Meet "Barbie and Ken" -- "Daddy's little girl" and "Mommy's little man". These are the "goodie-two-shoes" (goodie-two-shoes) parent-pleasing puppet whose heart belongs to Daddy or Mommy. They are the sexually saturated "chosen one" who is kept exclusively tied to the engulfing parent via the "phantom Papa" or the "ghostly Mama" in their head for the rest of their life. They are a highly specialized reward machine for the "choosing" parent. They literally can't live an independent life because the "Lilliput-tie-downs" were so effective. They are like the odd half of a pair of scissors for which the other half will never come through or show up. They end up living a "movie" instead of a destiny.
HOW DID THEY GET THIS WAY?
One of the parents psychologically hovers over and forms an intense, often sexually loaded, but seldom acknowledged "special relationship" with the "goodie-two-shoes". The parent is an emotionally immature person who forms a genuine peer loving and sexual relationship with the child, with the result that the parent-child relationship becomes eroticized and then disguised/denied/repressed, so the child is in constant turmoil around subtle and hidden incest on the one hand, and around rejection and abandonment-anxiety on the other.
One of the many problems with this situation is that the parent then plays withhold-withdraw "dance away lover" games with the child, out of their subconscious terror and rage about their reaction to the child. The parent is themselves hung up on their parent-in-the-head, who did the same thing to them, so they can't commit to anyone really, including their spouse or this "special" child. They therefore effectively keep the kid at a distance, but they also never let them go. It is a form of tantalizing that precipitates an idolization in the child that is hugely fueled by "Let's fly away together!" implied promises from the parent.
To make matters worse, on the subterranean and subconscious level, the child replaces the other parent and becomes the spouse/parent of the "choosing" parent -- or perhaps the other or both parents. There also develops a rivalry thing with the other parent, which greatly pleases the "choosing" parent. In the meantime, this parent promises paradise, utilizes abandonment-threat maneuvers, and periodically partially acknowledges the relationship, all to keep the child exclusively involved with them. They convey many commitments and "some day" contracts in a "promises, promises" pattern. There was an autobiographical song by Dory Previn many years ago called, "With my Daddy in the attic", where he played his clarinet for her, which is about this type of relationship
The enmeshing parent is actually highly dependent upon and erotically bonded to the child, and they are bottom line terrified of losing the child. So they send a powerful message to the child to never grow up or grow away, and they build in "immoral", "unnatural" and "selfish" implants around the child's committing anywhere but with them. They also effectively "tie the child's shoelaces together" psychologically so they can't get their legs apart or have personal power or go anywhere. They jealously insulate the "goodie-two-shoes" from other relationships, and they intensely track and restrict their every move.
If the "goodie-two-shoes" is a female and the bonding/binding parent the father, he often shapes her with his withhold-promise games to become extremely seductive and hyper-feminine. The sheer power of this combination of processes, especially when she hits the Elektra period where she is to learn to be a graceful woman from him, is truly awesome. In effect, he seizes her biological mechanisms and totally entrains them to him for life, if he can. The same general process happens with the mother on the son or the other combinations.
Some "goodie-two-shoes"s are started extremely early, during the symbiotic period (0 to 9 months), which results in a fusion of sexuality, dependency and emotional infantility due to the developmental flatline that occurs. She then goes on to take advantage of her maternal role and impact to totally enslave the child for life.
This could in some ways be called the "Appalachian suite", because it was commonplace for this type of relationship to develop there -- indeed it was expected, as a part of parental rights. The "chosen" child then never leaves home and takes over the spousal/parental role for the "choosing" parent for the rest of their life.
The impact of all this on the child is profound to the extreme, and they have a severely difficult time pulling free of it to ever have a life of their own.
WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?
As a result of all this "hidden special relationship" stuff going on with the parent, the "goodie-two-shoes" never really has a chance to become themselves. They have a "fusion fantasy" about their "choosing" parent, and they are obsessed with that parent's reactions and promises. Their life is effectively "on hold" while they await the so often promised "nirvana merging".
The "goodie-two-shoes" lives vicariously through and for the parent, and vice versa. They are "saving it all for Daddy/Mommy". That is, the "goodie-two-shoes" keeps their potential and their passion for the "choosing" parent for fear of there being nothing left and losing the parent forever if they in any way become vulnerable or commit elsewhere. And since this is the "God-stand-in" figure for them, that means their soul is on the line from the perspective of their "inner child". They are terrified of acknowledging that the parent will probably never come through, and they are also afraid that they wouldn't be able to give back if the parent did come through.
