Got Estrangement? (Part II in a Series)

Last post, I began to present how codependency as a "addiction-to-certain-people-based" relationship lifestyle can do even more damage to relationships which lead to parent/adult child(ren) estrangement(s).  Today's post, I would like to address how estrangements only get worse when we still allow the codependent way of doing things to run---and to ruin---an already pre-existing estrangement.

Since codependency is about everyone getting reduced down to "object" status....nobody is really going to be treated as an equal to one another, let alone treated respectfully as a general rule.  As such we reduce people down to "Are your worth my time and energy right now or not?"  Since we are all codependent by nature, we can put on our "giver" hat in an effort to impress someone---or switch to put on our "taker" hat in an effort to be impressed by someone.  This may sound confusing for some, but here's an example of how two people can flip flop back and forth between "giver" and "taker" status in an attempt to get what is wanted from each other without involving any real negotiation and/or compromise attached:

(Bill) "Hey, I got invited to a Superbowl party today and it's over on 23 and Hayes.  My dad took my car for the weekend;  do you want to come with me to the party, but you'll have to drive?"

(Gene)  "Who's having the party?  What time does it start?  Who will be there?  Is there going to be any food and drinks?"

(Bill) "Oh...it's a guy from work you don't know him and I have no idea about the other stuff, but he's a cool guy so I am sure there'll be food and drinks.  Who doesn't offer food and drinks at a Superbowl party right?"

(Gene)  "Did you want to stay for the whole thing?  Or is it o.k. if we have to leave early?"

(Bill) "Why would you want to leave early?  It's the freaking Superbowl?  Forget it man.  I'll call somebody else!"

(Gene) "What time do you want me to be at your house then?"

Sheesh!  Give and take take and give at it's best and worst!  You can see that initially, Bill wanted a ride to a party.  Gene just happened to be the guy Bill first thought of to give him that ride.  When Gene considered Bill's "invite", at least he didn't knee-jerk "SURE I'LL DRIVE!" as he could have.  Had Gene immediately responded like that, it would have signaled that Gene is working-without-realizing-it to "impress" Bill as a friend (functioning as an all good codependent "giver").  Yet since Gene found his boundaries and asked his questions about the party itself, Bill was unable to come up with definitive answers to satisfy Gene.  In this way, Bill was leaving Gene to imagine what might be the reality once arriving to the party.  When Gene asked about the possibility of leaving early, especially if the party ended up being a bust for Gene...Bill immediately got up on his own hind legs.  In that way, Bill was now responding like the codependent "taker" in this interaction and there was no more invite for Gene to consider.  Sadly, Gene was too intimidated to reply:  "Great.  Have a good time!"  Instead, Gene caved in as all good codependent "givers" do and there goes another interaction to show how codependency works to bring out the master/slave in each of us when pressed.

If both Bill and Gene were more appropriately "interdependent" instead of codependent, their interaction may have gone this way instead:

(Bill) "Hey.  I was invited by a co-worker to a party at his house tonight for the Superbowl.  I want to go but my car is with my dad for the weekend.  I don't know anything about who will be at the party or if they are even going to have food or drinks or what.  I know he mentioned maybe a couple other guys from work showing up.  Do you want to go with me?  If so, you'd have to drive...but I can pay you $20 for gas."

(Gene)  "I don't know.  It sounds o.k. but if we get there and there's no food or drinks, what do you want to do?  Just get something on the way for ourselves to snack on...or have dinner early and bring our own drinks?  What do you think?"

(Bill)  "Yeah, I hear you.  Well, there is this small restaurant not far from his house.  They got everything.  I can call this guy to find out if he's doing food or not...and I'll get back to you o.k.?"

(Gene)  "O.K., that sounds good.  If I don't hear back from you by 4:00pm though, I'm going to assume it's not happening for us tonite, o.k.?"

(Bill) "Affirmative."

Yeah, much better!

Are you catching the drift of what a codependent-fueled conversation looks like as opposed to interdependent-based interactions where both parties treat each other as EQUALS with MUTUAL RESPECT and HONEST exchanges of information and care?  I hope so!

Among women, I can't even tell you how many times I have heard stories about "girl trips" planned, taken, and/or ended which involved drama crisis and chaos because nobody chose to function interdependently instead of codependently.  The various comments I have heard over the past 20+ years go something like this:

"She didn't tell me that she wanted to sightsee the whole time once we arrived there...because I would have told her no way I'm not into it.  Did she think I would just do whatever she wanted the whole weekend?  WTH?!  And that is why I will never travel with her again in my life she's a selfish  b****!"

"When she invited this random person to join us on this trip that was meant for only us and nobody else, I was like ?!?!?!  She's done this to me more than twice before note to self!  But she said she just didn't "think" about anything else other than the great time we'd have together.  What great time?  All in her mind, not mine.  I'm done with her treating me like my mind is her mind!"

