• How to manage your parents

Taken from a book written by Lucy Beresford, these extracts look at how to tackle relationships with parents.

Lucy Beresford is the agony aunt for the women’s glossy Psychologies magazine and works as a psychotherapist in private practice and at The London Psychiatry Centre and Priory Hospital. She has also had three clinical sabbaticals in New Delhi, India. Based in London, Lucy spent 10 years in investment banking in the City before leaving to write fiction and to retrain as a psychotherapist.

Her book, Happy Relationships, at Home, Work & Play (McGraw-Hill, January 2013), looks at why some people seem to be more skilled at interpersonal relationships than others. Lucy believes that this isn’t just down to lucky gifts from the gods or even down to a particular type of temperament, but because such people deploy particular ways of interacting with others which are successful.

Happy Relationships aims to share this wisdom, to help us understand how relationships in all areas of our lives can be a joy and not a chore. Here Lucy reveals how we can best tackle our relationships with our parents.

The biggest relationship of all

Our relationships with our parents provide the earliest templates we have for our later relationships. We aren’t always conscious of this, but the way our parents behave, and cope (or not) with life, and get on (or not) with their own partners and family act as examples for us in how (or not) to do it.

If you don’t recollect much warmth from childhood, and often feel lost in your present day intimate relationships, keep a diary of the strong emotions you experience in the present as a result of your interactions with people. Ask yourself whether they remind you of episodes from your past.

If you’re afraid you feel trapped by such emotions, comfort your inner child: remind it that you’re an adult now, with adult skills, enabling you to choose new directions. As a result, you won’t need to blame your past but you’ll be able to see it in a new light, as something that contributed to the You you are today.

Favouritism in childhood

One of the most common forms of resentment about parents goes back to favouritism experienced in childhood. Parental favouritism is invidious and destructive. It’s also almost the last taboo subject and not much acknowledged - at least not by parents themselves. But kids are alert for favouritism of any kind.

The less favoured child will feel diminished and empty. The favoured child on the other hand may feel an inflated sense of superiority at being the ‘golden child’, yet also guilt for being ‘chosen’. Whether you were adored or ignored, there will be pain or discomfort.

It’s worth pointing out that some parental favouritism is intentional and appropriate. There’s no point dragging all our kids to film club or football practice if the talents of some of them lie elsewhere. And it’s appropriate that older children receive perks for being so, such as later bedtimes or more pocket money.

If you were not the favoured child, now is the time to acknowledge your own past hurts and disappointments over how you and your siblings were treated differently. Work out if there’s a link between your emotions and moods and how you try to soothe yourself, such as over-eating, drinking or taking drugs, shopping, or throwing yourself into inappropriate relationships. This way you’ll be able to see if you’ve been trying to compensate for love or attention you didn’t receive from your parents, but which you witnessed going to a different child.

Letting your parents know you're an adult now

One of the hardest things to do, in moving to a place of adult maturity in our relationships with our parents, is to step out of previous child/parent roles. This is especially true when our parents keep trying to pull us back there. Separation from parents is natural and healthy, and follows a fairly predictable path but both sides can get scared of it happening.

If you’re finding your parent overwhelming or suffocating or needy, practice being firm, by reminding yourself that you have permission to live your life not theirs. Identify the boundary you want to create with your parent, such as preserving weekends as ‘me-time’ or not being dragged into their decision making-process, and be alert for their attempts to dismantle it.

Assert yourself pleasantly, which may have to include explaining that if certain unacceptable topics come up you’ll be putting the phone down/leaving the room. This way, you’ll shift an out-dated pattern of childlike relating to your parent.

                                                                                      By: Jess Edwards