You developed mechanisms of accommodation, rebellion, and
mimicry to survive growing up in your family. Let's look at
mimicry.
Mimicking
When you were a child you probably remember swearing to the
universe that when you grew up you'd never, ever treat your
children the way your parents treated you. You'd be different;
you'd be better. You knew it from the core of your being. Right?
So how is it that instead of making your vow come true, all
these years later you've ended up copying their very qualities
that you most despised? Welcome to the world of mimicking--the
third mechanism (accommodation and rebellion being the other
two) we sometimes use that's influenced by guilt toward your
parents and siblings. Why do we use "mimicking"? What are the
reasons behind this behavior? Remember the warning "I hope your
children do to you what you've done to me"? You were blamed for
your parents' suffering, and they wanted you to suffer the same
way at the hands of your children. And so you do. Four reasons
explain why.
MIMICKING: PUNISHMENT AND RELIEF
We become like our parents to punish ourselves and relieve our
guilt for hurting them. If you think you're responsible for
causing your parents' unhappiness, suffering, disappointment,
getting out of control, then you deserve to be punished by
having the same faults. Huh? Think of it like this, if you are
unhappy, suffer, are disappointed, or out of control, then you
have paid yourself back for the suffering you caused them. Think
of the biblical expression, "an eye for an eye." This requires
that a punishment fit the crime exactly. It turns out that your
conscience operates the same way. It requires that you be
punished exactly in the way you've made another person suffer;
in this case, your parents or sibling. When your overprotective
parent became frantic with worry when you played sports, you
felt responsible for causing their worry. They screamed with
anxiety, "You'll break your leg! You'll get killed!" And how
does your conscience operate? It requires your becoming frantic
with worry when your kids are playing, just as your parents did
with you. There. Now you've been punished for your long-ago
offense of causing your parents to feel frantic with worry over
you. Remember the indigenous tribe described in Chapter 1?
Remember how they blamed themselves for earthquakes, floods,
volcanic eruptions, and so on? A child blames him- or herself
when a parent continually acts badly. Later on in life, being
like that parent keeps the grown child from feeling better off
than the parent. This is how our conscience evens the score. If
you blame yourself for the explosive rages your domineering,
overbearing father suffered when you didn't submit to him, you'd
assume that your independent attitude was responsible. You could
do penance for your guilt toward him by becoming domineering
with others and explosive with your own children. Why is this
"penance"? Because by mimicking your father, you also suffer
when your children act independently of you. Does this sound
self-destructive? It is. Surely, you'd prefer to not fly off the
handle and rail at your children. And just as surely you'd
rather not suffer when they don't submit to you. But the idea is
that if you caused your parents or siblings to suffer, you
deserve to suffer in the same way. It's precisely this idea, the
dynamic of self-blame, that's central to why we behave in ways
that we hate. That explains the first of the four reasons why we
choose to suffer through mimicking our parents' behavior. Let's
look at the second reason.
MIMICKING: DON'T FEEL BAD--WE'RE IN THIS TOGETHER
If you've ever felt bad because you think it's not fair to be
better off than your parents, you might resort to mimicking to
relieve your bad feelings. At a talk I gave, a woman told me
about her experience with her obese mother. She remembered not
only sitting with her during meals and snacks, but she also
recalled mimicking her mother's overeating because she thought
that would comfort her mother. Her exact words were, "I felt she
would feel comforted because we were in it together." What was
she really saying? "Don't feel bad, Mom, I have the same
[overeating] problem that you have." That's the second reason
for mimicking behaviors we hate, what's the third?
MIMICKING: PUSHING AWAY THE PAIN
For the most part, we all want to forget our unpleasant
experiences of the past and have the bad feelings associated
with them fade away. This done, we can enjoy our present-day
lives. Now factor this in: By mistreating others the way we've
been mistreated, we help forget that we suffered at the hands of
our parents. How does that help, you're probably wondering?
Imagine you've gone through something terrible like childhood
abuse. (The victim could have been you or perhaps someone else
in the family.) The result is that you can't stand thinking
about it, that you want to bury the memory and never
reexperience the pain of it again. The farther removed from it
you get, in physical distance and in time, the safer you feel
and the less likely you are to think about it. What helps you
accomplish this? Being as far removed as possible from your
memories of the traumatic experience. What could be farther away
from that opposite position? To become the one who mistreats,
not the one is mistreated. If as an adult you act possessively
toward your children, you demand underlying loyalty and overt
demonstrations of love the way your parents did with you, it'll
help you forget the pain you felt when your parent was that way
with you. What pain? Maybe out of loyalty to your possessive
parent, you inhibited your relationships with others. Or maybe
you cut off new relationships because you feared being trapped
by the demands of loyalty you felt all relationships came with.
Either way, you suffer. And now, as an adult, if you dominate
your children, maybe you'll forget that you yourself submitted
to your own domineering parents. You don't want to recall
painful memories of having been cheated out of your own
independence. With three reasons for mimicking looked at and
understood, we're left with one more. Here's how that one shapes
our world of self-blame.
MIMICKING: WORKING HARD TO IMPROVE THE FLAW
By doing to others what was done to you, you hope to meet people
who can show you how to better cope with the behavior that
harmed you. That's the basic premise, and it's a lot to take in
so let's look at it from another angle. These new people you
meet become role models for you in learning new ways of dealing
with behavior that was painful or difficult for you in the past.
If you think about couples you know, you'll find that this is
often true. And if you've ever wondered why many couples have
extreme opposite personalities that often clash, you now have
the answer to all your wondering. A submissive person, who gives
in easily, is with a domineering partner who tends not to. Why?
Each one is actually learning from the other how to improve on
his or her own shortcoming. These four reasons are why, in
spite of your best intentions, you may have acquired those
qualities of your parents that you hated the most. In the case
of David, a smart businessman who undermined his career success,
you'll see that he did this because of his father and because he
identified with some of his father's qualities.
Excerpted from Self-Help for Smarties: Secret Success Codes for
Weight Loss, Love, Career and
Parenting(
http://www.penmarin.com/proddetail.asp?prod=Gootnick2&f
rom=2) by Irwin Gootnick, M.D. (Penmarin Books
http://www.penmarin.com, May 2006).
About the author:
Dr. Irwin Gootnick is an Associate Clinical Professor of
Psychiatry at UC San Francisco Medical Center, has had a private
practice in San Francisco since 1967. In addition to his
extensive clinical experience, Dr. Gootnick is past director of
the Psychiatric Day Center and a noted teacher, author, and
lecturer.
