The Elusive "Normal" - Second of 3 parts

8. Gentle on Teasing and Sarcasm

Teasing can be OK as long as the teased is in on the joke. Same with sarcasm. A functional family won’t use either as a poorly masked put down.

  

Nobody likes to be the butt of a joke. And nobody likes being the perpetual fall guy. In dysfunctional families, it is common for people to poke fun at the Scapegoat and if the Scapegoat expresses hurt by crying, complaining or even walking away, then the offense is often compounded by claims that the Scapegoat “can’t take a joke” or has no sense of humour.

Make no mistake, this kind of behaviour is passive aggressive. It is thinly-veiled hostility. It is not funny and those who find amusement at the expense of another person’s feelings are demonstrating insensitivity and even sadism.

But even people who grow up in functional families may engage in this kind of so-called humour because today, unfortunately, to be viewed by your peers as clever and witty, you may have to engage in such behaviour, either as the so-called wit or as part of the laughing entourage. Popular culture endorses this behaviour with insulting, sharp-tongued television hosts on game and competition shows, reality TV divas indulging in verbal cat-fights, even movies in which the “winner” is the person with the sharpest tongue and most devastating wit.

Wit is a good thing, as is cleverness, but when it is at the expense of the feelings and dignity of another, the witty one is nothing more than a glib bully. In functional households children grow up learning the value of respect, not only for themselves, but for others as well. If they engage in this kind of socially-sanctioned bullying, calling it to their attention will make them feel guilty and even ashamed of themselves. In functional households, parents do not use sarcasm and verbal bullying on their children and do not allow their children to do it to each other. Teasing, when it happens, is affectionate and the teased is part of the joke…he is not hurt by the teasing but views it as one of the ways his family shows affection. And if he expresses hurt, the family not only stops, it apologizes and tries to make amends.

It is through this respect for the child’s feelings that the child grows up to be an adult who can take a joke…but doesn’t mistake veiled hostility for humour.

9. Allows People to Change and Grow

It used to be people in the family were labeled the smart one or the pretty one, the funny one or the shy one. While that’s not done so overtly any more, labeling is still something to watch. A functional family lets people define themselves. Individual differences are appreciated even celebrated. It also lets the kids become independent when it’s appropriate and come back to the safety of the family when they need nurturing.

The adults in the family need to be allowed to grow as well. A mother may want to get a graduate degree, or a father may decide to retire early and start something new. These changes merit discussion on how they will effect everyone in the family, adjustment, perhaps negotiation, but again, if done with respect every one can be satisfied.

This is actually a very important aspect of functional families. Think, if you will, of a family of birds. The role of the parent is to provide the young with a home and food and to teach the young one the necessary skills to fly the nest and not only survive, but be able to perpetuate the species by doing the same for its own nestlings. If you were to come across a dove that refuses to teach its little ones to fly, that thwarts their every effort to gain independence, or that keeps the young ones tied to it in a way that does not facilitate their own independence and autonomy, wouldn’t you think there was something really wrong there?

The role of human parents is little different, although more complex due to the length of time the young ones are under their care and the demands and expectations of the society. But ultimately, the role of the human parents is much the same: shelter and nurture the little ones and facilitate their learning the skills and lessons necessary to survive in the society. These lessons range from learning to walk and talk to learning to drive and shop, cook, and take care of themselves. Inherent in the latter years is increased freedom and autonomy so that by the time the young one is launched, he has the basic skills and some experience that will help him survive…even thrive…independently. Unfortunately, dysfunctional families often thwart this drive towards independence because the dysfunctional parents may wish to maintain the status quo. Even if the young leave the physical presence of the family, the dysfunctional parents wish to keep the ties the bind intact so that their emotional needs are met, even if it is at the expense of their children.

I have heard more than one daughter of a narcissistic mother echo my own complaint that NM refused to acknowledge our puberty by refusing permission for us to engage is the normal grooming rituals of developing teen girls. No bras or other feminine underthings, permission denied to tweeze unruly brows, shave legs and underarms, or begin using cosmetics or hair styling products. We were kept in childish clothing long past the time it was appropriate, and we were limited in our permission to associate with our peers and explore our surroundings in the same way we were limited at age 10. At age 14, I was wearing clothes from children’s department at Sears with the seams let out and the hems let down, rather than be allowed to choose my own clothes from a more adult section.

But it goes further than that. By refusing to teach a child the skills s/he will need for survival in the real world, the narcissist binds the child to her by necessity. If it is a malignant narcissist, the withholding of life skills training may be part of an ultimate revenge: if the narcissist is insulted by the child’s natural drive towards autonomy and independence, the narcissist may intentionally withhold training and even forbid the child from learning certain skills necessary for independence, not to bind the child to her, but to “teach her a lesson” about how important the narcissist is to the child’s survival. My own mother was a master at this: I was not allowed to cook, to use the washing machine, sewing machine or learn how to grocery shop, pay bills, balance a check book. I was told to do certain grunt-labour jobs that to relieve her of the drudgery, but never taught how to sort laundry, choose a good steak, determine if an avocado was ripe or not. I was even forbidden to attend junior college after high school, despite the fact that I graduated only 3 months after my 17^th birthday and had nearly a year to fill before I turned 18. No, to let me learn any more might make me competent to manage my own affairs and the plan was for me to turn 18 and be shoved out the door with a couple of suitcases, no money, no job, and no life skills. This was to be my payback for daring to not need her, to be preparing to move beyond her control.

A functional family wants their children to succeed as independent adults and give the kids increasing responsibility and autonomy as they grow older and demonstrate their ability to handle it. My own kids had to learn to do laundry, get the groceries without me there to pick out the meat and produce, and even to fix their own food. They may not have liked learning it, but they all went out on their own with the knowledge to make it independently. Whether or not they used it, of course, was up to them.

In a functional family, the parents encourage growth and autonomy and the eventual launching into independence. Those who had such parents may find it difficult to even fathom what it was like with our families. If you grew up having privileges taken away because of something you did wrong, when a friend tells you she spend most of her adolescence shut in her room, it is natural to wonder what the friend did wrong to get restricted to that degree. Why? Because capricious parents who put their own desires ahead of the developmental needs of their children are simply outside their frame of reference.

10. Parents Work as a Co-Parenting Team  strongly believe that a functional family is one where the adults are at the center of the family, in charge and pulling together in the same direction. In a functional family parents, divorced or married, take responsibility. Kids need the assurance that a firm hand (not too tight and not too loose) is at the tiller, even if they may not thank you for it.

This can be a tough one for some people to grasp, the idea that a home with two parents in it is not necessarily healthier or more functional than a home with only one parent or a blended family. It comes down to the functionality of the people who are heading up the household.

Some people get smart fairly early in a relationship with a dysfunctional person and bail out before they become stuck in victimhood. Unfortunately, sometimes there are kids involved, when that happens, the children may be stuck in a dysfunctional family even if they are living with the more functional parent. If one of your parents was dysfunctional and the other is not, your home may become a battleground as one parent fights for what is best for the children against the other parent who is fighting (or sneaking around) for what she or he wants. The more functional parent often is left on the horns of a dilemma: keep objecting and thereby keep the conflict alive; opt for peace but let the dysfunctional parent exploit the child; get out and continue the fight through court. There is no easy answer for the functional parent married to a dysfunctional one.

In a functional family, both parents put the well-being of the parents ahead of their own desires and even needs. If they differ on what constitutes what is best for the child, they don’t degenerate into screaming or tantrums, threats, or sabotaging the other parent. They will work together for the well-being of the children, putting aside their personal animosities and desires and working toward a common goal. One parent will reinforce the other, even if they personally disagree, and take up the disagreement with the other parent privately. Functional parents say things like “Did you ask your mother? What did she say? Well, let me talk to her for a minute before I make up my mind…” so that they don’t inadvertently undermine the other parent.

In a functional household, parents are less concerned with themselves, less concerned with trying to be your buddy, less concerned with displeasing their kids, and most concerned with doing the right thing, even if it disadvantages them or upsets the kids. Children, to survive in the real world when they enter it as adults, need to know how to deal with disappointment and that they don’t always get what they want. Parents who ease their own wounded souls by never saying “no” to their kids or who satisfy their need for control through regimenting their children are not functional and do their kids no favours. Functional parents may deny their kids things they want but never what they need: dysfunctional parents often cannot tell the difference.

