942: Ken Adams | The Confusing Dynamics of Covert Incest

942: Ken Adams | The Confusing Dynamics of Covert Incest

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[00:00:12] Ken Adams: They've over romanticized their love for their child. The little girl in me, is turned on by my child. There's a romanticization of it. There's a discussion about intimate details that don't belong. There is, "Do I look good in my nightgown?" Or inappropriate boundary crossing that doesn't have to involve physical, sexual contact, but can be sexualized. The boy feels like the sexualized boyfriend to the mother.

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[00:01:34] Today, an episode about emotional enmeshment. Yeah, this is something I really hadn't heard of, until recently. And it seems like this is so common. It's essentially an unhealthy, too intimate relationship between a parent and child. And I know that sounds icky because it kind is. Where the child ends up surrogate partner for mom or dad. We're not necessarily talking about incest here. It's not like a graphic episode. It's kind of — it's emotional incest.

[00:01:57] And speaking of incest, I co-hosted this one with my homeboy, Gabe Mizrahi. Sorry Gabe, that was awkward placement. But you'll just have to deal with that. Really interesting look at this phenomenon. Why it happens, how it happens, and what we can do about it — both from the parents or child perspective. And I just — I think this is one of those episodes where people are going to hear it and they'll be like, "Oh my gosh, that's me." Or, "Oh my gosh, that was my best friend growing up, or my cousins like that." So let me know if you have that kind of reaction to this one because I was surprised at how many people probably have this going on and never had a name for it. And even if you don't see yourself in it, you might see a sibling or a friend or something like that. This is one of those topics — once you spot it, it really sheds a lot of light on things, maybe in our own family or that of others.

[00:02:41] Alright, here we go, with Dr. Ken Adams.

[00:02:51] I just found this stuff so interesting because it's a world removed away from where I am. I mean, I had a relatively, probably vanilla, relationship with my parents. But what you write about in the book, this world was totally foreign to me. I've had — as an adult, I have a couple of friends who will say things like, "My therapist says I'm emotionally enmeshed or whatever." And I was like, "What is that?" I got as far as Google and then being like, "Oh, okay, your mom's overbearing." But that's not quite what this is, right? There's helicopter parents and tiger moms and whatever, but this is a totally different animal. Can you define what emotional enmeshment is? It's almost like a euphemism for something that's a little bit more severe.

[00:03:28] Ken Adams: Yeah, that's a brilliant start. I couldn't agree with you more. We do want to differentiate the normality of occasional overinvolvement or overshadowing a kid or stick in your nose where it doesn't belong and so forth from enmeshment. Enmeshment is — and you probably have noticed it's a word that's getting used in the popular culture more, you know, you see a pop up over and over again with different things. So-and-So a sports star is enmesh with his coach or something. So I was curious to watch that. In a broad way, it means, too much involvement at a cost to the individuality of the person or both parties in that enmesh system. And it crosses a line in this way, when we talk about mother-son enmeshment, for example. A parent-child enmeshment. That love is transactional and obligatory. You owe me.

[00:04:14] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:15] Ken Adams: I love you and you owe me. And I'm your higher power, right? So it's nowhere near the normality you're talking about. So if I took all the cases that I've seen over the years in my workshops, for example, about 700 guys at this point from all around the world, different cultures. What they all have in common as a parent, who became the higher power, the God in their life, and demanded a degree of, if not totality, of obligatory loyalty that was transactional. And that my love was dependent upon your willingness to support me, not leave me, stabilize me, love me, and be my good boy at a cost to whoever you have in your life — your partner, your spouse, your kids, right? So I get emails all the time from spouses and partners of these guys say, "Look it, I've been thrown under the bus for decades. I can't stand anymore. What do I do?" It is a deeper cut and a different experience than what you had just talked about. And certainly, there's a continuum where you can have somebody overinvolved. But in these enmesh systems, it's been mistaken for love and closeness over the years. Sometimes, people think that these enmeshed family systems are actually close. What they are is overinvolved. And love is transactional and not freely given. And so, that's one of the big mistakes in enmeshment.

[00:05:34] Jordan Harbinger: How does this happen? Is this something where the parent is, sort of predisposed to this because of their own upbringing, or does it have to do with the relationship that they're in with the child's parent? What's going on?

[00:05:45] Ken Adams: So there's a number of setting factors. You could have a parent with a personality disorder issued, overly dependent, overly narcissistic, right? They don't see the child for who they are. They can come from their own enmesh background. They could have mental illness. There could be addiction in the family. So, usually, a dysfunctional, a marital bond or a relational bond between the parents, is a factor. That's a common denominator, where one of the parents is checked out for one reason or another. Then the neediness, the anxiety, the depression of the other parent gets transferred to the — almost always the sensitive soul and the siblings, right? One of the kids who has a sensitive temperament, meaning that they tend to be more generally empathic, sensitive, and attuned, just by temperament. And those are the kids that will be drawn to say, "Mommy, what's the matter with you?"

[00:06:34] My first practicum was at Children's Hospital in Detroit and we saw schoolphobic kids and I said to my supervisor, "These kids aren't afraid of school, they can't leave their mothers." We have them into family therapy sessions. And we began to see these psychosomatic issues and school phobia related to the fact that these sensitive souls, were absorbing their mother's worries and pain. And they couldn't separate because they were worried. Now, a lot of kids have early separation issues, that's not by itself, pathological. Kids vary in their ability to separate at kindergarten and so forth. But these kids just couldn't do it. And we see that in adulthood. These kids grow up, and they're still tethered to their parents. And they're making compromises, "It's my anniversary weekend and I'm going to go change my mother's light bulb this weekend because she can't do without me." You think that's just a a dramatic example. But the truth is, we've had stories like that. I'm laughing, it's not funny because these guys don't feel like they have a choice.

[00:07:30] Jordan Harbinger: I realize that it's not funny in reality at all because of why this happened. There's kind of no, not sad reason that a parent would have to use their child as an object to fulfill their needs emotionally.

