POLL: Have you experienced emotional incest in your family?

[pinkeagle]

Totes, that was M_

[pinkeagle]

I was treated like an adult when I was a child and am now treated like a child when I'm an adult.

You know, that really jumped out at me. uBPDM ALWAYS says _

[PaGuy]

I was treated like an adult when I was a child and am now treated like a child when I'm an adult.

You know, that really jumped out at me. uBPDM ALWAYS says “you will always be my baby” and other such things to me, which annoys me hugely. On the other hand, when I was a child, I was parentified and used as her sounding board and was told that “I was a big girl” from the age of FIVE!

I wish she would make up her mind and could be more developmentally appropriate…

 

I couln't agree more.  One of the things that had always bugged me as an adult is that my mother never treats me like an adult.  She would try to make major decisions for me.  If I didn't want to do what she thought I should, she would either pull the "No, you don't really want to do that, do you?  Come on, why not do this instead  " nonsense.  If I stood up to that, she would find some way to either berate my decision or focus on one aspect she didn't like and harass me about it until I changed my mind (or forever if I stuck with my decision).

As a child, my mother would use me as her counselor.  She would ask my advise on everything from how to find a job (seriously, I wasn't even 15, what could I possibly know about getting a job?  ) to how to deal with work politics.  Even though she never dated after her divorce (probably a very good thing), she still asked for advice on interpersonal matters... .when she wasn't trying to sway me to think people A, B, and C were absolutely evil because *gasp* they said "Hi" to her in a "funny" way.  She would reward me for helping her by telling me how "wise" I was.  

My mother would constantly bait me into telling her she was a good cook (in hindsight, she wasn't, but hey, what did I know), and a good mother by saying that she was an awful cook/mother and would stand there waiting for my response, and then argue with me why she thought she was a bad parent.  I was a kid, why would I tell her she was a horrible mother? How she was treating me as a result of being a pwBPD was never mentioned.   She would also cry at the drop of a hat.  I remember asking her why she would cry so often and she told me that "Women are emotional, men are logical" (yeah, like that didn't screw me up any ).  I think it was then that I started to feel responsible for comforting my mother whenever she would cry.  Oh, and when she was happy over something, she would be hurt if I did not immediately become equally as happy as she was... .even if it was over the dumbest things.

When I was young, I fell n a garden and hurt myself... .not too many scratches, but it hurt a lot... .and I could see my mother was nearby but she refused to come when I called out for help. I remember asking years later why she didn't help me and she said that she wanted me to learn that she won't alwas be around to help and I need to be able to take care of myself (at less than 6 years old?  Really?).  She also provided no real structure for boundaries/what I should do.  If I ever got caught doing something I shouldn't, the punishment was normally very light... .unless it wasn't at which point it was very severe.  In either case, the punishment never really seemed to fit the crime.

I also never had a solid door on my bedroom.  Instead, it was more like a plastic curtain that could close.  I also remember my mother would often sleep in the same bed as me - even past puberty  .  Her excuse was that the air conditioner was in my room, but I never understood why we couldn't change rooms the A/C was in or get a second window unit.  I even remember inadvertently pushing her out of bed several times because I barely had enough room to lie down.  That's when she slept on the floor.  That finally stopped when I insisted... .many times over many weeks, that it needed to stop.

Growing up, I always looked a lot older than my age, and my mother tended to look young for her age.  Once I was in/past my junior year of high school, waitstaff would often think we were a couple on a date, and my mother always laughed it off.  I thought it was humerus.  Now I just see it as one more way we were enmeshed and she was carrying out the emotional incest.

If you look at pictures of my college graduation, my mother is grinning from ear to ear, hugging me in a ridiculously hard hug.  I am there looking like "Get. This. Person. Off. Of. Me. Now!"  I think one of the worst things is that I bought the lies and manipulations whole-sale.  I thought this was normal  (I didn't have a father-figure around and I didn't see any other mother-son relationships indepth enough to know otherwise).  Every time I think about this stuff, I feel dirty... .like I need a brillo pad, a ton of degreaser, and a  shop vac to clear out all of the crud this left in me. 

[lipsticklibrarian]

Yes, the sad thing is my mother is being very emotionally incestuous with my little sister and in turn she doesn't have any boundaries. When I'm at home it feels a bit like being in a concentration camp, you have no privacy, your valuables are taken off you, nothing is your property, you're always working and there are daily rituals of humiliation. My sister always wants to sleep in my bed and winds herself up into a fit even if I don't. I can't have a shower without her insisting on being in the bathroom where she spends the duration of the time trying to touch my breasts/ genitals or pooping loudly on the toilet.

