The Enmeshed Family

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From pages 85 - 87:

The Enmeshed Family

Enmeshed families are characterized by an extreme sense of closeness, so much so that almost any expression of independence or separateness is seen as disloyalty to the family. This kind of false loyalty is a very high value in an Enmeshed family.

Take Marti as an example. She expressed a great deal of hostility toward her mother. But then she was overwhelmed with guilt at her “disloyalty.” How could she speak of her own mother that way?

Marti had very few friends growing up. Her mother dominated her use of time and energy. Marti felt obligated to check everything she did with her mother, to run all her plans and ideas past her for approval before proceeding. Even after she grew up and got married, Marti felt compelled to seek her mother’s approval for decisions she was making about her family. On one hand, Marti greatly resented this state of affairs; she knew it was a way for her mother to keep her under her thumb. But the thought of breaking free from her mother terrified Marti...

Where does one person’s business, one person’s identity, one person’s life, end – and another’s begin? Within the Enmeshed family, boundaries are virtually non-existent. Everyone experiences his life as almost totally “overlapping” with everyone else’s.

Interestingly though, Enmeshed families tend to have remarkably rigid boundaries vis-`a-vis anyone outside the family. Marti said her mother never tired of warning everyone that “family business was family business” never to be discussed with outsiders.

Enmeshed families can look attractive and inviting from the outside. Take George’s family, for example. George had built a successful bakery business in his town. His three grown sons were all very active in the business. Together, George and his sons had established a virtual monopoly on the baking business in their area. They had also established a virtually monopoly on one another’s lives.

Consider Tim, the oldest son, who wanted to get married. He was almost thirty years old, and had cancelled three previous engagements because his family did not think the girl would “fit in.” Finally he found a girl that everyone approved of. She was quiet and docile, and came from a family in which people were aloof and uncaring. “I finally found a real family.” she would say, and Tim’s parents and brother would smile contentedly.

In time, Tim’s two brothers also married. As tieh Tim, their wives came from highly detatched, uninvolved families. Each was quickly absorbed int their new clan and into the bakery business. This is a classic example of a moderately enmeshed family – not quite suffocating enough to cause the kinds of discomfort that Marti experienced, but enough to blur the individual members into what one family researcher calls an “undifferentiated ego mass.” (Quote sites Murray Bowen!)


From pages 89 - 90:

The Attached Family

While the Enmeshed family feels suffocating, and the Disengaged family leaves the individual feeling isolated, the Attached family strikes a healthy balance. There is a sense of individuality without a loss of connectedness. People in an Attached family enjoy being together and doing things together, but are able to relate to people and be active outside of the family as well. When they are away from the family, they do not feel guilty or disloyal. They are able to share outside experiences with the family, knowing other family members will understand and accept their choices.

In the Attached family there is a mutual respect that allows freedom of activity, without any hidden agendas that trigger guilt. There is support for individual uniqueness, coupled with shared appreciation for one another’s accomplishments. Like all delicate balances, it is difficult to find and maintain, but it is well worth the effort.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

Multi Generational Faithfulness: The Ultimate Tragedy

“Love is a Choice: The Definitive Book on Letting Go of Unhealthy Relationships” by Hemfelt, Minirth and Meier.

In the very first chapter of the book “Love is a Choice,” the authors offer the story, what they would call a case history. They describe a couple with marital difficulties and a little about each of their grown children, using an example that allows us to see a more obvious example of how interconnected a family is, in both function and dysfunction. These books are filled with such little vignettes of people, examples of real life situations and how real people struggled with them.

The authors go on to describe how professionals came to understand this field of study – addictions, obsessive-compulsive disorders, workaholism, etc. – as a WHOLE FAMILY problem. He explains the history of the Christians who came up with the “Twelve Step” program for alcoholics, but how they soon noted that addictions were not just an issue of the person using some substance, as destructive and involved as that is. The problem is also one of the family, family roles and family behaviors, and addictions are just a symptom of a greater cause.