11. Courtesy at Home First

An ounce of a well-placed ‘please’ or ‘thank you’, ‘you’re welcome’ or ‘I’m sorry’ is worth a pound of explanations, defensive arguments and misunderstandings.

This, again, is about respect (are you noticing a trend here?). Functional people will step out of themselves, even if just for a moment, to acknowledge another. My father used to tell me “Courtesy is contagious…infect somebody.”

I think I would have dropped over in a dead faint if my mother had ever said “please” or “thank you” to me…and on one occasion, when I had mustered up the courage to ask if she was going to apologize to me for punishing me for something she later learned my brother had done, she laughed and told me “Consider that punishment for something you did do and I never found out about.” I was crushed. I felt this was just one more example that she didn’t love me, didn’t care about my feelings. In functional families, members do care about the feelings of the other members, and they respect them.

People who are treated with respect and courtesy by family members while they are growing up learn that behaviour. If they observed the role models in the household treating the family members with courtesy and respect…including the children…then this is what they will tend to learn. And when you grow up with the experience of being treated with respect and courtesy, this is what you expect to get from others…and when people don’t behave that way, you don’t doubt yourself, you know there is something wrong with them.

Growing up with the kind of self-worth that comes from being treated with respect all of your life makes you less emotionally vulnerable, more confident. You have a greater tendency to treat yourself with respect, as well. Children who grow up in a household where their feelings and rights were disrespected and courtesy was a one-way street (from child to parent but not from parent to child) may develop hypervigilance or hypersensitivity, and even anxiety; children from a functional household in which their feelings and rights were respected will have a more positive sense of themselves and the world around them.

12. Encourages Siblings to Work Together

Brothers and sisters have a unique relationship and it’s a dead shame when it is not nourished. Functional parents encourage siblings to play, work and problem solve together, enhancing inter-sib communication, instead of interfering with their arguments. That way siblings feel empowered and their bond is closer when they find a solution by themselves.

When parents compare one child to others or pit children against each other, when they demonstrate favouritism or don’t explain apparent favouritism, they are creating a dysfunctional environment.

When my sons were 17 and 10, we went to Hawaii for a week. After breakfast each morning the older boy was told what our plans were for the day and given his choice of coming along or spending the day on his own. If he chose the latter, he was given $10 for pocket money (enough to buy lunch and rent a surfboard) and told to meet us back at the room at a certain time so he could clean up and go to dinner with the family.

The younger boy was outraged because he was not given the same choices as his brother. He characterized it as “unfair” that we wouldn’t give him $10 and let him spend the day running around Waikiki without supervision. And although we tried to explain to him that, when he turns 17, he will have the freedom to go and do on his own for the whole day, his anger did not abate. I finally told him that the subject was not open to debate, he was 10 and he was not going to get the same privileges as his 17 year old brother until he, too was 17.

Without the explanation, both of my sons could have taken the decision as favouritism shown to the older boy…with the explanation, it became clear that this was not a case of favouritism but one of what was appropriate for a certain age and responsibility level. Dysfunctional parents, however, will not see any reason to make such an explanation, just simply cite their own authority and demand that their authority not be questioned.

My mother showed favouritism towards my younger brother so blatant that even family members who did not spend much time with us both saw it and remarked on it. She pitted us against each other and made immaterial comparisons, then doled out privileges or treats based on the results of those comparisons. For example, I was two years older and three grades ahead of my brother. When I was struggling with fifth grade math and he was sailing through second grade math, my mother conveniently forgot that my math scores in second grade were stellar…instead, she accused me of laziness, stupidity, daydreaming and not applying myself as the reasons my math grades were poor (not that I’d never learned my multiplication tables because she had me skipped a grade mid-year and I missed that in school) and he was rewarded for his grades and I was punished for mine. I was also told that he was smarter than I was because his grades were better, even though we weren’t studying the same things at the same levels.

In any comparison with my brother, I always came up short. Not only did this cause me to resent him, it caused him to think he was superior to me. This led to a whole other kind of conflict between us. The last time I saw him was at my grandmother’s funeral, 20 years ago. He was arrogant and condescending to virtually everyone in the family. It was not until years later, when I began to study narcissism, that I began to understand what kind of person he had become. It stuck out all over him, but I didn’t know what I was seeing at that time. But, thanks to my mother’s failure to nurture a bond between us and her delight at setting at each other as competitors or judging us as if we had been in a competition, there has never been any love lost between us.

This is what it means to have a dysfunction relationship with your siblings that was created and fostered by a dysfunctional parent. In a functional family, however, the kind of posturing my brother would do…encouraged by our mother…would result in an admonition to be nice to the sibling, to be a good sport, to have a care for the other child’s feelings. Pride in accomplishments of the siblings would be encouraged from the standpoint that everyone is a part of the whole…the family…and that the family sticks together and cares for each other. Bonding between siblings and between parents and children is a given, trust and love and respect taken for granted because it is how these families work. Of course there will be conflict and strife, but they are not taken as blood feuds or excuses for extended animosity. In a functional family, members of the family love and respect and support each other, even when they disagree.

Next: Part 3 (click here to go to Part 3)

The Elusive "Normal"-First of 3 Parts

People who grow up in dysfunctional homes often long for a normal family, a normal home, a normal life. But just what is meant by “normal”?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines normal as “Conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.” Right there, we run into the first problem because what is “usual, typical or expected” most definitely varies from one person to the next. Even “conforming to a standard” is problematic because there is no objective standard for a functional family and even dysfunctional families can conform to a standard for dysfunctionality. The truth is, there is no such thing as a “normal” family, home or life.

So, are we pining over, yearning for something that exists only in our own imaginations? To a degree, yes. There really is no such thing as a “normal” family or even a “normal” parent. We create in our minds what we each define as “normal,” and your definition is, of necessity, different from mine. Our personal definitions of being normal, having normal family members or a normal family life are based on both our observations of others (people who we perceive as “normal”) and on our own needs and wants. Your version of normal may include an effusively loving stay-at-home-mom who bakes cookies and listens, rapt, while you described your school day whereas my definition of normal could include a working mom, but one who didn’t hit or scream and who allows me to close my bedroom door. A better term for what we want is “ideal” and that right there creates another set of problems: ideals are goals to shoot for, but not always realistically achievable.

What might be a better examination is the difference between functional and dysfunctional family interactions, recognizing that even this is an ideal, but at least some of it is achievable. Rare is the family that achieves all of the benchmarks of a fully functional family, and even families that achieve some of them…well, sometimes those qualities can be faked. It’s not an easy thing to nail down.

Then there is the question: why do we even want to know what is normal? Why chase after it, want it, hunger for it? If you’ve never had a pony you can’t miss having one, so if you’ve never had a functional family, can you miss it? And knowing that we cannot change anyone but ourselves, are we not creating for ourselves a whole new world of pain by focussing on and wishing for something we not only have been denied, but something we can never have, a functional FOO?

I think the value in knowing what an ideal functional family looks like is that most of us go on to have families…children…of our own. It is doubly difficult to create something if you have no idea what it should look or feel like. People who grow up in reasonably functional families know…they may even subconsciously recognize each other, much as dysfunctional people can subconsciously recognize and be drawn to people with similar or complementing dysfunctions. If we have any hope of breaking the dysfunctional cycle that we grew up in, the first thing we have to do is know what functional looks like…not our personalized, idealized version of functional but an achievable, real-world kind of functionality…so that we can create something approximating it for our kids.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Elvira G. Aletta wrote an article on just what qualities are present in functional families. What Makes aFamily Functional vs Dysfunctional? outlines 17 points that are common to functional families. Dr. Aletta’s points are presented below and my comments are, as usual, shown in violet.

1. R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Respect is the Holy Grail of functional families. All people in the family, brothers to sisters, mothers to fathers, parents to kids must be respectful as consistently as possible. Being considerate of each other is the tie that binds, even more than love. I think too much emphasis is put on love in general. I’ve heard of many atrocities done within families in the name of love but never in the name of respect. Just about all the things on the list come out of respect first.

