Healing Your Emotional Self (12 page)

By replicating their behavior and becoming just like them

By trying to be the exact opposite of them

By working hard to never anger them or otherwise risk their rejection

By deliberately doing things that will make them angry or cre- ate conflict with them

By not setting healthy limits and boundaries with them

The following information and suggestions will help you counter the ways you have remained enmeshed.

Declare Your Independence

You began to declare your independence when you started to face the truth about your parents and other family members and the negative role their behavior has played in your life. When you began to give

voice to this recognition by expressing your righteous anger, the emo- tional separation process accelerated. Standing up to your parents and saying no to them (perhaps for the first time) are other ways of declar- ing your independence from your parents and their ways of doing things. This action can be empowering and exhilarating. It allows you to see how different you are from the people you identified with as a child and how different you are from the mirror they projected onto you.

Declaring your independence does not involve denying the emo- tional impact your parents have had on you, however. By denying your parents’ role in shaping your personality you risk denying a part of yourself. It is inevitable that you will take on many of your parents’ characteristics. After all, their influence on you, both genetically and environmentally, is the most profound influence you will ever experi- ence. Separation includes acknowledging how you are similar to your parents as well as how you are different from them, for many of the traits that you have inherited from your parents are no doubt very positive.

Some people spend most of their lives trying desperately to become different from one or both of their parents. Ironically, the ones who work hard to become different are actually just as emotion- ally tied to their parents as the ones who attempt to emulate them. Their focus on being different from their parent can actually prevent them from becoming themselves. By focusing too much energy on being different from your parent, you take away energy from discov- ering who you really are.

Exercise: The Good and the Bad

1. List all the ways you feel you are similar to your parents.
   

2. List all the ways you feel you are different from your par- ents.
   

3. Write about how these two lists make you feel. Are you dis- turbed by how many similarities there are? Are you proud of the differences?
   

Question Your Parents’ Values and Beliefs

You do not have to automatically take on your parents’ or your family’s values and beliefs, especially if they contribute to your neglecting or abusing yourself. In fact, you can be the first one in your family to question values and beliefs that until now have been taken for granted to be true. The following exercise will help you begin:

Exercise: Your Parents’ Beliefs/Your Beliefs

1. Make a list of your parents’ beliefs and values that you agree with.
   

2. Make a list of the beliefs and values you disagree with.
   

3. Consider which of your parents’ beliefs and values are con- ducive to self-neglect or self-abuse.
   

4. Which of the values and beliefs from item 3 have you taken on as your own?
   

Set Healthy Limits and Boundaries

If you have continued to be controlled or manipulated by your par- ents, or if you have remained too dependent on them, you will need to set boundaries and limits in order to individuate from them. It can be painful to see your parents’ pain and disappointment when you begin to tell them no—no, you aren’t going to do as they suggest; no, you aren’t coming over now; no, you aren’t going to become what they wanted you to become. You may be afraid they will say, “In that case, to hell with you” in response to your show of autonomy. Your parents may, in fact, initially become quite angry when you first begin to set limits and boundaries with them. They may even become insulting, bitter, or threatening when you stand up to them and tell them you are going to run your life your way. But do not allow these reactions to throw you off your course.

Complete Your Unfinished Business

Completing your unfinished business with your parents or other abusers can include any or all of the following: expressing and getting past your anger, confronting your abusers, resolving your relationship, and forgiveness.

Getting Past Your Anger

Resentment is the most frequent kind of unfinished business. Although it is natural and normal for you to feel resentment (which translates into
anger
) toward your parents, you will need to get past your anger if you are to emotionally separate from them. When we remain angry with someone, we stay emotionally tied to them in a very negative way. We continue to feel victimized by them, investing a tremendous amount of energy in blaming them. While anger is a nat- ural, healthy emotion when ventilated properly, blame is a wasted and negative experience. The difference between anger and blame is that blaming keeps you caught up in the problem, while releasing your anger constructively allows you to work through the problem.

If you have not successfully worked through your anger toward your abusers, refer back to the exercise given earlier in chapter 5 on constructively identifying and releasing your anger.

Confrontations

Confronting your parents or other abusers has many benefits. It can help you emotionally disconnect from people with whom you con- tinue to have an unhealthy emotional connection and help you resolve or bring closure to the relationships that plague you most (with your parents, siblings, or other abusers).

Confronting the ones who hurt you enables you to take back your power, proving to yourself that you are no longer going to allow any- one to frighten, control, or mistreat you. It provides an opportunity to set the record straight, to communicate what you need from now on. It gives the other person another chance to make amends and to treat you better now.

A confrontation is a way of declaring the truth, of standing up to those who have hurt you and telling them how they hurt you and how you feel about them. It is not an attack and it is not meant to alienate them. It is also not an argument. Its purpose is not to change the other people or to force someone to admit that she was wrong in the way she treated you.

Confronting is different from releasing your anger. Although your confrontation may include expressing your anger along with your other feelings, it is generally important that you have released a great deal of your anger in constructive ways before you confront, because you will be better able to communicate your feelings in a strong, clear, self-assured manner. You will also be less likely to explode or lose con- trol. It is strongly recommended that you write an “anger letter” before you do your confronting. From this letter you can glean the material for your confrontation.

Practice your confrontation by writing it down, speaking into a tape recorder, or just talking out loud. You can practice with a friend or a therapist. Use the following format as a guide. You may then pick and choose which points you wish to include in your actual confrontation.

