Parents who Feel Both Guilty and Angry About Their Parental Performance

I recently received an e-mail from an irate reader of my blog on Psychology Today. It was in reaction to a post I wrote about parents who were cut off by their adult children acting as if they had no idea why that happened, when in fact the majority of them (but certainly not all of them) have at least a pretty good idea. She told me I was an a**hole who was automatically calling all such parents “dicks” and “a**holes.” I of course actually made no statements like that in the piece.

Of course, if a history of child abuse is involved, which it may or may not be in such cases, parents have the responsibility for that and not their children, at least before the children grow up and have minds of their own. But this was not the subject of the post.

I wrote back to her:

Sorry if the piece sounded like I was calling the parents a**holes. I don't believe that. And of course not all families that have problems like the ones I describe [in the post] are in denial about what's going on. I view everyone in the whole family as all caught within a devilishly-difficult problem to solve that is created by a variety of external factors over at least three generations. 

I never recommend cutting off parents -  even when the parents actually were (unlike you) physically or sexually abusive - and take a lot of heat for advocating that they try to work things out for everyone's eventual benefit (not that it is at all an easy thing to do this).

I of course have no way of knowing anything about particular families like yours without ongoing in-person evaluation and therapy, so what I'm about to say may or may not apply to some degree to your situation. In some families in which parents, in the estimation of the adult children, seem to be frequently beating themselves up with guilt about their worth as parents, the kids worry that they need to fix that. And what they then do is start to piss the parents off on purpose to make them feel angry at them instead of guilty. Hatefulness as a gift of love, as it were..

That last bit referred to how, in the patient with borderline personality disorder’s spoiler role, the adult child is regulating their parents’ de-stabilizing internal conflict over having children (described in this post). When the parent starts to feel too guilty, their children make them angry. When the parents start to get to angry, they lay guilt trips on them.

As I said in my reply, I don’t know if that dynamic applies to the writer and her children or not. So what made me think that it might very well apply? Well, there were certain sentences in the writer’s original inquiry that seemed to indicate a lot of guilt as well as a lot of anger:

Implying guilt:

• “I have admitted and apologized for the times I was a bad parent, naming specific incidents and listening to them to tell me other times they were hurt by me. I try as hard as I can to listen, be supportive, and not be overbearing.”
•  “I don’t know that any parent who needs to be told they’re a dick would accept that from you. It made me feel defensive and hurt, all over again. Trust me, most of us a**hole parents don’t realize we’re being a**holes.”  
• “I really do not know why my kids, especially my younger daughter, hold a grudge against me.  They have never said anything that I didn’t acknowledge, apologize for, and try to make right.”   

Implying anger/defensiveness:

 

·         Calling me an a**hole for allegedly implying she might be an awful person when I hadn’t actually said anything of the sort, and accusing me of “taking sides.”

·         “If they are mad because I turned out not to be perfect, but downright human and not always the best decision maker when it came to parenting, well, I at least know I always loved them immensely and would have, & still would, die for them.”

 

You be the judge.

 

Not Taking the Bait in Family Discussions

When adult children complain to their parents about how the parents are repetitively engaging in invalidating, hateful, critical, demanding, and or abusive behavior towards them, the elder family members have almost always developed a number of ways to get them to shut the hell up. Often these ways include dismissing the adult children's complaints by accusing their progeny of being:

A) Little snowflakes (to use the current trendy term) who are overly-sensitive, weak, selfish, unable to take a little good natured teasing, or "high maintenance."

and/or

B) Stupid - reading things into what the parents are saying that are not really there.

and/or

C) Pathological -making things up that did not even happen or twisting the meaning of everything the parents says to unfairly shift the blame for the child's problem onto the poor, put-upon parents.

Unfortunately, in many of today's psychotherapy models, many therapists seems to agree with the parents that the adult child's problems are all in their heads and are not, in fact, due to their having being traumatized or understandably upset by dysfunctional or abusive family relationships.  