Respect is paramount in all functional relationships. The idea that people have to earn respect is logically absurd and emotionally destructive. We are owed respect from everyone until we do something to earn disrespect and we owe respect to everyone until that person earns our disrespect. It is very simple to respect another person if don’t confuse respect with approval or love or even liking. You don’t have to like a person or even approve of what he does or says or is in order to respect him. Respect does not mean putting a person on a pedestal, looking up to him, or even admiring him. Respect is simply caring about others, about their feelings and their rights, regardless of whether you like or admire or approve of them or not. And this includes our kids.

As ACoNs, every one of us can look back and find examples of disrespect from our families. Caring about the feelings of others is not the same as being controlled by those feelings, either. When I was very young I came home from school and found most of my toys missing. Thinking our house had been robbed, I ran to my mother only to learn that the Goodwill truck was in our neighbourhood that day and she “cleaned” my closet. I remember feeling shocked that she would do that. I was well aware that children were obligated to follow the dictates of their parents and if she had told me earlier that she would be giving away my old toys, I would have accepted her dictates…but to come home and find it a fait accompli was shocking…it was my stuff! In retrospect I can see that I was feeling disrespected, that she had usurped what little autonomy I had, by taking and giving away that which I believed to be mine. It reinforced my feeling that she was not to be trusted, and that it wasn’t a good idea for me to get attached to anything because it could be gone in a heartbeat. Her lack of respect for my feelings…indeed, her failure to acknowledge that my feelings were valid and deserved respect…characterized and defined our relationship.

If your relationships with your FOO, your partner, your kids, lack reciprocal respect, you are already in dysfunctional territory. You cannot have a functional relationship or home without it.

2. An Emotionally Safe Environment

All members of the family can state their opinions, thoughts, wants, dreams, desires and feelings without fear of being slammed, shamed, belittled or dismissed.

This is less about permission to express emotions but more about feeling free to express yourself without fear of being emotionally injured as a result. I can remember telling my mother I wanted to take French in the 9^th grade and being called “pretentious” for it. If I told anyone about getting an A on a test or received an academic award, I was “showing off.” When I said I wanted to go to college, I was simply laughed at. When I said I wanted to go live with my father, she took it as a personal affront. She was fond of saying “There are three ways to do anything: the right way, the wrong way, and my way…and my way is the only way that counts.” This translated into every aspect of life: I could not like something she didn’t, and if I didn’t like something she did (like liver), it was a personal affront. It was not safe to like, feel, want or even need anything she did not also like, feel, want or need. And the punishment for diverging from the “party line” was emotional excoriation.

In a functional household, people are allowed to hold and express their own opinions, feelings, wants, and beliefs without fear of being punished for them. They can speak out and if their opinions differ from others in the household, they are not subjected to ad hominem attack, even if those beliefs and opinions come under rigorous discussion. In a dysfunctional household, any deviation from the approved or expected leaves you open to personal attack…and even agreeing may result in the same if you can’t parrot the party line as to why you believe as you profess. Members of functional households are not controlled or punished with fear.

3. A Resilient Foundation

When relationships between and amongst people in a family are healthy they can withstand stress, even trauma, and, if not bounce back, at least recover. Resilience starts with encouraging sound health, eating and sleeping well, and physical activity.

Resilience implies flexibility and strength; its opposite is rigidity and inflexibility. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that functional households, while possessing structure and boundaries, also are resilient, flexing to accommodate new situations and circumstances, and in dysfunctional households, there are rigid roles and no flexibility to accommodate the members of the household.

Children learn more by observation that by what they hear. What you, as a parent, demonstrate to them, is what they absorb. So, if the parent as a rigid personality, is stubborn and intransigent, won’t make exceptions when they are warranted or, conversely, is so chaotic that no kind of grounding is provided, it is difficult for children to learn to roll with the normal punches of life. If your partner leaves and you become mired in grief or rage or react with a sudden desperate siege of all of the local single’s joints, you aren’t teaching your kids resilience, you aren’t demonstrating for them that first you grieve, then you pick yourself up and resume life.

Resilience is learned and you can learn it young, through a family that practices emotionally healthy responses to stressors, or you can spend a lot of money and time in therapy as an adult to learn it. Functional families give it to their kids for free.

4. Privacy

Privacy of space, of body and of thought. Knock and ask permission to enter before going through a closed door. All family members are sensitive regarding personal space and aren’t insulted if someone needs a wide berth.

This has to do with boundaries. In the dysfunctional household, boundaries are set by the people who are in control of the household and, as a rule, only they are allowed to have boundaries. Privacy is a boundary that the dysfunctional parent finds threatening: they only feel safe if they can know what you are doing at any time they feel they need to know. It comes from fear and distrust: control makes them feel safe and they fear that if you have privacy you might be doing something forbidden…and the fact that you might do something forbidden is dangerous to their control.

In a dysfunctional household, people do get insulted if someone needs a wide berth or personal space. You might be doing something that goes against the controller’s wishes or, worse, you might be doing something that threatens his control. If you are perceived as “hiding something,” you are suspect. You are expected to be an open book but, at the same time, you are expected to respect the privacy of the household controllers.

Functional households allow children to set their own age-appropriate boundaries (parents must still have some idea of what their minor children are doing in order to keep them safe…an Australian mother recently discovered her toddler had brought a bunch of eggs that he found outside into the house and stashed them in his closet—turns out they were eggs of the most venomous snakes in the world and they hatched inside the closet! Imagine if she didn’t think she had the right to go into his wardrobe because of privacy issues and therefore didn’t find the snakes before her child was bitten!). In dysfunctional households, the ability to set boundaries is reserved to the people in control. Your privacy is at their whim, not your right.

It all boils down to respect and dysfunctional households, that is in very short supply.

5. Accountability

Being accountable is not the same as planting a homing device on your kid or abusing the cell phone to track her whereabouts 24/7. That’s not much better than stalking. No, being accountable is (again with the respect thing) respectfully and reasonably informing people in the family where you are and what you are doing so they can grow trust and not worry.

This can be a touchy one because for safety’s sake, parents need to know where their children are, and the younger the child, the more important it is for the parent to know. In a functional home, however, children are granted more and more freedom and autonomy as they mature and demonstrate that they can make good decisions (or have learned from their bad ones) and be trusted.

Dysfunctional households tend to go to one extreme or the other: either the kids are simply turned loose to fend for themselves and allowed to run wild, or they are rigidly controlled and given no autonomy that does not benefit the controlling parents. There may be even be a situation where some children are allowed to run wild while others are rigidly controlled. Either way, the children do not come up in a household in which they gradually learn responsibility and are given guidance such as how to learn from a mistake.

6. An Apology

It’s sad when people hold out for an apology on a point of pride, never acknowledging their part in a dispute. How many times have you heard of rifts in families that last for years because someone feels they are ‘owed an apology’?

A functional family will have conflict. It’s very cool when we can have an argument and get to the other side of it still friendly and satisfied with the outcome. But let’s face it, that’s not always the case. Sometimes we say things that we regret. If we can feel and show remorse for our part, quickly apologize, ask for and receive forgiveness, no harm is done. You may even become closer for it.

I have to take some exception to this. While it does, on the surface, seem a bit absurd to remain estranged for an extended period of time while ostensible awaiting an apology, this might also be the tip of a huge narcissistic iceberg.

Many of us go No Contact with narcissistic family members for our own well-being and sometimes that decision is based on an event in which someone ends up feeling s/he is owed an apology. Most of us shy away from painful introspection…we don’t want to dig into our past pain and re-experience it and come away with the devastating realization that our parents are narcissists who have never loved anybody but themselves. Subconsciously, if we are not emotionally ready to accept and deal with it, we protect ourselves from that kind of shattering insight with less devastating “reasons” that still allow us to take the steps that shield us from the damaging people in our lives.

Whether or not breaking contact with a family member is a dysfunctional thing depends entirely on that family member and the relationship with him/her. If it is a narcissist who constantly gas lights you, exploits you, and generally runs you down and the schism occurred when you stood up to the abuse, one or both of you may expect and apology from the other and remain estranged while awaiting it…and in such a circumstance, I don’t think that is a bad thing!

7. Allow Reasonable Expression of Emotions

When I was growing up I wasn’t allowed to be angry at my parents and my father would walk out on me if I cried. I was determined to not do that to my kids. It hasn’t been easy. The main thing for me was to teach them to state their anger in a managed manner and to teach myself not to fly off the handle when they did. I had to learn that their telling me they weren’t happy with something I did or said could be done with respect. And, very importantly, vice versa.

