The Perfection Trap

How good is “good enough”? Isn’t this a question that plagues us all?

If you grew up with a narcissistic parent, this is probably something that has crossed your mind numerous times, but have you ever tried to really answer it?

Have you ever tried to define perfection? “That which is without flaw,” seems to fill the bill but for one thing…without flaw in whose eyes? That makes perfection a very subjective thing and, because it is so subjective, virtually unattainable.

Perfection is a pernicious, amorphous, unachievable goal that locks you into a struggle that is impossible to win. Seeking perfection can be your entire life, with no feeling achievement whatsoever. Pursuing perfection (as opposed to excellence) is a guaranteed way to live your life feeling like a failure.

My NM was a fault finder…really a fault finder…so much so, if she couldn’t see a flaw in something, she would invent one. But that was seldom necessary because she set standards (always for others, not for herself) that were impossible to achieve. It took me years to figure it out, but the reality was, nobody was supposed to succeed…if you succeeded, the bar was too low, so she simply raised it and discounted the previous achievement in light of the new bar. It wasn’t enough to get some As on the report card, they had to be all As…and when they were all As, then it was discounted because not all of the subjects were difficult and academic…what value is an A in PE, even if PE is a required course and a kid can’t get out of it and take astrophysics in its place? Of course, advanced academic courses or subjects she didn’t know anything about were discounted as useless, so an A in French…even awards for French…were of no consequence. There was always…always…a way to discount an achievement and make it fall short of perfection.

When your parent is a perfectionist, mistakes are never allowed. Never mind that mistakes are the most valuable learning tool you can ever have, the perfectionist parent pooh-poohs that and expects perfect performance from you the first time, every time, whether it is hitting a baseball, mopping a floor, or learning the multiplication tables. If you don’t have it and have it 100% by the time that parent expects it, regardless of such things as eyesight, inexperience, physical strength, or intellectual affinity, then you are deficient in some way: lazy, inattentive, stupid, wilful, obstinate, careless…there are a whole litany of adjectives to describe the NParent’s perception of a child as inadequate and disappointing because the child failed to measure up to that parent’s expectation…and that is what it is all about: expectation.

When you grow up with the idea that nothing is acceptable but perfection and you have never been able to achieve that perfection, you grow up with a perception of yourself as being fatally flawed: you can never do anything right, no matter how hard you try. Perfectionists think that is supposed to be an incentive to you to try even harder…approval is out there, dangling just out of reach, just waiting for you to achieve that perfection. But for a lot of people, it just doesn’t work that way.

If I walked you to the edge of a steep cliff and said to you “Fly!” you would look at me like I was crazy. If I then started calling you names and berated you for being cowardly, unwilling to make an honest effort, and a shirker, you would be certain I was crazy because you would know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what I was expecting of you was not possible. You not only wouldn’t try it, you wouldn’t even feel bad about not trying it, would you?

And yet when our parents set impossible tasks before us, we tried and, rather than be rewarded for our efforts, we were castigated for our failures. As a child, I was afraid to put my face in the water, which severely inhibited my ability to learn how to swim. The moment the littlest bit of water got in my nose, I totally panicked, complete with screaming and windmill arms. It wasn’t pretty.

When my grandmother learned why I failed Red Cross swimming lessons at the age of 12, she went out and bought me a nose clip type of nose plug…and when I took the lessons again, the problem was solved and I learned to swim. My mother, by contrast, derided my need for the nose clip, saying she would never have bought me one, and then derided me further by jibing that it took me until 12 years of age and taking the swimming lessons twice to learn how to “dog paddle.” My sainted little brother had taught himself to swim in a bay near our house, without a nose clip, and he could swim underwater better than I could swim on top.

In retrospect, I realize that if I had made the Olympic swimming team, my mother would have found a way to minimize it, to find fault with me or my performance, and cloak the whole thing in the guise of it being for my own good because if I don’t know where the faults in my performance are, I cannot fix them and be perfect.

Sounds rational and logical right up to the point that you acknowledge that, by and large, perfection is not an attainable goal for humans and aspiring to perfection is a guaranteed way to make yourself neurotic…or worse.