And of course, as readers of my blogs know, if parents act as if they expect  their children to act in weak, stupid, or pathological ways, in response the children often do indeed start to act out exactly what they are being accused of doing. When dysfunctional family patterns include that phenomenon in addition to the problematic parental behavior mentioned at the top of the post, the situation is a bit more complicated to talk about and will not be discussed further here.

To solve the problems, the adult children have to find a way to not shut the hell up, but to constructively push the conversation forward in order to put a stop to the problematic patterns. (I'm currently under contract for and working on a self-help book for New Harbinger publishers that discusses in great detail a large number of different strategies for achieving this goal).

This post will discuss one countermove to use when you are being accused of A, B, and/or C above that is often successful in disarming the parents and pushing the conversation onward. Of course, no strategy works with all families, or even all the time within any one family. But this one increases the odds of productive conversations when adult children bring up the complaints mentioned in the first paragraph of the post.

The strategy is based on a premise that was described beautifully and concisely by my colleague Dr. Jami Woods. She said, "You can't be pulled into a game of tug-of-war if you don't pick up the rope."

In this case, the accusations by the parents are bait. They want you to take it. You are being baited into becoming angry or defensive. Once that happens, constructive conversations immediately end in fight, flight, or freeze responses. No problems get solved then. Do not take the bait!

So how to avoid doing so?

Let's say you tell your parents that their demands are getting on your nerves because no matter how much you do, it never seems to be enough for them, and that that they seem to ignore the fact that you have other things to do and cannot just drop everything at a moment's notice to do things for them. Say they respond by telling that you are grossly exaggerating how much they ask of you, and that you ought to be happy to take the time to help them out. They add that you are being ungrateful. Just think of all the sacrifices they had to make for you when you were growing up!

How not to respond:

A) Argue with them about the frequency or reasonableness of their requests, or how much they sacrificed for you as a child.

B) Attack them and tell them they are insensitive, overly-critical clods.

C) Defend yourself by pointing out that your life is busy and of course you cannot always just drop everything to come over and do something for them.

D) Explain in detail your feelings and go on and on about how those feelings are justified.

E). Scold them or lecture them about etiquette and the proper relationship between adult children and their parents.

The basic form of the recommended response:

"Well, maybe so, Dad, but I am finding this situation to be a big problem. Do you think you could help me out by checking with me first about when it would be convenient for me to come over to help you?"

This sort of response is basically a refusal to argue about the merits of your personality characteristics, but trying instead to make a relationship better. In doing this, you are neither agreeing nor disagreeing with their characterization of you. It might be accurate, partially accurate, or complete wrong. Who's to say, really? That isn't the point. The point is how you are reacting to them when they do something, not whether your reactions are justified or not. They should want to know that so that everyone can, to quote Rodney King, just get along.

Surely they'd prefer a pleasant relationships to an unpleasant one. I know that it often looks as if this is not the case, but nonetheless, I advise that you give them the benefit of the doubt. 

Are Parents Who are Cut Off by Their Adult Children Really That Clueless? (Themes of This Blog Seen In Newspaper Advice Columns – Part III)

**For an interesting exception to the pattern discussed in this post, see an update at  http://davidmallenmd.blogspot.com/2016/03/adult-children-who-cut-off-their.html

In the advice column Annie’s Mailbox by Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar, there has recently been a series of letters from the parents of adult children who have cut them out of their lives. The parents complain that they have absolutely no idea and do not understand why this has happened, and they seem to indicate that they had been just model parents or, at worst, guilty of some very minor parental transgressions.

Lately, a couple of other letter writers opined that just perhaps the parental behavior was a lot more problematic than these folks would have the world believe. For the most part, whenever I delve into the family dynamics of those patients who either cut off parents or have been cut off like this, that is certainly always the case.

In reading the letters from the parents who just cannot seem to figure out why their children have cut them off, a question arises. Are they really that clueless? Are they “in denial?” - whatever that means?  To me, “denial” of reality is just – how should I put this? – lying.

In fact, when such parents are in the process of portraying themselves as the innocent victims of mean-spirited, unreasonable adult children, they are in fact, pushing their adult children even further away. They are, in a sense, invalidating their adult children’s sense of reality about what transpires in their relationships.  In doing so, they are literally being hateful. This of course further infuriates the adult children. This illustrates one subtle form of distancing behavior. 

