Table of Contents
End child abuse! © Martyn Carruthers & Kosjenka Muk
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 for help resolving emotional and relationship issues.
Go to: Emotional Incest Solutions (Part 2)
Covert emotional incest begins when a family member perceives
or responds to another family member as a substitute for a partner.
We help people resolve emotional incest, and remedy other child abuse.
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The symptoms of emotional incest usually include feeling special (believing that you are exceptional). Associated issues may include addictive relationships, passive aggression and perfectionism. |
Children raised as special do not forget it. Love may not be enough … they often demand devotion. If their need to be special is threatened, they may feel that life is not worth living. They may seek substitutes for parents … as partners. They may fall in love with people who have qualities that a parent had – or lacked. They may become irrational if or when a substitute parent withdraws or threatens to leave.
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My live-in boyfriend (38) told me that he could never marry me because he has all the love he needs from his mother (who treats him like her husband). I was angry and he just went home to live with his mother. Los Angeles |
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.
Warning for Therapists & CounselorsHave you specialized in your own issues? If we help you resolve those issues, you may lose motivation to help other people with those issues. |
I was known for helping depressed middle-aged women cope with their 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
Covert Emotional Incest & Identity Loss
Covert emotional incest causes obsessions, compulsions and many emotion-driven behaviors, including:
- Identification: You express another person’s emotions
- Inner Child: Some part of you is split-off – you can be childish
- Identity Conflict: You swing between extremes – you live in conflict
- Lost Identity: You cannot express yourself – your life lacks meaning
- Relationship Bonds: You are bonded to someone – you are dependent
Emotional incest may accompany Parental Alienation, in which
(in the mind of a child) a parent hates or alienates the other parent.
Often, such toxic beliefs are taboo – taboo beliefs can rarely be
consciously changed or even considered without help.
Covert emotional incest spans generations … there is no one person who caused it. It usually reflects chains of suffering going back many generations.
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Emotional Incest – Signs of Abuse |
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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 a parent’s unfulfilled desires? If so – you may be diagnosed as having passive aggression, sexual problems, anxiety and/or depression. If you try to fulfill both parents’ conflicting desires. your life may include endless inner conflict.
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My husband is a mature man half the time – but he acts like an aggressive child after visiting his mother. When he is mature – life is good … but a few hours with his mother and he becomes an irresponsible, conceited little boy! |
If you try to carry ancestral emotional baggage, you will fail. You may find yourself in crisis, depression, obsessions or addictions. Worse, your children will copy you.
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I 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 Hawaiian ritual. Martyn |
Parents who Abuse Children
Some parents are abusive and manipulative, yet they usually claim good intentions. They often say that they’re doing the best that they know how to do.
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My husband was a case of arrested development which made him easy to control. Since your sessions, he is taking more responsibility, but now my teenage son is angrily trying to be the “irresponsible one” in our family. New Mexico |
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. The consequences of this abuse includes destructive relationship habits:
- expressing contempt and conceit
- testing people’s acceptance of them
- expressing anger, rejection and emotional chaos
- showing inappropriate affection and 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 immature people who will parent them.
Solutions for Transferences & Negative Emotions
Transferences motivate fixated and 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. We can
help you resolve emotional and relationship problems.