Discover How Developmental Trauma Hinders Adult Attachment and What You Can Do to Overcome It (Episode 14) -Special guest Jon Taylor

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Something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh Something's around.

Welcome to the Human intimacy podcast. I'm Dr. Kevin Skinner. In the Human Intimacy Podcast, we talk about everything about relationships. The focus is on helping us create deep, intimate relationships. So we're going to be talking about the challenges and the adversity, some of the barriers to intimacy. We're going to talk about things that include addiction and addiction recovery. We're going to talk about dealing with life's traumas and adversity, how to go through grief and loss, how to be the best in relationships that we can possibly be. Today I'm excited to introduce my friend and colleague, John Taylor. I met John back in 2013 when we were both being trained to become certified sex addiction therapists. John is the founder of White Pine Recovery and he also trains with Dr. Ken Adams, where they have a special training for Mother Enmeshed Men, a profoundly influential program to help individuals overcome developmental challenges and traumas that they experienced in their early relationships. All right, I'm so excited to introduce John today. All right, John, so I've known you, I think it was Santa Fe in 2013. Unbelievable. It's been 11 years. Tell our audience a little bit about yourself and what you're currently doing.

Yeah, so like, like Dr. Skinner mentioned, we met at Santa Fe at a certified sex addiction therapist training. I'm, I'm a social worker by education and that's, that's my primary focus in my career is helping individuals and couples where there's been intimate betrayal or addiction. So I, I have a clinic, a private practice in Kaysville, Utah, White Pine Recovery, where I focus on helping couples where there's been intimate Betrayal. And this niche that over the last seven or eight years, I've really folded into my practice and my focus. I help enmeshed individuals. And we'll talk more about what that is in a minute here. But I do individual therapy. I do some group therapy. I do lots of couples therapy and some individualized couples intensives as well. And that's my. My passion. And what I think the funnest part of my job is, I think working with couples is the most dynamic, interesting, fun part of what I get to do.

It's a lot of fun and. And it's a lot of hard work.

Right? Yeah.

All right, so I want to start off today concept we were talking about before we started the podcast, developmental trauma. Developmental challenges that individuals and couples have. Let's just start off with that topic. Just what are you thinking about? Developmental trauma.

Yeah, so this, this is something that I think as we start to define it, your listeners will be like, oh, yeah, I've run into that because I think we all have a version of that. We all have something in us. So a big part of the work of our relationship after we commit and after we're together is, okay, now I really have to find out who you are and how you tick if we want this thing to work. So some of the discovery we look forward to. It's really fun. Like, you know, I never, I never knew you loved that music. I never knew that was your favorite food. I've never heard that memory before. We both really enjoy it. And then some of that discovery is like getting smacked in the head with a 2x4. And developmental traumas, I think, fall into that category. They're. They're. It has to do with how our expectations around attachment, commitment, intimacy, trust, proximity are formed. So when. When we have the, quote, unquote, ideal childhood, which I, I don't know anybody who has that, supposedly we emerge into adulthood with some flexibility. There's room for growth when we meet new challenges. We. We tend to meet those challenges with curiosity, creativity, empathy, inquiry, all those qualities that again, we really, really want in a partner. But is. Is not necessarily given. So it's an indication of trauma or a developmental issue. Sometimes it's not always trauma when, as a relationship goes on, the more time we've spent together, the more demands and complexity there is in the relationship. We're noticing deficits. We're noticing like this, this expected way that an adult my age should be able to show up or handle things I can't. So that can be an indication of a developmental Trauma or some kind of rupture in the early attachment system, some kind of rupture in the early family, or even some kind of structural issue in early attachment that gave us an expectation around our relationships and intimacy and all that that makes us too rigid. We can't adapt. Some of the language from. I believe this comes from adult child of alcoholics and dysfunctional family. They talk about coping mechanisms that worked in childhood that we carry into adulthood. Think of that as those developmental trauma issues. It's this part of me that becomes activated and my adult flexible, creative self is not able or present to help solve relationship issues.

What's interesting is you bring this up. I was talking with Dr. Jill Manning. I don't know if you know Jill. Oh yeah, over in Colorado. She did a podcast with me early on and interesting. She. We were talking about emotional immaturity.

And.

And as individuals, they get stuck at certain phases of maybe a specific experience, a traumatic event. Maybe it's their first time experiencing some intense emotion through sexual. Their sexuality. And sometimes they get stuck there. And really when you get stuck at a certain place, you really don't continue emotional development over time. I think this is part of a segue into what you're talking about here. Really get stuck at certain timeframes.

