How I was programmed in my childhood drove my destructive enabling behaviours

The collapse of my family structure began after my divorce, and after the birth of my daughter. The decisions I had to make in order to survive were to follow me on my journey continuously. If I had to say what was my greatest regret it would be asking my ex-husband to look after my boys. The subsequent years of acrimony impacted upon them to such a degree that my relationship with them now is non-existent.

My eldest son asked me to help him come and live with me when he was 16, I did, and he did. However, half way through his final year of school, during a school vacation his behaviour changed completely and within a few weeks I discovered he was dabbling with recreational drugs. He refused to give them up, stayed away from school and he didn’t graduate with a high school diploma. The dread I felt knowing how much harder it was going to be for him to become successful in a career path was overwhelming.

This was the same time that I was sitting out a restraint of trade after leaving my high powered job in the corporate Out of Home Industry. Money was once again tight and I felt that my son was heading down a slippery slope into a life of drugs if I didn’t do something drastic to get him away from this group of friends. I had some air-miles through an airlines loyalty programme and I had around $ 100. His dad had kept in touch with an old friend now living in the UK, and I despatched him there hoping against hope that he would be ok. My thinking at the time was that he would be able to lift himself out of what was going on, and in hindsight he did a pretty good job of it, I don’t think he has ever forgiven me though as he says that I abandoned him and sent him away.

Long distance parenting

Over the next few years I kept in touch with him on and off and I started to go to the UK a few times a year, always catching up with him for a lunch here and there. He moved closer to his God Parents, and my daughters God Mother helped him tremendously. He drifted job wise and fell in love. It was an intense love, an infatuation that came to an abrupt end in June 2008. I received a text message telling me he was sorry, and goodbye. At first glance I thought it was an apology for a rude telephone call the week before, until his dad called me as he’d received the same message. I will be forever grateful to the Thames Valley Police in Reading, in the UK, they helped a very distraught mother, thousands of miles away, pulling out all the resources to find her son and help him before it was too late. I left for England the next evening and brought him back to South Africa. I will never know if his intention to die was serious or not, but I am truly grateful that he didn’t.

Alpha male rivalry

Well this certainly changed the family dynamic back at home. In 2007 my younger son had decided to come and live with me. The escapades of my elder son during his final year of high school meant that the younger one had no chance of living with me until he had left school. Ironic really, that the foray into drugs was used against me. I don’t smoke, have never taken any form of narcotic and I drink very little by way of alcoholic beverages. My daughter now had both of her brothers in the home and I had to contend with two young men wanting to be the alpha male. The rivalry between them was immense, emotive and draining and all I wanted to do was bury my head in the sand. I was trying so hard to get to grips with my own life and behaviours at this time.

Neither of my sons were working, the youngest son was studying via an Open University equivalent, but I was never sure if he was doing his course work, and the older one watched movies all day. Looking to motivate them to get ahead, I helped them to get their drivers licenses and bought them nice cars. I enrolled my eldest son in classes because he wanted to be a plumber, but he didn’t finish the course. The disruption was impacting on my daughter and she was staying off school. Something needed to change. I needed them to change and they wouldn’t.

All I was doing was enabling them to stay exactly the same way. By this time I had met my now husband Chris, talk about brewing up a perfect storm. He helped me to calculate all the money I was handing out to my sons, car insurance, fuel, cigarette money, food, spending money etc. It was a huge amount of money every month and I had to make some decisions as they refused to get jobs.

A mothers guilt

I got them an apartment, together, put in some basic furniture gave them an allowance, and gave them 6 months to get jobs and get on their feet. For whatever reasons they didn’t and I cancelled the lease on the apartment. They were furious and a lot of venom was heaped on this all being Chris’ doing. My word a mother’s guilt is legendary in its capacity to expand.

A child’s natural instinct is to survive, and they will instinctively use whatever means at their disposal to do so. Sharing this story is not to highlight their bad behaviour, or in fact their behaviour. I am sharing this with to show you how if you continue to enable bad behaviours you don’t learn your lessons and the cycle repeats itself. If you stop enabling the behaviour then something has to change. I was only at the beginning of my journey at this stage. My eldest son and I had become more and more estranged again and the youngest drifted away. For whatever reason their anger towards me kept them away from my wedding lunch, and with the exception of one other attempt at intervening and assisting my youngest son on track, we have very little contact today. I must include here, that at a very, very difficult moment, when I had lost everything I had, my youngest son helped me financially when we had none else to turn to and for this I am truly grateful.

I am pretty sure now that my decision to ask my husband to take my sons was the starting point of all of what transpired. At that moment I felt that I had no other choice, but, whatever your choice in life, there is a price to pay. It has taken me twenty one years from making that decision, to be ok with myself as a mother, to understand that I did the very best that I could with the resources I had to hand. I loved my sons so much, that I chose what I thought to be a better path for them. I know that they probably don’t think that, but whenever negatives thoughts of doubt, hurt or guilt around my sons arise I remember what Eleanor Roosevelt said “What somebody else thinks about me, is none of my business.”

Enabling Behaviours brings to this to mind: In Poland, there’s an idiom that I’ve recently fallen in love with. Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy . . . literally, “Not my circus; Not my monkeys”; figuratively, “not my problem.”  If it’s not your monkey, and it’s not even from your circus, then it’s not your problem. If you’ve never heard of this life lesson before, then you’re in for a treat given the transformational exercise below!

Question:

Whose circus and monkeys are you unnecessarily part of and what’s the price you’re paying right now for allowing this nonsense to persist in your life?

Exercise:

1. Whose circus and monkeys are you the ringleader of right now?
2. Why did you allow them to pass their circus and monkeys on to you?
3. Has this happened to you before?
4. How many times?
5. What’s the lesson you haven’t yet learned from all these circuses and monkeys?
6. Are you worthy and deserving of something significantly better than this?
7. What would happen if you were to hand their circus and monkeys back to them?
8. Would that maybe teach them a much needed life-lesson?
9. How would this make you feel?
10. If feelings of guilt are surfacing, ask yourself why. Why should you feel guilty over ridding yourself of something which was never yours to own in the first place?
11. What interference are you running in people’s lives as a result of not allowing them the experience of dealing their own circus and their own monkeys?
12. How is your getting in the way stunting their learning, growth and development of a greater awareness?

My profound lesson:

As you may have gathered by now, since young, I was always the family fixer. I fixed everything and as such I developed the subconscious belief that it was always up to me to fix everything and everyone. What a foolish default setting that was with which to approach life! The moment something or someone went pear-shaped, I jumped into “fix it mode” and found myself getting very involved with everything that was happening. When what had to be fixed was sorted, the gratitude I expected to receive was never forthcoming. This left me feeling angry, resentful and confused. Everyone else had been lounging around, wistfully bemoaning their fate, whilst I took the strain of what was invariably a very hot kitchen. Eventually, I got it! I realised that one of the biggest causes of stress (and dis-stress) in my life was my need to be the ringmaster of every circus in town, stupidly putting their lessons and needs ahead of my wellbeing. Why did I feel the need to fix everything and everyone in my path? Because as a little girl that was the only way I ever got some form (albeit meniscal) of recognition and significance. Even more shocking was to discover that because I was a fixer, I was fulfilling against this subconscious desire by attracting to me, very broken people, making their circus and monkeys, my circus and monkeys.

Not anymore. Thankfully my children – every one of them – taught me this powerful life lesson over and over again until I finally learned it. Thank you children.

To your success, with love

Suzanne.