When Carol solicited direction from her husband or me, she was secretly hoping for validation and support of her desires—without saying so. She asked what her husband thought about things not really to get his opinion, but to indirectly seek approval for what she wanted to do. Her husband, of course, took her requests at face value and gave his opinion, thinking he was being asked to contribute. Carol listened to his suggestions with resentment, feeling angry and victimized. She felt deeply misunderstood, as though he had steamrolled her. Why was everybody always running over her? she asked herself.
It was not unusual that Carol wanted to talk things over before making decisions. Soliciting advice and input promotes a feeling of harmony and closeness with the important people in our lives. Successful people who value others’ insights like to keep an open mind and listen to other ideas, but they have no intention of blindly following other people’s advice, and they definitely are not asking permission. Talking it out and hearing another viewpoint simply serves to clarify their thoughts and feelings on the matter. The point is that this style can be effectively used in the service of what will ultimately be an independent decision.
This was not what Carol was doing. She in no way enjoyed getting the advice she felt compelled to seek. Her compulsive need for permission frustrated both herself and others.
In Carol’s childhood, she had been punished for making mistakes and thinking for herself. She was the youngest in a family of tyrannical older siblings and impatient, easily angered and controlling parents. Assertiveness had come to feel dangerous to her, while indecisiveness signified safety. Carol cleverly succeeded in her life by inviting others to run it for her, and fortunately she usually picked the right people to tell her what to do. At a certain point in her late thirties, however, this lifelong trade-off between safety and self-fulfillment became intolerable. Depression hit when she got sick of being pushed around, but was too scared to do things differently.
Carol’s Next Step
Carol’s challenge was to break away from the child status she had assigned herself in her own mind. Exploring the painful subordination she had suffered as a child, we realized together that permission-seeking had been her best way of coping under the threatening circumstances of her childhood. Unfortunately, she had carried forward her “youngest child” mentality to all her adult relationships, including those with her husband, friends, and employers. She had such a charming way of going along with others that she was well liked and fit in easily. However, once a relationship reached a certain level of closeness, Carol began to tilt back and forth between avoidance and resentment as she struggled to find some way of getting her needs met without openly asserting herself with the other person.
Once she could see how she was unintentionally inviting just the kind of domination she had hated since early childhood, Carol had some new choices. She began to take small steps toward making decisions on her own, and she practiced determination in the face of her husband’s initial resistance. The results were amazing. Carol was astounded at how often she was able to have things her way once she stepped up and asked for it She saw her husband in a new light, no longer impressed by his pronouncements of authority, because she no longer accepted that he knew best every time. Carol had decided to give up her child status in her relationships. As she did so, her vulnerability to depression faded, and she began to discover new avenues of creativity and enjoyment for herself.
Permission-Seeking Means Never Having to Leave Home
Carol’s dilemma had many aspects to it, but at a primal level she was simply seeking the security of childhood. All of us can relate to that wish. Whether our childhood life was happy or miserable, we all had that peculiarly secure feeling that our fate at least was in the hands of grown-ups. We only had choices up to a point, and for most of us nobody was seriously expecting us to know best—because we were just children. Under those conditions, a person can only feel minimally responsible.
The enormity of adulthood responsibility can frighten us into giving up the joys of adult freedom. Like Carol, we can settle for self-denying depression rather than feeling the anxiety of adult responsibility and freedom. However, it is only in a grown-up frame of mind that we can pursue who we were meant to be.
Childhood should prepare us to become an adult in our society. Usually this involves the act of leaving home in some form, a circumstance that is honored around the world through many kinds of ceremonies and rituals. Another way of looking at the need for these rituals is that family members, with their deep loves and attachments, usually do not give dependency on each other up without a fight.
Buying the Car
I come by my awareness of permission-seeking honestly. I did not like to offend people and as a young adult I often went through the agonies of indecision we all suffer when I was about to take major steps forward. One such important moment occurred when I bought my first automobile. I was in my early twenties, still in graduate school, and while it would certainly be a convenience, a car was not yet a necessity—except that I wanted one. While home on summer break, I had an unparalleled opportunity to buy a great small car. All the conditions were right, and I even had the collateral for my first bank loan, a loan the bank was willing to delay payments on until I was out of school and employed. The whole thing fell right into my lap. Naturally I had to ask my mother what she thought.
In a cautious and objective tone of voice, my mother simply suggested that I consider where I was in my life—still in school, no money and no job—before I made such a decision. Objective or not, the feedback was clear: you are overstepping your bounds. To say I felt deflated would be a gross understatement, but at the same time I in no way lost my desire. Boiling in a pot of conflicting feelings, I broke down in tears. How was I ever going to do this when my mother thought it was a bad idea? It was a big step and I knew it; I was putting myself on the line for a debt I did not yet have the job to support. The other truth was that I was trusting myself to get the job, pay down the loan, and enjoy the car for a whole year before I had to start paying it off.
Perplexed by my tears, my mother reminded me that the decision, of course, was mine, and that she was merely giving me the feedback for which I had asked. This was true, but why did I feel such turmoil? Now I can see that what I was really asking for was her blessing, for her to side with my strivings for independence and responsibility. I needed her to firmly show she was in favor of my “growing up.” Getting her objective advice was a pale and secondary concern. Not being in touch with my real emotions at the time, all I could do was feel completely miserable and totally neurotic as I watched the car deal cool.
However, the part of me determined to have what I wanted continued to weasel toward a solution. I telephoned my friend, Peggy, who has since used her tough-minded heart to excel in a career of forensic psychology. To my credit, I called the one person I knew on this earth who had no trouble taking a stand. I dithered and obsessed into Peg’s patient ear, until she had finally heard enough. “Screw ‘em, Lindsay,” she said, “What you really want is to believe in yourself and buy the car.” And that is what I did.
Automobiles are often symbolic of our sense of control over our lives and where we want to go. They symbolize our readiness for freedom and express our belief about our place in the world. Most importantly and most basically, they literally take us away from home. How you feel about your vehicle, how it functions, and what it looks like can be fascinating symbols for how psychologically prepared you are to leave home, and how you feel about this separation.
The Envious and Bullying Parent
Ask yourself this question: who arzyou waiting for permission from to start your life? This is the person you are afraid will judge or abandon you. If it is hard to see it in those terms, then just ask yourself who has the real power and control in your family. That person is your particular psychological bully, the person you have given the authority to hold you bade.
It may be especially hard to think of our parents as bullies. After all, they only want what is best for us. But the unfortunate fact is that parenthood does not change anybody’s personality