BP45
Twelve-year-old Katy walks through the store and glances around with apprehension at the displays on the counters and shelves. Thousands of expensive goblets, flute glasses, platters, bowls, and exquisite vases surround her like a forest of glass. Everywhere she looks, the elegant crystal gleams under the store lights. Everything is so beautiful.
Everything is so fragile—so breakable.
Katy’s heart begins to beat faster, and her palms become moist with perspiration. She makes her way down the aisle slowly and ever so carefully so as not to damage any of the elegant glass pieces. She fears that even breathing on them might shatter them. Some people are horse whisperers. Some have green thumbs. Others yet have the Midas touch. Katy, quite to the contrary, is the crystal-breaker. She has a reputation.
Her eyes dart nervously back and forth as she reads the small signs placed around the store that announce ominously, Fragile! Do not touch! Break it, you buy it!
When she turns to read yet another written warning, her elbow grazes a tall crystal vase, and it begins to lean like a tree toppling in the forest. Dexterously, Katy grabs the vase and restores it to its upright position. But in grabbing the vase, she bumps the table behind her.
Two glass plates tumble off their perches. Katy breaks the fall of one of the crystal pieces with her foot, but the other one hits the floor and shatters. A gunshot would have been less explosive than the sound of the heavy plate crashing against the floor.
The girl stares in horror at the destruction lying at her feet and covers her mouth with her hand. I’ve done it again! she cries out in her head. I’ve caused mass destruction in the glass shop. I must get out before–
Panicking, she wheels around to locate the exit. Three more fragile pieces smash to the floor. So agitated now that she is visibly shaking, Katy heads for the exit.
After several steps, she stops and freezes. The door is not where it had been before! Frantically, she spins around to look for the exit and sends a half dozen goblets to their demise on the hard tile floor. Katy screams and covers her face with her hands. Then she breaks into a dead run toward the far end of the shop where she sees an exit.
As she sprints, she notices in horror that the store has grown to the size of a warehouse and the door is now a hundred yards away. Worst of all, the aisles have begun to narrow. Every time she pumps her arms as she runs, she displaces more fragile merchandise from the display counters, and they shatter on the floor. Eventually, Katy, now totally distraught, stops running and attempts to squeeze sideways through the narrowing aisles so as not to bump anything.
Despite her best efforts, she bumps, tips and breaks piece after piece of the precious glassware. Soon she cannot even breathe without triggering an ear-splitting cascade.
I’m doing so much damage! she now screams out loud. Her voice echoes eerily through the massive warehouse. How can I ever pay for my sin? Somebody is going to be terribly angry with me. I’m such a bad daughter!
Slowly, a dark wave washes up Katy’s neck and flows into her cheeks. In an instant, her demeanor changes and she is overtaken by irrational rage. She shrieks and then begins smashing every piece of crystal around her. Soon, her hands are torn and oozing blood.
Mercifully, her body jerks violently and she wakes up panting in the darkness of her bedroom. Her sheets are damp, and her jaws are locked.
So, it was all a nightmare, in the end. A familiar nightmare. One of the repetitive ones that Katy has at least once a week.
Katy wipes away tears from her young cheeks and whispers into the night, Help me, Jesus—if you even listen to bad girls who break things.
Katy has not put all the pieces of her nightmares together yet, so she does not know what they are saying. They are far from crystal clear to her (forgive the pun). When she is twenty-three and discusses them with a counselor at her church, she will finally understand their message: The glassware shop—so beautiful especially when the crystal vases are turned to gold by the rays of the afternoon sun, but so full of fragility and a conveyor of her shame—represents her mother.
Little Katy grew up with the mother (it could be the father as well) described by Alice Miller in her book, The Drama of the Gifted Child. Her mother never matured emotionally. Since she missed the loving presence of her own mother who was depressed and afflicted with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Linda—Katy’s mom—remained about six years old emotionally and was left chronically hungry for attention. What better place to find that attention than in her own young child?
Miller describes this needy mother as emotionally insecure and dependent for her narcissistic equilibrium on the child behaving, or acting, in a particular way (p. 8).