The alcoholic (or any who use a substance or a behavior as a means of coping or as a way of escape) becomes dependent upon either the behavior or the substance, whatever that may be. Because families all work together to help one another and provide balance (keeping all those relationship triangles in some kind of balance), each member of the family develops a role within the family. The addiction itself becomes problematic but is not the primary problem but merely a symptom. The real disease is whatever the addicted person tries to overcome or compensate for through the addiction.


From page 7:

The Ultimate Tragedy

Another tragedy with which we will deal in later chapters is a problem of multigenerational nature. The serious dysfunction in a founding family will be absorbed by the children’s families and then their children’s families, a ripple of misery extending farther and farther down through the years. The dependency or dysfunction may change: an alcoholic father may sire, for instance, a worka holic son who sires a compulsive daughter who spends her way to bankruptcy. But it’s there. It’s almost always there, wreaking it’s damage.

Excerpts from
Robert Hemfelt, Frank Minirth and Paul Meier’s
“Love is a Choice:
The Definitive Book on Letting Go of Unhealthy Relationships”
Thomas Nelson, 1989

What does the literature on family dysfunction, covert incest and addiction have to do with the Botkins?

Explaining the Botkin Model for Stay At Home Daughters

I present this information here to those who have some interest in the Botkin Daughters and Family because I believe their model, promoted by patriarchy/patriocentricity and groups such as Vision Forum is destructive and unhealthy, but the nature of the dysfunction is not so apparent. For those who are interested in the Botkin concept, I hope that you will benefit from my experience and the experience of the study of families who struggle to cope with the inevitable frustrations of life.

We have unavoidable tensions in life, many painful realities that even concern religion. The Apostle Paul said that we “see through a glass darkly” so that we do not know everything that we would like to know about God, the world and ourselves. That can be painful at times and leaves us with many unanswered questions. The so-called “Biblical patriarchy” in Evangelical Christianity has been termed more succinctly as “patriocentricity” because the practicalities or the daily working out of it describes all family life as centered around the father. His considerations and protections and wisdom comes first and it therefore the functional center. I believe that this father centered model is just another construct or tool that Christians developed in order to deal with the unavoidable pains in life, but it actually does more harm to people as opposed to helping them.

I grew up in a wonderful home, an only child with two wonderful parents that have been married 45 years, at the time of this writing. We went to church and I was a devoted Christian that loved God for as long as I can remember. I grew up and entered a helping profession as a nurse (though the available choices for me were very limited by my parents), then got married. But there were many problems along the way (which you can read about in greater detail by selecting the “personal testimony” tag). We didn’t have alcoholics or drug addictions, but we had other things that we did in order to cope, one of which was religion.

I was shocked to realize that though there was no substance use or gambling, we had all of the characteristics of an alcoholic family (centered around depression instead of substances or debachery). For some time,

 I followed two different religious alternatives in an attempt to cope with the pain of life: (1) the Word of Faith teachings that I shared with my family, and (2) a formulaic and rule-oriented Christianity through my church’s eclectic combination of Bill Gothardism, shepherding/discipleship from the Charismatic movement in the ‘70s, and through a misapplication of Theonomy (introduced to us through the Bob Mumford connections to Chalcedon through the shepherding movement). I believe that patriocentricity, the Botkin Model, is just another type of religious means of coping with life, and they differ little from the religious means that I used myself.


The Botkin Model

The patriarchal model, the Botkin model, describes and prescribes ways by which a person can hopefully avoid many of the pains, pressures and unpredictability in life through following the wisest plan of living: the Bible. But the Bible is not so specific, and application to our age must be clarified for us. In the process of making application of those principles to our daily lives, there is a great deal of our own ideology worked in as a part of the process. We select elements from our culture that have worked for us in the past. We work in our own personal beliefs as a consequence as well, since we are the ones who are working out the plan. We use what we grew up to interpret as “normal” as a guide for us. And for our family, this constitutes a good guide. For us, the effort has been noble and worthy.