[00:07:42] Ken Adams: That's right. None of it really adds up to a legitimate deal. I mean, there's certainly, there are some immigrant families who kind of bond together when they're in Western cultures. You'll see a, sort of cohesion enmeshment, sometimes temporarily, in cultures that are first-generation and so forth. But eventually, people kind of find their way. But beyond that, there aren't a lot of legitimate reasons. I often say, that the last spiritual assignment for a parent, is to get out of the way and take the loss of their children. It's not the child's job to cushion the blow. My son's 21, and the more I get out of his way, the more he wants to circle back and consult with me. If I try to impose my opinion, he wants nothing to do with the old man.

[00:08:22] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:22] Ken Adams: In these enmesh systems, it's the opposite, right? I demand that you are my audience and that I am the one dictating terms. So it's more than just the funny movie of John Candy taking his mother on a date. These parents will interject directly and criticize partners. "She's not good enough for you, don't you forget that." There'll be always an undermining, and the motivation behind that is, "Don't you leave me. Don't you dare leave me." Right? And sometimes, it's explicit. I remember a story once, that one of the guys came to the workshop. He was having trouble with his wife, and his mother called and says, "Just divorce her, so we can get out with our life together."

[00:08:58] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that's so weird.

[00:08:59] Ken Adams: I could walk you through multiple examples like that. I got these 700 guys from across the globe coming into these workshops, and every single one of them are ambivalent about commitment. I don't know what I think or what I want because I've been absorbed by my mother's needs and feelings, and now I'm confused. "Is she good for me? My mother says she's not." You know? I don't know where I end and my mother's opinion begins. So the relationship to desire, romantic desire, sexual desire, any passionate involvement, even careers can be waylaid.

[00:09:33] Gabriel Mizrahi: So then in that case, the parent-child relationship, as you describe it, becomes a kind of emotional or psychological marriage, right? Where the child becomes the parent's surrogate spouse because, oftentimes, there wasn't that healthy bond between parents and/or there were other variables like the personality of the child. And the relationship can become sexually energized and occasionally, violating, as you write it, even without the presence of overt incest, sexual innuendo, sexual touch, or conscious sexual feelings, on the part of the parent. But, does this apply to men and women, or is this only something that happens between men and their mothers?

[00:10:10] Ken Adams: Good question. So we'll see mothers and sons, in which the son plays, sort of on a continuum. On one end of the continuum, he's her emotional caretaker. "Don't worry, mommy. I won't leave you. I'll stabilize you. You don't have to be lonely. I'm sorry you're depressed. Don't kill yourself." He's organized as a caretaker. On the other end, he's her boyfriend. He goes on dates. So we've got guys reporting to us that the mother would take him on dates. And she would prance him around, take him to the movies and dinner, and literally, be at his arm, without any overt sexual touch, you know. So you have a continuum — one end, is a sexualized boyfriend, one step before, that's the surrogate husband. You know, "I'm better than daddy." Which is a loss to the man. If the kid best the father, and the mother uses him to best the father, it's a double loss.

[00:10:57] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:57] Ken Adams: You lose your mother's love because she's not supposed to be doing that to you. And now, you're in competition with the old man, and you've overridden him and now you lose him.

[00:11:05] Jordan Harbinger: Right. Yeah. It would be very weird for a guy to stick around in a relationship like that with his wife, treating his son like that and he's like, "Is this my son or is it my wife's boyfriend who lives in our house? I want out of here. This is very odd."

[00:11:16] Ken Adams: Precisely.

[00:11:17] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It seems like, it would be so hard to have a real relationship with somebody because you're thinking, even if you're dating or married to somebody, it would be weird because your pattern for relationships is your mom. So do you really want to like, sleep with that woman and feel passionate for your wife and have kids with her? But then, it would be such a weird thing to do.

[00:11:36] Ken Adams: Yep.You put your finger right in the middle of the pulse of why it's inappropriate sexually, right?

[00:11:42] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:42] Ken Adams: Just walk ourselves back a minute here. So kids fall in love with their parents, right? They want to marry, have babies with their parents, and they're not reading Freud. It's just hardwired that your first love affair, in a very simplistic way as your parents. And then, you have your crush at school, maybe a crush on a teacher kind of unfolds. Hopefully, nobody abuses you, and you have a peer-to-peer relationship, and you kind of marry your lust, your biological lust with your ability to love, and they kind of link together and you can manage the deal, right? Imperfectly, for many of us. But basically, you can keep track of it on your own behalf. Well, if mom says, "Oh boy, my little son loves me." If a mother says, "Oh, he adores me. I'm going to use him."

[00:12:25] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:26] Ken Adams: "Oh, you're very cute. You're very sweet. Does Mommy look good? Why don't you pull up my dress?" And pretty soon, there's an involvement that goes too far and too long. And now I'm getting jealous that you have a crush at school.

[00:12:37] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:38] Ken Adams: You know? So now it's complicated and contaminated, and you're right. So now, I download that erotic, romantic story, and I take it out into the world when I'm 20 years old and now I'm confused. I'm conflicted. You know, so maybe I can love you, but I can't have sex with you, but I can have sex with you and not love you, right? So sometimes, we'll see this splitting in these men. Their answer to this intrusiveness is to split off sex with non-committed situations.

[00:13:09] Jordan Harbinger: It's interesting because when I first explored this, when I cracked the book, I was like, "Oh, this is about people whose mothers care about them, just a little bit too much." But now, it's not really that.

[00:13:17] Ken Adams: No.

[00:13:18] Jordan Harbinger: It goes beyond that, and it transcends that, and it becomes actually, the care is not for the child? It's that parent's own emotional needs, sucking that out of the child and it's kind of the opposite of caring too much. It actually has nothing, really, to do with the child's needs at all. You'd mentioned earlier, transactional — "Well, I'm going to overinvest in this child or make it appear that I'm doing that. Because then later, they owe me this affection or this attention or whatever. They going to fill my black hole of need." And that is the creepy, pseudo-incestuous thing that this ends up being.