In other words, the child who grows up around such a needy and fragile mother—like Katy did–is not free to spontaneously be who God made her to be. Instead, she must accommodate or shape herself to become who the mother needs—or demands. Often this empty mother will reward her child for being her caretaker and her admiring mirror. She will also communicate great displeasure to the child for manifestations of independence and anything else that feels like her child is ignoring her.
By age twelve, Katy had already been trained for a decade by this reward and punishment conditioning that taught her to be the mother her mother never had. Rarely could the daughter escape her calling. One way she found some freedom from her hypersensitive mother was to slink away and play outside. Katy could enjoy nature without hurting the mother or making her feel insecure, without reducing her power or endangering her equilibrium (p. 10).
Katy became an expert at sensing and anticipating her mother’s needs because she had been trained since she was a toddler to be aware of Linda (yes, she often called her mother by her first name as if they were peers). Katy’s own emotions and needs rarely captured her mother’s attention because Linda needed to be the center of everything. If the family was a planetary system, Linda was the sun and everyone else orbited around the mother star.
Yes, Linda was so needy for attention and ‘mirroring’ by Katy, her little mother substitute, that she was incapable of paying attention to her child unless it was to reward her for being a good caretaker. Whenever Katy did begin to talk about herself, her mother would laugh and nod her head and begin to recount an experience she had experienced that was even more enthralling.
Katy’s mother was dependent on a specific echo from [Katy] that was so essential to her, for she herself was a child in search of an object that could be available to her. However paradoxical this may seem, a child is at the mother’s disposal. A child cannot run away from her [Linda] as her own mother once did. A child can be so brought up that it becomes what she wants it to be . . . The mother can feel herself the center of attention, for her child’s eyes follow her everywhere (p. 11).
Linda’s narcissistic needs were overwhelming for little Katy to satisfy. In addition to that, her father, Sean, was chronically irritable or physically absent. Katy did not know it at the time, but her father was an alcoholic who changed for the worse whenever he had more than two beers which was every night of the week except Saturdays (to be sober for church).
Sean’s alcoholism consumed his life. It was a mistress that took him away from both his wife and his four children. Occasionally, Sean’s irritability would bloom into explosive rage and he would scream and throw things at anyone in his vicinity. He did not explode often–just enough so that everyone in the house knew it could happen at any time and so they always lived on edge.
So it was that Katy, innately more sensitive than her three brothers and chosen by Linda to be her designated mother substitute, grew up in a glass shop chockablock with fragile crystal and in a mine field where she had to navigate carefully because her father was so unpredictable and difficult to read. One misstep and detonation might occur.
A child’s self/heart/personality cannot grow in an environment where she must take care of both parents and be so aware of their needs and moods that she cannot be aware of herself. In this household where both parents are emotionally immature, the child must hide her true self with all her needs, emotions, and desire for independence.
For example, Katy’s anger could not be expressed because it would trigger her father’s land mine of rage and threaten her fragile mother who would crumple if any negativity was directed toward her.
Katy’s needs would be more than her mother could satisfy since her pantry was empty; and her father—he was simply unavailable for the needs of his daughter due to work or inebriation.
Katy’s independence/boundaries would feel like abandonment to Linda who needed her daughter to always be close to her. Any separation would be tantamount to abandonment. Some would call the relationship between Linda and her daughter an unhealthy merger.
Only the accommodating child who is capable of relating to the world with a false self can survive in this type of family–unless they are not worried at all about how they will impact the fragile or unpredictable parent. Accommodating, again, means the child is able to bend herself into a shape her parent(s) experience as convenient.
So much for the words of scripture, Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it ~ Proverbs 22:6. For Linda and Sean, their mantra was, Train up Katy in the way that our emotionally immature selves can tolerate.
As Katy grew older, she excelled at everything. But at the same time, she felt emptier and numb. Her true self could not grow in the arid, shallow soil her parents provided. Plants never grow in crystal glass shops or mine fields. The child is too busy taking care of the outside world to even attend to the needs of her own heart.
Let’s look a bit more closely at these fragile/unpredictable parents. We will first consider the fragile mother.