But herein lies the problem. Those who grow up in a less effective family generally grow up coping with the struggles of the other members in the family. This need not be alcoholism. In my own family, it was depression. You stand on your head and move mountains to help the depressed person survive, through constant acts of self-sacrifice and service. This is not different than how the alcoholic family operates, and it is far from healthy. In my own family, I did everything I could to “enable” the depression itself. As a consequence, I developed and LEARNED my own similar ways of coping by being both depressed and sickly. Instead of being the bad kid, I was the very good kid but also the sick child because that was the only thing that pulled my other family members out of their depression. And while I was a child, it worked. And I learned very unhealthy and destructive ways of coping, and to me, they were “normal.” But I grew up, and none of it worked anymore.

I believe that the Botkins are perpetuating the same type of system. I do not know what the original problems were (addictions or a smothering parent or through some abandonment of some type) that produced the dysfunctions in the family systems of those who have constructed patriocentricity. What I can readily recognize is the pattern and the rules, both written and unwritten. I did not grow up with an understanding of “multi-generational faithfulness” in the terms that the Botkins now profess, but I did grow up with a devotion to my depressed and dysfunctional family that needed me to perpetuate it in order to survive the pains of life. I can spot the patterns a mile away. And I know well, along with every other adult child of a family trying to survive some pain of life, the destructive outcomes that the patterns produce. Those who hold the power benefit from those who support them, and I know well the role of the enabler (as well as the pleasure of the benefits of that role – the secondary gain).

(Read more under the "triangulation" tag from the label list for more information.)

What the Botkins declare to be a Biblical model -- that outlines the wisest way to live the Christian life -- I see as the die-hard attempt to make religion work to avoid the unavoidable and inevitable unpredictability and pain of living.

The Botkin model, that of patriocentricity, contains many Christian elements and concepts that are Christianly in general, but it also has the dysfunction of the addicted family rules woven in it. From my vantage, it is obvious to me that those who drafted the specifics of it have not dealt with the grief and pain of elements of their own past, and have made patriocentricity their drug of choice.

The tragedy is that they claim that their potpourri of preference (Christianity, Old Testament Legalism, Victorian and Medieval culture, the cult of domesticity, American Nationalism, and the dynamics of dysfunctional and addicted families) is the only Biblical alternative for effective Christian living. In reality, they are preaching the family dynamics of addiction, representing them as faithful Christianity.

They are using the integrity of Word of God to legitimize (and market!) their own emotional and psychological disease processes..

Drawing a Relationship Triangle

Information based upon Dr. David Stoop's description of charting family dynamics.

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.

[Note: Dr. Stoop uses a wavy line in his book, but I use dashed lines.]

Drawing a Triangle Diagram of Relationships

A balanced relationship between three people is represented by a triangle diagram. Each point on the triangle represents a person in the relationship, each point connected to the other by STRAIGHT lines. Each point and line is equally supportive and solidly connected to the other point (person) through healthy communication and appropriate intimacy for that relationship.

Unhealthy, Unbalanced Relationships

Within an unhealthy set of relationships, a RED, DASHED line between two points represents an unhealthy, unstable or inappropriate relationship between those two people within the group. This opens up three possible types of systems.

The first would depict a system where each individual in the system has a distorted/unhealthy relationship with every other person in the system. This is represented by a triangle with each three points (individuals) connected by RED, DASHED lines (unbalanced, unhealthy relationships).

Within the second dysfunctional system, two individuals have a healthy, stable and balanced relationship with one another, so one boundary of the triangle is represented by a STRAIGHT line between those two points. However, each of those two people (or points in the triangle) each have a troubled relationship with the third party in the system. So the two solidly connected people each have a RED, DASHED line connecting them to the third person in the triangle. The third person has no stable and healthy connections with anyone. That person is the “trouble maker” or the “odd man (or woman) out.”

This system is a bit more stable than the first example where all the relationships are rocky, as that one stable relationship between the two points (connected by a STRAIGHT line) acts like a base for the triangle. They are balanced and help to maintain more balance within the system as they can share and distribute the difficulties of the third party. They can work together, strengthening one another to ground the system. Stoop says that though it doesn't represent an ideal situation, it is capable of lasting much longer than the first system (with RED, DASHED lines between all parties). He goes on to say that the two people “aligned” against the third often “draw much strength from their mutual distaste for the third person” (pg. 138).