[00:13:56] Ken Adams: Yeah. Well you said it very well. Well put. What you just described feels icky. The word icky comes up over and over and over again. Too much closeness for too long. We get guys sleeping with their mothers until they're 15 or 16, not sexually. Although, sometimes, it crosses a line. We get guys whose sexual erotic desires involve mother-stepson porn and fantasy, you know. So pretty soon, you see the sexualized experience emerge in the man that carries the story that was once icky. And so, it's almost like eye color with a lot of these guys. There's no way to have your romantic sexual desire not burden to some degree.

[00:14:41] Jordan Harbinger: What do you mean by eye color?

[00:14:42] Ken Adams: Well, I mean, it's just so common. If I had to list 10 symptoms that I've seen over 700 guys in the workshops, it'd be right there on top. It comes over and over again. Where my desires romantically are conflicted. Beyond the normal, is she or he good for me? And maybe I made a mistake. This next time, I'll date somebody different. And everybody has periods of questioning and exploration. This is a ongoing ambivalence and commitment issue that I just can't get right. So I've got guys who show up in my world of treatment or education, and they're 55 years old. They're great guys, good looking, financially well off, have never been inlove.

[00:15:23] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:24] Ken Adams: Can't do it.

[00:15:24] Jordan Harbinger: Can't do it. Yeah.

[00:15:25] Ken Adams: They can't surrender. They can't let go. They might be able to have a truncated sexual experience with an escort or a temporary girlfriend, but I can't really merge with my lover because if I merge with my lover, I can't leave. I'm stuck. I feel like I'm stuck, and engulfed by my mother. I'm not going to do this. So we've got guys who just don't bond.

[00:15:45] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:46] Ken Adams: At the worst case, who are great souls, but they can't get the relationship down because they're so afraid of being consumed again.

[00:15:54] Jordan Harbinger: You wrote in the book, "There's nothing loving or caring about a close parent-child relationship when it serves the needs and feelings of the parent rather than the child. Feeling close with your parents is a relationship in which, the individual, both as a child and later as an adult, feels silently seduced by the parent." So that sort of speaks to what we're getting at here. I'm curious, though, what this covert incest looks like in action. Those are the results. Okay. Not being able to bond, having dysfunctional relationships in that respect. What does it look like when the child is growing up? You mentioned co-sleeping with mom until 15 or 16. That is hard to imagine. I co-sleep with my 4-year-old and my one and a half year old right now, and I'm kind of like, "How many times do I have to have a child step on my, you know what, at four o'clock in the morning before we're kind of out of this phase?" now, don't get me wrong, it's very cute, but I can't even imagine anyone would want that for a long time. Especially when the kid gets older and smelly, you know. When they're 10 or 11. It's like, "Get out of here. Get in your own gross bed." I was disgusting at that age. I would never want anything like this but I'm also not one of these black hole of need people. What other symptoms are there, right? How do we know when this is too much? There's people who are close to their parents and it's totally fine. Where's the line?

[00:17:07] Ken Adams: Well, you know, I think the ultimate line is the parent. So if we really take it to a higher level, the ultimate line is the parent has become the God. That's the bottom line here is the parent claimed an authority over the child that they don't have a right to, which is to cross whatever boundary I want. And I think we've been talking pretty liberally about the different types. So you get parents who will share intimate details about how frustrated they are, even sexually with their husband, right? So we talk about mothers and sons here for the moment, just because it's easier. And they'll talk about, you know, your dad's not a good lover.

[00:17:40] Jordan Harbinger: Oh God.

[00:17:41] Ken Adams: I'm glad we never have sex anymore. I'm glad that you are such a handsome boy.

[00:17:45] Jordan Harbinger: Ugh.

[00:17:46] Ken Adams: So we begin to hear things that we might, in other normative systems think are affectionate. "Oh, you're such a good looking kid." You know? Or, "How did you get so good looking" or whatever, becomes icky in the sense that it's serving, that the parent has taken their love affair too far.

[00:18:03] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:03] Ken Adams: That they've over romanticized their love for their child. And let's face it, your kid loves you. There's nothing like it, right? And you know, it's different than a spouse. And so, if you've got a underdeveloped parent, the little girl in me is turned on by my child. So there's a sort of inappropriate context. There's a romanticization of it. There's a discussion about intimate details that don't belong. There is, "Do I look good in my nightgown?" Or inappropriate boundary crossing that doesn't have to involve physical sexual contact but can be sexualized. So the covert incest phrase is designed for that end of the continuum where the boy feels like the sexualized boyfriend to the mother.

[00:18:49] Jordan Harbinger: Icky is a great word because just imagining someone's mom saying that to them, "Do I look good in my nightgown?" Is so cringey is not even quite the right word. I mean, it's really beyond inappropriate and so, so icky that that can't not have a negative effect over a prolonged period of time.

[00:19:06] Ken Adams: Absolutely.

[00:19:07] Jordan Harbinger: The oversharing of what's going on in mom's dating life or relationship with dad is so not conducive to having a functioning emotional life of their own. What about when the kid is the go between parents? You hear about that, occasionally, with people who are divorcing but it seems like this is a little different.

[00:19:26] Ken Adams: So you're describing, when a kid is caught between the parents and the parents are vying for the kid's attention, they're fighting over the property of the child, right? Nobody's really paying attention to the feelings of the kid, but the kid becomes a piece of property like they would fight over a bank account, and the kid is torn in that instance. And there's a sort of crossover, where an enmeshed boy or girl who's in these enmeshed relationships or covert incest, they certainly will feel caught in between, but it tilts a little further with what we're talking about where one parent is using the child to stabilize themselves and to best compete with the other parent. In these cases where you've got a divorce situation, parents are fighting over there, certainly the kid will be a casualty in that. And they might then become, over time, the surrogate partner to the parent they get stuck with. So if one parent wins the child over, it may not be the victory that they really needed.

[00:20:27] Jordan Harbinger: You are listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Dr. Ken Adams. We'll be right back.

