Parental overcontrol

Did you ever noticed that parental overcontrol is common on their skitzos children, even when they are advanced in adulthood? Do you think this is a cause or a consequence of schizophrenia? Or both of them?

I haven’t met every parent of every sz I know. So can’t really say anything.

Mine was though. Maybe you could make a poll on it.

Mine are. Specially my father. Very suspicious of my behaviour and. Makes me feel uncomfortable and incompetent.

Wish my parents were more involved in my life.

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When I was at my worst… my Mom was involved with everything…

It’s taken us all some time to heal. Now that I’m getting better… My Mom has been working on letting go and letting me take care of more of my own life…

I’ve been thinking… when I was at my worst and could barely think enough to get out of bed… my Mom and Sis did EVERYTHING for me…

It’s taken me some time to learn how to do things for myself… It’s all a learning process.

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not sure over control is right answer but i know enabler isnt is tough when 1 parent beleives in tough love 1 enables tears the family apart

I wouldn’t call it over control… My mums older now and appears like a bit of a busy body!
They just wanna take care of the babies

Having now observed and/or interviewed several dozen sz pts, I’d say 1) every comment here thus far seems in line with what I saw, and 2) @katzmeow is especially dead on. Confusing parenting – either because what the parents do conflicts so much with each other… or because one or both parents say and do thing that conflict with other things that same parent says and does – seems to play big part in sz. Alcoholic parents can be especially confusing, evidently.

A lot of books were written about this in the '50s - '70s. If you’re interested, look up Theodore Lidz, Gregiry Bateson, Paul Watzlawick, Don D. Jackson, Aaron Esterson, Ronald D. Laing and Jules Henry. Some “experts” say the books were wrong, but what I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears says they were right.

And, yes, “invasive,” boundary-ignoring, “helicopter” parenting also seems to be common among sz pts.

That said, I have seen instances of neglectful, abandoning parenting, as well. But not nearly as often among sz pts.

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My dad texts me every day and if I don’t respond for more than three days they panic and come to my place. My mom gives me more freedom but they were the ones responsible for all my Hospitalizations. As a kid I had the liberty to come and go as I pleased and do whatever the eff I wanted.

me personally I think for most its just a matter of time.the problem I see with people with schiz when they were prodromal and In early life , Is there coping skills are attuned to causing them alot of stress.I think it takes good coping skills to disallow unhealthy relationship dynamics to develop. So it just happens to be a parent , if it wasnt a parent ,it would be probably a guardian , if it wasnt a guardian it would be a boss , if it wasnt a boss , it would be someone else in authority. if it wasnt someone in authority , it would be a friend , and so on and so on.

People tend to focus on the mother because she is the matriarch and has spent the most time with the person with schiz.

my honest view…

and of course coping skills are governed by stress responses within the individual. Put simply people that are prodromal for schiz ,because of there biological makeup get stressed too easily. its as simple as that for me.

My mom used to tell me if I don’t want her to treat me like a child, then don’t act like a child.
Fair enough.
My parents have always given me a lot of space to make up my own mind, but, they have also made sure I knew I was responsible for any decision I made too.

How many of these parents in the “over control” catagory are really just overly concerned? Is that a bad thing?

My parents are nearly nonexistent in my life, always have been.

Ignoring is probably not the right word. Harassment and abuse “role game” (in family but also in the professional environment) is fully based on an accurate “mapping” of the concerned boundaries ; that are rather on purpose “trespassed” than simply “ignored”!

I’m not sure I follow you here. Are you saying that the “overcontrol” is a common problem in the parents of children who develop schizophrenia,

Or are you saying that “overcontrol” is common in the children of people who have schizophrenia?

Please help me understand.

Gregory Bateson, Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland, Murray Bowen, Jay Haley, Don D. Jackson, Jules Henry, R. D. Laing, Aaron Esterson, Theodore Lidz and Stephen Fleck all saw boundary-breeching in their extensive observations of the parents of sz children in the '40s to '60s.

Having read all of them, I began to watch for it myself. And what I saw was not “conscious,” “willful,” “cynical,” “malicious,” "purposeful "or “sociopathic” boundary-busting… but, rather, “ignorant,” “unconscious,” “robotic,” “socialized,” “conditioned,” behavior that had been “normalized” in the parents’ own upbringing.

What I saw was inter-generational re-transmission of accepted standards of parent-child behavior that were beyond the self-absorbed, typically narcissistic parents’ unusually limited capacities to see any cause-and-effect relationship.

What I also saw was that the mentally ill children had been so effectively bamboozled and/or confused that most – though not all – of them were wholly unable to connects the dots between their own psychopathogy – including their reactive, paranoid projections upon others they mis-identified as their boundary-breeching parents – and the behavioral conditioning we’re discussing here.

I will recommend Eleanor Payson and Nina Brown as being among the most readable current-day presenters of the phenomenon.

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Notmoses : Your analysis of this behavioral scheme is very interesting. You’ve read a lot on this subject. Bravo! In fact boundary-breeching parents are themselves boundary-breeched children who unconciously re-enact their own upbringing problems. Thanks for your knowledge on this subject. :wink:

Among many of my SZ friends, I’ve noticed some kind of an over parental presence for a normal adult. I wondered if it was the consequence of disability due to Sz symptoms or if it could have played a role in the trigger of schizophrenia. Notmoses has some interesting informations about boundaries-breeching upbringing.

Bateson, G., Jackson, D., Haley, J.; et al: Perceval’s Narrative: A Patient’s Account of his Psychosis, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961.

Esterson, A.: The Leaves of Spring: Schizophrenia, Family and Sacrifice, London: Tavistock, 1972.

Henry, J.: Pathways to Madness, New York: Random House, 1965.

Jackson, D. (ed.): The Etiology of Schizophrenia: Genetics / Physiology / Psychology / Sociology, London: Basic Books, 1960.

Laing, R. D.; Esterson, A.: Sanity, Madness and the Family, London: Tavistock, 1964.

Lidz, T.: The Origin and Treatment of Schizophrenic Disorders, New York: Basic Books, 1973.

Lidz, T.; Fleck, S., Cornelison, A.: Schizophrenia and the Family, 2nd Ed.; New York: International Universities Press, 1985.

In fact this is not very politically correct in the present time when schizophrenia tends to be explained only by genetics and when families are very sought for support in a context of budget cuts. Psychological explanation is not very trendy today.