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 Parenting
Pathfinders: Tools for Raising Responsible Children - Section
11
Parenting Pathfinders Establish Healthy Boundaries with Children
Content:
LET GO STEP 1: LIGHTEN THE
PRESSURE
The first thing you need to do is to LIGHTEN THE PRESSURE to control
one another, so that you can have healthy boundaries with each other. To do this you have
three substeps to accomplish to LIGHTEN THE PRESSURE.
Sub-step 1: Get ALERT to the hooks which keep your boundaries down
You first must both ALERT yourselves to what irrational messages you have about family
which keep you boundary-less with your older children. You need to identify the irrational
emotional hooks which prevent you from having healthy boundaries with your children.
Consider these emotional hooks as examples for your ALERT work.
10 Emotional Hooks in Family Life
Hooks:
1. Lack of Individual Identity
Maybe you are hooked by the irrational belief that: "I am a nobody
without a somebody in my life." If you are, you maintain no boundaries
with your children because you are very dependent in getting your identity from being
their parent. You are willing to do whatever it takes to make the relationship happen,
even if you have to give up your health, money, security, identity, intelligence,
spiritual beliefs, extended family, country, job, community, friends, values, honor and
self-respect. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook
is: "I am a somebody, just by being who I am. I am OK just the way I am, even if my
children no longer need me. My value and worth as a person is not dependent on having my
children needing me. It is better for me to allow my own children to be independent and
healthy than to have them dependent on me and for me or them to be sick intellectually,
emotionally and/or physically. I will work diligently with my children to correct this
faulty thinking which has made me too dependent on them depending on me. By being more my
own person and allowing my older children to be more independent our family will flourish
and grow healthier."
List of Hooks
2. Scarcity Principle
Maybe you are hooked by the scarcity principle of feeling happiness:
"because the current status of our family life is better than anything we have ever
had before." This is a common problem in families which have faced
trials and challenges in the past. The problem is that the current status of your
relationship might be better than what you had in the past, but it might not really be as
healthy an intimate family life as described earlier. You may be so happy with your
family's current functioning that you are willing to give all of yourself intellectually,
emotionally and physically with no regard for what you need to retain for yourself so that
you do not lose your identity in this relationship. You may be in a recovery program like
AA, Alanon, NA, CODA, ACOA etc. You may be in a Bible Study Group or some other form of
spiritual renewal self-help group.You may have a support system and a plan of recovery for
personal and spiritual growth. You may find that in your family life you have no time to
do the "recovery or growth activities" of: maintaining contact with your support
system, going to 12 Step or other group meetings, or reading recovery literature or
scriptures. You may find it hard to maintain your new behavioral and emotional commitment
to personal and spiritual growth in your family. If this is true, then your family is not
supportive of your recovery for personal and spiritual growth and is not healthy for you
no matter how happy you are in it. If in your family life you have no alone time to spend
with your spouse, other children, extended family or friends then it is not healthy no
matter how happy you are in it. If in your family life you have no time, energy or
resources to put into your career, education or current job then it is not healthy for you
no matter how happy you are in it. If in your family life you are finding it difficult to
maintain your own spirituality and connection with your Higher Power then it is not
healthy no matter how happy you feel in it. A family which requires that you sacrifice all
of you for the sake of the happiness you feel, in it, is not a healthy intimate family. A
healthy intimate family life allows you to make time, space and allowance for you to focus
on yourself, your own needs, your spouse, each of your children individually, your
extended family, your friends, your recovery program, your support system, your career,
your education, your spiritual beliefs and your personal integrity, individuality and
identity. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is:
"I will focus on my needs, my identity, my individuality and my personal integrity in
my family life. I will set aside my time, resources and energy to give to my children, my
family, my friends, my support system, my recovery program, my spirituality, my career, my
education and my community involvement while maintaining a healthy intimate family life
with my children. I will insist that I have the time, resources and energy to focus on all
aspects of my life in my family life. I will not become complacent in my family just
because there are no conflicts or crisis in it at the time. I will work with my children
to insure that the health of our family is ever growing and increasing."
