The Dark Psychology Behind Enmeshment

追加: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Starting around the ages of eight and nine, my parents marriage went really south and they got divorced. My mom made me believe heinous things about my dad, that he didn't love me, that he was a monster, he didn't care, etc. And because of that, I feared and rejected him. I feared and hated him and rejected him for 20 years. When I turned 28 with two kids of my own, I realized the truth that I had been manipulated. And I learned the truth from nothing other than a YouTube video by another person who's been through this is a child named Ryan Thomas. That's why I know the power of social media can it could be a really good tool for good and that's what I try to use it for. I try to educate the public about this form of child harm and um specifically I try to educate and reach through time and space and be able to give other people that re revelation who are still living in a parents delusion. So Dr. Childress he starts the book by saying of central importance to understanding the core personality processes what happens is that parent uses the child for their own needs and they use the child as what he calls a regulatory other or a regulatory object. And the purpose of that child as a regulatory object is to regulate the emotional and psychological state of the parent.

[00:01:22]And that is because the parent themselves has been through lots of childhood trauma and they are stuck at a developmental age of an infant when it comes to the ability to regulate their own emotions. So they have to enlist outsiders to do that for them.

[00:01:39]He goes on and I would encourage you to buy the book. Buy the whole book. Read the whole thing. I love this analogy he gives in the beginning of this ep of this chapter, chapter 5. It is talking about a thermostat. And bear with me. I think you're going to understand once we go through this, but he compares regulation to the analogy of a thermostat. He says the concept of regulation can best be understood as an analogy to the functioning of a thermostat in regulating the temperature of a room.

[00:02:08]If the room temperature becomes too hot or too cold, then the thermostat registers that fluctuation in temperature and turns on either the air conditioner or the heater to bring the room temperature back into a comfortable mid-range.

[00:02:24]You don't necessarily have to touch the the thermostat for it to do its job. It just regulates the temperature. That's what it does.

[00:02:34]The brain has a variety of regulatory systems to ensure that our emotions, behavior, and social relationships remain in an organized and adaptive mid-range of functioning. So he's basically saying our brain also has a thermometer that is supposed to regulate our emotions, regulate our behaviors, regulate us.

[00:03:01]And the development of this internalized capacity of self-regulation develops gradually over the period of childhood. Like I mentioned, we all develop or we don't develop the capacity to regulate our own emotions, our own behaviors, our own thoughts, etc. And as a child, I don't know if you guys have kids, but if you're if you're have an infant or if you have a toddler, you know that they have little to no ability to regulate themselves whatsoever. And he talks a little bit about this. And he talks about how the parent during those stages of life, those early early babyhood, toddlerhood, early childhood stages, the parent acts as an external regulatory other for the child and helping the child to both maintain and regain organized and regulated emotional and psychological states. In layman's terms, until a child reaches an older age, that parent models regulation to the child and helps them regulate their emotional, psychological needs.

[00:04:12]He then he goes on to explain the process of how our brain networks grow.

[00:04:19]I've heard about this before, but this is something that I think I need to do more research into.

[00:04:26]He says that brain networks grow and develop based on the principle of we build what we use.

[00:04:34]I've heard about this as like a pruning mechanism. Like if there are networks in your brain that are not being activated, they will be pruned away. They will be pruned off. They will essentially die.

[00:04:46]He says, "Every time we use a brain pathway or network, the connections within this network become stronger, more sensitive, and more efficient within this network through use dependent neurodevelopmental processes.

[00:05:01]And this is called canalization.

[00:05:04]When the attuned and responsive parent provides the child with a scaffolding support for helping the child remain in a regulated state or regain their regulated emotional psychological state, the parent helps build the child's brain networks for self-regulation.

[00:05:23]And you know some people have asked me like how did I turn out somewhat normal or how did I turn out not like my parent who caused all the harm in my life. I think it's cuz for the first eight or nine so yearish years I had my dad his normal range healthy unconditional loving influence on me. So I think my dad provided this for me. the the responsive parent scaffolding um emotional regulation. I think I had that and I feel really bad for kids who are separated from their loving stable parent at such young ages because then they will never receive that as a child.

[00:06:12]So he goes on to provide the different um stages of childhood and how this canalization happens.

[00:06:22]describing how the parent takes on the interactive role with the child as an external regulatory object. Ah there's that term again regulatory object. So actually what is naturally supposed to happen is that the parent is meant to be the regulatory object for the maturing child.

[00:06:47]Yes.

[00:06:49]The role of the parent as an external regulatory object for the child is to help the child maintain a wellorganized and well- reggulated state through attuned and responsive parental caregiving.

[00:07:04]This is how we achieve a secure attachment style.

