Chapter 13: Setting Boundaries in a Religious Authoritarian Family
Setting boundaries in an enmeshed family is always an uphill battle
Thank you for reading and supporting STRONGWILLED. We know that many in this community are reeling after a triggering and devastating election season in the United States — where many religious authoritarian ideologies were on full display. Today we are looking toward the future, and to a reality that is playing out in families all across America. Please take care of yourselves during this time, and know that you aren’t alone. Thank you for your support of this project and our work. Now, more than ever, learning how to walk in our own power and autonomy will be essential to resist religious authoritarianism, wherever we find it.
Trigger warning: corporal punishment/spanking
//
“You just need to set some boundaries with your parents. Express your needs, and your perspective. Say no sometimes.” This was the advice from a therapist I saw years ago. He explained to me that I simply needed to determine where my boundaries were, and to communicate them. “I’m sure you and your parents can talk it through.”
I walked away from the session feeling very misunderstood. I grasped the concept of boundaries — but the idea of ever actually setting them with my family felt utterly impossible. In reality, it wasn’t impossible, but it did mean breaking the family rules, knowing that my parents would feel hurt, and probably angry when I set a boundary. It would mean I have to face my own feelings of guilt that arose when I felt like I was disappointing my parents.1
You might have had similar experiences, hearing someone explaining the concept of a boundary, or reading an article online about the steps toward setting boundaries, and thinking: but you don’t know my family. That would never work. In families that are authoritarian and hierarchical, there is a flawed understanding of boundaries. In these homes, one person (ostensibly the dad) or group (parents) make demands or needs known and those who are lower on the hierarchy (the children) are not allowed to set their own boundaries. Adults who were raised under religious authoritarian parenting were often discouraged or punished for setting boundaries and practicing their own autonomy.2
Enmeshment — or the lack of personal sense of self — was actively encouraged in these families. The child never learned how to set boundaries and instead became used to complying with whatever the people in power wanted, needed, or demanded in order to keep the peace. If you were raised in a home that utilized religion to enforce authoritarian patriarchal hierarchy, then your lack of boundaries also extended to people in “leadership” outside of the home. You were also expected to immediately comply with the leaders in your church, Christian teachers and authors, employers, local law enforcement, and conservative politicians.
If you grew up under religious authoritarian parenting, your family system is probably not accustomed to individuals making choices for themselves. Setting a boundary means taking a step that is new, often unwelcome, and goes against the cultural grain of your family and their community.
Boundaries Shouldn’t Exist (at least that’s the family belief)
The lack of boundaries in communities like white evangelicalism is a feature, not a bug, of the system. In this worldview, people are regarded as sinful wretches who cannot be trusted to make decisions for themselves. Luckily for them, there is often someone (God, a pastor, or a parent) who knows better and can tell them what to do. Individual autonomy is not only suppressed, but it is regarded as wicked. When you grow up in this environment, it can be hard to see just how insidious this issue of paternalistic control is in high control religions like white evangelicalism.
I’m reminded of a church I attended over a decade ago that took a large portion of Sunday morning service to forbid us (a room full of 200 adults) from reading Love Wins by Rob Bell because it was heretical, and would lead us down the wrong path. The men in leadership knew better than us, prohibiting us from making our own decisions. For our own best interest, it was best that we obey them. The hierarchy is best for everyone.
My church story illustrates the philosophical assumptions in these types of communities. Even adults cannot be trusted to practice autonomy, to know what’s best for them, to make their own choices. Instead, they must be guided by wise, patriarchal leaders. Religious authoritarian parenting authors like Dobson and MacArthur encourage this type of family dynamic, telling parents to expect to have an influence and authority over their adult children in adulthood.
So to show up in your family, and set boundaries, declaring that you’ll make decisions for yourself, can be like speaking another language. Often, there’s no framework for it. In enmeshed families, there is no foundational belief that individuals (especially adult children) have the right to their own individuality and autonomy. Instead, there is a belief that what is best for the individuals is dictated by what is best for the family. In a faith context, this often means that what’s best for the individual is dictated by the religion. So the idea of setting a boundary simply does not compute. It’s breaking the family rules.
