Emotional Incest

[Progress Not Perfection]

I am new to this site but I found something today that absolutely blew my mind with how relevant it was to my experience, it is this concept of emotional incest. This article: https://bpdfamily.com/content/was-part-your-childhood-deprived-emotional-incest as well as reading an old forum about this topic, has helped me SO much! So I thought I would start a new forum in case anyone else wants to chime in, or in the hopes that maybe someone reads this and thinks "wow, so that's what that was!"

My mom is uBPD, and when I read about physically abusive BPDs I feel guilty because she wasn't "that bad". But the term emotional incest totally sums up what she did to me, and how it affects me to this day, in spite of years and years of counseling.

When I was really little we spent all of our time together, and I remember feeling so special. She has said that we were "best friends" even when I was 4 or 5. I distinctly remember taking driving trips to see extended family and feeling like I had to stay awake to keep her company, and I couldn't have been older than 5. I still have extreme anxiety about sleeping if someone else is driving, which makes me wonder if she told me I had to stay awake and talk to her... .

When my sister was born I was almost 7, and yet I have always felt like I was her parent. When watching a video of mom with BPD giving birth to my sister (which is only the tip of the TMI iceberg... .) my mom got teary eyed and said "I always felt like she was our little girl, our baby" meaning ME and  HER.

My dad traveled a lot for business and whenever he was gone she would make me sleep in her bed to keep her company... which I was happy to do because I was little and she was my "wonderful caring mommy"... I continued to either sleep with her or sleepwalk into bed with her almost every single night until I was 13 or 14. This used to make me feel so ashamed and like I was so messed up but now I am starting to see that maybe it wasn't ME that created that creepy/unhealthy dynamic but HER.

When she and my dad divorced it got worse and I had more emotional care taking to do... .I have always been her therapist/"best friend" according to her... .setting me up for feeling like any friendship is contingent on me taking care of the other person, and having no needs of my own. When she started dating/having promiscuous sex with new men (who were all creeps) I felt left out and jealous of the attention she gave them, but she would shame me for wanting to be close to her. I could barely sleep alone because she had fostered such codependency, but she would make me feel like I was bad for "needing" her. Meanwhile whenever it was convenient for HER i had to be on call to take care of her every need. i feel like i never got to be a child, and also felt/feel shame for having "taken on" more than I should have... .as if I had a choice in the matter. The concept of parentification always hit home with me, but didn't quite capture my whole experience... .so it is a huge relief to have another word for what i went through.

Does this concept resonate with anyone else? And any advice on how to move forward, with the BPD or within romantic relationships? I have set some strong boundaries with my mom, but still struggle in my marriage and in friendships... .it is starting to make more sense now but I'm unsure where to go next?

[Cheshire]

Emotional incest is a familiar concept to a lot of us here. My BPDm chose me out of three to latch into this way. Identifying this part of my history was a tough process. I do so hate the label, but it was quite real for me as well as my two brothers. I have been nc for three years this sept, but both of my brothers still spend time with her.  She tried to latch into my brothers son (14 at the time), and eventually he got creeped out. Next was the same brothers younger daughter. She is now cut off from contact to both kids (thank the maker) due to several inappropriate "little talks" she had with them while drunk. I'm still working with my T to sort out my damage and heal myself. At some point I may have to explain this concept to my brothers. Both drink to dull the pain and won't talk about her, but I hold out hope they'll find a way out of the FOG. Good luck in you journey.

- Cheshire

[littlebirdcline]

I can relate.  My mother has told me her entire life that I'm the only one who she can talk to, confiding everything in me.  As a little girl, I had to hear all the problems in her marriage to my father (which I'm still listening to today), the problems with my very ill brother, her mother and family, her past, everything... .  I was made to feel that if I didn't listen to her, she would have no one and would be completely lost.  I have rehashed trauma with her that happened before I was even born over and over my entire life.  If I give her suggestions or try to help her "deal" with it, she says I'm supposed to just listen.  It's so much pressure.  Add to that I am an actor, who as an adult has spent a lot of time learning to access my emotions (which were always ignored) and be empathetic to others.  This just makes it worse.  My brother, who, as a I say has had physical health issues his entire life, was spared most of this.  And he is allowed to express himself freely with her, telling her to shut the f@#k up when she starts dumping on him.  If I did that, it would be a mega meltdown.  It often feels like she thinks my function in life is to be her emotional support.  Isn't it supposed to the other way around?

