Confrontation with my parents Part 2

[David P]

Hi all, I wrote to my parents' inviting' them to a 'meeting' in my T's office. My Dad called me and interrogated me( sane parents would enquire or ask but N's interrogate). I told them what it was all about and the rants began. My Dad called my T and started to brow beat her in order to 'soften her up'. He accused me of being brainwashed by her and then my Mom called my kid sister who called me and "begged me not to do this to THEM". Like they were some kind of victims. I replied that one way or another I will get them to this meeting even if I need to have them kidnapped, hog-tied and shipped there on the back of the turnip truck.
 I am writing out my stuff for the confrontation - runs to six pages so far.. Stay tuned.

[Plucky]

Hi David,
This looks to be a knock down drag out fight.  You seemt o be ok with it.  Maybe all that anger you've been repressing is giving you energy.

After it comes out, you will feel different.  Maybe down, maybe drained.  Have you and t talked about after the catharsis?
a wary
Plucky

[David P]

Yes Plucky one,we have discussed the potential outcomes and each of them frightens me but not enough to quit this path. My parents are boiling angry and accusing me of all kinds of naughty stuff.
The poor dears ! I told them that they may not have the son that they wanted, but they have the son that they got. Lots of people around here are keeping their head down. My writing is going well. I have re-written my list of grievances about six times and it is getting to be finely tuned.
Did yoall ever hear a T say that ,"They( parents) did the best that they could at the time?" What a crock! They did what they did because it exactly suited THEM to do it that way and to hell with the impact on their children. I really think that we have to name evil and condemn it strongly and loudly.If we don't it will thrive and perpetuate itself. Scott Peck had the stones to do so and he is to be congratulated for not buying into that 'value free' crap so beloved by the third raters in the sciences and, in particular, the counseling profession.

[miss piggy]

Hi David and all,

Gosh, David, you sound so strong!  It's great.

Yeah, I really hate hearing that "they did the best they could..."  I feel really discounted when I hear that.  I want to ask: "So, T, why am I here?  Does that make it OK?"  Why do therapists say that?  So we get past blaming our parents and on to healing?  Any thoughts here, anybody?  I know these sound like rhetorical questions, but any comments would be helpful to me. 

David, may I ask you this, not to be doubting or argumentative, just curious and interested: is the point of this catharsis to confirm just how bad your experience was with them?  Sort of a reality check,now that you are an adult?  Or...something else?  Maybe you explained it but I still don't understand (but want to). 

Thanks, MP

[October]

Yeah, I really hate hearing that "they did the best they could..."  I feel really discounted when I hear that. 

I agree with this.  I remember what it was like, and I don't remember anyone doing the best they could.  I remember everyone getting away with the least they could get away with, and leaving us to grow up as best we could, without any kind of emotional nurturing.  I remember us learning that touch is dirty, and feelings to be stifled and buried.  I remember dead people never being mentioned ever again after they died.

Saying that was 'the best they could manage' is a big lie.  How much effort does a hug take?  What does it cost to kiss a child goodnight and say 'I love you'?

My dad even rationalised his approach.  He said people who use endearments never mean them.  Only the people who never use them really mean them. Whcih means that somewhere, underneath it all, there was a man struggling to learn how to express love.  But somehow never ever managing to do so.

If that is the best they could do, then God help them.

Good luck, David.  I don't think I could ever break through my parents defences to get the truth to them, but I commend your efforts to try with yours.   

[amethyst]

I totally agree. " They did the best they could" is a crock because it absolves abusers and neglectors of choice. Everyone, no matter how they were raised or what circumstances they live in, has choices over his or her behavior and attitudes. The reason I am here is that I was raised by "parents behaving badly." We all make mistakes with our kids, but when I made a mistake, I apologized and made amends. The evil comes in when the parents cannot and will not admit to being only human and perpetute the abuse and neglect.

First of all it takes guts and sheer desperation to drag oneself to therapy and admit you need help...at least it did for me. Then to have a therapist blithely state that one's parents "did the best they could" is so dismissive and lazy on the therapist's part. That is not what someone who is deep pain needs to hear. I can tell you that if a therapist talked to me about forgiveness, I was out of there. Some things are unforgiveable. 

Much later on, I did a family genealogy and I could see how far back the problems went in our family, which helped me understand the mechanism of the abusiveness and how it was passed on. It still didn't let my parents off the hook because they had choices all along. For instance, my mother could have gone to AlAnon, and she refused to. Just one thing that was a healthy option that she refused to take...and there were so many.

Good luck with the confrontation, David. You may have to bring out the turnip truck to get your parents there. I can guarantee that under all the bluster, the rants, the rage, the interrogations are two scared and banal evil little people.

