"Let’s Fix The Kids!" A parenting Resource Manual by

NOTE #15 - Intellectual Boundaries

Parents who try to control their children’s belief and thinking processes are not allowing the children to establish their own intellectual boundaries. In a sense, this is a terrible insult to the child and assumes that the child is either incapable of thinking for himself or so morally corrupt that he can’t be trusted.

Parents who put forth an endless stream of comments about everything (what to do, what to think, what to wear, etc.) can cause the child to doubt his own capabilities, or feel that it’s wrong for him to think for himself. Children should not be forced to see the world from the parents’ view, or be forced to surrender their own reality to the parents’ reality. Children need parents who encourage them to evaluate for themselves, decide on their own, and then defend those decisions and beliefs, while at the same time remaining open to new ideas.

Children should not have the impression that the parents’ way of viewing the world or thinking is the “right” way or the only way. This will cause the children to begin to doubt their own perceptions of the world because most children will constantly see the parents’ perceptions and interpretations as superior to their own.

Children who are not allowed good intellectual boundaries grow up to be persons without the intellectual confidence to make the important decisions in life. They are constantly trying to figure how they “should” see things. This lack of trust in their own perceptions lays the foundation of dependency. These people are at higher risk to be influenced by peer groups because they have been taught to be dependent; they naturally follow very easily.

NOTE #16 - Spiritual Boundaries

I came from a perfectionistic and over-controlling family, and the impressions I got as a child about God stayed with me through my adolescence. My impression from the stories I heard was that God was often very angry with His disobedient children and that He was going to punish everyone very severely for all their wickedness. At the same time, what was taught over the pulpit was a religion that demanded that I have faith, believe, cast out every sin, and never have evil thoughts, for if I had done any of these things, I would surely go to hell and burn forever!.

I saw God as a fierce, unpredictable, angry, punitive Being whom I could not please. I did not understand how I could ever get in His good graces, how I could avoid His condemnation of my imperfection. I did not see God as a loving, forgiving Being at all. Grandma gave the impression of being a saint, a perfectionist, and always having to be right. She demanded it of herself and of everyone else. Mom and dad were silent on the subject of religion and Grandma felt it was her duty to “save” the grandchildren. I felt almost overwhelming pressure to accept “her” religion just to please her, but I couldn’t make an insincere gesture before God to please her or anyone else. I know I was a great disappointment to her.

I have found supreme joy and happiness in the religion of my choice; but it produced a chasm between me and my grandmother that was never bridged, and indeed it doesn’t have to be. I can accept her and her religion; it’s a pity that she could not accept me and mine. If we are concerned about the eternal welfare of others, let us invite them to our spiritual table by being a living example of what we believe, by being kind, patient and loving to them, but never obnoxious, condemning, overbearing, coercive or impatient with them. This is doubly so with our children.

If we came from a home that was healthy, our parents set a worthy example, offered certain principles, and allowed us to decide for ourselves. They let us set our own spiritual boundaries and develop our faith based upon our desires, needs and conscience. Coercion is almost never justified on another person, whether it’s spiritual, emotional or intellectual.

NOTE: People often become very angry when they can’t use or manipulate you anymore; telling you what to think, feel, do, or believe. When you have the courage to claim your own life, you can expect to upset certain self-serving people who are controlling and manipulative and who have been taking advantage of you. It is our personal right and responsibility to set our own boundaries; no one else can, or should be allowed to do it for us. As we begin to set boundaries, we are able to risk being close and establishing healthy relationships.

When you try to establish your boundaries, don’t go around telling everybody about it; they’re not going to appreciate your courage in trying to do this. Even dear friends may become very upset as we disturb their lives by changing. In our own lives we must expect great resistance from demanding children, spouses, and bosses as we begin to set boundaries to protect ourselves and our integrity. These people can become very unreasonable. Remember, dysfunctional systems have a homeostatic feature which requires them to stay the way they were (are).

