Free Healing Your Emotional Self by Beverly Engel Page A

second-guess
An inability to identify and express their emotions
Compulsive behaviors (extreme dieting, overexercising, exces- sive cleaning)
Depression
    Hypercritical, Shaming Parents
    Parental Mirror: “You Are Bad” or “You Are Unacceptable”
    Stephen grew up feeling that both his parents didn’t like him very much. “Our home was a very cold place,” Stephen shared with me during our first session. “My mother didn’t want to spend time with me. She said I reminded her of my father—that I was stubborn and opinionated just like he was. She always looked at me with disdain, as if to say, ‘You’re so miserable I don’t want to be around you.’ ” His ear- liest memory is of being in a crib, screaming at the top of his lungs. He felt he had done something wrong and was being punished for it.
    His father was a strict disciplinarian, and Stephen always seemed to be in trouble with him. He often shamed Stephen because Stephen didn’t meet his expectations. “I tried to be perfect so I wouldn’t disap- point my dad and so I wouldn’t get punished, but no matter how hard I tried I never made the mark.”
    Stephen was a bed-wetter until age ten and felt a lot of shame about it. His mother constantly complained about having to wash his sheets. Eventually, Stephen began to view himself in the same way his parents did—as a bad kid. “Who I was, wasn’t acceptable.” His mother also became verbally and physically abusive toward him, especially after she and his father got a divorce. “She used to call me a loser. When my dad left it became obvious that she didn’t want anything to do with me.” The last time his mother beat him, he ran away from home and never returned. He was fifteen. He ended up moving in with some older boys he had befriended.
    “I always felt like I was under my parents’ thumb when I was at home. With my friends I felt freedom for the first time in my life. I didn’t need a mother or a father—I decided I’d raise myself.”
    And that he did. He became very demanding of himself. He did well in his last years of high school and even went on to college, pay- ing for his tuition by working at a grocery store as a bag boy. Stephen built a fortress around himself to prevent himself from ever getting hurt again.
    When I met Stephen he couldn’t cry, even though his wife was
    threatening to leave him. “I don’t know why my wife married me in the first place. I’m just no good,” he told me at our first session. The sad truth was that Stephen had pushed his wife away because he was so afraid of losing her and so convinced that he was not worthy of her.

    How Parents Shame Their Children
    Sometimes parents deliberately shame their children into minding without realizing the disruptive impact shame can have on the child’s sense of self. Statements such as “You should be ashamed of yourself” or “Shame on you” are obvious examples. Yet, because these kinds of statements are overtly shaming, they are actually easier for the child to defend against than more subtle forms of shaming such as contempt, humiliation and public shaming. For example, behavior that is accept- able at home is suddenly seen by parents as bad when they are in pub- lic. Or a parent seems to be ashamed because a child is not adhering to certain social norms that he is completely unaware of. Such com- ments as “Stop that, you’re embarrassing me in front of everyone” not only cause a child to feel exposed, judged, and ashamed but also bur- den him with his parents’ shame as well.
    There are many ways that parents shame their children. These include belittling, blaming, contempt, humiliation, and disabling expectations:
Belittling. Comments such as “You’re too old to want to be held” or “You’re just a crybaby” are horribly humiliating to a child. When a parent makes a negative comparison between his child and another, such as, “Why can’t you act like Tommy? Tommy isn’t a crybaby,” it