The key word in this point is “reasonable.” My kids were allowed to express their feelings but they weren’t allowed to be abusive in the process: they were expected to respect the feelings of others even while expressing their own. That meant that tantrums that disrupted the peace of the rest of the family was not allowed…a child having a tantrum was sent (or taken) to his room until the tantrum was over and s/he could rejoin the rest of us and state his/her frustration in a manner that we could all deal with. That meant that being angry was ok, but name-calling, insults, throwing or breaking things, screaming and hitting were not.

Reasonable expressions of emotion, both demonstrated by the parents and allowed to the children, do not include abuse. They respect the rights and feelings of another, which can be a fine line to walk when your child wants something desperately and the parent must say “no.”  Sometimes we have to hurt our children (or do things they perceive as hurtful) in order to protect them. We are not their buddies, after all, we are their teachers, mentors, guides and protectors. But in fulfilling that role, we cannot squelch their expressions of emotions, we must help them learn the appropriate, acceptable means of expressing them and in functional families that is done both by example and by instruction.

Next: Part 2 of 3  (click to go to Part 2)

The Flying Monkeys in Your Life

If you’ve got an N parent, you’ve probably got Flying Monkeys in your life. What are flying monkeys? To paraphrase the Glossary, flying monkeys are people who do the N’s bidding, whether to inflict additional torment or to simply spy on the victim or spread gossip.

Flying monkeys are people who take your NM’s part in the family drama and act on her behalf. They may be obvious or they may be so subtle that you react with utter shock when you discover their betrayal. But make no mistake: flying monkeys never truly have your best interests at heart because if they did, they would refuse to play secret agent for the narcissist.

In my experience, flying monkeys fall into two basic categories: willing, complicit partners and well-meaning dupes. The willing, complicit partners also fall into two categories: those who believe that you just need to forgive and forget and they are going to help you do just that, and those who just don’t like you and are therefore quite happy to spy on you for your NM, and to do her bidding. The dupes also break down into two categories: those who are fooled by her drama into helping her violate your boundaries and those who believe all of the lies and half-truths that NM and her minions have spread about you and who want you to see the error of your ways.

The complicit partners have their own agenda that they are going to satisfy through helping your N while the dupes are basically people who are fooled by your NM into helping her. I am not going to let the dupes off the hook, though…by stepping in as one of the N’s flying monkeys they are making one critical…and very disrespectful…error: they don’t bother to come to you and ask you for your side of the story. Any rational, truly well-meaning person wants to know both sides of an issue before they agree to assist one side against the other and they have a thirst for truth. Anyone who sides with your narcissist against you without having contacted you first, anyone who takes it upon himself to violate your boundaries after you have clearly stated them, is not your friend, no matter what s/he tries to get you to believe. You are not obligated to tell another person…not even a close member of your family…why you do not wish to communicate with another person. If it is not enough that you don’t want to, if the person refuses to respect your boundaries unless she agrees with your reasoning, then this is a person you cannot trust to have your back…and a person who is a potential flying monkey.

So, just what do flying monkeys do? Basically two things: act as a source of information to the NM and act against you on the NM’s behalf. Maybe your sister will call you and ask seemingly innocuous questions, draw you out, even sympathize and commiserate with you about your mother’s behaviours. But when you hang up the phone, Mum is the first person she calls and unloads everything she heard. It may go further than that…the flying monkey may send you emails or texts, may phone you, and say terrible things. If the flying monkey is also an N…and I believe many are, based on the basic premise that to be a flying monkey, one must be willing to disrespect the person targeted…then the flying monkey may go further: she may attempt to seduce the scapegoat’s husband or boyfriend, tell lies (or highly embroidered and biased versions of the truth) to the scapegoat’s children, even tell unflattering stories to the scapegoat’s coworkers or employer. The flying monkey may resort to outright threats: “if you don’t be nice to your mother, I will tell everyone you tried to seduce my ex-husband when we were still married” (when you did nothing of the sort). Or the flying monkey may try persuasion and guilt-tripping, telling you your mother loves you and how much you have hurt her with your refusal to speak to her…and anything else that may get the NM what she wants.

And what does your NM want? Well, whether or not you are LC, NC, or in full contact with your NM, what your NM wants is control of you, and for you to play your role in the family drama without any thought of backing out. The flying monkey is around to gather intelligence to help the NM further her agenda. When I was the young mother of two, I had not seen or heard from my brother, the Golden Child, for several years…he had been overseas with the military and when he came back, he didn’t tell me. One day a man showed up at my front door, a man on a blue Kawasaki motorcycle, and when I opened the door, it was my brother. Since this was before my knowing anything about narcissism and dysfunctional family structures, I was delighted to see him and invited him in. In retrospect, it should have been obvious to me that he was snooping and asking a lot of personal questions, but being a person who was largely invisible during my childhood, I was delighted he was finally taking an interest in me. It never occurred to me that he was snooping on my NM’s behalf because I couldn’t imagine what would motivate that. My naïveté was to come back to haunt me, as this turned out to be NM’s opening salvo in taking my children away from me and giving them to her childless younger brother to adopt.

The court was full of flying monkeys as witnesses: an uncle, NM’s older brother who lived in another state and hadn’t seen me in seven years (before my children were even born), testified that mine was an unfit home, that he had seen it with his own eyes. A probation officer, who had never even been to my house but who had interviewed my brother, uncle, and mother in addition to interviewing me, described a house that I had never seen before, let alone lived in with my children. I cannot speak to the motives of the lying civil servant, but my uncle and brother’s motives were clear: they wanted my mother to have custody of my children. Why? Because she had convinced them I was a bad person, a bad influence, a bad mother. Did they know her real plan was to kidnap my kids and take them across country to give to her younger brother to adopt? I really don’t know, but I do know that is what happened and that she managed to rope my entire FOO into being flying monkeys for her because every time I called or wrote one of them and asked about the whereabouts and well-being of my children I was either stone-walled or yelled at. That is what flying monkeys can do.

I doubt the majority of flying monkeys are as pernicious as mine were, but it isn’t the big gush of water that wears a hole in rock, it is the steady, unrelenting drip-drip-drip of small drops over an extended period of time that wears down even granite. The small predations into your life, the constant awareness that you cannot know who to trust, the endless violations of your boundaries, the ceaseless little moments of disrespect…they all count, they all add up to the chipping away of your confidence, your self-esteem, your peace.

I know of a man who lives half the continent away from his parents and brother. A kind and compassionate man, when he decided to go NC, he tried to do it gently so as not to upset his mother, and told her that he was going to be out of contact for a while, that he needed some space from his family. His mother agreed, in her sweet way but, within weeks, she was back to sending him emails and texts, often closing them with something like “oops! I know I wasn’t supposed to contact you, but I thought you would want/needed to know this…” Within a month, his NM had violated his No Contact boundaries as if they didn’t exist.

When he stuck to his guns and didn’t respond to her violations she changed tactics and began sending in the flying monkeys. Out of the blue, a cousin he hadn’t heard from in years called him to “catch up.” Cousin asked a litany of nosy questions about his life, his plans, his work, his projects, and even mentioned the mother back home who was hoping everything was OK with him. Sneakily, while professing not to want to know what was wrong, the cousin made it clear that he thought the lack of contact between mother and son, initiated by the son, was wrong and that it made the mother so terribly sad. It was a combination flying monkey attack and hoovering session, all in one!

You can be pretty sure that when you interrupt communication with your N and within a month or two you begin hearing from people who have been off your radar for a long time, these people are flying monkeys. They may be a sibling who is invested in keeping your NM happy and therefore a complicit assistant, they may be old friends or relatives with whom you were once close but have grown away from, who are now dupes, but any way you slice it, these people have come back into your life at this moment for a reason, and the reason is not your well-being.

When I was 14 I lived with my father for a year while my mother was off gallivanting around the country with her latest boyfriend. When she returned, she decided she wanted me back home with her…I was not only her personal maid and housekeeper, I was a source of income in the form of child support. She showed up at the door one night and asked me to take a ride with her. To my surprise, we both got in the back seat. Expecting her boyfriend to be at the wheel, I was delighted to see it was my old singing teacher, whom I had adored.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have gotten right out of that car and gone back into the house. But for the next hour the singing teacher drove us around and the two of them played me like a violin. They trotted out every cliché, every platitude, every conceivable reason I should go back to live with my mother. They succeeded and I made one of the worst decisions of my life: I went back to live with my her. And once I was there, nothing changed. My NM and her flying monkey successfully hoovered me, and I went back to live in the emotional Badlands with NM.