This doesn't help you, I know, but saying I identify.  It's so hard to change a dynamic as an adult that was ingrained from early childhood.  Especially when the other person doesn't see anything wrong with it.  I wish you luck- I'm trying to figure this out myself.  If I find the "magic pill", I'll let you know!

[ForeverDad]

That's an excellent article.  It's hard to undo years of such behavior, but strong boundaries are a crucial part of the process to rebuild our lives.  It's clear that the inappropriate parent hasn't changed and may never change, so it's up to us to erect better and stronger boundaries.  And it's always OK to say No, walk away, whatever it takes to stop the old patterns.  Better late than never.

[Finding Courage]

YES! When I finally discovered the term emotional incest I realized that it was a perfect label for my experience with my mom.  My mom wasn't physically abusive either but the emotional abuse of emotional incest is also quite harmful and insidious.  My mom saw me as a tool to meet her own needs, but her best friend, fill her emotional problems, and it was a boundary-less harmful relationship.  It has taken me years to undo the damage.  I like the term emotional incest because I feel like for me, minus the physical component, the experience and trauma are very similar to sexual abuse.  Children should not be used in these ways. 

Best wishes to you.

[claudiaduffy]

Progressnotperfection,



... .and, yes, emotional incest is absolutely possible and probable in your story. (I've been gone from these boards for over a year, but my mom is uBPD, high functioning and sort of BPD-light - not nearly as bad as a lot of sufferers - and my husband's mom is uBPD/NPD, very very bad off and abusive. Both of us put up with emotional incest in different ways, both were used by our moms to make up for what they felt they lacked from our dads and from close friends, whom they both pushed away.)

I found the term "emotional incest" to be really helpful to me personally as it allowed me to describe accurately what my abuse actually was, in a specific and serious term that helped me recognize that I did not have to feel guilty for thinking of my mom as abusive. I hope it does this for you, too!

Do you want to share about how you're struggling with the implications in your marriage? I'd love to listen and commiserate. 

[Progress Not Perfection]

Thank you all SO much for your caring and empathic responses! It helps tremendously just to know I am not alone and to hear from folks who are further along in their journey than I am.

As for how this impacts my marriage, I think the main way that i see it happening is that I struggle a lot with expressing my needs, and this is very related to questioning whether or not my husband "really" loves me. I am finally starting to see that this is likely because he does NOT use me, and this makes me question if it is "real" love if he doesn't totally NEED me. It is making a lot more sense to me now why I can't always feel or accept love -- I think it is due in large part to the very confusing and damaging ways that my mom has always showed me love. It's like I can't quite wrap my head/heart around the notion that someone would actually love me for ME, and not for what I can do for them. Our relationship isn't perfect but I'm extremely grateful that my hubby sticks around and is helping me work through some of this, mostly by listening and letting me vent and validating my experiences. 

I feel like my journey has really started now! I have known my mom was BPD for years, but I always felt like if she wasn't raging, she was "doing better" and that I shouldn't be upset if she wasn't yelling or being cruel. Now I am acknowledging that even the closeness and what always felt like nurturance was ultimately damaging! I always have thought I had symptoms of someone who was traumatized and now i get it.

Thanks to you all for reading, and responding! Seriously... these forums are such a warm and welcoming place and I feel super grateful to you all!

[claudiaduffy]

I feel like my journey has really started now! I have known my mom was BPD for years, but I always felt like if she wasn't raging, she was "doing better" and that I shouldn't be upset if she wasn't yelling or being cruel. Now I am acknowledging that even the closeness and what always felt like nurturance was ultimately damaging! I always have thought I had symptoms of someone who was traumatized and now i get it.

