I suspect the most we can hope for, and it’s no small
hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving
ourselves permission to try to love and receive love.
—ELIZABETH STROUT, Abide with Me
WHENEVER THE subject of parents comes up in my office, I know that it’s time to be extra softly vigilant about protecting everyone’s feelings. So many different ones come rushing to the surface. Guilt about talking about them, relief at being able to discuss the problem, pain, anger, and shame. Fear of hurting them, betraying them, losing them, and not ever getting what we need from them. And longing. Longing to work it through. And desire. Desire to not just be able to act or have them act, different, but to feel different and different about them. To shift away from experiencing them only in their shortcomings, difficulties, or addictions. And you can. It takes some patience and some willingness to sort it through, but there is light on the other side of your anger, your hurt, and their stuff.
“And why are they so important to me? Damn. Why do I both crave their attention and hate them at the same time? How do I stay connected in a healthy way?”
I hear these questions all the time, and they are hard to answer. I think the sprint toward independence starts when you leave the womb. Really. It’s one long goodbye. And it’s a goodbye you both want and don’t want at the same time. But it’s also one long hello—a continuous negotiating of your physical and emotional dependency, your separateness, and your sameness. A hello to your real self and a hello to a relationship with your parents and a way of experiencing them that is healthy, nourishing, or at least workable.
Certainly if you come from a stormy house, or even one with gentle breezes of conflict (most of us do!), you can go round and round with how to do this and with wanting to be close to your parents and wanting some distance from them.
Some of us have parents who don’t pay all that much attention to us. They are busy with their own business, and we are just mouths they have to feed—or at least it feels that way. Others grow up at the epicenter of the house—as either the joy of their parents’ hearts or the pain. And certainly if your parents are very ill or actively in an addiction, the process of getting to a better place with them and with yourself vis-à-vis (or in relationship to) them, has many more folds to it. Much is expected, much is hoped for—and much is the burden. It can be difficult either way. That’s why it helps to understand more about who our parents are and what they are and are not capable of. And to understand more about how and why we see them the way we do, because that can change, and that change can help—a lot. Parents can be great at certain things while falling flat on others. This can feel jolting to us and frightening at times. One young woman I knew was so confused about her parents and how to get some attention and understanding from her mom that she incited riots.
Knowing exactly how to provoke your parents is a wonderful way to get things all revved up. It’s a gift, really (though there might be a better way). It is most definitely a way to get love and hate going all at the same time.
Kelly, seventeen, who is just barely maintaining her body weight agreement with her nutritionist, routinely likes to annoy her parents—just to, well, annoy her parents. She tells me that she often shouts obscenities at her mom. Without fail, this always wins her a slap in the face. She then recedes into muttering under her breath, and it escalates from there. It usually ends with Kelly walking out the door.
I ask Kelly why she starts this routine. “I don’t know,” she replies. “It’s just what we do.” But then she adds, “She gets me so angry with all her yelling that I just have to yell back. I just have to take her down, even if it gets me slapped. Hey, at least she knows I’m in the room and not just the person who is supposed to walk the dog.”
“Hmm,” I reply, which is therapist talk for “Tell me more.” So Kelly tells me that she doesn’t really mind the actual hit itself, and she really likes getting a rise out of her mother and watching her get out of control. In fact she does other things to provoke her, like sneering at her, hiding her car keys, and refusing to eat dinner. Kelly wants her mother to lose it; then Kelly can be sure who the crazy one is—and it’s not Kelly.
I think that we have some road ahead of us. Best to settle in. This might be what Kelly really needs—someone to settle in with her—no cures, no mandates, no weight checks. Just some settling in.
Many sessions go by; the weeks roll on. We sit together and talk. We think about slapping, love, attention, and being hungry. We think about fat, fear, never getting enough of anything, and having to do too much for yourself. We talk about how being too important can feel like a burden and not feeling important enough can feel like rejection.
Eventually we figure out that provoking her mother is Kelly’s way of letting her know how angry she is and how unsettled she feels. It’s a terrific way to let off steam, but while it’s mildly scratching the itch for attention, it is not leaving Kelly with much dignity or true relief. Kelly is holding a huge grudge against her mom for many things, but mostly because her mom couldn’t keep Kelly’s dad from moving out (at least this is what it looks like from Kelly’s angle).
