Some people feel embarrassed or resentful when I suggest that they may be self-defeatingly tied to their parents. Please remember that this is a common struggle. Few people are sufficiently evolved to be completely "in charge" of their own lives and totally free of the need for parental approval. Most of us have left home physically, but very few of us have left home emotionally.

Children of toxic parents have so much need for parental approval that it prevents them from living the lives they desire. It's true that most adults have at least some ongoing enmeshment with their parents. If asked, "Are you able to have your own thoughts, actions, and feelings without in any way considering your parents' hopes or expectations?" few could answer with a categorical "yes." In fact, in a healthy family, some amount of enmeshment is beneficial. It helps to create feelings of belonging, of family communion. Even in healthy families, however, that influence can go too far. And in toxic families it goes right off the scale.

To help you determine how enmeshed you still are with your parents, I have designed three checklists, one for beliefs, one for feelings, and one for behaviors. Use them as catalysts to help you uncover your self-constricting beliefs, feelings, and behaviors.

There are basically two types of enmeshment. The first involves continually giving in to your parents in order to placate them. No matter what your own needs or desires, your parents' needs and desires always come first.

The second type involves doing just the opposite. You may be just as enmeshed if you scream at, threaten, or become totally alienated from your parents. In this case, as contradictory as it may seem, your parents still have enormous control over how you feel and behave. As long as you continue to react so strongly to them, you give them the power to upset you, which allows them to control you.

What Do You Believe?

Remember, where I use the term parents, you may prefer to substitute father or mother. I use the plural only to simplify the list.

As we saw in chapter 8, beliefs are deeply ingrained attitudes, perceptions, and concepts about people, relationships, and morality. Before you can begin any process of growth and change in your life, it is essential that you first become aware of the connection between erroneous beliefs, negative feelings, and self-defeating behaviors.

Here's how it works: a belief like, "I can't ever win, my parents have all the power," will probably lead you to feel helpless, afraid, frustrated, and overwhelmed. In an effort to defend against these feelings, you will automatically back down in disagreements, give in to your parents' wishes, and perhaps use drugs or alcohol in an attempt to avoid these feelings altogether. It all starts with beliefs.

-- It is up to me to make my parents happy.

In My Relationship with My Parents, This Is What I Believe:

This first checklist will help you identify some of the beliefs that underlie your feelings and behaviors. Put a mark next to each statement that rings true for you.

-- It is up to me to make my parents proud.

-- I am my parents' whole life.

-- If I tell them how much they hurt me, they'll cut me out of their lives.

If four or more of these beliefs apply to you, you are still very enmeshed with your parents. As hard as it may be to accept, all of these beliefs are self-defeating. They prevent you from being a separate and independent person. They increase dependency and rob you of your adult power.

-- If I stand up to my parents, I'll lose them forever.

-- My parents couldn't survive without me.

-- My parents don't have any control over my life. I fight with them all the time.

-- If I told my parents the truth about (my divorce, my abortion, my being gay, my fiancée being an atheist, etc.), it would kill them.

-- If I could just get them to see how much they're hurting me, I know they'd be different.

-- I shouldn't do or say anything that would hurt my parents' feelings.

-- There's no point in talking to my parents because it wouldn't do any good.

-- My parents' feelings are more important than mine.

-- I couldn't survive without my parents.

-- I have to make it up to my parents for being such a bad person.

-- No matter what they did, they are my parents and I have to honor them.

-- If my parents would only change, I would feel better about myself.

Several of these beliefs put full responsibility on your shoulders for how your parents feel. When toxic parents feel bad, they often look for others to blame, and those others are usually their children. If you were made to believe that your parents' feelings were your responsibility, you probably still believe that it's within your power to "make" them -- and often everyone else -- either happy or sad.

For example, if you do something that is neither cruel nor abusive but nevertheless makes your mother feel sad -- such as marrying someone she disapproves of or taking a job out of town -- it is up to your mother to find ways to feel better. It's perfectly appropriate for you to say something like, "I'm sorry you're upset," but it is not your responsibility to change your plans for the sole purpose of taking care of your mother's feelings. When you ignore your needs for the sake of your mother's feelings, you are doing a disservice not only to yourself but to your mother, as well. The anger and resentment that you will inevitably feel cannot help but affect your relationship. And if your efforts to make your mother happy fail, you will feel guilty and inadequate.

Many experts on human behavior contend that you can't "make" anyone feel anything -- that each person is totally responsible for how he "chooses" to feel. I don't think that's true. I believe we do have an effect on the feelings of everyone we are connected to. But having an effect is not the same thing as being responsible for fixing those feelings. Just as you are responsible for finding ways to make yourself feel better when someone hurts you, your parents are responsible for finding their own ways to feel better when someone hurts them.

False Beliefs, Painful Feelings

When you base the majority of your life decisions on how they will make your parents feel, you are relinquishing free choice. If their feelings always come first, they are in the driver's seat of your life.

Think about what other beliefs you may have that keep you from feeling like an effective adult with your parents. Add them to the list. This list will become part of a short exercise I'll ask you to do later.

