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Coping with a dysfunctional parent

Gerry Kelly, host of Late Lunch on LMFM Radio, chatted to me last Tuesday, about coping with a difficult parent, having spotted my recent article, Difficult Mothers: the last taboo?

You can listen to the interview here:

I loved the phrase ‘kindred spirits’, which a recent reader of In My Gut, I Don’t Believe used about us. He felt a connection with me because he, too, had a difficult relationship with his mother.

‘My relationship with her was the most complex relationship of my life. If anyone listening to this takes away anything that is helpful, I hope it will be that there are no unacceptable feelings or thoughts. If you feel hatred, accept it. Because if you don’t accept it, then you don’t accept yourself and you can’t grow.’

Kids pick up tensions at home

‘I grew up too close to my mother,’ I told Gerry. ‘Probably because she didn’t have a great relationship with my father or with his two sons. She probably put too much emotionally into our relationship.

‘As a kid, I was aware there were all kinds of tensions in the house. You pick it all up like a sponge. Sometimes, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. Even up to my early twenties, I dared not mention the names of my two brothers. It would be a huge no-go area with my mother.

Most complex relationship of my life

‘My relationship with her was the most complex relationship of my life. The joy of writing a memoir, or, in my case, being middle way through writing my second one, is it’s a huge opportunity to examine myself.

‘My mother’s mother died when my mother was two. So she never had a mother to model her behaviour. She got married in her late 30s. My father had two sons from his first marriage. It was a huge shock to her system to go from being an independent woman with no responsibilities to suddenly having a husband and two little boys.

‘It didn’t work out. She didn’t’ get on with them. They had a really hard time. Far harder than me. My challenge was trying to grapple with the emotional and intellectual task of trying to disengage from whatever strong mother–child bond I had as a kid.

Exasperation of trying to talk to her

‘I found it exasperating trying to reason with my mother. My father would take me aside and say: “Joe, there is no point talking to her.”

‘Obviously, that was a very sad thing about his own relationship with his wife. I don’t know whether my mother might have had some psychological issue that was undiagnosed.

‘A huge part of my choosing not to proceed with the priesthood was trying to disentangle myself from all the messages and learnings that I picked up from my mother.

Undermining my thoughts and feelings

‘She always seemed to undermine not only my thinking but my feelings. I’d say I feel something and she’d say: “Oh you can’t feel that.” Or I’d say I think something and she’d say: “Oh, you can’t be thinking that.” Or I’d remember something and she’d say: “No, it didn’t happen like that at all.”

‘So she was constantly undermining my confidence. She was doing the opposite of what a good parent is meant to do. A parent is meant to be encouraging the child to think for themselves, to feel their feelings etc.

Admitting feelings of hate

‘I remember in my late teens going to confession and confessing to the priest the negative feelings I had towards my mother. I had this love–hate relationship with her. But it was hard to admit the hate aspect of it – that there were times when I just hated her. And my dad would be going on about the things she did, but he didn’t always tell me what things. But I knew she had done stuff that had made his life pretty miserable.

‘But that priest – and as you know I’m not a believer – he was a man of compassion and he had wisdom and he was human. And he was able to tell me that’s OK. You feel as you feel for a good reason.

If you can’t accept how you feel, you can’t accept yourself

‘And, to fast forward, after nine years in the seminary, when I went to counselling, I remember the counsellor saying: “If you feel that your negative feelings towards your mother are unacceptable, then, you feel you are unacceptable.”

‘And if anyone listening to this take away anything that is helpful, I hope it will be that there are no unacceptable feelings or thoughts. If you feel hatred, accept it. Because if you don’t accept it, then you don’t accept yourself and you can’t grow.