working with parents who intrude in your private life

[Kerry]

"working with parents who intrude in your private life" --anonymous

Hi Anon: It’s a bit of a challenge for me to answer your question without bias because as a parent I have considerable experience (and many beliefs) about your topic. On the other hand, I hold that your post is/was an unconscious setup—that you are ready and willing to read the following.

As a parent, it was my responsibility to know everything my child did, wanted to do, or thought, up until age 18. As you can surmise the parents of the Columbine-rampaging teens operated from the same communication model used by your parents and friends and therefore, yourself. In communication-skills coaching, it's referred to as the adversarial communication model. In my household and among my friends the agreement is to communicate openly, honestly, and spontaneously, zero thoughts withheld.

Another of my responsibilities as a parent is/was to teach them how to manage me. In lay terms, it’s called manipulating/conning. The trick is to learn how to manipulate (to con [to convince, to control] your parents in a way that feels good to them, and of course, to you. We all have to learn how to manage (support) our managers and leaders. There’s a way to ask permission and there’s a way to present an ultimatum. My sense is that you have mastered the latter. For example: “Either you let me do as I want or I’ll make your life miserable.” The problem with ultimatums is that when delivered unilaterally, by either a young person or an adult, they are abusive. Your task is to learn how to create space for your parents to support you in having life work for you. Your curriculum is to master mutually satisfying communication.

To have life be the way you say you want you first have to acknowledge that you and your parents, friends and teachers, operate from the adversarial communication model. Acknowledging is the first step towards mastery for an alcoholic (hanging out in denial postpones mastery). With the model you and your folks use the non-verbalized agreement is to withhold certain thoughts, each his/her thoughts of choice from everyone, to not be totally honest, to deceive, to succeed at the expense of others, and to master the art of white lies. You are in the process of trying to make sense of this warped way of relating, trying to make sense of the hypocrisies all around you, and learning just how much unethicalness you can get away with, and live with, to succeed without getting put in jail.

Power is the ability to cause what’s happening to happen. You are stuck in trying to change your parents, instead of intending them to say what they say. You are also stuck in temper tantrum. You have an incomplete, a much earlier incident that didn’t turn out mutually satisfying. You are dramatizing your upset over that incident. Your parents were supposed to have taught you, through example, how to clear each night before going to sleep (to acknowledge all upsets, perpetrations, and withholds).

Because you don’t yet have the courage to move out away from the “tyrants” you are at effect of being controlled by them, and so you have no choice, none whatsoever, but to resist them. You have lost your ability to choose. You have become a whining puppet.

Here’s my advice: As ludicrous as it may sound I offer it because I don't have any sense that you're ready to intend advice that works. Put another way, I’m almost certain I can cause you to heed my advice. Keep thwarting your parents. Make life as miserable for them as possible. Be rude to them. Give them short curt answers. Give them stink-eye and pout a lot, it really makes them feel like failures. For sure they won’t be getting a nice night's sleep. Keep rebelling and trying to change them. Hide things from them, and develop your sneaky skills. If you really want to hurt and punish them get poor grades and misbehave in school, do something that will invalidate them as good parents and embarrass the hell out of them, like get involved with the police. Be sure to hang out with teens you know they won’t approve of.

I’m serious about all of this. If you’re going to do it anyway have the integrity, the courage, to do it openly and honestly, and masterfully? State it cleanly and clearly. "I am at war with you. I intend to make life a living hell for you. I will move out as soon as I can find a way. I will not engage in casual conversations with either of you until you both have completed 25 hours of therapy/counseling." The more lies and sneakiness, the more abusive you can choose to be to them, the sooner you will discover the effects, on you and the results you say you want in life. Most adults have still not realized the effects of their childhood out-integrities. Read Reunion Conversations. The game is to see if you can make it to 18 without damaging yourself too much. Oh, yes, I forgot. Latch on to a partner who communicates as abusively with his/her parents as do you, one who will support you in deceiving/abusing yours. Remember, “accidental” pregnancies are always consequences of deceit.

I’ll stop here because I can’t serve you if I don’t know the particulars—how, and with what issues, they are intruding.

I’ll close by saying that up until your question and my reply you have had no choice about this condition in your family. Just as your parents were taught the adversarial communication model so too were you programmed to behave this way. Now you can’t say you don’t know.

Do show your parents this reply.

Thanks so much for reaching out.

With Aloha,

Kerry

Last edited 9/17/22