This is what flying monkeys do: they advance the cause of the N at your expense. They could be anybody, even your old grandmother…after my mother put me through 8 years of hell by stealing my children, lying to the whole family about me, and giving my children away to be adopted…my grandmother begged me to “bury the hatchet” with my NM. She was old, she told me, and she didn’t want to go to her grave with all the hostility between her only daughter and her favourite grandchild. I succumbed and, like everything else I do, I did it with a sincere desire to make peace. To me, that meant trusting and being honest and aboveboard…both of which were used against me yet again. But who would think my grandmother—and I always had been her favourite and we all knew that—would act as a flying monkey for my mother and set me up to be exploited and hurt by her yet again?

Whether you are NC, LC, or continue “normal” communication with your N, beware of flying monkeys. They are the people who will criticize you for not doing what your NM wants, will try to sway you towards her agenda and away from your own. They will sabotage, undermine and undercut you without compunction if it furthers the NM’s agenda. They may do it out of blind loyalty to her, animosity towards you, or simply well-meaning interference, but their reasons aren’t really important: what is important is that they are more than willing to put your NM’s wishes ahead of your own rights, feelings and autonomy. If you aren’t doing as your NM thinks you should, then they side with her against you with no thought to your right to self-determination or even your feelings.

Flying monkeys come in all shapes, sizes, ages and from every possible walk of life but they all have this in common: they unquestioningly further the agenda of the Ns in your life and they have no respect for you whatsoever. No matter what they say, they are not on your side.

Don’t pay them any attention.

The not-so-sweet taste of revenge

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” ~ Confucius

What would you think if you saw a person run up to another, stab that person in the arm with a knife, then disappear into the shadows and the victim’s response was to cry out in pain…and then start stabbing herself in the same place? You’d think she was nuts, wouldn’t you?

And if you asked her why she was repeatedly stabbing herself and she answered that she was taking revenge on her attacker this way, you’d be sure she was a few bricks shy of a load, would you not?

And yet, that is exactly what we do to ourselves when we focus our minds on revenge and retribution, on vengeance against those who have hurt us. We do not hurt them in the least, but by keeping our wounds alive and bleeding, we repeatedly, continually, hurt ourselves.

We like to think that vengeance is justice. We like to think that we will feel better if the people who hurt us are hurt in the same way. We like to think that thoughts of vengeance will not hurt us, that those thoughts are cathartic, allowing us to have our revenge at least in our minds, if not in our deeds. But, unfortunately, what we like to think, the conventional wisdom, is wrong. Not only is it logically wrong, it is empirically wrong: it has been studied and thoughts, fantasies, and wishes for vengeance actually make us feel worse than if we had turned our minds elsewhere.

Some people cite the Hebrew Bible’s “an eye for an eye...” scripture as justification for vengeful thinking and behaviour, but the same book also says “‘vengeance is mine’ says the Lord” (Deut. 32:35, in the NT, Rom. 12:19), reserving the right to vengeance to God, not giving encouragement to mankind to engage in it. And, as Martin Luther King once said, “That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind.” 

The American Psychological Association (APA) published an article entitled Revengeand the people who seek it by Michael Price in which he referenced numerous researchers on the topic of revenge.

“Social psychologist Ian McKee, PhD, of Adelaide University in Australia, studies what makes a person seek revenge rather than just letting an issue go. In May 2008, he published a paper in Social Justice Research (Vol. 138, No. 2) linking vengeful tendencies primarily with two social attitudes: right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance, and the motivational values that underlie those attitudes.

“ ‘People who are more vengeful tend to be those who are motivated by power, by authority and by the desire for status… They don't want to lose face.’”

“ ‘Rather than providing closure, it [revenge, thinking of revenge] does the opposite: It keeps the wound open and fresh…’

Bryan Robinson, in his article Why Revenge Is Bad and Good,  quotes Harold Takooshian, professor of psychology at Fordham University in New York: “ ‘…everyone has felt the need to extract revenge. From being cut off in traffic by a rude driver and wanting to return the favor, to fantasizing about putting a school bully in his place, we have all felt wronged by someone — and mulled ways of gaining vengeance.’

“ ‘But while the need for revenge can be understandable, experts say it is never healthy… It’s not healthy, but like many other human needs, it’s also normal… Like hate, revenge is something that takes a toll on the person who feels wronged, as well as the [person’s] enemy. It is inherently unhealthy because it takes a psychological and physical toll on the person. Venting those feelings of anger and hostility does not decrease those feelings… It may give you a cathartic feeling, but it doesn’t last.’

Robinson goes on to say “Revenge spawns an endless cycle of retribution. It is not a long-term solution, but a quick-fix. That, experts say, is part of its appeal — it gives a wronged party some gratification, even though it is only temporary.

“Some people equate revenge with seeking justice, but the two are not the same. People who seek revenge are driven by anger and violence and have not thought about how [to] channel their negative feelings into something positive. They have not considered how they could use their negative experience — the injustice they suffered — to bring about change.

“ ‘It doesn't mean that you don’t want to hold people accountable for their actions or that you don’t want to seek justice,’ said William Mikulas, professor of psychology at the University of West Florida. ‘With revenge, you are coming from an orientation of anger and violence or self-righteousness: “I want to get him, I want to hurt them … I want to make them pay.” You’re coming from a place of violence and anger and that’s never good.’”

So, according to the literature, wanting revenge is normal but it’s not healthy for us. Basically, it keeps us stuck, unable to move past the injury for which we want revenge and, if we manage to actually get revenge, it still keeps us stuck, mulling over it. I am not so sure I entirely agree…

I think the desire for revenge, at least in Western society, is based on the pervasive but fatuous notion that life is fair and we are entitled to fairness in everything. Real life couldn’t be further from the truth. If life was fair, no child would be born into poverty…or all of them would. If life was fair, no child would be born with cleft palate or anencephaly or blind or to an indifferent, uncaring mother…or all of us would be. Human life, from the moment of conception, is inherently unfair, some blastocysts implanting to become fetuses, some failing to implant and being flushed out with the next menstrual cycle. We are not guaranteed fairness in life, nor are we entitled to it in the grander scheme of things: women live longer than men, Swedes, Brits and even the Greeks live longer than Americans, and by and large, men are taller and stronger than women…none of this is fair.

But while Mother Nature isn’t fair, there is one place where we can legitimately expect fairness and that is in institutions crafted by our fellow humans: marriage, family, law…things over which we, as humans, have actual control. We can create laws and marriage customs and family structures that are inherently fair to all participants or inherently unfair. And it is within this paradigm, the concept of man-made institutions, where we can create and legitimately expect fairness.

There is a fine line to be drawn between these institutions and the greater society, however. While we can expect to be treated fairly under the law, we cannot expect that the society will treat us fairly because society, by and large, does not reflect a perfect world. Our behaviour and our expectations will have a large part in determining where in the society we will fit and that determines other things, from who will befriend us to the jobs we get to our economic status. While we do have a measure of control with respect to law, we have no control over the behaviours of those around us. The rules of society are not codified, fixed, and enforced like the criminal and civil laws and, unlike law, the rules of social interaction don’t pay the slightest attention to what might considered fair.

Are we really clear on what is fair? Is it fair that one guy dates a string of supermodels but the same women won’t date the engineer at the next desk? Is it fair that one sister has four children but the other sister has fertility issues? Is it fair that your neighbour drives a new Porsche and you can barely keep your 15 year old Saturn moving? And if you believe these things are not fair, what are the viable options to level the playing field? Should the women be forced to date the engineer? Should he be permitted to shoot all of the beautiful women who won’t date him? Should the fertile sister give half of her children to the infertile one? Should the neighbour buy you a Porsche as well? Of course not…the solution is in learning and accepting that life in inherently unfair and that in many instances, there is nothing we can do about it. Accept it, change the attitude that you are entitled to a fair (“everything everybody else has”) shake in life, and that if you don’t get it, you are entitled to vengeance, even if the law doesn’t allow it.

