FOBU, the fear of becoming Unnecessary: 370

 He felt bad thinking about the way he had brushed aside the friends’ concerns during their previous meeting. Bystander entered the park with purposeful strides, determined to set the score right. The calm atmosphere in the park did not pervade in to his mind as he had a heavy subject to discuss with his friend.

When the friend poured out his woes that his children are not willing to acknowledge his struggles and instead of appreciation, they are treating it as a bad loan to be written off. As a friend, he should have comforted him but had said, “Before you want to criticize someone, better walk a mile in their shoes.” He could have stopped there but pointed out the friend’s sardonic quip “That way you will be a mile away and you will have the shoes!” He did not know why he had repeated his friend’s own words, to him at that time. 

He had continued and lectured him by asking, “Really, can any of us tell the universe to behave as we want it? How incognizant it would be? We extend help thinking someone needs it, but in reality, they may not be. Don’t you realise why in a family, the medal of appreciation is not given?  The children’s valid reason could be to discourage you from continuing with such activities beyond a point.” 

The friend, who was glum became gloomier. With a late attempt in comforting, he had said, “Many of us could understand this unreadable googly. In this situation, I would get off thinking that the inside of my own head would not be the reliable place to hear things I have been refusing to hear. Though, this might sound like an advice cum admonishment.” 

Unable to take it anymore, finally the friend for this friendship’s sake, had silently swallowed his own caustic retort, “How a person standing on his hands could entertain the thought that he is holding the world in his hands?” Of course, Bystander did not know that. 

He greeted the friend and said, “I am really sorry. I should have been more considerate to your concerns, the last time we met.”

The friend replied, “Forget it. I too should not have burdened you with my confused thinking.”

Bystander replied, “All said and done, I should have been more receptive. The last few days I have been spending on reading what other people are saying about this sort of situation. Is it alright to discuss about it now?”

The friend said, “If I am permitted to ask my doubts, go ahead?” 

“Then answer this one. Why did you, knowingly repeated my own words to mean as if I was only interested in getting a pair of shoes, though the context and content were unrelated?” 

Getting a chance to set it right, Bystander said, “I intended it as a suggestion to apprise your situation from a distance. The shoes mentioned was to allude to the other person’s perspective. Hear me, I will discuss what my reading materials say about the FOBU (fear of becoming unnecessary.) 

Generally, parents who can't stop helping their adult children may be struggling with the FOBU. Be it the mother or the father who extend unprompted, unsolicited help just to make sure. This helping does not stop there but continues by taking care of doctor appointments and extending to financial assistance.  The parents call it love. The whole culture is set up to call it love. It often isn’t.”

The friend queried, “How can it be not love?”

“Because love is imaginary in the sense that the real person acts as the template for the mind to construct that lovable personality as it wants or comfortable with. And it does not stop being only love, but becomes an expectation for reciprocation. This combination sows the seeds of FOBU.

Underneath this visible kindness there is something that the parents fail to see clearly - a quiet, accumulating fear that if they stop being needed and then they stop being anyone at all. This is the fear of being left alone. When twilight fades, stars become visible but when dawn fades what you feel will be the harsh reality of life.” 

The friend asked, “Are you trying to blame me for this situation?”

“No. It is the helicopter parenting, of course with love, of children during their emerging adulthood. It only undermines, their natural development. But how this helicopter takes to the air? By the parents fueling it with their regrets, anxieties, driven by prevention is better than cure focus, and fearing a failure in their own parental efforts.”

“Why this fear of parents should be blamed for this situation?”

They fear witnessing the failures of their children. Fear of receiving the call they don’t want to get. There is one thing that they don’t say out aloud - what they themselves would become when the children no longer need them. For parents, being needed actually gives a clear, continuing reason to exist. They try to cling on to the ‘something’ acquired from about twenty years of parenting which ‘something’ the rest of their life rarely might bring.

What is that ‘something’? Satisfaction of solving small problems, signing of forms. Attending to a scraped knee, comforting after a bad dream., averting a pending homework crisis and so on. The needs roll in, one after another. This leaves no room for the doubt whether this parenting life has meaning or not as the meaning itself shows up in person, three times a day, asking for things. This is the most direct evidence for a parent’s purposeful life. Though parenting is exhausting, this regimen leaves a parent with the most solid sense of self.”

“Why do the children push back and don’t appreciate the efforts of parents?” 

