The Dysfunctional Family Role of the "Loser"

It seems like a lot more adults in the United States are living with their parents than ever before. Some of this is completely reasonable and is in no way indicative of significant family dysfunction, as economic conditions have led many twenty-somethings to require much more time to get their financial ducks in a row so they can move out and be more independent. 

In other cases, however, this phenomenon is due to significantly dysfunctional family dynamics. If the pattern continues into the adult children's thirties, forties, or even later, the odds that dysfunctionality is the culprit skyrocket. 

In  a previous post, I discussed some typical patterns that create this pattern, and pointed out that the adult children remain enmeshed with their parents because, covertly, they are taking care of some of their parents' needs. They may be mediating disputes between bickering parents who for whatever reason will not get a divorce; they may be helping take care of sick, elderly, or just plain lonely parents; they may be providing free cooking and housekeeping services for families that for a variety of reasons are not being done by someone else.

Or in some cases, all of the above!

This is the shell game that I refer to as Who is Taking Care of Whom?

I have seen cases of such patterns that continue throughout the entire lifetime of the adult child. You can find many examples of a sixty-something year old man or woman living with an eighty-something year old mother or father. The adult child's siblings may all be independent, but the "identified screw-up" seems to be the parent's favorite child.

Usually in these instances, the parent is taking care of all of the adult child's financial needs, including for housing, food and spending money, so said adult child does not have to work outside of the home.  The reason they do not work, however, is actually because they already have a full time job: taking care of their parents.

On the surface, it seems to all the world - and even to many peripheral family members - that the adult child is using the parent, and said adult child normally receives all of the blame for the dysfunctional living arrangement. They are accused of using the parents because of less than admirable motives.  Many such folks readily accept this blame, and in fact act in many ways to confirm everyone else's worst fears. They do this to protect the image of their parents, and in the process sacrifice their own reputation.

Another variety of this pattern is when the adult child living with parents pretends to be a failure who always seems to need the help of their parents. That is the version of the shell game that is the subject of today's post. The adult child appears to be a big loser in both love and work. Said adult children will venture out into the real world from time to time, only to return in relatively short order with their tails between their legs.

So how does one go about becoming such a loser?  Let me count the ways.

They may flunk out of school for various and sundry reasons that are not actually the real reasons. Alternatively, they may get a degree in something that qualifies them for a profession that is rapidly disappearing from the current landscape, so they cannot get a permanent job.

They may make impulsive decisions that get them in trouble in way one or another, and subsequently lose any job they do manage to land. They may even develop various medical or mental illnesses, some of which are real and some of which are feigned and some of which are both, but all of which appear to be far more disabling than these particular illnesses should ever be in real life (the role of the defective). Drug or alcohol problems are common.  Some of these folks are massively obese.

They may get themselves fired from a whole series of jobs, again for reasons which may appear legitimate but are masks for the real motivation of the job loser. Or they might take a job knowing that the company they work for is actually planning layoffs.

These people may also or instead play the role of loser in their love lives.  They may look like they are really trying to meet romantic partners by going to singles events or signing up for dating websites, but somehow very little comes of it. Or they choose partners - or a series of partners - who are abusive, have drug or alcohol or commitment problems, or are in other ways dysfunctional, so their parents have to come and rescue them from dangerous or dead-end relationships. Sometimes repeatedly.

Because of these patterns, the parents - who are in reality highly dependent on Mr. or Ms. Loser - often criticize the poor judgment of their offspring unmercifully.  

The more the parents criticize, the more the adult child continues making the same mistakes over and over again. The parent then feels justified in continuing to make the criticisms. On the rare occasions when the adult child expresses anger at the parent's constant harping and verbal abuse, the parent can point to the child's irresponsible behavior as justification for it.

