When Avoidance Must End

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Hello and welcome back.
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This is Kim Lee, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist.
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And this is episode nine of the series entitled The Avoidant Parent: The Effects Upon Their Children.
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Now, in this episode, I'm going to pose what is something of a tricky question.
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Perhaps it's more a statement.
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So I've entitled this When Avoidance Must End.
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That in itself is perhaps a slightly contentious thing to say, but on the other hand, there's a hopeful component to it if people will do what is generally regarded as the right thing.
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Now, understanding avoidance isn't the same as accepting its consequences indefinitely.
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Because we can understand that the avoidant parent was once a child whose feelings were dismissed, whose dependency was shamed, or whose emotional needs overwhelmed by the adults around them, or was overwhelming for the adults around them.
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We might recognize that the withdrawal originally developed understandably as protection.
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But the problem is that the defense that once protected the parent may now be injuring their child.
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And at some point, explanation must be followed by responsibility.
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The central question becomes: can the avoidant parent remain emotionally present when every part of them wants to leave?
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And this is where change begins.
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Not with a promise to communicate better, and not with another referral for the problematic child, so-called, and not with another explanation of why the parent finds emotion difficult.
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It begins when the avoidant parent recognizes that withdrawal, their withdrawal, is something they do not simply as the absence of action.
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Silence is an action, leaving the room is an action, failing to respond is an action.
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Allowing the other parent to carry every difficult decision is an action.
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Treating another person's kindness as though it requires no acknowledgement is also an action.
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These behaviors, whether they are conscious or not, still have effects.
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They leave consequences.
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A genuine change begins when that parent can acknowledge those effects without immediately defending their intentions.
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They may simply need to say, I didn't understand how alone you felt, or I withdrew because I was overwhelmed.
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But that left you on your own.
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And I allowed you to become the difficult child because I couldn't face my part in what was happening.
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Or I blame the other parent because recognizing my part and it just felt too difficult.
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And these are difficult statements because they require the avoidant parent to tolerate shame without escaping into silence, blame, or self-pity.
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And this distinction matters because healthy guilt says I have done something that caused harm and I need to repair it.
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Overwhelming shame says I'm a terrible person, and therefore I can't bear to remain in this conversation.
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Shame can become another form of avoidance.
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I was too, I felt too ashamed.
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Well, that's great, but where does that leave everyone else?
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The parent collapses, becomes defensive, or insists that they are being attacked is another tendency.
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And then the conversation shifts away from the injured child or partner and towards reassuring the parent.
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You know, once again, somebody else is required to manage the avoidant person's feelings.
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And responsibility means actually remaining present.
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You know, it doesn't matter if it hurts, if that's a feeling.
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Nothing bad will happen.
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But it means hearing about the harm without demanding immediate forgiveness.
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It means resisting the urge to explain before the other person has been fully hurt.
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It means tolerating the possibility that good intentions didn't produce a good outcome.
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The avoidant parent may say, but I'm a good parent, I love my children.
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And that's not the thing that's in question.
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The more difficult question is: how was that love experienced by them?
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Did it remain available when they were angry?
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Could they depend upon it when they were frightened?
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Did it survive disappointment and conflict?
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Could the child feel loved without first becoming quiet, successful, helpful, or emotionally undemanding?
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Love is important, but love that cannot be emotionally accessed may not provide the security the child requires.
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Change, therefore, has to become visible in behavior.
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So the parent returns to the conversations they previously abandoned.
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They attend everything that needs to be attended rather than leaving the responsibility to somebody else.
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They communicate, they participate in parental guidance, they maintain boundaries even when the child becomes angry.
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They acknowledge kindness and being loved, and they reciprocate.
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They ask the child what an experience was like rather than deciding what it should have been like.
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Most importantly, they need to do these things repeatedly.
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A single emotional conversation doesn't reorganize a family, and one apology certainly will not restore trust.
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The family's expectations were built through repetition and they will be revised through repetition.
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You know, I often talk about the words and the actions having to match, but it's the actions that always speak louder than the words.
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The words are easy.
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When there is change, if there is change, the child is likely to distrust it.