One of the most difficult challenges for young women who are thinking about recovery is how to make progress when you are living under the same roof with your family and swirling around in the same old family dynamics, even if those dynamics are not necessarily difficult ones. Even good situations can keep you stuck sometimes, especially good situations in which you are comfortable in basic and predictable ways. It’s hard to leave when things are bad, but it’s often harder when things are good. This can be a real snafu because many young women live at home well into their twenties or even longer.
Since at least some eating- or self-injury-disorder stuff has to do with parents, can you get better if things are not resolved and you are still living in the turmoil? The answer is yes, you can. If you are ready to get better, you can get better no matter where you live or with whom. And if you are not ready, no matter what kind of geographic change you make you will still be where you are.
But for many people, recovering is a lot easier out of the house, just like it’s easier to put on skis when you’re not sliding down the hill and it’s easier to see the landscape from a distance.
It is true that the support of living at home is a great relief in many ways. Even if you are old enough to live on your own, the financial and security benefits of living at home can outweigh moving out. But relationships with parents get better when you are not constantly up against house rules, daily expectations, disappointments, annoyances, and arguments, and when you are not bumping into each other’s characters all the time. If even only part of your self-attack and your self-attacking voice is triggered by your parents, it’s better to have some space.
I’ve known kids who moved out, either to college or just to be on their own, and blew it fast and big. The separation was just too much. The comforts of home—even the battles and the frustrations—were better than being away. The craving for closeness can outweigh the need for independence even when things are rocky. And it can take a while to forge a new closeness from independence.
Therapists watch for repetitions—behaviors that repeat and patterns and situations that happen again and again in one way or another. Most repetitions are not done on purpose. Some therapists believe that you keep coming back around to things to try to work them out better. We repeat negative experiences unconsciously, setting ourselves up for them, partly because it’s what we have learned to do to protect ourselves and survive, and partly in the hope that things will work out differently if we just keep at it. And sometimes going back to the same old feelings is comforting and familiar, even though the coping mechanisms that helped us survive childhood can hinder us going forward.
When you are trying to get well but are suffering from hurt and pain and general self-loathing, it’s helpful to look for patterns in your life and in your relationships. And ultimately it’s easier to discover your patterns when you are not living at home. Your recovery needs to be on your terms, because you are interested and ready to go there. It is best not to be interrupted too often by parents who are desperate, frustrated, or even loving; they will figure into the mix one way or another and you can end up in knots.
When I was little I used to worry about my parents dying. I always hoped that when they did, it would be at a time when I was angry with them. To my young mind, if they died when I hated them, it would hurt less. I’d be glad they were gone. It would make losing them easier.
It’s not that you want to feel bad feelings toward your parents—and you certainly don’t want to get stuck in such feelings for too long—but on some level you need to feel those feelings. Painful as they can be, bad feelings can help you create your own future; one that is separate from your parents—and sustainable; one that will forge a path to richer, smoother relationships with them. Sometimes it is the bad feelings that help motivate you to work towardthe better feelings; they don’t always have to pull you down further into the darkness.
There are no easy answers to if or when you should move out. Nothing is really the norm anymore. Certainly if you are dangerously ill, too young, or unable to support yourself financially, moving out is not an option.
At home or not, though, parents live with you in certain ways all of your life. You need to know that you can be close and separate at the same time, and you should learn those boundaries for yourself by sensing when your parents’ involvement feels comforting and when it feels intrusive.
One of the advantages of moving out is that you will not encounter being told what to do as much. Being told what to do often has an oppositional effect. Most people value a parent’s opinion (on some level), or are at least affected by it. Being told to eat can make you not want to eat; being told to stop eating can make you want to eat. Even the most well-intentioned, protective parents, behaving in the most low-key way possible, can induce a kid into oppositional rage and defiance. You are less defiant when you are not living under the same roof. When pleasing or infuriating parents becomes a diminished part of the mix, it’s just a drop easier to face personal truths, take responsibility for your actions, and take on recovery for its own sake—for your sake, for goodness sake.
Jane always keeps her coat on in my office. The season doesn’t matter—she has cover and she keeps her small body wrapped up. Maybe she’s hiding her body from me; maybe she feels safer with extra layers between us. Therapy can feel a bit too raw on occasion.
