How Being The Child of ‘Be Strong’ Parents Really Messed Me Up
If we don’t cry and rage when we feel sadness and anger, where do we believe those emotions go?
This week, I had a thought that I wanted to write something about how many people I meet — both as private clients and in workshops — who are depressed and full of self-judgement as a result of having a ‘be strong’ driver: believing a story that their suffering is ‘invalid’ and that they have ‘no right’ to their anger and sadness.
But after starting and deleting the first few paragraphs a couple of times, I realised that what I actually wanted to do was write about myself, and how this particular story has affected me personally.
I was raised by parents (and grandparents) whose answer to every complaint or objection I made always seemed to be the same thing: ‘what have you got to complain about?’. No matter what my bone of contention, the story I heard from them time and time again was how much harder their lives had been growing up than mine, and how little they had had by comparison, so as a child I quickly learned that any expression of discontent I had would be instantly negated by them in this way.
In short, I had ‘no right’ to my feelings of sadness, frustration or anger, and instead was expected to conjure positive feelings for whatever my life allowed me — I ‘should just be grateful’.
The problem was that, after having being told this, I never felt grateful. I just felt guilty.
As I got older, that message that I’d internalised from my family influenced my reactions to so many of my life experiences. When things went badly for me and I felt sad or angry, I never complained out loud, always telling myself that ‘other people had it so much worse’ and that anyway my sadness and anger would not change my circumstances.
This tight self-regulation of my emotions didn’t always work perfectly, but on the occasions I did allow myself to cry or rage, afterwards I would internally berate myself for ‘being a baby’, ‘making a fuss’ or (most cruelly of all) ‘whining’. My judgement of this self-indulgent behaviour was extremely harsh, far harsher than I imagine my parents’ would have been, and often left me feeling worse than before, with a story that I had disappointed them and myself.
As if all this self-flagellation and internal shaming wasn’t enough, I also extended my harsh judgements to the people around me. If someone chose to share their troubles with me, then they sure as hell better have a good reason for feeling sad. If I judged their complaint to be a trivial one — and not worthy of sympathy — I would quickly start to irritate myself with thoughts like ‘what have they got to complain about’ and feel strong tension in my body.
Although I had a story that I was listening to my friends talk and caring about them, what I’d actually made myself was bored, annoyed and resentful. On top of which, the same mean things that I told myself when I was sad I then recycled and directed at the sad, hurt person in front of me:
They have no real right to feel sad
They’re making a fuss about nothing
They’re whining.
Fast forward a few more years, and at 35 I became a parent. My pregnancy was awful, I hated being so big, I hated how swollen my ankles got and in the last three months I developed SPD, the pain from which was excruciating. Being pregnant can be a real flashpoint for people with a ‘be strong’ driver, as the world and his dog seems to feel the need to tell you how lucky you are despite often feeling physically and emotionally awful.
As the well-raised child of ‘be strong’ parents and grandparents I soldiered on, walking to the shops in agony rather than admit to needing help, driving my husband around with my back in agony, agreeing when people told me how exciting it all was. Then, when my daughter was born, it was more of the same. And how could I say how sad I was that my exciting vibrant life was now exhausting and colourless, because how ungrateful would that make me?
At least you have a healthy child.
At least you have a husband.
Some people can’t even have children.
One good thing about being a new parent though is that, if you’re brave enough to let others know what you’re really going through, you’ll eventually find someone else who not completely empathises with what you’re going through but will entirely validate your experience.
“Do you ever feel like you are completely failing as a mother? That you’ll never be good enough and that everyone else is doing a better job than you?”
“Oh my god yes, every day!!”
“Do you ever just want to go back to bed, lie in a heap and cry?”
“All. The. Time.”
“Do you ever regret having a baby?”
“Ugh yes, and I feel such a shitty person for saying that.”
We’re not allowed to say being a new parent is really tough, because ‘we should be grateful’. This one was such a strong story for me that I convinced myself I must be a terrible person for not being filled with joy every day, simply because my daughter was strong and healthy. I didn’t suffer from post-natal depression, but I had friends that did and — once they were able to speak about it — the story they told me about what they’d told themselves was the exact same one:
I thought I had no right to feel that way.
I learned about the way my dad was raised by talking to him about it. I learned how he’d been taught from a very early age to act like there was no problem, that he and his family were all fine. That, although they were very poor and my grandfather had left my grandmother and his four small children for another woman, they had to let everyone know that they had ‘nothing to be ashamed of’.
And I learned how my mother was raised by talking to her about it. I learned how my grandparents had wanted to send her to private school, but that they couldn’t afford it. That she’d gone into the civil service instead of to university, and despite being highly intelligent and well-read always seemed to see herself as a class below her peers who had.
My parents had lived very different lives, but they both shared the same ‘be strong’ driver, inherited from their own parents. Life had been hard and often felt unfair, but they’d both been expected to keep that on the inside, a quality they dutifully passed on to their children, with the judgement that it was not only a useful one, it was also hugely admirable.
But if we don’t cry and rage when we feel sadness and anger, where do we believe those emotions go? Do they magically dissipate when we tell ourselves ‘you should be grateful’? Or when we push them down in our minds, do we only drive them deeper into our bodies to come out in some other way?
It was a powerful thing when I first began to allow myself to feel sad and sorry for myself and cry. Up until then, I had always told myself that the thing that had happened to me had to be worthy of my tears, and that was such a bullshit story.
Tears are not something we need to hoard like diamonds, and if I truly experience sadness in my body and sit with the thoughts and physical feelings — the clenching throat, the seemingly endless tears, the tightness in my chest — instead of pushing them away, they will recede and leave me. I can choose to feel my sadness and to be kind to myself instead of mean. I can say ‘it’s ok to cry, go ahead, we’re sad right now’ and notice how much better it feels in my body hearing that, rather than ‘oh for god’s sake, just pull yourself together!’
Being kind to myself feels so much stronger than being strong, and learning to be less hard with own self-judgement, less tough on myself, has had a miraculous effect on my ability to hear and be with others, so much so that eventually I became a therapist myself. And often a client will sit in front of me and tell me the saddest stories of childhood: stories of being emotionally or physically abused, of being denied affection and love, of feeling unseen and uncared for, and very often finish their tale with:
“Of course a lot of people have it much worse than me”.
And maybe they do, but they are not you. And no matter what the cause, your sadness and your anger are valid, and are yours to feel and to communicate to the people around you. And take it from me, ‘being strong’ doesn’t feel anywhere near as good as being truly seen and heard.
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Law Turley is a BACP Registered Integrative Therapist and Certified Radical Honesty Trainer living and working in the south west of the UK.