The absolute worst part of this is, if we were raised by a parent like this, we internalize it and take it into adulthood with us and we become the insatiable beast expecting perfection of ourselves. It affects different people different ways, but I have seen a lot of people who respond to it with paralysis…and I am sure you know some who have done the same thing: bright, talented, capable people who don’t even come close to their potential because they are afraid of failing…and they avoid failing by not really trying. Some self-sabotage, others simply never set their sights above easily attainable goals, and other simply don’t make any effort at all and just drift through life.

How different might their lives have been if their parents viewed mistakes as learning tools, expected them, and focussed on the effort and what was achieved rather than that which was not? There are an awful lot of us who would rather not try than risk failure or even partial success: it is guaranteed success or nothing at all.

Harbouring the belief that you must succeed wildly on your first effort can paralyze a person. It can put you in the perpetual planning stage or it can put you into a kind of limbo where you procrastinate until you forget, and when you are reminded, you punish yourself with guilt until you can forget again. (I am sure you can guess how I know this…) Writing this blog has helped me to silence the voice of my NM, that internalized voice that doesn’t want me to write drafts or proof read or change anything because it “should have been done perfectly the first damned time.” (And fast, too…taking time for research is proof, to that perfectionist ghost in my head, that I don’t know what I am talking about…if I need to research it, I must not know it already.)

Some of us, instead of succumbing to the nagging voice of doom in our psyches, rebel. To hell with perfection, I’ll do it my way. Ok…maybe good in concept, but if your way turns out to be truly slap-dash and half-assed, you’ve accomplished nothing of value except, perhaps, a rather childish bit of rebellion and acting out. There is a right way to do some things (generally measured by the outcome) and nobody wants to eat off inadequately washed dishes or sleep on sheets that haven’t been changed since the end of Desert Storm. Not trying, not making a sincere effort to do a good job of something is a form of rebellion and it doesn’t serve you any better than paralysis.

To get out of being stuck between paralysis and rebellion, I had to completely re-think my attitudes and beliefs about achievement, effort, accomplishment and come to some real-world assessments of my skills, abilities, interests and talents. I had to learn to create realistic expectations of myself because that, when you drill down to the core of the issue, is what it is all about: expectations. The Ns in your life have expectations of you and you did not meet them…and once you have internalized their voices, you have expectations of yourself that you will never, ever be able to meet, expectations of perfection, the definition of which get adjusted with every success so that it does not include that success.

I had to remind myself that being good at something doesn’t happen overnight. It took me time and many failures to learn to ride a bicycle, roller skate, swim, and do a whole host of other things…I didn’t just get up and do them perfectly the first time. It also took me an entire winter of bruised tail bones and sore ankles to come to the realization that, pretty as it looked when others did it, pirouetting on the ice in pretty little ice skating dresses was probably not going to be a part of my future. You also have to know your limits…and when to quit.

It was not easy to look at my mistakes as learning experiences. Due to my conditioning as a child, I felt humiliated by them, believed others were secretly snickering behind my back, and saw failure in my future. But for some odd reason, I was able to help others to not see their errors as harbingers of doom but as clues to heed in fine tuning whatever it was they were trying to achieve “Ok, you now know that that doesn’t work, so next time, don’t do that, try something different…” And somewhere along the line, I began hearing that voice in my head, overlaying the one that kept haranguing me for my ineptitude.

At one point it dawned on me that I was judging myself by the standards of another person, not by my own. I was ok with other people making mistakes and learning from them, but I wasn’t ok with me doing the same, which finally struck me as absurd. From then on, I began a conscious dialog with myself, even sometimes saying aloud “ok, that didn’t work…wonder if this will…” so that I could consciously imprint the idea of mistakes, errors, failures, as learning tools. When I first moved to Johannesburg I couldn’t understand why I had suddenly become so inept in the kitchen. At first I suspected it was a subconscious rebellion on my part because I had come to Joburg kicking and screaming in protest (my husband was transferred and I did not want to leave Cape Town). There were some problems with the stovetop and the oven, but even after those were fixed, the food problems continued, mostly the food being undercooked…there was more than once that a roast had to be plunked, raw in the middle, into the microwave to be finished and the potatoes came off the stove hard as little rocks. This went on for months…gradually I increased the cooking time of everything except microwaved foods, using the errors—the degree of unacceptable rawness—as a guideline to fine tuning the cooking and finally, after about a year of continual adjustments, the food started coming to the table properly. The failures were the clues that helped me get it right. (And a couple of years later I discovered that Johannesburg is higher above sea level than Denver, Colorado, which was the underlying problem: high altitudes require longer cooking times!)