It's like my mum has deliberately trained her to be unpleasant so people won't want to spend time with her, kind of sad because she really does like being around other people, she just exhibits the behaviors of a person who hasn't been raised with any kind of logic or consistency. I wish there was something I could do to get her out but she's too young to go anywhere without mum.

Another weird thing my mum does, which is an extension of her narcissistic/ competitive personality is talking about her sex life. She always talks about her sex life, how hers is the most healthy, most fulling sexual relationship anyone has ever had in the history of the world. She is always judging other women as part of her 'splitting.' If she doesn't like a woman she talks about how she imagines she is in a bad/ abusive sexual relationship with her partner, she goes in to quite graphic detail about what the woman's husband must say to her while he's raping her. Not very normal right?

I can always tell when she is making me the bad child because she will imply I'm also having bad sex, she honestly thinks that I lay there detatched while my partner jackrabbits away on top. So wierd! A few years ago I remember my sister who was nine was sitting on my mothers bed miming a sex act my mum grinned and coo'ed 'ooh she's going to be a wild girl just like her mummy!' 

[Fransisca]

Yep, I can relate to a lot of these posts. I have a hard time with boundaries, I didn't know you were allowed to have them! My mother views me as an extension of herself and we were very enmeshed.

My mom slept with me in bed until I was in fifth grade. She would wash my hair and give me a bath while I was in the shower until that time, too. This only stopped because I had a bout of lice that went on for a year in fifth grade. I remember this because it was a classmate of mine who had the lice and she made me call the girl on the phone myself and tell her that I couldn't "be her friend because she was a dirty girl". I had to stop the situation myself by hurting my friend or be stuck with the lice because she refused to get me transferred to a different class.

My real dad left when I was three/four. I became her therapist, her best friend, and something like a comfort doll or a teddy bear. She always told me that I was such an adult, and that she believed in talking to me like I was an adult, not a child. When she was having fights with my step-dad, she would confide in me a lot. She would confide in me about her anger towards our relatives, people she didn't like, work drama etc. and she worked hard to build a paradigm of me and her versus the horrible world. Except when she'd split and it was her and my step-dad against the horrible world.

My step-dad is emotionally and verbally abusive so as a child it felt good when she confided in me because I felt validated, I think. My step-dad and I would be white or black and we were never the same color. It was really dysfunctional.

I didn't even realize anything was strange about this until I was an adult. When I moved out she began to cling even harder, working at the same place as me, calling me almost everyday, and (creepily enough) trying to compete with my husband for my attention and paint him black. She started to confide in me about harder stuff, like her days snorting cocaine, growing marijuana as a profession, and lots of sexual stuff.

I didn't have to listen to her talk about her sex life as a child, thankfully. She would have a lot of loud sex while I was in the house, though, and I'd have to listen to that when I was in middle school almost every night. I can't watch a sex scene in a movie without becoming triggered and getting upset. I'm trying to get over that one right now.

[GreenMango]

Boundaries are important.  It's pretty crazy the things we can assume are normal then find out there not.

Fransisca you mentioned working on the sex scene trigger.  What are you finding helpful?

[justnothing]

To what extent is this like incest?

When I was little the social workers wanted to take me away at one point because I was exhibiting behaviors of having been sexually abused but I don't remember any overt abuse.

I enjoyed being her chosen child (or at least I think I did) and until my late teens I always thought of all the sexual stuff as a form of "bonding".

I've tried talking about this in other places to some extent in the past but I'm kind of disgusted with myself because at the time I wanted it.

In my early teens we watched porn together and shared a vibrator at one point and wore the same underwear and since I was a child I would wear the sexy lingerie that she'd gotten way back when for her ex… at the time I enjoyed all that attention I got from my mom and I thought it was just being "liberal" and modern… and she was just "educating" me by telling me all about her sex life including with my dad and so on… It was only in my mid teens that I suddenly didn't want her to touch me anymore or see me naked.

When she tried asking why I wouldn't even hug her anymore I admitted a couple of times that it felt sexual and she called me a "pervert" for thinking that "everything's sexual" and for thinking of my own mother that way…

(One time when I ~sort of~ confronted her though she actually said "oh my, I really messed you up in your teens… I'm sorry" but I didn't want to hear her say that because I knew that no matter how sincere she was with that "I'm sorry" that she'd soon forget all about it and then go back to her previous attitude and I didn't want to forgive her either at the time…)

When she was brain dead I finally felt safe enough to touch her again and I hugged and hugged her the way I hadn't hugged her in years… at one point I went home and realized that all these years that the feeling of disgust whenever she touched me – it was fear of finding out that I had been attracted to her all along… which apparently I was.