The third example of an unbalanced relationship is a bit more complicated, wherein one party has a strong and healthy relationship with the two other parties, so we see one point with two STRAIGHT lines connecting them to both of the other people in the system of three. This might seem like it is actually more balanced, because there is more healthy communication and better relationships overall. However, the one stable and more healthy person becomes a fulcrum that supports and balances the unhealthy relationship between the other parties (connected by a RED, DASHED line) who don't communicate well. The one with the two healthy relationships bears the brunt of the pressure, as this more stable person will be relied upon to support the system. They are the obligatory peace maker and the one who sacrifices most to support the others.

Before we venture any further into the discussion of Botkin Syndrome and what these dysfunctional relationships might look like, we should learn just a little more about how family relationships effect one another. In the next few posts, we will examine what Dr. Stoop has to share about what tends to happen in families and different ways families pull themselves into a functional balance, whether healthy or unhealthy. Another little taste from his book looks at relationships from the Old Testament patriarchs as an example of how families tend to develop and relate follows in future posts. He also gives pointers on how to diagram the relationships within your own family and significant relationships.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

Exploring Enmeshment and Family Issues with Dr. David Stoop

Photo of David & Jan Stoop 

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.

-->

From the book Introduction by Dr. Paul Meier:

More and more the family is being seen as it really is – the primary influence in our lives that no only builds us and shapes us, but also sets in motion the disorders that limit and frustrate us as adults. The child who was physically or emotionally abused, for example, usually becomes an adult who will also tend to abuse his or her own children, or else will marry someone who does. All too many of us find ourselves behaving like our parents I ways that we vowed we would never repeat, even though we don't have to follow that pattern.

I remember the pain of a young man whose wife had left him for another man. As he talked to me about it, he mentioned in passing that she was at the same age as her mother was when her mother left her father for another man. I asked him about what he had just said. He didn't answer. He just sat there shaking his head, tears filling his eyes. Finally he said, “I can't understand it. She talked often of the pain her mother had caused by leaving. She was still angry at her mother for it. Now she's gone and done the same thing? Why?”

There is no simple answer to the pain of these patterns. Usually, these problems serve a function within the extended family that is beyond our awareness. That is why we get stuck in behaving in ways we swore we never would...

As a physician and psychiatrist, I can attestt to the vast medical and physiological consequences that take place when we don't get our home in order. Dr. C. Everett Koop, our former U.S. Surgeon General, has told me personally that about 80 percent of all the medical illness seen in a doctor's office are either caused by emotional stress, or will be significantly worsened by stressors.

On going, unresolved family issues, along with other stressors cause ACTFRF (adrenocorticotrophic hormone releasing factor) to be released from the hypothalamus, causing ACTH to be released from the pituitary gland. This causes stress hormones to flow out of the adrenal glands, causing decreased lymphocytes (white blood cells), decreased antibodies, and increased vulnerability to all kinds of infectious diseases, including viral-induced cancers.

The physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of a human being are all intricately intertwined. Repressed injuries that we experienced in our families can cause migraine headaches, ulcers, colitis, muscle aches, and other disorders. But we often forget that they can also be the indirect cause of bronchitis, pneumonia, strokes, cardiovascular disease, mental illness, and death. Taking the effort to analyze and understand the dynamics of our families of origin will help us to take control of our lives, and to move in new and healthier directions. Unless forgiveness is a part of the equation, our analysis and understanding will leave us still caught in the family dysfunction.

I have known Dr. Stoop for many years, both as a colleague and as a personal friend. There is no one I trust more to guide me personally into an understanding of my family and its issues. His gifted abilities and experiences, as well as his extensive psychological and theological training, have all contributed to this important book. All too often the process of forgiveness is either left out or distorted. I'm thrilled that Dr. Stoop and Dr. Masteller have restored it to its central role in the process of our healing.