The human psyche is an amazing thing. My NexH was also inculcated with the expectation of perfection but how he dealt with that was like my NM…the problem was never, ever him. He learned to drive a manual in the military and the shift point on those old trucks was 2000 rpm; his first car with a manual was a Ford Pinto, and the shift point on that thing was also 2000 rpm. But I had a Triumph TR-6…and eventually I had to take the spare set of keys away from him because he was ruining my clutch and transmission…in insisted that cars had to be shifted at 2000 rpm, even though the TR required 3000 rpm for a smooth shift. HE was perfect, it was the car that was at fault. Since he believed he was making no mistake, he could not learn from the ones he was making. When I had the stove replaced (it really was defective…it shut down just as water reached the boiling point) but the food didn’t improve, the only thing I could look to was myself…what was I doing wrong and how do I use my mistakes as a way to guide me to getting it right? The Ex, unfortunately, ended up losing access to my car because he would not acknowledge that the car worked fine for me, so there must be something wrong in the way he was driving it, seek out and acknowledge his errors, then adjust.

While my learning to accept mistakes as learning tools rather than devastating pronouncements on my competence was a useful, healthy thing, it got me to thinking about the whole subject of mistakes and expectations. And one morning, while reading an article about people who whose adult lives were negatively affected by their narcissistic parents, a thought came to me…what about our expectations of our parents?

It was a bit of an earth shaker for me because I have long operated on the premise that my mother was a poor parent and her poor parenting had set me up for a lot a difficulty in my life, both as a child and as an adult. And while I still do not step back from that assessment, I now had a new insight: a lot of the suffering I endured as a result of her parenting came from within…it came from my expectations of her!

ACoNs may have expectations of their parents that, because they did not have functional childhoods, they have no idea if those expectations are reasonable or not. Their expectations, in fact, are based on what they wanted in a parent and actually have nothing to do with the reality of who and what their parents are. For each of us there is an individual definition of “perfect,” and each of us wanted a perfect parent, based on our own definition of the word. Our parents did not meet up with our expectations. Whether or not the expectations were reasonable, whether or not the level of our parents’ dysfunction was mild or severe, we set the expectations…sometimes in retrospect…and our parents did not measure up.

Are we, then, then guilty of the same sin our dysfunctional parents perpetrated upon us? They set up expectations of perfection that had nothing to do with the reality of us, our abilities, talents, interests…they set up expectations of perfection for us that were based on their desires, not ours. But are we not doing the same in having expectations of our parents that are based on our desires rather than the reality of their abilities, talents, interests? You can say, on the one hand, that people should not have children if they aren’t willing to sacrifice all to be a good parent, but it just isn’t as simple as that…and we all, deep in our hearts, know that.

I had a heated discussion with my daughter once, a discussion in which she called me out on some of the things I did to discipline and control her when she was acting out in her teens. She was angry, she was blaming…and I was listening. When she took a breath I asked her “If what I did was wrong, then tell me what I should have done? What would have worked? What would have gotten you to stop cutting school and sneaking out of the house? You tell me…if I was wrong, then what was the right thing to do?” She had no answer.

So what could your parents have done differently and would those things be true to their inner selves. Oscar Wilde once said “Selfishness is not living your life as you wish, it is asking others to live their lives as you wish.” So how many of us are finding fault in our parents not because they lived their lives as they wished, but because they failed to live their lives as WE wished? They were not the kinds of parents we wanted…or even needed…but is our continued angst based on that fact or on the fact that they failed to live up to the ideal we have each constructed in our minds as the “perfect” parent. Just how much of our pain comes from our expectations of our parents rather than those parents themselves?