Yeah, I think there's all sorts of things, Kevin, that have labels that I think, like I get the label of emotional immature. I think it describes really well what's happening, but it doesn't describe how that came to be. And that idea of developmental trauma, I think is really handy both for therapists and couples to recognize that there's a real issue here. There's a real hang up, there's a real hardship. You know, a really obvious developmental trauma would be like sexual assault in childhood. And with someone who, you know, unfortunately went through that. If, if they arrive at a marriage and they have a hard time with things like loud voices, sudden movements, all things sexual, like, we wouldn't look at that and say, gosh, you're sexually immature. We'd look at that and we'd say there's a wound that, that limits and dictates how free and present and flexible you can be in this relationship. And with, with some work and acknowledgement on that wound and helping the relationship arrange itself in a way that holds that person well. There is a greater latitude of flexibility. There's a greater latitude of, of willingness and ability there. So these, these developmental traumas, they usually don't present in a huge way early on in the relationship because the relationship doesn't demand a lot of the individuals relatively early on. It's. It's when things get more complex, when there's a need to move past that initial start point where we're attracted to each other and this is really fun. Or you're interested. Or interested.

The easy phase, right?

Yeah, the relatively easy phase that I'm sure if you. If any of your listeners are dating right now, they'd say that's not easy at all. But relatively.

Relatively. Yeah.

Yeah. When you're building a life together, these developmental traumas tend to become more profound. They're more profoundly pronounced as the relationship moves on through time and the demand greater.

And as core concept there, I often say there's always a story. The question is, is what's the story that, that we haven't seen or we've missed that prevents a person from being present in this current relationship? And oftentimes, as we go back and we look at that, I love this concept of looking at developmental. What I refer to as key life events or what we've been taught, you know, key life events, what are they? And. And are there certain places that we are stuck at because they've never really been resolved.

And that, you know, some writers, like Harvl Hendricks, talks a lot about this. That, that's. That is like the most beautiful thing that relationships can do is we're set up really, really well to not only expose those developmental traumas, but push on them in a way that. That can actually promote growth. As long as we're sensitive to each other, as long as we recognize that's what's going on, as we have an opportunity for growth, we have an opportunity for healing. This relationship can provide what no other relationship before has provided that I need. But it. It often, like, like I said in the beginning, these developmental traumas, we become aware because they smack us in the face. So it. It takes a reorientation away from, you know, how. How crappy it is that we're finding out we have a problem into, like you said, the story behind it, why we have the problem. And in all of. In all of trauma work, I think it's really, really important that the specific narrative about the specific trauma is right. I've seen this. I learned early on in my career, I used to say to clients, I'll read this book. It's really good for your situation, but you have to look at it through this lens. It's not written specifically to you. And I'd get surprised when clients would come back and be like, I couldn't resonate. And I'll say, and I would say to them, well, you know, I told you, like, just switch the paradigm just a little bit. And, and you got it. And there's really something. When we've been hurt that way, my specific story and the specific way I experienced it, there's something that starts to open up space for healing, space for recognition in that, you know, as I.

Look at that, how many times have we sat with clients who've never really felt understood using that phrase, feeling felt from Dan Siegel. Right. Somebody who's willing to really be with them and let them express that story that maybe has never been talked about.

And, and you know, I want to talk specifically about enmeshment as a developmental trauma today. And, and that's one of those things that you look at any developmental trauma and there's, there's taboos around talking about any of them. Sexual assault, parentification, enmeshment, even like extreme poverty in a family growing up. Also, also, you could say extreme wealth poses its own problems. But there's this, like, there's a lot about our culture that doesn't let us really talk about the nitty gritty and how it really is. There's a lot that we feel induced to hide and that makes it that much harder to, to open up to the, the healing and the development that, you know, we wish would have happened earlier, but it didn't, and now we've got to get it later in life.

So a couple things let's. You talked a little bit about the poverty or having money. You also talked about this concept of enmeshment. Let's talk with our listeners kind of meaning of enmeshment so they can, you know, put application. What. How does this apply to me? What do you mean by enmeshment?

Yeah, yeah, so what. What enmeshment is, think about it this way, is when being close to a parent or even being close as a family is too much. Now, don't get me, don't get me wrong here. I think it's one of the most wonderful things in the world to have a close, loving relationship between parents and children. I think it's awesome to have close loving relationships among siblings and even larger family systems. But we see again and again in the research that one of the preconditions for intimacy and attachment is something that we call differentiation. So while we can all come together and be this, like, greater than the sum of the parts, whole differentiation means that those individual parts don't lose their individual qualities in order to be part of the relationship. It's actually the other way around. The relationship forms around the individual parts. And I think that's one of the things that can feel so good about being part of a really bonded, attuned, close relationship is this was custom built for me. It's not this I became something, and now I deserve this. It's I. I found someone or I'm a part of something where we all care more about the people than the roles that they play or what they produce. And so we build a family, we build a system, we build a coupleship that's a perfect fit, as perfect as it can be. So when we talk about enmeshment, we're talking about a relationship that primarily serves the emotional needs of the parent, not the children or in. In broader families. I see this with a lot of adults that I work with, especially families that look like a family business. The relationship primarily serves the need of the family image, not the individuals in.