Paul D. Meier, M.D.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

-->

“Triangles Help 'Blow the Cover' of Our Denial Systems” (a Dr. Stoop quote!)

-->

:Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.

From pages 131- 133:

[F]amily researchers have found that the best way to study what goes on in people's relationships is to look at what are called groups of three people, or triangles... But they soon began to find that the inner workings of a relationship were really unlocked when a third person was added to the picture...

Offset quoting of Harriet Lerner from page 151 of “The Dance of Intimacy”:

Two-person systems are inherently unstable. Anxiety and conflict will not stay contained between two parties for more than a short time. A third party will quickly be triangled in (or will triangle him- or herself in). This process operates automatically, like a law of physics, without conscious awareness or intent.

The third person in a triangle can also serve to uncover hidden dynamics in a relationship. Many husbands and wives, for example, grow accustomed to relating to each other according to established patterns, often with a number of secrets, myths, and unspoken rules in operation. When a third person comes along who either does not know the secrets, myths, and rules (or who knows of them and simply refuses to go along with them) the couple is suddenly forced to deal with realities that they are otherwise adept at ignoring or sidestepping. Triangles help “blow the cover” of our denial systems...

A note in passing. Usually when we speak of a triangle, we are dealing with a relationship among three flesh-and-blood people who actually interact together on a regular basis. Sometimes, though, the “third person” in a relationship can be more figurative, as when we say things like, “You're just like your mother,” or “You remind me so much of your father when you do that.” The spectre of an absent third party can be a very real presence in a relationship.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop &Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

-->

Healing the Chosen Child ~~ Love on Recovery

from “The Emotional Incest Syndrome” by Patricia Love with Jo Robinson.. Exploring the dynamics of covert (emotional or non-sexual but gender-related) incest.

Up until this point in this series of posts concerning Patricia Love's book “The Emotional Incest Syndrome” concerning non-physical incest, I presented information from Chapters 1 – 5. There are an additional ten chapters that represent a very personal journey that those who want to find healing must take on their own. I cannot reproduce the entire book in this forum. I would, however, like to offer some glimmers of hope for those who read here. Toward that end of healing, let me write a summary of the journey that Dr. Love guides the reader through in order to find wholeness.

Dr. Love on Healing Self

Finding personal healing from the wounds of covert/emotional incest involves a major undertaking of revisiting one's own personal and family history. In earlier posts, I touched on some of this, but the remainder of the book delves into the specifics of the process. She does an expert job of explaining the process of healing and it's two components. The first involves an autobiography of personal history and the second component involves changing behaviors.

The first and essential step towards healing begins with the dispelling of the myths of one's childhood. (I recall Julie Andrews singing “Do, Re, Mi” from the “Sound of Music” with the “very fine place to start” – at the beginning.) She reviews those factors that we naturally employ and used as ways in which to cope and survive our childhoods which have worn out their usefulness for us. The first means of coping is that of denial. Telling ourselves that our childhoods were perfection or that our problems were never problems at all hinder our natural ability to heal. 

She also discusses the resistance that we experience through our natural inclinations to deny a true and realistic view of our own pasts in favor of the childhood perspective of fantasy. We tend to see the past through the rose-colored glasses that our memories and our child-like perspective gives us, yet this perspective inhibits realistic assessment necessary to change our current perspectives with the chief end of seeing things for what they really are. The other form of resistance is external, as our families and loved ones tend to resist a change in the status quo. 

Our loved ones built relationships around the ways that we always been, so there will be a natural resistance as you begin to stretch your borders as you grow in healthy new ways. This is often seen as “rocking the boat” which is generally something that is resisted in relationships characterized by the covert/emotional nature of the relationships with the “Chosen Child.” We can and often do find our loved ones working against this new area of growth in our lives which is already a challenge in and of itself.

