LETTING GO OF OUR ADULT CHILDREN
Chapter 5: Shifting Your Focus
Page 13
BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT
Continuation of Chapter 5 of Letting Go of Our Adult Children, in which you can learn how to begin turning your attention from your child to yourself.
A Time for Different Windows, Different Views
At this point you may have said "OUCH" and agreed that you are responsible for your own emotions. You may also continue feeling stuck. What to do? Time to get a new perspective.
When my clients are unable to see options other than the ones they've always seen, I tell them that their problem is fairly simple. They need to look through different windows. I tell them that they have been living, psychologically, in a house with windows on every side. Like most people, however, they have only looked out of the windows that face in one, or possibly two, directions. By restricting their view of the world to what can be seen through their favorite window(s), after many years they assume that view is the "accurate" one.
No window's perspective is wrong — but each is limited. Because very few people look through all available windows, and because different people, especially those in different generations, tend to look in different directions, it is not surprising that parents and their children have different points of view, different perspectives on who is right and wrong, and different ideas on how to resolve conflicts.
After our children turn eighteen, we are given a perfect opportunity to look through new windows — and in so doing, to change our outlook on life, redefine our identities, and re-evaluate our commitments and relationships.
For starters, we must now adjust to a family organization in which we are no longer focused primarily on raising children. Many family constellations must change as boundaries expand to include in-laws and grandchildren. And while the "empty nest syndrome" may pose transitional problems for some, there is increased freedom and independence for us as couples (and for single parents as well). Errant children merely add another element to the changes we must make at this time of life.
Today's mother of grown children has almost limitless freedom to develop relationships with the world outside the home, if she has not already done so. She is free to create a different ending to life, a different identity for herself from that which was available for her mother and grandmothers. On the other hand, fathers who kept their eyes only on the ladder of success, power, and achievement may now want to take advantage of this period in their lives to confront previously ignored issues of identity, intimacy, and commitment.
This time of life clearly provides an ideal opportunity to begin a journey of self-discovery. It is an essential journey if we are to be vibrant individuals in the last decades of our lives, even if we don't have problems with our children. Only those who are hopelessly locked on automatic pilot don't feel some pull to reappraise their life about the time their fiftieth or sixtieth birthday nears.
Those who engage in a midlife realignment may choose to attend seminars designed for that purpose. For anything from a fairly modest to a substantial fee, participants can examine the manner in which they have constructed their lives. They can look through new windows as they are led through exercises to explore where they have come from and where they are going, what they see as the meaning of life, or their need for intimacy and compassion. Out of this examination can come a new script that, while riskier than the one they've been using, can rejuvenate their lives.
If nothing else, the combination of reaching middle age (or older) and finally having children past the age of eighteen provides a perfect opportunity for creating the respite for quiet reflection we desperately needed when our children were young. Remember those days? In addition to long hours at work, we washed sticky kitchen floors and walls at the height of our child's reach, fixed broken bikes, shopped for groceries and school clothes, reviewed homework, monitored sibling rivalries, read bedtime stories, searched for lost shoes. We longed for a place where we could get away from it all once in a while.
Now that our children are no longer constantly underfoot, we have increased leisure time. Even if our children are over eighteen and still living at home, there is probably some time we can take for ourselves. We can finally get away and concentrate on issues of personal growth.
Of course, "getting away" doesn't necessarily mean we need to go on vacations or expensive seminars. We can easily create our own retreat center by selecting a place in or near our house that offers the peace and calm we need to open new windows to the world. It may be a rocking chair in the living room, a patio in the back yard, or a quiet meadow in a park or woods nearby. If our retreat has comfortable, pleasant surroundings, we are more likely to use it. And the more we use it, the more likely we are to be successful in learning how to let go with love as we shift focus from our child to ourselves.
Here in this special, private place we can contemplate, meditate, read, and just be to our heart's content. There is no one around for us to impress. We don't need to prove ourselves to anyone; we need to find ourselves.
