and fears. He could now respond to her current reality, which was very different from the powerful, engulfing mother the little boy inside him remembered.

Jonathan’s confrontation with his mother had some positive results, but this is not always the case. Age or illness doesn’t necessarily make toxic parents more able to deal with the truth. Some may mellow in later years, and coming face-to-face with their own mortality may make them more receptive to taking some responsibility for their behavior. But others will become more entrenched in their
denial, their abuse, and their anger as they feel their life slipping away. Their assaults on you may be the only way they know to fend off their depression and panic. These parents may go to their graves angry and vindictive without ever acknowledging you. It doesn’t matter. What
does
matter is that you’ve said what must be said.

Confrontation with a Dead Parent

It’s extremely frustrating when you’ve worked hard to get to the point of confrontation, but one or both of your parents are dead. Surprisingly, there are several ways to have a confrontation even though your parents may not be physically present.

One method I’ve devised, which has proved to be very powerful, is to write a confrontation letter and read it aloud at your parent’s grave. This gives you a strong sense of actually talking to your parent and of finally being able to express the things you’ve been holding inside for so long. Through the years I’ve received very positive reports, from both clients and from members of my radio audience, as a result of these graveside confrontations.

If it is not practical for you to go to your parent’s grave, read your letter to a photograph of the parent, to an empty chair, or to someone in your support system who is willing to stand in for your parent.

You have one more option: you can talk to a relative, preferably from the same generation as your dead parent(s). Tell that family member (preferably a close blood relative) about your experiences with your parents. You don’t have to ask this relative to take responsibility for what your parents did but there is a tremendous release in being able to tell the truth to an aunt or an uncle.

You may get the same negative reaction you would have gotten from your parents if they were alive. The relative may react with denial, disbelief, anger, or hurt, in which case you should do exactly what you would have done with your parent: stay nonreactive and nondefensive. This is a wonderful opportunity to reinforce your understanding that the responsibility to change is yours, not theirs.