Yes to all of the questions, and that’s why I’m here. I have such a strong, physical reaction to trying to share a different point-of-view; it’s the only time I go situationally mute. I cannot physically disagree. My body will not allow it. My heart pounds. My throat closes up. I get dizzy. It’s so frustrating! I appreciate this space where I’m learning to be aware and think about why I have these reactions.
Me too. I've felt some embarrassment on top of that because I wish I could relate to the people who are like "they tried it on me, but I could never keep quiet," but I wasn't like that. I know that not being "strongwilled" doesn't necessarily mean I was weak, but still.
We don't get to choose our nervous system responses! They just happen. In RAP frameworks, the fight response was labelled as "strong-willed" while fawning was seen as "obedient / compliant". Here at STRONGWILLED we believe that everyone, no matter their automatic nervous system response, has a strong-willed part of them :)
I was originally labeled strong-willed for my fight response but then the freeze response kicked in hard and I would be labeled as defiant because I literally could not obey immediately. The more pressure they placed on me the respond quickly, the more frozen I would become. Talk about “asking for a fight”. I relate so deeply to Taylor swifts song who’s afraid of little old me. “I was tame, I was gentle till the circus life made me mean.”
You did what you needed to do to be safe at the time. I hope that you will give yourself all the credit for that! I often had the vocal strong willed response, but I was usually punished for it, either directly or indirectly. So I sometimes fell into fawn responses, and in those times I got the most parental approval. But it was never enough to get me out of the black sheep role in which I had been cast.
I feel what you’re saying about the embarrassment. Looking back on interactions, I could beat myself up for not pushing back against what is obviously (to me now) manipulation. I can see it in hindsight, but in the moment, their tactics are so successful. They’ve had years and years to hone their skills, and I’m just now seeing it.
Yes to everything. I don't see my parents much, but I would always get nervous to be alone with them, like riding in a car, because I worried about what questions they might ask me about myself and how I could give the "right" answer. In the past year, I've been working on the part of me that feels like a bad daughter (when, say, I tell someone a true thing about my childhood or disrupt a pattern of how my parents and I used to relate), and my reactions have faded from panic attacks to just feeling sick, so...that's progress. I'm 39 and parenting two teenagers btw.
The automatic shame response is so wild, isn't it? It's been an interesting thing to work through as both Krispin and I have been working on this project.
Also—I’ve noticed lately that my mom largely saves her loaded questions for when it’s just the two of us. I’ve learned not to ever be alone with her. I used to enjoy our walks and phone conversations, but that was before I noticed how those were the times she brought out those “testing questions” and dropped her comments made to “guide me.”
Oh wow I went through this exact same stage with my mom about 10 years ago. I thought she was truly interested in how I was doing / my thoughts, but eventually realized she mostly wanted to guide me back to her way of thinking.
I am very struck by the idea that RAP’s focus on respect for God ordained authorities includes government. It was certainly my experience as well as a child with parents who subscribed to this philosophy, but it was so unevenly applied. Any time an RA did not like something about the government or a government policy, the government was vilified as godless and corrupt and untrustworthy. As a child in the Reagan era this was confusing and in the era of the Party of T***p I’m sure that it’s even more confusing. I am sure that you will cover this aspect of RAP and I look forward to reading your insights.
Yes, Dobson does shift a lot through the decades when talking about this element . . . in the beginning he was big on promoting obedience to teachers (and even wrote Dare to Discipline for both parents and teachers) but as the decades went on he started to vilify public schools and teachers as being godless and liberal. At some point I will write a post about Dobson and his support of Trump and all the implications of that!
In my home growing up, Christian and conservative/republican were interchangeable and inseparable ideas. I felt like reading Jesus and John Wayne by Kristen Kobe’s Du Mez gave me so much insight into this dynamic in my childhood and our current political landscape.
I have two sibling and we are each 18 months apart. As I thought about RAP I realized that the three of us all were parented differently by our mother.
I recieved a permissive parent, my youngest sibling has a neglegtful parent, and my "strong willed" middle sibling had a RAP parent.
The youngest and I were not punished often where my middle sibling had to walk alongside the car and recieved other common RAP punishments like the shoulder pinch and spankings.
We had Gothard and Dobson materials in our home and I am excited to read more of this project.
I think it's also important to recognize that this can be a hallmark of toxic family systems -- one child is the golden child, another is the black sheep / strong-willed child (and sometimes there is a "lost" child who just floats around). This way the family can focus on the strong-willed child as the problem in the family instead of the parents / parenting methods. It's sadly very, very common to see these patterns play out in families with multiple children.
