Free If You Had Controlling Parents by Dan Neuharth

first in her life,” Shirley said. Yet her mother’s devotion to Jesus left Shirley feeling considerably less than a priority. As Shirley grew older, her mother viewed her daughter’s innocent questions about religion as blasphemy. Once, while in her teens, Shirley brought home library books on witchcraft. Her mother immediately summoned church friends for an emergency exorcism: “I had to kneel for four hours. They were shouting, ‘Do you love Jesus?’ ‘Are you washed in the love of Jesus?’ Finally I fainted because of no food or water and they said, ‘Praise God! The demons have left her. This child has healed.’”
    While her mother inundated Shirley with zealotry, her alcoholic, Abusing father cowed Shirley with threats and violence. Once, during a slumber party with two girlfriends, she and her guests were awakened at two A.M. by shouting from her parents’ bedroom: “My mother was quoting Bible verses and screaming, ‘Satan, get thee behind me.’ My father was throwing change at her, yelling, ‘Do I have to pay for it?’ Then he put his fist through the wall. I never asked friends over after that.”
    Today Shirley struggles with the lasting effects of her upbringing: depression, distrust of others, and sensitivity to criticism: “When people criticize or get angry with me, I melt down. Sometimes I’ll believe them and buy whatever they say. Other times I’ll just go off and cry.
    â€œI feel like a concentration camp survivor,” Shirley adds. “I was at my parents’ mercy and they didn’t have any.”
    Military Families
    While some Cultlike parents use religion to know the “truth,” others find certainty in institutions that allow them to know the “rules.” The military, with its authoritarian structure and regulations, can attract Cultlike parents searching for a way in which to order their lives.
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    Caitlin, a forty-one-year-old teacher, recalls that as kids she and her six siblings were rousted out of bed on Saturdays at six A.M. by her father, a navy officer. The sleepy-eyed children were trotted to the kitchen and shown the “watch bill” of chores for the week. Military-style standards prevailed. Beds had to have hospital corners and bounce a dime. Garbage-can liners were to be folded and creased square at the corners. Silverware was organized in the dishwasher by implement. Milk was stored in a pitcher, never in the milk carton; butter on a plate, never in the carton .
    Caitlin’s Cultlike, Perfectionistic mother would answer her children only if addressed by the words, “Mom, may I speak?” Her father would ignore any statement lacking the prefaces “Father,” “Dad,” or “Sir .”
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    Cultlike parents zealously adhere to rigid behaviors because they are troubled by the gray areas of existence. Knowing the rules allows them to view life in right-or-wrong, all-or-nothing terms. Furthermore, many controlling parents are not adept at communicating about personal issues and feelings. “In our family we never said, ‘Let’s talk things out,’” one woman told me. “‘I don’t understand’ and ‘Why?’ were not a part of our vocabulary.”
    Among those I interviewed from Cultlike families, tension and theimpending threat of physical or emotional violence pervaded their lives. “Our home was like the lid on a boiling pot,” says Caitlin. But in true military fashion, the children were supposed to be stoic when punished: “You were the scourge of the earth if you cried. Crying was a sign of weakness.”
    Many controlling parents, not just Cultlike parents, interpret children’s questions or lack of instant compliance as a deliberate challenge to their authority. They cannot see that in many cases their children are simply afraid, unsure, or preoccupied. When they feel deliberately