Exploring Mechanisms You Developed to Survive Your Family -
Accommodation
You developed mechanisms of accommodations, rebellion, and
mimicry to survive growing up in your family. Let's look first
at accommodation.
ACCOMMODATION--AND SUCCESS
Do you know people who can't enjoy any success they have in
their career? Does it not make any sense to you when you see
them unable to bask in the light of their achievements? It may
make sense if you understood their family life growing up. Here
is one example: a parent who lived through the children's
accomplishments, and needed for them to be perfect in everything
they did. And so, good grades were never good enough. What would
a 90 percent on a test ensure? Endless criticism, a clutching of
the chest in disbelief, and bitter complains.
And what would the child's response be to all of this? The
belief that if she weren't perfect, she'd ruin her parents'
life. What behaviors would it cause in such children? They'd
become driven, feeling that no matter how much they achieved, it
was never enough. Where would that lead? To the inability to
enjoy any achievement, to never be able to relax, have fun, and
do any activity for the pleasure of it because to do so would
make them feel guilty. Unconsciously, they assume that their
parent will feel devastated if they're not always seeking to
achieve more. And more and more.
ACCOMMODATION--AND RELATIONSHIPS
Does any people you know, friends perhaps, have trouble getting
close to someone they're strongly attracted to? Looked at from
the outside in, it may not make a lot of sense, but looked at
from the inside, it probably does. What if a friend had a parent
who was extremely needy, who absolutely had to be in full
possession of your friend's love and attention? Your friend's
closeness to this parent was essential for the parent's
well-being, so much so that they he or she would resent your
friend's normal involvement with others. Sulking, acting
depressed and moody when your friend was happy or close to
anyone else (including teachers, grandparents, or friends) were
well within the repertoire of this parent's behavior whenever
your friend was spending time with others. Finding fault with
anyone your friend valued was another sign that the parent felt
wounded by the child. What was the effect of all of this on your
friend? An obligation to change his or her personality just to
maintain a relationship to the parent: staying tied to the apron
strings, complimenting the parent all the time, showing extra
affection, spending less time with friends. All are possible
coping mechanisms developed by your friend to accommodate this
parent's possessive need for him or her. "Loyalty" will become a
high priority moral value in your friend's mind and it will have
a powerful influence throughout his or her life. And the effect
of this particular accommodation on future relationships Will be
detrimental at best, dysfunctional at worst. Your friend will
either feel uncomfortable pursuing friends for fear of being
disloyal to his parent, or he'll worry that anyone he's
seriously involved with will require undue loyalty and devotion
from him. This is how accommodation can start and it is also
the start of some people's self-defeating motivations. In the
case study below, we'll see how one man's accommodation affected
his ability to succeed in business and in relationships.
YOU'RE STUCK
Did you ever have a terribly painful blind date--one that,
thankfully, only lasted a short time? Now think about your
childhood situation. You're stuck with your parents and siblings
for years and years, no matter what. Now think of the
accumulated resentment building up after years of accommodating
behaviors that you know shifted you away from some of your
normal qualities and goals. To relieve this resentment, you may
have become an accommodator. Another route you could have taken
was rebellion. What does that look like and how does it show up
in your life? Let's see.
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).