It going along with this. I know you have countless cases where, you know, you've seen individuals like this, but I'll never forget one that I had where this individual was getting into a committed relationship, and in this specific case, his mother felt so threatened by this person he was dating that she did everything possible to sabotage that relationship emotionally. She's not going to be good for you. So much so that even calling her family and saying, you know, my son's really got some challenges. So she was actually attacking her own son. Even though she. She loved her son, it enmeshed to her son, and she felt like him pulling away was such a threat to her.

I wish I could say that's an outlier story for the work that I do, but that's a real common part of it. As another. Another marker, there is no. You're a parent. And you know those bittersweet moments when you realize, like, my. My kid is shifting their attention from me to something else. And it's just like, all right, here we are. You're going out in the world and you're ready to do that. And then there's also this loss. That loss is real. The. The developmental task for the parent. My colleague Ken Adams will say, the last task of the parent is to take the loss. It's to let the kid go. And not like, I have nothing to do with you, but this full recognition. You get to live your own life. You get to make your own choices. And whether they're the choices I would make or not, that's not the point. Whether they make me happy or not is not the point. Your life is in service of you and what you're building, not me. And in meshed families, sometimes that's really overt, where, you know, people will hear, who do you think you are? You're a fill in the blank for your last name. This is how we act. And a lot of times it's more covert than that. It's this guilt, it's this obligation.

Yeah. And if I was to just real quick to build off that, it's not only that, that emotional pool, I feel like I'm betraying this system that I grew up in. Because if I start to individually and pull myself away, differentiate, as you say, then I begin to think, am I, am I, am I doing something wrong? Am I letting this system down?

Well, and often you'll see in these enmeshed systems, the emphasis is more on the relationship between the roles, not the individuals. So that sense of like, I'm letting the system down and I'm doing damage, that doesn't come out of nowhere. Because the system that's so rigidly built around roles, when somebody starts to pull back and either say, you know, I, I'm thinking about my family. I grew up in a family of six kids and my youngest sister right now, she and I have talked a lot of her work right now she said, I'm not the family mascot anymore. It was fun when I was little, but I'm grown up now and I need to be a grown up in this family, which I think is awesome for her. And, and that is something that needs to develop and change. But families that rely on those roles, they'll feel the, it's like, it's like taking out a load bearing wall in your house. It does start to collapse. So the, the individual in an enmeshed family doesn't get the experience of people saying, it's so awesome. You found your own way. We're here for you. They get the feeling of where are you? In fact, there's this, there's this picture that we show the guys in I, I run workshops for enmeshed men. Our level two workshop, this is an actual picture that one of the participants was sent after the level one workshop where he started setting functional boundaries with his mother. And he was saying things like, I need to be my own person. I'm not going to talk to you every day by phone. I'll talk to you when I feel like I need to talk to you again. That, that reasonable stuff. His brother and his mother sent a picture holding A cardboard sign. His name was Kevin. They, they great name sign that said, yeah, they're holding a sign that said where's Kevin? And it was this thing that reverberated through the family. They could feel his emotional withdrawal. And instead of seeing what he was putting that emotional energy to his own relationship, his children, his career, they just felt the, you've taken it from us. Where are you? You owe us essentially.

And developmentally, when we stay stuck there, it really prevents us from connecting in our new relationship or forming new relationships because we're tor. Rather than feeling it's complementary and we're strengthening each other and we love each other. But that's where I see the greatest damage being done, is I feel like I have to choose between one or the other. And when I have to choose like that, it damages all relationships.

Yeah. You know, Bodine and I think this research was done in 1989. My kids would say that's super old. I would tell them it's not that old. But they, they, they looked at like a couple hundred couples and you know, what, what, what indicates a happy couple? And they came up with like seven factors. The number one factor was both. These were heterosexual couples. Both the men and the woman felt they could separate from their families of origin and form an independent identity both as individuals and together. That was the number one factor in what made these couples happy. And Bodine went on to say that refraining from guilt or unnecessary coercion may be an expression of love. If I were as editor, I'd go back and take out the maybe and I'd say it's absolutely an expression of love to take the loss. Because in these families, the family is held together by obligatory demands for loyalty, obligatory commitments. The parents needs and demands interfere with the child leaving, separating romantic relationships essentially and enmeshed relationships. The parent is the God in the system, which is one as wonderful as some of our parents are. I don't think that God status is a great place for any human being to hold.