We have two choices when it comes to dealing with unfair situations that are not governed by law: 1) acknowledge it feels unfair, learn a lesson about your part in it, and then accept it and walk away or 2) decide to do something about it. That latter choice also breaks down into two choices 1) take positive action, like exposing an injustice or spearheading a change in law (that is how MADD was formed and our laws about drunk driving got changed) or 2) plot, fantasize about, wish for, and focus on obtaining revenge. The first is a productive, positive way to deal with your disappointment, the second a corrosive, self-destructive, way to stay stuck and never, ever have feeling of closure.

Revenge…even fantasizing about revenge…may seem sweet in the moment but over the long term it is ultimately dissatisfying. It keeps you angry and stuck in the pain, and even if you are able to exact revenge, it keeps you stuck because we, as humans, vastly overrate what it will do for us. Revenge does not level the playing field, it doesn’t make things fair where they weren’t fair before, it doesn’t even make the victim of your vengeance empathize with your feelings—it just makes them feel hurt, unjustly attacked, and may even put them on the path of revenge against you. How do you think vendettas get started?

In the modern day, many people advocate turning the other cheek and forgiving the transgressor but I disagree with that, too. If you have been hurt, it is important to acknowledge that hurt and find out why you feel injured. Were you expecting blood from a turnip and now are disappointed, hurt and angry because the turnip didn’t bleed for you? Did you set up a transaction in your mind—failing to get the buy-in of the other person with whom you set up the transaction—and are now hurt and disappointed that the other person did not perform as expected? Are you in denial about another person or yourself and somehow an uncomfortable truth was revealed? Or were you really, truly victimized, taken advantage of, exploited?

When you know why you are feeling hurt, then you can learn the lessons your pain has to teach you and modify your behaviour, your expectations, who you trust. If you were truly victimized, you now know what to expect from the person who victimized you…will you heed this lesson going forward or put yourself in the position to be victimized again? If you created a transaction in your head… “I will do this and he will appreciate it and then he will love me”… and it didn’t work out the way you expected, you can learn to be more honest in your interactions with people or you can learn that this person is either not very perceptive or simply not interested in reciprocation and adjust how you interact with him in the future.

From analysing why you feel hurt and angry and learning the lessons that analysis provides you, you can move on to acceptance: recognize that rattlesnakes have venom, scorpions have stingers, wild animals bite, and some people are no different. They take and do not truly give. They will betray you every time you give them an opportunity and they stand to gain from it. They stab you in the back with one hand while extending the other in a gesture of friendship or love. They cannot be trusted to be benign, only to strike when it suits them. Accept that this is the way they are, be happy they have given you the gift of truth—they have shown you their true colours so now you can protect yourself, and use that knowledge to your best advantage. Vengeance does not evoke empathy in them for you, it does not make them understand how you feel. They merely see it as an unprovoked attack for which they have a right to retaliate. In the long run, revenge never ends well, nor does it give you that feeling of closure.

And it doesn’t heal what is hurting you, either.

The “Identified Patient”

Over and over again I see it written: the scapegoat is troubled, the problem child, the troublemaker, even the household rebel. Psychologists and other writers, from the well-known like John Bradshaw to the most obscure blogger, publish works that make it look like the scapegoat, because of his or her behaviour, might actually deserve both the role and the disdain forced upon him.

My own experience does not bear this out. M. Scott Peck, in his book “People of the Lie,” references the “identified patient.” According to Wikipedia, “Identified patient, or ‘IP,’ is a term used in a clinical setting to describe the person in a dysfunctional family who has been subconsciously selected to act out the family’s inner conflicts as a diversion; who is the split-off carrier of the (perhaps transgenerational) family disturbance. The term emerged from the work of the Bateson Project on family homeostasis, as a way of identifying a largely unconscious pattern of behavior whereby an excess of painful feelings in a family lead to one member being identified as the cause of all the difficulties - a scapegoating of the IP.

“The identified patient - also called the ‘symptom-bearer’ or ‘presenting problem’ - may display unexplainable emotional or physical symptoms, and is often the first person to seek help, perhaps at the request of the family. However, while family members will typically express concern over the IP’s problems, they may instinctively react to any improvement on the identified patient’s part by attempting to reinstate the status quo.”

That last paragraph strikes a responsive chord in me. I was not only the first person to seek help in my family, I was the only one. NM’s one foray into psychology for me during my childhood—part of a custody battle with my father in which she wanted a psychologist to testify on her behalf—was abruptly cancelled when the therapist was more interested in talking about her than about me. I don’t remember this at all (part of that blank period in my childhood for which I have virtually no memories), but I clearly remember NM citing this as an example of the uselessness of psychology/psychiatry: she took me to a therapist because I was obviously disturbed (I wanted to live with my father, not her) and the therapist was focussing on her instead of me. NM, who had an agenda that had nothing to do with my emotional well-being, took me to that psychologist as the “identified patient” (a person who is taken to therapy by his or her family, as being a problem or having problems), but the therapist saw right through her. We never went back for a second session.

Peck says this child, the identified patient, is the family member who is identified as the source of the family difficulties. And while some of these children are, in fact, acting out, it is usually a problem in family dynamics that is the true source of problem, and if the child is acting out, it is in response to those dynamics. In other words, the child doesn’t really have to be a problem to be designated the scapegoat, although some children become a problem as a result of their being cast into the scapegoat role. Then, they are blamed not only for their acting out behaviours, but for the problems of the entire family system as well.

I read “People of the Lie” long before I had any notion of narcissism and personality disorders. But I was struck with the similarity between the “identified patients” and my self-identification as a scapegoat. I had come across the term in my reading and it immediately resonated within me: my brother, who was always in trouble at school, at home, even in the neighbourhood, was seldom punished for his misdeeds and his lies…often mind-bogglingly transparent…were always accepted as truth. For me, I was blamed and punished for not only my mistakes (which were interpreted as deliberate defiance) but for his misdeeds—his misbehaviour was my fault because I “allowed” him, I didn’t stop him, I was the oldest and he was my responsibility. This is classic scapegoating and, since I was already being blamed for ruining NM’s life by my very existence, it wasn’t much of a leap to lay everything wrong the family at my feet.

In “People of the Lie” Peck describes the parents of a little boy so deeply depressed he was hospitalized. That year for Christmas they had given the boy a .22 rifle, the exact same rifle his older brother had used to commit suicide. When confronted by Peck and the message their “gift” conveyed…that they wanted him to commit suicide, too…the parents became immediately defensive, dug their heels into denial, and refused to entertain the thought. They became angry at Peck, insisting their son was the sick person, not they. Peck defines evil as “militant ignorance” and the behaviour of these people, angrily defensive and unwilling to accept the truth of their actions and the message those actions conveyed to their grieving younger son, exemplify not only their ignorance but their militant defence of it. To remain blameless, to be able to see themselves as good people and good parents, they sacrificed their son, making him the sick one, the identified patient, the one with the problems, and completely absolved themselves of any responsibility for his depression. No, he was the sick one and the doctor needed to focus on him, not on them. They reacted to Peck’s rejection of their son as the “identified patient” in much the same way my NM reacted to that psychologist rejecting me as the same.

This is not to say that the identified patient is not suffering, does not need some kind of therapeutic intervention. Most likely s/he does. But critical is the understanding that the reasons the IP needs help is not because s/he is the centre of the family dysfunction. Often the child singled out as the scapegoat is the most emotionally healthy, most cognitively aware, most fundamentally balanced member of the household. The child may act out to draw attention to the family in a subconscious hope of getting help…or the child may be so successfully subdued that s/he simply goes along, not making waves, either biding her time until she can escape or becoming so imbued with the family mythology that she buys into it and accepts that she is at fault, even though she cannot figure out how. The identified patient has been damaged by the dysfunctional family system, but she is not the only damaged person and she is not the cause of the dysfunction.

Is it possible to have a dysfunctional person inside a functional family? I believe it is, using my NM and her FOO as an example, but I think it is rare. Perfectly normal families can have a family member who is substantially different from the rest of them. We are not blank slates upon which our parents write: if we were, all of us ACoNs would be the same and we are not. We each bring a unique personality and set of traits with us when we come into the world and it may well be that there is something in our particular make up that strikes a negative note in our NMs and causes them to single us out as the scapegoat.