The last letter in the following series illustrates the adult child's anger about this issue better than I ever could.

(How such situations might be repaired is described by the letter writer of 4/5/14).

10/8/13.  Dear Annie: When our daughter was a child, she had emotional issues and extensive anger management problems. With tremendous concern and love, we got her professional support and therapy, and ultimately, our daughter learned the skills to control herself. What we did not do was tell extended family members of these private problems. We had seen their extreme intolerance for any kind of mental health issues and did not want our daughter to suffer prejudice from her own family. In college, the troubling incidents started again. Because of our daughter's refusal to let us have access to her medical information, we had no real idea of what was happening. The next few years included troubling breakups with both friends and boyfriends, extreme weight loss and talk of suicide.

Our daughter is now 32 and recently married. She suddenly and inexplicably has cut us off. When we try to communicate with her, she becomes hysterical with rage. We have learned she has been saying horrible things about us to the same extended family members we tried to protect her from in childhood. We are devastated. One relative actually told my husband that we must have done something terrible to our daughter for her to treat us this way. These family members now have a special, almost frenzied new importance to our daughter. They judge us constantly. To be accused of such mistreatment is insulting and painful. Please print this so these family members will stop jumping to conclusions. — Reading This Can Help

Dear Reading: Most likely, the only thing that will change their perspective is to be on the receiving end of your daughter's erratic behavior. Despite all the therapy she had when younger, her problems haven't disappeared. She has simply chosen to deal with them in her own way, which currently precludes a loving relationship with you. We hope that will change. While you cannot control what the relatives think, please take comfort in knowing you handled your daughter's issues in a way that protected and helped her. That is what good parents do.

12/26/13.  Dear Annie: You often print letters from older parents dealing with rejection from their adult children. This is literally an epidemic everywhere. Anger and hatred are destroying families. My husband and I have three adult children who were the delight of our lives. We had a typical loving family, with vacations, birthday parties and special celebrations that included friends and extended family. We had anxious times during illnesses, surgeries and accidents, but we made it through. All three of our children have grown to be successful, well-liked and respected adults. Sadly, over the past 22 years, they all have chosen to shut us out of their lives. We've had minor disagreements at times, but never any major battles that might justify their choices. None of them will tell us why they are angry. They refuse to have any contact or open dialog that might heal our relationship. I know you're probably thinking "there must be something." If so, we don't know what it is. My husband is 81, and I am 78. We understand there is a real possibility that we will never hear from our children before we die. We do our best to focus on the great times we had and to hold onto the many precious memories of their growing-up years. Holidays are the hardest, but with God's help, we make it through. We have forgiven our children and will always pray for them. We will always thank God for choosing us to be their parents. — Joining the Letting Go Club

Dear Joining: Your letter is heartbreaking. When children are brought up by loving parents, we don't know why some remain close and others do not. The same fire that melts butter will forge steel. If you have any family members who are in touch with your children, perhaps they could help you understand what is going on and even intercede on your behalf. In the meantime, you are wise to accept what you cannot change and compassionate to forgive those who have hurt you.

3/7/14. Dear Annie: My wife and I have lost contact with our son. He is a recovering addict. As far as we know, he has maintained a job and, I hope, has been able to stay clean. He has moved to a city about four hours away with his new girlfriend, and I am sure she is keeping him in line.  My wife is heartbroken. We maintained a room for him in our home until he was almost 30 years old. He was always close to his mother, and they would speak on a daily basis. Now, he doesn't call or take our calls or emails, and never accepts cards or letters. He said he needed space when he left, and that was a year ago. My wife grieves as though he has passed, crying at night, wondering what happened to our son. What should I do to relieve the pain? Should we keep trying to contact him? We don't understand how he can be so hurtful. — Tears in Vermont

Dear Tears: We are so sorry that your son has chosen to cut off contact, but you cannot force him to stay in touch. Are you in touch with the girlfriend? Is she a reliable partner, or might she be abusive? Even so, he is an adult, and you can only do so much without his cooperation. In the meantime, please consider counseling. You are grieving and worried, and you need to move forward so your son's absence doesn't become the focus of your daily life. It will not be easy. But we recommend that you keep sending your son emails and cards, just saying that you love him and that you will always be available should he decide to contact you. We hope he will. Soon.