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The compliant child might say that everything is fine because that is what they've learned to say.
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The angry child may become more provocative.
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They may be testing.
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Will you still remain?
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If I show you what I really feel the child experiences?
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Is this change genuine?
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Will the boundary disappear if I become difficult enough?
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Will you reject me again?
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A parent may feel discouraged.
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They may say, I'm trying, but nothing I do makes any difference.
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But the child is not refusing the parent's change.
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They're checking whether it can be trusted.
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Trust develops when the parent remains consistent after the first hopeful moment has passed.
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The compliant child requires particular care.
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When a quiet child begins expressing anger, disappointment, or need, the family may believe that the child is deteriorating.
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They may say things like, You never used to behave like this.
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What's happening to you?
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But what's happened may be that the child no longer feels compelled to disappear.
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Their newly expressed anger may be uncomfortable, but it can also represent development.
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The child is discovering that relationships might survive their full emotional presence.
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And the task is not to push them back into compliance, it's to help them express themselves without becoming destructive.
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And the parent might say, you've spent a long time trying not to add to the family's difficulties.
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And I imagine that's been really hard.
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And I want to know what it's been like for you.
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Because that child may need permission to stop being understanding.
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They may need protection from an aggressive sibling.
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They may need time alone with a parent in which they're not discussing the other child's problems.
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And they need adults to recognize that a parent coping came at a cost.
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The aggressive child requires a different response.
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They need emotional understanding and firm containment.
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The parent must communicate those two things at the same time.
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I want to understand what you're feeling, and I'm not going to allow you to frighten or hurt other people.
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Neither statement is sufficient alone.
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Understanding without boundaries just leaves everybody feeling unsafe.
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It's a bit like, okay, you can understand, you can understand the avoidance and you can rationalize it, but that that doesn't change anything.
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Boundaries without understanding, though, can deepen rejection and shame.
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Where violence, intimidation, or serious risk is present, safety must come first.
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And sometimes we have to think about separating children if the risk is high and if it's present.
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Because the vulnerable sibling requires an individual safety and opportunities to speak without the aggressive child or avoidant presence.
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So sometimes professional or statutory intervention may be necessary.
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Family understanding must never be used to minimize harm.
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The aggressive child also needs to know that being stopped doesn't mean being abandoned.
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A calm boundary says, you can't do this, you just can't.
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And I'm responsible for helping you, but just you can't do it.
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That's not rejection.
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The other parent has also a role in change, but it's not to work even harder.
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They may have spent years compensating for the avoidant adult.
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They arrange, explain, remind, anticipate, and repair.
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But their overfunctioning, whilst it's been necessary, actually has allowed the avoidant parent to remain under involved.
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It's like enabling.
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So change requires them to stop taking responsibility for what another adult should be doing.
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And it might feel dangerous.
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You know, if they don't remind the avoidant parent, perhaps the, you know, there will there'll be a consequence.
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But actually, whilst those are realistic concerns, they aren't that it is necessary to manage them differently.
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But stepping back should never place a child at risk.
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Where responsibility can be safely returned, it needs to be returned.
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The other parent will continue, hopefully, to provide support, but what they won't do is protect them from the effects of their avoidance.
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And that has to be done in a way which is as non-critical as possible, because the avoidance default position is to defend, retaliate, dismiss, ignore, avoid.
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So what this is about is the restoration of adult responsibility.
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And you know, the the thing is if if the child alone is sent to therapy while the parents remain unchanged, the child receives the same message as always.
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You are the problem.
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Therapeutic work with the child may be valuable and necessary, but it can't substitute for parental engagement.
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And I speak with with far too many examples of this.
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When I see avoidant parents not engaging in therapy, I will very probably bring therapy to an end.
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And that's difficult because you know, when you when you work with children and you form relationships and you can see what they need, and you try and help parents engage, you try and share your understanding and knowledge in a way that they can hopefully utilize, you know, you do it for all the right reasons.
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But if you have avoidance as a consequence, then it means that the work that you're doing is going to be pretty well, it's going to provide temporary relief for that sort.
