JIM O'SHEA
Counselling Service

I am an only child, and I don’t wish to generalise, but I am convinced that only children are more susceptible to enmeshment than children from larger families. Maggie Mamen, who has written on the ‘Spoilt Child Syndrome’ might disagree with this.  We often hear of such children being ‘spoiled’. The only child has the full focus of parental love. On the surface they can be over-loved, and this, of course, is very understandable. In reality, however, such over-love can be a parent having their needs met from their child. In this sense it is a form of abuse, albeit the parent or parents are totally unaware of the harm they are doing in terms of forming their child’s personality.

Now, the important thing to understand is that early separation from their parents, especially from the primary caregiver, is vital for a child. Children’s behaviour clearly illustrates this, and such separation should be in process by the time the child is 6 months old. The child will physically begin to move away from the parents at that age. He or she will begin to explore their own house, crawling into a room to investigate this new world, while at the same time crawling back to check if ‘mammy’ is still around. And so it goes, until the child eventually ventures into the big world, and someday moves away. if there are any only children out there, including older ones like myself (we are always children to our parents, even when middleaged ourselves!!!), perhaps you would like to comment. Have you been spoiled as a child? Over-indulged? Got everything you asked for? How has this affected you in your behaviour as an adult?

  I have shown that toxic shame means being shamed to the core, so that it permeates and pollutes all other feelings, except rage. Now I would like to explore how we can become toxically shamed. Generally such shame is sown in us in our early childhood, and is reinforced as we grow through childhood, so that by the time we are adults it is ingrained in our core. sometimes toxic shame is called core shame.

As tiny babies we are totally dependent, and rely upon the love and affection of our parents, and particularly upon our mothers, who are our primary carertakers. In that context, I must emphasise that i am not writing this  to blame parents. But, it is a fact that we learn from our parents, we imbibe their feelings, and if they are shame based we automatically absorb and internalise their shame. We can be shamed, in what psychologists call our family systems, in many ways.

Enmeshment is one source of toxic shame, and sufferers of toxic shame from this source have no idea of why they are so unhappy at the core. They are unaware of an enmeshed relationship, and thus unaware that they have been shamed to the core by such a relationship. Interestingly the Dictionary of Psychology makes no reference to it. I only came to understand it as I was undergoing therapy for my counselling training, when my therapist used the imagery of the river being swallowed up as it enters the sea. I will explain this further in my contribution next monday.