My mothering skills have huge pockets of All or Nothing options, accented with control and responsibility that is overly dramatic and leaves me with little options to manuver through issues that I find are out of my control.
While talking to my brother I was trying to figure out how this ‘all-or-none” works within dysfunction, like what how is it applied and why?
How was I taught this and why do I still use that as my “go to tool” in conflict resolutions.
Charles Whitfield in his book, “Healing the Child Within”, writes.
“This is the ego defense that therapists call splitting. When we think or act this way, we do so at either one extreme or the other. For example, either we love something or we hate them. There is no middle ground. We see the people around us either good or bad, and not the composite they really are. We judge ourselves equally as harshly. The more we use the all-or-nothing thinking, the more it opens us up to behaving in an all or nothing fashion. Both of the actions tend to get us into trouble and to cause us to suffer unnecessarily.
We may be attracted to others who think and behave in an all-or-none fashion. But being around this kind of person tends to result in more trouble and suffering for us.
Table 3 lists types of parental conditions associated with dynamics of AcoA’s, and adult children from other dysfunctional families. While all-or-none thinking can occur in any of these parental conditions, it occurs especially often among fundamentalist religious parents. They are often rigid, punitive, judgmental, and perfectionists. They are often in a shame-based system, which attempts to cover over and even destroy the True Self.
All-or-nothing thinking is similar to active alcoholism, other chemical dependency, co-dependency or other active addictions and attachments, in that it sharply and unrealistically limits our possibilities and choices. To be so limited makes us feel constricted and we are unable to be creative and to grow in our day-to-day lives.
In recovery, we begin to learn that most things in our life, including our recovery, are not all-or-none, not either-or. Rather, they are both-and. They have shades of gray, they are somewhere in the middle of a 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 and not either a 0 or a 10.”
Charles Whitfield.
I am beginning to see how it is applied and why.
It limits the possibilities and choices and covers up our true self.
That feels right.
Yet it feels dreadful that is what I am doing to my children, when I offer the all-or-none attitude.
While all-or-none seems to be easy and cut and dried, it actually reduces the choices so small, it leaves little room for both-and.
I than fail to see my child as good and bad, or energetic and lazy, that they swing and sway to both sides, depending upon what needs to be done.
I write them off quickly, too quickly when my reality becomes overwhelming to me, when my fears rush in that I am being abused again by their lack of caring for my home, their dishes etc.
This ideology is the corner stone of my being a huge foundation that I leaned upon and lived from.
It is so much easier to manipulate others from there. Manipulating others is a scary premise to raise children. Manipulating them for my benefit…Instead of finding solutions with multiple choices.
I lived by the hard and fast rule, do it my way or leave.
Or its cousin, do it my way or I leave.
Each and every time I feel overwhelmed or out of control, I want to bring this dogma back into my world, to wield the cumbersome sword and dictate to clear my world of riff raff and true selves begging to be heard.
It is so hard to wrestle yourself free from the ties that bind this to my way of thinking, to be open to others ideas and solutions, to bring them in and see if this is just my problem or a family problem.
I will ride the mower with this thought, “attempts to cover up or even destroy the true self.” And sadly we both suffer, no true self remains standing in the all-or-none religion.
