Adult children: the secrets of dysfunctional families

damaged in this country by very overt means such as beating,
battering, severe neglect and sexual abuse. And this is just the tip
of the iceberg. The more covert and subtle forms of abuse and
neglect are only recently being studied with any precision. Those
of us in the psychotherapy field see it all the time.
A great deal of what we write about in this book comes under the
category of abuse. At the end of this section we offer a list of the
most common types of abuse that we see. We offer the following as
food for thought.
Children need to be punished to grow straight and tall, right?
Perhaps. But do your children cower in fear when you show the
least bit of anger? Are they fearful? Do they seem unwilling to play
and have fun? Are they unusually angry and aggressive? Do they
pick on the younger children in the family unmercifully? Are they

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moody, negative and "difficult"? If you were punished too much or
too severely as a child yourself, you won't be able to tell the
difference between appropriate punishment and what we now call
abuse. It's not your fault that you can't tell the difference. But you
won't be able to tell the difference, no matter whose fault it was.
Letting children into your marital arguments and trying to get your
emotional needs met by your children is a form of emotional abuse
called covert incest by many professionals including Woititz
(1985). Criticizing your shy child for being too shy is emotional
abuse.
Screaming at your child because you're exhausted or have a
hangover is emotional abuse. Not being there enough for your child
is emotional abuse; as is hovering over your child and never letting
him fall down, make mistakes on his own and recover on his own
where appropriate for his age.

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Page 77
Many of us are quick to say, "Oh, I was lucky. My parents never
fought when I was a kid. Billy's dad was always drunk and they
were always fighting." That may be true. But finding the worst
example of abuse in someone else's life for comparison is one of
the best ways to maintain our own denial about our own families.
The truth is we know of few families that don't have some of these
problems. What were the problems in your family? Forget Billy's
family. Billy has to deal with that. Deal with your own.
If you are witness to the abuse of anyone else, then you tire also a
victim of abuse. If you observe your little sister or big brother being
hurt by Mom or Dad, it does emotional violence to you, too. You
may feel guilty that you were treated "better". You may feel
powerful in unhealthy ways because you were treated "better",
which will then make it hard for you to have an equal relationship
with another person. You may feel frightened that if you don't hold
your breath and toe the mark, you will become the next victim of
family violence. Seeing someone else be abused is called vicarious
abuse, and it is just as painful, hurtful and harmful as other kinds of
abuse. Below is our list.
Emotional Abuse
Double binds (all choices given the child are negative ones) 
Projection and transfer of blame onto the child 
Alterations of the child's reality (intellectual abuse) e.g. "Dad's not
drunk, he's just tired" 
Overprotecting, smothering, excusing, blaming others for the child's
problem 
Fostering low self-esteem 
Double messages: "Of course, I love you, dear," (as More tenses up

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and grits her teeth) 
Not talking about the abuse at all