Mother-Enmeshed Men: Is A Mother-Enmeshed An Effect Of Generational Deprivation?

If a man has come to see that his life revolves around his mother and that he is neglecting himself, he might wonder why he is this way. He can see that unless this changes, his life will continue to pass him by.

However, although he will want to change his behaviour, he might find that he is unable to do so without feeling extremely uncomfortable. The reason for this is that when he does do this, he ends up feeling anxious and guilty.

Inner conflict

Therefore, even if he does change his behaviour, he can soon go back to how he was before. While this won’t allow him to freely express himself, it will allow him to settle down again.

Based on how he feels, it will be as though his survival is under threat and he is doing something wrong when he is there for himself. Assuming that this is what takes place, he can wonder what is going on.

Shining the light

Now, if he were to reflect on what this childhood was like, he might not remember much. Or he might say that this stage of his life wasn’t that bad, for instance, and that he generally received what he needed.

Nonetheless, this may have been a stage of his life when he received the shelter, clothing and food that he ended, but that was typically about it. This is because his mother might have looked toward him to meet a number of her own needs.

An Inversion

If this were the case, the roles would have been reversed, with her being more like his child and him being more like her parent. And, as he was powerless and totally dependent on her, he wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it.

His only option was to adapt to her, which would have involved him losing touch with his embodied, connected, and fully feeling true self. In its place would have been the creation of a disembodied, disconnected, not fully feeling and outer-directed false self.

A Big Risk

When he did freely express himself, he was likely to have been punished in some way, with this being a time when he was disapproved of, ignored, rejected or abandoned. Thus, being who his mother wanted him to be and behaving how she wanted him to behave was a way for him to maintain his connection to her and to try to be loved by her.

But while this might have typically allowed the former to take place, it probably didn’t allow the latter to occur. This is because, most likely, his mother had also been greatly deprived and deeply wounded during her formative years and couldn’t provide him with the attunement, mirroring, care, affection and support that he needed to grow and develop in the right way.

The other Side

As for his father, he might have been emotionally unavailable and out of reach, or he might not have been around. If he were around but was emotionally unavailable and out of reach, it would have meant that his father didn’t provide him with the guidance, support or protection that he needed.

This can show that this father had to be there for his mother very early on, with him staying emotionally underdeveloped and becoming emotionally disconnected as a result.  His father might have also been emotionally unavailable and out of reach, or he might not have been around.

It Goes Way Back

With this in mind, it won’t just be that his parents choose to deprive him; it will be that his parents were also deprived, and his parents’ parents had also been deprived. It might go even further back than this, too.

If he were able to go back in time and find out what the cause was, he might need to go back hundreds, if not thousands of years. This might be a time when he finds that it was a famine, war, conquest or plague.  

Moving Forward

Ultimately, what he went through wasn’t a sign that he was worthless or unlovable, that his needs or feelings were bad, or that he had no right to live his own life. Of course, if his parents had been aware of how underdeveloped they were and had started to resolve their inner wounds, his childhood would have probably been different.

Fortunately, he will not only have become aware of how deprived he was and the impact this is having, but he will also want to do something about this. For this to take place, he will have beliefs to question, pain to face and process, and unmet developmental needs to experience.

This will take courage, support, patience and persistence.

Awareness

If a man can relate to this and he is ready to change his life, he may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer. 

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Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk