When people confront an ocean of need, they feel anxiety. Some run
for their lives; others jump in and drown. Both reactions are rooted
in the inability to stay separate and set limits in a healthy way
that balances generosity with self-preservation.
After my mother had a series of small strokes and was increasingly
unable to take care of herself, I felt overwhelmed by her neediness.
She was going to a dozen different doctors who were not
communicating with each other; she was losing weight and constantly
complaining of nausea; she had stains on her clothes; she couldn’t
remember her keys or that she had just found them; she couldn’t
remember if she had sent her rent check or not; she couldn’t
remember if she had taken her medication or not; and she couldn’t
remember my husband’s name or my birthday. She called me all the
time—to ask me the same questions over and over. My sister said it
was my mother’s anxiety; she often felt angry toward her. My sister
is the oldest child and her anxiety about drowning in my mother’s
neediness made her feel so overwhelmed that she needed to withdraw
from my mother. She could hardly bear to visit her. In addition, my
brother rarely visited and never indicated when he was going to. I
felt guilty and frightened. What could I do? I felt that my only
alternatives were doing nothing at all or letting her take me over
(i.e., live in my house; change my relationship with my husband and
my children; interfere with my work, my friends, and my routines). I
had to face a new phase in my own development. For a long time I
dealt with my mother by trying to keep my distance. During high
school and college I imagined whom I would go to for help if I got
pregnant—my mother was definitely out. When I was in college I had
mononucleosis and I was in the university hospital. I did not tell
my mother. As a young married woman, I never talked to her about
anything personal that mattered to me. It was easier to report on
facts of my children’s lives (i.e., Jason has a cold or Matthew got
an A on his English paper) or day-to-day activities and events in my
life (i.e., I spoke to my cousin or I went to the dentist). My
withdrawal from my mother was a result of my insecure attachment to
her—and that remained inside of me, sometimes consciously and
sometimes unconsciously.
The early insecure attachment creates a wish to be comforted and a
wish to run away from danger. The problem is that the person from
whom you want comfort and the person who is dangerous is the same
person—that creates an often life-long conflict. The mother you
yearn for is the mother you withdraw from; the mother you are afraid
of is the mother you cling to. Children with school phobias offer a
good example of this paradox—the inability to leave home is often a
response to a perceived threat from the parents. Thus withdrawal and
clinging are two different anxiety responses resulting from an
insecure early attachment to the mother.
Ever since I returned to New York from college in California at age
twenty-one, I took a minimalist approach to seeing my mother. I saw
her and spoke to her as little as possible. My sister enjoyed
shopping with her, but I never did. I never felt good about myself
in my mother’s presence because I was always struggling with
yearning for her to be what she could never be and being angry with
her for being unable to be that. I guess what I wanted her to be was
a mother with whom I could feel like a good daughter. But that was
not possible.
About two years ago I realized that my mother could not take care of
herself. She forgot to make entries in her checkbook, although she
had been a crackerjack bookkeeper when I was a girl. She could add a
long list of numbers in her head and never lose track of the total.
Now she couldn’t figure out where to enter the amount of the check.
Her clothes were dirty and she was steadily losing weight. I had
been denying it. But I couldn’t deny it any longer. I had to find
some way of helping my mother cope with living while maintaining my
own life—bringing a cup to relieve some of her feeling of
helplessness, but not drowning in her neediness.
Setting limits is difficult for most people—it’s a common problem in
many areas of our life, not just caregiving. It’s hard to say “no”
or “enough” without feeling guilty. It’s difficult to tell a friend
she can’t borrow money or tell your son he can’t have another toy he
can’t live without. I had a terrible time toilet training my older
son. One of my friends used to console me by saying: “Don’t worry,
by the time he gets married he’ll be toilet trained.” The more you
project your own neediness on to someone else and then identify with
the person to whom you are saying “no,” the harder it is to do it
without feeling bad about yourself. I would start off feeling like a
separate adult and saying: “Okay, now you’re going to use the
toilet.” As soon as Matthew started yelling that he didn’t want to
use the toilet, I would start identifying with him. How can I force
him to do what he doesn’t want to do? I’ll be acting like my mother.
I’ll wait until he wants to use the potty. Except he never got to
that point. He was three years old and they wouldn’t let him into
nursery school in diapers so I went to a child psychologist for
help. She said: “Your son does not have a problem. You do; you are
not like your mother. You can tell him he is going to wear
underpants and throw out his diapers and he will be fine.” I
followed her advice and he never had an accident again. She made it
clear to me that the problem was all mine. I was so afraid of being
like my mother that I couldn’t set limits and stick to them. I
couldn’t distinguish between being sadistic and helping my son
master a developmental task that would make him feel better about
himself.
If we feel needy and deprived because we have an insecure internal
attachment to our early mother then it is hard to say “no” or
“enough” to somebody else. People who have difficulty saying “no”
often get angry at people who ask them for anything. After all,
asking them for something sets off their conflict. Thus, setting
limits with needy elderly parents can be extremely difficult if we
are needy ourselves—which we usually are if we had needy parents. We
vacillate back and forth between identifying with their neediness
and feeling we have to save them; and feeling angry at them for
needing so much from us and wanting to run away so that we do not
drown. Adults with a secure attachment do not feel “needy”—or are
able to work their way out of that feeling fairly quickly. They have
needs, of course, but they are not “needy.” The feeling of being
needy is a feeling of desperation for someone else to save you and
to provide sustenance. In addition, it easily gets projected on to
other people so it’s had to stay clearly separate. Caregivers who
have an internal sense of secure attachment have secure boundaries
and have less difficulty saying “no” or “enough” in a way that does
not necessitate hitting the other person over the head with it or
running away from a person who is needy. They can say: “I wish I was
able to do that for you, but unfortunately I’m not.” But that does
not come naturally for many of us. We have to remind ourselves that
when we confront an ocean of need, all we need to do is bring a cup.
Roberta Satow is Chairperson of the
Department of Sociology at Brooklyn College and a practicing
psychotherapist in New York City. She has written numerous articles
on sociological and psychoanalytic subjects that have appeared in
numerous journals and magazines such as Partisan Review and
Psychology Today. This article is an excerpt from her new book:
Doing the Right Thing: Taking Care of Your Elderly Parents Even if
They Didn’t Take Care of You (Jeremy Tarcher Publishers,2005).
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