Mother-Enmeshed Men: Is A Mother-Enmeshed Man Carrying Split-Off Infantile Parts?

Even though a man will be here to live his own life, if he is focused on his mother’s needs and does what he can to please her, this is not going to be possible. His life will be of secondary importance, whilst his mother’s life will be of primary importance.

If he is aware of this, he can be well and truly fed up with turning his back on himself. However, as fed up as he is likely to be, he can find that he is unable to just change his behaviour.

Trapped

When he merely thinks about doing so, he can feel deeply uncomfortable. Due to how he feels, it can be as if changing his behaviour is the wrong thing for him to do and that it is not safe for him to do so.

Thanks to this, it won’t matter that he is a man, not a boy and is, ultimately, free to live his own life. He will feel like a boy who has to do what his mother wants or his survival will be under threat.

A Strange Scenario

But, although it will seem as if he has to do what his mother wants to survive, this will be nothing more than an illusion. Most likely, he will largely be having this experience because of what is taking place for him at a deeper level.

Outside of his conscious awareness is likely to be a lot of pain and unmet developmental needs, with this inner material having a big impact on how he behaves. He is then not going to be aware of this inner material but it will still exert a big influence on him.

Confusion

At this point, he could wonder why he is carrying this pain and these unmet developmental needs. What this is likely to illustrate is that his early years were anything but nurturing, with this being a time when he missed out on the love that he needed to grow and develop in the right way.

If so, his early years may have been a time when his mother was emotionally unavailable and out of reach. The outcome of this is that he would have been greatly deprived and deeply wounded.

A Brutal Time

In all likelihood, his mother had also been greatly deprived and deeply wounded during his formative years and was not in a position to provide him with the love that he needed. She might not have moved beyond the toddler phase of her development.

As a result of this, she would have unconsciously seen him as an extension of herself and believed that he was there to meet her needs. This shows that the needs that were not met during her formative years didn’t disappear; they continued to influence her behaviour.

One Option

Anyway, as his mother was out of reach and he couldn’t change her behaviour or find another mother, he would have had to lose touch with how he felt and a number of his needs. This would have involved him losing touch with his connected and feeling true self, and developing a disconnected and unfeeling false self.

Thus, if he had access to all of himself when he was born, he would have gradually lost touch with himself as time passed. Consequently, he ended up living on the surface of himself to handle a stage of his life when he suffered greatly.

A Closer Look

So, during his early years, when he was ignored, rejected or left, for instance, how he felt and a need or a number of his needs would have been repressed by his brain. This would have been how he was able to keep it together and function.

And, as how he felt and a need or a number of his needs were part of him and were repressed, this is why he lost access to part of himself. The years would have passed and more of him would have been lost.

Reconnection

For him to fully be in his body and no longer live on the surface of himself, he will need to reconnect to the parts of himself that were split-off. When he does this, he will be connecting to parts of him that relate to when he was an infant, toddler and a child.

It can then be as if he has regressed to an earlier stage of his development but he will have simply reconnected to parts of him that are frozen in time. This will be a time when he will feel the feelings that he was unable to feel and experience the needs that he was able to meet all those years ago.

Moving Forward

To do this, he will probably need to reach out for external support as this will allow him to go where he wouldn’t go by himself. Over time, he is likely to develop the strength that he needs to be able to do this work by himself.

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