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“…and the day came when the risk to stay tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
–Anais Nin–
Often, when I am working with a young adult who can’t figure out a way to break ranks with her family and make headway with independent life, I will ask the following question: "Which is more important to you right now, to get your parents to worry about you, or to get your parents to be proud of you?”
The question usually prompts a combination of surprise and indignation, along with a predictable answer, something along the lines of: “Proud of me, of course! Why would I want my parents to worry about me? I hate it when my parents worry about me!”
The reason I am posing the question, though, is that many young adults who are stuck have, consciously or not (and usually not), made an enduring investment in eliciting worry rather than pride from Mom and Dad. On the surface, of course, this seems counter-intuitive. If she is so irritated by her parents’ worry about her—and just about every child at any age will robustly attest to the fact that she doesn’t like being worried about and that she doesn’t need to be worried about—then why would she so assiduously devote herself to provoking what she finds so irritating?
One explanation for this apparent hypocrisy is that, at some fundamental level, when we feel worried about, we feel protected and cared about. And giving up those feelings of protection and care is a loss, a reminder that, at some level, we ultimately have to learn to protect and take care of ourselves (and others), that our parents can’t and won’t always be there to shield us from vulnerability, discomfort, and adversity.
And on a parallel note, while eliciting pride feels good and every child instinctively seeks out and basks in parental approval, succeeding in doing so is a reminder that, at some point, we have to put our boat on the water and ship out on our own. After all, the richest sources of parental pride are indications of a child’s competence, and competence is the foundation for, and points towards, self-sufficiency. Parents take delight in their offspring’s mastery of important developmental tasks like toilet training, or learning how to read or ride a bike, or managing homework successfully, because it makes them feel less and less necessary to their child. Their pride is surely an expression of their love, but also an expression of their readiness to not have to be so loving all the time, to feel less burdened, more nimble.
Children, of course, sense this, even if they can’t put words to it. So if a young woman doesn’t quite trust her capacity to survive and manage well as she struggles across the threshold separating dependence from independence, she will generally find inventive ways to supply the worry that keeps the two generations entangled. Let’s face it—staying stuck is staying safe, and if you feel like an un-roped mountain climber navigating a sheer cliff with your face pressed tightly and fearfully against rock, one method of self-preservation is to simply stay put—inertia is risk-free and no unpredictable catastrophes are likely to occur.
Of course, it’s rarely that simple (is family life ever simple?) because while her stuckness may be an indication of her lack of faith in herself, it may also be an indication of her lack of faith in her parents’ capacity to adapt and manage well as she leaves them behind.
And it is with this latter possibility in mind that I will usually ask the parents the corollary question: “At this point in your daughter’s development, would you rather be proud of her or worried about her?” And, with just as much surprise and indignation as their young adult summoned, the predictable answer will be, “Proud of her, of course! We don’t like being worried about her. We don’t want to have to worry about her anymore!”
But while parents often feel weighed down by having to worry about their young adult, their worry is also a source of connection that works in both directions, reassuring them that they are, indeed, necessary, and that they can rely on a a life that regularly and dependably revolves on the axis of childrearing. As long as they can worry about their child, they might not have to worry (or worry so much) about other, less familiar, issues, like the future of their marriage, or their professional regrets, or aging and a growing recognition of their mortality. So despite insisting that they would prefer to be more proud than anxious, they may subtly encourage the dependence that reassures them that they still need to be parents, while simultaneously insisting that they feel victimized by and tired of this dependence.
The reality is that independence is both delicious and painful. Thinking about the difficulty a young adult is experiencing when it comes to becoming independent as an indication of internal struggle, rather than as an indication of her internal weakness or her parents’ inadequacies, tends to open up new possibilities for both generations, and raise the likelihood that the family can release their natural energies, propelling them upwards towards a higher pinnacle of existence where they can better breathe in the clearer, cleaner air of freedom and autonomy.
