Your early family relationships are the most influential relationships of your life.
Confusion in those early relationships can lead to confusion throughout life.
Contact us to manage negative emotions and relationship problems.

Go to: Emotional Incest Solutions (Part 2)

Covert emotional incest begins when a family member perceives
and responds to another family member as a substitute for a partner.
We help people resolve emotional incest, and remedy other child abuse.

The symptoms of covert emotional incest include feeling special (believing without evidence that you are exceptional) and identity loss (losing access to some of your qualities, resources and emotions). Other common signs include addictive relationships and passive aggression.

Children raised as special do not forget it. Love may not be enough ... they may  demand devotion. If their need to be special is threatened, they may feel that life is not worth living. They may seek a substitute for a parent ... as a partner. They may fall in love with people who have qualities that a parent had - or lacked. They may become irrational if or when that substitute person withdraws or threatens to leave.

If you cannot ask for help or advice - even when lost in a strange city,
you are unlikely to ask us for guidance even when lost in life.

Covert Emotional Incest & Identity Loss

The consequences of covert emotional incest include obsessions, compulsions and an array of dysfunctional behaviors, including:

1. Identification: You express someone else's emotions
2. Inner Child: Some part of you is split-off - you can be childish
3. Identity Conflict: You swing between extremes - you live in conflict
4. Lost Identity: You cannot express yourself - your life lacks meaning
5. Relationship Bonds: You are bonded to someone - you are dependent

Emotional incest often accompanies Parental Alienation, in which
(in the mind of a child) one parent hates or alienates the other parent.
Often, the toxic beliefs are taboo - taboo beliefs cannot be consciously
changed or even considered without help.

Covert emotional incest spans generations ... but there is nobody to blame. It usually reflects chains of suffering going back into family history.

Solve Emotional Problems

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 fights and fantasies, you 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.

If you try to carry ancestral emotional baggage, you will fail. Then you may find yourself in crisis, depression, obsessions or addictions. Even worse, your children will copy you.

Parents who Abuse Children

Few human parents deliberately kill their own children. Most parents strive to give their children what they lacked when they were young.

Some parents are abusive and manipulative - even with their adult children. Yet even the most abusive parents claim good intentions. They often say that they're doing the best that they know how to do.

Good intentions can have bad consequences. If a lonely parent loves a child as a substitute for a friend or partner, emotional chaos will follow. Later as adults, they may watch their children and grandchildren try to cope with the same problems.

Some of the more unpleasant consequences of covert emotional incest can include destructive relationship habits:

1. expressing contempt and conceit
2. testing people's acceptance of them
3. expressing anger, rejection and emotional chaos
4. showing inappropriate affection after inappropriate rejection

Father-bonded women or mother-bonded men may only relate well with other bonded adults. They may find themselves only falling in love with or sexually excited by, immature or irresponsible people whom they neither like nor trust ... or they may desperately seek people who will parent them.

Transferences motivate addictive relationships. Affected people may suffer negative emotions and relationship problems. They may say, "I don't know what love is". For more on this, see mother-son bonds and father-daughter entanglements.

When transferences fail - as they must, being lies - affected people
may seek distractions or drugs to avoid depression. Contact us to
manage your negative emotions and solve relationship problems.

Go to Emotional Incest Part 2

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Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 1996-2013 All rights reserved.

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Manage Your Emotions & Solve Relationship Problems Have You Suffered Enough?  Where are you now? Assess your fixations, bonds and enmeshments What do you want? Know your life goals and how you sabotage yourself Do you feel resourceful? Find your lost resources by dreaming together Which emotions block you? End relationship problems and mentor damage Do your beliefs limit you? Change your limiting beliefs and end dependence Do you feel empty? Resolve identity loss to recover your lost resources Is your partnership happy? Build healthy partnership (or separate peacefully) Are your children healthy? Happy parents can better manage family problems Do you want team success? Team leaders and top teams can develop together Do you have other goals? Specialty coaching & training

Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 1996-2013 All rights reserved. Soulwork Systemic Coaching was primarily developed by Martyn Carruthers
to help people solve emotional problems and relationship issues to achieve their goals. These concepts and strategies are for general knowledge only. Consult a physician about medical conditions and before changing medical treatment. Don't steal intellectual property ... get permission to post, publish or teach Martyn's work.