I believe this is why so many adult children of evangelicals are going low contact or no contact. They can’t find a way forward toward healthy relationships, because healthy relationships depend on boundaries, and there’s little hope that boundaries will be honored in a family system that has historically disregarded them. There is no foundation of being listened to or understood or negotiating needs. So it makes complete sense that adult children would simply withdraw. A conversation about differing needs has never gone well before, so there’s no good reason to believe that you’ll be listened to now.
Fight, Flight, Fawn, Freeze
As I worked in therapy to set boundaries with my parents, conversations with them often went differently than I planned. For some reason, I’d go into a conversation ready to assert my needs, and by the end, I’d just end up acquiescing to the desires of my parents. I couldn’t make sense of it, it was almost like I went into a daze. Eventually I realized my nervous system was trying to save me from rupturing the relationship with my parents by launching me into a freeze response.
For many people who grew up under religious authoritarian parenting, we learned that setting a boundary was seen as a threat to our parents. So rather than being able to have a calm conversation about needs, these conversations often replay a dynamic we knew from childhood: that if you oppose your parent, you will be punished (often through physical violence). So it makes sense that as soon as you consider setting a boundary, your body becomes dysregulated.
For many of us, our nervous systems launch into fawn or freeze response, just yielding to what our parents want, preventing us from practicing our own autonomy. Our nervous systems were shaped through religious authoritarian parenting to avoid speaking up for ourselves, in order to maintain our own safety. So when it comes time to set a boundary, our nervous systems literally prevent us from doing so, because we learned early on that to oppose our parents is dangerous.
However, others launch into fight or flight. For those who go into a flight response, they might just avoid the conversation, or move to another place as soon as conflict arises. Then there are those who go into a fight response, raising their voice or looking aggressive. Yet, even when they go into fight mode, often their boundaries are disregarded, perceived as simply “blowing off steam,” rather than taken seriously. It leads back into the same cycle of struggling to set boundaries.
Counter Moves
When we do set a boundary in a religious authoritarian family, there’s often a negative response to that boundary. Since setting boundaries is not part of the DNA of these family systems, breaking that family rule comes at a cost. There are multitude of consequences for setting boundaries. Sometimes it’s explicit shaming, other times it’s chronic invalidation, sometimes it’s passive aggressive maltreatment, while others notice that setting boundaries triggers anxiety or sadness in their parent, and they feel a heavy responsibility for rescuing their parents from that emotional state. Harriet Lerner, author of feminist classic, The Dance of Anger, calls these “counter-moves.” Whether conscious or not, their function is to encourage you to go back to the way things were back before you started setting boundaries.
A family that didn’t allow children to have their own autonomy and individuality will not often simply grant that privilege to an adult child without some large shifts in family dynamics, usually putting the adult child through hell as they fight against the family culture.
Often setting boundaries triggers emotions in our family members, and often this is the hardest part of setting boundaries. In religious authoritarian families, there’s a belief that if someone feels sad or mad or anxious, it’s because someone has done something wrong. It’s okay and normal for parents to have feelings about your boundaries. If you decide to stop spending all your vacation time traveling out of state to spend with your parents, it’s normal for them to be sad about spending less time with you. But it doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong.
But in religious authoritarian families, very often, parents do not protect their children from their emotions because they believe that their emotions are aligned with a higher authority. For example, there’s a difference between a parent saying “Sometimes I feel sad that we don’t share the same faith anymore, but I’m so glad you’re figuring out what works for you,”3 verses “Ever since you stopped going to church, your mother and I have been absolutely distraught.” In the second statement there’s an assumption that the adult child should feel bad for their decision because it was the wrong decision to make, and the parent is expressing how badly they feel in an attempt to make their adult child feel bad, in order to bring them back into the fold.
Setting boundaries often means learning how to manage your own often overwhelming feelings of guilt that are common in religious authoritarian families, and in high control religion. For many people who have set boundaries, processing how powerful that guilt can be, and how to tolerate it is key to beginning to set boundaries. This guilt can often arise in response to our parents’ sadness or anxiety.
