Desperate To Help Your Adult Child?
When a parent doesn’t like the decisions that their adult child is making, they can become desperate in their efforts to try to steer their child in a different direction. If you find yourself in this situation with your adult child, be sure to read my article on what you can do to help them.
In this article, we will consider what is at the root of the fears that drive you to desperately want to help your adult child make good decisions - and the truth that will help set you free from your desperation.
Why do you get desperate to help when your adult child is making bad decisions?
You see yourself in their choices
The first reason you try to help may be because you see yourself in their choices. In other words they are doing what you have done: they pretend they’re fine, they rescue others, they try to manage others’ emotions, they focus on the good in their relationships and ignore the bad, they give someone chance after chance instead of calling it quits, they keep trying to make something work that isn’t working, they aren’t following God, they’re justifying their decisions - all the things that you do (or did), and it scares you because it’s leading to nowhere good.
So you believe that if you can “help” (*clears throat* …if you can “control”…) them, you can also vicariously undo what you did when you were making those decisions in the past, too, or when you were in those bad relationships or situations, too. You want to prevent your child from experiencing the pain that you went through - and you want to fix the pain that you have over the poor choices you’ve made.
But you can’t fix your life vicariously through your children. You have to fix your life by focusing on yourself, not on others. Let go of what they are doing and look inward at what your reactions to their choices say about your own need to change.Codependency
Another reason you get desperate to help may be because you’re codependent, so you want your child to see what you see. You spend your energy trying to get validation that you are right - because if you’re right, then you can validate your own experiences in your own bad situations, too.
But you don’t need others to validate what you know is true. If you’re struggling in areas of your life, you know what those areas are. Be vulnerable with yourself and allow those to come to the surface to be healed. Don’t be trying to convince others of their messes in order to affirm your own. Own up to your mistakes and the value you got from struggling through them - and let your adult child work through their own struggles. Just be there for them the way you needed someone to be there for you - just loving you, not judging you.
Misunderstanding your role
A third reason you get desperate to help may be because you misunderstand your role, believing that you have a duty (as a parent or as a Christian) to insist that your children (or people in general) act a certain way or make certain decisions. But parenting (and Christianity) is never about getting people to behave. That’s what all the other religions do - they tell you what to do in order to be “good.” But true Christianity says “come as you are, because you’ll never be good enough, because you can’t, and that’s OK (because Jesus took care of that)” Same with parenting - it’s not about getting your children to behave, it’s about getting them to maturity. [Unless the “behavior” you are trying to manage is their sin against you, then you may need to read my article on complacent and complicit]
But getting them to maturity has to be done before they turn eighteen years old. Once they are adults, your job is over. No adult wants to continue to be parented and told how to behave. But many people get stuck in a kind of thinking that says that people should act a certain way, Christians should act a certain way, our kids should act a certain way. And you keep parenting and correcting. You condemn them when they do what you think ought not to be done. You punish when what they do isn’t aligned with what you believe God wants (or what you want for them), trying to intervene and control. You forget that you, yourself, have not yet arrived and are still walking out your own path. Instead, you impose your immature ways of thinking on those you feel are less mature than you are, not acknowledging that you’re responsible for your life, and other adults (including your adult children) are responsible for theirs.
The solution? Stop trying to change your child. Stop condemning them for the things necessary for them to grow. Stop trying to get them to change. Let them be adults, let them fail, let them grow.Your own struggles
And finally, you get desperate to help because you’re still struggling with your own dysfunction, and you know what needs to be done, so you try to get others to do it, even if you’re not taking your own advice. It’s always easier to give advice than it is to live advice. When you’re finding it hard to live up to your own expectations of yourself, you find that it’s much easier to put those expectations on the ones you love. While it’s an unconscious dynamic, it isn’t healthy - and it can ruin your relationships.
Where does this dysfunction come from?
Think of the parent or caretaker from your childhood and/or adolescent years who did not do a good job of meeting your emotional needs: the need for strength, significance, and security. You either become like that person… or you marry someone who is like them. That’s because you are still trying to work out getting your needs met, and you’ve learned patterns of doing that from the person in your growing-up years who was responsible for meeting them but didn’t. [You can read more about the dangers of continuing to play this out in adult relationships in my article on attachment]
You don’t always recognize right away that a parent didn’t do a good job of meeting your emotional needs, but everyone has an area of need that wasn’t fully met (because we’re human and no one but God can perfectly meet all of our emotional needs). So to figure out which parent or caretaker most impacted you, even if you think they were a great parent, you can ask yourself: Who was I most influenced by? You can be influenced either by role modeling (you look up to someone and try to be like them) or by control (they exerted control over your life and choices, restricting your freedom and making you feel like being open and and honest with them would have negative repercussions).