NOTE #17 - Codependency

Codependency means that we are focused on somebody else’s issues and problems, and their life becomes the most important factor in our own life. We see ourselves as unimportant; feel guilty and selfish for focusing on our own feelings, needs or wants, and lose contact with what we think or believe. A codependent is someone who feels responsible for others, someone who wants to fix, to rescue, and make everything okay in the family. A codependent suffers from a grandiose idea that he is responsible for everything that has to be corrected. If anything goes wrong, codependents feel responsible for it; being a codependent is an awful life.

If family problems are so big in comparison to what a child feels his own needs and problems are, the child will lose his inner focus and begin to look outside of himself. In other words, the parents’ problems become “everything” to the child. In alcoholic homes (or in homes where individuals have other obsessive/compulsive behaviors) the child is actually trained not to be in contact with his own feelings, wants or desires, because these seem insignificant when compared to the great tragedy and the awful drama that is being acted out by his parents. All attention and focus are on the addicts (alcoholic and codependent) and not on the needs of the child.

A codependent shows her codependency whether she is taking care of an alcoholic spouse or an irresponsible child. The codependent believes that everybody needs her, that they can’t get along without her, that she must protect others from the world, or from failure. She derives certain satisfaction from rescuing and being “better” than other people. Codependents often move into the martyr role or the victim role, and they get good mileage out of that (satisfaction, and a purpose for existence). These people have lost track of their basic, inner selves.

There have been cases when the alcoholic has died and the codependent person (now without the alcoholic to save anymore) feels lost and worthless in life, and will immediately go out and marry another alcoholic, or find some other “needy” person to save. Codependents feel worthwhile as long as they are able to rescue and save other people. Now, the fantasy is that they are actually rescuing and saving, but the reality is that if they actually did rescue and save someone, their mission would be over. Therefore, they always “hook up” with an addict or someone who is never going to get fixed so that they can continue their insane codependent game forever.

NOTE # 18 - Addiction to Codependency

The codependent typically experiences difficulty expressing feelings, trusting others, having intimate relationships and dealing with conflict. Codependents do not feel that they themselves are lovable or worthwhile people. Because they feel their own lives are not worthy or worthwhile, they have to “rescue” others and be involved in other peoples’ lives. The codependent needs to learn the “Prayer of Serenity” (See page 340) and live it. Codependent means “also dependent” or “dependent with” or “addicted with”. The codependent is addicted to the work of rescuing the person who’s addicted. The codependent is addicted to the alcoholic like the alcoholic is addicted to the alcohol. The alcoholic’s obsession is alcohol; the codependent’s obsession is fixing the alcoholic.

The “supermom” is really a codependent. When the mother is acting out of a reaction to satisfy her own needs instead of the child’s, she is acting in a codependent manner. Not letting people work out their own difficulties or solve their own problems is a sign of codependency. Service is what we do in kindness for others that needs to be done, not doing for them those things that they can and should do for themselves. How are people ever going to learn to be responsible if we don’t allow them to deal with the challenges and issues of life that train them to be responsible?

CODA

CODEPENDENTS ANONYMOUS: CODA is an organization like Alcoholics Anonymous but it is for codependents. They offer no definition or diagnostic criteria for the word codependency; they allow the psychiatric and the psychological professionals to do that. CODA believes that recovery begins with an honest self-evaluation. Codependent behavior usually falls within two general categories: COMPLIANCE (pleasing others) and CONTROL (manipulating others). On the following two pages is a checklist of characteristics, behaviors and attitudes for use in determining your level of codependency. It might be helpful to use the notations always, usually, sometimes and never.

Control Patterns

________ I must be needed in order to have a relationship with others.

________ I value others’ approval of my feelings and behaviors over my own.

________ I agree with others so they will like me.

________ I focus my attention on protecting others.

________ I believe most other people are incapable of taking care of themselves.

________ I keep score of good deeds and favors, becoming very hurt when they are not repaid.

________ I am very skilled at guessing how other people are feeling.

________ I can anticipate others’ needs and desires, meeting them before they are asked to be met.

________ I become resentful when others will not let me help them.

________ I am calm and efficient in other peoples’ crises situations.

________ I feel good about myself only when I am helping others.

________ I freely offer others advice and directions without being asked.

________ I put aside my own interests and concerns to do what others want.

________ I ask for help and nurturing only when I am ill, and then reluctantly.

________ I cannot tolerate seeing others in pain.

________ I lavish gifts and favors on those I care about.

________ I use sex to gain approval and acceptance.

________ I attempt to convince others of how they truly think and should feel.

________ I perceive myself as completely unselfish and dedicated to the well being of others.

Compliance Patterns

________ I assume responsibility for others’ feelings and behaviors.

________ I feel guilty about others’ feelings and behaviors.

________ I have difficulty identifying what I am feeling.

________ I have difficulty expressing feelings.

________ I am afraid of my anger, yet sometimes erupt in rage.

________ I worry about how others may respond to my feelings and behavior.

________ I have difficulty making decisions.

________ I am afraid of being hurt or rejected by others.

________ I minimize, alter or deny how I truly feel.

________ I am very sensitive to how others are feeling and feel the same.

________ I am afraid to express differing opinions or feelings.

________ I value others’ opinions and feelings more than my own.

________ I put other peoples’ needs and desires before mine.

________ I am embarrassed to receive recognition and praise or gifts.

________ I judge everything I think, say or do, harshly and never as good enough.

________ I am a perfectionist.

________ I am extremely loyal, remaining in harmful situations too long.

________ I do not ask others to meet my needs or desires.

________ I do not perceive myself as a lovable and worthwhile person.

________ I compromise my own values and integrity to avoid rejection by others.

After completing this checklist we suggest that you attend a CODA meeting if you wish. You might search out some members for fellowship, some whom you believe you could trust and with whom you could discuss your checklist answers. If you come to accept that you are a codependent, then you will be ready to work in a twelve-step recovery program.

NOTE #19 - Adult Children of Dysfunctional Homes

Some of us from dysfunctional homes have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. We learned and (even preferred) to be concerned with other people rather than with ourselves. We even feel guilty when we stand up for ourselves. Thus, the roles we began to fill in life and the identities we attributed to ourselves made us reactors instead of actors in our own lives. We let others take the initiative for us. Many of us develop very dependent personalities, frightened that we will be abandoned. We are willing to do almost anything, even stay in ridiculous relationships that are harmful to us, in order to not be abandoned emotionally.

The tragedy of this is that we keep choosing insecure relationships, often because they parallel our childhood relationships with dysfunctional parents. So often when our parents were obsessive/compulsive, whether they were alcoholics, rageaholics or workaholics, we became covictims with those who were suffering from the primary problem. As covictims we began to take on the characteristics of the addiction without personally ever taking a drink or being addicted to any chemical ourselves. As children in these families we learned to keep our feelings hidden; now, as adults, we have learned to keep them buried. As a result of this conditioning, we often confuse love with pity and we tend to love those whom we believe we can rescue.

NOTE #20 - Healing

The healing begins when we risk moving out of our old comfortable isolation. As we begin to own our feelings and do our grief work, feeling the old fears and the old feelings that were buried before, we begin to relieve the burdens such as unexpressed grief and pain. As we do this, we are slowly freed from the past because we have now processed our old feelings instead of burying them. In a sense, we learn to reparent ourselves with gentleness, humor, love and respect. We come to realize that our parents were imperfect and (in most cases) unable to give us what we needed. Again, nobody gets enough mothering or fathering.

As adult children from dysfunctional homes, we need to find the freedom to express all of the hurt and fear that has been kept inside of us. We need to free ourselves from the shame and blame that we carry from our past. We need to realize that as adults we can be imprisoned by our childhood opinions, reactions and feelings. These childhood experiences might have been very traumatic and greatly affected our impressions of ourselves, the world and the people around us. Through this process of becoming connected again with our feelings and thoughts, we will become adults who are no longer imprisoned by our childhood reactions. We discover the child within ourselves and we learn to accept and love ourselves.

Those who subscribe to a twelve-step program such as that incorporated in Alcoholics Anonymous look to the higher power whom most of us choose to call God. Although we may have had alcoholic or dysfunctional parents, AA teaches us to turn to our higher power and incorporate the twelve steps of recovery in our lives. The twelve-step program is truly remarkable.