1. List the neglectful or abusive behaviors this person inflicted upon you.
   

2. Explain how you felt as a result of these behaviors.
   

3. List the effects these behaviors had on you, both as a child and as an adult, and how your life has been affected.
   

4. List everything you wanted from this person at the time.
   

5. List what you want from the person now.
   

There are several ways to conduct your confrontation: face-to- face, by telephone, or by letter or e-mail. Face-to-face confrontations are the most advantageous but sometimes not possible due to dis- tance, or because you are not prepared to see someone in person. Choose the method that suits your needs and trust that whichever one you choose will work out.

Before you choose to actually confront someone in person, con- sider the following:

1. Decide whether you would like to have someone come with you for support. If you are apprehensive about violence or loss of control, you may need to have a third party present—even if it is your own rage or loss of control that you fear.
   

2. Set some ground rules for the confrontation and determine how you will express these to your parent. Here are some examples: “I want you to hear me out before you respond”; “I don’t want you to interrupt me or stop me until I am finished”; “I don’t want you to defend, justify, or rationalize—just listen. You’ll get your chance to respond later.”
   

3. Even if the person does agree to your ground rules, be pre- pared for any of the following, both during and after your con- frontation:
   

   Denial:
   “I don’t remember,” “That never happened,” “You’re exaggerating,” “You’re lying.”
   

   Blame:
   “You were such a demanding child,” “I had to do some- thing to control you,” “You wanted it—you came on to me,” “Why didn’t you tell me?”
   

   Rationalizations:
   “I did the best I could,” “Things were really tough,” “I tried to stop drinking but I couldn’t,” “I was afraid to leave your father—how were we going to make it?”
   

   Self-pity:
   “I have enough problems without this,” “You just don’t understand how hard it was for me,” “I’m too old (or sick) to take this.”
   

   Guilt:
   “This is what we get after all we did for you?” “Nothing was ever enough for you,” “How could you do this to me?
   

4. Make sure you have supportive people to talk to before and after the confrontation.
   

5. Be prepared to end the confrontation whenever you feel it is no longer effective, beneficial, or safe—if you feel threatened or fear you are losing control, if your parent is too busy defending himself to really hear you, or if the confrontation has turned into a shouting match.
   

   Don’t set yourself up with the false hope that your parent or other family member will suddenly see the error of her ways and apologize profusely. In fact, you can expect her to deny, claim to have forgotten, project the blame back onto you, or get very angry. Give the person time to think about what you have said. Don’t assume that just because she didn’t apologize on the spot she didn’t take what you said seriously and might not apologize in some way later on.
   

   No matter how the confrontation turns out, consider it successful simply because you had the courage to do it. This confrontation sym- bolizes the beginning to a change in the balance of power in your rela- tionship and is a significant act of individuation on your part.
   

   Resolve Your Relationships with Your Parents and Other Abusers
   

   Unresolved relationships will continue to bother you and negatively affect your life until you get things out in the open, giving room for healing. Resolving a relationship with a parent or other abusers may involve any or all of the following: forgiveness, reconciliation, tempo- rary separation, or “divorce.”
   

   Forgiveness
   

   There is no doubt that forgiveness frees us. Forgiveness has the power to heal our bodies, our minds, and our spirits—our very lives. But we need to make sure we aren’t forgiving just because we think it is the right thing to do or because we are giving in to pressure from others. And we need to make sure that we are not just using forgiveness as another form of denial.
   

   True forgiveness occurs only when we allow ourselves to face the truth and to feel and release our emotions, including our anger, about what was done to us. It is completely premature to forgive if you haven’t even acknowledged that you were harmed. Alice Miller notes that when children are asked to forgive abusive parents without first experiencing their emotions and their personal pain, the forgiveness process
   

   becomes another weapon of silencing. The same is true of adults who rush to forgiveness. Many people have been brainwashed into submis- sion by those who insist that they are “less than” if they don’t forgive.
   

   Many people think that forgiving someone who hurt them is the same as saying that what happened to them was okay or that it didn’t hurt them. But forgiveness doesn’t mean that what happened was okay. It simply means that we are no longer willing to allow that expe- rience to adversely affect our lives. Ultimately, forgiveness is some- thing we do for ourselves. The information in chapter 7 will further help you to forgive your parents.
   

   Reconciliation
   

   Even though you may have forgiven your abuser, you may not feel safe to be around him. Many survivors of childhood abuse have stopped seeing their parents or other family members as a way to protect themselves from further abuse. This is especially true for those who confronted their abusers in the past but did not achieve positive results. If your abuser is not open to looking at what he has done to damage you, or continues to abuse you in the same way he did when you were a child, or presents a threat to your children, you may need to continue to separate from him or even divorce him (for more infor- mation on this, refer to my book
   Divorcing a Parent
   ).
   

   On the other hand, if your abuser has shown some capacity for
   

   understanding your pain and some willingness to take responsibility for his actions—however small that capacity and willingness may seem—there may be hope for the relationship. This is also the case if you have noticed that your abuser has been open to your attempts at setting limits and boundaries.
   

   Before you reconcile, ask yourself the following questions:
   

   1. Am I strong enough to be around this person without losing ground in my recovery?
      

   2. Can I maintain a sense of emotional separation from this per- son when I am in his presence?
      

   3. Am I strong enough to set appropriate limits and boundaries so that I do not allow myself to be abused again?
      

   4. Am I being pressured into reconciliation (by other family members, by my spouse, by guilt, or by my religious beliefs) before I am actually ready?
      

   5. Is this person ready to reconcile with me? Is she still angry with me for being angry with her, for not having seen her for a while, or for bringing the abuse out in the open? (If so, she may need more time to heal and forgive, no matter how forgiv- ing you might feel.)