List of Hooks
3. Guilt
Maybe you are hooked by irrational guilt that you must think,
feel and act in ways to insure that your family life is preserved, secured and nurtured no
matter what personal expense it takes out of you. You feel guilty if the your children are
not succeeding or thriving without your personal resources, energy, money, time and effort
going in to making such success happen. You have a problem of feeling over-responsible for
the welfare of your children and cannot allow to accept personal responsibility to make
choices and live with the consequences of these choices. This irrational guilt is a
driving motivation to keep you tearing down your boundaries so that you will always be
available to your children at any time, in any place for whatever reason your children
"need" you. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from
this hook is: "My children and I are responsible for accepting personal
responsibility for our own lives and to accept the consequences for the choices we make in
taking care of our own lives. I am not responsible for the outcomes which result from the
choices and decisions which my children make. My children and I are free to make our own
decisions with no one forcing us to make bad ones which will result in negative
consequences to ourselves if they should occur."
List of Hooks
4. Inability to Differentiate Love from Sympathy
Maybe you are hooked by the inability to differentiate the difference
between love and sympathy or compassion for your children. You find yourself
feeling sorry for your children and the warm feelings which this generates makes you think
that you are in love. The bigger the problems your children have, the bigger the
"love" seems to you. Because the problems can get bigger and more complex, they
succeed in hooking you to lower your boundaries so that you begin to give more and more of
yourself to your "pitiable" children out of the "love" you feel. The
rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "It is OK
to have sympathy and compassion for my children, but that does not mean that I have to
sacrifice my life to "save" or "rescue" them. Sympathy and compassion
are emotions I know well and I will work hard to differentiate them from what love is.
When I feel sympathy and compassion for my children, I will remind myself that it is not
the same as loving them. The ability to feel sympathy and compassion for another human
being is a nice quality of mine and I will be sure to use it in a healthy and
non-emotionally hooked way in the future in my family."
List of Hooks
5. Helplessness and Neediness of Children
Maybe you get hooked by the neediness and helplessness of your children.
You find yourself hooked when your children get into self-pity, "poor me" and
"how tough life has been." You find yourself weak when your children demonstrate
an inability to solve personal problems. You find yourself wanting to teach and instruct,
when your children demonstrate or admit ignorance of how to solve problems. You find
yourself hooked by verbal and non-verbal cues which cry out to you to "help"
your children even though they have the competence to solve the problems on their own. You
find yourself feeling warmth, caring and nurturing feelings which help you tear down any
shred of boundaries you once had. These sad, weak, distraught, lost, confused and
befuddled waifs are so needy that you lose all concept of space and time as you begin to
give and give and give. It feels so good. The rational message needed to establish healthy
boundaries from this hook is: "No one is helpless without first learning the
advantages of being helpless. Helplessness is a learned behavior which is used to
manipulate me to give of my resources, energy, time, effort and money to fix. I am a good
person even if I do not try to fix and take care of my children when they act helpless. I
cannot establish a healthy intimate family life with my children if I am trying to fix or
take care of them all of the time. I need to put more energy into fixing and taking care
of myself if I find myself being hooked by my children's helplessness."
List of Hooks
6. Need to be Needed
Maybe you get hooked by the sense of being depended upon or needed by your
children. There is no reason to feel responsible for your children if they
let you know that they are dependent upon and need you for their lives to be successful
and fulfilled. This is over-dependency and is unhealthy. It is impossible to have healthy
intimacy with an overdependent person because there is no give and take. Your children
could be parasites sucking you dry of everything you have intellectually, emotionally and
physically. You get nothing in return except the "good feelings" of doing
something for your children. You get no real healthy nurturing, rather you feel the weight
of your children on your shoulders, neck and back. You give and give of yourself to
address the needs of your children and you have nothing left to give to yourself. The
rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "It is
unhealthy for me to be so overly depended upon by my adolescent and young adult children.