At this point, someone is bound to think “but we have a right to expect certain things of our parents!” Do we? What do we have a right to expect? Food, shelter, clothing…certainly. We have a right to have our human rights respected, although many people (and even whole cultures) deny that children have human rights. Do we have a right to expect fairness? Do we even have a right to expect love? Do we have a right to expect any person to give us that which they do not have or even that which they do not wish to give? How righteous is our anger and pain if it is based on unrealistic expectations? When you expect a snake to dance a jig, is your disappointment caused by your expectation or the snake’s failure to perform?

Lest you think otherwise, this is not about letting your Ns off the hook. This is about examining your expectations, particularly your expectations of perfection, and determining what is unreasonable and letting that go. Whether it is an expectation of yourself, your parent(s), your spouse, your kids, boss, friends, government…your disappointments are all rooted in your expectations, both reasonable and unreasonable. And you can reduce the amount of pain and disappointment in your life by the simple expedient of examining what you are expecting, what you have expected, and letting go of the expectations that were unreasonable in the first place and the disappointments the caused.

The easiest way to determine if a disappointment is reasonable or not is to simply ask if it is attainable, taking into consideration the limitations of the person(s) involved. Would you be disappointed if your toddler couldn’t hit a home run in regulation baseball? Would you be disappointed in your teen, who is more interested in chess than baseball, couldn’t do it? Is the toddler or the teen at the root of your disappointment? Or are your expectations out-of-whack with reality? Can you command love? Can you tell yourself “I should love this person” and then, magically, you do? You can’t? Whose fault is that? Are you defective because you can’t? Is everybody else on the planet defective because you can’t make yourself love them? Of course not…so why do you believe someone who does not love you is defective and your expectation of being loved by them is therefore a reasonable expectation?

We live in a society in which we tend to think that there is an answer for everything. If science can’t give us an answer, rather than simply say “we don’t know that yet,” we feel we must have an answer so we subscribe it to God or the supernatural or aliens or even conspiracy theories. Somebody has to be at fault, somewhere there has to be an answer, somehow there has to be an explanation. But the truth is, there isn’t always an answer, we don’t always have an explanation, and there isn’t always any blame to place. Sometimes things just are what they are, with no malice or failure or conspiracy behind them. Sometimes, when we let go of expectations, there is just nothing to put in their place.

And so it is with perfection…you can’t achieve it, no matter how you try, because you are human. My father once told me that no matter how good you are at something, no matter how smart or accomplished, eventually somebody is going to come along and be better, smarter, more accomplished…and you have to live with that knowledge, that you are not and cannot be ever perfect (and therefore unbeatable), and keep on doing the best you can anyway.

Perfection is not a goal, it is a trap, a trap that you set for yourself and you spring on yourself, and you then set on yourself again. It is a trap you set for others, when you have expectations of them that do not take into account anything of them and everything of you. The pursuit of perfection is to dedicate your life to futility and disappointment, it requires that you have impossible expectations (of yourself and/or others), it guarantees disappointment and pain. It profits you not.

The Elusive "Normal" - Third of 3 parts

13. Provides Clear Boundaries

We aren’t each other’s friends. A parent is a parent no matter how friendly they may be. Our children are not extensions of ourselves, they are individuals. Do not ‘friend’ them on Facebook unless you talk about it first and they say it’s OK and they mean it.

It’s more than providing clear boundaries, it is about enforcing them and enforcing them consistently and justly.

In functional households, there are clear boundaries, boundaries that to not capriciously fluctuate from day to day, whim to whim. Boundaries may change and evolve with time and the maturity of the children…like curfew…or they may be immutable—like treating your parents and others with respect, but they remain clear and they have consequences for violation that are proportionate to the breach.