Identified patient is a psychological term that, in my mind, equates to scapegoat. “A dysfunctional family needs someone to focus on, someoneto blame things on, someone to point to when things go wrong… It means that in a sick family system, the group has subconsciously elected one person to act out all the family sickness in a very overt way while the rest of the family acts it out in a covert way. Even if the IP tries to act “not sick,” the family will send messages to “get back where you belong” and set the IP up for failure.” How much does this sound like the family dynamics surrounding the scapegoat?

“It’s not that the identified patient is any sicker than the rest of the family, in fact they probably aren’t, but they are the one through whom the family channels all of its “stuff.” The family dynamic is to keep things status quo, to keep its eyes trained on the IP.” Have you tried going NC—or even LC—only to find members of your family going out of their way to suck you back into the drama? That isn’t because they love you and miss you (as they may well say) but because they need you to be there to take the blame, to be the negative focus, to be the disappointing one against whom they can all compare themselves and come away superior.

Some of us disappear from the family scene and we don’t get hoovered. This is the function of the “ignoring types,” the family dynamic that treats you like you are invisible until something is needed from you. In such situations “…the identified patient, or IP, is viewed as a troubled individual or, in extreme cases, as someone with whom the family would be better offwithout.”You are still the IP or scapegoat, but in this case, the family had decided that your absence makes them whole as they can continue to find ways to blame you even at a distance.

“Usually the one who gets help first in the family is the IP. They get out of the family and find out what is wrong because they are tired of being blamed for everything and everyone. Usually their acting out is a normal response to an abnormal situation and they want help.” Some of us seek therapy, others of us seek self-help through books, websites, on-line groups, journaling. Some of us don’t seek help at all and just escape the FOO but continue to replicate our dysfunctional emotional relationships with others, seeking to “get it right” this time…the next time. And some of us just get out and withdraw, licking our wounds and living in a cocoon of hurt.

But we all want that hurting to stop. “…part of recovery is identifying who you were in the family and how you have carried that role into adulthood. See how your role in the family plays itself out in your current relationship and ask yourself if it’s time for a change.

“Being the IP or the one that doesn’t belong can be a [hidden] blessing. If you’ve never belonged, it’s easy to take a step in another direction. Take refuge in exile. It can be a good thing.

“If you’ve been the IP, realize you’re never going to win their approval, so stop trying. You have a role to fill and they’re not going to be happy if you’re not filling it. If you’ve brought it into your relationships, chances are you will not be validated and acknowledged in those adult relationships either.

“Stop seeking approval from people who don’t have it to give. Throw off those old messages…get rid of the negative messages from the family…get rid of “get back where you belong” everytime you try to save yourself.”

Yes, you might fail. You might even fail repeatedly in your efforts to get away, to resist being sucked back into the drama by empty promises and your own broken heart. But if you don’t keep resisting you will get absorbed back into the drama and become nothing more than a broken gear in their dysfunctional machine. They aren’t going to change –there is too much in it for them to keep you in your assigned role—and nobody is going to rescue you. To escape and have your own life, a life of fulfilment and devoid of their drama, you have to shrug off the role they have imposed on you. You have to do it yourself. 

You have to be your own hero.

“Why Me?” Why were we chosen to be the scapegoat?

I think many of us make the presumption that our NMs reject us because we are somehow flawed, even if that flaw is the simple fact that we were the result of an unplanned pregnancy and we were therefore unwanted. But a cursory glance at history tells us that simply is not the case: for aeons women became pregnant without planning because no reliable means of contraception existed. You had sex, you had kids…and as long as you kept having sex, you kept having kids. Virtually all of those pregnancies were unplanned and certainly many of them were unwanted…but once those babies arrived, it’s pretty certain that the majority of mothers loved and nurtured those infants despite their unplanned and initially unwanted status.

Our mothers were different.

My maternal grandmother was born on an Iowa farm in January of 1910, the first girl of what would become a family of 11 children. She grew up to be a tiny, deceptively fragile-looking young woman and in March of 1926, she married a local farmer. Just days before her 17^th birthday she delivered her first child, a boy. At less than 5 feet tall and under 100 lbs, her labour with her second child, my mother, in June of 1929, was arduous and she was warned against having any more children. But contraception was a hit-or-miss affair in those days and within three years, she delivered a second son. This child weighed nearly 10 lbs and my grandmother nearly died in his delivery. There were no more children after that one.

In May of 1946, just weeks before her own 17^th birthday, my mother eloped with a 20 year-old sailor she barely knew in order to escape the authority of her father. Ten months later she gave birth to her first child: me. Her plan to escape the controlled life her father imposed on her did not include a child or even a husband-in-residence: no, she had expected her husband to go overseas for a year, a year in which she planned to live it up on the stipend she received from the Navy, free from the authority of both husband and father. But her husband got an early discharge and she fell pregnant within a month of the marriage, effectively scotching any chance of an annulment and destroying her plans for freedom.

Today, many people have the notion that because contraception is reliable and the ability to plan your family is commonplace, our parents and grandparents had choices similar to our own with respect to bearing and raising children. But when my grandmother was young, sex education, at least for girls, consisted of a brief, awkward chat with Mama just before the girl got married. Contraception was not reliable and many people were completely unaware it existed…and in many places it was even illegal.

My mother eloped so there was no opportunity for my grandmother to have “The Talk” with her daughter when she got married and apparently my parents were either unaware of contraception (which, by this time was legal but still not very reliable), or were too young and full of lust to care. It was not until 1965 that a really reliable form of birth control—The Pill—hit the market. Not only did it change women’s options, it changed the whole outlook of society with regard to family planning: for the first time in history, women truly had the choice of being sexually active and limiting the number and frequency of their pregnancies.

When I hear someone moan that if their mother hadn’t wanted children, she shouldn’t have had them, my first instinct is to ask when they were born…because if they were born prior to 1966, there’s a good chance that their mother had no choice in the matter except, perhaps, the choice to have sex. If they were born in the late 60s through early 70s, more choice was available, but that lovely contraceptive pill wasn’t as reliable as subsequent formulations (I was on the Pill when my own second child was conceived). They were also expensive and required a doctor’s prescription, something not easily obtained by many young and/or low income women. And, depending on your location, other forms of birth control were often available by prescription only, and those prescriptions were not available to unmarried females: doctors simply would not...or legally could not...prescribe for them.

Many of us presume we were mistreated by our NMs because we were unplanned and/or unwanted but I don’t think that is the deciding factor: none of my grandmother’s children were planned and her third and last pregnancy was “an accident.” And yet my grandmother loved and nurtured all of her children anyway. Additionally, she loved and nurtured her grandchildren, whose conceptions she had no control over.

My grandmother’s “accident” grew up, went to college, married and he and his wife used contraception to put off child bearing until they were financially able to provide well for children. When they tried to have a baby, it happened that the wife was infertile…so they adopted. These people truly wanted children…they planned their family and when my aunt couldn’t fall pregnant, they found another means to have kids. And yet, those “wanted” children, the ones they adopted, were not loved and nurtured and, six years after they were adopted, the children were returned to their birth mother and the adoption rescinded because one of the kids had behavioural problems my aunt and uncle were unwilling to (foot the bill to) address.

Rejection by your parents, whether they be biological or adoptive, is a bitter pill. Because as children we are hard-wired to please our primary care giver and because our very survival depends on nurturance from that care giver, we can be reluctant to accurately identify the care giver as the true source of the problem. From our own life experiences we understand the concept of rejecting something imperfect, flawed, substandard; we also understand that mothers “naturally” love their children. So, when our own mothers treat us in less-than-loving ways or even reject us outright, our natural instinct is to view ourselves as defective. What else, after all, could overwhelm a mother’s “natural love” for her child?

Unfortunately, when we make such an assumption, we prevent ourselves from fixing the problem: you can’t fix a leaky tap by changing the locks on the doors. Unless you can accurately identify and address the source of a problem, you can’t fix it…you can’t even tell if it can be fixed…accurate diagnosis of the source of the issue is critical to healing.

