Susan Forward

harmful behaviors you’ve learned from her and the pain you’ve carried with you for so long are not a permanent legacy. As I will remind you throughout this book, despite what she’s told you, you are the healthy one. You can change.

She holds out promise and praise that disappear when you prove to have a mind of your own. And she tries to mold you by making you feel guilty if you don’t go along with her wishes and needs.

To an engulfing mother, love means:

• You are my everything, and that makes you responsible for my happiness.

• You can’t live without me, and I can’t live without you.

• You are not allowed to have a life that doesn’t involve me.

• You are not allowed to keep any secrets from me.

• You must never love anyone more than you love me.

• If you don’t want what I want, it means you don’t love me.

• “No” means you don’t love me.

If you had an enmeshing mother, you may carry with you a great fear of abandonment or separation. You may be overly clingy with partners or your own children. You may hold yourself back because you lack confidence in your own abilities and resilience. And you may know precisely how to make your mother happy but struggle to satisfy your own soul.

The child fails and becomes the scapegoat for family problems. Once again, the child is saddled with the blame.

Paul’s stepfather had implanted in Paul the need to be perfect—Perfectionism. Paul’s fear of failing to do things perfectly led him to postpone doing them—Procrastination. But the more Paul put things off, the more they overwhelmed him, and his snowballing fears eventually prevented him from doing anything at all—Paralysis.

Adult children of perfectionist parents have usually taken one of two paths. They’ve either driven themselves relentlessly to win parental love and approval, or they’ve rebelled to the point where they develop a fear of success

Joe expected the worst of others. He expected to be hurt and mistreated as he was in his childhood. So he encased himself in a suit of emotional armor. He wouldn’t let anyone get close to him. Unfortunately, that suit of armor proved to be more of an emotional prison than a protection.

Remember, your parents had parents too. A toxic family system is like a multicar pile-up on the freeway, causing damage generation after generation after generation. This system is not something that your parents invented; it is the result of the accumulated feelings, rules, interactions, and beliefs that have been handed down from your ancestors.

toxic parent’s beliefs about children, on the other hand, are almost always self-centered and self-serving. They believe things like, “children should respect their parents no matter what”; “there are only two ways to do things, my way and the wrong way”; or, “children should be seen but not heard.” These types of beliefs form the soil from which toxic parental behavior grows.