Guilt also presents a major hurdle to overcome, as part of the process of covert incest and Botkin Syndrome requires that the child and the adult child absorb and bear the responsibilities for the adult's needs and for related hardships. In a related work, Pia Mellody defines this type of guilt as the “shame-existence bind.” Often, we were expected to deny our own needs, pretend that we did not have needs or forfeit the satisfaction of our own God-given needs for nurture in order to care for or avoid any “undue burdening” of our parents. For myself, I've found this to be my greatest hurdle in healing. Love states that a proper attributing of responsibilities of the parent-child relationship to the parent (as opposed to an unhealthy sharing of the responsibilities between both parent and child through denial and guilt) must be acknowledged and is key to healing. Addressing the faulty belief systems within the family also presents a critical element of healing. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is the primary means of addressing this, and personally, I like Daniel Amen's concept of countering Automatic Negative Thoughts (killing the “ANT”s) as an example. Another Christian author on the subject that has been very helpful to me in the past is Chris Thurman who wrote “The Lies We Believe” and “The Truths We Must Believe.”

Love guides the reader through the process of writing one's autobiography as a first practical step means to healing one's own perception and wounds of the past. She also presents questions to present to family in the form of interviews that help to elucidate truths about other family members' perceptions of the past. The third step in the autobiography involves drawing a family “genogram” chart of one's ancestors, giving consideration to their own histories. (Did one's predecessors have coping or relationship problems, showing that one's parents may never have had opportunity to learn better relationship skills?) Finally, Love guides the reader through a summary of what was learned in the previous steps of the autobiography.

-->

Dr. Love on Healing Relationships

The book also presents detailed information about how to approach the various relationships that the Chosen Child or the parent of the the Chosen Child must undertake on the road to healing and wholeness. She addresses confronting and reconciliation with parents, siblings, spouses and one's own children in subsequent chapters of the book. 

Establishing healthy boundaries, both boundaries that protect self as well as decreasing the boundaries that Chosen Children erect in order to protect themselves from harm that serve to inhibit appropriate intimacy later in life, are an essential part of this process. (In addition to the helpful information that Love presents in the book, I also recommend “Boundaries” by Townsend and Cloud.) 

“The Emotional Incest Syndrome” offers exercises to help correct some of these emotional boundaries that inhibit intimacy in marital relationships of the Chosen Child. There are also several chapters that address general good communication skills as well as those specific to healing each type of relationship effected by covert/emotional incest. There are also good ideas about developing a healthy and supportive network of loved ones as well as promoting healthy, happy, well-adjusted families.

Before I conclude these blog posts, I will also highlight the last chapter which offers two case studies and examples of hope for those who have begun to realize that they are Chosen Children.

Excerpt from
Dr. Patricia Love's
The Emotional Incest Syndrome:
What to Do When a Parent's Love Rule's Your Life
Bantam Books, 1990

The Adustments that the Rest of the Family Makes: Keeping the Dysfunctional Family in Balance

-->

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

How Emotional Incest Affects Family Members:

From pages 56 – 72:

In this continuing drama, the actions of one family member elicit reactions from everyone else, and every plot development has implications for the entire group.

In enmeshed families such as the ones I've been describing, the interplay between individuals is greatly exaggerated... “the drama where everyone loses.”

• Blood Ties
• Invasive Parent
• Left Out Child
• Left Out Spouse
• Shadow Parent
• Spouse of the Chosen Child
• Inlaws

-->

Blood Ties

[Describes a research project demonstrating measurable levels and Free Fatty Acids in the blood regarding how children absorb family tension. Salvador Minuchin's study demonstrated that the enmeshed child's physiology became altered as evidenced by the FFA response, coinciding with child's sustained and persistent anxiety level as well. Children without enmeshment did not demonstrate any physiologic response.]

The Invasive Parent

Viewed from the outside, the Invasive Parent – the one enmeshed with the child – appears to be in an enviable position. As we've seen, the parent gets many of his needs met by the Chosen Child who – unlike a spouse – rarely makes demands, criticizes, or challenges the parent to “relate.” The child merely accepts what is given. If Daddy is a little self-centered or irritable or

hits the bottle once too often – so be it. That's the way Daddy is. The child has no basis for comparison.

