Healing from Covert (Emotional) Incest and Enmeshment: A List of Resources

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Go Shopping !!! (...for books, that is!)

Covert or Emotional Incest:

(Non-sexual but gender related inappropriate usury of family members to meet unmet needs or to medicate shame)

• Silently Seduced (Adams)
• The Emotional Incest Syndrome (Love)
• Facing Love Addiction (Mellody)
• Trapped in the Mirror (Golomb)
• [I found this book to be very helpful to me, BTW.]
• (Also note links to online information in this blog post)

Sexual Abuse

• The Wounded Heart (Allender) [Note: This is a Christian book!]

Hidden In the Heart of the Adult Child

In every adult who has suffered abuse as a child lies dormant that small child's fear of punishment at the hands of the parents if he or she should dare to rebel against their behavior.  But it will lie dormant only as long as that fear remains unconscious.  Once consciously experienced, it will dissolve in the course of time.

(Pg 27)

Excerpt from
Alice Miller
The Body Never Lies:  The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting
WW Norton, New York, NY (2004)

Processing Emotional Pain Brings Relief to the Body

From Alice Miller's

"The Body Never Lies":



Children have no choice.  They must repress their true feelings if they have no "helping witness" to turn to and are helplessly exposed to their persecutors.

Later, as adults lucky enough to encounter an "enlightened witness," they do have a choice.  Then they can admit the truth, they can stop pitying and "understanding" their persecutors, stop trying to feel their unsustainable, dissociated emotions, and roundly denounce the things that have been done to them.

This step brings immense relief for the body.  It no longer has to forcibly remind the adult self of the tragic history it went through as a child.  Once the adult self has decided to find out the whole truth about itself, the body feels understood, respected, and protected.   (pg 27)

Excerpt from
Alice Miller
The Body Never Lies:  The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting
WW Norton, New York, NY (2004)

Thoughts About Therapy

From Alice Miller's

"The Body Never Lies":


[W]e can give ourselves the attention, respect, the understanding for our emotions, the sorely needed protection, and the unconditional love that our parents withheld from us. . .

If we want to achieve this assistance from a therapist who can accept us for what we are, who can give us the protection, respect, sympathy, and understanding we need in order to realize how we have become what we are. . .

We need such a companion -- what I have called an "enlightened witness" -- if we ourselves are to act as companions for the child within, if we are to understand its "body language," to engage with its needs instead of ignoring them. . .

In that process one can shed one's symptoms, free oneself of depression, regain joy in life, break out of the state of constant exhaustion, and experience a resurgence of energy, once that energy is no longer required for the repression of one's own truth.

The point is that the fatigue characteristic of such depression reasserts itself every time we repress strong emotions, play down the memories stored in the body, and refuse them the attention they clamor for.  

Excerpt from
Alice Miller
The Body Never Lies:  

The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting
WW Norton, New York, NY (2004)

Forgive Then Forget?

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


From pages 185 -186:

[Following the discussion of the details of a woman named Myra, seeking to forgive her abusive father.]


“Now, Myra, I said, we’ve talked a lot about forgiving your father. I’ve told you how important forgiveness is. But listen to me: I do want you to forgive your father, but I do not want you to forget what he did. Forgiveness has nothing to do with forgetting. Do you understand? Forgiveness has nothing to do with forgetting.”

It is easy to become confused. The Bible says repeatedly that God is able to forgive and forget. For example God says “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 21:34). But it never says that we are to do the same. We cannot. Only he can. One reason why God can forget is that there is nothing he needs to learn by remembering. There is often a lot of important information that we can learn by remembering, even though we may not want to remember.

I understood how Myra felt. I’ve felt the same way myself many times. Haven’t we all? We want to get rid of the pain of harmful things that have happened to us, and we think that the way to do that is by getting rid of the memory of those harmful things. If we can work ourselves around to believing that the hurtful incident never happened, then it can’t hurt us anymore.