I am applauding you! Yes, yes, yes, this exactly. I went through so many loops of "my mom is doing better, so I shouldn't keep her at arm's length so much" until I started understanding that while she may learn that some of her worst tactics don't work on me anymore, she can't "get better" in a way that makes her more trustworthy or normal. But I can "get better" in how I limit the damage she is capable of doing to me, by changing myself, not by hoping she'll change.

[Woolspinner2000]

Hi Progressnotperfection!

Such great responses!  I first became aware of emotional incest when I read a book about boys, to help me raise our son in a better way than I had observed in my family. I was reading along and saw that a parent should never use their children as emotional substitutes for the relationship they don't have with their spouse. Warning bells went off in my head and I said, "Oh my gosh! That's exactly what my mom used to do with all three of us children!" I did not have any idea it was connected to BPD until about 8 years later.

I too have struggled with if those around me, especially my husband, 'really' love me. Because of emotional incest, the only way I learned to recognize what I thought, felt, and perceived truly as love was if there was emotional unhealthiness taking place, or what I now know is 'unhealthy' love. In the past couple months I've come up with my own list of what I thought was love. Here are a few examples of what love was to me: demanding love, smothering love, appeasing love, controlling love, conditional love, and invasive love. Those are all so extremely unhealthy and really have nothing to do with love at all, but I very much thought they were love. Without them, I've been lost, struggling to find what feels loving in the healthy realm, and I'm finally on the track to saying the following are examples of what real love is all about:  quieting love, trusting love, beautiful love, accepting love, patient love, equipping love, and safe love to name a few.

You are on the right track too! Keep at it! You'll find real love as you grow and heal.  

Woolspinner

[claudiaduffy]

Here are a few examples of what love was to me: demanding love, smothering love, appeasing love, controlling love, conditional love, and invasive love. Those are all so extremely unhealthy and really have nothing to do with love at all, but I very much thought they were love. Without them, I've been lost, struggling to find what feels loving in the healthy realm, and I'm finally on the track to saying the following are examples of what real love is all about:  quieting love, trusting love, beautiful love, accepting love, patient love, equipping love, and safe love to name a few.

Woolspinner,

This is beautiful. May I quote this online to a couple of friends who would benefit from it? I won't link anything that would lead anyone back to your actual post (usually I believe in citing sources, but protecting the privacy of this place supersedes that!)

[Woolspinner2000]

Claudiaduffy,

Please feel free! I share here on the BPD site to help others grow from my baby steps, and if it will be an encouragement to someone else, go for it. I'm honored. 

It was good for me to go back to my 'love' notes yesterday and post about real love as I did here. Too easily I forget and need to be reminded!

Woolspinner

[claudiaduffy]

Yay! Thank you! 

[Progress Not Perfection]

Woolspinner, I agree wholeheartedly with claudiaduffy, your description is very insightful and helpful! I too am working on recognizing what is actually love that helps me grow and feel safe, and also to feel more self sufficient, as opposed to "love" that creates dependence and fear and anxiety and feeling invaded and put upon. Thankfully I have a partner who is really good at the "real" love and encourages me to care for myself more than I care for him. Thanks to you all for the encouragement and support, it is so helpful! 

[Cheshire]

Yeah, I'll echo that: good list, Woolspinner! I can identify with all of those.

[Turkish]

I am new to this site but I found something today that absolutely blew my mind with how relevant it was to my experience, it is this concept of emotional incest. This article: https://bpdfamily.com/content/was-part-your-childhood-deprived-emotional-incest as well as reading an old forum about this topic, has helped me SO much! So I thought I would start a new forum in case anyone else wants to chime in, or in the hopes that maybe someone reads this and thinks "wow, so that's what that was!"

My mom is uBPD, and when I read about physically abusive BPDs I feel guilty because she wasn't "that bad".

I think many of us feel that way. My mom even implied once, when I mentioned that she may have abused me, something like, "well, here is what my father did to me!" and then would proceed to explain his horrible behaviors. I was an adult at this point, however.

I distinctly remember taking driving trips to see extended family and feeling like I had to stay awake to keep her company, and I couldn't have been older than 5. I still have extreme anxiety about sleeping if someone else is driving, which makes me wonder if she told me I had to stay awake and talk to her... .