What do we know so far? Fragile mothers often missed mothering from their mothers. They did not receive what I have referred to in another post as primary narcissism—healthy attention that all children need from their parents. These mothers will then feel unseen and most likely unloved. Where will they find the loving attention that satisfies the unhealthy, secondary narcissism that now drives them?
Long before they become mothers, they might look to their boyfriend or spouse to meet those deep needs. However, husbands often become exhausted by the neediness of such a hungry wife and will eventually respond by staying at the office longer or going fishing more often. They will emotionally distance and allow something else or someone else to fill their wife’s emotional needs. Here one can see how easy it would be for an affair to occur with another man or . . . with a child.
An emotional affair.
In defense of the wife, sometimes the woman marries a man who woos her with amazing presence and loving words during the early months of their relationship which I refer to as the conquest season. But once they are married and the husband has harvested his trophy, so to speak, he stops pursuing his wife with that same idealizing intensity. Eventually, she feels betrayed or ignored. What happened to my adoring husband?
It is at this moment that the woman can become hurt, angry and disillusioned. She can either move toward her husband and communicate her dissatisfaction or she can throw herself into her own work, friendships or . . . affairs. After all, affairs are enticing partly for the exciting attention that accompanies fresh romance. The needy woman will feel idealized once again.
Of course, a mother’s child can become her admiring idealizer. Taking this route, she can escape the messiness of an affair which might lead to divorce. Besides, a woman might still love her husband and simply agree to settle for a less amazing relationship than she had at the beginning. She may never even consider an affair.
But when her child comes into her life—often the first born or a later child who is very caring and sensitive—she may find a perfect source of admiration and attention. Often, this mutual attention between mother and baby is healthy. Sometimes, it is not. Rarely is it premeditated. It is discovered.
Just observe the eye contact between the mother and the child during the first year of life. A baby’s eye contact can make anyone (but especially the emotionally hungry mother) feel watched and special. The cute smile only adds to the sense of feeling loved and noticed. The needy mother may never have planned to use her child to get what she missed from her own mother, but it does happen.
I will not give much attention to the dynamic in this post, but there is a formula for the husband/father as well. It goes something like this: After he has won the affection of the special woman and made her his wife, he eventually stops idealizing her. Before long, his wife notices that her husband does not look at her the same way he used to and she begins to feel unloved or at least not as loved as before.
At this point, some women—especially empty women—progress from sad to hurt to angry to bitter to resentful to critical to contempt. As the husband experiences these negative vibes from his wife, he finds her much less attractive and he might pull away or build a wall and seek to fill his need for admiration somewhere else or with someone else–even in pornography where the eyes of the women stare back so admiringly at him.
Not as commonly will the husband look to his child for his needs, but it does happen. Nothing good will come from this devolution of the marriage for either the wife or the husband.
Back to the mother who is looking for a mother’s presence in her child . . .
One thing I want to make clear is that I am not referring to the relatively healthy mother in this discussion. I am referring to the mother who missed significant presence and love from her parent(s) leaving her understandably starved for attention and for the experience of being loved by another person.
Feeling special is huge in this scenario. Everyone has a need to feel like they are number one to someone else. Sometimes I wonder if the overpowering need to feel special explains why a conversation among three people can be difficult. When two of the conversationalists are focusing on each other, the third person might feel unseen and certainly not very special. They might quietly detach from the interaction and slink into a dark place in their hearts.
Always remember that we have been hard-wired to be special to someone. This need is not just relational. It is deeply spiritual. We were created to be known by God and be special to Him. Since Linda missed that with both her mother and father, the danger is that she might attach to the first man (or child) who would give her undivided attention and so make her feel special (unless she seeks God when she feels unloved which may not happen often for the emotionally immature mother because she usually requires instant gratification that is tangible and even tactile).
A few more observations about the needy mother . . .
Sometimes the mother’s mother (or father) was unavailable to her daughter not because she was depressed or anxious or an alcoholic but because she was physically absent. She may have died when the child was young.
I have known some very needy mothers who will not only communicate their hunger to their child through emotional messages, but also through physical maladies. They will draw the chosen child into the caretaking role through physical complaints or illnesses. (In extreme cases, Munchhausen Syndrome by proxy might even occur.)