Woah. Yes! That was our house. Oldest = permissive, middle= strong-willed, youngest = neglected.
I am so curious if this is a trend! I always assumed that the kid that got the permissive parents would not deconstruct because they drew the lucky card.
I am so curious how those different forms of parenting effected kids. My brothers don’t say a lot of negative things and they are still in it. I’m the strong willed one.
This absolutely resonates with me. I’ve actually been going through the process of reading my old journals. I started journaling at 9 years old and these parenting themes as well as religious indoctrination are so apparent in my journals. I’ve been separately documenting key entries that I wrote to help me heal from that kind of parenting. My parents used all of the books you mention in this article!
In regards to the role hierarchy… let me tell you! That has absolutely impacted me. I specifically wrote that my only options in life were to be a missionary or a stay at home mom. As a result, I didn’t finish college or have any educational aspirations as I was convinced that was my only true purpose in life. I’m in a better place today but at 27 years old I’m still struggling with the impact of this kind of parenting and religious/political agenda.
Yes to all of the above. My parents followed the authors mentioned above (plus some) and FOTF was often the soundtrack to my childhood. I’m still working on untangling this giant knot that is my experience of growing up in that cult-like community and have found my way to safety, however I am embarrassed that I was so old before I was able to see it for what it was. I really didn’t start to question until my kids were born and I looked at them and knew that no loving parent (or God) could treat their child in such a way. As I parent dramatically differently than my upbringing I’m often still caught off guard when having flashbacks of how my interactions were so markedly different.
You are not alone! I also feel embarrassed sometimes that it has taken me so long . . . and parenting my own children was also a catalyst. But I think honestly it speaks to how psychologically impactful these methods were -- they were designed to keep us in the fold (and unaware of our own agency / autonomy) and it takes a lot to break out of that!
Thank you as always for the work you both are doing. It is healing to know I wasn’t alone. I think we will eventually see psychology link RAP to religious trauma syndrome and cPTSD in people who were raised in fundamentalism (cults).
I took the Bible quite literally in some ways. So it was confusing to me the pushback we got from family when we decided to adopt via foster care. And now I believe in adoption abolition.
I come from a missionary family and made assumptions about the ethics piece. I’m still trying to understand the dynamics. I can’t wait for the learning and discussions, as I know they’ll help me to understand my family and myself (and in a bigger context).
Yes to all of the above, as many folks have already said. I got my CPTSD diagnosis about a year ago after working with the same Therapist since the pandemic started, and the amount of baggage I'm still unpacking to this day stemming from my own RAP upbringing has been as overwhelming as it has been eye-opening. I know I mentioned it when I signed up for this group, but sincerely - I cannot thank you guys enough for exploring this topic - the timing has been remarkably helpful for me in my current healing journey, not only to further aid my exploration of everything I experienced (and continue to experience to this day) but to help me realize just how very NOT alone I am in how my mental health and life have been effected by this breed of upbringing. Trauma can be so deeply isolating to work through - and you guys are making it feel less so. And that's really an incredible thing. Thank you!
I can’t agree more! I used to think that what happened to me was unique and not even connected to religion. I just thought I was unlucky. I thought I had to figure it out alone. My inner child feels so empowered to meet all of the other strong-willed kids and to pull the curtain back on all of the secrecy.
To train up a child and Dobsons work feel like they most deeply capture my upbringing. I was also homeschooled, spent many years in ministry, and studied biblical studies in college. In a way I feel like I was the model outcome for what RAP was seeking to accomplish- a dissociated, obedient, super Christian. My body literally couldn’t handle it and I kept getting so sick with all sorts of puzzling medical symptoms. Learning about trauma and child development while I was in grad school for counseling sent me down a road of untangling the nervous system implications this parenting approach had on me. Then parenting my own kiddo (and learning about my own and their neurodivergence) and whew, it feels like things cracked wide open. I’m still trying to figure out family dynamics and live down the street from my parents. It’s all so tricky for me to sort out now, but I’m finding my footing slowly through embodiment and self compassion and some good trauma therapy.
I don't remember my parents equating obedience to God as obedience to them or spiritual authority. They required absolute obedience to them no matter what. My mom was always more worried about what people at church thought than what the Bible said or what God might want. Even now, both parents (age 80), are more concerned with Fox talking points than they are about what Jesus taught.
I was always nervous around my mom because she was the volatile disciplinarian. As an adult, I have learned boundaries and am not AS nervous. Plus they live a thousand miles away. I never talk about politics OR my current beliefs with them. My mom used to say she wished I had a daughter like me so I knew what she had to put up with but I was never able to have kids. That said, I DID nanny and work with kids a lot and have taken child development classes and parenting classes to help me with my work. My mom should have done the same.