One of the things that is so beautiful about AA or any twelve-step program is that we come out of denial and realize the dysfunction that we have been living. We see parental dysfunction or alcoholism for what is really is: a disease that infected you as a child and continues to affect you as an adult. In the twelve-step programs you learn to: keep focused on yourself, stay in the here and now, take responsibility for your own life, supply your own parenting, and to be good to yourself.

In a twelve-step recovery program, we look hard at our own lives and learn that many new options are available to us. We learn to feel and we begin to think for ourselves and discover a sense of self and self-worth that we never knew before. We learn that we don’t have to be perfect all the time. We come to understand how this demand for perfection in our homes drove us to obsessive/compulsive behaviors as people-pleasers or as rebels. We learn to make the decisions and changes in our lives based upon choices and upon acting out of our own need rather than reacting to others with self-destructive behavior.

This is not done alone. No man is an island; you need a support network. In the twelve-step programs you will find that people love and encourage each other and learn to accept each other for who they are. The twelve-step programs are really spiritual programs based on action and love, or based on action coming from love. Individuals who truly work the twelve-step programs see beautiful changes in all their relationships. Miracles happen!!

There is an inner child in us whom we must come to know again. We see the beauty, the innocence, the spontaneity, the wonder and the awe of this child within us. Psychologists have written much about this inner child. This inner child is our true self, our honest self, our basic self, that has been imprisoned while we were taught to develop a pseudo self, a false self, a pretend self and a public self, in order to gain love and be accepted. Health means we are moving in the direction of rediscovering and developing this real self, or the child self, within each of us.

NOTE #21 - Children of Dysfunctional Homes

It is very important for us to understand what happened to us as children and how it presently affects our feelings, thinking processes and views of the world. We need to come out of denial and realize that there really was, and still is, a problem. It wasn’t just our imagination; we weren’t just “goofy”. Many of us, because of dysfunctional childhood experiences, live in a state of suppressed rage or unresolved grief. Others have been trying to “fix” themselves for years but have not been exposed to the information or the groups that would help in the healing process. We can even begin to believe that living in need and pain must be normal, that there is no recovery from it and that our lives cannot be bettered. We must go through a process of self-discovery, realizing that we don’t have to keep doing what we did as children to survive.

In order to free ourselves from the pain of our past, we must go through a certain identification process and grow beyond our desperate attempts to control. We must let go of much of our dysfunctional past. We need to know that it is all right to talk, to trust, to feel and to work through our own stages of grief. It is okay to feel the feelings and emotions that we were never allowed as children, that we were never allowed to express in our own families. We often do this with companions or in twelve-step groups by sharing what has happened, how it has affected us, and how we feel about it.

By understanding what happened to us in life and the dysfunctional behavior patterns that we set up to compensate for the tragedies of our past, we begin to break the survival patterns which we had incorporated to compensate for childhood traumas. We are then free to deal with the unresolved problems of our past and to learn to live full lives unhampered by old, distorted childhood judgments and decisions that were made in desperate ignorance and fear in order to defend ourselves.

Many of us are still laboring under the decisions we made as very small children; we are still handicapped by these early decisions. When we are unaware of these decisions, attitudes and beliefs we never challenge them as adults! If we will challenge this ancient “truth”, we will discover that much of it is not only “not correct” but that it is also very harmful and that we should dump it. We don’t have to act a certain way anymore just to survive. Maybe when I was a little boy I had to please my parents and I couldn’t express anger because if I did I would have been beaten. Now, as an adult, I don’t have to please my parents. It is safe and all right to express anger, to have pain and to say what I feel; it is not dangerous anymore. At least I have the right to do it. I have the right to be a person, to be real and genuine.

“RISKS”

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.

To reach out for another is to risk involvement.

To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.

To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd is to risk their loss.

To love is to risk not being loved in return.

To live is to risk dying.

To hope is to risk despair.

To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.

The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing and is nothing.

He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot

learn, feel, change, grow, love or live.

Chained by his certitude’s, he is a slave.

He has forfeited freedom.

Only a person who risks is free.
Anonymous

Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship

as the pathway to peace.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

Taking as He did this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,