In a very real sense, the adult child is purposely giving the parent this ammunition to use against him or her, although they do not have to think about this consciously while doing so because their behavior is habitual and automatic. This allows the parent to avoid feeling guilty for both their criticisms and for the fact that they are contributing to their own child's impairment. The parents, of course, act in this manner because they themselves are playing their own roles within the family.

Some are stuck in bad marriages because of family/cultural/religious prohibitions regarding divorce.  Some are females who are stuck in outdated gender roles with a prohibition against women being independent.  Some need their child to act out their own repressed anger because they cannot do so themselves - often due to family rules prohibiting anyone from being "selfish" enough to put their own needs above those of other family members.

There is a very incisive and sophisticated comic strip called Momma by Mell Lazarus that absolutely nails the family dynamics described above. A son named Francis is the identified loser.  He apparently does have his own apartment, which of course Momma is paying for, but he is constantly doing everything in his power to act out the various negative characterizations of him that Momma compulsively throws his way. 

It's kind of sad that a cartoonist understands this dynamic better than many therapists.

Themes of This Blog Seen In Newspaper Advice Columns – Part I

Carolyn Hax

In this series of posts, I will show how several of the issues I discuss in the blog show up in letters to newspaper advice columnists. These columns have historically been written by women, but some men are entering the fray. The first ones were seen in Britain and the writers were referred to as agony aunts.

Of course, some of the published letters may me fakes, and the prejudices of the columnists determine which letters they publish and which of the many that they receive go unpublished. Nonetheless, as I have mentioned in previous posts, in order to have a wide readership, they must bring us problems that resonate with a fairly wide readership. This provides another source of information about human behavior for any mental health professional aware of the fact that the entire world of their patients does not consist of what they see or hear in their offices.

One other important point: there is always way more to the writers’ story than they possibly could tell in a short letter, even if they wanted to.

 I follow Jeanne Phillips (Dear Abby), Carolyn Hax, Amy Dickinson (Ask Amy), and Marcy Sugar & Kathy Mitchell (Annie’s Mailbox).

I will underscore each theme with a title reflecting the blog subject that seems to be discussed in the letters, which will also be a link to a related post. I’m not putting the columnist’s responses in the posts, as I will either give my own take or list any questions that the letter would raise, and lead me to ask, if I heard the story in a therapy or patient evaluation session – the “holes in the story,” as it were.

An abused daughter is angry at Dad but is still protective of him

Most formerly abused adults have covert protective feelings towards their abuser, no matter how bent on justice or revenge they seem to fancy themselves. This particular letter writer admits to these feelings here anonymously, but not to people who know her in her actual life.

2/21/13.  Dear Carolyn: My father was an awful dad. He was the first person to ever call me a “b----” (I was 9) and was absent when he wasn’t antagonistic. Bad, bad Dad. The thing is, I’ve always toed the party line, always said the very best things about him publicly. I lied with a smile for decades and continue to now that it’s pretty clear his days/hours are numbered. I’ve contacted extended family and old colleagues to let them know this great man is ready for the last bits of adulation they may offer. I represent him within our small community and receive and share the sadness of his demise. He’s still so hurtful to me in every way imaginable and yet here I am, being a sucker until the very end. How do I deal with all of the self-loathing for having essentially been complicit in his bad behavior? I can hear (the imagined?) tsk-tsking from your readers (and from you, Carolyn, because you lost a mom who was clearly amazing and devoted). I’ve decided not to speak about any of this as my last gift to him, but it’s costing me. I’m just so angry at myself. How do I deal with it? I genuinely wish him no ill will; I’m just torn up by the lack of justice here. Not only will he never be held accountable for being so unrelentingly selfish and cruel, but now I’m burdened with these feelings that I fear would only make me sound petulant and somehow ungrateful. Moreover, he honestly wouldn’t know what I’m talking about because he is so utterly convinced of his own blamelessness. Help. - Anonymous

Another aspect of families protecting abusive members (the protection racket) is seen in cases in which an entire family pressures the daughter of an abusive father, say, to let him babysit her kids. In a sense, the family is banding together to deny the earlier abuse ever took place, so they must pretend letting him do this is not dangerous. Therefore, they gang up on the protesting parent (I call ganging up in this manner clustering). 

