Emotions and Control-
Learning To Allow Intimacy

By Eva M. Brown

When talking about health, we often assume that we're talking about physical health. However, mental illness has an enormous impact on both the emotionally ill person and their family. Growing up with a mentally ill parent often impacts children long into adulthood, affecting many areas of adult life. One of the areas that is frequently quite difficult for "ACMIs" (adult children of the mentally ill) is the ability to form satisfying relationships. This chapter explores some of the most common patterns preventing satisfying relationships.

"I learned how to appease. And, for the most part, I could appease my mother, but it was at the price of my spirit. When I didn't, she would fly into rages. She would also go into silence for long periods of time. They were very angry silences, silences filled with blame."

As a child, you developed certain ways of coping with an ill parent who couldn't provide the support you needed to fully explore yourself and the world around you. These coping strategies enabled you to survive your childhood, but they became counterproductive once you left home. Most of you find that you have the same style of interacting with people now that you used in your family. The problems that arise in your current f relationships originate in your continuing use of these old strategies in brand-new situations.

To some degree, everybody brings old learning into each new experience, but the hallmark of the ACMI is a certain rigidity in one's approach to new situations. Most of you grew up with a lot of fear. You responded to that fear by clamping down on the wide range of emotions you otherwise would have experienced under safer circumstances. You were left with a heightened sensitivity to others' needs and feelings and with a tendency to be out of touch with your own emotions. As a child you learned to get along by being aware of the feelings of the people in your environment. As an adult you continue to get along with others by noticing what they need and attempting to provide it for them. This sensitivity to others, a very beautiful quality, becomes a liability when your own needs are excluded.

Typical ACMI Relationships

One way to understand your internal conflicts about relationships is to look at the kinds of partners you choose. If you're like many ACMIs, you'll find that you limit yourself to one of three types of relationships.

You may choose to be with somebody who needs and demands a lot of caretaking. With this individual you continue the emotional role you performed for your disturbed parent.

One ACMI describes her first marriage:

"I think what attracted me to him was that I felt he really needed me. I wasn't attracted to him physically. And I didn't really like him as a person, from what I knew of him, just seeing him around. But he kept following me around so much that I started going out with him. He told me about things that upset him, so I felt emotionally close to him, and I felt like he was mixed up and that he really needed me. That was attractive to me."

In exploring why she was attracted to her partner, she talks about her own craving to be needed:

"I guess taking care of him gave me a sense of security in some way, because I was really insecure in myself. I never felt important in my family."

Another ACMI describes the conflicting emotions caused by being a caretaker:

"Sometimes I feel that my wife is enjoying herself too much, being in touch with her childlike side. I'm jealous that Pm not. And I also resent the fact that this puts me in the parenting role, when her child cries out at me. It's like the double-edged sword: In a wayl like giving comfort, and then I resent it, resent being there for her. Why can't I be like that? I don't allow myself to be in that position. If I am, I get too scared and say 'this isn't right,'"

Those of you who suffered physical and/or emotional abuse may find that you consistently pick an abusive partner. In such a relationship, you re-create your childhood experience. You live with the fear and with the blows to your self-esteem you grew up with.

As an ACMI, you may be prone to overlook how poorly you're being treated. You focus instead on your partner's pain. Furthermore, the abusive partner-like the alcoholic who sobers up from time to time-goes through periods of being loving and affectionate. If you lived with a parent who was prone to erratic behavior, you may have a tendency to put up with these swings in behavior. In your childhood, you may have been eternally hopeful that your disturbed parent would recover and become a consistently loving parent. In your adult relationships, you may hold false hope about your partner's ability to change.

It frequently takes the ACMI a long time to decide that a partner is not going to change his or her abusive ways. One woman, whose partner was physically abusive, talks about ending the relationship after many years of abuse:

"I just got to the point where I couldn't make myself believe he would change any more. It was a long process. At one point he hit me, and I got really upset, I told him that if he ever hit me again I would kill him, and I really made him believe it. And then I just decided I was leaving. I wasn't going to stick around and endure it anymore."

Another typical choice for the ACMI is a partner who remains emotionally distant and unengaged. With such a person you can remain aloof and invulnerable yourself. This can be a place of safety for you, since you don't need to open up emotionally to your partner. One ACMI describes this type of relationship:

"I used to pick people who didn't seem to expect too much from me. They never got upset but they also didn't share much of what they thought and felt. After a while I'd start hammering at them to open up about their feelings. Of course, I didn't realize that I would have been scared to death if they had started to want more involvement with me."

There are a number of reasons why you, as an ACMI, would want to be in this type of relationship. You may fear that closeness will bring the same pain suffered in childhood. Or you may be afraid of losing your own boundaries. When asserting your needs and setting limits is difficult, you fear being engulfed by your partner's personality. A distant partner doesn't threaten your shaky boundaries.

Some ACMIs find themselves unable to form any sustained primary relationships. You might stay with a partner for a short period of time, but you remain unable to commit to a relationship of any duration. Here an ACMI talks about her tendency to run away from relationships:

"There have been times within this recent relationship that I've really gotten in touch with the fact that if I don't work on my stuff and try to deal with an intimate relationship, instead of running awayfrom it when it gets hard, I probably will spend the rest of my life in and out of relationships. I'll never have the stability that I really would like."

How can the ACMI change these ingrained patterns of behavior? The next section of the book will look at some practical ways to begin learning self-knowledge and self-expression, and to begin changing the nature of your relationship.

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