The trouble is that this "great waiting act" is a limbo type of thing. They can't get what they need, they can't leave it, they can't get mad, they can't give, and they can't give up. There are no options, and they are trapped in it as it holds them by the throat like a pit bull. While all this is going on, they feel really "special" -- and phony because it's an empty promise trip and they know it at some level. But they can't let go of it, and they are always trying to please Daddy/Mommy who, of course, is playing withhold/withdraw games with them to keep them hooked.
As a result of all this, the "goodie-two-shoes" is stuck in childhood, like an actor/ actress understudy waiting in the wings to finally get their big chance. There are several effects of this. One of them is that they tend to be "prima donnas" or "his majesty, the child" due to the over-indulgent "special relationship" history. They also retain the impish childlike quality, with its attendant "Peter Pan/ella" "never-never land" characteristics. They can't find a self-justifiable role in the community or in life, they are intensely competence-anxious, and they operate out of a learned helplessness position -- the "helpless, hapless, hopeless" scene.
They are also very much a dependent child who is desperately demanding of sibling figures as they try to please their parent and to keep their resentful rebellion under control. They are intensely abandonment-anxious, and they go into a panic reaction if they displease their parent or if their "life supply system" sibling figures get fed up and threaten to not support them.
To make matters worse, they were programmed and implanted to feel immoral, selfish and destructive if they manifest any self-commitment. They pack an image of their observing and judging parent around in their head, and everything is evaluated in terms of this image's being aware of what's going on. They are always imagining the approval or disapproval of intended actions. And acknowledging that they might not believe in this "phantom in the head" is like no longer believing in God -- everything is never the same and they can't tell people about it for fear of catastrophic results.
One of the prime effects of all this is that they can't be truly erotic. For one thing, they have the fear that the parent will walk in on them with their pants down, so to speak. For another, they are stuck in childhood sexually, and they can only respond to passive and largely visual sexuality like stripping, voyeurism, pornography and exhibitionism -- "Don't you DARE act on it!" hangs in their minds and guts like the sword of Damocles.
They are frightened and guilty if they experience full-fledged sexuality, and they spend most of their time totally shut down. In fact, they often end up super-disgusted and afraid of sexuality, and even of physical contact. This doesn't mean that they can't be physically sexual. In fact, they are very aware of the power of Eros, especially the females, but only in the "femme fatale" and "homme fatale" sense of seductive-destructive or no follow-through. They can do the act, but it is gamey.
This plays havoc with their capacity for intimacy, of course. The fact is that they are saving it all for Daddy/Mommy, and so they can't respond to true love. Indeed, they are actually repulsed by a relevant person who is similar but crucially different from the parent. They are hopelessly hooked on their parent, and what happens when they attempt to spouse is that they develop a "hate-mate" relationship, partially to keep their heart open to their "true love", and partially to provide a self-deluding "cover" for the erotic aspect of the relationship. They are in effect intimacy-incompetent and intimacy-deflecting until they "close the book" on the parent. And just to seal the thing up nice and neatly, they are hopelessly vulnerable to "fatal attraction" re-runs of the parent, who then of course do the same thing the parent did.
As might be expected, there is a great deal of resentment-rage involved in this, which, of course, has to be suppressed/repressed. They are angry about the enslavement to the "promises-promises" parent, they are angry about the "phantom in the head", they are angry about the sexual immaturity and shutdown, they are angry about the great inequity between what they put out and what they get back, they are angry and in great grief about putting all their eggs in a bottomless basket in a never-ending drain-out on a hopeless cause. They are angry that they can't go anywhere else, they are angry that they treat all their friends as rivals like they did as a kid, and in general, they are angry that their life isn't working and may never.
HOW DO THEY FUNCTION?
"Goodie-two-shoes" are intensely approval-seeking and disapproval-avoiding in a smiling-dancing sort of way. They are also eager to please, especially towards authority figures and other parent-stand-ins such as "mainstream" conventions and social institutions -- to which they respond in a compulsively super-conventional manner. They suppress their uniquenesses and idiosyncrasies, and they are highly deviation- and alienation-avoidant. They are very deferent, supportive and supports-supplying, imposition-avoidant, and assertion- and aggression-avoidant. They are also quite apologetic, and they are always saying, "I'm sorry", "Excuse me" and "Pardon me". They make a great point of being polite and considerate, to the point of being a bit too much.
However, the underlying resentment is also always playing out in often quite creative passive-aggressive ways. They are in continuous subtle rebellion, and they are very good at "errors of omission" (failure to provide needed resources or responses). They also have a way of becoming rather "snappy" to drain off some of their rage, and they can be "prima donna" and "his majesty" selfish and inconvenience-inducing at times. This comes from the spoiled incompetent and "special relationship" inflating parenting pattern, but a lot of it is used to release some of their huge reservoir of stored up rage.