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[00:22:23] Jordan Harbinger: If you're wondering how I manage to book all these amazing authors, thinkers, and creators every week, it is because of my network. The circle of people that I know, like, and trust. And I'm teaching you how to build something similar for yourself and that's free. It's over at sixminutenetworking.com. This course is about improving your relationship building skills, and it's not cringey. It's down to earth. It's not going to be awkward for you or the people you're talking to. It's great for any profession, or if you're a student, your job hunting, this has got your name all over it. Just a few minutes a day is all it takes, and many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to this course. So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company. You can find the course, once again, it's free at sixminutenetworking.com.

[00:23:00] Now, back to Dr. Ken Adams.

[00:23:04] I know we asked earlier, does it happen with just mothers and sons or are we talking about fathers and daughters and or other mixtures? We didn't really close that loop. Do we want to do that?

[00:23:15] Ken Adams: Sure, we can do that. You know, When we see mothers and sons, again, we're assuming heterosexual. Although, I've had gay men come into the workshops, maybe 10 percent of the guys coming in and you know, one of the big misconceptions in the culture is all this relationship my mother caused the gayness. No.

[00:23:30] Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

[00:23:30] Ken Adams: Because the truth is, we'd have all 690 of the guys should be gay and they're all straight. Same dynamic.

[00:23:36] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:23:37] Ken Adams: There's about a 10 percent difference. Same issues, same intimacy problems, same sexual type of issues, just the gender orientation preference is different. So with men and their mothers, we see a lot of sexual issues.

[00:23:49] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:49] Ken Adams: And also of the father and the daughter, where the daughter is the sexualized girlfriend. We'll see her have similar issues like the man, versus the woman, who is her mother's best friend and surrogate partner. There, we tend to see eating disorders. You know, "I may be stuck with my mother, but I eat what the hell I want to eat." Right? There's always a rebellious attempt. So icky is the way to describe the end of the continuum when there's a sexualized boyfriend or surrogate husband or wife. On the other end of the continuum, the feeling is suffocation.

[00:24:24] Jordan Harbinger: And that's with this same-sex parent, right? So like a mother and a daughter?

[00:24:27] Ken Adams: Actually, it could be both.

[00:24:28] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I see.

[00:24:28] Ken Adams: Right. You could have somebody who felt more suffocated and sexualized, so suffocation is the broader enmeshment feeling, right? I'm suffocated by the relationship. I can't breathe. So a part of me needs to protest. "You might control me, mommy, and now you make me hate my dad and all men because you're angry at dad and men. But now why do I have to carry that?" So we sometimes see daughters carrying their mother's anger, as well the son, have difficulty with male friendships, for example. But with the daughters and the mothers, we see this protest in eating.

[00:25:01] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:01] Ken Adams: I'll eat what the hell I want.

[00:25:02] Jordan Harbinger: Interesting.

[00:25:03] Ken Adams: You can't have all of me. So when somebody is engulfed across their early development and they're enmeshed, suffocated, or sexualized, or all of the above — Everybody has a self, right? We have interests. We have preferences. We have a self. You have a core of who you identify as who you are, right? But in these relationships, that gets snuffed out, man. That gets shot down and pressed down, and you become a shadow of who you are, and you become the role at which your mother or father have defined for you, in need of you, because you're a sensitive soul. So you don't want to displease mommy or daddy, and you love them. So you're exploited. And now you have to find some way to declare your independence — sexing, eating, other addictions become perceived freedom, which really aren't. So if you look at the statistics now of the guys coming into the workshop, for example, the men, probably about 40 to 50 percent of them act out sexually outside their committed relations because now, I was suffocated by my mother. Now I'm suffocated by my wife. They kind of transfer that feeling onto to their partner. And to some degree, we all can do that, right? Sometimes, we react to our partners if there was negative qualities about one of our parents. But these men, they're projecting onto their partners, feelings that belong to their mothers. And so then they say, "Well, the hell with you. I'll betray you, I'll reject you." So they wind up betraying and rejecting the wrong woman. But we see the same issues of women and their mothers — commitment problems, codependency, always people pleasing.

[00:26:34] Jordan Harbinger: People pleasing. Interesting. That makes sense.

[00:26:37] Ken Adams: Not really having my own voice. Marrying somebody or getting involved with somebody who won't have any interest in being intimate with me. Besides, I'm not available to be intimate, so I'm going to pick somebody who really is not really available either.

[00:26:49] Jordan Harbinger: The people pleasing and caretaking stuff crossing over transferring, that makes total sense, right? Because if you're doing that with your parent your whole life, you just look for a partner that wants the same stuff, and now you've got two black holes of need in your life.

[00:27:01] Gabriel Mizrahi: Dr. Adams, I find it so interesting that as you move away from the icky part of the spectrum, which is much easier to identify, right? It's easier to say, "Oh, my mom put me in these situations. That made me feel very uncomfortable. I was sexualized or people commented on my appearance or whatever." But as you move more toward the, the more covert versions of this, the subtler versions of this, where perhaps you were your parents' confidant or advisor, or you had too much access to their emotional life, you supported them, nurtured them, cared for them. There was a real friendship there. But I think for some people, it can take years if they ever get there at all to realize, "Oh, I actually wasn't really just close with my parent. We didn't really have this beautiful collaboration or friendship going on. I was actually playing a role for this person that I didn't even understand." and then it plays out in all these ways — the people pleasing, the caretaking, the self-loathing, the feelings of inadequacy, the feelings, ironically of abandonment, oftentimes, of some of these people. Also, ironically, the emotional distance from that same sex parent you were actually so quote-unquote, "Close with" There's so many contradictions in this dynamic, and I find it very interesting. But the sexual dysfunction that you just touched on a moment ago is perhaps one of the most interesting. You said that so many of the men you work with end up bringing those issues into your sessions or into your workshops. I can understand how a person who is raised in a house like this, might become what we would consider a traditional sex addict, where the sexuality is very driven and it's very compulsive, but the opposite can also happen where sexuality gets shut down. Why does that happen?

[00:28:34] Ken Adams: Well, I think that, Jordan, you alluded to it earlier, right? That if I get too close to this person, it feels like I'm with my mother.

