Article: Distancing: Early Warning

[Harri]

I came across this article posted by David M. Allen M.D. on his Family Dysfunction and Mental Health Blog (I found it after poking around following a post of several other articles he wrote shared by Vanilla Sky).

Title:  :)istancing: Early Warning

He offers an interesting take on the often overwhelming demands some elderly people place on their adult kids.  In his view, the frequent and intrusive demands for help are actually an effort to distance them from their children.

"Both of the patients described above just assumed that their mothers were absurdly dependent and too crazy or stupid to realize that their “dependent,” behavior, by being extremely noxious, was in fact very close to driving the sons away from them completely. Of course, for this to be true the mothers would have to be extremely crazy or impossibly stupid. At least with these two patients, there was no evidence that their mothers were either.

In fact, all three of these mothers were sending a very mixed message: I badly want you to be here but I’m going to drive you so batty you will never want to come see me. When parents act in an obnoxious manner like this that pushes their adult children away, this is referred to as distancing behavior."

He describes two patterns in which this type of behavior occurs:
"In the first pattern... .the mothers have a dependency conflict which really stemed from a gender role conflict. The mothers were both bright, capable and ambitious women who had been raised in families that valued exactly none of those traits in females. Females were supposed to get married, raise a family, and be totally dependent on men. In today’s culture, such earlier mandates sometimes lead older females to acquiesce to male dominance while at the same time seethe with secret resentment over being infantilized.

The second pattern might be the one that applies to the Dear Abby letter writer. Parents who know they were abusive, even if they do not admit it, may secretly believe that their children are better off without them. Hence, they engage in distancing to push their children away, thereby protecting the children from themselves. However, the parents also secretly long to have a healthy connection with their children, so they cannot seem to bring themselves to just cut off all ties directly. Their own conflict causes them to give off the double message inherent in distancing behavior: come here but get the hell away from me. Or as the singer Pink so aptly put it, “Leave me alone, I’m lonely!"

I never thought of these behaviors in this way before.  I think he offers an interesting take on the unreasonable and often impossible demands some parents place on their adult children.  When I think of certain posters here I think the theory and description fits.  Good examples of push/pull behaviors by a parent on adult children?  How might this information change the way you respond to your parents demands?  Thoughts?

Full post here:  www.davidmallenmd.blogspot.com/2010/07/distancing-early-warning.html

[Mooberry]

The 2nd reason is interesting, and makes quite a bit of sense for my mom.  She genuinely thinks she's a piece if crap.  I also know that while she FOGs to avoid abandonment... .she actually hates when we are around all the time.  And I genuinely thinks she hates living with us, but is scared to death of abandonment.

[Turkish]

Maybe this isn't the "i hate you,  don't leave me" mentality, but kind of?

A pwBPD feels shame and undeserving of love.  I can imagine those who may be "borderline lite" may feel the same,  especially elderly people in their twilight years. Heck, I kind of feel it myself and on not BPD. I hope to never put my kids through this.