They are unable to form successful intimacy, even with the "parent-doubles" they are attracted to, because of their total involvement with the "ghostly figure in their head and in their guts", and because of all the promised "some day" cash-ins. They function as "Mr. Nice Guy/Ms. Nice Gal" as they are "waiting for Godot" and marking time. Their life has a "not until" quality to it, as they never really commit to anything, lest they lose out on their "ship coming in" (which it never does, of course).
In their relationships, they play withhold-withdraw games, while at the same time being a master of the sexual releaser-display thing in the "Shirley temple syndrome" way (both genders with appropriate projections). They do a "Lady or the Tiger?" type of thing where they use withholding and pseudo-anger alternated with warmth and seeming acceptance in a highly purposefully unpredictable manner so as to maintain control and to avoid closeness. They also play "the mice will play while the cat's away" and "Catch me if you can!" childish games with their intimates and parent figures. And they can be totally intolerant and gamey parents themselves.
One of the more alarming aspects of their whole pattern is that because of all the learned helplessness, "on hold", and self-suppression that their pattern involves, they are often sick, their physical equipment begins breaking down while they are still young, and they are intensely cancer-prone. This, of course, is the straw that broke the camel's back in a way, and it can serve as either an out-route or an activation of transformation.
HOW CAN THEY BE HELPED?
Coming to terms with the parent is the key to the release of the "goodie-two-shoes". The only way out is to kiss it goodbye and to forgive themselves for believing that they weren't enough (an impression carefully nurtured by "choosing" parent). They have to realize that the parent is the crippled one, and they have to bury them, grieve them and let go of them. They will have a huge resistance to this due to the super-taboo and life-and-death nature of the subterranean incest thing. They are also afraid that it is the ultimate moral violation to share about -- and they fear the parent will hear this "world-destroying betrayal of God". But if they are ever going to make it, they have to do the "ultimate mortal sin" in the family. Reality inputs and responsibility-forcing on the lack of parental commitment and the exploitative/abusive nature of the situation is a critical element in this aspect of the intervention with them.
It may also be necessary to utilize guided imagination with them to break the hold of the "nirvana-merging promises" and the "With my Daddy in the attic" thing. The idea is to take them into the space they have been in around the erotic aspect of the relationship and to facilitate their experiencing the liberating events, whatever form that might take. Because of the extreme entice-withdraw/withhold "tantalizing tarantula" aspect of the relationship, some might have to go into some sort of consummation fantasy to break the "tie that grinds", perhaps with vivid playouts of what it would really be like to "settle in" with the parent. Others might have to go into murder and retribution experiences to terminate the tie. Still others might have to really work on their power-avoidance with super-success fantasies and suicide reactions by the parent. Whatever it takes to get them through the doorway to freedom is what the individual needs to generate with the appropriate support and protection from the therapist.
The second thing that needs to happen is for them to become a person in their own right. They have to get in touch with, explore and release into manifestation their personal power -- and to leave the parent in the dust. They need desensitization to their terror of the development of self-commitment and self-expression, along with "stretch" exercises tailor-made to give them initial step experiences in doing so. And they need to work on the practical level to re-balance the enormous inequity of energy exchange in their life, where they put out far more than they get back.
The third thing they need is emotion-management during all these changes. First of all, there will emerge a tremendous amount of "betrayal-guilt" for the whole process, and for various events and undertakings in the healing. Secondly, there will be a lot of fear of what will happen to them, to the parent and in general as they step off the cliff to go through this and beyond. Thirdly, they will encounter their seething volcanic rage at the parent for all they have wrought with them. And finally, there will burst forth all the massive grief that has been activated all along. A good deal of the healing is, in fact, a "burying and mourning" process so that they can "give up the ghost" and go on to live their life.
They will need systematic desensitization around being and expressing themselves for who they are, not for how it would look to the "phantom in the head". It also involves insight-induction about how it all came about and its effects on their life. They often will also need some guided practice in being overtly "rebellious" and self-committed as part of the process of "exorcising the phantom". Some non-blaming explanation of the eroticized and controlling-restricting nature of the relationship with the "choosing" parent will be called for, as well as permission for and facilitation of the release of all the pent-up fury at the parent.
WHAT IS THEIR PURPOSE?
They have built their life around being completely there for another human being. That has resulted in their developing to a very high degree of manifestation the capacity to be truly compassionately comprehending and supportive. They therefore make an excellent confidante and a very pleasant, trustworthy support person. And their experience has given them a great deal on which to base a lot of wisdom and insight into the human condition that they can share in this role.
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