4/5/14.  Dear Annie: Thanks for printing the letter from "Joining the Letting Go Club," who feel rejected by their grown children. One part of the letter got my attention — the part where they say they've had "minor disagreements" at times, but nothing so major as to cut off contact. I have had this same situation with my family, and honestly, sometimes the disagreements aren't as minor as the folks believe. 

Sometimes disagreements are downplayed to avoid dealing with the hurt feelings and poor communication between family members. The grown children may feel they can't talk to their parents because of negative and heated exchanges in the past. Nonetheless, I do agree that the grown children need to tell their parents why they don't have any contact, even if it upsets the parents. They have a right to know. Several years after a falling out, I reached out to my family members. Over time, we were able to rebuild our relationship, and last year, we had a wonderful Christmas holiday together. I greatly appreciate the special relationship my children now have with their grandparents. Sometimes you have to be the bigger person and do what is best for the family — even if you don't always agree. — No State

Dear No: How heartwarming that you took that first step — not only for your sake, but for that of your children.

2/28/14.   Dear Annie: I have followed the many outraged responses regarding adult children who have cut elderly parents out of their lives, so let me give another view. My mother is 86 and possessed of her faculties. She can live alone and unassisted. Both of my sisters cut her out of their lives years ago. Why? Because Mom has a cruel mouth and is bigoted, gratuitously insulting, highly opinionated and very vocal about what she thinks of you and everyone else. Mom complained that she has been shunned because of her age, and I told her it is because she is unpleasant and impossible, and that she should get counseling. She responded with a well-chosen two-word obscenity. So I'm done.

I have tried with great patience to keep Mom in my life, but she is so difficult that I, too, have finally thrown in the towel. I don't need the stress that she creates. Please let your readers know that the behavior of some adult children may be abundantly justified. — Finished in Chicago

5/10/14.  Dear Annie: I feel sure that, were she to pick up pen and paper, my mother would be among those parents wailing over their "heartless" children's "abandoning" them. My mother would say that she was a loving, wonderful parent, and I'm sure she believes it. Annie, this is a woman who told me every day that she wished she'd aborted me. When I was very little, she helpfully explained the term so I would know exactly what she meant. Very rarely are abusive parents capable of comprehending that they are, in fact, abusive. There is no child on Earth who wants to not have parents. If your kids have cut you out of their lives, there is a reason, and that reason is YOU. — S. 

Abusive/Neglectful Parents Become Doting Grandparents

On my Psychology Today blog on June 22, 2011, I re-posted an entry about the huge increase in the number of grandparents raising their grandchildren since 1990, a trend which is continuing. Some of this is due to economic factors and military deployments, but in many cases, the “missing” parental generation consists of deadbeat parents who are addicts or alcoholics, those who exhibit signs of borderline personality disorder (BPD), or antisocial types who end up in jail.

I discussed how, in my opinion, the grandchildren are being – covertly - given up to the grandparents as “gifts,” since the grandparents seem to exhibit a pathological need to continue to take care of children – even as they complain bitterly about how much they dislike having to do so.

A completely different pattern of relationships between grandchildren and grandparents that I have been seeing more and more lately is the subject of today’s post: Parents who had been neglectful, abusive, generally unloving, or distancing towards their own children when those children were growing up seem to have a personality transplant when those children themselves have kids.

They begin to dote on the grandchildren. They are warm and generous to them and have a very close and loving relationship with them. They tell them how much they love them, buy them things, and take them to various fun activities on weekends. In return, their grandchildren adore them, and usually think that their own parents must have been treated similarly when growing up by these wonderful, upstanding people. If the parents tell them differently, they may find it extremely hard if not impossible to believe.

Such grandparents are giving the grandchildren everything that they did not give to their own children when their children were growing up.