Being a single mom working night shift, she always suffered from a lack of sleep. When I was little (7-10), she would make me responsible for awaking her in the evenings. I was on my own inside or outside for most of the day. If I failed to awake her, she'd get mad at me. I used to call "mom, mom, mom!" and she wouldn't respond. So I figured out that if I called her by her name, at least she'd respond, if even with a grunt or moan. That worked sometimes.

My mom commuted from the rural area where we lived for over an hour to work in the city. That was when I was 12 and she moved us to the unfinished barn shell in the woods with no electricity, plumbing, running water, or even an outhouse. She wouldn't leave me at "home" so I had to come with her to the city to sleep on the horrible vinyl couches in the nursing home she worked at with those rough hospital blankets (at least the pillows were ok). I remember we were coming home from the city one night, and here I don't remember why we were coming home at night--- it might have been just a trip to the city on one of her days off---, and she was falling asleep. She kept telling me to keep her awake. I was 12, exhausted myself. We were within 8 miles of home, and driving a particularly curvy stretch of mountain road. There had been numerous accidents and a few deaths on one particularly nasty curve. I fell asleep and remember awaking with the headlights highlighting a huge oak tree in front of the car. We were pointing downwards at about a 50 degree angle. Luckily, there was vegetation and saplings that slowed the car so we only tapped the large oak, and we must have not been going that fast. Being in an old Ford Pinto may have helped as well. My mom said later she awoke to the sound of me screaming. I don't remember screaming, so by the time I shook off the fog of sleep, which must have been in only seconds, I was stable. Like many similar episodes, I don't remember being scared, really. It was just another "day in the life" at that time. Maybe it's why I don't find things all that shocking.

Shortly after this incident, my mom asked if I wanted to learn how to drive. I said yes. She taught me how to shift from the passenger seat, and then how to drive on back roads. By the time I was 13, in the mid '80s, I was driving on curvy mountain roads, mostly at night, by myself, with my mom sleeping in the passenger seat. It was over an hour's drive to the city. By definition, I guess it was Parentification, but I just thought it was cool to learn to drive at such a young age in adverse conditions (shortly afterwards, in mud and snow). Learning to drive at a young age is pretty typical for kids growing up in rural areas. Being responsible for "taking care" of my mother was not.

Does this concept resonate with anyone else? And any advice on how to move forward, with the BPD or within romantic relationships? I have set some strong boundaries with my mom, but still struggle in my marriage and in friendships... .it is starting to make more sense now but I'm unsure where to go next?

It's why I am here. I always sought out "waifs" to "take care of." I came here due to the disintegration of my r/s with my uBPDx and mother of our two young children. She would completely deny that I "took care" of her, but in one of our break up conversations, she said she was looking for someone to "lead her" and "guide her." To her (a 32 year old semi-professional woman), I failed in that. She is correct in one sense, in that I got tired of being responsible for her feelings and happiness. When I withdrew from doing that (to focus on our kids), she found a replacement. Now my challenge is to never seek out to "parent" or "take care of" someone like that again. I have two small children. I don't need a third. My mom is my third, in a way.

To me, it's important to recognize my values (not my "rescuing" values), iterate them to my partner, and to not sacrifice my core values for another ever again. I recognized that I did so in my r/s, and resented her for it. But that was me, not her. I also erected boundaries with my BPD mother.

All of this is a work in process.

[DreamFlyer99]

Such an interesting subject! and one I can fortunately say, "i escaped THAT one!" Sorry all of you who did go through it though--

Something my T says to me periodically as needed: "Those beliefs helped you survive your childhood, but how much are they helping you in your adult life?" And so I've learned to challenge some of my old garbage where my needs and feelings come out waaaaay below the needs and feelings of others. i'm finally learning to take care of myself.

Another thing I told my T was that I finally realized in my r/s with my uBPDh of more than 30 years was that the times between rages were really just The Eye of the Storm... .and the storm would surely be back. That helped me keep a clearer perspective of the totality of the r/s.

May we all continue learning on this curvy night road of life.

df