Roles That Enmeshed and Abandoned Children Play within Families

From the writings of Pia Mellody on Facing Love Addiction and Love Avoidance (The dynamics of non-sexual covert/emotional incest)

Note: A child can fill both positive and negative roles.

Roles Assigned to Child With Enmeshing Abuse

"Positive Roles":

• Hero or heroine (good child)
  
• Counselor
• Surrogate partners
• Surrogate parent
• Mediator
• Mascot (comedian role)
• Daddy's Little Girl (a ROLE, not a name said in passing)
• Daddy's Little Man
• Mommy's Little Girl
• Mommy's Little Man

In Enmeshment,

In a relationship, this person will be “very good at being good.” Because he/she is so adaptable as a child, when they become an adult, they will seek intensity in order to feel alive and do it in a “positive” but COVERT manner.

They derive both shame and a false sense of empowerment from these roles which imparts a sense of value. They objectify those whom they care for by devaluing their partner while also elevating self.

“Negative Roles”

• Scapegoat (problem child)
• Rebel
  

In a relationship, this person will be “very good at being bad.” This adult will seek intensity in order to feel alive in a “negative” OVERT manner.

Roles Assigned To Child With Abandoning/Neglecting Abuse

“Negative Role”

Lost Child:

In a relationship, this person will act in a dependent, needy manner and try to create intensity inside the relationship itself as he/she perceives that it is the relationship that keeps him/her alive.

Irrelevant Child:

Deeper level of the lost child.

Xenophobia for BOTH SUBTYPES:

• Fear in general.
• Fear of strangers.
• It is a biological imperative and sometimes is necessary for survival, and we then tend to be relational with what is familiar.
• For the person who has been neglected or abandoned, he/she will try to be relational with people who create distance in relationships through the use of walls. (They will naturally be attracted, ironically, to those who are emotionally unavailable to them.)
• For the person who has been enmeshed, he/she will feel compelled to be relational with people who are needy and who believe that they are worthless.
  

From Pia Mellody's writings and lectures,

and professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility.

And from

“Facing Love Addiction”

by Mellody, Miller and Miller

HarperOne, 1992.

Types of Trauma Children Suffer in Dysfunctional Families

From the teachings of Pia Mellody

Trauma Descriptions

Enmeshment Trauma

1. Physical: (Use of implement s, face slapping, hair pulling, having a child physically nurture a parent and intrusive procedures.)
   
   
2. Physical SEXUAL: (Sex acts, sexual touching, sexual kissing and hugging, voyerism, exhibitionism, verbal sexual trauma, failure to have sexual boundary in the presence of a child, and child as a witness to sexual trauma.)
   
   
3. Emotional SEXUAL: (Involving emotional enmeshment by the parent or major caregiver.)
   
   
4. Intellectual: (Attacks to the shaming of or over control of the child's expression of thought)
   
   
5. Emotional: (Shaming of a child's expression of emotion. Refusal to let child express feelings or improper expression of feelings by the parent or major caregiver.)
   
   
6. Spiritual: (Religious addiction of the parent or major caregiver, trauma at the hands of a religious caregiver, parent acting like he/she is a god or goddess of the family, indulgence or false empowerment of the child, and moral perfection and obedience demanded from the child.

Abandonment Trauma

Failure to provide adequate:

• food, clothing and/or shelter
• physical nurturing
• emotional nurturing
• sexual information
• medical/dental care
• financial support or information
• education
• spiritual nurturing
  

The Child Always Loses in a Psychological Partnership with the Parent

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When Children Are Used to Meet the Needs of their Parents

About Covert Incest from “Silently Seduced” by Kenneth Adams.

From pages 11 - 12:

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Since the parent-child relationship is used to meet the needs of the parent in the psychological marriage, the child feels ashamed of legitimate needs. A child seeking to have those needs met by the parent fears loss of the parent. As unhealthy as it is, the child has no choice but to actively participate in meeting the parent's needs. The child already feels emotionally abandoned, and expressing needs raises the fear of more abandonment. Children do not have the cognitive capacity to see the situation as it is. They are trapped.