Imagine for a moment that you are the parent in the middle generation. Can you imagine how this would feel?  On one hand, you know that you should be happy that your parents have apparently reformed their ways, and that your own children are getting from them all the things that you missed. On the other hand, however, your kids are getting from your parents everything that you wished you had received from them. You probably do not want to appear to be jealous of your own children, but why didn't you get that?

What are you? The proverbial chopped liver? These contradictory feelings really can do a number on your head. Was it all your fault that you were treated badly? What have your kids got that you don’t?

When patients in this predicament challenge their parents on this issue, the parents tend to get defensive or deny that there has been any sort of double standard at all. One such grandparent recently replied, "You already knew I love you!  Why should I have had to tell you that?"

So what might be happening here? My theory would predict that, as the grandparents are getting older, they are mellowing out, as people with personality disorders often (but hardly always) do. Their own parents are often dying off as well, and are no longer feeding into their destructive behavior. So they start to have the relationship with their grandchildren that they might have preferred, had the family dynamics been different, to have had with their own kids.

If and when their children confront them on the change, they go into attack or denial mode because down deep they feel horribly guilty and ashamed about their own behavior when their children were growing up. In fact, they are indirectly trying to atone for their sins with the grandkids. However, because they are guilty and ashamed of how they treated their own kids, they can’t face them, and push them away, similarly to the way other parents push their children away described in my post, Hatefulness as a Gift of Love.

Hatefulness as a Gift of Love, Part II: a Case Example

In Part I of this post, from 2/7/12, I described my belief that parents somehow still love their children even if they act out a hateful, nasty, and/or abusive family role.  This is naturally something people who have parents like this have a great deal of trouble accepting, and understandably so.  If I were in their shoes, I am absolutely certain I would have come to the exact same conclusions they do. 


Still, as adults from dysfunctional families tell their stories to me in psychotherapy, I always hear of those rare times when their parents were not hateful but actually loving.  Sometimes such parents even will unexpectedly express their love directly, although often in a way which undermines their own credibility.  But why would anyone believe the professions of love of someone who generally tends to treat them horribly?

I mentioned that I would describe some of the “maternal” behavior that a woman who has been corresponding with me described to me, and translate some of her mother’s behavior and verbalizations into what I think was really being expressed covertly.  So here goes. (I will not be discussing my correspondent’s childhood, but only what has been going on in the very recent past). 

Her mother was getting old and was no longer able to live by herself, but was driving everyone crazy with various demands about whether or not she should be placed, or where she should be placed if she were sent to a nursing home. 

She had given her daughter power of attorney over her affairs in the eventuality that she became incompetent, setting up a situation in which my correspondent (I’ll call her Mrs. T.) was in a position to make major life decisions for her mother. It was also completely unclear whether the mother was developing dementia or how severe it was if it was present, which meant it was also unclear whether or not she was competent.

Mrs. T described the events as they unfolded, writing at various times (reproduced with her permission):

She [Mom] reacts extremely poorly to anything short of immediate subservience and submission on my part, and yet, she has appointed me to be her "power of attorney" in the eventuality that she becomes incompetent.  She was turned down by the only nursing home that she agreed to go to and, as of yesterday afternoon, was turning down offers by the hospital social worker to set up any in-home physical therapy.  The county social worker fears that because of her intelligence she will not be found to lack decision-making ability. 

I want to keep loving thoughts towards her (after a lifetime of anxious helplessness, guilt and overt/covert hostility) [Mrs. T had been reading my posts on disarming borderlines and spoiling behavior]. 

Now I must decide whether or not I want to be the person who puts my mother in a nursing home and have her hate me or to decline and leave her well-being to chance.

I was told that my mother was angry and acting out for about an hour this morning.  She was ok when I came to the hospital this afternoon and we had a good conversation, including my explaining to her that the POA authorized me to "put her in a nursing home" and that I was resigning.  She actually said that I should "give it back" after I said that and she said it in a friendly way.  The hospital social worker showed up and tried to immediately serve me with the "activation" paperwork. . .  She left to make me a copy of the POA…  My mother started acting out again.  I eventually left.  I came back in the room briefly while she was on the phone with my brother "trashing" me and I told her that I just wanted her to be safe.

