Mother-Enmeshed Men: Why Would A Mother-Enmeshed Man Feel That He Would Die If He Lived His Own Life?

If a man, who is overly focused on his mother’s life, was at the stage where he is aware of what is going on and is able to step back and reflect on this behaviour, he could find that not behaving this way is seen as something that would lead to his demise. He is then going to have two options: either he neglects himself and lives, or he is there for himself and dies.

This is not just going to be an idea that he has in his mind, though, as his whole being is likely to be taken over by fear and even terror when he thinks about implementing boundaries with his mother and living his own life. At this point, he could feel totally powerless and as if he has no control over himself or his life.

Confusion

As he is an adult, his existence is no longer going to depend on his mother being there for him. Not only this, but he could have a well-paid job and be able to support himself financially.

Therefore, it is naturally going to be hard for him to understand why he can’t just live his own life and know that he will be fine. To say that this will be a frustrating time for him would be an understatement.

Self-Talk

After a while, a part of him could say that he lacks willpower and courage and just needs to ‘get it together’. Along with this, what could enter his mind is that he needs to ‘man up’.

However, even if he does end up laying into himself, it doesn’t mean that how he is behaving proves that he is lacking anything. What it is likely to show is that his formative years were very traumatic, and, although time has passed, he is still in a traumatised state of being.

The past is present

His physical self and his mental self will have grown since he was a boy, but his emotional self might not have really changed. This is then why, at a mental level, he can see that he doesn’t need his mother anymore, but, at an emotional level, he can’t accept this.

The child that he was will now be inside him and this part of him will be in control of his, not his adult self. How he sees life will be strongly influenced by his child self and this part of him will be deeply wounded.

Two Levels

The mental part of him is going to be no match for the emotional part of him and it won’t matter what he ‘knows’ at an intellectual level. His emotional self will have far more control and this part of him will make it hard for him to see clearly.

In other words, his emotional and his instinctual self will hijack his thinking brain. His thinking brain will then be like a rubber dingy and his emotional self will be like a tidal wave – there will only be one outcome.

What’s going on?

What could enter his mind at this point is why he is in so much pain and why, deep down, he feels like a scared and abandoned boy. The reason he is this way is likely to be due to the fact that he missed out on what he needed, during his early years, to be able to grow and develop in the right way.

This would have caused him to experience a lot of pain and deeply wounded him. In all likelihood, his mother was unable to provide him with the love that he needed and he was then forced to adapt to her and meet some of her adult and unmet developmental needs.

A Brutal Time

Throughout this stage of his life, he is likely to have often been punished, disapproved of and rejected and abandoned. This would have meant they he would have often felt as though his life was going to come to an end.

To handle how he felt and the pain he was in, his brain would have automatically repressed how he felt and he would have gone into a shut down, disconnected, frozen and collapsed state. He would have developed a disconnected false self that would have been focused on his mother and this self would have helped to keep his feelings at bay.

A Replay

With this in mind, whenever he thinks about breaking away from his mother, how he felt when he was left will start to enter his conscious awareness. This pain will relate to how he felt on numerous occasions when he was a child, and before, but wasn’t strong enough to handle, so his brain caused him to lose touch with how he felt.

As a result of this, a part of his consciousness would have been split off and he wouldn’t have been able to integrate the experience. Now that he is an adult, he is a lot stronger and he can reach out for support to help him to reintegrate these parts.

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