My mom, Sue, had a compulsive need to be right.
She navigated most days in search of human fault lines, similar to the geological variety. Volatile and just beneath the surface. Dangerous, hard to detect, and ever-present.
Sue sought fault lines and weaknesses in others as one of her defensive maneuvers. Her contentious behavior was best characterized by her tendency to be offensive, for self-preservation.
Do you know anyone who keeps score?
Someone who is quick to point out failings and mistakes and scooch responsibility and fallout to others? That was Sue. Maddening and disturbing but it always for show. Cloak and cover.
Few transgressions stuck to Sue because she was the most capable adversary, adept at wiggling free. Even when her misdeeds and mistakes were in full view of others. She’d reconstitute facts as needed.
One of the most brazen examples is told in “Surviving Sue” – the escapade where Sue switched trophies during the annual banquet for her ladies’ golf club. Oh, my goodness. It’s Episode #4 in the series of “Sue or Lucy” stories (yep – as in “I Love Lucy”) in my book. Sometimes Sue’s antics were harmless, almost childlike. As if she was still learning the ropes of being an adult.
When confronted, Sue could take responsibility, but rarely in the moment. With time and rising guilt, on occasion she’d feign an apology if the lights were low, and the show was over. In somber spaces, Sue could identify the narrow distinctions she drew between truth and spin, becoming cloying and kind as if to make amends. As a child, I realized the version of Sue who exuded softness was intent on manipulation. I saw, early on, how Sue’s behavior was often mismatched with her words and affect. Incongruent. Odd.
I’ve found a path to forgiveness and carry an honest ache for her now. Sue’s ferocious drive to repel blame, her deflections? They were moves drawn from her well-worn playbook, accusing others as her first line of defense. Fragility made her that way and her instinct to deny, coupled with her compelling alternative stories gave her the distance she desired. Most curious to me – then and now – is how ardently she believed her half-truths and fantasies. Alternative storylines become alternative realities. And over time, I believe, her undoing.
When readers ask about my background in counseling and psychology, gently inquiring about my ability to see Sue’s pain and understand its origins, I struggle to provide an adequate answer about the “how”.
There were many threads of hard-won insight which helped me cobble a composite of the Sue who was broken…the Sue who did her best to navigate a world which crushed her as a child. Sue was an actress, hiding the truth about her insecurities. Clutching her illusions of confidence and capacity across a lifetime.
When asked, I can be more explicit about the ‘how’ but I’m cautious. It’s just my story, my journey. One of the helpful glimmers came from Alfred Adler and what he described as “safeguarding tendencies” – my favorite description of neuroses and defense mechanisms. His use of the word “safeguarding” offered insight, helped me see beyond Sue’s behavior in order to examine her intent: self-preservation.
Safeguarding refers to the mistaken movement of the discouraged person in thought, feeling, and action in response to perceived threats to his or her self-esteem.
Safeguards may be expressed in anxiety, panic attacks, or paralysis, more or less severe, and all relative to the individual’s degree of discouragement or diminished sense of social feeling and connectedness.
Safeguarding may show itself in such forms as a claim to being “above it all,” marking time, hesitation, or retreat, all of which may be understood as similar in function to the defense mechanisms later posited by other psychological systems.
The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler: A systematic presentation in selections from his writings. (H. L. and R. R. Ansbacher, Eds.). © 1964, Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. Used by permission of Perseus Books Group.
Understanding Sue’s pain as a child and her underlying motivations helped me see her with softer eyes. It excused nothing about the damage she did to others, but it opened a portal and a pathway to healing.
Confronting Sue’s ‘fault line’ compulsions and her systematic safeguarding paved the way.
Vicki ❤
P.S. Click here for more “Peek Inside” content about “Surviving Sue”.
I’m grateful for the great reviews on Amazon and Goodreads…and the wonderful questions from thoughtful readers. I welcome more! If you’ve enjoyed the book and my story, please pass along your positivity to a fellow reader.
Victoria Ponders 
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