My mom always said that too. It happens that I have three nuggets just like me and it turns out that they are not at all hard to love or difficult to like. They are amazing and I want nothing but what they feel is best for them. It’s been healing to realize that it was her that was the disconnect.
Thank you for tackling this topic and the reading of all those parenting books. This is an area I’ve wanted to explore and discuss but I can’t handle reading the books, way too triggering. This series looks like it may provide a safer way for me to explore this element of my upbringing. Looking forward to how this series will progress.
Yes to many of the above. My parents definitely used the Dobson approach while I was growing up, and I certainly felt, and often still feel, that I had to protect them from my feelings. From the time I was a young child through to early adulthood I couldn't understand why anyone would disobey or upset their parents, since in my black and white thinking at the time disobedient = bad person.
One difference between my parents and many of the RAP families I grew up around is that my parents appreciated thinking of all of their children as "strong-willed". They valued stories of curious and creative people challenging corrupt authority, even though they were very unwilling to question authorities in their own lives. In the words of my therapist, they encouraged a degree of independent thought in their children that they would never allow themselves.
Part of this could be generational. I've noticed that my Gen-X parents gave up many aspects of religious authoritarian parenting after seeing the impact it had on myself and one of my brothers. My Baby Boomer grandma, on the other hand, seems to have become more openly far right, racist, and homophobic as the years go on.
So much of this resonates with me, and makes me so sad for my childhood self. I remember so vividly being told to say "yes to Jesus and no to myself/sin" when my parents wanted me to obey. I was also the strongwilled child in my family and was also reminded of that. I faced so many "consequences" for not obeying "the first time". So much is coming back to me about how I was parented and it's so heavy.
Yes to all of the questions, and that’s why I’m here. I have such a strong, physical reaction to trying to share a different point-of-view; it’s the only time I go situationally mute. I cannot physically disagree. My body will not allow it. My heart pounds. My throat closes up. I get dizzy. It’s so frustrating! I appreciate this space where I’m learning to be aware and think about why I have these reactions.
yes! I know a lot about this experience personally, and to me it's a sign that my body tells me about my history with my parents :(
Me too. I've felt some embarrassment on top of that because I wish I could relate to the people who are like "they tried it on me, but I could never keep quiet," but I wasn't like that. I know that not being "strongwilled" doesn't necessarily mean I was weak, but still.
We don't get to choose our nervous system responses! They just happen. In RAP frameworks, the fight response was labelled as "strong-willed" while fawning was seen as "obedient / compliant". Here at STRONGWILLED we believe that everyone, no matter their automatic nervous system response, has a strong-willed part of them :)
I was originally labeled strong-willed for my fight response but then the freeze response kicked in hard and I would be labeled as defiant because I literally could not obey immediately. The more pressure they placed on me the respond quickly, the more frozen I would become. Talk about “asking for a fight”. I relate so deeply to Taylor swifts song who’s afraid of little old me. “I was tame, I was gentle till the circus life made me mean.”
You did what you needed to do to be safe at the time. I hope that you will give yourself all the credit for that! I often had the vocal strong willed response, but I was usually punished for it, either directly or indirectly. So I sometimes fell into fawn responses, and in those times I got the most parental approval. But it was never enough to get me out of the black sheep role in which I had been cast.
I don’t feel like I ever got “approval”for my fawn response; it was just the only way to get them to stop.
I feel what you’re saying about the embarrassment. Looking back on interactions, I could beat myself up for not pushing back against what is obviously (to me now) manipulation. I can see it in hindsight, but in the moment, their tactics are so successful. They’ve had years and years to hone their skills, and I’m just now seeing it.
Yes to everything. I don't see my parents much, but I would always get nervous to be alone with them, like riding in a car, because I worried about what questions they might ask me about myself and how I could give the "right" answer. In the past year, I've been working on the part of me that feels like a bad daughter (when, say, I tell someone a true thing about my childhood or disrupt a pattern of how my parents and I used to relate), and my reactions have faded from panic attacks to just feeling sick, so...that's progress. I'm 39 and parenting two teenagers btw.
The automatic shame response is so wild, isn't it? It's been an interesting thing to work through as both Krispin and I have been working on this project.
That feels like progress to me, too!
Also—I’ve noticed lately that my mom largely saves her loaded questions for when it’s just the two of us. I’ve learned not to ever be alone with her. I used to enjoy our walks and phone conversations, but that was before I noticed how those were the times she brought out those “testing questions” and dropped her comments made to “guide me.”