There is a need for me to be clear what I am willing and not willing to do for my
children. There is a need for my children to become more independent from me so that I can
maintain my own sense of identity, worth and personhood. It would be better for me to let
go of the need to be needed than to allow my children to continue to have such dependency
on me. I am only responsible for taking care of myself. Human adults are responsible to
accept personal responsibility for their own lives. Supporting my children intellectually,
emotionally and physically where I have nothing left to give to myself is unhealthy and
not required in a healthy family and I will be ALERT to when I am doing this and try to
stop it immediately."
List of Hooks
7. Belief that Time will Make it Better
Maybe you get hooked by the belief that: "If I give it enough time
things will change to be the way I want them to be." You have waited a
long time to have a healthy intimate family life, you rationalize: "Don't give up on
it too soon." Since you are not sure how to have one or how one feels, you
rationalize that maybe what the family needs is more time to become more healthy and
intimate. You find yourself giving more and more of yourself and waiting longer and longer
for something good to happen and yet things never get better. You find that your wait goes
from being counted by days, weeks or months to years. Time passes and things really never
get better. What keeps hooking you are those fleeting moments when the family life
approximates what you would like it to be. These fleeting moments feel like centuries and
they are sufficient to keep you holding on. The rational message needed to establish
healthy boundaries from this hook is: "It is unhealthy for me to sacrifice large
portions of my life, invested in a family life which is not going anywhere. It is
unhealthy for me to hold on to the belief that things will change if they have not in one
or more years. It is OK to set time limits in my family life, such as: if in 3 months or 6
months things do not get to be intimately healthier then I or all of us will need to seek
professional help to work it out. It is OK to put time demands on my family life so that I
do not waste away my life waiting for something which in all probability will never
happen. It is not OK for me to blow out of proportion those fleeting moments in my family
life which make me believe that there is anything more in it than there really is."
List of Hooks
8. Belief that It Must be All of My Fault that there are Problems in the Family
Maybe you get hooked by the belief that: "If I change myself more
things will change to become more like I want them to be in our family life."
You rationalize that maybe the reason things are not getting healthier and more intimate
is because you need to change more to be the person your children want you to be. You feel
blamed and pointed out by your children as the reason why things are not healthier or more
intimate in your family. You find yourself having to defend yourself from attack from your
children for "not being good enough" or "doing enough" to make the
family's relationships work. You find yourself with a mounting list of expectations,
duties or responsibilities, given you by your children, which must be accomplished if the
family is ever to become what you want it to be. You find yourself needing to change the
ways you think, feel, act, dress, talk, look, eat, work, cook, entertain, have fun,
socialize, etc before you will be "good enough" for your family life with your
older children to work. You find that you will have to basically give up "who you
are" for "who your children want you to be" if your family life is ever to
work. You find yourself hooked by the challenge to change and you find yourself working
harder and harder to effect the change. What keeps you hooked is the affirmation and
reinforcement you get from your children when you effect a small change. The only problem
is that there is always something else identified which needs to be changed after the last
change has been accomplished. You are in a never ending loop of needing to change and
unfortunately there never seems to be an end to it. The rational message needed to
establish healthy boundaries for this hook is: "I have to be real to myself and be
the person I am rather than to be the person my children want me to be. It is not healthy
for me to give up my personhood and identity to please my children just to maintain our
family. I have a right to my own tastes, likes and dislikes, personal style, beliefs,
values, attitudes etc. I am in control of my own thinking, feelings and actions. I will
not allow my children to take control of my basic rights."