As the children become adults, this entrapment continues as long as the reality of being a covert incest victim continues to be denied. Adults continue to feel ashamed of their dependency needs and seek to fulfill parents' needs at a continued cost to their own ability to be intimate. One important ingredient in learning to be intimate is to accept one's own personal dependency needs. The silent seduction, if not faced directly, continues to sabotage the desire to reap the benefits of intimacy and love with another.

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From page 33 - 35:

When Peter came for therapy, he complained of feeling burned out and lethargic. He was a successful therapist who, in spite of his thorough understanding of himself, was unable to stop over committing and overextending himself. His life primarily consisted of helping, pleasing and being there for others. He complained of having no sense of identity and not having any free time for himself. Peter felt unappreciated and that others took advantage of him. He reluctantly acknowledged that for some time he had resented his wife. He complained he was always there to listen to the multitude of problems she had, but he never felt he got equal time. Yet Peter claimed to be going out of his way to be there for his wife even more than he had done previously. He felt crazy. He was sexually shut down and had lost all interest in being intimate with his wife...

Peter's story is not unlike those of other helping professionals: doctors, therapists, ministers or nurses. On the outside is a mask of competence supported by a proficiency in helping others by always being there for them. These individuals gain their self-esteem through pleasing and helping others. But this sense of esteem is false. Feelings of worthlessness and shame generally prevail underneath the exterior of “being so together.” A compulsion and desperation to help others usually consumes the lives of individuals like Peter. They hope that soon they will feel worthy and have their own needs met. This never happens and the desperation grows.

Excerpts from

Kenneth A. Adams
"Silently Seduced:
When Parents Make Their Children Partners
~ Understanding Covert Incest"
Health Communications, 1991

Enmeshment Produces Guilt and Anxiety

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From “The Emotional Incest Syndrome” by Patricia Love with Jo Robinson.

The Guilt and Anxiety of the Chosen Child

(The child within a relationship of enmeshment with a parent.)

From pages 33 – 38:

(BUY THE BOOK if you find this relevant to you!

This is a gross condensing of the main points of the text!)

Guilt

“I feel responsible for everything that happens around me – especially when things go wrong. I feel especially guilty when other people are unhappy. I'm sure I must have done something wrong or failed to do something I was supposed to do.”

For some people, the single world GUILT sums up the negative consequences of growing up with an Invasive Parent. Depending on their circumstances, they can fell guilty for one or more of a number of reasons, including: taking a parent away from a partner, winning out over siblings, failing to live up to a parent's expectations, wanting to break away from an overbearing parent,and participating in a love triangle when they were “old enough to know better.”

Introduction to Love Addiction and Love Avoidance

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From Pia Mellody's writings and lectures, and my professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility.

INTRODUCTION

Love Addiction and Avoidance are not about love at all. It is all about trauma reactions inside a relationship. Love starts with thought which requires an awareness of self or others that allows you to hold both in warm regard. Those who are “hard to love” require “heaving lifting” for the other party because the respect and love are not reciprocated or done so evenly. Respect is a willingness to tolerate others violations, even when you really don't have to do so. All this requires self esteem.

Note that we have three basic human needs that are God given and easily compared: love, sex and food. Just as with any need, we can manage any one of these inappropriately or to extreme. In terms of extremes, we can seek out fulfillment compulsively (like an addiction) or we can avoid and deny our needs compulsively. Both of these unbalanced extremes are self-destructive.

We all face disappointment and shame which Mellody calls “experiencing our humanity.” For the Christian, this would be experiencing our sin nature and the shame and disappointment in our failure to overcome our natural desires that have not yet been transformed to be like Christ. Until our degree and process of becoming like Jesus and our level of sanctification grows, we tend to fall into the same human trappings as everyone else. We tend to confuse love with caretaking. We tend to go about this in predictable pattern.

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Two Patterns

Pattern 1: Love Addiction

All about making up a fantasy about another person and falling in love with the fantasy

The fantasy involves

• seeing the other person as god-like
• capable of saving the love addict from his/her fear of not being able to make it on his/her own
• and loving him/her forever.
• They are someone who will “love you into loving yourself.”
• The fantasy objectifies the partner or the counter part in the unhealthy relationship (reducing them to an object of fantasy).
• This actually means that the partner is not acceptable to the love addict, therefore the love addict objectifies them by seeing them in terms of their own fantasy and not as the partner really is.
  