-->

An Invasive Parent who is married also gets to enjoy the convenience of having a spouse. Even though there is some unresolved tension in the marriage – otherwise the parent would not turn to the child – there is a semblance of a relationship. For example, the couple may have sexual relations, share household and parenting responsibilities, and have occasional moments of intimacy. When there is more substance to the marriage, the Invasive Parent appears to be sitting in the catbird seat. He or she basks in the adoration and companionship of a child and reaps many of the rewards of being married as well...

At first, it may look like this man has the best of both worlds. But it must be remembered that he, like all parents who are overly bonded with a child, initially turned to his daughter because of a lack of more suitable companionship. After his divorce from his first wife, he turned to his daughter to help ease his pain and loneliness. And even though living with his daughter seemed to satisfy his needs, it was not fully rewarding to him, or he would not have remarried. Like all

parents who are enmeshed with a child, he had an unsatisfied desire, whether conscious or unconscious, for a more encompassing union with another adult. But when he acted on this desire and married for the second time, he had to contend with his wife's jealously. He was being forced to choose between the two people he loved most in the world. He was sitting in the hot seat, not the catbird seat!...

Besides juggling competing claims from the spouse and the child, the Invasive Parent ultimately faces a greater trial – the loss of the child, for in all but the most ingrained parent-child relationships, there comes a time when the child moves away from the parent. It can happen abruptly or it can happen over time, but either way, the loss is often heartbreaking.

-->

The Left Out Child

It's a fact of life that parents don't respond to their children equally. They may love each other and each one of the, but they invariably find themselves drawn to one child more than the other. In some families, this natural attraction is nto moderated by compassion or fairness but is acted out as favoritism...Added to these blatant signs of favoritism were tens of thousands of subtle, daily interractions that said to the Left-Out Child: “You are not a priority in my life. You are not as important to me as your brother or sister.”

...It is difficult to maintain your self-esteem when you grow up in a family in which you don't feel prized or valued, where the laurels always go to someone else. When a sibling gets all the attention, you ache for your share of love. You want your special gifts to be celebrated and your weaknesses to be met with compassion... The Left Out Child's goal in life is straightforward: toseek a place in the sun... Some excluded children try to cater to the whims of the parent. They become highly attuned to the parent's needs and mirror the parent's interests. Many years later, they are often the ones who volunetter to take care of the aging mother or father, trying to return to the well in search of life-giving love.

In large families where one of the children is clearly favored, it is often possible to see a number of these coping mechanisms being played out. One Left-Out Child may be a people pleaser, another an overachiever, another a criminal, a fourth a member of a religious cult. Outside observers wonder how the same two parents could produce such diverse offspring. What they don't see is that the children are trying to solve the same family problem – parental favoritism – and that they are following one of the unwritten laws of family dynamics: choose a coping mechanism not preemted by other siblings.

-->

The Left Out Spouse

Of all the members in the enmeshed family, the Left-Out Spouse, the one relegated to the far outpost of the love triangle, is the most commonly misunderstood. Displaced by a son or daughter, the spouse may feel violently jealous. He or she may have a hard time justifying this anger, however, because there is rarely any one incident between the Invasive Parent and the Chosen Child that is blatantly wrong: the relationship in inappropriate only when viewed as a whole and only when viewed against the backdrop of healthy family dynamics. When the Left-Out Spouse reacts to an isolated incident, the whole thing seems blown out of proportion.

The Shadow Parent

I use the term Shadow Parent to refer not to a discrete role in the family but to a personality type: passive, detached, and noninterfering. Either the Invasive Parent or the Left-Out Spouse can be a Shadow Parent. When the Invasive Parent has a passive personality (as in the example of Cinderella's father), the Chosen Child will have little protection from the scorn of the Left-Out Spouse... If the Left-Out Spouse has a passive personality, there will not be much resistance to the parent-child alliance; a potentially corrective force in the family will be missing.

