Free Healing Your Emotional Self by Beverly Engel

referred to by professionals as hypervigilant , meaning they develop extraordinary abilities to notice any warning signs of an impending attack. They learn to recognize subtle changes in the facial expressions and voice and body language of others as signals of anger, intoxication, dissociation, or sexual arousal. When they sense danger, they attempt to protect themselves by either avoiding or placating the other person. In addition, children with a tyrannical parent usually carry around a great deal of repressed anger—repressed because they cannot afford to admit they have it, much less risk expressing it.

    The Perfectionistic Parent
    Parental Mirror: “You Are Never Good Enough”

    Perfectionistic parents are often driven by a fear of disorder, unclean- liness, or flaws. They tend to put a great value on appearances, status, and material possessions, or on what others will think. Many feel strongly that anything short of perfection is failure. Consequently, they are also domineering and tyrannical when it comes to what they expect from their children.
    Rod’s father expected him to excel in everything he attempted. During high school and college, his father insisted he bring home all As, be class president every year, and shine on the football field. Needless to say, this was a heavy burden. Whenever Rod made a mis- take, his father would always say to him, “Get on the stick, Wilson.” Whenever he complained about being tired or showed any weakness, his father would say, “There’s no room for whiners at the top.”
    By the time Rod graduated from college, he was emotionally numb. “I pushed myself so hard all my life that I don’t even know who I am. When I look in the mirror I don’t even recognize who I see.”
    We’ve all heard of perfectionistic parents who push their children to excel in a particular sport, in academics, or in other endeavors. These children are given the powerful message (sometimes spoken, often unspoken) that they only have value if they perform to their par- ents’ satisfaction. Oftentimes this is because the parent is living through his child, trying to make up for his own lost dreams.
    Perfectionistic parents tend to have disdain for flaws of any kind. This makes them especially critical of their children’s appearance. “My mother was always concerned about the way I looked,” my client Veronica told me. “She hated my teeth, which were crooked like my father’s, so she taught me how to smile without showing my teeth. She couldn’t wait until I was old enough to get braces, but even then she seemed to be embarrassed by the fact that I had to wear them.”
    Veronica’s mother’s concern about her appearance understandably made her very self-conscious. “I thought I was a real ugly duckling,” she confided. “I thought everyone had the same reaction to my teeth and later my braces as my mother did—that they couldn’t stand to look at me. Today, even though I have nice straight teeth, I still smile with my mouth closed and put my hand in front of my mouth a lot.”

    The Mirror Perfectionistic Parents Hold Up to Their Children
    Instead of receiving encouragement and support from their parents, children of perfectionistic parents tend to receive only criticism, demands, and sometimes ridicule. Consequently, they often grow up feeling inadequate, incapable, awkward, or inept. Since they receive little praise or constructive guidance, their self-esteem is usually very low, and they have little faith in their own abilities. They are often over- whelmed with anxiety whenever they have to perform in any way, and this sets them up for failure. In addition, people raised by perfection- istic parents tend to suffer from any or all of the following problems:
A sense that they are valued for what they do instead of for who they are ( doing versus being )
A tendency to be self-critical, never satisfied with themselves or their performance
A tendency to doubt themselves and to