Oh wow I went through this exact same stage with my mom about 10 years ago. I thought she was truly interested in how I was doing / my thoughts, but eventually realized she mostly wanted to guide me back to her way of thinking.
I am very struck by the idea that RAP’s focus on respect for God ordained authorities includes government. It was certainly my experience as well as a child with parents who subscribed to this philosophy, but it was so unevenly applied. Any time an RA did not like something about the government or a government policy, the government was vilified as godless and corrupt and untrustworthy. As a child in the Reagan era this was confusing and in the era of the Party of T***p I’m sure that it’s even more confusing. I am sure that you will cover this aspect of RAP and I look forward to reading your insights.
definitely unevenly applied.... I think the basis is that the "true" government is Christian nationalism, so anything else can be disregarded
Yes, Dobson does shift a lot through the decades when talking about this element . . . in the beginning he was big on promoting obedience to teachers (and even wrote Dare to Discipline for both parents and teachers) but as the decades went on he started to vilify public schools and teachers as being godless and liberal. At some point I will write a post about Dobson and his support of Trump and all the implications of that!
In my home growing up, Christian and conservative/republican were interchangeable and inseparable ideas. I felt like reading Jesus and John Wayne by Kristen Kobe’s Du Mez gave me so much insight into this dynamic in my childhood and our current political landscape.
I have two sibling and we are each 18 months apart. As I thought about RAP I realized that the three of us all were parented differently by our mother.
I recieved a permissive parent, my youngest sibling has a neglegtful parent, and my "strong willed" middle sibling had a RAP parent.
The youngest and I were not punished often where my middle sibling had to walk alongside the car and recieved other common RAP punishments like the shoulder pinch and spankings.
We had Gothard and Dobson materials in our home and I am excited to read more of this project.
I think it's also important to recognize that this can be a hallmark of toxic family systems -- one child is the golden child, another is the black sheep / strong-willed child (and sometimes there is a "lost" child who just floats around). This way the family can focus on the strong-willed child as the problem in the family instead of the parents / parenting methods. It's sadly very, very common to see these patterns play out in families with multiple children.
wow, that is really striking -- especially to have such similar ages but different parenting
Woah. Yes! That was our house. Oldest = permissive, middle= strong-willed, youngest = neglected.
I am so curious if this is a trend! I always assumed that the kid that got the permissive parents would not deconstruct because they drew the lucky card.
I am so curious how those different forms of parenting effected kids. My brothers don’t say a lot of negative things and they are still in it. I’m the strong willed one.
This absolutely resonates with me. I’ve actually been going through the process of reading my old journals. I started journaling at 9 years old and these parenting themes as well as religious indoctrination are so apparent in my journals. I’ve been separately documenting key entries that I wrote to help me heal from that kind of parenting. My parents used all of the books you mention in this article!
In regards to the role hierarchy… let me tell you! That has absolutely impacted me. I specifically wrote that my only options in life were to be a missionary or a stay at home mom. As a result, I didn’t finish college or have any educational aspirations as I was convinced that was my only true purpose in life. I’m in a better place today but at 27 years old I’m still struggling with the impact of this kind of parenting and religious/political agenda.
I resonate so much with your comment! Hopefully in future posts we can talk/share about reading journals and how to process all of that!!!
Yes, please! I also kept journals.
What did my mom recently call my journals? The books where I wrote down all her sins or something like that. That’s wild.
Yes to all of the above. My parents followed the authors mentioned above (plus some) and FOTF was often the soundtrack to my childhood. I’m still working on untangling this giant knot that is my experience of growing up in that cult-like community and have found my way to safety, however I am embarrassed that I was so old before I was able to see it for what it was. I really didn’t start to question until my kids were born and I looked at them and knew that no loving parent (or God) could treat their child in such a way. As I parent dramatically differently than my upbringing I’m often still caught off guard when having flashbacks of how my interactions were so markedly different.
You are not alone! I also feel embarrassed sometimes that it has taken me so long . . . and parenting my own children was also a catalyst. But I think honestly it speaks to how psychologically impactful these methods were -- they were designed to keep us in the fold (and unaware of our own agency / autonomy) and it takes a lot to break out of that!
Thank you as always for the work you both are doing. It is healing to know I wasn’t alone. I think we will eventually see psychology link RAP to religious trauma syndrome and cPTSD in people who were raised in fundamentalism (cults).
totally agree! I hope that there's more research on this, we definitely need it!
