|
Early family relationships may be the most
influential relationships of life.
Confusion in early family relationships
can lead to confusion throughout life,
and burden the lives of subsequent
generations.
We can help adults who want to change.
Go to: Emotional Incest
Solution (Part 2)
Covert emotional incest begins when a person perceives and responds to a
family member as a replacement or substitute for a partner, or for fantasies of
sexual gratification. We
help people dissolve emotional incest between parents and children, and between other family members.
The symptoms of covert or emotional incest include feeling
special
(people believing without evidence that they are somehow extraordinary
or exceptional) and identity loss (people lose access to some of their qualities, resources
and emotions). Other signs are
addictive relationships and
passive aggression.
|
I broke up with my boyfriend when he told me that he would
never marry me and that he has all the love he could need from his mother, who
treats him like her husband ... He hardly noticed - he just went home to his
mother. Los Angeles, USA
|
Children raised as special do not forget it. Love may not be enough
... they often demand devotion. And if their sense of being special is
threatened, they may feel that life is not worth living. 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 that partner 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 for guidance when lost in life.
Coaching for Therapists & Counselors
When we coach helping professionals to
resolve emotional fixations, we often find that they specialize in their own issues and, when they resolve their own issues,
they may lose
motivation to help other people with those issues. Some
counselors and therapists change their specialties after our coaching.
|
I was well known for helping depressed
middle-aged women cope with their sad lives. But since your coaching, 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 seem to be survivors of
covert emotional incest.
Do they offer real healing - or symbiosis - or codependence?
Emotional Incest & Identity Loss
The more obvious consequences of covert emotional incest include obsessions, compulsions
and an array of immature and dysfunctional behaviors. The causes of this identity loss often include:
- 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
- Relationship Bonds: You are
overly bonded to someone - you are dependent
- Identity Conflict: Your behavior swings between two poles - you
live in conflict
- Identification: You express someone else's emotions:
anger, anxiety or
sadness
|
Emotional incest often accompanies
Parental Alienation, in which
(in the mind of a child) one parent hates or alienates the other parent.
Often, the child's resulting toxic beliefs are taboo and cannot be
consciously assimilated or even considered without help. |
Covert emotional incest usually spans generations ... there is no one
person to blame. It usually reflects chains of suffering going far back into family
history. Some people call it a family curse.
We coach adult children to resolve the emotional baggage
that their parents could not recognize or did not resolve.
|
Some Consequences of Emotional
Incest |
|
|
|
Do you want Emotional Freedom?
Do you carry your family's 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 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. Untangle your family relationships!
|
My husband is a mature man half the time -
but he acts like an aggressive teenager after visiting his mother. When he is
mature - life is good ... but I cannot live with his dark side - an
irresponsible, very conceited boy! Washington USA |
If you try to carry your parents' emotional baggage, you will
fail. If you try to complete the unfinished business of your grandparents
- you will fail. Then you may find yourself in
crisis, depression,
obsessions or addictions. We offer you happier
endings to your family drama.
First children often seem to carry a heavy emotional burden. First children
seem to have a higher risk of a fatal disease, and more often suffer from
chronic mental, physical and sexual problems. Note that first
pregnancies have a higher risk of miscarriage, stillbirth, crib death ... and
abortion.
|
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
With the exception of abortion,
few human parents deliberately kill their own children. Most parents strive to
give their children what they lacked when they were young. We help parents
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.
|
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 teenage son is angrily trying to be the
"irresponsible one" in our family. 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 try to cope with the same emotional issues.
Some of the more unpleasant consequences of covert emotional incest can
include destructive relationship habits based on feelings of being worthless and
empty:
- expressing contempt and conceit
- testing people's acceptance of them
- expressing anger, rejection and emotional chaos
- showing inappropriate affection after inappropriate rejection
Father-bonded women or mother-bonded men may only relate
well to other immature 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 seek partners
who will parent them.
Solutions for Entanglements & Transference
If caught up in transference, a mother may behave as if her son
were her partner or a father may show love to 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. Expect to hear ...
I love you (only) when you remind me of ...
Such people may be unable to sustain emotional commitment. They
may rapidly change emotions and have difficulty maintaining loving
relationships. They may say that their love has gone - perhaps with
indifference. They may say, "I don't know what love is".
They may to turn to drugs, alcohol or sex in attempts to
distract themselves from boredom or to hide their unpleasant emotions. Many
people seem to take refuge in cults or New Age therapies and later describe feeling
damaged by their mentors.
When transferences fail - as they will, being lies -
affected people may withdraw into crisis,
seeking distractions to avoid depression. We often coach bonded
and entangled people
to change their strange beliefs and
manage their unpleasant emotions.
Go to Emotional Incest Part 2
Are you ready to free yourself from the burden of your parents' emotions
and behaviors?
Online Coaching & Mentorship for
Emotional Incest
Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers
1996-2012 All rights reserved.
|