[David P]

Hey, you guys are such a source of inspiration and support. I am wobbling along here doing the preparation for this comfrontation in  a couple weeks. I am running on anger and fumes.
My paremts are now claiming that they are too/old/frail/ill/ to be involved in this confrontation and because they are retired from the workforce then I should let them alone in their retirement It is all about THEM and THEIR wants and needs (which is exactly why we have gotten into this drama).
I really appreciate yoall and your feedback. This is something that I feel the need to do. I am not sure of the outcome or whether it will make me a more whole person, but my relationship with them is not worth preserving in its current form. I hate it and I am going to change it ( maybe for the better,maybe it will just snap in two). The way it has been to date is the way that suited them - at my expense.I have a relationship with my parents which was designed and shaped by them when I was a child for THEIR benefit and to hell with me.This is not OK with me and it is going to come to and end in its current form. I may suffer some emotional fallout from this but what the heck.

David P.

[miss piggy]

Hi David,

I forget where I  picked this up, but I have to tell you it really helped me cut through some BS from my dad.  His main defense for neglecting us is he's the one who pays the bills (have many of us have heard that one?).  Someone wrote somewhere that there are three roles for those of us who are married and have children ie a family.  One is provider, another is husband, and the other is father.  (for me, obviously it would be "domestic engineer" (ew), wife and mother. )  So saying you are upholding one role does not excuse you from the other roles & responsibilities you have assigned yourself.  By using retirement as an excuse for whatever, are they saying they no longer have a relationship with you?  sheesh.  perhaps they mean they do not have a duty and they choose to opt out of this.  That might be valid.  anyway, more food for thought. 

MP

[Plucky]

I am wobbling along here doing the preparation for this comfrontation in  a couple weeks. I am running on anger and fumes.

You are an inspiration to lots of us David.  Already you have gleaned a lot of benefit from your preparation and determination to complete the confrontation.  (Weren't we calling it something else before?) 
I could see several possibilities here.  You'll go through with it, somehow get your parents there, and be able to get all that history out in the open.  Or you might not be able to get them there.  How can you force them?   I guess you could bring the mountain to Mohammed and have the meeting at their home.   Or you could decide that you want to change your mind.  Or you could end up having an impromptu mini confrontation as you continue to try to get them to commit to coming.
Any of these is a good outcome.  The good is in the preparation, at least some of it is, right?
the Plucky One

[David P]

Hi Plucky one - I have written to THEM again and told them that if they refuse to show up at the confrontation( I called it a 'meeting') in my T's office that I would send a copy of all my written grievances to all my siblings,cousins,aunts and uncles ad infinitum.

This threat from me really pissed them off and now they are calling my T and accusing me of 'emotional blackmail'. They then called me and said that I was a bad person because I was emotionally blackmailing them.
I said,"Is that what you call it?", They said" YES" . And I said ," Yep, that is exactly what it is.So are yoall coming or what?" The phone went 'click'.   So what do you guys think THAT means ?
This is getting to be fun!

David P.

[vunil]

I think "they did the best they could" is not supposed to mean "you are wrong to be mad at them" or "they did the best anyone could do."  I think it is supposed to mean "they are operating under certain limitations that you will be better able to heal if you can recognize that they have those limitations."  In other words, "I know they were terrible. Let's try to talk about what may have made them act so terribly so we can know what you are dealing with."

I understand the desire to hogtie your parents and get them to your therapist's office, as a fantasy (if you get them there, conversation will happen or revenge or change or something) but I don't totally understand it as a reality.  Maybe you need to experience the reality to move on, but I'm more worried than everyone else seems to be about this whole thing. I'll try to catch up (I've been away for a few days) and hopefully my worry is misplaced! 

[David P]

Hey Vunil, please do not worry too much.It will all be OK as it unfolds and plays out to whatever of a conclusion.
I read that some of yoall see what I am doing as ' acting out'. Maybe that is accurate . So why is that a problem? Who better to 'act out' with than your childhood abusers! After all they 'acted out' with me all my childhood .

This is going to be rough and tumble time. However my Dad is showing signs of getting tired and weakened already.He told my brother that he does not believe that he is,"Up to going through with this thing with David. I am not going to my grave for David or anyone for that matter." How dramatic! Melodramatic even? This is coming from a decorated Vietnam Vet, and a member of numerous service clubs.He is revered and respected in the wider community -just like any self-serving N would be ! Too bad that they don't ever see his black heart at work. I think that the poor diddums is scared of me a tad??

David P.

[amethyst]

Hey Vunil, please do not worry too much.It will all be OK as it unfolds and plays out to whatever of a conclusion.
I read that some of yoall see what I am doing as ' acting out'. Maybe that is accurate . So why is that a problem? Who better to 'act out' with than your childhood abusers! After all they 'acted out' with me all my childhood .