I can deal with sex but last time I tried lying next to a guy (one of my exes) I kept getting flashbacks to when I was little and snuggling in bed with my mother and it was like such a weird cross between a sweet dream and a horrible nightmare… idk how to describe it.

This may be a stupid/rhetorical question and I'm sorry if someone else already mentioned it earlier in the thread 'cause I didn't read through the whole thing but: Is there any way of dealing with this?

[justnothing]

This may seem inappropriate to mention but I literally just threw up after sending the above post. I can't believe I actually wrote that.

Sorry for double posting btw, I don't have an edit option these days… which is probably just as well…

Right now I just want to say "I'm sorry" repeatedly forever and idk why…

[Gerda]

I just finished reading The Emotional Incest Syndrome, and it was an amazing book. Very thorough talking about how all this affects a person and their whole family. I highly recommend it!

My mom was the victim of ACTUAL incest, by her father, so I completely understand why she's as messed up as she is, and how she could easily justify something like, "Well, it's not like I've having sex with my children, so I'm actually treating them great!"

The book also covers how the emotionally incestuous parent can actually believe this counts as GOOD parenting (my mom thinks she's a Super Mom), and how the Chosen Child also thinks this is great at the time (my mom was my best friend when I was in middle and high school, and I was grateful we had such a "good" relationship, and she trusted me to tell me all her most intimate thoughts and feelings).

Makes me feel a lot less guilty about thinking this kind of behavior was actually good at the time, to find out that's actually a normal thing for a Chosen Child to think.

Justnothing, don't be so hard on yourself. There's a reason why it's called emotional INCEST, because it can get dangerously close to actual incest. I just had a talk with my younger sister last night, and apparently after I grew up and moved out, Mom turned her attentions on her, and in some ways worse, or at least more sexual. I was always mom's best friend/unpaid therapist, but then again that was when mom was a bit more emotionally stable. My sister didn't want to get into detail, but I got the impression things got worse when I left, to the point where my sister now acts like a survivor of sexual abuse.

I only have a couple of problems with Love's book. She doesn't even consider the possibility of homosexual emotional incest. She mentions same-sex incest as a "best friend" thing like I had with my mom, and acts like only opposite-sex parents are the ones that cross the line into romantic/sexual territory, but I seriously doubt that's actually the case.

The other criticism I have is that she has these stories in here of Adult Children reconciling with their Invasive Parents which I think are way too optimistic for most of our situations here at BPD family. BPD is not the only reason a parent can be invasive, so maybe the ones that do it for other reasons are more willing to work things out. I'm sure that if I did like some of the people in the book did and confronted my mom about what went on, it would not go NEARLY as well as it does for some of the people in the book.

So for that I'm reading some things about BPD specifically, but Love's book is at least really helpful in understanding what emotional incest can do to a person, and how to avoid letting it ruin your marriage, social life, or your own kids.

[Fransisca]

Fransisca you mentioned working on the sex scene trigger.  What are you finding helpful?

I try to treat it like an anxiety attack or an emotional flashback. Deep breathing, recognizing it for what it is, and keeping myself in the present.

I didn't understand what was happening until recently. I have no problems with intimacy and am relatively open-minded about sexual things so having an irrational child-like response because of a scene in a movie was humiliating. My poor husband had to come find me one time, because I just got up and walked out of a theater during a movie on one of our first dates. I have had to leave the room during movies and try not to watch anything that might be explicit. I just go somewhere and curl up and want to cry like a little girl.

I have always thought I had problems with explicit scenes due to self esteem with my previous weight issues, perceptions about misogyny in raunchy movies, objectification, I'm just broken etc... .It's a relief to finally understand what's causing the intense response. Just understanding has helped.

It doesn't always work perfectly, particularly if the trigger is unexpected/loud. It's getting a lot better, though, and I was even able to watch a movie with my husband last night with no problems.  Baby steps. 

[justnothing]

Justnothing, don't be so hard on yourself. There's a reason why it's called emotional INCEST, because it can get dangerously close to actual incest. I just had a talk with my younger sister last night, and apparently after I grew up and moved out, Mom turned her attentions on her, and in some ways worse, or at least more sexual. I was always mom's best friend/unpaid therapist, but then again that was when mom was a bit more emotionally stable. My sister didn't want to get into detail, but I got the impression things got worse when I left, to the point where my sister now acts like a survivor of sexual abuse.

