Exploring Mechanisms You Developed to Survive Your Family -
Rebellion
Rebellion (the Opposite of Accommodation)
You developed mechanisms of accommodation, rebellion, and
mimicry to survive growing up in your family. Let's look at
rebellion. What's another way of saying rebellion? Refusal to
comply with parental demands or needs and the restrictions they
impose. Yes, it's true that a certain amount of rebellion is
normal and healthy in the development of a child's independence
and control. But once again, when a parent's expectations are
extreme, that child will rebel against accommodating his or her
parents in order to fight their attempts to limit the normal
goals we set for ourselves. Children aren't usually able to
complain to their parents about how their parents' specific
behavior is spoiling their life. When was the last time you
heard a young daughter complaining to her father, "Dad, your
behavior is ruining my psychosocial development." Right: never.
So, rebellion, as a protest, is meant to signal, or communicate,
to parents that their actions are not just distressing, but they
need to stop--period. And that would be fine if not for one
problem: Parents have their own hidden self-defeating
motivations from their own childhoods. Do these cause them to
keep behaving badly? You bet it does. Does it also prevent them
from receiving their child's message in a mature way? Right
again. Ultimately, parents' unresolved childhood issues wind up
provoking them even more and the cycle of parent/child conflict
continues unchanged. Let's look at another case study. It's the
real-life story of Will, a stubborn man who used rebellion as a
way of acting out against his parents' demands.
WILL
Will was looking for more control. He was a wealthy businessman
who refused almost all requests made of him by his wife, Tracy.
Any time Tracy asked for, suggested, or requested something,
Will's response was always the same, "No!" Whether her
suggestion was important or meaningless, Will's negative
response never wavered. Why did he do this, despite the fact
that he was really provoking Tracy? Because Will was rebelling
against his strong impulses to accommodate others. A devastating
combination of parental traits created in Will a strong
inclination towards giving in to others. Let's look at his
father first. Authoritarian and pompous, he required Will to
accept his point of view and to give in to his orders, and if
Will didn't, his father would react angrily. Comments like,
"What's wrong with you?" "Why are you so thick headed?" "Listen
to me, I have years of experience and I know what I'm talking
about," dominated Will's childhood. Will's father needed to be
completely in charge, and although Will viewed that as a sign of
weakness, he still complied with the needs of his father to
maintain his father's position of authority and self-importance.
He did this by agreeing with and doing whatever his father
expected of him. Now, for his mother, Will was a confidant and
companion. Because her husband was uninterested in her (which
she confided to Will), Will felt obliged to cheer her up and
spend time with her. He did this so she wouldn't feel lonely or
unhappy. Pressure from both parents left Will unable to do what
made him happy. If he did, he felt he'd hurt his parents because
he wasn't focusing on their needs. And so, Will grew up feeling
that his role was to accommodate everyone else's wants. To make
himself feel that he was more in control of his life (and not be
the wimp who complied with everyone else's demands), Will,
without even being aware of it, developed a protective, stubborn
quality of automatically saying no to people's wishes, even if
they seemed reasonable. This was the opposite of Alex's way of
accommodating everyone. Will complained, when he came to see
me, that he and his wife fought all the time. He said he
couldn't stand Tracy because she was too demanding and critical
of him. Will had no awareness that his lifelong inclination to
give in to people, which we now know started back with his
parents, was behind his problem with Tracy. Any request from her
was viewed as dangerous because he (unconsciously) worried about
having to submit to her and become her servant. And the problem
wasn't just confined to his marriage, either. Every relationship
caused him anxiety about having to become a slave to the other
person's requests. Becoming more aware of the source of his
problem, Will began realizing that he equated reasonable
requests with the unpleasant demands of his parents. Therefore,
he wasn't able to rationally evaluate his wife's requests and
suggestions. Will gained understanding of his problem, and the
effect was an increasing relative comfort with saying no to
Tracy when he meant it and saying yes when that was the
appropriate response. Soon they began fighting less.
Disagreements now took on new meaning for Will. They no longer
served only the purpose of fighting against giving in. Now they
could also reflect his actual point of view.
NO RELIEF
When children fight against excessively accommodating the flaws
of their parents and siblings, they suffer so much guilt for
their rebellion that they resume accommodating in order to
relieve their guilt. Where does that leave them? Shifting back
and forth between two evils and never finding relief.
Excerpted from Self-Help for Smarties: Secret Success Codes for
Weight Loss, Love, Career and
Parenting(http://www.penmarin.com/proddetail.asp?prod=Gootnick2&f
rom=2) by Irwin Gootnick, M.D. (Penmarin Books
http://www.penmarin.com, May 2006).