This is going to be rough and tumble time. However my Dad is showing signs of getting tired and weakened already.He told my brother that he does not believe that he is,"Up to going through with this thing with David. I am not going to my grave for David or anyone for that matter." How dramatic! Melodramatic even? This is coming from a decorated Vietnam Vet, and a member of numerous service clubs.He is revered and respected in the wider community -just like any self-serving N would be ! Too bad that they don't ever see his black heart at work. I think that the poor diddums is scared of me a tad??

David P.

Bingo, David! Dad is seeing you as the "anti-supply." If an N's whole existence and sense of self is predicated on having a source of supply, they will often feel as if they are annihilated if somebody doesn't play into that. That's why it was not ok to have feelings and disagree with them when we were kids. My mother would literally say,"You are killing me." Your father is afraid that your anger and truth-telling is going to wipe him off the face of the earth; he fears a fatal and permanent narcissistic wound. The fact that your therapist will be there to give you support means that he will not be able to fight to maintain his sense of inflated self.

Many N's love conflict for the attention, but many are petty dictators who will brook no conflict. It sounds as if your dad and my mother had similar dynamics.   

[vunil]

Good question-- what is wrong with acting out?  I think the answer is kind of complicated.  Well, the short answer is it isn't "wrong," of course-- if it is something you need to do.  Wrong/right don't enter into it in that sense.

I guess by acting out I mean confronting the real anger, hurt, confusion, and more subtle legacies of this long childhood (including legacies in your own personality-- narcissism you have adopted, as we all do, in imitation of the narcissist in your family, doubts you have taken on in order to make the relationship "work" when you were young, things you blame yourself for secretly that aren't your fault, black and white thinking that reflects how they always treated you, fears of being close to people because of the hurt they might inflict that leads you to ineffective relationships, etc etc) not by really confronting any of it but instead by yelling at your parents.  Even if you read something long and articulate, you are still essentially making an official appointment to yell at your parents.  They know that, you know that.

Confronting all the stuff you are carrying around with you (legacies of their treatment of you) by yelling at them might be helpful because it might symbolize to you the real yelling you want to do, which is at the legacy you hold inside you, your memories, your hurts-- the protection you want to offer to the child you were.  But it will only be a symbol.  For some of us we needed to do this sort of yelling (and I did do it, too, to not very good results) to make clear to ourselves that we weren't doormats any more.  I don't get the impression you need that-- nothing in your posts suggests you think of yourself as a doormat.  On the contrary, you seem armed for battle, which is a good strong place to be if your sword is aimed in the right direction.   

But I have sort of said all of this a bunch of times and I think it isn't resonating.  Maybe it will later, maybe it isn't hitting a bullseye for you, maybe there are personality (and gender?) differences in all of this and on the other side of your meeting is a better world for you.  However it goes, I wish you luck!

One thing I thought of that I hadn't realized before:  My relationship with my parents now is only tangentially related to the healing I need to do over my childhood.  Because no matter how things are now (and for me they are pretty good) it has no effect on what happened to me then, which is over and done with and has to be processed.  I am not sure, now with some distance, that even if my parents had said to me "aha!  we see what you mean!  we are sorry!" when I confronted them (and I confronted them in a way that made it difficult for them to do that, because I just got really mad and did it) that it would have made as much of a difference as I thought it would at the time.  Yes, it would have been nice.   But it wouldn't have been the catharsis and healing that I really craved.

Sorry-- just had that revelation and wanted to share-- ignore at your leisure

[October]

Reading through these posts at the end of a long and tiring day, I just had a thought about my own parents and whether a confrontation/meeting of this kind would ever help.

Then it struck me that the actual people who are my parents are not my worst enemy at all.  My worst enemy is the internalised parent attacking the inner child.  That is where the damage is worst, and that is where the healing needs to take place with me. 

Incidentally, it is also a place totally untouched by therapy, and even by this place, good as it is.  No therapist has ever tried to get close to that place, or even acknowledged that it exists.

Someone once told me that the adult takes the child to therapy.  That may be true, but it is also true that once there the adult protects the child from ever being seen, if being seen or heard equates to being open to pain, as in my own case.  Very few people ever see or hear other than the capable adult who I became at about age 8.  Maybe sooner, but 8 seems to fit.

It is the child who needs help, from the demon parents within.  Confronting the ageing, powerless pair a couple of miles from here, who are really not able to even see me, let alone hurt me any more, might well miss the point.  It assumes they make a difference, or could make a difference now by changing who they are.  They cannot.  The damage was done a long time ago, and now has nothing whatever to do with them.

Just a thought.