Your sickness and health, your suffering and happiness reflect how you behave and communicate. Your relationships with your family may be the most important relationships of your life. Confusion in these relationships can lead to confusion throughout your life; and the lives of your children.

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Emotional incest begins when a person loves a family member as a replacement or substitute for a partner. If you are affected by emotional incest, we can help you free yourself. If you ignore the symptoms of covert or emotional incest - both you and your family will likely suffer.

The symptoms of emotional incest revolve around identity loss - lost access to human qualities, resources and emotions - and specialness - believing you are somehow special. Identity loss is a common consequence of trauma, incest, abuse and cult membership. Identity loss is often accompanied by addictive relationships and symptoms of passive aggression.

Symptoms of identity loss include:

1. Relationship Bonds: You are bonded to another person - you are dependent
2. Identification: You express someone else's emotions: chronic anger, anxiety or sadness
3. Identity Conflict: Your behavior swings between two poles - you live in endless conflict
4. Lost Identity: You cannot express a "sense of self" - your life may have little meaning

Children raised as special will never forget it. Later in life they will try to prove their specialness in their relationships. Ordinary love is not enough, they may want devotion. They may want devotees rather than friends or partners. And without their specialness, life may not be worth living.

Emotional incest spans generations. There is no one person to blame. Emotional incest often reflects chains of suffering going back into your family history. Unless you recognize the symptoms of emotional incest and become conscious of your role in them - these chains of suffering will likely continue into future generations. Your children will likely carry your burden and repeat your drama.

Do you want alleviate the consequences of your entanglements? Do you want to resolve ...

You probably feel connected to people in the the human systems to which you belong. You can probably feel a special sharing, empathy, compassion for those special people. Your family relationships reflect your family history and your work relationships reflect your organization's history.

Entanglements are strong feelings of connection. Do you try to carry other people's burdens - living, missing or dead people. Your entangled parents may try to partner you. Your entangled partner may cling to fantasies and avoid responsibility (act like a child) or become super-responsible (act like a parent). If you participate in their fantasies - you entangle yourself in drama and games.

If your parents were unhappy, you may strive to fulfill their unfulfilled desires. You may feel emotionally entangled - and you may be diagnosed as having attachment disorders, passive aggression, personality disorders, sexual problems, psychosomatic symptoms, anxiety and/or depression.

If you try to carry the emotional baggage of your family, you will fail. If you try to complete the unfinished business of your parents or grandparents - you will fail. You may then retreat into depression, or you might distract yourself from your failure with obsessions and addictions.

First children often carry a heavy emotional burden, and first pregnancies have a higher risk of abortion, miscarriage or stillbirth. First children have a higher risk of a fatal disease, and first children more often suffer from chronic mental, physical and sexual issues. We can help you sort them out.

Parents who Sabotage Children

With the exception of abortion, few parents deliberately harm or kill their children. Most parents have good intentions - and usually strive to give their children their best and what they lacked. Most parents love their children, and wish to protect them, and support them to adult independence.

Sometimes things go wrong. A lonely mother may use a son as the object of her lonely love - and love her son in ways more appropriate for a partner. A lonely father may love his daughter more than he loves his wife. If a parent loves a child as a substitute for a friend or partner, emotional chaos will follow. These habits often cross generations. You can watch your grandchildren try to deal with your issues.

Emotional incest can damage your ability to set boundaries and take care of your own needs. It can damage your sexuality and your ability to create and enjoy happy partnership. Emotional incest can motivate you to avoid commitment and over-bond to your children as you recreate your parents' drama.

If you are or were a Daddy's Princess or a Mother's Prince, you may relate well to people of the opposite sex but not so well to your own, except for short-term pleasure or long-term security. You may find yourself sexually excited by or feeing in love with people whom you can neither like nor trust.

Entanglements & Transference

Mistaken identity may be called transference. A mother may act as if her son were her partner - or a father loves his daughter in ways that are more appropriate for a wife. (A first son may be overly loved by a lonely mother; and a youngest daughter may be adored by a lonely father). For more on family enmeshment, see mother-son bonds and father-daughter entanglements.

Transferences are unconscious ties and emotional lies. Transferences motivate inappropriate behavior - including marriage and divorce. Transference often brings short-term pleasure at the high cost of long-term happiness. I love you (only) because you remind me so much of ...

And when transference fails - as it must, being a lie - one or both people may withdraw into distractions or depression. People who were bonded by transference or transference loops may suddenly feel no or unpleasant emotions towards the other person.

Instead of a fulfilling partnership, toxic entanglements support manipulation, emotional blackmail, symbiosis and codependence. Sentences beginning “If you REALLY loved me you would…” indicate transferences, entanglements and manipulation.

Did a parent emotionally dump on you? Did a parent continually talk to you about adult issues. Did your parents involve you in their conflicts? Did your parents avoid talking about feelings, yet you feel responsible for their emotions? Contact us.

Do you want relationship coaching or systemic coach training? Do you want to coach people to resolve emotions and relationship challenges to find emotional maturity and freedom? Contact us.

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