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Early family relationships may be the most
influential relationships of life. Confusion in these relationships can lead
to confusion throughout life, and
burden the lives of partners and children. Here is help for motivated adults.
Coaching Teenagers
Coaching Young Adults
Coaching Older Clients
Coaching Difficult Clients
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We help prevent emotional incest being transmitted
across generations.
We coach entangled adults and we offer
public education.
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Covert emotional incest begins when a person perceives and responds to a family member as a
replacement or substitute for a partner. If covert emotional incest is ignored -
the whole family may suffer. We often dissolve emotional
incest between parents and children, and codependent or symbiotic
relationships between brothers and sisters.
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People who fixate on a
parent may be unable to maintain healthy partnerships!
We offer help to motivated adults affected by covert emotional incest.
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Two common symptoms of covert or emotional incest include feeling special
- people believing without evidence that they are somehow extraordinary or
exceptional; and
identity loss - lost access to qualities,
resources and emotions. These common consequences of trauma,
incest, abuse and cult membership are often accompanied by
addictive relationships and
passive aggression.
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Our innovative solutions for parent-child
codependence and
inner-child work helps
people resolve emotional blocks and relationship issues in very short time frames.
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Children raised as special do not forget it. Later in life they will
try to prove their specialness in their relationships. Love is not enough ...
they want devotion. They may seek devotees rather than friends or partners. And
if their sense of being special is threatened, they may feel that life is not
worth living.
Many people cannot ask for help or directions - even when lost in a
strange city.
These people are even less likely to ask for guidance when lost in life.
Help for Therapists
We seem to coach more helping professionals than
members of any other occupation. We have met therapists of very many schools and
specialties, both university and New Age, and we have become adept at guessing
their educational background and specialties based on how they describe their
goals.
Most therapists want to change something in their
lives and learn some of our methodology - which we applaud. Many say that
they cannot approach their colleagues without risking gossip. (Therapists'
confidentiality may not extend to other therapists). Through our
Skype and telephone services, people can easily withhold their names and even
their towns,
and feel safe.
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I have a PhD in psychology ... many mental health professionals
specialize in their own issues and project their issues onto their clients ...
psychotherapists are notorious for codependent, dysfunctional behavior ... don't
give them power over you ...
beware of
abuse by therapists. California, USA
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Many people who experienced emotional incest become helping
professionals.
Do they promote healing - or therapist-client codependence?
Emotional Incest & Identity Loss
The more obvious symptoms of emotional incest include obsessions, compulsions
and a wide array of immature and dysfunctional behaviors. The causes of these
forms of identity
loss often include:
- Relationship Bonds: You are
bonded to another person - you are dependent
- Inner Child: Some parts of you were split-off during family trauma - you
are childish
- Lost Identity: You cannot express a sense of self - your life
may have little meaning
- Identification: You express someone else's emotions: chronic
anger, anxiety or
sadness
- Identity Conflict: Your behavior swings between two poles - you
live in endless conflict
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Emotional incest often accompanies
Parental Alienation (PAS) , in which one parent or
guardian alienates the other parent in the mind of a child. Often, the resulting
toxic relationship bonds cannot be
consciously considered or rationalized without help. |
Emotional covert incest usually spans generations. There is no
one person to blame. Emotional incest reflects chains of suffering going back into
family history. Unless people recognize the symptoms of emotional incest and
change their roles in it - these chains of suffering will likely disturb
future generations. Children will likely carry the emotional baggage that
parents do not resolve.
Can you enjoy Emotional Freedom?
You probably feel connected to some people in the the family, teams and
communities to which you belong. You probably enjoy a special
sharing, empathy and compassion for special people.
Entanglements and bonds refer to feelings of connection - pleasant or unpleasant. Do you carry
other people's burdens - whether those people are living, missing or dead? Do
your
parents try to partner you? Does a partner cling to
fantasies and avoid responsibility (act like a child) or become
super-responsible (act like a parent) ... or both? If you participate in their fantasies -
you enmesh or triangulate yourself in their
drama and their history.
If your parents were unhappy, you may strive to fulfill their
unfulfilled desires. If you feel emotionally enmeshed -
you may be diagnosed as having attachment disorders,
passive aggression,
personality disorders,
sexual problems,
psychosomatic symptoms,
anxiety, guilt
and/or depression. We find that untangling family
relationships can dissolve many mental health symptoms.
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My husband is a mature man half the time -
but acts like an aggressive teenager after visiting his mother.
When he's mature - life with him is wonderful
... but I cannot live with his dark side - an irresponsible, arrogant boy!
Washington DC |
If you try to carry your parents' emotional baggage, you will
probably fail. If
you try to complete the unfinished business of your grandparents -
you will probably fail. Then you may retreat into
depression, or you might distract yourself from
unpleasant feelings with
obsessions or addictions.
We note that first children seem to be more often entangled with parents.
First children often carry a heavy 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 mental, physical and sexual problems. We doubt that this is
coincidence.
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One root of our work is in the pre-contact
healing used by
native Hawaiians. They
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 - an ancient family therapy. |
Parents who Sabotage Children
With the notable exception of abortion,
very few parents deliberately kill their own children. Most parents have good
intentions - and usually strive to give their children what they lacked
when they were young. Most parents wish to protect their children, and to
support them to adult independence.
Some parents are abusive and manipulative - even with adult
children. Some parents expect their children to be obedient, or to look after
them as they age, or to act as parents to their younger
siblings. Yet even the
most abusive parents usually claim good intentions.
Good intentions can have unpleasant consequences. A lonely
parent may express love to a child in ways more appropriate for a
friend or partner. If
a 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 unresolved issues.
Covert emotional incest can damage the ability to set boundaries and
take care of needs. It can damage sexuality and the ability
to create and enjoy happy partnership. Emotional incest can motivate people to
avoid commitment and over-bond to children as they recreate their parents'
drama.
A Daddy's Princess
or a Little Prince may relate well
to immature people but not so well 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 Entanglements & Transference
Mistaken identity may be called
transference.
A mother may behave as if her son were her partner - or a father loves
his daughter in ways that are more appropriate for a wife. For more on family enmeshment, see mother-son bonds and
father-daughter
entanglements.
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When I read your articles, I
feel strong emotions ... I am searching for a man like you ... ... you know
so much about me ...
you describe my
darkest fantasies ...
... you are like my father. Idaho, USA |
Transferences are unconscious ties and emotional lies.
Transferences motivate inappropriate behavior - including poor career
choices, addictive relationships and
unneeded divorce. Transference often motivates short-term pleasures at the high cost
of long-term happiness. Expect to hear words like ...
I love you (only) because you remind me of ...
And when transferences fail - as they must, being lies - one or
both partners may withdraw into crisis, distractions or depression.
Then, bonded by entanglements or transference loops, they may feel empty,
and/or overwhelmed by unpleasant emotions ... or both! Separation or divorce
become likely if such a couple cannot create a fresh start.
Instead of adding meaning to life, entanglements
more often
support manipulation, emotional blackmail and
codependence.
Demands beginning with “If you REALLY loved me you would …”
often expose transferences and
triangulation.
We help motivated adults dissolve these and similar issues ...
and build mature, healthy relationships.
Did your parents entangle you in their issues? Do you feel
responsible for your parents' emotions?
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We do not try to change immature people. We
do not try to make people responsible. We do point out the consequences to
themselves and others.
When those people have suffered enough ... we can help them!
Would you like to
benefit from our experience?
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Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 1996-2010 All rights reserved.
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