She called me tonight after I was home and told me that she never wants to see me again and that I am a bad daughter because I haven't confided in her and because I have shared information about her with the social services people.

Tonight she cited her Sicilian upbringing as a reason for being an unaffectionate parent… My mother called my husband yesterday to thank him for watering her plants and told him "good bye." My mother has told me that she never wants to see me again.  My brother tells me that she has also said "I do not have a daughter" etc. She has called here several times, mostly leaving messages asking for my husband, but I was home and did answer last night about 10:35 and she spoke to me but was clearly not happy about it, demanding that I send an attorney there because they were "killing her." 

She did not trust me to do the simplest thing correctly.  Even to be in her presence was to be under her dominion and control.  I could not wait to leave the minute I got there even though my intentions had been good in going to visit her.  She harangued me non-stop for bringing her groceries.  "I thought I told you not to...."  "Didn't I tell you not to...." She would write letters thanking for the groceries, and other kindnesses.

[After Mom leaves the hospital:].

Right now she is in a nursing home two blocks from my home.  She does not speak to me when I go there and bring her flowers or rub her feet.

My mother was on a hunger strike when she was in the hospital prior to the emergency mental detention/initiation of the guardianship process.  She is now refusing to eat in the nursing home, except for food which I bring her. I have told my therapist for a long time, and my mother's "thank you" notes in the past confirm, that she credits me with "keeping her alive."  I, however, see the other side of the coin, i.e., that if I cease my efforts, I will be a murderer. On Weds. afternoon she disowned me to my face and a day later is playing the "I'll only eat food you make me" game.

I left there assuming she still can't chew, as she told me that she had been to a luau the night before and ate nothing, not even water, not even the coconut cream pie....(I said words to the effect of couldn't you just mouth that and swallow it...???)  Anyway, very long story short.....b/c my mother dislikes me talking to people about her, I called the nurses station after I left and spoke to Ann and told her I had brought cottage cheese, yogurt and OJ and she tells me that my mom had eaten a pasta w/sausage lunch no problem....... one of the last times I saw her, she said "You need lessons, you need lessons" and when I asked why, she said my meatballs were too hard, then ate part of one and contradicted herself, said that one was ok.  shoot me now.

So, I am responsible for her survival.....just like I was always made to be responsible for her happiness (there is a no win situation for you with a woman who was constitutionally incapable of being happy...) So, I am trapped.  And, if I stopped bringing her food and she lost weight, and died, it would be "all my fault."

Without turning her head to look at me, my mother said to me "You didn't get any sleep at all last night did you?" Today, while talking to my husband about this feeling of always being under scrutiny, with his help, I made the following observations:

1) with her I was always under close observation......nothing I ever did went unobserved, nothing I ever did was free from commentary, judgment or mischaracterization

2) she did not ask as one might, "are you tired?" but instead she made a gross exaggeration  (any sleep at all)

3) she made her observation in the form of a leading question.

For most of my life, I would have 'taken the bait' and defended myself with an "Oh yes I did" kind of answer which would have just started an argument or occasion a global statement by her to the effect of "you never get enough sleep" "you don't take care of yourself" etc. OR a criticism of me along the lines of being a hot house tomato or thin skinned if I objected to the criticisms. 

This may seem like a small observation, and yet, it helps to describe the type of relationship I had/have with her.....she was intrusive, and yet, her intrusions did not feel like expressions of love or concern, they were simply opportunities for her to chide me, condemn me or make me feel inadequate or incompetent as a person.....I don't think I am ever going to "heal" from this.

 I do not remember her ever kissing me. 

She said, the other day, as I was leaving, words to the effect (and this is very very very rare) "You know I love you very much, don't you? You make life liveable."  This was after telling me earlier that she did not want to be alive this time next year, among other things.  I believe that by providing her with homemade food, so she doesn't have to eat the nursing home food, she feels cared about by me. 