Right. And one of the consequences of that is we cope. And that's really. If we could talk a little bit about the coping strategies that people use when they're in that kind of a system. Because I think more often than not, yeah, we can describe a system. But how do you cope when you don't know how to deal with a system?

Yeah, and it's, it's this coping that usually starts to clue people. And this is when they start to do their Internet searches. Why, why do I feel like I'm the second woman compared to my, my partner's mother. It's the coping. So here's some of the coping that we see. When the enmeshed individual is young and the complete loyalty is demanded by the family, there's no conflict for the kid. I mean, there's no relational conflict. I say, I'm going to be here, I'm going to be here. When, when there's a committed partnership, we'll see a lot of ambivalence emerge. So maybe I commit to everybody and I pull through for no one. Maybe I just don't commit. Well, I have to see. I have to check my calendar. And one of the guys I had in a level one workshop, we were talking about losses they'd accumulated. And this one hit him right between the eyes. He said, you know, since college I've had a really great group of friends and I've noticed they don't reach out to me anymore. They don't ask me to, to do anything. And he said, I'm realizing my inability to commit and say, yes, I'll be there Friday night for darts and pool. He said, I would always say, I'll have to see or sounds fun. And he couldn't commit. And these friends who, who loved him dearly, just, you know, he never shows up. You, you compound that. In a relationship where there are needs, like we hear a lot of partners of enmeshed men saying, like, I parent all by myself. I handle the emotional load all by myself. It's not this lack of willingness on the guy. It's this torn loyalty. Who do I show up for? Because the reality is a bonded relationship requires that we make choices that will disappoint people outside of that bonded relationship. And that's part of what we sign up for. If it's going to be a good relationship. We kind of have this thing that we say, I'm willing to disappoint people outside this relationship because what we have is so valuable. Another coping that we'll see is we'll see a lot of. There's a struggle with commitment. We'll see a lot of folks in our workshops, they really lack a sense of identity because their identity was formed around their parents reaction to them. Am I making you happy? Am I doing what you want me to do? So they, they're more identified with a role that they play than the person that they are. And as exhilarating and great as some of those roles can be, it's just not. A role is not a person. They're not. It's not the same thing. So we'll often see one of the coping mechanisms. And this, this came out in some research that Dr. Ken Adams and I did. The beginning of this year. We asked the connection between sexual addiction and enmeshment for men who struggled with both. And they all talked about, in the beginning, sex was my sense of freedom. Secret sex was my sense of freedom. I could do whatever I wanted there. Nobody knew what was going on. So we'll often see in about 50% of the 1500 enmeshed men that we've had take the survey, over 50% say they struggle with some kind of addiction, some kind of secret life. They really struggle with the difference between secrecy and privacy, because in a mesh system, there is no privacy. It's all intrusion.

Right. And. And ultimately there it's. I'm the coping, you say. I would also say it is the area I can control that my. A part of my life. And if I can control that part of it, even though I feel like I'm out of control, it is a place where I feel like I can be in control, whether that's drinking or drugs or sex or all of the above. It's the area. In some ways, I think it's almost like this adolescent temper tantrum. Like, I'm not going to be controlled because I feel like I've lost my identity and I'm. I'm trying to take something back that I can't influence or control.

Yeah, there's a lot of that. We see. I would call it like a sensitivity to intrusion. So in a relationship that I'm choosing this request of like, hey, could you tell me when you're leaving work so I know when you're going to be home? Perfectly reasonable request for an enmeshed person. They'll experience that as that intrusive control, and they'll throw a temper tantrum in response. They won't want to be pinned down or why do you have to know? And so, again, a lot of these partners will be like, am I asking for too much? Is this wrong, what I want? And the answer, like, 99% of time is no, you're not asking for the wrong things. You, you. You're both just forgetting that this guy comes from a background where he didn't have choice. And he's trying to live in this world where he can make everybody happy and make his own choices, which doesn't exist.

Which is where a lot of the confusion really comes in. It's because, again, I. For my entire life, I've been fighting for my own identity. Now you're asking me. It feels like it's a reminder of the control that I experienced in my childhood.

You're.

You're, you're telling me I can't do this and I can't do this. Boy, that feels exactly like my experience growing up. And I'm. I'm going to be resistant to that because I didn't want to marry my mom or I didn't want to marry into that kind of a system. So there's a lot of resistance there.

