Susan – Cycling Between Guilt and Resentment

The following is the analysis to my last blog post “Susan – Parent Pleasing to her own Detriment.”

Upon analysis of her behavior, Susan slowly realized that her relationship with her parents all these years was greatly affected by guilt. Her mother played the role of the victim and blamed both Susan and her father for having been the causes of her victimization. As a result, Susan felt an obligation to always make her mother happy, either by taking an adult role and getting involved in parental arguments that were impossible for her to solve, trying to act unrealistically “grown up” to set a “good” example for her siblings or stressing herself out about always getting that perfect 100%. When these things did not work out the way she ideally would want them to, her mother would become upset at her, and Susan would become depressed and feel like a complete failure.

Susan began to realize that she carried these childhood experiences forward into her adult life. She still felt like anything less than 100% was a complete failure and that if she was not perfect she was worthless. She realized that in order for her to feel successful she had to be perfect, but she acknowledged that perfection was a highly unrealistic goal. Susan came to realize that her procrastination and tendency to give up when things became too tough was a result of this striving for perfection, and a fear of failure (in her case to be perfect).

Susan realized that by allowing herself to become controlled by the guilt that her mother was inflicting on her, she was allowing herself to become the victim. She focused so much of her energy on making her parents happy, that she had no energy left to make herself happy. Susan came to realize that she could not live her life according to her parents unrealistic expectations, but that she had to learn to create her own expectations. This would be a hard task, but a very important one in order for Susan to start building up her personal confidence, and reduce her feelings of anxiety and depression.

Upon further analysis, Susan began to discover a self defeating belief that contributed to her unhappiness. Susan thought that she always had to be “perfect” and responsible to an unrealistic degree. She felt that she had to be perfect both to satisfy her parents desires, as well as to set the “correct” example for her siblings. Being self-indulgent and having fun was out of the question. When she had fun she would feel guilty and feel that she was acting irresponsibly, and therefore she was unable to enjoy herself. Her guilt over disappointing her parents by not always being responsible and getting perfect grades would drive her to be perfect. But then this push to always be perfect made her resentful, and this resentment drove her desire to have fun and not be “perfect.” However, when she would go out and have fun, she would feel guilty. These self-defeating thoughts and feelings resulted in a self-defeating cycle with Susan cycling between guilt and resentment, and hence the two behaviors that went along with them, in her case acting “perfect” versus having fun and not being “perfect.” Because of her self-defeating belief, studying and having fun could never be in balance. Once Susan identified this self-defeating belief, and recognized its influence on her behavior, she was slowly able to break free of its influence and enjoy herself both in study and in social situations.

Susan – Parent Pleaser to her own Detriment

I’ve spoken about guilt in many of my posts.   Now I’m going to present you with the experience of a client of mine and I would like you to analyze it.  Please post any of your thoughts and in my next blog post, I will let you know the results that came out of my therapy work with her.

Susan came into my office to deal with feelings of depression and anxiety.   She was in college and couldn’t focus on her work. Although she was smart, she felt intimidated by all the people around her who she felt were smarter.  She wanted to do well, but with all the other smart people around, she felt that she would not be able to do well enough.  Susan placed very high expectations on herself, and felt that if she got anything less than straight A’s she was a failure, but she also felt that if she completely ignored her social life she was a complete ‘loser.’  She had no idea how to balance her academic and social life.  Her social life started to take over and her grades quickly dropped. Susan had no idea what to do.   She told me that when she tried to focus on her studies, she would get anxious and the only thing she could do to relieve that anxiety is go out with friends.   But when she would go out with her friends she would feel depressed about the fact that she was not doing well academically, and would feel that she was a disappointment both to herself and to her parents.

As a child, Susan grew up in a difficult home.  Her parents were always arguing and very often blamed her for their arguments.  She never knew whose side to take in the argument and was torn between supporting her mother or her father.  Susan’s father was not around much when Susan was growing up, and therefore her strongest parental relationship was with her mother.  Her mother would often complain to her about what a horrible man her father was, and how miserable she was because she was married to him.   Susan empathized with her mother and felt horrible for her.  How could her father be such a horrible man?  How could he be so bad to such a seemingly innocent person such as her mother?

Susan grew to hate her father.   She began to take her mother’s side in all arguments and would many times come to her mother’s defense when her parents would begin fighting.   Although Susan’s mother did not stop accusing Susan of being the cause of the arguments, Susan still felt compelled to side with her mother.  She felt so hurt by her mother’s comments, but at the same time felt that she needed to defend her mother against her seemingly worse father.   Every time her parents would fight, Susan would get in the middle.  She told me that she made it her mission to help them get past their problems and to bring peace to her home, but that every time she tried she would fail.  And every time she would fail, she would feel horrible.  She became depressed, feeling that she was a complete failure.

Susan’s parents also had very high expectations of her.   She recalled that a 90 on an exam was never good enough.  And if anyone in the class got a higher grade than her, her parents would always say to her, “Well why was so and so able to get that grade and you weren’t?  You probably didn’t study hard enough.”   In addition, being the oldest, Susan was expected to always be responsible for her two younger siblings, as well as to always set the right example for them.  Even as a young child, doing normal things that young children do, Susan’s parents would criticize her for setting a bad example for her siblings, and therefore if her siblings did something wrong she was the one who got punished.  They considered it her fault.

Susan felt like there was nothing she could do to make her parents happy, but that did not stop her from continuing to try to please them.  However, her continuous attempts always ended the same way: her parents were never satisfied and she felt like a failure.  So why did she keep going out of her way to try make them happy?  This behavior was making her miserable, so why was she continuing this seemingly self-defeating behavior?  Let me know what you think, and in my next post I will let you know what Susan came to realize in our therapy work together.

Stop being the Victim. Unleash your inner Force and Achieve all of Life’s Possibilities.

Inside all of us is an inborn force pushing us to develop our talents and to become as strong as possible.  This force helps us leave our nest and spurs us on to become successful.  Because this force within us is so strong, there’s no good reason to limit ourselves and not achieve life’s possibilities.  Or so it may seem.

But actually there is a reason.  When a parent or sibling’s extreme behaviors persist for a long time, children develop destructive patterns, and these destructive patterns can often last throughout adulthood.

“My father was an alcoholic.”  “I was poor.”  “I was neglected.”  Isn’t that sad?  Don’t you feel sorry for me?  Please pay attention to me.  Does this sound familiar?  Maybe you know someone who plays the victim in order to get through life, or maybe you yourself have played the victim to your parents role of victimizer.

Some people say that criticizing parents isn’t justified, that people who criticize their parents have exaggerated fantasies about their childhood suffering.  They say it’s done in order to get attention of sympathy or in order to avoid adult responsibilities.  There are those that argue that the past isn’t important, that all that’s necessary for change is that we change our behavior, that we be strong, use willpower, follow someone else’s positive example, and think positively.

If you really think about it, does this make any sense?  No!  Do you honestly know anyone who doesn’t want to be happy, successful or fulfilled?  Sure, there are people who play the victim in order to get attention or to avoid responsibility, and yes they are doing it in response to damaging family experiences of the past.  But not all of us relive our childhood pain in order to play the victim.  Why should a suffering child cease to feel pain just because he or she has become an adult?  This is just not the way we are wired.  Our past does follow us into our future.

So clearly these attention seeking behaviors such as whining and complaining are annoying.  And clearly they are not effective.  So why would a person go out of his or her way to get attention and avoid responsibility by being ineffective and by annoying people?  Given the choice, they wouldn’t.  But unfortunately, they weren’t given the choice.  When children experience mistreatment, they blame themselves and suffer.  They suffer as children, and they suffer as adults.

As adults, the self-defeating motivations behind these behaviors are unconscious.  But recognizing these self-defeating motivations is an important part of overcoming your limitations and achieving your life’s goals.  So how do you know what these self-defeating motivations are if they are hidden from your consciousness?  By observing the results of the flawed behavior you exhibit – your self-defeating patterns.  Remember accommodation, rebellion and mimicking.

Now think about yourself.  Which of these self-defeating behaviors do you exhibit either with your parents or in interactions with others in your life?  Maybe you exhibit a combination of these behaviors.  Now what could be the motivations behind these behaviors?  We spoke about guilt as a huge motivator.  What other motivations could be causing your behaviors?

If you have any questions or comments about this post, please post them and I will get back to you.