[00:28:41] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:28:42] Ken Adams: So this entanglement of that individual who's listening to mom's complaints, he becomes the loyal lover who never leaves her, right? Now, think about even if we don't have a sexualized piece of it, maybe she's not talking about her dissatisfaction sexually or prancing around in her nightgown, but he grows up and he's mommy's loyal lover, and he's never really moved out from that role. And now it's time to be sexual with his partner. And he gets past the early phase of excitement where everybody can be pretty much present. But then after a while, you've going to negotiate how to be both with somebody sexual and also separate and keep that spark alive. And he can't do it because it feels like my mother, you want too much from me, you're needy. It feels icky to me. I'm not you a loyal lover, so how do I defend against that? I can't leave you, so I'll just shut down my sexuality. Okay, I'll neuter myself.

[00:29:36] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:36] Ken Adams: So we get guys who don't function, and then they go off to the side and say, "I'll function over here. I'll do my thing over here." And so, I'll betray the wrong woman. I'm going to be loyal and betray the woman I should have been betraying over here, right? My mother. I should betray her and say, "No, no, you don't get me." When we work with these guys, we do a lot of work helping them take back this sort of unneutered process, which can be done, by the way, by embodying these guys back in their selves. "This is my body, mom. You don't get your hands on it. I now am free." Now, I have no doubt that these guys would struggle a week later. They'd kind of relapse back into it.

[00:30:12] Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

[00:30:13] Ken Adams: But it's very dramatic in that it points to the fact that these guys have not embodied themselves because it felt too icky.

[00:30:20] Gabriel Mizrahi: I think what you're also saying is that being in touch with your sexuality, and not just your sexuality, but also just your healthy ego, like my sense of self, my identity, my individualism, that is dangerous, actually.

[00:30:31] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:32] Ken Adams: Exactly.

[00:30:32] Gabriel Mizrahi: Because it would be sort of a threat or even a betrayal to the mother they have enough appropriately thrown over or redefined.

[00:30:39] Ken Adams: Precisely.

[00:30:40] Jordan Harbinger: Tell me if I'm just overanalyzing this here, but it seems like essentially in this situation you're being abused as a child, but then, also it sounds like you're idealizing your parent in all these other ways. So you're idealizing somebody who's also abusing you, which now that I say it out loud, is probably more common than one would think with an abusive parent-child relationship.

[00:30:59] Ken Adams: Learning to tolerate people in your life that really aren't good for you, sometimes. So we see two extremes in these guys. They either miss a boat and they go, "My God, I wish I could have committed to her." Invariably, most of these guys report losing the love of their life.

[00:31:15] Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

[00:31:16] Ken Adams: Because they couldn't commit. It's profoundly sad to listen to this.

[00:31:21] Gabriel Mizrahi: Wow.

[00:31:21] Jordan Harbinger: That is sad.

[00:31:22] Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah.

[00:31:23] Ken Adams: I mean, literally, the love of my life and I couldn't commit, you know. She wanted to commit for me and I couldn't do it. Or we see the other extreme, right? I keep committing to relationships that I have high tolerance for, but they're not good for me.

[00:31:35] Jordan Harbinger: That's where I was leading with this, right? If you're idealizing the abusive parent, do you then bring in that confusion around abuse and love as an adult? So then do I start dating women who are abusing me because that's what normal relationships are like in my pattern, because my mom did that where she would be like, "You're going to eat this, and you're going to dress like that, and you're not going to go do this." it's like, "Well, if I date a normal woman and she's not doing that, maybe she doesn't love me. Let me find somebody else who tells me what to do at every moment of the day." You would just recreate that and then you'd go, "Wham, my wife's abusive." It's like, well, of course you filtered out everybody who wasn't treating you poorly, so of course. And the next person you find is going to do the same thing, because that's all you know.

[00:32:14] Ken Adams: Yeah. That certainly happens. We talk about the three Ps. When we are trying to rectify the past, we may pick somebody. So you're talking about picking a person that resembles our primary abusers in order to work through the past or we might project onto them that, which isn't there. You're always too needy, right? When infact, she's saying, "What are you talking about? We've been dating for four years. I'm just looking for a commitment here, Bill."

[00:32:38] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:39] Ken Adams: Or we might provoke them, right? So let's say, I do get attached to somebody who's pretty decent, pretty loving, but I betray her. I act out sexually and with an affair partner or an escort or do something. Now she becomes a version of my mother — always controlling, always demanding to know where I'm at. But I did that to myself. So usually, we see people pursuing the past through one of those three Ps — picking somebody, projecting out to them, or provoking them. And you're talking about picking somebody, which is always sticky because when we hear these guys tell their stories, it's not always clear to us whether they've provoked them or whether or not they've picked them to become that.

[00:33:20] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:20] Ken Adams: And sometimes, it's water under the bridge. Sometimes it's too late. And divorcing both the mother and the current partner have to become part of the emancipation process.

[00:33:30] Jordan Harbinger: How did you get interested in this kind of work? Because I know you're a therapist, but it just seems like a very specific niche to get into. Did you just have a bunch of patients like this and you got interested in it or what?

[00:33:41] Ken Adams: There's a couple threads. This won't surprise you, but there was some enmeshment in my family.

[00:33:45] Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

[00:33:46] Ken Adams: So my mother has enmeshed with her parents. They were first-generation Hungarian, and then, they kind of trickled out to myself and my brothers. That was sort of behind my work, to be frank with you. The first thing that I noticed, professionally, outside of the children that I was working with at children's hospital, who were school phobic, which is when I first discovered it, is I was working with adults who had grown up in alcoholic families, adult children of alcoholics. And this man was compulsively picking up prostitutes, escorts. And he was split between living in his own place and living with his mother where he had to live in order to do his job, which was in the city. And so, while he was living with his mother, he'd be picking up prostitutes and he said, "What should I do?" I said, "Stop living with your mother." right? I was early in my professional career, you know, I wasn't aware that you don't always give sexual direct advice. To my surprise, he stopped. He did it. He moved out, and his compulsion to pick up prostitutes dropped precipitously.