List of Hooks
9. Fear of Negative Outcomes for Children
Maybe you get hooked by the fear of the possible negative future outcome
if you are not deeply involved in taking care of and fixing your children. You may be
aware of the hooks which keep you boundary-less with your children. Yet you are afraid to
LET GO of the control you have with your children for fear something very negative might
happen to them. Maybe you fear that your children would go to jail, become: homeless,
hungry, jobless, poor, lonely, scared, or worse yet dead if you do not continue to fix and
take care of their needs. If your children are married you might fear they might get a
divorce, keep their kids away from you, turn their kids against you if you did not rescue,
help out or take care of their current "pressing need." This fear of the
possible negative future outcomes is so debilitating, that it feels better being sucked
dry intellectually, emotionally and physically than to LET GO and watch your children
suffer their feared awful negative outcome. You find yourself powerless to keep from doing
the healthy thing because of the intensity of this fear. You have become a prisoner in the
prison of this relationship. You have become a hostage of very powerful, needy, helpless,
manipulative "hostage takers." You are a possession of your children. You find
yourself doing all you are asked to insure that this possible negative dreaded outcome
does not happen. You are being emotionally blackmailed and may even have heard threats of
suicide if you say you want to change or get out of the relationship the way it is. The
rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "I am only
responsible for my life. No one can make me responsible for my older children's life. I
can choose to feel responsible for my children's life, but I cannot control or determine
the outcome of that life no matter how hard I try. I am powerless to control other people,
places, things and conditions. The only thing I can control is my own thinking, feeling
and actions. I need to hand my children's problems and needs and the outcomes of their
lives over to my Higher Power. I cannot carry my children's possible negative future
outcomes on my body or I will experience failed emotional and physical health. It is OK
for me to expect my children to accept personal responsibility for their own lives. It is
OK to require my children to accept the consequences for their own actions, choices and
decisions."
List of Hooks
10. Idealism or Fantasy Thinking
Maybe you are hooked by the fantasy or ideal about how it is supposed to be.
You have an ideal, dream or image in your mind of how a family is supposed to be or how it
should be and you have a difficult time accepting it the way it really is. You work hard
at making your family life approximate this idealized fantasy. You put a great deal of
time, energy and resources into making it become a reality. Unfortunately the more you
give and give, the fantasy never becomes the reality you are wishing for. The pull to make
the fantasy become real is very powerful. You seem brainwashed into believing that it is
possible even though all of your efforts have not made it happen, after years and years of
effort on your part. You get hooked by the delusion of the fulfillment of the fantasy and
live as if the fantasy has become reality. You are sometimes so out of touch with reality
that you appear to be psychotic to others when you discuss your family life. They know it
is not real and in some cases does not even closely approximate what you are saying. You
keep pouring your resources, energy and time into an empty pit which seems to never get
filled. You become obsessed into acting and looking like the fantasy is real. You get
hooked into waiting for the "big pay off" down the road if you just stick with
your children in their state of irresponsibility and/or over dependence. You remain loyal
to the belief that it will happen one day. "Wake up and get off the fantasy train
before it runs off the track!" you hear people saying but ignore their warnings and
keep blindly on, in search of your quest. The rational message needed to establish healthy
boundaries from this hook is: "I must accept reality the way it is rather than how I
want it to be. I will give my support system, in my recovery or spiritual renewal program,
permission to call me on it if I am hooked into a fantasy family life and losing myself in
it. I will work hard to stay reality based and keep myself from losing my objectivity and
contact with the way things really are. I will make every effort to accept my children the
way they are rather than how I want them to be. I am a human and subject to making
mistakes and failing and I will forgive myself if I make a mistake in my efforts to
establish a healthy intimate family life with my children. Once I give up the delusion
that things are the way they are supposed to be, I will work with my children to try to
correct the problems in our family life."
Use the tools in the Tools for Handling Control Issue (Messina,
J.J.,
Kendall/Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa, 1992) to get yourself further unhooked and detached from any
unhealthy aspects of your family life. Use the tools in the Tools for Personal Growth (Messina,
J.J., Kendall/Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa, 1992) to get yourself more rational in the face of the
hooks you experience in family and your relationships with others.
List of Hooks
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