Choose Realistic Goals and Then Reinforce Them
There is no shortcut, no magical path to understanding and accepting ourselves as parents, or as people. Changing the relationship with your child will involve hard work, creativity, strength, patience — and the awareness that you are doing the best you can. I suggest you give yourself a pat on the back for accepting the challenge to learn how to let go with love.
As you begin this journey, you may discover very quickly that some of the pain and pressure you have been under for much too long is beginning to lift. That is probably because letting go of the rope stretched across the family rift (or at least refraining from pulling on the rope) allows you to use that energy for more productive ventures. Now you can make progress in resolving some of those conflicts over values and lifestyle that had previously kept you engaged in a fruitless game of trying to get your child to meet your expectations.
Achieving complete relief — and getting where you want to go — is most probable if you set your sights on a specific goal.
Consider how good it would feel not to feel discomfort any longer when you think of your child; to be completely responsible for your own reactions to what your child does or did; and to live at peace with yourself, accepting who you are and who you have been without recrimination or guilt.
There are other goals you might aim for as well. For example, if it would relieve tension between you and your son, might you be willing to visit your son's church — something you have so far refused to do because he says you are going to hell for not believing as he does, or because you say the same thing about him? Could you anticipate that arguments between you and your daughter might not occur so frequently if you simply decided not to comment on her lifestyle?
Remember that your goal can only focus on changes you want to make. It is possible, of course, that if you change the way you relate to your daughter, she will change in response to your change. In fact, it is probable. But don't count on it.
After all, your family is made up of individuals who've learned to relate with one another over a long period of time. In other words, your family is a system. And systems often resist change.
You and each member in your family, has a niche (or more likely several niches) where each of you fits. Primary bread winner. Arranger of family get-togethers. The only one who can get Granddad to calm down when he gets loud and bossy. The one who buys all the presents for the children or balances the checkbook or makes certain reservations are made for vacation trips. You may not like a particular role you play, but until someone (most probably you) makes an effort to change that role, you will likely be stuck with that position for a very long time.
What happens when someone decides to stop playing the role he or she had previously been assigned? Let me use our family as an example. I am extremely glad my husband is in charge of car maintenance. Since I am not mechanically minded and don't understand how cars work, a repair person could talk me into repairs I didn't need. But suppose Bob decided he was tired of taking care of the cars and announced that starting immediately I had to be responsible for my own car? At first I'd give him my best arguments, talk about my lack of aptitude and all of that. I would definitely plead with him to change his mind! If he still refused — and if I wanted to have a car that wasn't going to break down frequently — I would learn a heck of a lot more about motors than I currently know, or find a repair shop I completely trusted. I might grumble and complain, but I'd do it.
So it is very possible that if you decide to act differently toward your child, your child will make adjustments because of your new behavior. For example, imagine that one of the problems you have with your son, Joe, is that you believe he is not very mature. There are many things that bug you about his lack of responsibility, but a frequently frustrating conflict arises over his late arrival to family events. Everyone knows he's going to be late, so they've gotten into the habit of arranging the dinner, or the highlight of the gathering, to accommodate his late arrival. Every time that happens, you are reminded of his inconsideration of the needs of others. You get hot under the collar, but so far you haven't said much and what you have said has fallen on deaf ears.
Now, however, you decide to stop being controlled by Joe's perpetually late arrivals.
You begin by setting a specific goal for yourself. For instance, "I will not wait dinner until Joe arrives" or, "If we are leaving for Aunt Jane's and Joe has agreed to come with us, I will drive away from the house at the time we agreed to leave, even if Joe isn't there." What might Joe do in reaction to this new behavior of yours? He might complain that you are being overly demanding and aren't willing to be tolerant of his easygoing approach to life — or he might start showing up earlier. How he will change in reaction to the changes in your behavior is not under your control. Therefore, altering his behavior should not be a part of your goal statement.
Establish your goal as something tangible. A real possibility. Not a vague hope that things will somehow get better. Although you may not be able to be as specific as the statements above, you can, nevertheless, state your goal in terms that include your primary intention to act differently, such as, "I will remain calm when disagreeing with my son." Or your goal could be, "I will not ask my daughter to change her behavior, even though I strongly disagree with her lifestyle."