I only have a couple of problems with Love's book. She doesn't even consider the possibility of homosexual emotional incest. She mentions same-sex incest as a "best friend" thing like I had with my mom, and acts like only opposite-sex parents are the ones that cross the line into romantic/sexual territory, but I seriously doubt that's actually the case.

Thank you… (I needed to hear that)…

And yeah, unfortunately it's not surprising that Dr. Love doesn't consider the possibility of same-sex incest…  Society itself doesn't seem ready yet to even consider that mothers, in general, can be anything other than the Virgin Mary… much less abusers and much less sexual abusers and much less sexual abusers of their daughters…

I know a woman who was sexually abused by her mother since she was small and when she once tried to confront her mother and aunt about it the two actually laughed at her and said that "that's not sexual abuse"…

Not that I think boys have it any better. I used to wish I were male when I was little because I wanted to be my mothers' knight in shining armor (which I think she may have wanted)… and between that and my mothers' belief, back then, that men were the ones responsible for all the woes of the world and that women were there helpless victims… I absolutely shudder to think what it might have been like if I had been male.

[lipsticklibrarian]

Just nothing, you have nothing to be ashamed of, you were a child and did not know the difference between right and wrong. You completely trust your parents and everything they say because when you are a child everything seems a bit bizarre, you're still learning and your parents job is to tell you whats normal.

I really worry about my sister sometimes, the stuff she and my mum talk about to do with her sexual feelings and she thinks it's normal... .

Since you've all been so honest I have to confess my mother has made some areas of my sex life quite difficult, because I'm not the golden child she makes remarks about how she thinks I'm very passive in my sex life and her and my sister are wild and empowered.

Even though I have a wonderful boyfriend and we have a very fulfilling sex life because he's so loving and understanding and I'm really embracing my confident side it still bothers me that she thinks that way.

I've had dreams where I've been engaged in sex and somehow through video or a spy hole my mother is observing it and commenting on how everything I do is a sign that I'm a passive victim. I think this is maybe because my mother has no respect for my boundaries and maybe would do this if I ever had sex within a five mile radius of her.

[XL]

I realize that this thread is old, but I need to release this into the world... .

I am always in the position of "unwilling/unpaid therapist" as well, including wildly inappropriate statements about my parents failed marriage, her exes, etc. I finally flipped out in late high school with "Oh my god, stop telling these things about my dad!"

I also experienced what I consider sexualized bullying, not specifically sexual abuse, mainly relating to developmental things (telling me I was "swinging my hips like a slut" when I was 9), wildly inappropriate demands for information about my period, micromanaging that (demanding I pack I whole extra bag of clothes to middle school everyday, which other girls bullied me about), screaming at me in public for needing a quarter when I forgot to bring a supply of pads with me. She refused to let me use tampons in middle school, and I missed a going away swim party my little friends planned when she chaotically decided to move on a whim, and all of my little friends thought I stood them up. She made me call them to cancel, then told the family I was "throwing a tantrum about what to wear," not that she was so worried about toxic shock syndrome she was willing to let me move away without saying goodbye to any of my friends. She threw the worst, most abusive tantrum ever and refused to give me my insurance card to get birth control when I was 17.

The worst was when she showed up unannounced for a "driving lesson" at my (repeat:my) house when I was 18 (in my car which I bought and insured myself), saw me in bed with my boyfriend, KIDNAPPED ME IN MY OWN CAR, drove me to planned parenthood and demanded I go inside at that very moment for an immediate gyno exam. She was literally trying to drag me into the appointment lobby by the arm, screaming and crying. That was the point I threatened to call the cops to get a restraining order and possession of my car. I told her if she succeeded in shoving me in to that office to be examined under duress, that I would be to using their phone to call the police. I missed the first day of college classes over that BS, and had to finish teaching myself how to drive. The next week I crashed into some dude's Jaguar in a parking lot because, surprise, my insane parent was more worried about me dying of AIDS than learning how to drive. I had to change the locks on my rental house too. I should have cut her out of my life completely then.

[AbbyNormal]

Wow. I'm going to bookmark this. I didn't know this was a thing. So, my uBPDm wanting me to sleep in the same bed with her and snuggle when I was 16yo wasn't just run of the mill enmeshment? She used to confide everything in me at a very young age. She would ask me to lie to her boyfriends about which boyfriend she'd seen the night before. I started helping with the household finances and paying my own way as a teen.

Even now, when I think about it, she still wants me to take on the role of her missing partner. She wants me to take her to appointments, take her grocery shopping, help her pay bills, do the maintenance on her house, etc.