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Very often the avoidant parent may want the professional to teach the child emotional regulation while remaining unwilling to tolerate the child's emotions at home.
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You know, sometimes parents say, well, we want some strategies.
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And I will almost always say I don't do strategies.
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What they're looking for is a toolkit.
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I say we want the child to have a toolkit.
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And I think, okay, how about you?
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What do you need?
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You're the pro you're the grown-ups.
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Where is this going wrong?
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What do you need?
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And if I'm honest, a lot of people will actually understand that connection and they will begin to see that actually the child is part of a system that needs not strategies, but it needs help.
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And I think once that happens, then we start to look at the whole situation differently.
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Engagement is what's important.
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I mean, they may want the therapist to stop the aggression while continuing to undermine boundaries.
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They may seek an assessment but resist the family work.
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Treatment then risks becoming another place where responsibility is displaced.
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I can remember one person saying, I I brought my family.
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And my thoughts were, well, that's because I don't live in your house, you do, and I don't fix families, particularly if they don't get involved.
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Effective intervention requires individual work with a child, parental guidance, family intervention, and coordination with schools or other services.
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And I do this all the time.
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I try and get everybody, as best I can, to have a shared understanding of what that's.
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And that's not about judgment.
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It's about, look, we have a child here who is struggling.
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How did that happen?
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How did the child arrive at this point?
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Everybody will have their own perceptions, rightly so.
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My job is to bring those together into a coherent response, which is appropriate to each situation.
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It's quite a difficult task, but when it happens, my goodness, the change is phenomenal.
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But any intervention must address the system, the family system that's sustaining the difficulty, not only the person displaying it.
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Here's a question: Can every avoidant parent change?
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And the answer is no.
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Some will continue to explain, minimize, and blame.
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They may seek repeated professional opinions while refusing the work each professional recommends.
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They may offer brief engagement when the relationship is threatened, they return to withdrawal when the immediate crisis is passed.
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They may insist that the child, partner, or other parent must change first.
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In those circumstances, the rest of the family may need to stop measuring progress by promises.
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The meaningful question here is what's actually changed?
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What's that what are the responsibilities being shared?
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Are boundaries consistent?
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Are difficult conversations completed?
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Is kindness, care, and love acknowledged?
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Does the parent return after the conflict?
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Are the children safer?
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Is the partner still carrying the entire relationship?
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Hope has to be connected to evidence.
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And without that hope, without that, I'm afraid families are in a state of suspension until withdrawal eventually occurs.
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For the adult partner, becoming unstuck may involve recognizing that understanding another person's avoidance doesn't create an obligation to live inside it.
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They can have compassion, they can invite engagement without pursuing it, they can offer an opportunity for repair without pretending that repair has occurred.
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But the the comp for the children, recovery begins when the assigned roles are no longer required.
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You know, when the compliant child doesn't have to disappear, the aggressive child no longer has to become the pro the crisis, and the caregiving child no longer has to manage the parent.
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And the apparently independent child is allowed to need and be a child.
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Repair, if it happens, doesn't erase the past.
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If the parent days, listens, acknowledges, return after failure, and become capable of saying, I understand why you expected me to do what I used to do, because this is what I've always done.
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And I'm trying to respond differently, and I know that you'll need to see that over time.
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This is really honest.
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It's an honest beginning, and it demonstrates fallibility, the recognition of fallibility in the parent, and the fact that it's okay to be fallible so long as you do something about it.
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It really matters enormously.
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So, in conclusion, the avoidant parent may once have survived by disappearing from difficult situations and feelings.
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But recovery begins when they decide that their child will no longer have to disappear with them.
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I sincerely hope that this episode has been useful in the and the whole series, I hope, has been useful.
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The next series is going to be entitled I Wish My Parents Would.
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And what I want to do is to bring the voice of the child into out into the open.
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This is what things these are going to be things that children have told me.
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And I'm going to illuminate what they're saying, why they're saying it, what's required.
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Because children don't have a voice.
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Sometimes they do.
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So they hold the I wish my parents would inside themselves where it ferments.
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That's coming soon, but thank you for listening.