In reading this, the things that jumped out at me the most was the fact that Mom is constantly giving off double messages to Mrs. T. about needing and loving her.  The positive messages, however, could easily be interpreted as having a negative ulterior motive behind them - like Mom is only saying them to manipulate Mrs. T.  This negative interpretation comes about for a number of reasons:

First, the positive messages are expressed way less frequently than the negative ones, and are rarely said directly to Mrs. T.  They are said to third parties or written in notes.  Second, expressions of concern are expressed as criticisms, and their frequency make it appear as if Mrs. T is constantly being judged in the negative.  Third, Mom seems to imply that Mrs. T. is responsible for Mom’s happiness, and that Mrs. T always fails her, making Mom’s misery Mrs. T’s fault.  So, of course Mrs. T interprets them in the way she listed above as her three “observations.”

I believe that the negative comments and the spin Mom seems to put on her positive comments represent Mom’s “role” of spoiler in her own family of origin – manifestations of a false self.  The positive comments and the underlying concern represent what is going on covertly, and are what I believe to be manifestations of her true self – the way she really feels.

For example, Mom complained bitterly about the groceries Mrs. T. brought to her, but would then write letters thanking her.  Then, to top it off, she refused to eat any food except that which Mrs. T brought to her. She even credited Mrs. T. with keeping her alive, although she “undid” this at different times by accusing Mrs. T. of “killing” her and by predicting that she will soon be dead.  She tells Mrs. T she needs cooking lessons – again while refusing to eat other people’s food. (Except occasionally. Just to throw everyone else off).

After a lifetime of avoiding kissing Mrs. T., again Mrs. T naturally discounted Mom’s statement, "You know I love you very much, don't you? You make life liveable." 

Mom “disowned” Mrs. T. several times.  Each time, Mrs. T. felt like Mom was going to do what she said, despite the fact that it never actually happens.

At one point, when the patient was sitting with her in the hospital, Mom said, "Sorry this was so boring for you." I told Mrs. T. that I would wager that Mom had said this with a tone of voice that was dripping with either sarcasm or hostility, as if Mrs. T. were an ungrateful daughter who does not appreciate all her mother had done for her, and who resented Mom for inconveniencing herself - or something like that.  


Alternate translation: "I know this is no fun for you and I'm a pill to be with, and I really do hope it wasn't as bad for you as I think it would be."   

Sounds insane I know, but when patients who are subjected to this sort of figurative insanity think back, they may find they can remember times when Mom was actually loving in some strange way. Double messages are the norm in the BPD family. 

Last I heard, by the way, Mom ended up in an appropriate facility, Mrs. T. retained power of attorney, and they are still speaking.

In my post of July 6, 2010, Distancing: Early Warning, I wrote: When parents act in an obnoxious manner like this that pushes their adult children away, this is referred to as distancing behavior.   Parents who know they were abusive, even if they do not admit it, may secretly believe that their children are better off without them. Hence, they engage in distancing to push their children away, thereby protecting their children from themselves. 

It's a version of self-denigrating sentiment expressed in the famous quote by Groucho Marx: "I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."

Groucho Marx on "You Bet Your Life"

However, the parents also secretly long to have a healthy connection with their children, so they cannot seem to bring themselves to just cut off all ties directly. Their own conflict causes them to give off the double message that are inherent in distancing behavior: come here but get the hell away from me. Or as the singer Pink so aptly put it, “Leave me alone, I’m lonely!”

Mrs. T.’s mom obliquely refers to her own upbringing as the source of her difficulties being a good mother when she blames her “Sicilian upbringing” as the reason for her being an “unaffectionate parent.”  What transpired in that upbringing, and how much Mrs. T knows or does not know about it, is something Mrs. T. and I have not discussed in great detail.  I am willing to wager that the story of Mom’s background is powerful and moving.  Such stories always are.