And boundaries work both ways…children need to be able to set boundaries—within reason, of course—so that they can have a sense of control of their lives. You cannot allow them to set any boundary they like, however, because they do not have the wisdom yet to do so responsibly. That comes with time and trust…and you must allow them to be trusted until they show themselves to be untrustworthy. You can help a young child set a boundary with respect to body touching, with respect to the kind of treatment s/he will accept from others (no hitting, for example) and teach your child that boundaries apply to others as well as to himself: if he expect other people not to hit him when they are frustrated, then he must not hit others, either.

But with kids, boundaries must have limitations. Years ago a diamond ring set was stolen from my home after our teen baby sitter and her boyfriend had been there. I reported it to the police and gave a sketch of the unique setting. A year later a police officer showed up at my place of work and said “I think I have something that belongs to you,” and handed me my ring. Then he told me what happened: a teen-aged girl (not our baby sitter) came home wearing a ring her mother recognized as being much too expensive for her daughter to have legitimately received from her teen-aged boyfriend (our former baby sitter’s now ex-boyfriend). She took the ring and called the police. The girl, under pressure from her mother, told her where she got the ring and, using the ring as evidence to get a search warrant, went to the boy’s house. There they not only found my other missing ring, they found tens of thousands of dollars of stolen goods stacked up in his closed, stowed under his bed, and even hooked up and being used in his room.

When the police asked his mother how he could have all of this stolen merchandise in his room and she knew nothing about it, she indignantly told the officer that her son had a right to privacy and she respected it. She was fortunate that she was not also charged as an accessory for allowing a massive amount of stolen goods to be stored in her house.

There was a news story some years ago about a disabled low-income woman who was evicted from her apartment in a government-sponsored housing project because her teenaged son was storing drugs in the apartment and dealing from the premises without her knowledge. It violated the lease and when he was arrested, her ignorance was no excuse. She lost her home because she respected a privacy boundary her child had no right to erect and she had every right to deny him to have.

So, it is a fine line we must walk when allowing our children to set boundaries, but they must be able to erect some…and to erect more as they grow older…but not to the point that you can be held liable for a criminal act that occurred because you were more focussed on respect than guidance and monitoring. Functional families find balance and sometimes that balance involves violating someone’s “rights” for the well-being of the whole household. And as the parent, the decision to put family welfare over one child’s self-imposed boundaries is yours to make, not the child’s, just as in the larger society, your right to freedom of movement can be overridden by the authorities if something you are doing with that right somehow jeopardizes the rest of the community. Respect for boundaries is a good thing in general…but it can, of necessity be conditional—but the children are not the people to decide when such a condition exists.

14. Has Each Others’ Backs

Part of resilience – being supportive to each other no matter what, will allow your kid to call you when he thinks he’s in trouble, like needing a ride home from a party that’s gotten too wild.

This one is a true tightrope walk because, on the one hand you want your kid to call you to come get him in a circumstance like the one above…on the other hand, you don’t want your kid to take this as tacit consent to go out and get tanked every weekend and you’ll pick up and there will be no consequences.

We have to be supportive of the person, but not necessarily of the behaviour—and that can sometimes be a tough one to negotiate. My solution was to make sure the kids could get home safely, then supply some onerous chore in the morning (and I did not let them sleep in on the following morning…up at 7!) that made the effects of the hangover even worse…like weeding the garden or cleaning up dog poop or some such job that gets the blood pumping (and throbbing in the hangovered brain).

My daughter was searched by a male member of the faculty in front of 150 other students on the grounds that he thought she had marijuana on her. I came to the school, over her objections, and had a row with the Vice Principal over it. He at first defended the search, saying “If we found drugs on her, you would feel differently!” to which I replied “No, I would not. There was no reason for that man to physically search her body and to do it in front of 150 of her peers. You have a Girl’s Vice Principal, a female school nurse, and this happened in front of the Girl’s Gym, where she could have been taken and privately searched by a gym teacher.” It was not until I threatened legal action and going to the school board that he capitulated.