A certain percentage of people in the situation of trying to keep their kids away from dangerous adults actually give in to the family pressure and expose their kids to the risk. And almost all of them have difficulty dealing with the pressure. Here are three examples:

2/22/13. Dear Carolyn: I grew up with a mother who was profoundly manipulative, volatile and mean-spirited. My siblings and I all have anxiety disorders for which we have sought counseling. I have distanced myself from my mother and have a happy life with my husband and 4-year-old daughter.  I have begun allowing my mother limited contact with my daughter out of my mother’s desire to have a relationship with her. I am comfortable with where the boundaries currently are, but my mother is not. She continually pushes to have my daughter for weekend visits (she lives several hours away). I do not believe she would overtly harm my daughter, but she can fly off the handle when upset and has very different ideas than I do about what is acceptable behavior from a ­4-year-old.  My family seems to think I am being unreasonable to hold my mother at such distance. My sister has no personal relationship with her but does allow her to babysit her children. Am I wrong not to allow weekend visits, or am I being realistic? - Anxious Mother

9/9/13.  DEAR ABBY: My 61-year-old father was arrested recently for 30 counts of possession of child pornography. He has had a rough past -- he cheated on my mother and has had multiple stints in rehab for alcohol abuse. During my teenage years he verbally abused me. My mother is in denial about the entire situation and the fact that he is facing time in prison for his actions.  Nine months ago, my husband and I were blessed with the birth of our beautiful baby girl. I feel I must protect her from my parents and my father in particular. Some of my family agree with my decision, others disagree because I am my parents' only child. Am I wrong for not wanting my father and possibly my mother any longer in my life? -- TOUGH LOVE IN FLORIDA

3/5/13. DEAR ABBY: My father-in-law, "Earl," is an alcoholic and an avid gun enthusiast. He owns many weapons; I don't know the exact number. He has been accumulating ammunition at an accelerated rate because he's afraid that large clips will soon be banned. He drinks to excess and becomes belligerent and angry when drunk. Last summer, during one of his moments of inebriation, he shot a gun into the air as a "surprise" to the eight family members who were sitting within two to 10 feet of him. He takes pride in the fact that his guns are kept loaded, as "what good is an unloaded gun?" On two separate occasions, I know for a fact that a loaded gun was found unsecured in his home. When my husband and I travel with our children, ages 7, 5 and 4, to visit his family, we stay in Earl's home. I feel the combination of alcohol and loaded, unsecured guns is not safe for my children. I have suggested to my husband that we stay in a hotel during our visits from now on. The problem is, my husband is unable to stand up to his father. He told me that when he tried talking to him about his concerns, Earl called him a "wimp." Please tell me how to get through to my husband. I don't want to alienate his family, and I do want my children to have a relationship with their grandfather. -- GUN-SHY IN SOUTH CAROLINA

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Clueless grandparents are at risk of causing problems for yet another generation

Annie's Mailbox 

2/27/13. Dear Annie: My daughter is a drug addict who is in and out of jail. Over the past 14 years, we have taken custody of her four children. Two of the kids are great. However, the other two are the problem. The oldest girl just turned 18 and moved out. This kid made our lives miserable. She saw counselors multiple times and began cutting herself, and we finally had to have her committed to a hospital. We did whatever we thought would work, but nothing did. She quit school and now lives with any friend who will take her in. Now, one of the other girls is 13 and doing the same thing. It's as if they lose their minds once they hit middle school. Her grades are down, she is getting into trouble at school, she cuts classes and has briefly run away twice. The other two kids are very involved with school and church and are as good as they can be. But, Annie, we don't want to handle the 13-year-old anymore. All of the counseling, the discipline, the problems, it's too much. My stomach is in knots trying to decide what to do. I am so tired of kids who think they know everything but are dumber than dirt, and all of the drama they command. My friends tell me to turn her over to foster care, but no one else is going to worry enough about her. My husband has had two heart surgeries in the past year, and my blood pressure is way too high, even though I take medication. Should I put her in foster care? — Helpless, Tired Granny