Yeah. And it's. Again, think about it through the lens of trauma. It's often not. We tell the guys, there's three ways that your enmeshment is going to. To manifest itself in your relationships. You'll either pick someone who's exactly like your mother or your family of origin, and that happens in the smallest number of cases, or you will project. This is inside me. This is my fear. So, like, my, you know, my mom was too close and controlling. So everyone's too close and controlling. That's a projection. Or you'll provoke. And that's the one we see most often is. It's, it's not like he married someone who's like his mom, but she can become angry and demanding in the face of his withdrawal, in the face of his, you know, continued broken promises over commitment and under delivery. And so unbeknownst to both of them, the dynamic that they're living in, and this is how developmental issues manifest all the time. The dynamic that we're living in is exactly the thing that traumatized me. It's exactly the thing that's hardest for me. So when. When I work with couples where there's enmeshment, that's one of the first things that we look at is what are the emotions that are on the table and where do those come from? You know, I have. I have one guy who has to remind himself every time his partner makes a request, he has to remind himself, she's a really nice person, she's a good person. She's never wanted to control me. And he has to remind himself that every time, because every time he hears request, he hears his mother's demanding voice, he hears her criticism. Because it started from. For most of these guys, like, you know, things happen through. Through childhood. I have a good friend I, I worked with in our teenage years. I don't remember exactly what happened, but he ended up needing to, like, make money for the family when he was like, 16. And that was really, really rough. But that was not how the family worked before that point. It was this crisis and it was tough for him, but he emerged with a lot of identity intact. There was still stuff to work through. But for a lot of these invested individuals, we see it's from day one, they are a possession or a role in the family, not a person. And so that, that difficulty with individual wants and needs, that feeling of intrusion, it's so profound. Not because they're sensitive, it's so profound because there is like, again, from day one, it's almost as if, you know, they're trying to grow into a strong, healthy person with a parent sitting on their chest there. There's real restriction there.

And when we find individuals in those kind of situations, many times at least I hear this question of, so what do I do with my family, my mom or my dad? What do I do in this situation? Because I. I feel torn. But every time I go into that in system and, and now I've got my wife with me. Every time we go in there, it feels like there's a battle. I don't care. Holidays, events, every time we go around them, it feels like I'm going into a battlefield. How do I interact with them? What do you suggest there, John?

Yeah, so the, the precursor to that, and we're finding this more and more in the research. One of the differences between enmeshment recovery and a lot of other kinds of like perpetual harmful behavior recovery is enmeshment. Recovery doesn't start with a behavior change. It starts with an examination of yourself. It starts with getting the story right. So first it's. It's recognizing things. It's being able to say things. Like, when I'm around my family of origin, I turn into this person, or these parts of me come up that don't feel good or don't work well. And then we talk about three distinct phases of, of moving out of enmeshment. There's separation, which is just like it sounds, moving separate from oftentimes a prolonged period of no contact or, you know, no obligations. That is in. It's like 100% of the times it has to be kicked off by the person who's suffering. With a mesh, the family is not going to say, hey, we're really sorry, We've done you wrong. Never go be. The person who's suffering with meshma is going to have to draw some lines in the sand. Some of the guys we work with, we talk about the difference between separation and severing. Severing is not the same. That's just ignoring phone calls. That's avoidance. A separation is a real mindful. Here's where I can and cannot show up. And oftentimes in the beginning there is a prolonged period of time where it's, it's best for a lot of these guys to just not have contact with the family of origin.

And almost they have to be prepared for the intensity of the separation that's going to be coming from that system in and of itself. Because they may, they may say I want to separate, but that system will guilt load, make them feel like they're doing something wrong. Like you're abandoning us. How can you do this. This to us? That's the language I normally hear in situations like this.

Yeah, well, it's the intensity of the system and it's also the guilt inside because the whole, the whole way up as they're brought up, love is conflated with closeness. Closeness is the only way to show love, which, which is actually not true. So for, for again that. The second phase we talk about is differentiation. And, and one of the big hallmarks of that is we tell these guys you have to redefine things like love and, and commitment and loyalty because the template your family gave you is not complete and it's not in service of all of the individuals. It's in service of one individual or it's in service of, you know, this amorphous blob of family. So in, in that differentiation it's really, really hard because, and I, and I hear from guys all the time, they'll say, well I'm not angry, so why would I separate? Which is really interesting. Right. The only reason why I'd want space is because I hate you. You know, I, I can think with four kids in my house and two dogs and all that. Like there's a lot of times I separate and it has nothing to do with hating anybody. It's just like I need to feel myself for a minute and that's okay.