Pattern 2: Love Avoidance

Compulsive relational cycle that appears to be intimate but actually avoids intimacy and vulnerability

The love avoidant

• gets a sense of value from (compulsive) caretaking
• the partner confuses this with love
• They are “allergic to vulnerability”
• Their sense of value comes from caretaking and is a means of avoiding guilt.
  

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Relational Connections in Childhood

Type I: Healthy Relationship

• A relationship of Functional Bonding: Caregiver takes appropriate car of the child (affirming, nurturing, and limit setting)
• Caregiver takes care of the child and uses personal boundaries which protect the child appropriately.
• The care and responsibility for the child rests completely upon the adult caregiver.
  

Type II: Caregiver Uses the Child

• A relationship of Enmeshment: Caregiver uses the child to take care of himself/herself (affirming and nurturing must be earned by the child and must provide these to the parent as well)
• Caregiver is without personal boundaries
• The care and responsibility is partly provided by the parent, but the child is also required to reciprocate for the benefit of the parent)
• Produces a Love Avoidant type adult because the child resents the usury on some level. (Demanded sacrifice as a duty or obligation will always produce some degree of resentment.)
  

Type III: Caregiver Abandons the Child

• A relationship of Neglect/Rejection (Can be a partial neglect or inconsistent abandonment and neglect, or complete abandonment)
• Caregiver is detatched and "walled-in"
• The parent provides no care and bears no responsibility for the child and has no functional relationship with the child at all.
• Produces a Love Avoidant type adult because the child is always seeking the fantasy of love and attention.
  

From Pia Mellody's writings and lectures,

and professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility.

And from

“Facing Love Addiction”

by Mellody, Miller and Miller

HarperOne, 1992.

How Love Addiction and Love Avoidance Develops and Affects Perception of Gender

-->From the writings of Pia Mellody on Love Addiction and Love Avoidance (The dynamics of non-sexual incest)

Note: The child who experiences this abnormal parenting will associate the issues with people of the same sex as the parent. If a child experiences neglect and abandonment with a female parent, they likely will develop love addiction in their relationships with women. If the child experiences enmeshment with a female parent, they will be live avoidant with women. It is the same with a male parent (or caregiver). The association need not relate to sex but it carries with it an association with gender.

You can also have a combination of the two issues. I had a parent varied greatly based upon the level of depression they felt and the degree of threat that they felt in the relationship with me. For the most part, I was enmeshed with this parent, but when they were in an emotional fugue and withdrawn, I was neglected. So I have both issues with my parent. The enmeshment was most disturbing, but now that I am older, the abandonment implications have presented themselves (for healing).

Neglect and Abandonment

• Neglect or abandonment by a parent sets up a love addiction.
  
• The abuse is about the parent failing to provide the love and support the child needs.
• The parent is essentially "walled in" and distant.
• The parent is giving priority to other people and other issues as opposed to making the child a priority.
• The parent's behavior covertly shames the child causing the child to believe he/she is worthless and unimportant.
• In adult relationships, the person will see himself/herself as “one down” and the
  
  other person “one up.”
• Because the child's needs are neglected, the child experiences a lot of fear about being able to self-care and make it on his/her own.
  

What a child learns from neglect and abandonment:

• As a result, in adult relationships, this person will believe that he/she cannot ma
  
  ke it alone and needs someone to care for them.
• If this is triggered prior to three years of age, the child will be haunted with a sense of disaster.
• Neglect also produces an internalized sense of worthlessness, a lack of learning about relationships and and lack of learning about self care because of a “shame-existence bind.”
• Shame -existence bind: Their existence requires them to care for self but this requires the consumption of resources and they believe that they are not worthy of them and are ashamed of their God-given human need. The shame-existence bind is one of the more problematic issues to heal from after neglect and abandonment.
  
• The child will spend a lot of time daydreaming, reading and being alone.
  

Adulthood:

• As a result, in adult relationships, this person will also associate any distancing on the part of the partner (or friend, etc.) as a threat to his/her survival.
• All relationships become fear-based as well as shame-based.
  