Of course, like New Year's resolutions that fade with the last notes of Old Lang Syne, the pressure of old habits can erode your intention to change. One way to prevent this from happening is to write your goal on several pieces of paper. Carry your goal with you in your wallet, put it on the refrigerator, stand it against a picture on your bedroom dresser, tape it to the dashboard of your car. These simple slips of paper can remind you daily that you've decided to stop pulling the rope and build some bridges instead.
Another way you can reinforce your intention to reach your goal is to do a very simple exercise. Stand at one end of a long room. Imagine you can see yourself, as you will be after you've made the changes you want to make, near the wall opposite you. Create an image of yourself feeling calm and serene. You may also want to picture your child standing near you, doing what he generally does that causes you to reach for the rope. Now imagine that you can be near him without getting hooked.
In other words, imagine that you have worked on the Velcro issues that previously would have caused you to react negatively and that you can now be near him, or think of him, without that automatic negative response. Be careful that you do not picture your child as having significantly changed his or her behavior, for that is something that may or may not happen.
As the exercise continues, you will walk four times across the room toward the image of your goal. Each time — keeping firmly in mind the image of what your life will be like in the future — you will say, preferably out loud, something slightly different. As you move closer each time to your projected goal, and as you use different words, you will likely notice a shift in your body — a shift not unlike what your body experiences when you hear someone express different degrees of affection in the statements, "I guess you're okay," "I think you're really okay," "I like you," and "I love you."
The first time you move slowly toward your goal's image, say, "I wish I could reach my goal of remaining calm when my son disagrees with me (or whatever your specific goal is). Or, I hope I can reach my goal of. . . ." Stop every step or two and repeat the statement.
Come back to where you started and again slowly move toward your goal's image. This time say, "I must reach my goal of. . . ."
The third time you repeat the process while saying, "I want to reach my goal of. . . ."
And the last time you say, "I will reach my goal of. . . ."
This exercise is designed to help you discover that wishing and hoping are passive and have little power to effect change. Thinking you must or should do something is also without significant impact because such directives have their origin outside ourselves: you can only be successful, in the long run, if motivation is internal. And although wanting to change is a more powerful desire than the first two positions, it is still not as potent as declaring you will change.
Honesty is the Best Policy
In a world of perfection, power, and status, there are many individuals — parents and non-parents alike — who fear having their "failings" exposed, even to themselves. Others do not view themselves objectively for the opposite reason: their better side is hidden behind a veil of self-recrimination, low self-esteem, and guilt. The greatest tragedy in both these cases is not the failure to achieve an ideal but the failure to live life fully, enthusiastically, looking through all the windows available and opening oneself to learning the lessons of life.
Our defenses of clinging to perfection or failure are protections against those things we are afraid to face, including the inner dragons that imprison us in the limbo of disappointed parents. But the dragons that guard the path leading away from family conflict and into healing are strange critters. They can be stared down and defeated by the truly brave. And the truly brave are those who are willing to see themselves as they really are, with all their strengths and limitations!
When we accept the challenge to be honest and to stop paying attention to whether we are "better" or "worse" than our ideal, we can discover a powerful dynamic of healing. By permitting others to see our shortcomings and vulnerabilities, we allow them to accept us as we really are. In fact, our limitations make it more likely that others will warmly accept us. After all, it is hard to feel close to people who seem "perfect." And being accepted, being liked, is what we all basically desire.
The value of this perspective for disappointed parents is very simple: discovering we are loved despite our limitations, we can find it easier to accept the shortcoming of others (including our children).
In the privacy of your retreat, you can openly — and honestly — explore who you are at your best and at your worst, how you have changed over the years, and how you want to change now. Without pretense or defense, you can reflect on the goals you had for your children, how you attempted to shape their lives, how you were most effective as a parent, what you did least effectively. And you can begin to discover the Velcro that has entangled you unnecessarily in the details of your child's life.
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© Copyright 1994, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT, Reprinted with permission
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