Later in the year she was searched again but, the VP was quick to inform me that is was done by the school nurse with the Girl’s VP as a witness. And they found a couple of roaches in her purse. She was punished both by the school and by me. Her right to the dignity of her body was supported by me and all but forced on the school, but when she was found to be guilty of wrong doing, she was disciplined for it. I had her back when they searched her in such an inappropriate and humiliating manner, and whether they found drugs or not, I was not going to allow that kind of indignity to be perpetrated upon her: if they had found drugs, she would have been disciplined for it but I would still have pursued changing the policy that allowed fully grown adult men to run their hands over the bodies of nubile teen girls under the thin guise of looking for drugs. I supported her as a person being treated without respect but I did not support the stupidity of bringing drugs to school.

In a functional household (which mine was definitely not, but we had our moments of functionality) parents and siblings support the people without necessarily supporting a behaviour. You can understand that your child is angry or fearful without going along with his expressions of those feelings. Part of being a parent is recognizing when your child is not taking the appropriate steps to deal with a situation and helping…giving them options they did not have before. Hormones are high in teens and they may be thinking revenge scenarios, and their prefrontal cortex is not as well developed as yours and mine, so long-term consequences may not act as a restraining consideration. You have the obligation to notice when your teen is becoming emotionally unwound and to open the dialog and offer acceptable ways he might handle his issues. If you suspect something dangerous might be in the offing, you have the obligation to protect the rest of your family as well as the community so seeking counselling for your child or even involving the authorities are choices you might make. Functional families are concerned for the well-being of their members over their public image so they take those kinds of steps. Imagine that boy who had my ring and a bedroom stuffed full of stolen electronics that his mother knew nothing about…just imagine if those had been firearms?

15. Get Each Other’s Sense of Humor

Functional families laugh a lot. They have ‘inside’ jokes and favorite stories, anecdotes of memories shared that delight and re-enforces a healthy bond.

I have to take exception to this one because you can’t always “get” someone else’s sense of humour. My NM used to tell me I needed to get a sense of humour because I didn’t think laughing at the expense of someone else was funny. I didn’t “get” pratfall humour because my first thought went to whether or not the victim was hurt and I didn’t get cruel teasing for the same reason. My own sense of humour was much drier and more dependent on wit than on banana peels, and she didn’t get that, either.

I think a sense of humour is rather individual and can also depend on the age of the person as well. There is a time when scatological humour is hilarious, but most of us outgrow that by puberty…are Bevis and Butthead really funny after you are old enough to buy booze legally? If it is, maybe the legal age is too low…

All that said, I do agree that shared family stories—with the caveat that the humour is not at the expense of the feelings of one of the family members—are a good thing and re-enforces a healthy bond. But when those stories humiliate a family member, too often those who find it funny feel obliged to further victimize that family member by telling him or her to “get a sense of humour,” rather than acknowledging that they are hurting that person yet again and ceasing their behaviour.

16. Eat Meals Together

So hard to do in today’s society but research does show that communication within a family is enhanced if we take more meals together, even if it’s in front of the TV.

This is another one of those agree/disagree issues. It is not hard to schedule family meal time nor is it hard to enforce it. In a functional family, people care about their fellow family members and they respect them, and that includes respecting the efforts of the family member who had taken time to prepare a meal for them all. It may be the only time in a day that the whole family has the opportunity to be together.

Children in a household are not miniature adults who can decide what to do with their time. They can have blocks of free time granted to them by their parents, but it is up to the parents to see to it that a schedule, however informal, is established so that kids have rules…kids need rules for security. One of those rules can be dinner time. You set a time and everyone is expected to be there. There are consequences for not being there; there are consequences for being late; there are consequences for filling up with junk food at a friend’s house and having no appetite for dinner. And the first consequence is the shortening of the free time period so that if dinner is served at 7, the offending child must be home by 6, or something like that. You are the adult, you set the rules. No eating dinner at a friend’s house without prior permission, no making plans that occur during dinner time without prior permission, and no eating in front of the TV except on very rare occasions (and if you have a way to record it, not even then).

Dinner time is family time and it should be sacrosanct. Families bond during this time, it is your opportunity to observe your family and see how they are doing. Does your teen daughter seem depressed? Is your preteen son preoccupied with something? Is your toddler whiney? Does your husband seem distant and detached? Observe…discuss in private…and make the kids help with clean up so that they understand that a family meal is, in all ways, a family event.