Some "More to the Story" questions: The letter writers say that they “tried everything” to discipline their daughter without success, and they seem to be having similar troubles with two of their grandchildren. What is entailed by their phrase “tried everything” – what specific things are those? Did they give up on a disciplinary strategy and go on to another one way too quickly? Did they try to micromanage everything in their daughter's life in order to save her from herself? Or did they perhaps bounce back and forth between over-involvement and neglect?

The writers’ ambivalence over taking care of children is palpable from the letter alone, which, if an accurate reflection of their feelings, puts them at risk of creating children with borderline personality disorder.  It is interesting that half the grandkids do not create any problems.  How do the writers, as well as the children’s mother, relate differently to each child? (I can almost guarantee that they do).  Does a given child remind them of themselves or another relative they had trouble with?  What do the mother and grandparents say to each other in the presence of the grandchildren?

Ve Have Vays of Making You Talk, Part I

Oh, how family members hate to discuss chronic repetitive ongoing interpersonal difficulties with each other.  Everyone fears that they will hear something about themselves that is negative.  Some do not want to face up to or admit to anything they may have done wrong. 

If they are already feeling guilty about their past behavior, they may expect they will be unjustly blamed or misunderstood or humiliated.  Sometimes discussions about family dynamics, also called metacommunication, elicit anger or lead to an emotional cut off or the silent treatment. Some may even lead to violence.

All this may be true. However, an even bigger factor in many folks' reluctance to metacommunicate is often that family members worry that their thoughts and feelings about the other person will hurt the other person's feelings.  They fear that the Other cannot handle the truth because of intrinsic weaknesses,or that the truth might lead perhaps an exacerbation of his or her tendency to drink too much or even to become suicidal.

This reason for avoiding saying what you believe in order to avoid hurting others is part of what I refer to as the protection racket.

On the other hand, a family member might worry that a flat refusal to discuss a problem when pressed by another family member may seem rude or inconsiderate.  So in response people have developed a whole repertoire of behaviors to very subtly get out of such discussions without appearing to be completely uncooperative. 

Some of these strategies can be so subtle that the other person often does not even realize that the discussion has been completely redirected toward a more benign-sounding subject than the one the original complainer had in mind.

Another important aspect of this is that the original complainers may dread such discussions themselves.  They may have spent weeks building up the nerve to bring up the complaint, and are subconsciously relieved when the discussion is derailed.  They therefore cooperate with the ruse.  To prevent this from happening, those bringing up a problem for discussion have to remind themselves that, despite their discomfort, the problem really needs to be effectively and directly addressed.

In Part I of this post, I will discuss the most common of avoidance strategies - merely changing the subject - as well as suggest effective countermoves to keep a conversation on track.  The goal is effective and empathic problem solving.  In future posts I will do the same for other such strategies. 

In all counter-strategies, maintaining empathy for the Other and persistence are key.  

Strategy #1:  Changing the subject.  The person avoids a touchy issue by diverting the conversation to something else.  This one seems pretty straightforward and simple to understand, but often it is more difficult to spot than one might think.  Subject changes can be both subtle and insidious. 

For example, a person may go off on an interesting tangent.  A discussion that starts with someone bringing up a marital problem concerning the spending habits of the other person, for instance, may be led astray when the the Other discusses one particular recent but somewhat atypical purchase and how important it was to the couple.

This may then lead to fun stories about events that transpired over the object in question during the entire relationship.  The original complainer starts to reminisce with the partner, not even realizing that the original complaint was completely deep sixed.