"OMG this woman never shut up about Trump/Biden the whole time we were driving up north together!  She is a friend of my neighbor and I never saw this side of her before until we started driving up there in the same car.  I will never let that happen again ever in my life!"

"I knew her for years and overlooked her many quirks.  Then we took a trip with our daughters and that was the end of everything.  I had zero idea how high maintenance those two were as a pair.  My daughter couldn't believe it either.  I feel we were chewed screwed and barbequed by that gruesome twosome!  Never again!"

"I just want to know if someone invites you somewhere for a weekend with the girls, and states that the cost of the place we are staying in has already been taken care of...how is it that I'm expected to buy everyone's dinner on the first night we are there?  I felt set up by an entire group of women who I thought liked me!"

Yes ma'am.  When we don't think, appropriately process, and behave assertively enough...this is the kind of mayhem that can ensue because we are too afraid to SAY WHAT WE MEAN, MEAN WHAT WE SAY, NOT SAY IT MEAN, YET SAY IT ON TIME AND TO THE RIGHT PERSON(S) INVOLVED!

Now imagine how easy it is to make a pre-existing estrangement "worse" when we think like a codependent instead of like an interdependent person!  

Without genuine understanding as to "what happened here" and/or "what is happening here right now" and then doing the real work to correct the dung pile we just got thrown into...that's on us!  Estrangements are bad enough---when they become worse---even more so!

Until next post....

 

Got Estrangement? (Parent(s)/Adult Child(ren)) - Part I in a Series

Estranged relationships between one or both parents and their adult child(ren) is probably the most tear-filled terrain to navigate in life.  Regardless if the adults involved are sober-minded, free of any major mental illness, personality disorder, and/or thought disorder...estrangements can and do still occur at an alarming rate.  Recent statistics indicate that 25% of parent/adult child relationships these days are, in fact, estranged. That's a lot of broken family systems!  Quoting from a recent interview with comedian Jerry Seinfeld, he points out that once a child grown into adulthood, parents can look forward to about a year's worth of face-to-face contact with their adult child(ren) before death occurs.  And that's when everybody gets along with each other!  Today's blog post is about parent/adult child estrangements and what to do when you find yourself there...

In my own professional opinion, the vast majority of estrangements between parents and their children have to do primarily with the codependent relationship lifestyle that nobody realizes has been in charge of their relationship dynamics for as long as it has.  I have blogged so much about codependency over recent years....and it is still worth mentioning here.  Seatbelts on please---this will get ugly and difficult to read!

Codependency is about pursuing the "addiction" style of relating in one's own important enough and chosen primary relationships.  In this context, are we addicted to one or more of our children?  Are we trying to get one or more of our children addicted to us?  Have we spent our entire lives trying to make sure they will be loved enough, understood enough, comforted enough, encouraged enough, forgiven enough (etc. etc. etc.!) so as to ensure that they will love us forever in return and never truly leave or abandon us?  Well, good luck with that!  No parent is perfect.  No parent will ever do "everything" right when it comes to raising their child(ren).  Yet when we are addicted to our children, we DO NOT recognize how we are working to cultivate an unnatural dependency on us (as their parent(s))---which will ultimately render him/her/them fundamentally INcompetent over the course of time.  Is that what we want to teach our kids given the way we relate to them?  "You can't live without me!"  "After all I've done for you, you owe me!"  "You can't do anything right unless I do it for you!"  OMG!  STOP!  This addiction to our kids is premised, oh by the way, on our own toxic need to be NEEDED by him/her/them!  We think we will get our kids approval, acceptance, and love by teaching them how to become comfortable with being served by us.  That won't work.  They'll just find someone else to replace us and when they do, we may get booted out of their own lives quicker than we can blink, o.k.?!

So for the kids raised by this  type of "smother mother" or "helicopter dad"...he/she/they feel like nothing was right enough in mom's or dad's eyes when it deviated from mom or dad's "plan".  What plan you may ask?  Their child's "life" plan, that's what!  Don't misunderstand, nobody wants to raise a child who will end up becoming a sociopath on blast with zero empathy attached....yet it IS ironic how this seems to be the common and unfortunate result when speaking to parents who have been cut off by their son(s) and/or daughter(s) for no legitimately understood reason(s).  "He has no empathy for me or his mother at all.  It's just gone.  He used to be a kind hearted kid, but now he takes every opportunity to jump down our throats even when we text him to say "Hi!".  Yep, it can be like that for sure.  "It seems like as soon as my daughter met her now-husband, he was working to separate her from us like we were some kind of  poison", states another mom.  Yes, it can be that way also when codependency is at the heart of any given family system's relationship life.