Another way to discover which parent or caretaker didn’t meet your emotional needs would be to ask: Which parent do I resent the most? This might be the person you feel most at odds with or most annoyed by.
When you are able to identify which parent was responsible for (but didn’t meet) your emotional needs, you can begin to see how the dynamic of that relationship continues to play out in your adult relationship. You have emotional needs that are still unmet, and you are still trying to get them met, not realizing that no other human is responsible at this point for meeting those needs. This leads to a loss of control - you are desperate to get the need met but can’t get the other people in your life to meet it. So you try to get control. The means by which you do this either repeats the patterns you learned to use when you tried to get your needs met when you were younger, or you use the patterns of control that your parent or caretaker modeled for you.
You can discover the pattern of control that was passed on from your parent or caretaker to you by looking at your own methods of control:
You try to control others through ANGER because you felt controlled by someone's anger
You try to control others through CRITICISM because you felt controlled by criticism
You try to control others through GUILT because you were controlled by guilt
You try to control others through SHAME because you felt controlled by shame
You try to control others by "FIXING" them because you felt controlled by someone trying to fix you
You can identify patterns that you used to try to get your needs met by looking at ways that you control through abandoning yourself and your needs:
You try to control by ACCOMMODATING because you were taught to accommodate
You try to control by KINDNESS because you were told to be kind even when others aren’t kind to you
You try to control by being a good EXAMPLE because someone in your life had a double standard and told you to live a certain way while they lived a life that did not reflect what they said were their values
You try to control by SELF-PITY because you felt controlled by someone else’s SELF-PITY and had to abandon your needs and desires for them
You try to control by being a MARTYR because you felt controlled by the guilt laid upon you by someone who acted like they were sacrificing so much for you
Abandoning yourself is a form of control and a way of trying to get needs met because, in abandoning yourself, you are trying to fill someone else’s needs enough that they have something left to give to you.
It will not be until you are able to give up your desire to have others meet your needs (because you are getting them met by God) that you are able to stop the conflict that comes from your attempts to control others.
The truth that will set you free from wanting to control others:
Once you understand the needs that were not met in your own life and the methods by which you try to get them met, you can use that information to pivot how you interact with others. The following information about your attempt to control in order to get your needs met can help release you from those unhealthy ways of getting them met.
1. Control is an illusion of power
Control gives the illusion of power because it makes you feel like you have something you are holding over the other person’s head until they meet your needs or satiate your fears: you’ll be angry until they do what you want, you’ll keep sacrificing until they feel guilty and recognize how good they have it, etc. But control of someone else is a false sense of power because you don’t actually have control.
Rather than control that is powerful, it is freedom that is powerful. When you give someone else the freedom to act how they want to act, you put the consequences of someone’s actions on them instead of on you, and you set yourself free from having to control someone else. Anger and martyrdom and self-pity and shame are ways of punishing yourself for someone else’s behavior. Practice giving others the freedom to choose (while comforting yourself with the truth that no one is free from the consequences of their choices). Then practice self-control and step away from the consequences of their actions. It’s then that you’ll get your power back and won’t feel as though you need anything from them.
2. Tension and conflict come from wanting control
Any form of control whether anger, judgement, fixing, etc. creates feelings of resentment that result in tension. Think about a time that you felt tension between you and someone else. Note that the tension comes from wanting them to think differently or act differently. And that tension creates conflict. To resolve that conflict, get rid of the desire for them to think or act differently and, instead, seek to know what you will do in light of how they’re thinking or acting. You can’t change them, but you can decide what you’re going to do with the information that you have about who they are based on what they say or do.
3. Despair comes from giving your power to the wrong things
Wanting to control others' opinions or actions toward you can lead to despair because you are giving power to the wrong things. It’s letting someone else’s words or actions have power over you, and if you can’t change their words or actions, it feels despairing and hopeless. Identify how you control others by paying attention to how you feel when someone is trying to control your thoughts or behavior (e.g. if you feel guilt - someone in your life used guilt to control you; if you feel the need to fix people - someone used "fixing" to control you). You can use your feelings to identify how you have been controlled by others - and then commit to not using that to control others. Because when you try to control others, you give their response power over how you feel, and you’ll feel out of control. Don’t give them that kind of power. Choose what you can control instead.
And when you stop trying to change the situation, you’ll find that…. hope isn’t found in our situation changing; it’s found in our situation….
Want to explore the topic of emotional needs and wanting control? Schedule a Breakthrough Session below.