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Enmeshment:

• Enmeshment established by the parent creates love avoidance in the child.
• Enmeshment happens when a parent is without boundaries and without boundaries in the presence of the child.
  
• The child will get “used” in some way.
• He/she will learn that value comes from taking care of needy people and if he/she does not do that, he/she will feel guilty and believe that being relational is suffocating and abusive.
• The person will base his/her sense of self-esteem on care-taking of needy people.
• This will confuse love with duty.
• This person will be “loving” to others to avoid guilt and will be allergic to being relational or being vulnerable.
  
• Resentments will likely develop from being the caretaker
• The love avoidant develops a capacity for aggression, if they served as a “scapegoat” for the parent with whom they were enmeshed.
  

What a child learns from enmeshment:

• Relationships are all about duty and deadness.
  
• Requires a shutting down of spontaneity.
  
• Identity comes from focus on the needy instead of understanding self.
• Identity and value come from focus on the needs/wants of others instead of own needs/wants.
• Life's purpose is to do what makes others happy rather than on what satisfies self or provides self with happiness.
  

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As an adult:

• This person will need to create a lot of intensity outside of the relationship.
• They do this by “risk-taking,” addictions, extreme sports, risky business style, professions involving heroic care-taking, etc.
• They create intensity to feel alive as opposed to the deadness that they feel in relationships.
• They can become antagonistic or aggressive both inside and outside of relationships, especially if they were “scapegoated.”
  

From Pia Mellody's writings and lectures,

and professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility.

And from

“Facing Love Addiction”

by Mellody, Miller and Miller

HarperOne, 1992.

Making the Break from Your Parents

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About Covert Incest from “Silently Seduced” by Kenneth Adams. Exploring the dynamics of covert (emotional or non-sexual but gender-related) incest.

From pages 99 – 105:

The primary task for covert incest survivors is to separate from the opposite-sex parent. [Blog host note: It has been my task to separate from the same-sex parent, and the sexualized energy was actually limited punishment for being womanly.] 

The fact that so many covert incest survivors remain inappropriately bonded well into their adulthood suggests a tremendous struggle to let go. The separation will not be given. Real emancipation cannot be given. It must be taken. Emotional maturity cannot be realized until emancipation occurs. You cannot be an adult man or woman and hold onto Mommy or Daddy. For a marriage and a relationship to work, full access to your emotional and sexual energy is necessary. Even then, it's tough...[A] relationship cannot be fully functional when leftover sexual energy is tied to the opposite-sex parent...

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Remember that abandoned and hurt little child inside you has likely created a rich fantasy life about love, sex and romance as a way to cover your pain. If you continue to attempt to create adult relationships out of your fantasies, you will add to your sense of abandonment and chronic feelings of dissatisfaction. Keep working toward acceptance of the reality of yourself and your partner. You stand a much better chance at establishing a workable relationship. Allow yourself to grieve the loss of your fantasies and illusions...

Set boundaries and make your personal needs a priority in your relationship. The fear of losing yourself in a relationship is usually founded in truth. The incestuous relationship teaches you to sacrifice your needs for the love of your partner. Though this is needed at times in all relationships, you may experience a loss of choice and do it chronically. The hope is that maybe finally your needs will be met. This doesn't work, and the seeds sown for deep resentment eventually help erode the relationship.

It's okay to do what's good for you and not be concerned with pleasing your partner all the time. Setting boundaries needs to be concrete, even though you fear it will displease your spouse. It is crucial that you begin to develop a tolerance for allowing your spouse to be angry or displeased with you. If not, you'll stay stuck in the incestuous pattern of trying to please in the hope of getting your needs met. At this juncture, it is no longer your parent betraying you – it is your own self-betrayal.

You're likely to feel guilty in these attempts. Your guilt is the result of being violated in the incestuous relationship. Allow yourself to be outraged over being burdened with so much guilt. Your sense of outrage helps you to set boundaries. Adults who grew up with dysfunctional parents who did not use them to gratify their own needs do not feel enormous guilt when they attempt to get their needs met.

Excerpts from

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Kenneth A. Adams "Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners ~ Understanding Covert Incest"

Health Communications, 1991