Or can it? The fact is that very often the harmful effects of past injuries stay with us whether or not we consciously remember the injuries themselves. This is why we say that remembering, not forgetting, is the key to forgiveness. Only when we are clear on what has, in fact, happened to us can we deal with it effectively.

We may make connections between current difficulties and painful experiences from our past. The way a friend treats us today may trigger memories of the way our parents or siblings treated us years ago. These memories, in turn, may uncover connections to other past hurts. Many of the problems people bring into counseling stem from things in their past that they needed to remember clearly before they could deal with them.

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)

You've Forgiven When....

“You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.”

~ Lewis B. Smedes
in “Forgive and Forget”

Avoiding Superficial Forgiveness

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


From page 220:

There is nothing wrong with needing time to work through the process of forgiveness...

In his book, "Caring Enough to Confront," David Augsberger says, “Forgiveness is a journey of many steps.” That little sentence sums up much of what we have been saying. As much as we might like forgiveness to be quick and easy, it is a process. It is a journey, which can take many steps. The first step – choosing to forgive, choosing not to hang on to the emotional IOU – is important and should not be overlooked. But the other steps are important, too, and we should not pass over them.

We can learn a great deal from forgiveness. Being hurt by someone only teaches us to protect ourselves and to mistrust others. Forgiveness, however, presents us with a choice as to how to respond. We can brush off what has happened by extending superficial forgiveness, ending up bitter and resentful. Or we can choose the path of true forgiveness, and learn lessons along the way that will shape our lives for the better.

If we are going to take God’s principles seriously, we will see that forgiveness isn’t optional. It is essential. What is optional is whether we choose the quick and easy path of superficial forgiveness, or the harder but more rewarding path of genuine forgiveness.

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)

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Six Steps of Forgiveness

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


From page 179:



The Six Steps of Forgiveness

1. Recognize the injury.

2. Identify the emotions involved.

3. Express your hurt and anger.

4. Set boundaries to protect yourself.

5. Cancel the debt.

6. Consider the possibility of reconciliation.

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)

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“HONOR THY FATHER....”

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


From pages 298 - 299:

All of recognize that there is no such thing as a perfect parent. All of us are descended from imperfect parents, and grew up in imperfect families. But to acknowledge this as an intellectual proposition is one thing. To actually admit that our parents have failed us is, for some of us, a very hard thing to do.

It may even seem like a wrong thing to do. Doesn’t the Bible teach that we are supposed to honor our father and mother? (Exodus 20:12). Indeed we are. But what does it mean to honor our parents? Does it mean we should never acknowledge their weaknesses, limitations, and mistakes? Does it mean we should never acknowledge the pain they may have caused us? I don’t think so.

The original Hebrew word used in the passage literally means “assign weight to.” It is as though someone told us something and we replied, “I want to carefully weigh what you’ve said.” If we consider their words and decide that they are important, we are, in a sense “assigning weight” to them. Thus to “honor” our parents means to assign weight – value, importance, significance – to them.

When that original Hebrew word was translated into Greek for the New Testament, the Greek word had to do with “giving glory to” the thing being honored. Both the Greek and the Hebrew carried the sense of honoring people because of the position they held, not necessarily because of intrinsic value.

One way to understand this is to imagine that you are in a banquet hall. Part way through the banquet, your city mayor walks in. Now, let’s suppose that you are not particularly fond of this mayor. You didn’t vote for him in the last election, and you think he has made some bad decisions. Even so, when he walks into the room, you stand up with everyone else to greet him.

Why? Because he is the mayor, and honoring him is the appropriate thing to do. You assign a certain value, or “weight” to him because of the position he holds. This does not mean you now have to start liking him, or even respecting him, as a person. It does not mean you have to start pretending that you agree with everything he has done as mayor. The honor is accorded to the position he holds, not so much to the individual.

In the same way, we can honor our parents – accord them an appropriate degree of “weight” – because of the position they hold in our lives as parents. Similar to our example with the mayor, the fact that we honor them does not mean we have to pretend that they have never done anything wrong or hurtful to us.

