The Nice Girl Syndrome (10 page)

Patricia gave me a blank look and quickly said, “Oh, he took care of me. He was a very good provider. He managed to pay for my col- lege even though he didn’t make all that much money.”

I could see that even though Patricia was clear about the role her father’s alcoholism had in her marrying an alcoholic, she was in denial about how her taking care of him had turned her into a Nice Girl.

“From my perspective it seems to me that, when you were a child, you were so focused on taking care of your father and pro- tecting him from your mother that you didn’t take care of your own needs, or even know what they were. Can you see that?” I asked her quietly.

Again, Patricia gave me a blank look, but I could tell that the wheels were spinning. “I’ve never thought of that. I guess I should have, but I just never saw it that way.” She fell silent and I allowed her to stay with her own feelings. When she spoke again she said, “This really is a pattern in my life. I’ve been this way with other men, too, other people actually. I always go along with what- ever other people want to do. I don’t really think about my own needs.”

This was a huge breakthrough for Patricia. She needed time to integrate the information but she had faced a core issue. During our next session, I asked her if she felt any anger toward her father.

“It’s difficult. I felt so sorry for him because of my mother. I always felt he drank as a way to cope with her. But I’ve been think- ing about it since our last appointment, and I’m beginning to see that he was responsible for putting up with her in the first place— just as I am responsible for putting up with my husband. I can see how I even started drinking too much to cope with my husband. But I love my kids so much that I didn’t want them to have an alcoholic mother
and
father so I went to AA and stopped drinking. It was very hard, but I did it for them. My father could have done the same for me.”

Patricia was quiet again for quite some time, and I could see that this was the way she processed her feelings. She was a very intro- spective person and was doing really good work.

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“I guess I never wanted to hold my father responsible for any- thing. He was so kind and sweet to me. But he was responsible. And just being nice and sweet doesn’t cut it, does it?” Patricia flashed me a knowing smile to show me that she got the connection.

I encouraged Patricia to write down her emerging feelings about her father in her journal. I also asked her to pay attention to any feelings of anger that might bubble up as she faced more and more about her father, and to find a healthy and constructive way of releasing that anger. I suggested she write her father a letter express- ing her anger and assured her that she didn’t need to give it to him. I also suggested she give herself permission to release her anger in a physical way, such as putting her head against a pillow and scream- ing, or using her fists to hit her bed.

The next time I saw Patricia, she had a lot more energy than she had during our first two visits. “I can’t believe how much better I feel. I still have a lot of work to do. I’m still not ready to walk out on my husband tomorrow but I’m a lot closer to ending it. It’s taken me a long time to face the truth about all this, but now that I have I feel more motivated than ever to get my kids away from him—at least on a full-time basis. I don’t want them to grow up like I did.”

Patricia also reported that she had written about her feelings about her father in her journal. “It’s still really hard for me to do. I still want to protect him. I find myself making excuses for him, but then I think about my kids. I think about how I put them in the same situation I was in as a kid. I think about how they have already been hurt by having an alcoholic for a father and by seeing their mother put up with someone who is so cruel.”

“And can you get angry for how you suffered? Can you get in touch with how it must have felt for you to take care of your father instead of having him take care of you?” I asked.

“I’m beginning to. I still try to convince myself that he was a great father, and in some ways he was. But now I’m allowing myself to remember the bad times—like when he’d be falling down drunk in front of my friends, and how I’d come home from a date to find him passed out on the couch in his underwear.”

Patricia had come a long way. Her first step was in discovering the origins of her tendency to put the feelings and needs of others ahead of her own. I’ll talk more later in this chapter about how you can continue to come out of denial about your own childhood expe-

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riences, how you can come to acknowledge and release your anger, and what parentified children need to do to recover.

Many Nice Girls are envious of others who take good care of them- selves. Although they are not consciously aware of this, it is because they secretly wish they could take better care of themselves. Many claim that they don’t have the time, due to a heavy workload or their having children to raise. Others blame their spouses for not helping them more. But the truth is, your reason for not taking bet- ter care of yourself lies within you. No matter how busy you are, how neglectful your partner is, or how many children you have to raise, you can still find time to take care of yourself if you put your mind to it.

Earlier I mentioned that I had hoped that Sheila would make the connection between the way she talked to and about her hus- band and the way her mother had talked to her, and eventually she did. This happened during one of our sessions. As she tended to do, she began by complaining about how selfish Derrick was. I sympathized with how he did not do his share when it came to childcare and helping around the house, a common complaint about husbands, many of whom see that as “women’s work.” I also reminded Sheila that Derrick did make a good living for the fam- ily—a good enough living that she was able to be a stay-at-home mom—and that he was a good and decent man in many respects. She didn’t have the ideal husband but she certainly didn’t have the worst.

She responded with, “I know, I know. But I just hate it that he has so much freedom, while I feel like a prisoner in my own home sometimes. I hate it that he takes such good care of his body when I don’t ever have the time to work out or get a massage.”

When I suggested to her that she could, in fact, make time for herself, she balked. “But I always feel selfish when I do that. I always hear my mother’s voice, ‘You have time to do your nails but you don’t have time to clean the kitchen.’” This time she got it. “Oh my God, that’s exactly how I talk to my husband. I’m always saying to him, ‘You have time to go for a run but you don’t have time to help

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me with the kids.’ No wonder I resent him. He’s doing what I want to do but don’t because I don’t want to look selfish. I resent him because he doesn’t seem to feel guilty like I was made to feel. In fact, I’ve been trying to make him feel guilty.”