And usually there's, that's where that guilt is because they've never had that space that, that place to be with themselves and, and do a self evaluation which I, I love that of that process because you're describing a time where it's like you got to figure out you. That self separation where you begin to check your own identity and look in the mirror and say who, who am I? What do I feel and how do I think?

And that's scary for a lot of these people because they're in their 30s, 40s and 50s, and that idea of like, who am I? They've never been able to answer it. So it can feel like jumping off a cliff into a black hole. So that, that, that differentiation and separation part, it's really intense. And the number one feeling we hear people talk about is the guilt that they feel from separating. And the piece that we saw in our very limited research that made a difference is instead of strategies for making the guilt go away, they needed strategies to withstand the guilt long enough to hold the boundary so the change could start to happen. So it was almost like every time I start exercising again after a time period of, of not being real active. Like my lungs hurt, my joints hurt. And I've, I've learned if I can withstand that discomfort after a week or two, it's not there anymore. And you know, these whole new opportunities are open up. And it's the same thing with separating from family. Learning how to withstand and tolerate guilt without collapsing is really important.

And I would say that. And just, I'd love your thoughts on this. You also have to have a partner in that situation that realizes what you're going to be going through that phase. Because the emotional intensity, the anxiety, that guilt you're talking about, if you've got a partner who's not prepared for that time frame, you know, what's wrong, what's wrong with you? I thought this was going to help.

Yeah, there's, there's that. I mean, in, in all things trauma and especially developmental trauma, it often gets worse before it gets better. Because instead of avoiding the eye of the storm, we're like heading into it and resolving things. And then there's also for these, these partners and I, I totally understand where it comes from. They have an agenda of their own, what they want to see in these families. And I get where that comes from. You know, I've been second fiddle, I've been displaced. I've wanted to be part of your family system and they won't let me in. They hate me just because I'm with you. I took their sweet boy away. And, and so it's difficult too there for the partners not to load their agenda on, on their, their enmeshed partner. Not because their wants and needs don't matter. It's because first he's got a, he's got to identify, he's got to build a sense of identity. And then the third phase is differentiation. And that's when we can return to, we can step back into relationship space with a firm grasp on who we are and we can say based on who I am. Here's what I'm willing to give and take from here. And giving and taking doesn't replace who I am. I. That remains constant. And then that's where we see even, Even with parents and families of origin. I've heard some stories of some really, really beautiful family relationships going forward, because that differentiation could happen. The vast majority of guys I work with don't hate their parents. They actually want to be close to their parents and their family, but it has to be on their terms because the, the family system has not taken into account the individual needs. So the individual has to be the sole arbiter, the sole person responsible for representing their wants and needs in relationships.

So, John, I'd love to maybe get into a kind of a case study of a situation that you've seen somebody do that, especially as we look at that last part of it, because I'm going to assume that some families, they will consistently be destructive every time you go into that environment, whereas there's other families where you can, you can get back after you've differentiated it and you're able to see it for what it's been and you're able to say, okay, these are the. I'm going to call it boundaries, but really these are the parameters that, that have been created for this, for me to come back into the relationship.

Yeah. So I'll highlight with this is an amalgamation of a few different stories, but the, the, the similarities are uncanny. It might as well be the same individual. So this is the kind of person who comes into my office. Most of the time their partner is the one who's driving them in saying, I'm really upset. I have found this information. There's, like I said, about 50% of the time, there's some kind of intimate betrayal in that. And they say, you need to work on enmeshment issues, go to therapy, or we can't do this. So I'll, I'll see some. Like, I'm thinking of one specific case here. He was the only boy. I think he had four or five sisters. And he was maybe the second child or something like that. And the whole ethos around the family is like, this is Arden. They were, they were a very religious family. Like, he's going to be the next priest, he's going to be the next pastor. Like this, this is a holy kid, and we're so lucky to have him. And he's also so good at protecting all of his sisters. So this was fed to him from an early, early age. So, like, when his Sisters would start dating. As a teenager, he would go and have like, the scary father polishing his shotgun, conversation with his peers. And, you know, when it. When it came time for service in church, like, he was struggling with a porn addiction. Surprise, surprise. Because of all that pressure, he's struggling with a porn addiction and he can't actually go get help because he's this golden child. Gold. Yeah, this golden child. That's the term that we use. He's. He's the golden child. And when he got married, his. His partner, who was a very independent, strong, smart woman, she didn't fit the template of his family, and she didn't want to. And that's not what he was attracted about. But they didn't understand her, and they actually, they would tell her things like, you don't fit in our family. We don't think you're good for him. And so this, this culminated in, you know, a pretty massive sexual addiction. But he couldn't get traction in sex addiction recovery until he started to separate from his family. And here's what that looked like. It was this protracted negotiation, which again, it. It should not be. It should be a declaration on the part of the person who's in enmeshed. Here's where my boundaries are. But a lot of them can't do it. So it was this, like, they'd bring kids over, and his mother and father would pull the kids aside because they feared that he wasn't giving the kind of religious education that his kids should have. And they would tell the kids, this is how life is supposed to work. This is how you're supposed to do things. And your mom and dad are doing it wrong.