It is healthy, not dishonoring, to acknowledge that our parents failed us, hurt us, damaged us in some way – especially if we are doing so for the sake of forgiving them. We do neither our parents nor ourselves any honor by denying reality, eliminating the possibility of forgiveness, and locking ourselves into dysfunctional patterns of thinking and acting.

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)

Setting Boundaries With Your Parents

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From “The Emotional Incest Syndrome

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

From pages 166 -167:

An essential aspect of making peace with your parents is to establish clear boundaries between you. As I explained in chapter 7, a healthy family system has a firm but flexible barrier between parenst and children. When the children mature, this barrier is reinforced. The adult child no longer needs to turn to the parents for protection, guidance, day-to-day affection, nurturing, or financial support, because those needs are now taken care of by a partner or adult friends. The two generations stay in touch because of the love between them and because they are genuinely interested in each other, not because they meet each other's fundamental needs or feel a sense of obligation.

The exceptions are worth mentioning. I believe a parent and adult child are obligated to keep each other apprised of their status and whereabouts. A significant illness, a death in the family, a job change, a divorce or a marriage, and a change of address are examples of information that needs to be shared. In addition, I believe that adult children have a responsibility to care for their aging parents in some fashion. Whether that entails home care or institutional care is for each family to decide.

Beyond these minimal obligations, a healthy relationship between a parent and adult child is one characterized by choice. For example, one reason to stay in touch is to give everyone a sense of history. When family members play the game “remember when,” everyone has a sense of belonging and a connection to earlier times. Though repetition of these anectotes, a family identity is passed down from generation to generation...

The need for guidance may also connect adult children and their parents. The older generation may have expertise in a special area or have an overall wisdom that comes from having lived a few more decades. The tables turn as the parents become limited by poor health or age, and the older generation may turn to the younger generation for advice. In this exchange of insight and information, two ideas are kept in mind: (1) asking for advice is not the same thing as taking it, and (2) unsolicited advice can lead to resentment – especially if the advice is coupled with expectation.

A desire to express affection, history sharing, celebration, and guidance are key components of a healthy parent/adult child relationship. Ideally, these interactions and any beyond this -- mutual interests, cooperative ventures, and joint activities, for example – should be a matter of personal choice.

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

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.

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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)

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Start Healing Relationships with Your Siblings

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

From pages 193 – 194:

The Singular Nature of Sibling Dynamics

[T]here are some dynamics that are peculiar to siblings. First, it may behoove you to examine how your birth order influences your behavior. Just because you were the youngest child doesn't mean that Thanksgiving can never be at your house; the few years between you and older siblings make little difference now that you're adults. Similarly, just because you're the oldest child and the only one in the family with a dining room table that seats twelve doesn't mean you have to be in charge of all family functions – even if you've done so for the past twenty-five years... Everyone may benefit from a change. There's no need to stay locked into a position that is detrimental to you and to others.

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Second, if you have strained relationships with your siblings, your instinct may be to cut yourself off from them. You may have the desire to move across the continent and drastically limit your contact. But because you and your siblings are contemporaries, there is the strong possibility that you will have to deal with one another in the future. 

 You may need to cooperate in the care of an aging parent, for example, or work out details surrounding a family death. Your children may want access to their aunts and uncles, and you may want to play a positive role in the lives of your nieces and nephews. You may even come to depend on a sibling in your old age. Having the courage to initiate a reconciliations now will eliminate conflict further down the road.

Third, brothers and sisters tend to get embroiled in protracted battles about “who is right.” This could be a carryover from the early days when fairness and equal treatment from Mom and Dad were so important and determining who was right and wrong seemed a matter of life and death. Now that you're adults, you have to decide which is more important: being right or being close...

Take a look at the issues that divide your family. Are they worth fighting over? Are they a matter of pride and saving face? Did they have their roots in a previous generation? Are they due to the way your parents treated you, a matter over which you had little control? Could it be time for you to pretend that you're all grown up and let bygones be bygones?