[00:07:10]The parent essentially becomes an external part of the child's own internal regulatory system helping to build these internal regulatory networks by scaffolding for the child. So the parent becomes an external regulatory other for the child as they're developing because the child doesn't have that internal ability to regulate their own emotional and psychological states yet. And this is natural. This is not the perversion of the process. This is the natural process that is supposed to happen.

[00:07:48]So as the child matures um the scaffolding support provided by the parent or the regulatory other in the natural context becomes increasingly more sophisticated and nuanced as we might imagine.

[00:08:06]And gradually by the child repeatedly using the scaffolding support offered by their parent, the regulatory other, the child's brain develops the internal networks needed to make these state transitions from disorganized and disregulated states back into organized and well-regulated states independently from the external regulatory support provided by the parent.

[00:08:36]This is describing the capacity for self-regulation.

[00:08:42]The child grows up. They might enter um you know maturation 9 10 whatever it is and they become more and more able to regulate themselves internally because they have had that structure given to them by their parent. They've had that model the scaffolding as he as he calls it.

[00:09:06]So initially the parent acts as an external regulatory other for the child's internal emotional and psychological state. Eventually the neural networks for making these transitions becomes sufficiently developed through the scaffolding support of the parent as the external regulatory other and the child is able to independently maintain an organized and well-regulated state in response in response to stresses without the need of their parents help.

[00:09:42]This is how we are um designed to naturally be able to develop the process of internal regulation.

[00:09:51]Now that's the natural normal healthy way that we are meant to develop internal regulation. This is the twisted messed up role reversal nightmare that some of us go through instead or in addition to the normal way the role reversal relationship like Dr. children's mention rather in healthy child development the child down here uses the parent up here as an external regulatory other to regulate their internal state. However, and this is where things get like I said twisted.

[00:10:42]However, the pathological parent child relationships arise when the parent inverts this healthy development and instead uses the child in a role reversal relationship and they use the child as the regulatory object to meet the parents own emotional and psychological needs.

[00:11:07]Nope, don't do it. Going to cause a lot of harm to your child.

[00:11:12]Role reversal relationships develop when the parents own self-structure development and capacity for self-regulation is significantly compromised. Key point role reversal happens with a parent child relationship because that parent is incapable of internally regulating themselves. That's why it's often seen as a generational trauma repeating itself. Because if you have a parent who cannot internally regulate themselves, they will not be able to offer the scaffolding and the support for their child to learn how to internally regulate themselves.

[00:11:48]So the child grows up and they don't know how to internally regulate themselves either. So it is a mess up in here.

[00:11:57]Now it's the parent who uses the child as the regulatory other to regulate the parents internal emotional and psychological state. I also want to mention when you hear about this when even when I'm talking about this now as a 32year-old woman um I realize how messed up this is. I real I I have three little kids, three girls, and I would never go to them crying, wanting comfort, or go to them upset, wanting advice, or angry um to blow off steam about my my husband.

[00:12:40]Like, I I can't imagine in a in a million years doing any one of those things. I I just can't even comprehend how you would do that. And how you would do that without realizing, hm, this might not be good for my child. However, I was that child whose parent did that to me. And at the time, as a child, I didn't know it wasn't normal.

[00:13:06]I might have felt uncomfortable at times. I might have felt a lot of compassion, pity for my mom, in turn, anger at my dad, and frustration at my dad. I had emotional responses from these events, yes, but it didn't occur to me. Um, this is really upside down because I was at that point once their marriage got really bad, like seven, eight, I was accustomed to having no one meet my emotional needs.

[00:13:39]So, I just wanted to point out there that kids going through this don't necessarily realize how um wrong it is.

[00:13:56]In short, this one sentence in chapter five can describe in short this entire construct. So a parent who is incapable of regulating his or his or her own emotional and psychological state cannot provide the child with regulatory support and that makes sense to me and honestly this gives me more understanding for what I went through.

[00:14:26]My mom didn't necessarily choose to come to me, the parent coming to the child for emotional support, to blow off steam, to involve me in adult conflicts I should not have been involved in. She never learned how to regulate herself internally.

[00:14:48]And I do have compassion for her because of that.

[00:14:55]at the same time what she did was wrong.

[00:14:58]I I can have both be true.

[00:15:02]So this is um a little bit about how the role reversal relationship comes to happen.

[00:15:14]And while I was reading this chapter, I was just like, "Yep, yep, yep, yep.

[00:15:19]Check, check, check, check. That all happened to me. That's my life right there." So, I'm curious to hear from you guys if this resonates or if this makes sense to you. Let me know.

