Hidden Harm. Children Learn To Shrink When Love Has Conditions

Transcript

Hidden Harm And Conditional Love

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Inside the Consulting Room and this series on the subject of hidden harm. In this episode, I want to talk about something which is hard to quantify and can sometimes have an invisible quality, certainly an invisible effect for a time. And it has to do with the nature of conditional love. Bowlby talked about unconditional positive regard, as did Winnicott, in terms of loving a child and behaving in a manner that was consistent with that, without conditions. Namely, there was nothing that the child needed to do in order to be loved. And no matter what the child did, although the behaviors may be completely unacceptable, it didn't in any way challenge the basis for love. Now I think that there are times when our children behave in ways that render them in that moment unlovable. But that is a moment, and I think things then return to normal. Many of the parents I've I've worked with who describe really quite worrying behaviors will go on to that default position of, and I love them. So then imagine what happens if the child is not experiencing unconditional love, not without boundaries, but a kind of love which is conditional. Now, this is a highly damaging dynamic because when connection becomes conditional, the child is caught in a kind of double bind parental control. And there are some children who learn very early that their connections aren't secure, and that the connection can be given and taken away. It can feel warm, close, affirming, and then suddenly different, more distant, more tense, less certain. And over time the child begins to understand something in words, but in experience. And it learns that connection depends on something. In some relationships, connections become really conditional, not explicitly and not always deliberately, but in a way that the child begins to feel. The relationship is no longer a kind of I am here with you, whatever. It becomes I'm here with you depending upon how you are with me. And then the condition isn't neutral, it is tied. It's tied to something inside the parent which is in some way damaged. And particularly in situations where there is conflict with another parent, the child's relationship becomes a space through which something unresolved finds expression. So what we begin to see is a pattern. At times the child is drawn in, promises are made, and gifts are given, and time is spent with the child. There is warmth, closeness, approval, connection. The child feels wanted, important, and valued. And then something shifts. And perhaps the child speaks positively about the other parent. And perhaps they express a wish to spend more time with them, or perhaps they simply don't align in the way that is thought to be needed. And then the response changes: less warmth, less engagement, a subtle withdrawal, or a more direct expression of disapproval. And the child begins to feel something I've done has altered how things are. And it is highly damaging. Because then what happens is that the relationship becomes a means of maintaining something, connection, control, influence. And the child's role is to somehow manage that, to stay close in the right way, to feel the right things, to not threaten what the parent is holding. Internally, this creates a very particular type of experience. Because the child becomes acutely aware that their relationship is not entirely safe. Not unsafe in an obvious sense, but contingent, dependent on something they must manage. And so they begin to adapt. They edit what they say, they hide aspects of their experience, and they align themselves carefully. They suppress feelings that might disrupt the connection. Not because they are trying to consciously comply, it's an automatic adaptive response. And because losing connection feels like too great a risk. And this creates a double reality for the child. On the surface, there is a relationship, there are moments of closeness, shared experience, connection. But underneath there is a fragile uncertainty because the child knows that connection can change, that it depends on something they must get right. And this is where the psychological cost lies. Not in the absence of connection, but in its instability. Over time, this shapes how the child understands relationships. They may feel or come to position themselves in a way that believes that love is conditional, that closeness must be managed, that authenticity carries risk. They must adapt to maintain connection. And this doesn't remain in childhood because it becomes a way of being in all relationships. And it's important to be clear about this. This dynamic isn't simply about conflict, it's about control through connection, where the relationship itself becomes the mechanism through which something is maintained. Unfortunately, I have witnessed this kind of powerful dynamic in children who have been frequently disappointed by the behaviors of a parent who, on the one hand, states considerable concern for the child and who will even voice this to the child and say things like, Look, I do this, I do that, I took you to this place, I took you to that place. A kind of curious justification for what is ordinary, followed by you you always you always disappoint me. What did I do wrong? Why am I being what why am I being treated like this? Where's the parent that I want? So this kind of duality means that children are placed in a position where they don't know which parent is going to turn up, and by which I mean which part of a parent is going to turn up. And this is very damaging because children are not able to see that what's happening is not about them. What they see is that what is happening is a constant, so it must be them. Now, children shouldn't have to be in a position to manage this, they shouldn't have to earn connection or adjust themselves to keep it intact. Connection needs to be something they can rely on, not something that depends on how well they align. Not as difficult, but not as inconsistent, but as someone who has learned that closeness comes with conditions, and a child who's trying to navigate that as best they can. I think what's really important is that because I see so many children who have been caught in this kind of dynamic, and I see it not exclusively, but often where there is parental conflict. I think the central