In many ways, childhood is a time of freedom and exploration – but that freedom to explore depends on adults providing a child with enough structure and guidance to feel safe. Children need to know their parents and the other grown-ups in their lives will take care of them.
Cultures around the world vary in how they raise children, but one thing is universal: people everywhere recognize that we are not born knowing how to get by in the world, and that children need protection to learn and grow in healthy ways. Kids aren’t just little adults, and there are many aspects of the adult world they are not ready to navigate on their own.
One of the most important ways that adults create safety for children is by setting healthy emotional boundaries. Adults can help kids navigate intense emotions. Kids are not equipped to help adults navigate their own emotional landscapes.
A client recently brought up the concept of “Emotional incest” to me in session. I hadn’t heard of this and was intrigued. It is also called “covert incest” which takes place when an adult relies on a child for emotional support. Instead of taking responsibility for the child’s emotional health, the adult treats the child like a friend, a partner, or a therapist. It doesn’t involve sex – but it does involve expecting a child to play the role of an adult.
“Emotional incest” could be a mother asking a son for advice about navigating a rough patch in her marriage, instead of letting her son know that adults fight sometimes, but the grown-ups in his life will love and care for him no matter what. It could be a father who constantly needs his daughter to praise him and make him feel accomplished and important, instead of focusing on celebrating her accomplishments and letting her respect and appreciation for him develop organically.
Closeness between a parent and child is great, and so is honest emotional sharing – but only if they are age appropriate. When it comes to their parents’ finances, self esteem, and intimate relationships, kids need parents to model healthy boundaries, good self-care, and personal emotional responsibility.
Children who are forced to become caregivers, protectors, or confidants for the adults in their lives struggle to get their own emotional needs met. The unrealistic expectation that they can make the world safe for the people who are supposed to make the world feel safe for them can make kids feel anxious, inadequate, insecure, overwhelmed, and afraid.
Children who experience emotional incest often grow into teenagers and adults who struggle to find healthy ways to meet their own emotional needs. Lacking good models for building connection, they will often struggle to find balance in friendships, the workplace, and romantic and intimate relationships. Trouble managing emotional intensity can lead to unhealthy relationships with alcohol, drugs, sex, work, or food.
If you are reading this and thinking that it sounds an awful lot like what took place in your childhood home, there is hope. Healing from emotional incest begins with learning to give your inner child the love and care they never received and learning tools and techniques to establish good boundaries and manage intense emotions. Therapy is one great way to find support for that healing. As the saying goes, it is never too late to have a healthy childhood.