A Real Example of the [Wounds +
Unawareness] Cycle at Work - p. 1 of 2 

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        This is one of a series of lesson-7 articles on how to evolve a high-nurturance stepfamily. The "/" in re/marriage and re/divorce notes that it may be a stepparent's first union. "Co-parents" means both bioparents, or any of the three or more related stepparents and bio-parents co-managing a multi-home nuclear stepfamily. 

        As a veteran family-systems therapist, I have specialized in working with stepfamilies since 1981. Though every stepfamily is unique, they all exhibit basic themes. This vignette distills common elements of hundreds of complex stepfamily stories that I've heard. The "McLean-Tilmon-Cohen" clan is one of almost 100 different structural types of multi-home nuclear stepfamily, with five co-parents and five minor kids living in four related homes. Their full story could easily fill a book. 

        This sketch illustrates typical impacts of five hazards caused by the widespread [wounds + unawareness] cycle. It also illustrates this typical remarried couple’s reaction to early-phase stepfamily education and therapy. The names here are fictitious, but the people and their situation are real.

        This example assumes you're familiar with...

the intro to this nonprofit Website and the premises underlying it self-improvement Lessons 1 thru 6,  stepfamily Q&A and common problems; and... three stepfamily developmental paths

Sarah, Jack, and Patty’s Story

        To help place the people in this story, study this partial family map.  For simplicity, all 12 grandparents, and dozens of the five minor kids’ other relatives are not shown. Neither is Ted McLean’s 35-year old "girlfriend" Tanya, the divorcing, custodial mom of four-year-old Melissa. More complete stepfamily genograms (diagrams) look like this. 

        Patty McLean came into my office with her biological mom Sarah Tilmon on a Saturday morning. The slender 13-year-old had never worked with a counselor before, though she knew her mother had gone to several for "something." Patty had recently asked her Mom to "talk to somebody" about "something" to do with her live-in stepfather Jack. Sarah, a vivacious, overweight, 30-something brunette, had called for her own appointment many months before. 

        She came in then because of tensions in her one-year-old remarriage to a wonderful divorced man with two non-custodial kids of his own. Sarah was struggling with a collage of personal, parental, and remarital "problems." She had a high school education, and worked as a beautician.

        Just before she brought Patty in, Sarah told me matter-of-factly that she had been sexually molested at 13. She had had no professional help in coping with the massive inner wounds that a low-nurturance childhood and this trauma and  had caused.

        As Sarah sketched her stepfamily story, it appeared that she had again chosen a strong-willed, take-charge partner like her first husband Ted, though Jack was not alcoholic as Ted seemed to be. Eventually Jack came in with Sarah to support her getting "parenting education." He was a chiropractor with a successful suburban practice. Jack was compact, talkative, and opinionated – righteously, at times.

        A forceful man in his forties, he felt he had given "his all" to his former wife Karen and his kids. He was still angry and "mystified" about Karen’s divorcing him and claiming "irrationally" that he was "impossible to live with." At one point, this earnest stepdad said matter-of-factly that his father had deserted him and his mother when Jack was about six.

        Sarah’s second husband was adamant that his (vs. "their") new family was not a "stepfamily." He felt that "Labels aren’t unimportant, love is!" He was there to provide love, protection, and strong Christian male guidance to Sarah and Patty, while being a devoted absent father to his biokids Roger and Annie, and a responsible health professional in the community. His heart was in the right place, but...

        As I learned more about their stepfamily, it became clear that Jack had remarried to save Patty and her Mom from chaos, stress, and worry. As with many of us survivors of low-childhood nurturance, he seemed to see his wife and stepdaughter (and most things) in rigid, black-and-white terms. He felt that Sarah was lovable - and incompetent at just about everything, specially co-parenting her daughter Patty.

        Right after their wedding 18 months ago, as the new "head of the household," Jack had moved into Sarah's home and enforced a rigid code of discipline with Patty. He felt that Sarah "was too soft" on her early-teen daughter. Jack felt genuine concern that Patty "was headed for (some unspecified) big trouble."

        He was contemptuous that Patty’s biofather Ted had "weaseled out" of his parental responsibilities, leaving Jack to "clean up their mess." He had no wish to enlist Ted as a  co-parenting teammate, despising him for having abandoned Patty – just as Jack’s father had left him long ago. He rarely spoke to Ted or showed any real interest in his life. Both men steadily avoided the discomfort of recognizing each other.

        Sarah seemed to be overwhelmed with Jack’s righteous, rigid forcefulness. She had begun explain-ing lamely to Patty that Jack "really meant well" - which he did! Sarah’s timid attempts to get Jack to compromise and "be softer, and make friends" with her daughter earned condescending monologs on "correct parenting," "it’s for her own good!", and on Sarah’s inadequacies as a mother and wife.