Jane and I talk about her mom a lot, a subject she is both afraid of and attracted to. She is different from Lani, who loves to talk about her mom, letting me know in no uncertain terms that her mom is a big pain on a regular basis. Lani’s fury is front and center. But Jane’s is tucked away somewhere underneath her guilt and confusion. Both girls have similar problems with their mothers. Both mothers compare their daughters to other girls, often saying things like “Most girls your age have jobs by now” or “Kaye looks so good these days. I’ll bet if you exercised like she does, you’d feel so much better.” Neither mother seems to think she is being insulting, hurtful, or critical, or is conveying a message of despair or judgment. Neither mother seems to understand that her daughter turns these comparisons into self-attack.
Not every daughter hears these kinds of statements the way that Jane and Lani do, or has the same frustration. But many do. And they suffer for it. Both Jane’s and Lani’s mothers tend to give advice instead of asking their daughters if they would like suggestions, and both mothers start many sentences with phrases like “You could have …” or “Why didn’t you …” or “You are so …”
Both Jane and Lani sometimes think their mothers are right; that objectively what their mothers are saying is true: If Jane believed in herself more, she could probably land a good job. If Lani helped out around the house without arguing so much, she could get along better with her brother.
But it’s not that easy. Jane and Lani both understand, somewhere deep inside, that their mothers really do want good for them. They know that even in their overzealous attempts to push them forward into recovery and life, their mothers are not really trying to hurt them. Yet they do hurt them. Often. And it’s hard to separate out the right from the not-so-right.
When Jane and Lani hear these comments from their mothers, they feel anger, frustration, and guilt. It becomes a lose-lose situation. They figure, “If I agree with Mom’s statements in my own mind, it must mean that I am idiotic, lazy, stupid, or slow.” For many daughters, this starts the snowball of self-attack. Every daughter believes what her mother tells her—even if she doesn’t want to. Emotionally, we believe.
Then they figure, “If I disagree in my own mind with Mom’s words, that means my mother is wrong, stupid, and doesn’t understand me. And that is often worse. So it must be me!” They constructed the perfect, ironic concert of fury and guilt. “Who should I hate, my mother or myself? Who is the dumb one, me or my mother?” Neither is a good choice.
Jane wants to cut when she feels like this, and Lani wants to eat like there’s no tomorrow.
It’s not uncommon to want to punish the people who frustrate you. This includes yourself, and it definitely includes your parents. It’s always easier to punish yourself than your parents, though many people get rather good at doing both.
Just because your mother is right does not mean you are a lazy, stupid piece of disappointing garbage, and just because she is wrong does not mean that she is garbage.
Both Jane and Lani try to work out these complicated feelings. Jane works on the idea that she is allowed to get angry with her mother and that it won’t kill either of them. Lani tells me that her mother always encourages her, even when Lani herself knows that she is being ridiculous about something. Her mother, who is always trying to get Lani to try new things to help her recover from the eating disorder, often does not let Lani know when she is upset with her. She saves it up until she blows, and by then it’s so hot that neither of them can get out of the fight unscathed.
Lani and I talk about how she sometimes does not feel like walking the dog, the one chore her mother asks of her. Lani “forgets,” and her mother ends up doing it. Lani tells me this with a mix of guilt and joy. I smile and tell her that she can be a real pain in the tush sometimes. She laughs and says, “You got that right.” The truth is that we are all a pain in the tush sometimes, and it can be liberating.
My friend Wendy, who is forty-three, says that every time her mother comes for a visit she makes a comment about how much dust there is on the ceiling fans and how bad that is for the kids’ allergies.
Most of the time now, when Wendy is in a good place within herself, she knows that her mother is just, well, her mother, and that she’s simply chattering. Maybe she thinks she’s being helpful or she just wants to chime in and feel more a part of things, but when Wendy is not in a good place within herself, it still makes her wantto crawl into a hole—or push her mother into one. She feels deeply criticized, inadequate, and frustrated, just like she did when she was younger. All kinds of aggression instantly come oozing out from the small child who still lives inside my middle-aged friend. “Will I ever totally outgrow this?” she asks me each time her mother arrives. “Maybe,” I tell her. “But what’s the rush?”