Even creepier, she says my husband is the son she never had. She says she doesn't like his parents and wants to adopt him. Literally, she wants to legally adopt my husband. She seems oblivious to the creepiness level of how that would make him my brother. 

Can't talk about this anymore right now. I have to go breathe into a bag.

[charred]

Wow, sounds like this struck a chord in a lot of people... me included. Nearly everyone has talked about their mom being the one, in my case it was my malignant NPD dad. My mom was cold/distant to everyone, him included. And he treated me like I was his age... to the point of being ridiculous. He rode motorcycles ... and when I was 7 he got me one, and I rode with him and his friends... no other kids did, but I did (he was a doctor in a small town and was given more leeway than he should have been.)  We rode cycles each weekend... and they would bring beer to drink... and at 7... I was having beer because it would be summer, over 100 degrees and there was nothing else to drink.

He would talk to me about arguments he had with my mom, how she was unreasonable, didn't care, etc. He favored me so much over my sister that it was sad... he would plan trips to do things like go skiing or riding motorcycles out of state... and it would end up being him and I, but my sister either wouldn't be asked or invited... or worse, would be included ... . then at the last minute told she couldn't go. After a while she refused to discuss any of it with him, as she knew he wouldn't take her.

My folks eventually separated, and my sister and I lived with my mom, which was very unpleasant, as we didn't get along well... and she was passive aggressive in dealing with me, she would wait till I wanted to go somewhere with friends and say I didn't have some minor chore done ... and delay or stop me from going (despite me having asked and reasked many times whether everything was done... we lived on a farm... her thing not mine.)... So when my parents announced they were divorcing I chose to go with my dad (which wasn't expected)... and didn't see/talk with my mom for about 4 yrs... (she called to have me come out... I did and found out she wanted help burying our family dog that she was having put down that day... I was so hurt/pissed I didn't talk to her for a few more years.)

Anyway, I was always the responsible one, the one that looked out for everyone, I was barely out of high school and rescuing my dad's paperwork and taxes and everything else... we took a trip that was supposed to be 5 days, and it ran 14... he took me all over the place in an RV, then we went to Vegas and he wanted to get hookers... it was so twisted... I didn't and he acted like I was afraid of women.

He got more and more malignant over time, always had to have things better than me. I bought a 280Z when he had a VW Rabbit... a neighbor commented that I had a nicer car than my dad, next day he had a very expensive Vette roadster, and no VW. As I started making good money, he did what he could to get me to ruin my income... . when my wife got pregnant he tried to cause a miscarriage, and I ceased having anything to do with him... 2 yrs later he had medical power of attorney and orchestrated the death of my grandmother... at which point my whole family quit having anything to do with him.

Amazing what comes back to you when someone reminds you of something like being the adult to your parent growing up... no wonder I am attractive to a person with a PD... I had a childhood... it was about 3 yrs long... from about 4-7.

[LightnessOfBeing]

Even though this is an older thread, I'll speak here, for those who might be in the same situation - I am the left-out spouse. My BPD husband had a creepily enmeshing mother when he was growing up, and now he's repeating the pattern with my four year old stepson. It's heartbreaking to witness. My attempts at loving, civil interventions are - of course - met with lashing out and emotionally-violent deflection behavior by my husband.

I can well understand why the left-out spouse "turns to workaholism, alcohol, affairs, or other unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with an unhappy life at home"; it's a very off-putting dynamic to watch unfold. Seeing a grown man try to merge with a 4 year old, watching an adult use a small child for intimacy, companionship, ego fulfillment, etc is rather repulsive.    Among other things, it certainly decreases my desire for physical intimacy with my husband.

My BPDh craves symbiosis, he desperately seeks out engagement with others that replicates the Symbiotic Phase (see Margaret Mahler et al); Separation-Individuation isn't a state he handles well - when he's not actively enmeshed with either our child or myself (whom he turns to as the substitute when the child's not around), he instantly feels 'empty' and turns to drugs to get away from the feeling. My analogy is that of the 'windsock' figures one sees outside car washes, etc - those tall pipes of fabric with faces and hands at the top, connected to an air blower that makes the pipe of fabric remain upright and wave around. The moment that air source is removed, the windsock figure falls flat on the ground. When my husband isn't merging and snuggling and 'petting' (non sexual) with one of us - when he isn't wrapped in a cloud of infantic symbiosis - he immediately becomes empty and falls flat.

He's promised for over a year to go back into therapy; I wonder if he ever will. I know I can't live out the rest of my life with a spouse who is the way he is.