Wow.

So right. No, no universe. Is that okay? In. And so they start pulling away from the family, and his mother becomes really, really angry, and his dad becomes more passive and withdrawn. So as. As we're working on his separation, not only is he working intensely to recover trust from the way he's betrayed his spouse sexually, at the same time, like, everyone who he's ever been close to is turning their back on him. So, like, his birthday would roll around and the family would not acknowledge his birthday.

So in this situation, just want to say this. So he goes from being the golden child to the black sheep.

I mean, black. Black sheep would be putting it lightly. He. He was poison in this family system. And, and one. One of the most remarkable things about this in, in our Level 1 workshop, one of the things we talk about in recovering from enmeshment is separating from your mother's. Narrative about your father. Because often we'll see in enmesh systems, there's. There's a disrepair, there's a disrupt between mother and father. And the kid comes in to fill this pseudo partner, pseudo parent role. And often the parent who, who is doing the enmeshing has complaints about the other parent. And this kid got this all the time. He. He grew up with the sense of, I've got to be a better that man than my father. I've got to make up for his mistakes. So he grew up hating his. His dad and feeling bad for his mom. So one of the first things he wanted to work on, he said, I want to. I want to reestablish a relationship with just my dad. And, you know, he laid out the parameters of what that would look like, why he needed it. It was a really good idea. And so he called his dad soon after the workshop, and he said, dad, I want to go fishing, just me and you. Mom's not invited. And this is something they grow up doing. But mom would literally sit on the bank and she would. As they're. As they're in the water, she would dictate the conversation. She would.

She's monitoring everything.

Yeah. And his dad said, I can't do that. I'm married to your mom. I've got to be loyal to her. Which, fine. But in. In the face of his kids saying, dad, I want something closer with you, his dad couldn't do it. So it became this yearly ritual. I think it took about four years. And every time, every year this rolled around, they wanted to plan the summer fishing trip with his dad. It would kick off this other cycle of grief that he actually needed to do. And after about four years, his dad could finally say, I really miss you and I want to spend time with you. And then they. They started doing that. It took a while for some reintegration to happen in his family, but the family was not. It wasn't like, the prodigal son has returned. We have your seat at the table. They didn't know what to do with him. And fortunately, he had done that. Separating and emancipating work. He could show up and he and his spouse would talk before they showed up. What is it? We want to get out of this get together. So they would, you know, kids haven't seen these cousins in a while. We want to make sure they can really play with these cousins and have fun. Your. Your sister got a new job. Sounds interesting. Like, let's get updated on what she's Doing for. So they would go in with their own plan and they would make the connections that felt good to them.

You know, what I love about this story is it's something that I have found over and over again. We're not mentally prepared for those types of situations because we haven't pre thought what, what are we, what are we doing here? So most people go into that situation and just hope it goes okay.

Yeah.

And you're talking about the mental preparation of, okay, what do we, what do. My sister got a job, let's talk with her. Let's get right and let's. That's going to change the system all by itself because you have mental preparation of how to communicate and what you're trying to communicate well.

And, and the, the tent pole that this couple and this individual organize themselves around. His commitment was, I'm not going to lose myself in this family. I love them, I want to be close to them, but I will not lose myself. So with, with that, there were some scenarios that they had prepared for, and then there were some curveballs. And it was actually like the boundaries for these enmeshed people. They're relatively easy when they learn how to put themselves at the center of their lives. And that's what it was. So. So like religion or politics or something like that came up and he and his wife popped up from the table and they went and hung out with the kids. And it wasn't this thing that they'd even talked about. They were just like, oh, yeah, this never goes well. This doesn't feel good. We don't have to be around for this conversation. And you hear the emancipation in there.

The awareness is this, this environment, we know this isn't going to go well. Yeah.

And instead of looking at, oh my gosh, they brought this up. It'd be so rude to get up and leave. They were looking at how they wanted to leave the entire family get together, which was feeling good. So they were able to put in a proper boundary, a proper distance. And, you know, it continued to be a really rough reintegration into the family. But when they showed up, they showed up with their whole hearts. They could feel love, they could feel connected, they could feel like this is valuable because it switched from how do we serve the family? To what is it we want to give and receive from here we're in charge of that.

