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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. We offer help to motivated adults.
Go to: Emotional Incest
Part 2
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
help people dissolve emotional incest between parents and children,
codependent relationships between
brothers and sisters and symbiotic
relationships with other family members.
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People who fixate on a
parent may be unable to maintain a healthy partnership!
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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.
Children raised as special do not forget it. Later in life they will
try to prove their specialness in their relationships. Love may not be enough
... they often want devotion. And if their sense of being special is
threatened, they may feel that life is not worth living.
Children raised as specially bad will also remember it. They may seek
a substitute for a loving parent ... as a partner. They may fall in love
with a person with qualities that a parent lacked, and later become irrational
if/when a partner-parent withdraws or threatens to leave.
Many people cannot ask for help or directions
- even when lost in a strange city.
They feel that they are supposed to know everything.
Such people are even less likely to ask for guidance when lost in life.
Coaching for Therapists & Counselors
We seem to coach more helping professionals resolve covert emotional incest than members of any other occupation. We meet
therapists of many schools and specialties, both university and alternative.
And many seem to have specialized in their own issues!
There is a risk. Professionals who have
specialized in their own issues may, when they resolve their own issues, lose
motivation to help people with those issues. We have witnessed many
counselors and therapists undertake major career changes after our coaching.
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I was well known for helping depressed
middle-aged women cope with their sad lives. But since our sessions, I can't
hardly tolerate such women ... I enjoy being with dynamic people! I now
coach small business owners to expand! London, England |
Many helping professionals are survivors of
covert emotional incest.
Do they promote healing - or emotional 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 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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Emotional incest often accompanies
Parental Alienation (PAS), in which one parent or
guardian alienates the other parent or guardian in the mind of a child.
Often, the resulting toxic beliefs cannot be
consciously considered or rationalized without help. |
Covert emotional incest usually spans generations ... there is no one
person to blame. It reflects chains of suffering going back into family
history. Some people call it a family curse.
But until you recognize the symptoms of emotional incest and change your
own role in it - these chains of suffering will likely disturb your
children. Most children carry the emotional baggage
that their parents do not resolve.
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Consequences of Emotional
Incest |
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Do you want 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? Did a parent 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 yourself in their drama.
If your parents were unhappy, you may strive to fulfill their unfulfilled
desires. If you feel emotionally enmeshed - you may be diagnosed as having
passive aggression,
sexual problems,
anxiety
and/or depression. Untangling
difficult relationships seems to, by itself, dissolve many health symptoms.
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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 with him is good ... but I cannot live with his dark side - an
irresponsible, arrogant boy! Washington USA |
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.
First children seem to be more often entangled with parents. We find that
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. Is this just coincidence?
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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
- an ancient family therapy. |
Parents who Sabotage Children
With the notable exception of abortion,
few parents deliberately kill their own children. Most parents 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. Yet even the most abusive parents claim good intentions
for their children. They often say that they're doing the best that they
know how to do.
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 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 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 Entanglements & Transference
If caught up in a 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.
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 fun at the high cost of lasting
happiness. Expect to hear words like ...
I love you (only) because you remind me of ...
Entanglements often support manipulation, emotional blackmail and
codependence. Demands beginning with ... If you REALLY loved me
you would … often expose transferences.
When transferences fail - as they will, being lies -
the partners may withdraw into crisis, distractions or depression.
Bonded and entangled, they may feel empty or overwhelmed by unpleasant
emotions!
Emotional Incest Part 2
Do you want to untangle yourself from ancestral issues?
Do you want to free yourself of the burden of your parents' emotions?
Click HERE for help for
Emotional Incest
Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers
1996-2010 All rights reserved.
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