Self-defeating beliefs always lead to painful feelings. By examining your feelings, you can begin to understand both the beliefs that spawned them and the behaviors that result.

Most of us think our feelings are reactions to things that happen to us, things that come from outside of ourselves. But in reality, even the most extreme fear, pleasure, or pain grows out of some kind of belief.

For example, you get very brave one day and tell your alcoholic father that you are no longer willing to be with him when he's drunk. He starts screaming about how ungrateful and disrespectful you are. You feel guilty. You may think your guilt is a result of your father's behavior, but that's only half the story. Before your feelings washed through you, certain beliefs were triggered in your mind -- beliefs you probably weren't aware of. In this case, these beliefs might have been: "children should never talk back to their parents," or, "my father has an illness and it's up to me to take care of him." Because you have not been true to these deep-seated beliefs, you react with guilt.

Understanding the relationship between your beliefs and your feelings is an essential step toward putting a stop to self-defeating behavior!

When you are faced with a situation that calls for an emotional response, family beliefs run through your mind like an unconscious patter. Understanding that these beliefs almost always precede your feelings is more than an interesting psychological exercise.

"BUT I DON'T FEEL ANYTHING"

You may have gotten strong messages in your childhood that it wasn't safe to feel. Perhaps you were punished for expressing feelings, or perhaps your feelings were so painful that you pushed them deep into your unconscious in order to survive. Perhaps you had to convince yourself that you just didn't care, or perhaps you needed to prove to your parents that they couldn't get to you.

As an adult it may be very difficult for you to turn your emotional faucets back on. The connection between powerful feelings and your past and current relationship with your parents may be especially difficult for you to see. The feelings I'm discussing throughout this book may seem foreign to you. Perhaps you describe yourself as cold or numb, or you believe that you don't have any feelings -- that you don't have much to offer in the way of love or caring. If so, your childhood feelings were probably very intense, and you required a great deal of protective defenses to make it into adulthood.

We all have strong emotional reactions to our parents. Some of us are in touch with these feelings, but others protect themselves from the intensity of their emotions by burying them.

If your feelings are deeply buried, you can use these checklists as a starting point to get in touch with them. You can also try to imagine what the feelings might be of someone else who has the same relationship to his parents as you have. Many people find that they simply cannot reach their feelings without therapy. Your feelings are not lost, they are just misplaced, and sometimes it takes professional help to reclaim them. But whatever it takes, you cannot do this work without connecting with your feelings.

It's important that you take it easy as you begin to allow some of your blocked feelings to surface. You may feel very upset for a period of time as your feelings come to life. Many people enter therapy expecting to feel better immediately. They are dismayed when they discover that usually they have to feel worse before they can feel better. This is emotional surgery, and as with any surgery, the wounds must be cleaned out before they heal, and it takes time for the pain to go away. But the pain is a sign that the healing process has started.

-- I feel guilty when I go against their advice.

-- I feel guilty when I disappoint my parents or hurt their feelings.

In My Relationship with My Parents, This Is What I Feel:

-- I feel guilty when I get angry with them.

-- I feel guilty when I don't live up to my parents' expectations.

-- I feel guilty when I don't do enough for them.

Check the statements in this list that most closely describe how you feel.

-- I feel scared when my parents yell at me.

-- I feel scared when they're angry at me.

-- I feel guilty when I argue with them.

To help you bring your feelings into focus, I have divided them into four groups: guilt, fear, sadness, and anger. We are concerned here with these automatic, predictable, negative feelings -- the ones that usually cause you trouble.

-- I feel guilty when I do something that upsets them.

-- I feel guilty when I don't do everything they ask me to do.

-- I feel guilty when I say no to them.

-- I feel scared when I'm angry at them.

-- I feel scared when I have to tell them something they may not want to hear.

-- I feel angry when they try to live their lives through me.

-- I feel angry when they expect me to take care of them.

-- I feel angry when they reject me.

-- I feel angry when they tell me what I should or shouldn't do.

-- I feel sad when my parents tell me I've ruined their lives.

-- I feel sad when I know I've let my parents down.

-- I feel sad when my parents are unhappy.

-- I feel sad when my parents don't like my (husband, wife, lover, friends).

-- I feel angry when my parents try to control me.

-- I feel scared when they threaten to withdraw their love.

-- I feel sad when I can't make their lives better for them.

-- I feel scared when I disagree with them.

-- I feel angry when they tell me how I should think, feel, or behave.

-- I feel angry when they make demands on me.

-- I feel angry when they tell me how to live my life.

-- I feel sad when I do something that I want to do and it hurts my parents.

-- I feel scared when I try to stand up to them.

-- I feel angry when my parents criticize me.