        Jack was completely unaware that he was continuing a devastating pattern of over-controlling and shaming which Sarah had experienced from both her father and her first husband. I suspect this same attitude and denial (and other factors) had destroyed Jack’s first marriage.

        It was clear to me that Sarah and Jack didn't know how to listen, assert their needs, or problem-solve effectively as partners. Like many troubled couples, they were locked in a corrosive, lose-lose values conflict over "good parenting." Because Jack was rigid, unflinching, and "assertive" (i.e. controlling and aggressive) in his views, and Sarah felt poorly about herself as a person and mother, she felt powerless, intimidated, shamed, guilty, and despairing. She was getting increasingly angry with her husband, yet didn’t feel safe or fully justified in expressing it. 

        Sarah was withdrawing emotionally and physically, which made Jack "irritable" (i.e. hurt, uneasy, and angry). As a wounded, shame-based man in major (protective) denial, he made no apparent conscious connection between Sarah’s emotional and physical withdrawal and his former wife’s decision to leave him.

        Sarah brought Patty in to my office that Saturday because the girl was having trouble in her new school. She had begun hinting to her Mom that she was thinking of running away. This is a common clinical pattern: an anxious bioparent or concerned stepparent will initiate counseling to help a troubled  child, rather than admitting and focusing on scary remarital problems.

        I spent half an hour with Patty and her mother to invite the girl building initial trust in me and our process. When I asked permission to meet with Patty alone, both agreed. As soon as Sarah left the room, Patty’s warm brown eyes filled with tears, and her mouth quivered. In escalating gusts and sobs she told me some of her story.

        We met alone several other times, and a familiar heart-wrenching saga emerged. The early teen felt hopeless, unsafe, and overwhelmed by a set of tensions she could barely describe, let alone cope with. She knew her mother loved her, but felt frustrated and scornful that Sarah wouldn’t "stand up" to her dom-ineering stepfather and protect her from his endless lectures, rules, criticisms, and groundings.

        Part of Patty’s stepfamily pain was periodic. When her stepsiblings Annie (13) and Roger (11) came to visit every other weekend, Patty always felt that Jack favored them over her, despite his righteous, indignant denials. Annie would leave her clothes strewn around the house, and her father never yelled at her the way he did at Patty. Jack was specially supportive of Roger’s progress at school sports, while he alternated between indifference to, and criticism of, Patty’s gymnastic efforts.

        I asked if either of her bioparents had explained why they divorced. She dropped her eyes and said quietly "Well, sort of." Further gentle probing revealed that she really wasn’t clear on why, and felt much confusion and conflict about the stress her parent’s divorce had brought into their lives.

        Patty said sadly that her "real" father (Ted) really didn’t seem to care much about her. She described several instances where he promised to attend school parent-conferences and gymnastic meets, but never came. "He always has excuses," she said, without emotion.

        When I asked about her father’s drinking, the slender girl looked away. "It scares me sometimes. Mom won’t let him drive me anywhere now, because she’s scared we’ll have an accident. That makes him real angry, because he doesn’t think he has a problem." I asked "Do you?" Patty nodded silently, looking away.

        Much of Patty’s story was about instances where she felt Jack was unfairly and harshly critical "over nothing!" He often restricted her phone calls with friends as punishment for her "bad" school grades (Bs and Cs), cutting off her main source of human sympathy and support. "He never listens to me," she grimaced. "When Mom tries to argue, he just walks all over her. And she lets him! Our life wasn’t all that great before he came around, but I hate it now!"

        I asked if there was any adult in her life who understood how she felt these days. Patty’s long brown hair swung as she shook her head. Her only nearby relative was her mother’s sister, who lived about 50 miles away. I asked if there were things that got in the way of her talking honestly with her mother.

        She nodded, and again looked away. In her soft voice, the girl eventually was able to tell me she thought her mother was miserable and scared. "So I can’t tell her how much I hate Jack in our life. She has enough problems! You know, she’s already taking some pills for depression. Then an angry part of Patty emerged: "Why did she ever marry that dumb jerk, anyway? This is really her fault!" She began to cry again.

        Patty described sadness and frustration about her social life. "Jack won’t let me have friends in my room. I don’t like to have them over anyway at night, because he’s such a dork! And Mom is such a wimp!" I asked how she got along with her stepsister and stepbrother. "Annie’s all right, I guess. We can talk about some stuff, and we like the same music. She feels her father’s too strict, too, but she never talks back to him. Roger is so stuck up. He thinks he’s so great! He sucks up to Jack, and he (Jack) just eats that up. It makes me sick!"