I encountered one mother who was fragile to anger—perceived or real. Whenever her young child became angry with her, she would not respond with her own anger because to her all anger was dangerous—even her own. So, instead of getting angry, she would tell her daughter that her heart was suddenly beating rapidly and that she might be having a heart attack.
One can understand why this child soon learned to kill her anger because she did not wish to kill her mother.
I have read about cases where the adult child worked through years of therapy to create healthy boundaries with the mother only to have the mother become ill and literally die in response to her child’s independence. These are certainly extreme situations, but they can occur when the mother loses the person she has been merged with for so long.
I believe this particular woman lost her husband through divorce, but she never imagined her own child would separate from her. In this case, the daughter needed to create a healthy distance from the mother so that she could enter into a marriage with her husband instead of remaining in a marriage with her mother.
Briefly, what does someone like Katy, the caretaking child, need to hear? What must the child who has been emotionally merged with the parent need to know?
- As alluded to above, Katy learned that only a certain version of herself could exist in the presence of the mother’s fragility (or the father’s unpredictability). One way to describe it is that only good Katy (the false self) could exist while the bad Katy (the true self) had to cease to exist. Good Katy is allowed to exist because she is nice, agreeable, attentive to the mother, makes good eye contact, listens well, has no or few emotional needs, does not cry because then the attention is on her not Linda, does not argue, does not separate from the mother because separation feels like abandonment, and shows no anger toward Linda because anger shatters fragile people and spawns the dreaded feeling of separation. Good Katy—accommodating Katy–is safe for both her fragile mother and her unpredictable father and so is rewarded for killing her true self. Bad Katy (true self) cannot exist because this version of the twelve-year-old might be irritable, argumentative, distracted by homework and boys, look at her phone instead of her mother, listen poorly, cry, get angry, disagree, and separate from the mother by hanging out with her friends and eventually by dating (the dreaded competition). Bad Katy is like an 8.5 earthquake in the crystal glass store or like a herd of water buffalos in the mine field. Both are dangerous not only to her but to the two parents who both need a carefully controlled environment. So, one can see that the good child (good for the parent) is actually the unhealthy false self while the bad child (bad for the parent) is the healthy, true child.
- If you are a nice girl like Katy and were taught how to take care of someone, you will need to work hard to learn the difference between caretaking and real love. The nice child does not love. She only conforms or is compliant—on the outside. Inside, she might detest her parents. How many children raised in Christian homes with a fragile or unpredictable parent (both controlling) later leave the faith because after they finally separated emotionally from both parents they also separated from the faith of the parents because God was also perceived as controlling and intolerant of their true self?
- If you identify with Katy, you will need to not just be reborn spiritually but also be born emotionally since your true, God-given self was not allowed to exist in the world of breakable crystal or explosive land mines.
- Alice Miller writes about the adult child who finally comes to an awareness of the relationship she had with the wounded mother and says: Does this mean that it was not really me whom you loved, but only what I pretended to be [the false self]? The well-behaved, reliable, empathic, understanding, and convenient child, who in fact was never a child at all? What became of my childhood? From the beginning I have been a little adult (p. 15).
Much more could be said about both Linda and Sean or about Katy, but it is time to bring in the person of Jesus—the lynchpin for the healing of all fragile mothers, unpredictable fathers and caretaking children.
I have said before that Jesus is not some fairy tale myth who weak people add to their lives to help them survive in a world that has no meaning and ends in death. Neither is faith in Jesus some legalistic journey resulting in enslavement to rules, heavy-handed authority, and guilt. These are consequences of religion, not a saving relationship with Jesus the Christ.
What is so amazing about Jesus is that the world makes sense when you view it through the lens of faith in Him. I trot them out often, but let me cite C.S. Lewis’ words one more time: I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
In other words, the world exists because Jesus designed it and created it and knows how it should operate. We should and will discover that life in this world only works when everything is referred back to Him as Thomas a Kempis wrote. An encrypted universe, I believe, that has symmetric-key algorithms, uses the same keys for both encryption and decryption. To decrypt the message, we must always begin with the key.