Please add any feelings you have that aren't covered. These may include physical reactions to your parents. Physical reactions are often the language through which we express painful feelings, especially when it isn't safe to say them to the people we're upset with. We often say with our bodies what we can't or won't say with our mouths. The particular physical symptoms are influenced by such things as family medical history, predispositions or vulnerabilities in certain parts of your body, and your unique personality and emotional setup. It's not unusual for adult children of toxic parents to suffer headaches, stomachaches, muscle tension, fatigue, loss of appetite or compulsion to eat, sleep problems, and nausea. These reactions should never be discounted, and if they intensify to stress-related diseases such as cardiovascular or gastrointestinal disorders, they can be lethal. Therefore, it is essential that you seek medical help for any physical condition that persists, even if you are convinced that it is emotional in origin.

If you checked more than one-third of the statements on the lists, you are still closely enmeshed with your parents and your emotional world is largely controlled by them.

Once you begin to make these all-important connections, you will probably be surprised at how many of your feelings have their roots in your beliefs. This exercise is tremendously important because once you understand the source of your feelings, you can start to take control of them.

Try putting a "because" after each of the feelings that applies to you, and follow the "because" with a belief from your first list. This piggyback technique can help you make a lot more sense out of some of your reactions. For example, "I feel guilty when I do something that upsets them because I shouldn't do or say anything that will hurt my parents' feelings"; "I feel sad when I know I've let my parents down because it's up to me to make my parents happy"; "I feel scared when I'm angry with them because if I stand up to my parents, I'll lose them forever."

SEEING THE CONNECTION

Compliant Behaviors:

When you recognize that behavior is the end product of beliefs and feelings, some of your behaviors start to make more sense.

Here's a list of some behaviors that might grow out of the beliefs and feelings I have already listed. These behaviors fall into two basic categories: compliant and aggressive. Check the ones that apply to you. Again, if you identify any of your destructive behaviors that I have not listed, add them to the list.

In My Relationship with My Parents, This Is How I Behave:

-- I often don't tell them what I really think.

What Are You Doing?

-- I often give in to my parents no matter how I feel.

Beliefs lead to rules, feelings make you obey them, and that's what leads to behavior. If you want to change your behavior, you've got to work all the way through the equation, changing your beliefs and feelings in order to change your rules.

-- I often don't tell them how I really feel.

-- I often act as if everything is fine between us even when it isn't.

-- I am often phony and superficial when I'm with my parents.

-- I continue to be the bearer of the family secrets.

-- I blew my stack and cut my parents out of my life.

It is not difficult to see how compliant behaviors keep you from being independent. But enmeshment through aggressive behaviors is less clear. These behaviors would appear to separate you from your parents. They create the illusion that you are fighting back rather than capitulating. In reality, aggressive behaviors still indicate enmeshment because of the intensity of your feelings; the repetitiveness and predictability of your reactions; and the fact that your behavior is not determined by your free choice, but rather by your defensive need to prove how separate you are.

-- I often become the peacemaker in any conflict with them.

Aggressive Behaviors:

-- I often make very painful sacrifices in my own life in order to please them.

-- I often have to restrain myself to keep from attacking them physically.

-- I constantly do things that I know they don't like to show them that I'm my own person.

-- I try very hard to get them to change.

-- I am constantly arguing with my parents to show them that I'm right.

-- I often scream, yell, or curse at my parents to show them they can't control me.

If two or more of these behaviors fit you, then enmeshment with your parents is still a major issue in your life.

-- I try very hard to get them to see and understand my point of view.

-- I often do things in relation to my parents out of guilt or fear rather than out of free choice.

Reacting to the Checklists

I'm so ashamed. I'm middle-aged, been married three times, have a grown son, and my parents are still pulling my strings. Can you believe… I checked off nearly every belief and feeling on the lists. And talk about Ms. Compliant… When am I going to get it through my thick skull that my parents aren't ever going to change? They've always been cruel and unsupportive, and I guess they always will be.

Carol, the model-turned-interior-designer who had been verbally abused by her father, was astounded when she added up the results of her checklists. She discovered that at age 52 she was still highly enmeshed with her parents.

Compliance and aggression are merely two sides of the same behavioral coin.

I told Carol that feelings of shame and embarrassment are common for someone who considers herself an adult but suddenly sees that she's still controlled by her parents. We would all like to believe that we are independent adults making our own decisions about our own lives.

Carol probably was right: her parents weren't going to change. But she was. The first step in shaking off the destructive bonds is understanding what makes them so strong.

Avoid taking confrontative action when your emotions are at fever pitch. Your perspective and judgment will be clouded.

Remember, this is the beginning of a process, not an overnight cure. The preceding lists are just the beginning of your exploration. There are some very complex and often bewildering issues ahead. You don't want to dive into the water until you've checked for rocks beneath the surface. You can't change lifelong patterns overnight no matter how self-defeating they may be. What you can do is start to challenge your constricting beliefs and self-defeating behaviors and eventually discard them to allow your true self to emerge. But before you can recover your true self, you've got to know who you are.

Like many of my clients, Carol reacted angrily to the realization that she was still enmeshed. She wanted to rush right out and challenge her parents. If you have that impulse, resist it. This is not the right time. Impulsive action almost always backfires.

There is plenty of time to integrate your new awareness into your life. But first you've got to map out a plan of action.