Sheila had taken a huge step. Now she needed to realize that taking care of herself, doing things for herself, was not selfish. She needed to realize that she had a
right
to think of her own needs. You probably need to do the same thing.

Because of all your prior conditioning, you may believe that taking care of yourself is a selfish act. But your highest responsibility is to yourself. When you take care of your own needs first, you will be able to be a genuinely caring, giving person, not a martyr thinking everyone owes her something or a victim begrudging all that she gives. Although it may be uncomfortable at first, and you may be afraid that others won’t like you unless you cater to their needs first, keep trying. Eventually, you will find that nothing bad happens to you just because you think of yourself first or because you do what
you
want to do.

You’ve heard it before: if you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of others. Even the airlines know this. That’s why they instruct you to put on your own oxygen mask before putting on your child’s.

If your basic needs for nurturing, protection, and support were not met by neglectful or self-absorbed parents, you will have a par- ticularly difficult time knowing how to meet those needs now. It is as if there is a disconnect inside you between what you need and providing it for yourself. A child needs to receive love to be able to feel love. This includes love for oneself. If we do not love ourselves, we will not be motivated to take care of ourselves. Those who were neglected or emotionally abused often look at those who are moti- vated to take care of themselves with wonder. “Where do they get the motivation?” they ask themselves. “Why do they care so much about their health or the way they look?” They are poignantly aware that there is something missing inside themselves, something that creates the kind of motivation that would cause someone to say no

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to a piece of cake, the kind of motivation to get up at six o’clock in the morning in order to get to the gym before going to work, the kind of motivation that would help someone leave an abusive part- ner. The something that is missing is self-love.

Some adults who were neglected or emotionally abused do not take care of themselves because they feel they do not deserve it. Children tend to blame the neglect and abuse they experience on themselves, in essence saying to themselves, “My mother is treating me like this because I’ve been bad” or “I am being neglected because I am unlovable.” Adult survivors tend to continue this kind of ration- alization, believing that they are to blame for their own deprivation and abuse as children. As adults, they put up with poor treatment by friends, relatives, and romantic partners because they believe they brought it on themselves. When good things happen to them, they may actually become uncomfortable. They feel so unworthy that they cannot take in the good.

E
XERCISE
: W
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ARE OF
Y
OURSELF
?

• Write down the reason or reasons you believe you do not take better care of yourself.
  

• What beliefs do you have about your right to take care of yourself?
  

• List all the ways that you deprive yourself of nurturing, sup- port, protection, and so forth.
  

  Remedy #4: Create a Positive and Powerful Statement
  

  No matter how you were raised or what you believe about taking care of yourself, you can begin to change.
  

• Create what Laurel Mellin, the author of
  The Pathway
  , calls a positive and powerful statement that will counter your nega- tive belief that it is not okay to take care of your own needs. For example, it may be as simple as: “It is okay to take care of my own needs first.” Or, you may need to remind yourself that you
  deserve
  to take care of yourself or that you have a
  right
  to
  

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do so. In that case, your positive and powerful statement might be: “I deserve to consider my own needs first,” or “I have the right to think of my own needs.” Or, you may have to remind yourself that you need to take care of yourself in order to let go of your tendency to be a martyr—“I have an obligation to myself and to others to take care of my own needs first.”

• Work on your positive and powerful statement until it feels right—until it really
  resonates
  with you emotionally. It needs to be something that you can believe or that you are willing to believe in time.
  

• Make a point of repeating this positive and powerful state- ment several times a day. Do what Mellin suggests and “grind it in,” meaning that you repeat it until you begin to believe it (she recommends you repeat it ten times, three times a day).
  

• Don’t just say the words mindlessly, really
  feel
  them as you say them. Let the words permeate your very being. Take a deep breath and take the words into your body, mind, and spirit.
  

Because you have been focused primarily on the needs of others, your own needs have probably gone unmet. What makes matters worse is that you probably don’t even know what your own needs are. This may be because you simply haven’t paid attention to them or because your needs may have been ignored when you were a child and, as an adult, you have continued to ignore them. (As adults, we often treat ourselves the way we were treated as a chil- dren.)

Once you have identified your real needs, you will be better able to meet them. The following exercise will help you determine what your needs are.

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1. Take a close look at the following list of basic needs and think about how often you satisfy these needs for yourself.
   

   Hunger: Give yourself healthy food to eat.
   

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   Thirst: Give yourself plenty of water—not diet or sweet drinks, but water.
   

   Sleep: Go to bed at a reasonable time; don’t eat before bed or take any stimulants.
   

   Companionship: Don’t allow yourself to become isolated.
   

   Reach out when you are lonely.
   

   Sex: Provide yourself with healthy outlets for sex, neither depriving nor indulging yourself.
   

   Stimulation: Get involved in activities that stimulate your mind, body, and spirit.
   

   Spiritual connection: Satisfy your need for contemplation, gratitude, prayer, ritual, or any other type of spiritual expression you need.
   

2. Make a list of the needs you are meeting and how you are meeting them.
   

3. List the needs that have gone unmet and think of ways that you can begin to meet them.