-->

The Spouse of the Chosen Child

When the Chosen Child grows up and marries, another person stumbles into the quagmire – the spouse of the Chosen Child. I have a lot of sympathy for a person who marries one of us Chosen Children, because we can be “larger than life.” Our joys and problems appear boundless and overrun the concerns of our spouses, and our crazy mixture of high and low self-esteem can drive them to distraction...

If the Chosen Child was allied with a Critical/Abusive Parent, different marital problems can arise. The feelings of inadequacy and low-self esteem that characterize the Scapegoat Child can be difficult for a partner to deal with. The partner may feel the constant need to shore up the Chosen Child's ego and counteract the early years of abuse and neglect. This is a futile task, however, unless the Chosen Child is willing to examine those old parent-child issues. It takes a concerted effort to erase early messages from a parent.

Another spouse who earns my sympathy is the one who marries a Chosen Child who has reacted against an Invasive Parent by developing an impenetrable barrier to intimacy. Although the barrier was erected to keep out the overbearing parent, it also shuts out the marriage partner.

-->

In-Laws

If a Chosen Child grows up without fully breaking away from the Invasive Parent, the spouse of the Chosen Child has an additional obstacle to overcome: in-law problems. It is not uncommon for the Invasive Parent to dictate how the newlyweds should run their household, to require frequent phone calls or visits, to encourage financial ties between the families, to insist that the couple live nearby – ideally, in the same house – and to dictate the terms of all family gatherings. These demands are a clear violation of the autonomy of the younger couple. If, in later years, the Invasive Parent moves in with the family of the Chosen Child – which often happens – in-law problems occur daily, if not hourly.

The spouse of the Chosen Child appears to have only two ways to handle the invasive in-law: (1) give in to the demands and become an additional source of support, or (2) treat the Invasive Parent as an intruder, a foreign body to be rejected. If the spouse chooses the first option and joins the ranks, the couple will be absorbed into the family and have little personal freedom. Whenever they step out of line, there will be a price to pay. If the spouse chooses the second option and resists the Invasive Parent – watch out: the temperature will rise. Adding an outsider to the boiling pot turns the family into a pressure cooker.

Sometimes the Chosen Child secretly encourages the battles between the spouse and the Invasive Parent, because on some level, the emancipation feels long overdue. But even so, the parent will rarely blame the Chosen Child for the fracas – it's the son-in-law or the daughter-in-law who's considered the outlaw...

Excerpt from
Dr. Patricia Love's
The Emotional Incest Syndrome:
What to Do When a Parent's Love Rule's Your Life
Bantam Books, 1990

Restricted Identity and Controling Feelings by Controling People

“Love is a Choice: The Definitive Book on Letting Go of Unhealthy Relationships” by Hemfelt, Minirth and Meier.


From page 23:


“The Ten Traits of Codependency”


1. The codependent is driven by one or more compulsions.

2. The codependent is bound and often tormented by the way things were in the dysfunctional family of origin.

3. The codependent’s self-esteem (and, frequently maturity) is very low.

4. A codependent is certain that his or her happiness hinges on others.

5. Conversely, a codependent feels inordinately responsible for others.

6. The codependent’s relationship with a spouse or Significant Other Person (SOP) is marred by a damaging, unstable lack of balance between dependence and independence.

7. The codependent is a master of denial and repression.

8. The codependent worries about things he or she can’t change and may well try to change them.

9. A codependent’s life is punctuated by extremes.

10. A codependent is constantly looking for something that is missing or lacking in life.


From page 5:

In its broadest sense, codependency can be defined as “an addiction to people, behaviors or things.” Codependency is the fallacy of trying to control interior feelings by controlling people, things and events on the outside. To the codependent, control or the lack of it is central to every aspect of life.

The codependent may be addicted to another person. In this interpersonal codependency, the codependent has become so elaborately enmeshed in the other person that the sense of self – personal identity – is severely restricted, crowded out by that other person’s identity and problems.

Excerpts from
Robert Hemfelt, Frank Minirth and Paul Meier’s
“Love is a Choice:
The Definitive Book on
Letting Go of Unhealthy Relationships”
Thomas Nelson, 1989