[00:34:41] Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

[00:34:41] Ken Adams: It was stunning for me to see that. I understood that we had to work with him long-term on keeping boundaries and not reengaging in that. But the cathartic shift by moving out that decreased his compulsion was dramatic. I wrote my first professional article based on that case. So that was the first sort of dart on the board where I thought, "Ah, this enmeshment stuff affects sexuality." I wrote from there. I wrote silently seduced, how long after that. It just came to me, as they say.

[00:35:13] Jordan Harbinger: This is The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Dr. Ken Adams. We'll be right back.

[00:35:18] This episode is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. As each new year rolls in, we're bombarded with messages about transforming ourselves. But how about a different approach for 2024? Let's celebrate what's already great about us. I'm holding on to certain parts of my routine firmly. Top of the list is my four-day a week exercise regimen. My ongoing endeavor to learn Mandarin, which has been an 11 year journey. I should be way further than I am. Don't even remind me. It's been a gradual process. I am steadily advancing this year. I'm dedicated to accelerating a little bit. Let's talk therapy. It's a powerful tool, not just for overcoming challenges, but for recognizing your strengths and making meaningful changes. Therapy teaches you to cope positively and set boundaries. It's for everybody who wants to sharpen their mental wellbeing. So if you've been thinking about therapy, keep giving yourself excuses, here's a little nudge to give BetterHelp a try. It's completely online, tailored to your schedule. Fill out a questionnaire, get paired with a licensed therapist, and remember, you can switch therapists anytime, no additional charge.

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[00:37:25] Now for the rest of my conversation with Dr. Ken Adams.

[00:37:30] It reminds me of when somebody is getting clean from drugs or alcohol and they're like, "Don't go back to the same places." And it's like, "Yeah, yeah. Don't hang out with my friends who do drugs." And it's like, "No, no, no. Don't even go down the same road. Take a different path to work. Move out from your mom's house." "Well, what does that have to do with me picking a prostitutes?" Well, obviously at home there's some trigger that you can't not run into every single day or every time you do this. So if you move out and you're not hitting that trigger, the addiction stuff doesn't necessarily kick off or it's way less often and easier to break. And it sounds like that's kind of the pattern that we're looking at here. I would imagine triggers all kinds of addictions, right? There's going to be substance abuse problems that go along with this. Like, "Oh, I drink because I don't know." And it's like, "Well, you live with your mom, and your mom tells you all this icky stuff, and then your wife gets mad at you." And it's like, "Oh. Oh, yeah." That might have something to do with it.

[00:38:19] Ken Adams: So we like to use the word, "Ritual space." Everybody's crowded into my little center space, right? I'm not alone. I can't be alone. I've never been alone. I don't know who the hell I am. And mother is central to that space. But if I move out, now I can breathe. Now I have a ritual space in which she's not intruding. So my need to escape diminishes. So that's what you just described, is that if I'm at home, my sense of ritual space safety, is always being intruded on. So if I'm calling my mother five times a day, or she's texting me 10 times a day, I never feel a separateness, right? I don't want to answer every one of your texts here, right? And if I don't answer it, doesn't mean I don't love you, right? So please don't say that again. So these guys can't do that. They can't really set boundaries like that. So there's no spatial separateness. There's no breathing space. So the need to escape, addictions become a primary way to do that. Or I just shut down.

[00:39:18] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:18] Ken Adams: And I avoid everybody, right? I isolate, and I don't get involved in friendships or romances because as you said earlier, I just shut the whole thing down.

[00:39:27] Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm glad we're talking about this. I would love to explore, for a moment, some of the non-romantic impacts of covert incest, you know. We've talked about the dating stuff, the sex addiction stuff, but I would love to hear a little bit about how children of these parents navigate things like friendships, careers, creative pursuits, the world, in general. You touch on both of your books on a number of interesting themes in decision, fear, ambivalence, and inability to know how they really feel about a topic or an issue or a person. Sometimes, it's even difficult to make a basic decision, you know, like, do I do this or do I do that? Do I go to this restaurant or do I go to the beach? And also procrastination. Can you talk about that? Why do those qualities develop in children like this?

[00:40:09] Ken Adams: That's a good question. You just again, outlined that other series of eye color symptoms in the group. 95 percent of the guys will report what you just described. So let's think about that for a minute, right? If you're this sensitive, empathic boy, you're absorbing the dominant emotional landscape of your parent.

[00:40:26] Gabriel Mizrahi: Mm-Hmm.

[00:40:26] Ken Adams: And yours is being subjugated, right? Your needs and wants, you begin to set them aside. I don't want to upset mommy. I really want to play football, but she doesn't want me to play football, or whatever the issue is, right? And so, I begin this process early on in my development of losing my voice in the service of allowing mother to have her voice in my presence. And so, when it comes time for me to intuitively or instinctively know how to make a move, you know, this is the career I want, I'm going to take my chances. You know, we got guys who have built careers on, based on what their mothers want. They're changing careers over their 45 because they realize this is not what I wanted to do. And so you can get dramatic examples like that, all the way to I can't decide what dinner I want to go to tonight because I don't really know who I am. I don't know what my needs are. And if I get to what I really want, I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint somebody. So I'm going to move away from that and remain ambivalent or placating or people pleasing. I won't really assert what I want. In fact, I've lost track of what I want. So ambivalence in decision, self-doubt becomes sort of this repetition in me, around multiple topics. And also friendships. You know, I wind up getting friendships where I'm always the one doing the work.

[00:41:41] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:42] Ken Adams: My buddy's not reciprocating, or taking me to a ball game or whatever it is, right? And so, you know, sometimes we get friendships in which I'm doing all the heavy lifting.

[00:41:51] Gabriel Mizrahi: Wow.

[00:41:51] Ken Adams: And so, because my value is what I can give to you, how I can support you, not what's good for the both of us here, or what I want. You can say what you want without being narcissistic. "I'd really like to go to the Thai restaurant."

[00:42:05] Gabriel Mizrahi: Right.