I took the Bible quite literally in some ways. So it was confusing to me the pushback we got from family when we decided to adopt via foster care. And now I believe in adoption abolition.
Me too! Eventually I realized my family liked Jesus as a symbol of submitting to authority -- not because of his ethics!
I come from a missionary family and made assumptions about the ethics piece. I’m still trying to understand the dynamics. I can’t wait for the learning and discussions, as I know they’ll help me to understand my family and myself (and in a bigger context).
Yes to all of the above, as many folks have already said. I got my CPTSD diagnosis about a year ago after working with the same Therapist since the pandemic started, and the amount of baggage I'm still unpacking to this day stemming from my own RAP upbringing has been as overwhelming as it has been eye-opening. I know I mentioned it when I signed up for this group, but sincerely - I cannot thank you guys enough for exploring this topic - the timing has been remarkably helpful for me in my current healing journey, not only to further aid my exploration of everything I experienced (and continue to experience to this day) but to help me realize just how very NOT alone I am in how my mental health and life have been effected by this breed of upbringing. Trauma can be so deeply isolating to work through - and you guys are making it feel less so. And that's really an incredible thing. Thank you!
I can’t agree more! I used to think that what happened to me was unique and not even connected to religion. I just thought I was unlucky. I thought I had to figure it out alone. My inner child feels so empowered to meet all of the other strong-willed kids and to pull the curtain back on all of the secrecy.
To train up a child and Dobsons work feel like they most deeply capture my upbringing. I was also homeschooled, spent many years in ministry, and studied biblical studies in college. In a way I feel like I was the model outcome for what RAP was seeking to accomplish- a dissociated, obedient, super Christian. My body literally couldn’t handle it and I kept getting so sick with all sorts of puzzling medical symptoms. Learning about trauma and child development while I was in grad school for counseling sent me down a road of untangling the nervous system implications this parenting approach had on me. Then parenting my own kiddo (and learning about my own and their neurodivergence) and whew, it feels like things cracked wide open. I’m still trying to figure out family dynamics and live down the street from my parents. It’s all so tricky for me to sort out now, but I’m finding my footing slowly through embodiment and self compassion and some good trauma therapy.
I don't remember my parents equating obedience to God as obedience to them or spiritual authority. They required absolute obedience to them no matter what. My mom was always more worried about what people at church thought than what the Bible said or what God might want. Even now, both parents (age 80), are more concerned with Fox talking points than they are about what Jesus taught.
I was always nervous around my mom because she was the volatile disciplinarian. As an adult, I have learned boundaries and am not AS nervous. Plus they live a thousand miles away. I never talk about politics OR my current beliefs with them. My mom used to say she wished I had a daughter like me so I knew what she had to put up with but I was never able to have kids. That said, I DID nanny and work with kids a lot and have taken child development classes and parenting classes to help me with my work. My mom should have done the same.
My mom always said that too. It happens that I have three nuggets just like me and it turns out that they are not at all hard to love or difficult to like. They are amazing and I want nothing but what they feel is best for them. It’s been healing to realize that it was her that was the disconnect.
Having kids and raising them differently is healing.
Thank you for tackling this topic and the reading of all those parenting books. This is an area I’ve wanted to explore and discuss but I can’t handle reading the books, way too triggering. This series looks like it may provide a safer way for me to explore this element of my upbringing. Looking forward to how this series will progress.
Yes to many of the above. My parents definitely used the Dobson approach while I was growing up, and I certainly felt, and often still feel, that I had to protect them from my feelings. From the time I was a young child through to early adulthood I couldn't understand why anyone would disobey or upset their parents, since in my black and white thinking at the time disobedient = bad person.
One difference between my parents and many of the RAP families I grew up around is that my parents appreciated thinking of all of their children as "strong-willed". They valued stories of curious and creative people challenging corrupt authority, even though they were very unwilling to question authorities in their own lives. In the words of my therapist, they encouraged a degree of independent thought in their children that they would never allow themselves.
Part of this could be generational. I've noticed that my Gen-X parents gave up many aspects of religious authoritarian parenting after seeing the impact it had on myself and one of my brothers. My Baby Boomer grandma, on the other hand, seems to have become more openly far right, racist, and homophobic as the years go on.
So much of this resonates with me, and makes me so sad for my childhood self. I remember so vividly being told to say "yes to Jesus and no to myself/sin" when my parents wanted me to obey. I was also the strongwilled child in my family and was also reminded of that. I faced so many "consequences" for not obeying "the first time". So much is coming back to me about how I was parented and it's so heavy.