Anger is another emotional counter move. Often, setting boundaries means that a parent will become mad. Since so many of us were spanked, that anger has the potential to trigger body memories of violence. For others, the sheer tension of it can naturally be uncomfortable (after all, it’s hard to be around someone who is mad at you). Many people who set boundaries find a way to avoid the angry responses in order to keep their emotional balance while they’re setting boundaries. They’ll send a text message or an email, allowing them to set a boundary without having to deal with the immediate response of a parent (although many will imagine their parent’s response, which can be enough to dysregulate a person).
Emotional responses aren’t the only kinds of counter moves:
Accusations and insults: You’re selfish and you only care about yourself.
Claiming that you’re young/immature: I know you think you’re doing what’s best, but when you’re my age, you’ll realize how important it is to spend as much time as you can with your parents.
Religious-based control: I’m just praying to God that we will be close again in the future.
Claiming that you’re brainwashed: You just think that because you’ve been listening to liberal media.
Sending messages through other family members: getting a text from a sibling that reads, Dad is telling everyone how you don’t care about him.
Straight up invalidation of your needs or experience: You keep saying that holidays are too loud and overwhelming for you to stay at the house all day, but our family is tame compared to some other families I know about.
These are only a few of the typical responses when we begin to set boundaries in a family that hasn’t historically had them.
Healthy Families with Boundaries
Not every family struggles with boundaries. Lindsay C. Gibson writes in Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents:
“[a healthy person will] enjoy hearing about your limits as a way of learning more about you. In fact, your honesty will be appreciated. Stating a boundary makes you a little bit vulnerable and is therefore a relational gift; you are telling the person you like them enough to be genuine with them. Someone who wants to get to know you will appreciate this.
Safe people have no desire to overstep your bounds; they want to know how you feel. When you ask for space, thoughtful people may show curiosity or compassion, but they won’t react with pressure, arguments, or counteroffers. To a considerate person, everyone has the right to say no.”4
In healthy families, honoring boundaries is part of delighting in each person’s individuality and who they are. They understand that different people have different needs, and are happy to understand you better, figure out solutions that work for everyone, and discover how to have a closer, more comfortable relationship. In healthy families, parents of adult children are excited to see who their children grow into.
But in religious authoritarian families, to set a boundary undercuts the whole project: to replicate a white, conservative family. If you determine your own path, it threatens the whole religious system, and also signals that your parents did not do their assigned job in raising you. In this world, the whole goal of parenting is to ensure that your children grow up to have a family, lifestyle and political views that are just like your own. So to have an adult child take a different path means you’ve failed as a parent.5 This dynamic leaves little room for parents to tolerate their adult child’s individuality.
Boundary Setting in Unhealthy Families Will Always Present an Inherent Dilemma
So after identifying the challenges to setting boundaries in a religious authoritarian family, what do you do with that information? You name the reality: setting boundaries will almost always include a trade-off.
Often people say, “I can’t set boundaries with my parents” (or other family members), and I resonate with this deeply. However, I believe it’s better understood as a dilemma: If I set boundaries with my parents, then they’ll respond with counter moves. Sometimes, this means something like I don’t know if I can set boundaries and stick to them and that my relationship with my family will survive.
I believe it’s helpful to look at the family dynamic with clear eyes: If I set a boundary, I don’t expect a positive response. If I tell my parents that I want them to stop telling me how to parent my kids, I can expect that they’ll make passive-aggressive comments about how “I did such a terrible job raising you” for the foreseeable future.
Then you have to make a decision. A very difficult decision. What am I going to do with this? Do I continue the way things are? Do I set the boundary and undergo the response? Do I reduce the time with them so they don’t have a chance to tell me how to parent my kids? Do I tell them my boundary, and if they respond poorly, then reduce time with them? Do I want to be in a relationship with someone, even if they gave birth to me, that continually responds to my boundaries with push back? There’s no clear answer, but we believe that by clearly recognizing the pattern, it can be easier to make a decision about how you want to approach the idea of boundaries in your family.
Implementing Boundaries
One last note: you don’t have to share your process or rationale or explicitly state boundaries with anyone, especially those that tend to exploit rather than honor vulnerability. Often in high religion contexts, there’s an over-emphasis on transparency, especially for those at the bottom the power hierarchy.