Since the average estrangement is reported to last on average for four years, the good news is that nothing will remain the same forever.  However, when untreated or mistreated mental illness and/or a personality disorder is involved--these stats are no longer valid.  In my own case, my parents and brother were highly codependent with one another since he was born and crowned as the "golden child" of our family system.  As is still true today in many cultures all around the globe, when "men rule and girls drool"...life can get quite messy for the kids involved in this type of family environment.  Parents can argue all they want proclaiming "We loved all our kids equally!".  However, ANY kid knows when a sibling is declared golden at the expense of the others.  As such, some parents' eyeballs need a good washing to determine if "this" was their issue as codependent parents when raising their kids.  In the case of my brother, he was too dependent on our parents' "loving care"  to leave and start his own life interdependently from theirs.  Yet he also became involved in an alternative lifestyle that, sadly, ended up literally killing him after 45 years of practice.  My brother was, in life, more child-like than a full adult emotionally speaking.  He did not know how to regulate his emotions.  He did "go off" quickly like a firecracker when triggered by someone saying something he took the wrong way immediately.  He assumed the worst more often than he did any other choice. He and my parents can thank their toxic codependent relationship lifestyle for that.  It did not help him grow up into the kind of man they believed they would get---yet, as my parents hoped for, their son did live with them their entire lives until his own death less than a decade later.

Next post, I will address how parent/adult child estrangements feed the worst of our dysfunctional human nature...

Engage In the World As I Govern It....Or Suffer the Consequences!

Yep, that about summarizes the battle cry of the malignant narcissist. "Engage in the world as I govern it, or suffer the consequences!"  Who knew?  Now you do....

With so much being bandied about regarding the dreaded term "narc" on Tik Tok, Instagram, and other social media platforms...do we really understand what it is like to be engaged in our own life with a malignant narcissist?  We are all narcissistic to some degree.  If you are human, you've suffered narcissistic injury, period.  Nobody skips that reality of life on planet earth.  Nobody receives just the right amounts of understanding, validation, acceptance, encouragement, inspiration, loving kindness, forgiveness, and wisdom from the time of their own birth.  Of course not!  Parents are people too.  They screw up.  They do too much of one thing and not enough of the other.  They stare instead of care.  Like the rest of us, they are flawed humanity at its best and worst.

Having said this, is it any wonder why we can come to believe, truly and deeply, that we are hopeless, worthless, beyond redemption, and a big mistake of life in the general sense?  When we are treated like we really don't matter, that we are totally inadequate, and/or that we have no real value or purpose for our life---and then we treat ourselves the very same way as we grow older---it IS very difficult to climb up and out of that pit of personal despair when these experiences keep repeating themselves.  Am I wrong?  I remember hearing about a local man who was asked the very night before he died whether or not he thought he'd go to be with God when he died.  His answer was, "Oh no!  I'm going to Hell for sure!"  After a brief discussion, this man truly believed that he had done so much that was so bad in his life---that there was no way any God of any kind would welcome into Eternity.  In this way, this man believed he knew better than God how God actually operates.  Talk about malignant narcissism taking to the Nth degree!  Yikes o.k. whatever you say Boss!  :-P

I am consistently saddened by the people I meet through my work who do genuinely view themselves as "the worst!" when compared to their fellow humans.  Malignant narcissists would get nowhere if not for the malignant martyrs they keep attracting.  Stop now and re-read that last sentence about 100 times okay?  Thank you!  It may feel real good and real validating to "make" a malignant narcissist actually demonstrate some care and compassion towards you after you've basically run yourself over multiple times for him/her/them...but it won't last.  It never lasts.  Like a meme I recently read so aptly put it, "If you are bit by a snake, your job is to get the poison out, and heal.  It is NOT to go back and catch the snake, find out the reason why it bit you, and then try to prove to it why you  didn't deserve it!  Yep, that would represent an epic fail.  Correct?  You tell me!  

Malignant martyrs started out as true victims of true injustice.  That's a given.  How can you learn how to play the "good" victim/giver to all unless you have had lots of practice with being victimized against your will?  When martyrs become malignant, they look for the drama/trauma/chaos/crisis/mayhem without even consciously being aware that they are doing it!  I just heard the other day about a couple of young people who left a bar one night and just happened to "drive" to the sketch side of town to...???  To what??!  Two hours and two homeless guys later---they sure had a "story", but at what price the story?!   Malignant martyrs in this way are completely clueless as to how they genuinely are addicted to the D-word DRAMA!

Being with a malignant narcissist isn't so complicated to figure out once you have been on the receiving end of his/her/their disappointment/anger/rage/resentment/bitterness one too many times over.  If a person really does believe that you can change if you are intimidated often enough and over a long enough period of time...what does that say about you?  Forget about the other person who is engaging in the tactics to convince you to comply;  what does that say about you?  Oh yes, that's right!  It says you do not believe in YOURSELF enough to treat yourself like the precious child of God that you are while you are here to live your own life!

Today will be a good day when you choose to make it one.  Figuring out who treats you like an option instead of an equal is pretty much Step 1 of the inside-out transformation process.  When you are addicted to certain people who keep treating you like you work for them...that's a huge red flag o.k.?  Also, that's what we psychotherapists are for;  to assist YOU on your healing and recovery journey!  Choose wisely!  ;-)

Until next post...