“A good question. Being part of nature, don’t we have to cope up with its vagaries? How can we escape its influence?  We help thinking someone needs it without ascertaining the necessity, when the individual might be capable of managing without that help. In a subtle way, the children signal the parents to stop such activities by not appreciating and bestowing medals.” 

“When nothing has changed with the parents, why the children must change as they grow up. Is it not hurting?”

“The expert opinion here is, the needs of children taper out and the dependence on parental help becomes sporadic. It is time for the parent to retire from the job of parenting, though it helped the parent to accumulate twenty odd years of parental identity. This destined-to-occur retirement quietly takes away that identity without substituting with another similar task insight.  This begins the hurt and fear of becoming unuseful.

The now-free parent starts to think, who am I, not needed anymore and if I let it go, now what would be there left for me? This worried mind unconsciously begins to bargain for opportunities to be once again useful. As a parent am I not ready to find things to do for them and play an active role.? From your outside perspective this readiness might look like generosity. From the insider’s perspective much of it is a quiet defense against the doubt and dilemma – What have I become to them?”

The friend who remained quietly listening asked, “What would you do in such a situation?”

“This dilemma occupied my mind for some time, but by accepting this natural outcome, I changed my approach with diversions.  There are many innocuous ways one can occupy the mind. My thinking after this pause was to fill up the chasm with grandchildren and without becoming a helicopter grandparent. Once was enough, remembering these kids too come with their own priorities.

It was quite a revelation to the friend’s facial expressions did not hide it. He might be hastily reevaluating his perceived opinion about Bystander as a person - condescending and curt.

Becoming eager to know more, he asked, “What goes on in the adult child’s mind to bring a parent this dilemma?”

“The child’s first priority is to try and become an adult. Meaning “to get out of parental care as quickly as possible’ and I want to manage myself urge. Determination to breathe easy and build up trust and self-confidence to handle things without help.

The root cause lies with the well-meaning parents who have managed to undermine the growing-up child by unintentionally embedding the message that ‘I don’t believe you can do this by yourself’, even when it was not meant to covey it that way.

This actually costs the adult child. The fear of making mistakes or causing displeasure to parents has been growing in the mind since childhood. Losing trust, self-confidence and ability, the child needed the parent’s involvement to feel okay about every decision to be taken.  Becomes habituated to consult before acting. The long-term effect is, as an adult in the thirties, fails to act on own judgement, because someone can be relied upon to verify it. This is a dependency creating cycle. The now-adult starts ruing about the lack of internal resources and own failure to create it due to the habit of passing on the problem to a parent for a solution. Is it not very late in the game for the now-adult to regret?

Now, as a result there are two sets of people locked together by a fear, neither of them are prepared to acknowledge and name it.

The competent thirtyish adult feels like one who is still waiting for permission with the fear of making mistakes or causing displeasure or becoming a failure in the eyes of parents.

The parent who steadfastly hold to the feeling that being needed is the proof of their usefulness in life and is still worth something. The parent is not the villain, but with deep love prepared to do anything for the child. Whatever is done is not out of cruelty or desire to control.”

“Do you mean to say the blame lies only with the parents?” The friend asked.

“If you dispassionately think, the answer is YES.  At that age, as a parent their experience and maturity level would have been better than that of the child, they were bringing up. Continuing in the same vein, the parent stands today questioning: Have I become redundant and less useful?

Continuing to help the thirtyish adult is because of the inability of a parent to process the grief over ending of decades long identity and is directionless about what to do with the second half of life when the first half was spent being indispensable. This fear takes over from love and brings up a face-saving logic in the mind of a parent who feels being not needed to help anymore - The helping is for me as much as for them.”

Overwhelmed, the friend meekly asked, “You always quote from a famous personality; have any that fits this situation?” 

“Yes. Try what the great Wolfgang Goethe asked: “If I love you, what business is it of yours?” I will twist it a little like what you did once, to mean, “If you have expectations, what business is that of the recipient? or If you are experiencing trepidations, what business is it of others? and so on. The bottom line is, if you want to encompass everyone, then you have to distance yourselves from everyone! You don’t need permission, validation or even a response. It is too late for us old timers, but the youngsters might well be practicing it right now, starting with the old timers.”

Needless to say, a heavy curtain of silence fell between Bystander and his friend. The former in satisfaction of having set the score right and the latter in trying to understand the implications of whatever he had just heard.