You don’t have to say, “I’m not going out to lunch with you because every time I do, I feel like I’m being cornered to defend my political views.” Or “Every time I let you watch my kids, you tell them about how God created two genders.” You can simply say, “We’re really busy right now, and we don’t have time for lunch dates or get-togethers.”
In some instances, it definitely can be helpful to share why you’re setting the boundary. But you get to decide that. You don’t owe your internal reasoning or process to anyone. Enmeshed systems will tell you otherwise, but living with autonomy means you get to make your own choices for your own reasons and choose who you share those with.
It’s up to you to make your own decisions, even when it’s a very, very tough decision. Contrary to what you were taught in childhood, there is no correct path for everyone, and there’s no blueprint for how to do relationships.6 Navigating your own way and practicing individuality is core to claiming your autonomy (as well as resisting authoritarian systems). It feels like swimming against the current, even running contrary to our nervous system’s strategies of finding safety in childhood. But the hard-earned path toward autonomy is worth every step.
Let us know in the comments:
Growing up in your family, were some people allowed to set boundaries and while others were not?
What happens when you set boundaries in your family? What are common counter-moves you’ve experienced?
What’s a boundary you’ve set that you feel proud of?
For today, take some time to sit with the questions above and let us know in the comments : if you were raised with RAP methods, did you experience enmeshed family dynamics?
That guilt is the product of growing up in an enmeshed family, not a personal failing.
If you’ve been reading along, you’ll recognize how RAP authors actively encouraged parents to punish expressions of autonomy.
I’m aware that some parents may say something like this, and actually be conveying a counter-move message: they’re saying something that sounds nice, but they actually mean “you’ve really upset me.” If that’s the case, it’s okay to set a boundary of “I don’t want to talk about faith with you,” or “I don’t have the space to hear your feelings about my faith journey.”
Gibson, Lindsay C.. Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Honor Your Emotions, Nurture Your Self, and Live with Confidence (p. 28). New Harbinger Publications. Kindle Edition.
Another common trigger for an adult child’s guilt.
We discussed the implications of “God’s Design for Family” in our Send This Episode to Your Therapist Pt 2. Podcast episode.
When I went no contact with my parents in 2010 it was what had to happen because of all the reasons you have talked about. I was feeling so guilty about it and went to see a counselor and they recommended the book Boundaries and I pretty much laughed my way through it! I knew there was no way my parents would be able to handle boundaries. It had to be no contact. They would try and contact me and make me feel bad and it was just awful. I know most of you totally understand what I am saying! Once in a while I would allow them to visit for an hour to see my kids. Why couldn't they just be reasonable?! It was always that it was my fault and they never took any responsibility for anything. I wasn't happy that I had to make this choice but I felt like they gave me no choice. They have both passed away and I am just so relieved to not have that take over my life and cause so much guilt. I really feel for all of you who are still dealing with such difficult parents. <3
"...while others notice that setting boundaries triggers anxiety or sadness in their parent, and they feel a heavy responsibility for rescuing their parents from that emotional state."
This is 1,000% me, and reading this I just realized that I've spent the bulk of my time with my therapist over the last several months trying to explain and game out my parents' counter moves. Even after abandoning hope of setting and keeping boundaries and going full no-contact after the election, the discussion has continued because I know my silence is making them sad, and if they're sad on account of me, then that makes me the bad guy. And I am hard-wired to not want to be the bad guy and to make amends if I discover I am hurting someone. Thus, any contact I have with my parents will automatically have me starting out on my back foot, apologizing, meeting their emotional needs while ignoring my own, and in the process dissolving all my efforts to establish my autonomy and boundaries. It's a trap, and they've executed it to perfection many times.
Finally my therapist asked me: "So what if you are the bad guy?"
(I know he meant it as me being the bad guy *in their eyes*, not literal villainy.) I didn't have a good answer in the moment and I still don't have one. It's just hard to turn off that sense of responsibility for their emotional needs even after I've blocked them from communicating those with me. I get the intent behind the question though: at some point I'll have to grow comfortable with not caring what they think of me and fully embrace the autonomy I've worked so hard to carve out for myself. The irony is that my authentic self is a far better person than the ideal self they created for me, so if they can only see badness there, that's their problem.