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Confusion in childhood relationships can lead to confusion throughout life.
We help adults recognize and recover from covert emotional incest.
Go to: Emotional Incest
Solution (Part 2)
When you were a child, did you suffer from parents with unrealistic expectations?
Were you expected to unquestioningly follow family traditions? Were you obliged
to do things you knew were wrong - things you disliked - or even hated? Were you used as a substitute for a parent's
partner or friend?
Covert incest begins when a lonely or immature adult perceives a child as a replacement or substitute for a partner. We
help people dissolve covert incest between parents and children, between
brothers and sisters and with other family members.
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Mature people can accept reality with a realistic
attitude. They react to difficulties with careful creativity and intelligence.
They perceive children as opportunities to enjoy love, responsibility and
parenthood. |
Immature people fight reality with a idealistic
attitude. They react to difficulties with impulsive resentment and despair. They
may perceive children as opportunities to exploit rivals, parasites or saviors. |
Two common signs of immaturity are feeling
special
- people who believe without evidence that they are somehow extraordinary
or exceptional; and losing identity - people with a decreased ability to access
and apply qualities, inner resources
and emotions. Secondary consequences of immaturity include fixations,
compulsions, obsessions,
addictive relationships and
passive aggression.
Children trained to be special do not forget it. Love may not be enough
... they want devotion. If their sense of being special is
threatened, they may feel that life is not worth living. As adults, they may seek
substitutes for parents ... as partners. They may fall in love
with people who remind them of their parents, and become irrational if/when a
person leaves or threatens to withdraw.
If you cannot ask for help or advice when
lost in a strange city,
you are unlikely to ask for our coaching when lost in strange emotions.
Coaching for Therapists & Counselors
We coach more helping professionals to resolve
covert incest than members of any other occupation. We also find that helping professionals
specialize in their own issues. However, if therapists finally resolve their own issues,
they may lose
motivation to continue helping people with those issues.
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I used to help depressed
middle-aged women cope with their sad lives. But since our sessions, I can't
hardly stand such women ... I want to be with dynamic people!
I now
coach entrepreneurs and small business owners to expand! |
Some helping professionals are survivors of
covert emotional incest.
Check if they offer healing - or codependence?
Covert Emotional Incest & Identity Loss
The more obvious consequences of covert incest include obsessions, compulsions
and an array of immature and dysfunctional behaviors. The causes of these
forms of identity loss often include:
- Relationship Bonds: You are
bonded to someone - you are dependent
- Inner Child: Some part of you was split-off - you
are sometimes childish
- Lost Identity: You cannot express a sense of self - your
life lacks meaning
- Identity Conflict: Your behavior swings between two poles - you
live in conflict
- Identification: You express someone else's emotions:
anger, anxiety or
sadness
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Covert incest often accompanies
Parental Alienation (PAS), in which a parent
installs hateful beliefs about the other parent in the mind of a child. We
help people recognize, challenge and change terrible beliefs so that they
can move on with their lives. |
Covert incest often spans generations ... it usually reflects traditions of
suffering going back into family history. Many children carry the emotional baggage
that their parents could not resolve.
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Some Consequences of Covert
Incest |
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Do you want to be Free of your Parents?
Do you carry your parents' emotional burdens? Did a parent try to partner you?
Do you cling to fantasies and avoid responsibility (act like a child) or
become super-responsible (act like a parent) ... or both? If your parents
included you in their fantasies - your life may be enmeshed in their drama.
Do you strive to fulfill your parent's unfulfilled
desires? If so - you may be diagnosed as having
passive aggression,
sexual problems,
anxiety
and/or depression. Untangle your family relationships!
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My husband is a mature man half the time -
but he acts like an aggressive teenager after visiting his mother. When he's
mature - life is good ... but I cannot live with his dark side - an
irresponsible, arrogant boy! Washington USA |
If you try to partner or parent a parent, you will
fail. If you try to complete their unfinished business
- you will fail. Instead of retreating into depression,
obsessions or addictions - we can help you
explore and choose happier futures.
First children often carry the heaviest emotional burden, and first
pregnancies have a higher risk of miscarriage, stillbirth, crib death ... and
abortion. First children seem to have a higher risk of a fatal disease, and more
often suffer from chronic emotional, physical and sexual problems.
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We researched the
huna healing
used by native Hawaiian healers.
Some referred to ele'ele eke (black bags) of emotions held in
the body which cause disease and are difficult to heal except through
ho'oponopono
- a traditional form of family therapy. |
Parents who Sabotage Children
Most parents strive to
give their children what they lacked when they were young. But parents cannot
give their children what they lack themselves. We coach parents
to protect and support their children.
Some parents are abusive and manipulative - even with their adult
children. Some parents expect their children to be obedient, or to look after
them as they age. Yet even the most abusive parents claim good intentions. They often say that they're doing the best that they
know how to do.
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My husband was a pathetic case of arrested
development which made him easy to control. Since your coaching, he is taking
more responsibility, but now my son is angrily defending his own place in our
family as "alpha male". Mexico City |
Good intentions can have unpleasant consequences. If a
lonely parent loves a child as a substitute for a friend or partner,
emotional chaos will follow, often across generations. Later as
adults, the adult children may watch their children and
grandchildren act out and try to cope with their inherited issues.
A father-bonded woman or a mother-bonded man may relate
well to other immature people but not to mature adults. They may find themselves
sexually excited by, or falling in love with, immature or irresponsible
people whom they neither like nor trust. Or they may seek partners
who will parent them.
Solutions for Enmeshment with Parents
If enmeshed, a son may behave as if his mother
was his wonderful partner - or a daughter may show love to her father in
unhealthy ways that may feel very satisfying. For more on family enmeshment, see
mother-son bonds
and father-daughter entanglements.
Enmeshments are unconscious ties and emotional lies.
Enmeshments motivate inappropriate behavior - including poor career
choices, addictive relationships and unneeded divorce. Expect to hear ...
I love you (only) because you are like my ...
If an enmeshment is exposed, people may feel overwhelmed by
unpleasant emotions. Many retreat into drugs, distractions or depression.
Are you ready to free yourself from the burden of your
parents' emotions?
Online Coaching & Mentorship for
Covert Incest
Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers
1999-2012 All rights reserved.
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