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

Gaining An Objective View of Your Parents

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

From pages 160 – 161:

[Following a case history about “Beth.”] Just as Beth was able to scale her mother down to size [a realistic, non-fantasy view], you need to learn to see your mother and father in human scale. Phillip Guerin, noted family therapist, spent some time exploring his feelings about his parents and managed achieve this objectivity. 

 In a comment in “The Book of Family Therapy,” Guerin wrote, “...working on my own family has enabled to see my parents as real people. At this point I don't believe I over-value or under-value either of them. Although on one hand I am perhaps more aware of their shortcomings, I believe that each one of them is more knowable to me now and that I ma closer to each of them at any other time in my life. One thing is certain; I don't view them as the malignant cause of my shortcomings.”

How do you know if you've attained this balanced view of your caretakers?

There are four indicators to look for:

1. You can interact with your parents (stepparents) without being unduly upset or disappointed. Your parents may not act the way you would like them to, but at least you are mentally prepared for their behavior. You are rarely caught off guard by their actions.
   
   
2. Your assessment of your parents tends to correspond with other's assessments of them. This means you neither overrate nor underrate your parents as compared to the judgment of other people. You see them more or less the way others do.
   
   
3. You see positive and negative traits in both caretakers. Instead of idealizing one parent and diminishing the other, you see positive and negative characteristics in both of them. For the most part, they seem like ordinary people with a standard assortment of strengths and weaknesses.

4. You no longer blame your parents for all of your difficulties. Although your parents were responsible for your upbringing, you are able to transcend your tendency to blame them for all of your shortcomings. Over time, you have accepted the fact they did the best they could given their circumstances.

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

Hope For Overcoming Covert/Emotional Incest

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

From pages 257 - 269:

[Y]ou may have found yourself wondering, “Is it worth it to go to all this effort to explore the past and change my relationships? What rewards lie at the end of the journey?” The best way for me to answer these questions is to share the stories of two of my clients who are well on their way to recovery. In the beginning of the book I went into some detail about people who were suffering from emotional incest. Now you'll have a chance to see how two people resolve their difficulties.

The two stories in this final chapter are fairly representative. One is about a man who had to protect himself from an invasive mother, and the other is about a woman who was enmeshed with her adoring father. Through the process describe in this book, they've been able to get a clear understanding of what went wrong in their families and to overcome most of their emotional problems. With courage and persistence they've healed the wounds of enmeshment...

[The author presents two case studies of “Evan” and “Diana”...]

It is a joy to see Evan and Diana today. They are two people representing countless others who have had the courage and the dedication to alter the course of their lives. Are they free from struggle? Of course not. But they address life's little difficulties with the wisdom and confidence that comes from being a whole person.

The struggles they went through are representative of the healing journey of the Chosen Child.

First, they both had to learn how to shore up the boundaries between themselves and their parents, boundaries that had been missing in childhood... By realigning these relationships, they were able to restore a sense of balance within themselves.

Second, they needed to see how their history as Chosen Children was reflected in their present-day lives... Evan and Diana are no longer kept repeating the same painful mistakes... They were free from much of the destructive influences of the past.

Finally, having looked at the past and restructured the present, they both came to the awareness that they had the capacity to be happy, fully functioning human beings. They learned that they were indeed special – not because a parent saw them that way, but because they were loving, whole human beings. Their hard work had enabled them to experience joy in their lives and to be loving and supportive parents to their own children. Their own journey had taken them full circle – back to their original, undivided selves...

Best wishes on your own journey

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

If this information has been remotely beneficial for you,

please purchase the Dr. Love's book

and begin your own journey to healing

or encourage others to find the healing they need.

How to Deal With the Guilt While Looking Into the Past

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

From pages 136 -139:

For some Chosen Children, guilt, not anxiety, keeps them from gaining a more accurate view of their childhood. This is often true of those who grew up worshiping a parent. How can they go from thinking a parent was the most wonderful mother or father on earth to seeing the parent as the source of their misery? How can they be angry at a parent who sacrificed so much for them? How can a relationship that usually felt so good be classified as bad? ...