[00:42:06] Ken Adams: "How about you? What do you want to do at this time? Okay, you want to go to this? Well this time we'll go here. Next time we'll go to Thai." Right? So that ability to negotiate preferences and needs in relationships, from friendships to careers to romances is really burdened by, I don't get a vote. In fact, I've lost the fact that I even can vote. It's sad. You know, they might have a very specific career. So sometimes, you can see somebody who's managed a career and maybe they've got a career that they really like and they've found some way to fight, and they just are kind of locked into that. That's the one thing they know. It's the one thing they can hang on to. It's the one thing they can identify with. But if you move them outside that path, they start to get a little wobbly about who they are and where they end. So, you're right. You know, we all need an intuitive sense of self. My son, his first car, he says, "Well, I'd like a sports car for my first car." I said, "No, man. That's not going to happen." And so, he had it all laid out how I was going to save money and gas and insurance five years down the road. Said he had a little PowerPoint presentation. And I said to him, "No, bud. I'm sorry. That's not happening." He goes, you know, it just doesn't feel right. Sometimes, you make decisions based on a feeling. So you lose the ability to do that when you are absorbed by somebody else's feelings and needs. That's the reason for that ambivalence, uncertainty in decision.

[00:43:29] Gabriel Mizrahi: Which would make uncertainty and crisis and wide-open ocean, very anxiety provoking for a child of this template, I would imagine. In Silently Seduced, you wrote that the adult covert incest victim remains stuck in a pattern of living, aimed at keeping the special relationship going with the opposite sex parent. It is a pattern of always trying to please mommy and daddy. A privileged and special position is maintained. The pain and suffering of a lost child, denied. Separation never occurs and feelings of being trapped in the psychological marriage deepen. This interferes with the victim's capacity for healthy intimacy and sexuality, in addition to all of the other things you just mentioned.

[00:44:09] Ken Adams: I wrote that. That's well put.

[00:44:11] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, you're not bad. You should look into writing more.

[00:44:15] Gabriel Mizrahi: Time for a new edition. We've talked a lot about what covert Inces does to people. I think we need to talk about how to recover from it. What does healing from this look like?

[00:44:25] Ken Adams: Well, I think doing what you guys are doing, first of all, you know, education. You guys are doing a great service here. Somebody out there is going to hear this and it's going to change your lives. So way to go guys. Way to go.

[00:44:36] Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah,

[00:44:36] we're going to get emails about this. Like, "I never knew that this was it, but this is it. I totally have this relationship with my mom or dad."

[00:44:42] Ken Adams: It is a slice of the pie, right?

[00:44:44] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:44:44] Ken Adams: I can't keep up with it. We have a workshop every month. I get emails from all around the world. I just can't keep up with it.

[00:44:50] So the first order of business is to come to some awareness of what is the truth. To break through the denial and to realize that what you have been calling love is not love. And it's a hard pill to swallow, but unless you can face that, everything else becomes too problematic. If you don't confront the belief system and see the reality for what it is, you can't really set a boundary. But if I come to terms of the fact that, "Well, at some level, sure, my mother probably loved me, but what she's doing now is not love." And this is transactional, obligatory assignment in that love is a currency to get me to not leave her, it's not really love. Now, I can better begin to think about setting a boundary. So challenge the belief system, confront the denial, educate yourself and be prepared to give over the responsibility to the parent to manage the loss.

[00:45:45] Gabriel Mizrahi: Mmm.

[00:45:46] Ken Adams: Kids are supposed to emancipate from their parents and move on. It doesn't mean they don't circle back. We hope that our kids do, right?

[00:45:53] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Come home for Christmas.

[00:45:55] Ken Adams: Right. You break through the denial. You educate yourself, and you shift the responsibility in your mind to your parent. This is not my job to take care of you. And you don't worry about negotiating it. So emancipation is not a negotiation. You do not need your parents' co-signature on this. It'd be nice to get their blessing, but don't go into family therapy with your mother. It'll feel like couple's therapy.

[00:46:16] Jordan Harbinger: Oh man.

[00:46:17] Ken Adams: We have some guys, best intention but misses the point, brings the mother into the therapy session and it feels like it's marital therapy with my mother.

[00:46:26] Jordan Harbinger: Man.

[00:46:26] Ken Adams: And the guy relapses in his sex addiction the next day, man. So it's declaring that, "Look it, mom, I know you've been having a hard time with your life with dad, but things are going to change. I know you love me, but things are going to be different. I going to put my energy in my life and my career and my wife, my kids. We're going to shift things around, and I'm going to trust that you're going to figure out a way to deal with it because you said you love me." So you have to step up and have a position of emancipation.

[00:46:51] Gabriel Mizrahi: There's an interesting tension here because you talk a lot about assigning responsibility to the parent, holding them accountable. But how do you hold a parent like this accountable in cases where they don't even realize that this is what they were doing?

[00:47:06] Ken Adams: Well, I'm saying this more from the perspective of an internal dialogue with the self.

[00:47:12] Gabriel Mizrahi: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:12] Jordan Harbinger: I see.

[00:47:13] Ken Adams: More than I am an external negotiation. So there has to be an internal shift in the belief system, in the way that you narrate your story, right? Because that's what we're talking about. We're talking about changing the narrative of how you hold your life story. Everybody's got a story, right? You guys got a story? I have a story. We all have a story to tell. It has to change, and you change it internally. My job is not to carry my mother's disappointment for her. It's her spiritual assignment to figure this out before she dies. Not mine. So you change the internal dialogue and then, the external is limited. It might mean, "Look, we going to change things. We're not vacationing every year in Cancun with you anymore. We're going on our own vacation." So sometimes, the emancipation is just a declaration, occasionally, about what I'm doing differently. You know, I won't be visiting this Christmas. We're staying in the motel down the street. No, we're staying in the house, by the way. You'll begin to need boundaries. So belief system, internal shift, boundaries, and then commitments to yourself, to your partner. These are my priorities, and to push back on guilt.