I have found that the Key to understanding all that happens in this world is the person of Jesus Christ. He has given us a natural world with hard sciences like astronomy and biology and chemistry and mathematics and soft sciences like sociology and psychology and leadership principles. He has given us minds that can decrypt natural truth built into the fabric of the universe. Of course, for spiritual truth to be decrypted, we need the Spirit of God. See 1 Corinthians 2:6-16.
So, what does the Key have to say to Katy and her parents? What are some truths from God for both Linda and Katy?
First of all, Jesus says in Matthew 6:33, Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you as well. In this context, Jesus is telling His listeners not to be anxious about things like food, drink, clothing—in short, their daily needs. I sometimes abbreviate this verse to say, Seek me first and I’ll take care of the rest.
In other words, I believe Jesus is telling us that life will not go well (the way it was intended) unless we begin with Him. To Linda, Jesus might want this needy mother to hear what His word says in Psalm 27:10: For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in. Jesus would want her to know that the way her wounded and rejected heart will heal is not through her daughter but only through Him.
If Linda seeks Jesus first, then she is much less likely to find the satisfaction of her needs and hunger in a younger, pliable human being who she will damage in the process. Only Jesus can feed and satisfy her deepest needs. If Linda’s parents failed her, she needs to know that God is her first parent and that He will be there to take her in, love her, and heal her. Therapy with a Christian counselor might need to be a component of that healing journey.
Secondly, and related to the first point, I believe God created every man and woman to have a personal relationship with Him. He knows us all individually. I love the story where God appears (through an angel messenger or possibly even through Jesus Himself) in Genesis 16 to Sarai’s servant girl from Egypt, Hagar.
This young girl was not even a member of God’s chosen people. Yet, when she was alone in the wilderness after Sarai had been harsh with her, God showed up for her. He listened to the lowly servant girl and made her a promise that gave her hope for the future. After this personal encounter, Hagar said, You are a God of seeing, and, Truly here I have seen Him who looks after me.
The rejected servant girl felt seen by God and taken care of by name. Personally. If any of us are not feeling very special in this world—unseen, unloved, lonely, rejected, abandoned—call out to Jesus in the wilderness. Seek Him. Pursue Him. Like Hagar, He will hear you and you will say, He found [me] in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; He encircled [me], He cared for [me], he kept [me] as the apple of His eye.
If you are hungry for love, people with skin on will be part of your healing journey. But if God is not primary, if He is not the One you seek above all others, you will be disappointed over and over by humans. You must cry out to Jesus from the wilderness. Know that you are special to Him. You are the apple of His eye. (See Psalm 18.)
Thirdly, to Katy, Jesus might say, My daughter, as you grow older, be sure to discriminate me from your mother and your father. I am not fragile and narcissistic like your mother or quick to anger like your unpredictable father. I am not a Greek mythological god who is capricious and moody and abandoning if you do not appease me. No, I am patient and slow to anger and full of steadfast, covenantal love that never gives up on you even when you do not do your part. Do not avoid me like you avoid your parents. Run to my throne. You will never have to take care of me. You need people around you who are not fragile glass, but unbreakable Tupperware, and you need me, the God who you can never fracture.
Undoubtedly, Jesus would encourage Katy to approach Him with her true self. He would ask her not to be nice, false, or to hide her real self. He would ask her to come to Him even with her shame, her sin, her rage, her doubts, her hate. Jesus is the loving God who repeatedly says, Come to me. Yes, come. I am big enough to meet your hungriest need, carry your darkest sin and absorb your harshest bitterness.
Not a single human parent will meet all your needs. Some will meet very few of your needs or even expect you to take care of their needs. God is your perfect heavenly Father who is there for you—always. He does not need anything from you. His simple command is to come to Him so He can give you everything you need, every good and perfect gift.
The best gift, of course, is Himself.
So, come to Jesus and practice His presence. He will certainly satisfy the deepest longings of your heart—physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual.
For He satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul He fills with good things ~ Psalm 107:9
And my God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus ~ Philippians 4:19