...If you feel guilty for seeing the negative side of a parent, removing this barrier will hasten your recovery. But how do you do this? It's been my experience that learning more about the complicated psychology of guilt helps reduce its impact. In it's simplest form, guilt is a painful but short-lived phenomenon designed to jolt you into awareness that your behavior is not consistent with your beliefs. [Blog host note: This is much like the definition of cognitive dissonance, and guilt could well be an indicator of cognitive dissonance at work.] It's a voice from your conscience advising you to either (1) reexamine your beliefs or (2) alter your behavior so that the two of them line up...

[I]t's the adult who creates the parent-child alliance. A child can't be blamed for wanting preferential treatment from a parent; it's a survival mechanism built into all children: in times of scarcity, being first in line can mean the difference between life and death. A wise parent ignores the child's plea for a place of prominence and keeps all children on the same plane. No child is given preferential treatment or is asked to play the role of surrogate spouse. Ultimately, it's the parent's responsibility to create a balanced family system, not the child's responsibility to suppress a natural and understandable desire to be a Chosen Child.

Ironically, many Chosen Children discover that letting go of this misplaced sense of guilt for what went on in the family makes them feel anxious; it's a Catch-22. Once they place the responsibility where it really belongs – squarely in the lap of the parent – they may experience a surge of anxiety for having “bad thoughts” about the caretaker. Here's the internal logic: “If I was not responsible for being the Chosen Child, then my mother and father were to blame. It makes me feel anxious to see my parents in a negative light, however, because my unconscious mind assumes they are still responsible for my well-being. Even though I am 20 or 40 or even 70 years old and have outlived both my parents, I am still fearful of abandonment. It may be better to accept the guilt for what went wrong in my family than to blame my parents and stir up my anxiety.”

For many people, this complicated and erroneous belief system stands in the way of recovery. Understanding the way the unconscious mind operates is a first step to letting go of the unnecessary burden. Here, once again, is the faulty train of logic:

1. When children are young, they feel responsible for the tension in the family because of the false belief that they are in control of the situation.
2. In later years, if they try to change this belief and assign full responsibility to their parents, they feel anxious.
3. The underlying cause of this anxiety is the erroneous belief in their adult years.

If the thought of identifying the mistakes your parents made in raising you makes you feel guilty or anxious, you need to revise your belief system. You were not to blame for what went on in the family, and you have nothing to fear for placing the responsibility for where it really belongs. You are now capable of taking care of yourself. And remember that you don't have to confront your parents or disassociate from them to recover from emotional incest. You just need to remove some of the mythology that keeps you from seeing and experiencing the truth.

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

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.

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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

Why Should I Bother: Why Can’t I Keep My View of an Idealized Family?

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


From pages 294 -295:


We also learn that some of our long-protected illusions about ourselves and others must change. Childhood expectations and idealizations of the way people should behave may wind up influencing us long into adulthood with harmful results.

For example, it is a common childhood expectation that all families are happy: mom cheerfully takes care of the kids’ every need; dad goes off to work each morning with a smile on his face, and returns each night for dinner; the family schedules all kinds of outings for the weekends; everyone is happy and fulfilled all the time. That picture of “normal” family life is reinforced in dozens of ways in the storybooks we read in school, in the shows we watched on television, and so on.

As we grow older, we recognize that this rosy picture is an idealization, not the norm. We recognize that few – if any – families really look or act this way. We recognize that our own family does not look or act this way.

Or do we? In some cases, it is more accurate to say that part of us recognizes and accepts the unreality of this picture. But another part of us lings to it desperately, still believing it is to be true, and ever more conscious of the ways in which our own situation falls short.


Stoop quotes from Lewis Smedes’ “Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve":


“...we want our parents to be sheer light, with no darkness at all; and we feel a little foul if we allow shadows to darken our memory. We don’t want them to need forgiving; because if we forgive them, we must have found fault with them first, maybe even hated them.”