17. Follow The Golden Rule

It’s golden for a reason. “Treat each other as we wish to be treated in turn.” It was true way back when and it’s still true now.

mmmm…not necessarily. In a fully functional family, yes. In a family with dysfunctional people at the head…not so much.

They way we, the children of Narcissists, want to be treated is not necessarily healthy. If we grew up in a household that caused us to be hypervigilant and hypersensitive, then what we want is to not have the hypervigilance and hypersensitivity triggered…which others may perceive as having to walk on eggshells. And, if we give that same treatment to our kids, we may tiptoe tentatively around issues and situations when, if fact, such issues need to addressed head on.

The bottom line is, they are not you. The way you wish to be treated may not be at all they way they need or wish to be treated. You and your feelings and your desires are not the benchmark for your significant other, your kids, or anyone else on the planet: they are yours and yours alone. You are not a universal standard from which to measure the emotional needs of those around you. No matter what level of recovery you have achieved, you were still damaged in your early years and some of your emotional needs come from that damage. Your needs cannot even be used as a standard for measuring the needs of other damaged people, as we are all unique and respond to our tribulations and traumas in our own unique ways.

Better, I think is to adopt a policy of treating everyone with respect and expect that in return…and if you don’t get it, remember that is not a reflection on you, it is a reflection on the person who treats you disrespectfully. If that person is your child, then you have some work to do, some teaching and guidance. If that person is not your child, then you might want to reconsider keeping that person in your life.

But to treat everyone the way you want to be treated seems to be a little narcissistically centred, as if everybody on the planet wants to be treated the same way you do…and there are just too many of us for that to be true.

And I will add my own:

18. Trust and trustworthiness

It is important to be able to trust those in your family and for them to be able to trust you.

You create trust by following through on your promises, but being consistent and even predictable. That may sound awful, but if you have children, they need to be able to predict you to feel secure. If you are all smiles and praise over a “B” on a math paper this week, but thunderously displeased over a “B” paper next week, you are going to confuse your child and he is not going to know what to do to please you. Children feel secure if they feel their parents are happy with them.

Be very wary of making promises and when you make them, let nothing short of sudden death make you break them. I learned long ago to tell my children something less committal: “I’ll see what I can do,” “I will try,” “It’s not in the budget for this month but let me see what I can work out down the line”… They knew this could end up becoming a “yes” or a “no,” but they didn’t get their hearts set on something that would ultimately be a disappointment.

I rarely made promises then, and I rarely make promises now. But when I do make them, you can take them to the bank. People who know me know that if I promise something, it will happen…they can trust.

Was I always so trustworthy? Of course not. I didn’t understand the value of it. I didn’t trust anybody anyway…promises seemed just empty words to me. But time has brought me to the realization that if I am going to expect others to be worthy of my trust, I have to be worthy of theirs as well. I am always forgiving of unforeseeable circumstances, but many others are not, so I promise very infrequently and only when I know that I can deliver. Everything else gets either turned down or with a commitment to see what I can do, but no promises of the outcome.

People in functional families can trust each other because they come through for each other. Sophistry such as I employ…promising only when I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I can deliver and “I’ll see what I can do” for everything else is not really necessary because functional people in functional families understand and forgive those unforeseeable circumstances. People in functional families are not blindsided by the unexpected. To those of us raised with high drama and low blows, functional families may actually feel boring because they are pretty predictable. Your parents will still love you if you are unmarried and pregnant, gay or transgender, get an abortion, marry a person of a different faith or colour, commit a crime. They may not approve of the actions you undertake, but you know in the depths of your heart, that they will not stop loving you, no matter what acts you have committed. You trust that love…and they trust yours.

And that is what we, the adult children of narcissist parents, were most deprived of…the ability to trust. Because when you cannot trust your parents, when your entire life you live in fear of a rejection even deeper than that you endure as a scapegoat, trust simply does not exist. And that is the furthest from “normal” that you can get.

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)