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I like to get a sense of new clients’ family
backgrounds. In the first few weeks, I ask for data—the
facts about who is who, what things happened to them in
their childhood, and how they happened. We have not said
one negative thing about their families, yet clients
start getting anxious:
“Are you going to be blaming my parents like every
typical therapist?”
“That was back then. I only want to deal with the
here and now.” (These same folk usually have no
trouble talking at length about the past if their
parents were positive and loving and fostered positive
values within them.)
“I can’t speak ill of them. They did the best they
could.”
“Why go back to how they were then? That’s not how
they are now!”
The problem is that clients offer these statements while
I’m doing something neutral, such as writing down their
family history. Even the fact gathering and data giving
reminds them of negative, dysfunctional events that
occurred while they were growing up.
When something’s wrong in a family, kids may not be able
to put words to it, but unconsciously they know that
things aren’t right. So clients immediately start
warning me that it’s off limits to identify or discuss
anything questionable in the family closet.
I stress to clients that we’ll explore the positive
things their caregivers did do and how they did love
them. You couldn’t have come this far in your life
without those who raised you. But it’s unrealistic to
think that any parent is all good or all bad, or to
believe that you received from that parent only the
positive and none of the negative.
As a result of family dysfunction, children often fall
into various predictable roles. If you don’t explore how
these issues may play out in your current adult
relationships, you’ll either relive the agony of your
childhood or won’t be able to maintain healthy coping
skills and relationships. Facing your childhood and your
parents is to go from child to adult—one of the most
important paths to adulthood.
Working on issues that involve your parents isn’t about
blaming or villainizing them, nor is it about being
victimized from what your parents have done to you. Most
parents aren’t truly mean-spirited and intend no harm.
I’ve worked with clients whose parents were chronically
or mentally ill, depressed, overworked, stressed about
financial constraints, left with one divorced parent to
do the work of two, with no help from extended family,
and many other dysfunctions that might have contributed
to any poor behavior. But these negative circumstances
weren’t their fault. They did the best they could and
deserve some understanding.
The Internalized Parent
Even if you think you’ve dealt with your parents’ issues
and put them to rest, that’s not likely true because you
have two sets of parents: external and internalized. The
external are your physical parents, whether alive or
dead. Even if you’ve settled any long-standing issues
with them, your covert internalized parents—both
positive and negative—linger on. They become the
undertow you don’t see until you get close to someone in
either an adult love relationship or close friendship.
Your internalized parents are what you project onto your
partner, since your relationship with your partner most
completely imitates the close-knit ties you established
with parental figures in childhood. You establish
“family” with your partner, viewing him as more than a
friend. You interact with him more than anyone else, as
was likely the case with your family.
Functional and Healthy Families
In a healthy family, the two parents are adults who rely
on and meet each other’s emotional, mental, and sexual
needs. They may have other adults who meet their needs,
but maintain a boundary that lets them maintain their
adult status—mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and
sexually—and lets the children maintain their own. But
the boundary is permeable: at times, the roles might
reverse, with the adults acting like children or the
children like parents when the adults become dependent,
intentionally or otherwise.
For example, adults might act childishly playful and
irresponsible, or suffer an illness that puts them
temporarily in a dependent role. Any other adult in the
house usually picks up the slack, but the children might
be called on to fill in by assuming an adult role until
the parent recuperates. Things like this do happen, but
the key word is temporary. In a healthy family, parents
would seek out help to keep their children from taking
on too much. Then the children can go back to being kids
once again.
Dysfunctional Families
In a dysfunctional family, such a model isn’t occurring,
nor is any adult even striving for it. The parents step
into the child role and stay there, intentionally or
not. They might use the child for their own needs. A
child is not in charge; he cannot make decisions or
block dynamics in a family. In any case, the adults are
always accountable, never the child.
Parents and caregivers can wound or negatively influence
us in so many inadvertent ways. No parent or parenting
figure can get a child perfectly through all the
necessary developmental stages before age eighteen. Life
happens! I agree, therapy is not about going back and
getting stuck. But most clients when they come in are
already stuck by recycling the unresolved issues over
and over.
Abuse
Difficult though it may be, clients can quickly single
out past events of mistreatment. I recently had a client
in my office sobbing and saying, “To survive love, I had
to get away from those I wanted love from the most.” His
family was so mean and abusive; he knew he had to remove
himself as far away as possible.
Neglect
Not believing that they were products of neglect,
clients find this problem much harder to identify and
stay longer in therapy to learn how to cope with it.
They tend to imagine neglect in the worst light, such as
children left alone for long periods in unsafe
environments. But other types of neglect are sometimes
worse because they are so subtle and so covert that
they’re easy to dismiss. In an alcoholic, violent, or
abusive family, one at least can say what did happen.
Yet things that are not said or not done in a family
still have the same effects.
Clients have said, “My parents always cared for me.” But
it then comes out that they provided custodial care,
nothing more. Lack of attention can be even worse than
actual abuse.
Name, Rank and Serial Number
Not only do you keep the secrecy but often so do your
parents. Your parents may purposely or unconsciously
deny what upsetting things they did to their children
years before. They feel they did the best they could,
and usually they did. Often parents will say, “I didn’t
know any better,” or “It wasn’t called physical abuse
then, it was called discipline.” True, applying today’s
insights and values may not seem fair. But remember it’s important that your
parents own what they did and didn’t do.
When you’re talking about your childhood, the worst the
parent can do is say, “It wasn’t intentional,” “I don’t
remember,” “It didn’t happen that way,” or “You’re
making a bigger deal out of it than it was.” Perhaps
they do feel this way, but more needs to be said. You
deserve more than “I don’t know” or “I did the best I
could,” which is what I call nothing more than a simple
name, rank, and serial number.
Your parent needs to add non-defensively, “I’m sorry
that hurt you” or “I didn’t mean it that way, but I can
see it affected you badly,” or “I recall it differently,
but your memory is just as valid” or “I was so young and
I wish I’d known more.” No matter how the conversation
goes—or when you reflect on childhood in therapy or
support groups—after your parents say they’re sorry or
you forgive them, remember that you’re still the one who
has to do the work—not them.
What If They Didn’t Mean It?
I have worked with clients who remain angry at parents
who have died, and feel guilt for being so angry. “They
couldn’t help dying. Now they’re dead. How can I be mad
at them for that?” I respond that being mad is normal
and human. You counted on them to be around for you. Now
they have gone and left, and you still need them.
Feelings aren’t about logic; when they present
themselves in therapy, our job is to validate them,
understand them, and experience them—even if they’re
anger at a parent for dying.
Caring doesn’t rest in the decision as much as it does
in the thinking about the child. Being closely tracked
and having attention paid helps to build the child’s
self-esteem, which later provides the foundation for
healthy adult relationships. Not having had these
advantages can lead to problems that the child as an
adult will have to learn to resolve on his own.
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