[00:15:31]Dr. Shel just writes page 94. In the marital relationship, the narcissistic borderline personality expects the primary attachment figure of the other spouse to perform this parental role as the external regulatory object for the stabilization of inadequately developed personality self-structure. No, that to me is a lot of uh psychological jargon.

[00:15:54]So basically they're used to their parent or their other people in their life being that regulatory object and they get married that becomes their spouse. Their spouse now is their regulatory object.

[00:16:09]Following divorce, uh-oh, what are they going to do now if they don't have their spouse who is their regulatory object?

[00:16:20]What are they going to do? You're probably You're probably like, "I know me. Pick me. I know what's going to happen.

[00:16:28]I know what happens to they use their child. They turn to their child or children. In my case, it was just me." Following the divorce and the loss of the spouse as a regulatory object, the narcissistic borderline parent turns to the child. Don't know why I'm smiling. This isn't funny. I think it's just making sense of it and having the understanding of why this happened, why it was almost inevitable in the situation where you have a narcissistic or borderline parent. It was almost inevitable.

[00:17:07]I know now it's not personal. There's nothing that I did to cause this.

[00:17:12]There's nothing that I did wrong to deserve this. There's nothing about me specifically that made her choose me as that regulatory object. It's not my fault. In other words, and that's very freeing. So, if you've been through this as a child, know that it's not your fault.

[00:17:32]This is generations deep usually, and you did nothing to deserve the burdens that were put on you.

[00:17:42]Also, if you I just want to say if you're a parent too whose child has been manipulated to reject you or another loved one who's struggling with this and you have any guilt for divorcing because now your child is in this predicament, please know that you that it's not your fault.

[00:18:06]It's not your fault.

[00:18:09]You could have been any person that would have done the same thing.

[00:18:14]You just happen to be the person that they divorced. And it's not your fault either that they are isolating and manipulating your child. However, it is your responsibility to try to save your child.

[00:18:33]So, it shifts from the spouse to the child.

[00:18:40]In feeding off of the child's healthy development through a role reversal relationship in which the child is being used to meet the emotional psychological needs of the parent, the narcissistic borderline parent is robbing the child of healthy development.

[00:18:56]Obviously, despite the severe pathology in the role rel reversal relationship, the outward superficial appearance will be one of a highly bonded parent child a relationship. Let me repeat this for the people in the back. It's so important.

[00:19:14]Oh my gosh.

[00:19:17]People in my life thought my mom and I were close. We were like mortal en enemies. Like we fought nonstop. I fought her every step of the way. We were not close. She was trying to control my every move, my waking thoughts and beliefs. Everything was suffocating. I was suffocating.

[00:19:37]But like this book says, despite the severe pathology of the role reversal relationship, the outward superficial appearance will be one of a highly bonded parent child relationship.

[00:19:58]I believe this is why so many mental health providers, doctors, teachers, people in that child's life fail to see that they are being abused. It's so sad.

[00:20:13]But Dr. Childress says this outward appearance is highly misleading.

[00:20:18]The metaphorical image of this parent child relationship to conjure up in your head is of the empty life force of a vampire feeding off of the still vital life force of its victim.

[00:20:38]I don't like that.

[00:20:43]I really don't like that.

[00:20:47]In order to fill the inherent vacancy of a central life within the vampire, the victim of this feeding surrenders psychologically to the feeding process.

[00:20:59]God to the role as the regulatory object to meet the parents needs and the child.

[00:21:07]The child enters a state of shared psychological fusion with the feeding parent.

[00:21:16]My mouth is so sick. It's It's If you've been through a relationship with um personality disordered individual and you get out of that relationship, let me know in the comments how you felt about yourself and how you felt internally getting out of that relationship. Because the way I felt getting out of the relationship with my pathological parent was that I felt so confused and I felt hollow and empty and like a zombie, like a shell of myself. I think that's the word I use most often, a shell of myself.

[00:21:55]Um, and you know, I'm four, yeah, four years out now, and I'm a completely different person. I I've regained my authentic self. Like, it's amazing. I feel free. That started to happen right away, by the way, as soon as I got away. But this vampire analogy is so freaking creepy because of how accurate it truly is. And it's a lot of it's invisible. You can't see unless you're behind the closed doors, too.

[00:22:26]Unless you're in that predatory relationship.

[00:22:38]He goes on to say, "A role reversal is extremely pathological. Yet superficially, the psychological surrender of the child to the psychopathology of the parent appears to be one of bonding.

[00:22:54]H instead the pathology of the role reversal relationship represents the child's surrender of self authenticity to the role of being the regulatory object for the parent.

[00:23:11]You can you can just imagine off the top of your head how extremely devastating and damaging this will be for a child's sense of self self-esteem.