IT’S SO HARD TO LET GO
I want to stay loyal to them!

PREVIOUS:  Symbiosis & ACoAs (part 1)

REVIEW: Ego States – Parent
“Autonomy & Attachment” – opposite of symbiosis

SITE: Do you Love to be needed or Need to be loved?

IN CHILDHOOD (Part 1)

AS ADULTs
Emotional Symbiosis (ES) is the damaged part of us that tries to make any important “other” a carbon copy of ourself, assuming it will make us feel safe & loved. But it doesn’t work.
Because our mother was not able to emotionally bond with us from birth on – it created the original Abandonment, underpinning all our dysfunctions. It left us with a desperation for that missing connection – at any cost to self or others – which healthy infant-symbiosis would have provided.

SYMBIOSIS is narcissistic, appropriate for an infant – but NOT for an adult. It’s an futile attempt to get maternal nurturing & to gain self-esteem thru adult relationships

• It’s frustratingly unsuccessful, even if someone is willing to co-dependently try, because we know at some very deep level that it’s not a legitimate way to connect

• We’re trying to force others to give us the mother-infant love we never got, demanding they give us permission to be on the planet — rather than being with us out of genuine affection & respect, as equals.
And, if they do agree to “help” us, they are doing it to feel needed, to fill a hole in themself, SO it’s not really about you!

Unfortunately, ES not only affects the individual family unit, but is usually passed down through the generations, always with a negative impact. Family enmeshment is a form of psychic incest, as inappropriate cross-generational bonding.
Characteristics :
• children are caught in up the needs of parents, having to ignore their own
• communication is triangulated (party line)
• everyone is in each other’s business all the time
• everyone must conform to the party line – whatever that is in that family
• kids must stick to narrow Roles (Scapegoat, Hero….)
• have poor or no boundaries between the various members
• member are punished for any non-conformity or trying to be a separate individual, by constant badgering, outright attacks, the cold shoulder or banishment

IN THE PRESENT – in us or our parents
The compulsion to symbiose now comes mainly from the WIC ego state , held in place by its attachment to our internal negative Introject & external damaging parents – who were either overly-attached or unavailable for us.  The compulsion comes from NOT:
• having appropriate role models for healthy ways to relate
• having a strong healthy sense of one’s True identity
• feeling safe on ones own
• not having boundaries
• not knowing ‘who I really am’, with a deep fear of abandonment, causing intense self-hate, shame, guilt

ES is a way to not acknowledge absorbing the family line which implied or blatantly told us that we’re worthless & unlovable. Denying childhood abandonment is maintained in many ways – such as trying to prove we’re nothing like them – while at the same time repeating the very family drama we claim to be escaping. So we unconsciously choose the old familiar PPT (people, place & things) ! Freud’s ‘Repetition Compulsion’

A person who craves & demands ES has a limited capacity to be aware of, appreciate, respect & acknowledge the inner experience of another. They need everyone to agree with their point of view – about everything – & tend to put others down when they don’t.

Symbiotic Attachment IS:
• taking someone emotionally captive instead of having equal, healthy, inter-dependence with others (“Alcoholics – & other narcissists – don’t have relationships, they take hostages”)

• USING others to take care of us instead of being our own adult, to not have to do the deep emotional work that can heal our damage & free up the real us

• the need to insist everyone be a carbon copy of oneself (mirror image) to validate one’s shaky identity – actually the False Self. We don’t have permission to be REAL, so – if others are just like us – then we’re OK (allowed to live).  (MORE….includes examples)

NEXT: Symbiosis – Part 3