message is to do with enabling the child to understand that what they're experiencing is not about them. And I've taken a number of children through the process of realizing that the parent that they want for reasons that aren't to do with the child isn't available. I also try and work with those parents concerned, and I uh try and help them to see that whatever it is that they're experiencing is finding expression in a way that is damaging for the child. And as much as I try to do that in a child-centered way and without judgment, I don't think I've yet, apart from one case that comes to mind, I don't think I've yet had very much success. And this is because the parent concerned is most likely to be egocentric at best and narcissistic at worst. And their capacity to be able to see the child as a whole person who's got bits that work and other bits that don't work, their capacity to do that is compromised. So what they do is they try and maintain a relationship with a part of the child that is gratifying to them. Anything outside of that might be treated with disconnection, disregard, hostility, criticism, and so on. And the reality is that the children like this have to sort of shrink themselves in order to fit a template that's been created by someone who has a very unreliable sense of how relationships with children work. In such cases, this can escalate to a point where emotional harm is being sustained by the child. And when that happens, then we as clinicians have to think about does this constitute a safeguarding risk? Because what we see is a child is being damaged. I'm not talking about you know a single episode or a couple of episodes where things go wrong but they get rectified. We're talking about a pattern of behavior, and when that pattern of behavior becomes established, even though it's sort of hard to quantify, well, not hard to quantify, but sometimes these things are very hard to evidence. But my view is that I believe the child's truth. Now, the child's truth is not the same as objective truth, but it is the child's truth, and I'm not in a position to question the objectivity of that. I think there are times when I might say, when we're talking about sort of occasional episodes, whether or not there's a way that we can understand this differently. And that means things like, well, you know, maybe mum or dad just that maybe they were struggling and they just couldn't cope with how things were, and that's not your fault, but you know, maybe, maybe that was it, maybe it was more about how they were feeling. And what I'm trying to do is I don't want to vilify parents, what I'm trying to do is to help the child well understand that well, parents aren't perfect people either. And I can't, I I the number of times I've said, well, maybe, maybe he or she got really angry because they were frightened of what about what you were telling them or what had happened, and and sometimes grown-ups do this, and it it it doesn't mean they don't love you, it's just you know, it's a reaction. And I think that's important because it's about trying to re make make the connection or reconnect rather than the child being left with a version of events which is is distorted, and in some way, I mean parents do this as well. Parents very often will say, Look, I'm sorry, I'm I was just really angry, and it it's not your fault, you know. I still don't think what you did was a good idea, but and so there we see the repair. But for children who are caught in these awful conditional relationships, there is never repair. Children very often get to a point where they realize that they deserve an explanation or that they deserve an apology for the way for the things that have happened, for the ways that they've been treated. And I would say, well, absolutely. Trouble is it never happened, at least not in my experience. I did make reference to the the one case where I think I had some success. It took a while, and the man concerned, who had created a good deal of difficulty, was little by little able to see that that's what had happened. He couldn't understand how what he had done was difficult, and that's not because he was callous, it was because he was he was suffering with uh what we call compromised mentalization. So his ability to see, to make the connection between his own thoughts and actions and the the way in which they were experienced, he he couldn't join the dots. So little by little we made that possible, and w which which was, I think, under the circumstances, uh quite an accomplishment because this was a case that I worked on under court order, and uh it was very, very complex, and it was about trying to reunite parent and child, uh very difficult work, but oddly we had we accomplished it. So I think the other thing to bear in mind, and this is particularly the case where I think in in within legal frameworks where people talk about parental alienation because the child is refusing to see the parent. I think the bit that gets missed in that quite often is the question of well, why would the child want to be in a situation where they are constantly uncertain, where they are constantly compromised, where they can't be themselves. Eventually children vote with their feet. And that is apparently because the other parent has coached them. Well, I've never yet found a case of that kind, but it's a very common, it's a very common allegation. The truth is, children, if children are withdrawing, there's a very good reason for that, and blaming the other parent is really not a good idea. That said, yes, I am sure that there are some cases where the child is being used in that way. But ultimately I come back to the child, and the fact that these kinds of experiences are highly damaging and they don't end when the child becomes an adult. They strongly inform the ways in which children go on to experience and manage subsequent relationships. In the next episode, I'm going to be talking about the invisible impact of emotional neglect. And this is in many ways about bringing the series together. I would once again invite you to go to my website, thechildren's consultancy.com, and look at the compendium of parental guidance, which constitutes 20 different aspects of parenting. And you're very welcome to download these and use them for reference points. They're completely free, and they sit alongside many of the podcasts that I produce. I hope this has been helpful and thank you for listening.