Monday, January 10, 2011

CONFUSING CARING WITH CONTROL

Emotionally healthy people know themselves on an emotional level. They clearly can identify their own emotional reactions but also stay open to the fact that emotion can be easily hidden to oneself but clearly exposed to others. They learn to trust themselves with a grain of salt, using others reactions as the test of the real knowledge of themselves. If others respond differently than expected, they try to listen and learn.

One example of the potential problems with emotional awareness gets exposed between parents and children. For example, a parent will often set boundaries for their children with the belief that they are protecting the child from harm and acting in the child's best interest. Sometimes, the parent does not see their own fears that may be driving their actions.

I recently treated a father who would require his daughters to be home by 10 PM when out on a date. He would explain that only bad things happen after 10 PM and that he was trying to make sure they were safe. His daughters didn't buy it, but he would make them feel guilty for questioning his care for them. Truth is, he didn't want to worry about them while they were out and wanted to go to sleep. He justified his control for his own self-interest by presenting it as caring for their well-being. His daughters were angry about it, but were confused about their right to be angry. They couldn't tell if Daddy cared about them or about himself. They didn't know if they should listen to their anger or their guilt.

I have another case where a mom asked her college age son to keep her aware of his plans while home during Christmas vacation. The son goes to his friend's house, only to change plans and end up at his girlfriend's home. When his mother called him and found out that he was not where he said he would be, she got really mad at him, called him a liar, and told him to come home immediately. The son refused and a big fight ensued.
Mom's care for her son's well-being was certainly based on love for her son. Problem is that she is trying to control his behavior and using caring to hide her control. Her expectations for knowledge about her son's whereabouts was not reasonable. Most teenagers don't make plans. The plans develop spontaneously. Her son did not intentionally withhold information from his mom. His mom jumped to conclusions about why he did what he did. Their relationship suffered from the failure of the mom to know the real emotional base of her reactions and to discount her son's explanation.

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