You know, one thought here. I'm, I'm can just hear many people who have been in that kind of a system almost feeling freed by this conversation. But I can also See, this concept of everyone in my system is going to say, you're being so selfish. You're being so selfish that. That just. That shaming of. You're just thinking about yourself. You're not thinking about your family. Think about all the things we did for you as a child.

How do you help that? That think about some of the things we did for you as a child is one of the most toxic traits of families I worked with. I've worked with a couple people whose parents actually kept a ledger of money spent on clothing, lessons, things like that, and on their wedding day. This is part of the present, is, here's what you owe us from your childhood. No joke. I've heard of that three different times. Wow. Which is so backwards. Kids don't ask to be born into families. Parents make a choice. We. We call them out of the universe, we call them out of creation. We bring them into being. They're not the ones who are saying, hey, I'd like to sign up to be in your family. So that idea of you owe us for what we gave you, that's not what the game's about. That's not what parenting's about. And so I. I'll. I'll often say that that comes up 100 of the time in our. In our weekend workshops. And I'll say to them, maybe there's a difference between selfish and centered in self. And maybe when you get that feedback from your family, you were being selfish, maybe that might be an indication that you're right on. Because they're feeling you, not just pulling into line, not just doing what's expected. They're feeling you as separate. And so we. We really have to work on tolerating that feeling Then also, a lot of these guys in their alternate identity, they are extremely selfish. And so we really have to work on that. Like, I develop my boundaries, so I have a sense of separateness. And when I want to be a part of a relationship, not only do I have to think about what's required, because that's. That's part. Like, obligations are not a bad thing in and of themselves. I live my life by a lot of obligations that I've chosen to be a part of. And that's the difference. The obligations that I choose to be a part of, part of, versus the obligations that are forced on me. So you really have to stop and think what's being required and what do I want to and what can I give here? And then the commitment for the enmeshed individual is I cannot go beyond The. The bounds of what I can and want to give. As soon as I do that, I start playing this role, not being an.

Individual, you know, John, I know. I know we're almost out of time today, but it seems to me like we probably at some point, need to have another conversation here, because it feels to me like there's the other side of this. And the other side of it actually is, from my perspective, is okay. My entire life, I've been told how to live, what to do, what not to do. And I'm really resistant to connection now because I'm afraid that everybody's going to control me. Everybody's trying to tell me how to live my life, and I don't want to be told what to do any longer. I think we could go on that conversation because I'm sure there's a lot of that, too.

We could. The first piece of work that we have people do in these workshops, and these. These workshops are. Are not meant to be complete treatment. It's a cathartic shift from guilt and obligation into passion and purpose. The first piece of work we have these men do as a group, and the women, too, is they stand, and we have them imagine guilt and obligation. And they have to say a no as a group. Not say. They have to yell it, like, feel it from their bones in a way that's convincing. I mean, no. And the. The trajectory of that is not to become this curmudgeon that says no to everything. Now, our ability to actually say yes and commit comes from the quality of the no that we're able to give. So that's. That's the armor against intrusion, is I'm the one who's in charge of my space. When I say come here, you can come here, and you can get as close as I'm okay with. And then when I need space, I can say, thank you. That was nice. Back up now. And it's being able to do that without guilt, without obligation, because the. The fuller and freer I'm allowed to show up, the better the quality of the connection we can have. The better relation. And we hear this from partners all the time. There can be a lot of fear about him changing, but we hear a lot of the time. I'm so glad that he did this, because now I have a partner. What he was giving me before was my own reflection. I don't want a relationship with Amir. I want a relationship with a partner. I want a relationship with someone who.

Thinks and feels differently, and they know who they are.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Fantastic, John, what a great conversation. Any final thoughts for our listeners today? Anything you'd like to share and also, how can they get in contact with you and learn more about your workshop?

Yeah, the thought again here. Think developmental trauma. If you're suffering with this, it's not because you're bad. It's not because you're just immature. Like there's something that happened that needs to be unwound and can be unwound. I've seen some really beautiful transformation stories. You can, you can find out more about our workshops@overcoming enmeshment.com that's the work that Dr. Ken Adams and I do together. Dr. Adams books silently Seduced and When He's Married to Mom are written for the mother and Mesh Man. And there's some chapters for partners of enmeshed men in there. You can find me and my practice@www.white pine recovery.com.

Awesome. John, thank you so much for your time today. What an absolute joy talking with you. Very insightful.

Thank you so. Much. That something surround you. It's like you're shining, you're staring.