It’s Not You; It’s Your Trauma
EP 0079 – Emotional Incest and Codependency (Subscription)
It’s Not You – It’s Your Emotional Captivity
You were never just a child in that house—you were recruited as an emotional spouse, a surrogate partner, a hostage dressed up as love. The brutal truth is that what felt like closeness was theft. Passive healing, endless podcasts, and surface-level therapy won’t touch this wound. Only facing the reality of being emotionally incested will.
The Hidden Crime of Emotional Incest
Emotional incest, sometimes called covert incest, happens when a parent leans on a child to meet adult emotional and intimate needs they never got from their own partner or childhood. The child becomes “special,” “the only one,” “mom’s little man” or “daddy’s princess.” There is no sexual contact, but the dynamic is romanticized, enmeshed, and suffocating. The parent offloads loneliness, validation, and regulation onto the child, creating deep confusion because the attention feels like love while simultaneously erasing the child’s emerging self.
Why Survival Demanded You Stay Silent
You didn’t speak up because speaking up meant annihilation. The parent’s instability, rage, or collapse loomed as the alternative. You learned early that your job was to stabilize them, regulate them, adore them, so they wouldn’t fall apart and take you with them. That child part still believes rejection equals death. The guilt, shame, and disgust that surface when you try to name it come from the fact that the “love” was laced with violation. You were praised for self-abandonment and punished for having needs of your own.
The Lifelong Price Tag
Avoiding this truth keeps you in codependency autopilot. You chase unavailable people to recreate the familiar pursuit, or you freeze when someone gets too close because closeness equals engulfment and loss of self. Intimacy becomes a minefield—too distant and you panic about abandonment, too close and you suffocate. Boundaries feel dangerous because saying no once meant punishment or withdrawal of the only affection you knew. Addictions, people-pleasing, chronic anxiety, self-hate, and endless relationship chaos become the norm. You stay stuck serving others because that’s the only role that ever earned you a momentary sense of worth.
The Fierce Freedom on the Other Side
When you finally name it, grieve it, and reclaim the parts of you that were stolen, something opens. You stop being everyone’s emotional oxygen tank. Space appears inside—room to feel your own emotions without instantly handing them to someone else. Regulation becomes possible because you’re no longer fused. Self-abandonment loses its grip. You learn that disappointing others is not the end of the world—it’s the beginning of having one. Real intimacy, the kind that doesn’t require you to disappear, becomes attainable.
Three Important Takeaways
- Emotional incest is abuse disguised as love; it creates codependency and intimacy terror that no amount of surface work can fix.
- You were trained to believe your worth depends on regulating and rescuing others—unlearning that belief is painful but essential.
- Freedom arrives only when you stop abandoning yourself to keep dysfunctional giants comfortable.
Conclusion
Stop consuming content about healing and start doing the terrifying, unglamorous work of naming what really happened, grieving what was stolen, and building the internal boundary that says “this body, this heart, this life belongs to me.” No one is coming to apologize or make it easier. The only way out is through the discomfort of reclaiming yourself—one disappointing, boundary-setting, self-honoring step at a time. You’re worth the fight.