Other examples are when the Other make jokes, or looks for something in the environment that seems to need attention right away and suddenly starts talking about that after a nifty segue.

The first thing one has to do to counter subtle misdirection is to realize when it occurs, and then bring the subject back to where it needs to be.  The complainer's first countermove should be to directly change the subject right back to the original issue. 

If that fails, the complainers should then point out in a non-condemning manner how the other is avoiding their concerns and insist on returning to the subject at hand.  If the other still persists in sidetracking maneuvers, the complainers should step back and ask themselves why the Other is becoming uncomfortable, and then either empathize with his or her concerns, or if they cannot find a way to do that, express puzzlement over the Other's reactions. 

Another way to derail a conversation through a subject change is through the use of a counter-complaint.  The original complaint is not addressed, but instead the Others brings up a complaint of their own.  This maneuver usually takes the form of a statement beginning with, "Well you..." or "What about the time that you...?" The original complainant is then cowed into discontinuing his or her effort to address the original issue.

There are two versions of this strategy, each requiring very different counter-moves. The first is when the Other brings up a complaint that is completely unrelated to the original complaint.  In this case, the person should reply, "Well, that's an important issue for us, and I will be happy to discuss that with you later, but first I think we need to come to some mutually agreeable understanding on what I am bringing up."  One has to be willing to non-defensively do just that later on, of course, or else this strategy will eventually fall flat.

In the second version, the Other says something to the effect that, "Well, you do the same thing that I do (so how dare you complain about me)."  It is usually not stated this clearly, however.  The Other instead may bring up a specific example of the problematic behavior as practiced by the original complainer.  For instance, if an adult child wants to talk to a mother about why the mother stayed with an abusive spouse, the mother will start talking about the complainer's relationship with his or her own abusive spouse.

This type of response usually leads to defensiveness on the part of the original complainer, which then leads to an argument instead of effective problem solving.  An effective countermove is to acknowledge the legitimacy of the comparison, if it is in fact legitimate. 

Although there may be important differences between the behavior of the mother and the child, usually there are significant similarities as well.  The complainer should ignore the differences for the time being and say something like, "I was not trying to rake you over the coals for staying with Dad.  Isn't it interesting that we both seem to have the same problem?"

This turns the conversation into a far less provocative conversation about about a mutual difficulty.  It is far more difficult for the Other to feel criticized by the complainant if the complainants admit to having the same problem themselves.

Yet another way to change the subject is to make it a bit confusing as to what the subject actually is.



Ambigous language might be used by the Other so that the first person is not sure if they are both talking about exactly the same thing.  For instance, an adult mother of a teenager and the mother's own father were discussing how the grandfather was only willing to help with his grandson's expenses when he was living with his father, but not when he was living with the complainant. 

The woman was a single working mother with significant financial hardships.  Mixed in with this subject were allusions to the father's somewhat similar behavior when the mother was herself a child.

After a while, it became very difficult to tell which of these subjects was being discussed at any given time.  Were the mother and her father talking about themselves, or about the grandson?  Most of the references made within the conversation could apply to either one.

Again, spotting the confusion through understanding the analogies is the first step in separating out the ambiguous references so that the pair can discuss a single pattern (that probably started when the mother was a child and is continuing in an altered form in their current relationship whenever the needs of the grandson arise).

A related misdirection strategy is to mix several separate but highly interconnected issues so that none of them is ever completely discussed. For example, one woman was in a complex family system in which her husband would distract her from her anger at her parents and vice versa.  The husband and the mother would both do things to get the patient angry to draw her anger towards them. 

The genogram revealed that the problems in the system were related to gender issues (whether men should take care of women or women should pursue independence), concerns re the adequacy of males in the family (her husband felt that he was supposed to protect his wife but felt inadequate to do so and angry about "having" to shoulder the responsibility) and even class (how much money was being brought in and whether wealthy people are shallow).

The discussion would change from one of these aspects to another at the drop of a hat.  Because the aspects were all so interconnected it was indeed difficult to talk about one without talking about the others (for examply, when the issue of the husband's adequacy came up, the issue of why he was like that would also arise).  Because the subject jumped around, however, any conversations about the issue would end up going in circles with nothing being resolved.

In some relationships, large numbers of related issues are brought up in a sequence.  By the time the pair gets done with the last one, the arguments about the first one have already been forgotten, and the sequence begins all over again.  It repeats ad nauseum.

Again, the most important countermaneuver in these situations is to recognize what is happening.  The original complainant should then bring up the fact that there are several related issues, acknowledge that dividing them up is somewhat artificial because they are so intertwined, but request that they do so anyway before going off on a tangent. 

If that does not work, then once again the complainants should follow the steps discussed earlier in this post: first point out in a non-condemning manner how the other is avoiding a subject and insist on returning to the subject at hand.  If nothing changes, the complainers should next step back and ask themselves why the Other is becoming uncomfortable, and then either empathize with his or her concerns or express puzzlement over the Other's reactions.

The Protection Racket

The recent case of Abby Sunderland, the 16 year old girl who famously tried to be the youngest person ever to sail solo around the world and whose boat became disabled in a severe storm, has become a virtual Rorschach test on parenting. Editorial columns, letters to the editor, and online debates question the sanity of the parents who let the girl try out such a clearly dangerous activity, and argue about whether or not they pushed her to do it for the money they would earn from a reality show (although Abby’s brother Zac had already achieved the feat and the family apparently got very little money from that).

Some of the debate also centered around the question of who should have to pay for the cost of her rescue, although I do not recall that question being raised quite as much when several mountain climbers had to be rescued off of snowstorm-infested Mt. Hood after attempting to climb it in the wintertime.

A legitimate question about how much risk parents should allow their teenagers to take, and how protective of their children parents should be has been all but drowned out by extreme emotion.

Some people have applauded the Sunderlands for “brave parenting” and for fostering maturity in their offspring. Clearly Abby was quite mature and knew what she was doing. A lot of adult sailors would have trouble keeping their boat upright in 20 to 25 foot waves after the mass was snapped off, or have the presence of mind to quickly activate manually operated emergency radio beacons. Still, should that sort of risk-taking be encouraged in anyone, let alone a teenager?

On the other side are parents who think it’s too dangerous to let their children play outside on their suburban front lawns, walk two blocks to school, or surf the internet unattended for fear that the children will be whisked away by sexual predators.

Now of course children do get abducted. According to the National Center for Statistics and Analysis, there are 3,000 to 5,000 stranger abductions per year, which are mostly cases of sexual assault rather than kidnapping. Of course, there are 40 million kids in this country, making the odds of such an abduction around 347,000 to 1! Compare that to the approximately 3000 children between the ages of 2 and 14 who die in car crashes every year, or to the estimated 1,530 children who were killed by their adult caretakers in 2006, or to the nine hundred and six thousand child abuse convictions in 2003 alone.

Makes you wonder about how some folks assess risk.

Where’s the middle ground on keeping children safe? It seems to have disappeared.

“Protecting” children from themselves is nowadays often taken to extremes in which the parents actually cause their children to be less safe because the kids never learn how to fend for themselves or to tolerate adversity. A recent letter to the editor in my city’s newspaper opined that parents who do not randomly drug test their teens, regardless of whether or not there is any evidence that the children may have used drugs, have their heads in the sand. I would be more concerned that those children who had never used drugs would interpret such action by the parent as indicative of the parent’s expectation that they are going to use drugs, as well as the parent's expectation that they are incapable of using good judgment.

Children frequently misinterpret such parental overconcern as a sick need on the part of the parent to be some sort of rescuer - whether the children need rescuing or not. Such kids then often act as if they continually need to be saved from themselves - in order oblige the parent’s apparent need to do just that.