Hatefulness as a Gift of Love, Part I

Lorna Smith Benjamin, a well-respected researcher on the relationship between interpersonal psychology and personality disorders, has a saying that “Every Psychopathology is a Gift of love.”  In other words, she believes people develop maladaptive traits because, as she explains on her website:

“… problem patterns…are the result of one or more of three copy processes started in relation to an important early caregiver…Those are (1) Be like him/her (identification); (2) act as if he/she is still around and in charge (recapitulation); ( 3) treat yourself as he/she did (introjection). Sometimes the copying is in negative image (e.g., be the opposite)…The purpose of the copying is to seek reconciliation, approval, love of the internalized representation of that original object (person). People unwittingly act accordingly to the "rules" laid down by these early relationships and even when they believe they hate the original copy person. Every psychopathology is a gift of love.”

If you're looking for a therapist, find one who knows this stuff

[Some trivia for you: Dr. Benjamin started out as a student of Timothy Leary, way back when he was a respected academic interpersonal psychologist and before he went off the deep end as a hippie guru telling everyone to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” Don't hold it against her].

Ellllllesssssdeee

That people may mistreat themselves because of loyalty to their kin group and a sense of altruism in that context seems to me to be due to a biological imperative (see my post on kin selection), albeit one that we can consciously choose to ignore.

This idea is understandably difficult for most people to wrap their heads around.  Self destructiveness as a sort of altruism?  (I explained some patterns associated with this phenomenon in my posts of 2/6/11 and 2/11/11).  The idea that the biological forces of kin selection may lead individuals to act in hateful and/or frustrating ways to other people for altruistic purposes within the kin group (although certainly not altruistic to outsiders) is even harder to swallow.  But the idea that individuals are willing to sacrifice their own children as a gift of love to the family system is the most difficult of all.

I think that the attraction of the Biblical story of Abraham nearly obeying a command from God to kill his own beloved son, not to mention the story of God being willing to sacrifice his only Son for the good of humanity, stems from the pervasiveness of this phenomenon within our species.  Certainly, the common willingness of parents to send their children off to war illustrates how powerful this human tendency is.  

The military in this country honors the mothers of fallen soldiers as “Gold Star Mothers.”  The government gives them a folded flag and a dead son or daughter, and usually they somehow consider it quite an honor.

That parents somehow still love their children even if they are acting out a hateful, nasty, and/or abusive family role is something my patients often have a great deal of trouble accepting, and understandably so.  In order to explain their parents strange hatefulness, which I also refer to in my post of July 6, 2010 as distancing behavior, they have usually come to the conclusion that their parents are heartless, evil, insane, or stupid. 

If I were in their shoes, I am absolutely certain I would have come to the exact same conclusion. Still, as they tell their stories to me in psychotherapy, I always hear of those rare times when their parents were not hateful but actually loving.  Sometimes such parents even will unexpectedly express their love directly, although often in a way which undermines their own credibility.  However, because of the total context of the relationship, these positive acts and statements are discounted.  Again, discounting such contradictory double messages is perfectly understandable.

Why would you believe the professions of love of anyone who generally tends to treat you like sh*t?  That would really be insane. Why should you believe them when there is so much evidence to the contrary?

And who knows if they are not doing those positive things for you on purpose to set you up once again for disappointment?  Letting you start to hope that they could finally be the parents you always wished you had, only to dash those hopes to pieces.  Like waiting for your estranged father to come and pick you up as he promised, when he has broken such promises time and time again.

Still, what does one make of a mother who, for the first time, admitted to her adult daughter that she had severely verbally abused the daughter when she was very young, but then told her not to bring it up again because she would deny ever having admitted it?  

And therapists tell patients whose parents do this crap that they have “trust issues” as if somehow that indicates that there is something wrong with them.  If such patients did not have trouble trusting people, then there would be something wrong with them.

I have been corresponding with two women whose mothers are described as having many traits that are suggestive of the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.  While they both really want to believe that beneath all the horrible distancing behavior their mothers really did and do care about them, they of course find that the idea induces a lot of cognitive dissonance.  Again, I do not blame them one bit for thinking that I am just a little bit crazy for thinking so.

In part II of this post, I will describe some of the “maternal” behavior that one of them described to me, as well as translating some of her mother’s behavior and verbalizations into what I think is really being expressed covertly.