        Patty described at some length her anguish over really liking a boy at school, and Jack and her mother telling her he "wasn’t her kind of boy." "What do they know about it?" she declared angrily. "It’s my life, isn’t it?" She hinted that she was sneaking out to be with him, "no matter what they think!" I noted silently that Patty’s big hoop earrings, tight clothes, and overdone makeup signaled "growing up too fast" and her apparent desperation to attract some male approval and closeness.

        I worked with this stepfamily trio individually and together for perhaps 15 sessions before the adults quit. I suggested several times it would be helpful for Jack, Sarah, and me to meet with the three other co-parents "to strengthen communications and teamwork," but both partners balked for several (surface) reasons. By coincidence or Divine intervention, Jack’s ex-wife Karen had enrolled herself and her second husband Rick Cohen in a co-parenting class I gave. 

        Over seven weeks, I sensed that they were a reasonably stable, healthy couple who had fully ac-cepted their stepfamily identity and were mutually eager to learn the basics. An important factor in their home’s stability was that Rick and his ex wife Sheila had a relatively co-operative relationship around raising their son Nicholas (9). They seemed to have genuinely resolved most major issues around their separation and divorce and his remarriage.

        Karen and Rick Cohen were respectful of Jack and Sarah and genuinely concerned for Patty. They were unsure about what they could do for the young teen, whom they rarely saw. Karen had learned to be firm in setting clear co-parenting limits with Jack, on visitation, support, and holiday issues involving An-nie and Roger.

        She had talked empathically with Sarah about "how difficult" (rigid, patriarchal, and critical) Jack can be." Karen avoided criticizing or disparaging Jack in front of their kids, camouflaging some strong disagreements with his personal and parenting values and methods.

        I suspect that the Tilmons (i.e. Jack) stopped consulting me because we were getting too close to confronting what was really causing the tensions in their home. I think Sarah and Jack each sensed sub-liminally that they were heading towards redivorce, but unawareness and psychological wounds blocked their shared wish to reverse course. 

This struggling couple and their four co-parenting partners and five minor kids formed a classic example of the best and the worst in a normal nuclear stepfamily. The combined power of the five remarital hazards was clearly eroding the Tilmon’s remarriage and home but not the Cohen’s.

        My guess was that Patty McLean’s biofather Ted and his partner Tanya were Grown Wounded Children (GWCs) from low-nurturance childhoods. I never spoke with them. Ted's reportedly increasing alcohol addiction and protective denials demonstrated a classic (futile) attempt to self-medicate from relentlessly escalating inner pain.

The [Wounds + Unawareness] Cycle at Work

        How was this inherited cycle and these related hazards affecting the Tilmon’s home and relationships? The full description would take book. Here’s an overview...

1) Unseen Psychological Wounds

        As with well over 80% of the ~1,000 divorcing and stepfamily co-parents I’ve worked with since 1981, Sarah, Jack, and (apparently) Patty’s biofather Ted seemed to be dominated by mixes of common psychological wounds: a dominant "false self," which causes excessive shame. guilts, fears; major reality and trust distortions; and sometimes difficulty feeling and bonding with (caring for) others.

        Jack would have been resentful, defensive, and threatened to hear that I saw him as badly "wounded." If I had been frank with him about my opinion, I believe he’d have quit therapy sooner than he did. He would have gravely agreed that Ted and Sarah "had major problems." Sarah acknowledged (some of) her inner wounds, but was bewildered about what to do about them. What wounds?

        Sarah’s personality was dominated by excessively shamed, guilty, and scared inner children (plural) and their vigilant Guardian subselves. Her sexual molestation at 13, lack of education and other early-nurturance deprivations, and her divorce trauma all combined to give parts of her personality the certainty that she was a tainted, disgusting, stupid, inept, bad female person.

        This had many impacts on her remarriage and her parenting. One impact was that Sarah felt the only way she could merit love and support from a man was through subservience and sexual cooperation. That fit fine for Jack, who needed a dependant, compliant, desirable woman partner to "fix," so he could feel "good" and avoid looking honestly at himself.

        Sarah's ruling subselves were torn between compulsively eating fats and sugars ("comfort foods") to temporarily numb her ceaseless inner pain, and enduring Jack’s (and her own) ridiculing her extra 50 pounds and "looking like a pig." Her shame, fears, and other wounds locked her into a verbally-abusive (shaming) marriage by crippling any belief that she could earn enough to support her and Patty without Jack’s income.

        She (her ruling subselves) felt trapped, inadequate, confused, depressed, hurt, angry, and increasingly unhappy. This steadily hindered Patty from trying to fill her complex teen-development and family-adjustment needs.

        Jack was clearly a shame-based Grown Wounded Child (GWC) too. Though a licensed, competent health-care provider, he was in classic protective denial of his psychological wounds and their major effects on him, Sarah, and all three stepfamily kids.