An article entitled “Mother Damned-est” by Terri Apter, Ph.D, in Psychology Today states “A difficult mother presents challenges that a difficult father or other relative does not. That’s because, starting in the earliest days of life, a child’s relationship with her or his mother is the foundation of a sense of self. Through maternal attachment, we begin to learn who we are and what we feel and to acquire the ability to interact with others... A difficult mother…uses a [child’s] continuing need for responsiveness to control or manipulate the child. The repeated threat of ridicule, disapproval, or rejection is experienced as a choice between life and death…A child does not have the option to say to a mother, I don't care whether you think I'm bad, or, I am not frightened by the prospect of your leaving me. A primitive panic at rejection lasts long after the infant's physical helplessness comes to an end.”

To reassure ourselves that our mothers are not at fault (because if the mother is at fault, she has the potential to reject us, which triggers that primitive survival panic), we long refuse to acknowledge that she is the defective one. For one thing, we know we can change how we behave, what we say, what we do, which gives us a feeling of control over the issue: “I can prevent my mother from leaving me if I stop doing this or start doing that…if I just try hard enough I can find that magic key to unlocking her love for me…” To acknowledge even subconsciously that it is the mother who is defective is to acknowledge that we are helpless to influence the situation and that mother could or might walk out of our lives at any given moment…a situation that will inevitably provoke a serious and pervasive anxiety.

Many (most?) ACoNs walk around feeling like they are somehow at fault for their lack of closeness with their mothers, even though often they cannot identify how. Some of us subconsciously assign a reason because it is easier than not knowing, and if you know that your conception and birth were unplanned, it is easy to assume that because you were unplanned, you were also unwanted and that explains your mother’s distance.

But that’s not necessarily the case. My conception was unplanned, but my mother claims that once she knew she was pregnant, she hoped for a baby girl and spun all kinds of fantasies about what it was going to be like to have a baby of her own. Unfortunately, her fantasies were the benchmark against which she measured me and I fell very short. When I was 14 she told me, her voice hard and bitter “Nobody told me having a baby wasn’t like having a doll, that I couldn’t put you back on the closet shelf when I was tired of playing with you.” So I was a disappointment because, in essence, I called the shots: if I was hungry or wet, I cried and she had to get off her duff and do something, no matter what it was she wanted to do at that time. Add to the fact that I had colic and eczema covering large parts of my body and it became clear that she was disappointed in me from the very beginning because I did not live up to her fantasies and expectations. She wanted a baby girl and she got one…but the reality of motherhood was nothing like what she expected.

When she made this revelation, I had to ask about my GC Brother—why, if she felt so imposed upon by my demands, did she have a second child. Her answer? “When you already have one child clinging to your skirts, what’s two? Your life is already ruined, so you might as well have another.” So he came along with no fantasies—or disappointments—attached. He also didn’t have eczema or colic. All the way around, he was a much more satisfactory child than I was. So much so, that shortly after his birth, my mother abandoned me to the state for adoption. I was two.

Such an event triggers a pervasive fear of abandonment. In my case, I was reunited with my mother when I was about four, having spent the intervening time with her parents, but the fear of abandonment never went away. I came to expect it not just from her, but from everyone…friends, boyfriends, employers. Wholly impersonal things, like my entire shift being laid off, I took as a personal rejection. I was programmed very early to look for rejection and abandonment and I found it every place I looked.

The fact is, when my mother found out she was pregnant, she wanted me. Like many pregnant teenagers, she expected me to be like a doll, to be played with and cared for on her schedule and according to her moods. She also was shocked at labour and then an emergency C-section: she had not anticipated 48 hours of unproductive labour (and the associated pain) or the surgery. She also blamed me for ruining her figure: the stretch marks and sagging boobs on her 17 year old body were my fault. And when I proved to be incorrigible in my demands for food, clean diapers and attention, she felt deceived and hard done by.

Did she love me? I think she thought she did. In a nasty letter she once wrote me, she told me “I do love you…I am just not very good at showing it.” To which I replied “How was I supposed to know? I was a child. When you don’t show love, or tell your child you love them, how is the child to know what you feel?” Typically, she gave no answer.

So, according to my mother, she both wanted and loved me, but within two years she gave me away like a puppy who had outgrown its cuteness and was shunted aside by the arrival of a new one. I gave a lot of thought to this over the years, and I don’t think the way she treated me had anything to do with wanting or loving me, but more to do with herself and her own processes. In the end, I became a convenience: the older and bigger I got, the more chores I could relieve her of, so she could return to her fantasy world of doing what she wanted when she wanted while I did the dirty work of minding her other child, cleaning her house, and absorbing the blame for anything that displeased her. Being wanted or unwanted, loved or unloved, had no bearing on how I was treated…it was never about me and who or what I was…it was always about her and how my presence impacted her life and the way she wanted to live it.

Whether or not your parents wanted you or loved you is, peculiarly, not necessarily the reason you were assigned the role of scapegoat. In functional families, an unplanned child is not assigned a negative role in the family dynamic, it is welcomed and loved as much as its planned siblings. In dysfunctional families, even a wanted child can end up the scapegoat because of the dysfunction in the parent(s).

How is this possible? Well, suppose you wanted a pet. You fantasized about a puppy you could train and raise and love. You had a specific image of the puppy in your mind: a cocker spaniel with floppy ears and lots of curly hair. You imagined yourself with your cocker spaniel and how other people would admire your great little curly-haired puppy, how it would lick your face and cuddle with you and love you more than anybody else in the whole world. Imagine how you would feel when your parents said you could have a pet for your birthday…and even though your birthday was months away, you would be waiting with anticipation for your puppy. And the big day comes…and the pet is a goldfish.

You wanted a pet…you got a pet…but it wasn’t what you expected and, in fact, the fish in its stinky aquarium that you have to clean out regularly is not what you wanted. But now you are stuck…this is your pet, the one you asked for. And there is a good chance that you are not going to like the fish, even if you accept the responsibility for its care.

My mother wanted a baby but I was not the baby she wanted. She wanted a cute little baby with blonde curls, and a dimpled smile and a quiet, cheerful, malleable disposition—and that is not what she got. I was bald as an egg, no dimples, screamed night and day from colic, had eczema marring my tender skin, and she had to tend to me on my timetable not hers. Heavens, the reason she ran off and married a near stranger was escape other people—her parents—controlling her life and here she was with a person who weighed under 10 pounds and didn’t speak her language controlling her night and day and punishing her with incessant screaming if she didn’t do as she was bid.

So if you are thinking that because your conception and birth were not planned and that is why you became the scapegoat, you may well be off base because one does not necessarily lead to the other. Wanted, anticipated babies grow up to be scapegoats and accidental pregnancies end up as Golden Children. Being a wanted, planned-for child does not guarantee you will be a loved and cherished child: I am living proof of that. But the reverse is not necessarily true, either: being unloved and cast as the scapegoat does not necessarily mean you were unwanted, at least in the time leading up to your birth.

Having a baby is a bit like getting a pig in a poke. You know what you are getting, but you get no say in what it is going to be like. You can’t custom-order a baby, you just have to take what arrives on D (delivery)-Day. For most of us, that is just fine. Regardless of how it was conceived or its gender, hair colour, or even state of health, we gladly welcome the new arrival into our hearts and homes. It is the dysfunctional personality who rejects a child and assigns him a role in the family dynamic that diminishes him rather than nurtures and uplifts him.

It isn’t your fault, no matter what you have been told, no matter what you have been led to believe. The fault lies with those who cannot accept their child for who and what he is, who blame the child for not popping out carrying a full load of fantasy-fulfilling traits. It is that adult’s lack of maturity that is to blame, her expectations that you be the fulfilment of her fantasies and punishing you with rejection when you are simply yourself…which you have every right to be. And this disappointment and rejection begins long before you are cognizantly capable of doing anything to deserve it.

It’s not fair…but by now we have learned that life is not fair. So, rather than expecting fairness from an inherently unfair situation, we have to find other ways to resolve our issues. But in order to heal, in order to move on, we need to be clear that nothing you are capable of doing between the time of your conception and today justifies rejection by your parent(s) and being cast in the role as family blame receptacle. Even if you have been a bad person at times in your life, there is still no justification to load you with blame for anything other than wrong acts you have knowingly, intentionally committed.

So if your perception of your mother or other family member is that she doesn’t love you, that is entirely possible but it is pretty much impossible for that to be your fault.

Think about it…and if you must assign blame, then put it where it really belongs so that you can begin to heal and move forward.