In working through the process of forgiveness, we need to figure out how our own expectations may have set the stage for our being hurt. Part of maturity is accepting responsibility for our own outlook on life and relationships. If others have hurt us by failing to live up to our expectations, then one of the things we need to do is examine whether those expectations may have been inappropriate and unrealistic.

If so, forgiveness for us will need to involve repentance (a fundamental change of our own minds and hearts about what we should rightly expect from others) as well as our working through our pain. The pain of unmet expectations is still very real, and still needs to be dealt with, even if those expectations were unrealistic.

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)

Adult Children Learn to Assume the Blame

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


From pages 246 - 247:

We regularly see an interesting phenomenon occur among adults who were abused as children. Thy experience an overwhelming need to cast blame somewhere. Because of the dynamics of childhood – where adults are bigger and more powerful, and therefore perceived as “always right” – abuse victims invariably place the blames on themselves.

But they soon start accepting the fact that they were only children, innocent, unable to either chose or prevent the things that were happening to them. “For the first time I realized that I wasn’t to blame for all the problems that existed in the world,” one woman said. “I felt I had to blame someone. I couldn’t blame the adults, because after all, they were adults. So the only one left to blame was me.”

Once this realization hits, they often start blaming others with a vengeance. Some are simply programmed to blame others for everything. One man named Jerry, remembers growing up in a family where everything was regarded as someone else’s fault. He can remember times when they hoped for a sunny day and it rained. His father would say, “Even God is against us today.” Jerry grew up very confused about the matter of responsiblity. If he himself didn’t bring about the wrong, then he had to point an accusing finger at someone else.

A more mature understanding of the world tells us that sometimes things just don’t work out the way we hoped. There are disappointments, unexpected developments, changes in plans, that are no one’s fault in particular... Being able to accept this reality, without always having to point the finger of blame, is an important component of personal maturity and emotional health.

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)

. .

Recognizing Anger: Essential for Forgiveness?

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

From pages 223 - 225:

Would you agree or disagree with the following statements?

• Without anger, most forgiveness is superficial.
• Genuine forgiveness almost always includes anger.

Long experience helping people deal with dysfunctional family issues lead us to agree with those statements. However, many people are bothered by them. They tend to have a certain amount of mistrust concerning anger, and are especially uncomfortable connecting it with something like forgiveness. But the fact that anger and forgiveness tend to be intimately connected. In most cases, we cannot really forgive until we have dealt with our anger. To put it another way, working through anger is often a crucial step in the process of forgiveness.

A lot of confusing ideas circulate about anger. Many of us were brought up to believe that all anger is wrong, even sinful. But anger is a fact of life. It happens to us. We experience it. What do we do then? Many of us play word games with it. We say we are “a little irritated,” or “out of sorts,” or “a bit upset.” We go to great lengths to avoid coming right out and saying, “I’m just plain mad.”

But the fact is, we often are just plain mad – and there is not necessarily anything wrong with that. The emotion of anger, in and of itself, is not wrong. Let me say again, to make sure you get it: the emotion of anger, in and of itself, is not wrong. It just is. It is part of the “standard equipment” that comes with being a human being. It is what we do with our anger that makes it either right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy.

We can use our anger wrongly, or express it in unhealthy ways. A simple example is when we “fly off the handle” at someone we love without good cause. Unhealthy anger separates us from people we love and want to be with.

But we can also use our anger for healthy purposes. For example, anger can energize us to overcome some challenge or obstacle. Who among us has not had the experience of “getting good and mad” at some stubborn problem, and finding that the energy produced by the anger gets us over the hump?

Anger can also alert us to the need to set boundaries, or limits, with other people. It is one of the ways we protect ourselves.

~~~~~

Lewis B. Smeades in “Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve”:

Healthy anger drives us to do something to change what makes us angry; anger can energize us to make things better. Hate does not want to change things for the better: it wants to make things worse. (pg. 21)

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)