        He had camouflaged his personality-subselves' chaos and pain by earning the public image of a successful, competent chiropractor, and a devoted, non-custodial Christian-patriarch biofather. Where Sarah's false self used compulsive overeating to distract from her relentless inner pain, Jack's subselves used overwork, covert superiority, and religious dogmatism (vs. healthy spirituality) to distract from theirs.

        Another psychological wound destroying Jack and Sarah’s second marriages was their reality distortions - perceiving things that aren’t there (illusions), and not seeing things that are there (denials and repressions). For example, when Jack told Sarah "I love you," part of him meant it. Another subself meant "I desire you sexually, and enjoy having you." A third subself meant "I pity you. Because I’m a good Christian man, I will patiently rescue and fix you, because you’re incompetent and floundering."

        Like Sarah's (wounded) father, Jack sent her consistent mixed messages - a classic symptom of false-self control: "I’ll gladly commit to you, and want to support and ‘love’ you;" and "You’re stupid, inept, and hopeless and will never be able to stand on your own, so do what I say, be grateful, and don't complain." 

        Another of Jack’s reality distortions (denials) was "I have no need of or time for self-exploration." A third was "We are not a stepfamily, so we (I) don’t need special education and support, or to re-examine our family roles. I am (acting like) a responsible (bio)father to Patty. I am not a stepfather." Implication and expectation: "Patty better treat me like a biodad, and Sarah better go along, or they are wrong (bad). I know what's best for all of us (I'm "1-up"). 

        Another shame-based distortion Jack's well-meaning false self believed was "I had little to do with my first divorce. Karen made a major mistake in leaving me, for which I’ll generously forgive her, as Jesus would have." The biggest distortion of all was "I am not majorly wounded by my father’s early abandonment and my overwhelmed (badly wounded) mother’s inability to fill my wholistic needs as a young boy. I am OK enough!"

        No he wasn’t.

Several "Jacks"

        Mixed messages are a classic symptom of being ruled by a well-meaning false self. There were several "Jacks" (subselves) controlling his thoughts and actions, well short of his being a "multiple personality." One was Adult Jack - a genuinely thoughtful, patient, kind, decisive, and often fun, grown  man. Sarah married this subself, who was prominent during their courtship. 

        Another "Jack" emerged after the wedding music ended. Controlling Jack was often arrogant, rigid, closed, domineering, judgmental, and harsh with his wife and stepdaughter Patty. This Guardian subself was vigorously supported by Righteous-Christian Jack. He supplied zealous black/white, moralistic justifications for controlling Jack’s actions at home.

        Because he was following Biblical scripture (an early-childhood must, rooted in terror of eternal damnation implanted before second grade) Controlling Jack was allied with Jesus and God, and was therefore implacable, unreachable, and inherently "1-up"  (superior).

        I experienced Jack as unaware, very wounded, and dogmatically religious, pious, rigid, moralistic, controlling, and defensive, not spiritual. I suspect if I had said that (compassionately), his subselves would have politely pitied, discounted, and dismissed me.

        His chiropractic patients and staff saw Professional Jack, who was competent, courteous, warm, and trustworthy. Several other "Jacks" were well hidden from most people: a Scared Jack; lonely, lost, six year old Abandoned Jack; and Shamed Jack. This powerful inner child knew that he was worthless and unlovable because his Dad had left him, and his mother had let him leave.

        Sarah's Good Mom subself responded instinctively to lonely young Orphan Jack and nurtured and comforted these needy subselves when the other "Jacks" let her. Sarah's terrified, equally-lonely little Abandoned Girl responded powerfully to the strong, decisive, protective part of her husband's personality: Nurturing Jack. 

Sarah's Subselves

        Sarah's daily life and behavior were shaped by several prominent subselves: Good Mom, Good Girl (People Pleaser), a well-suppressed adolescent Rager, her Overeater (i.e. Addict/Comforter), Emotional Numb-er, Catastrophizer, Inner Critic, (Shamer), Sensual Woman, Beautician (Artist/Creative One), and several others. As a veteran inner-family therapist, my compassionate observation was that neither she nor Jack knew much about having their wise true Self manage their lives and relationships.

        These mates automatically used "I" to refer to the several subselves which dominated their personalities. Like most troubled, divorcing, and stepfamily co-parents, they were wounded and unaware, not "crazy," "stupid," "mentally ill," or "bad." 

        Their combined wounds and unawareness were unintentionally creating a low-nurturance environment which promoted young Patty unconsciously developing her own wounds - just as young Sarah, Jack, and Patty's father Ted had done. This is how the lethal [wounds + unawareness] cycle passes down the generations in millions of dysfunctional families.

        If you're skeptical or curious about personality subselves, read this letter and try "talking" to one of yours. Then come back here. For perspective, about 80% of site visitors responding to this poll say "Yes, personality subselves are real, without question."

Concluded on page 2

Updated  November 18, 2011