[00:48:22] Jordan Harbinger: Okay, do I confront my mom on this or my dad or whatever? And what if they're dead? You don't really need a boundary from a dead person, but you kind of do. Because if they're this ghost in your mind that's telling you like, "Yeah, your wife's not good for you." What do you do with that?

[00:48:37] Ken Adams: So that's the business of the therapy world, right?

[00:48:39] Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

[00:48:40] Ken Adams: That's what our business is about — is activating, experientially bringing to light into feeling that internal presence and doing the job of confrontation, therapeutically, right? So you're shifting the emotional landscape and narrative enough times and enough protest that you can start to breathe. Should that translate to a confrontation with your parents? I would say in general, not necessarily. So this is not about going home and grabbing your parents by the lapels and shaking them and saying, "Look, you guys smothered me. I want my own life." It's having your own life and letting them deal with it. Because what happens is if you go and you start getting enraged with your parents, you're going to provoke your guilt. And once you provoke your guilt, you're going to wind up resubmitting yourself back to your parents. So you have to be careful about how you declare your independence. Now, it might be if you've got parents who will listen. We always like to say that the best you can hope for is your parents will resign themself to keeping their mouth shut. If they're smart, that's what they'll do. They don't want to lose you. They want you to circle back. If I had more time, I would do a workshop for parents, and I would say, "Look, it's in your best interest."

[00:49:48] My son and I used to play baseball all the time together, play catch every day. It's not his thing anymore, right? But he's a young man now, right? So we have a different relationship. Your kids will circle back to you if you get out of the way. So your job is to keep moving forward and letting your parent or parents deal with the loss and not do too much negotiation about that. But it might mean that you could say things are changing. I'll put more emphasis in my life. I just want you to know, I won't be responding as frequently to emails or text doesn't mean X, Y, or Z. So you could make a declarative position, but know that it's not going to go far. You can't use it to get assurance that it's okay. So if you're doing that to get your parents to say, "Good for you." Don't do it. Because it's not coming.

[00:50:34] Jordan Harbinger: It's going to be so hard to do that, right? Because you're in a position that seems like it's privileged and special. "Your mommy's special boy." You don't really want to lose that at some level, I assume. But then also you're like, "Oh, and by the way, I'm not going to Cancun with you. I'm going on vacation with my wife because we're normal adults." That's not really going to fly if you're mommy's special boy and you're trying to be this, and then you're also like, "And by the way, I'm going to have my own life with my wife, and you're going to lose your pseudo boyfriend, partner, whatever that you've had since I was born." I can't imagine that going over too well. And that sort of leads to wonder if people recover a 100 percent from this, or will children of these parents always, at some level, wrestle with these feelings and conflicts. Even if the parent dies and is like, "I forgive you.", guilt is really hard to shed. It's really, really hard to get rid of entirely.

[00:51:22] Ken Adams: It's a one day at a time deal. You can keep creating real estate and spaces at which you're free, but you're always going to be provoked into some degree of relapse around that. You have to keep coming back to remind yourself about the freedom that you have a right to and deserve. So you've always going to, you know, have your private little dialogue with your mother, whether she's dead or not, and say, I need you out of the room. Sometimes, we'll have guys come into the practice, for example, and we don't come in and let them bring their spouses in to the same session because they've never had a space just for them.

[00:51:56] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:57] Ken Adams: So practicing over and over again, the ritual of space that's mine becomes a necessary piece. And that is probably ongoing. So the earlier this stuff occurred in childhood, the longer it's gone on, the deeper the template.

[00:52:13] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So cutting it off when you're 20 and you move out, is going to be easier than trying to do it when you're 45. You're married with two kids. I guess that makes complete sense. You can restart your life when you're 20 if you want to. It's a lot harder when you're married with two kids and you're in your 40s.

[00:52:27] Gabriel Mizrahi: One of the big consequences of covert incest is feeling objectified and used, as we talked about, not loved unconditionally.

[00:52:36] Ken Adams: Right. I like the phrase, "Not love for love's sake."

[00:52:39] Gabriel Mizrahi: I like that too. Not love for love's sake. So how does a person cultivate or rediscover that feeling of being loved for love's sake or even being worthy of that love?

[00:52:50] Ken Adams: That's a big question. So first of all, I think we need to confront the faulty belief system so that they understand that the transactional currency love was not really love. That's their first order of business. So assuming that's essentially challenged and out of the way. You know, I think it becomes a daily practice and being around people who are reciprocal. Pat Carnes who did all the work on sexual addiction said, "In recovery, relationships change or they end." I always liked that phrase. You can't be in recover from drug, alcohol, and sex addiction and keep going Las Vegas with your buddies. Relationships change at the end. There's no middle ground here. I think that you start cultivating relationships that are reciprocal, in which you're not the only one providing the service to the other so that you can begin to feel what it's like to have somebody hold you lovingly, and to permit yourself to do the same, right? Because the other thing that gets in the way, I remember this with my mother. I had a lot of grief about regret, and I thought, "You know what? That's not on me. She got in the way." You talked about grief earlier. One of the things that's lost here for the son is he doesn't get that sweet loving connection that I watched my son have with my wife. Sometimes, my son will turn to my wife for his counsel more than me, right? And so, that's lost to this man. And it's not on him, it's on the mother. Parents' job is to get out of the way so the kid can come back around and love them differently. So I would say surround yourself with people who can be reciprocal. And so that you can begin to take a chance on loving, because it's hard to do, right? If you've been suffocated and engulfed and enmeshed, opening your heart up is not an easy job.

[00:54:33] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:34] Ken Adams: Needing to learn that you can open yourself up to somebody romantically, lovingly, sexually. Merged with them and then unhook and come back, let yourself miss each other, right? So guys who've been enmeshed don't know that dance. They think they've always going to be emerge with their lovers. And then separateness means I never come back. But the dance of intimacy for these enmeshed guys is to learn to move in and merge and collapse and come back up. And not to bring the lover with you and have her collapse in your sacred space, but to move into a different space with her.

[00:55:08] Gabriel Mizrahi: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:09] Ken Adams: So it's a tough dance, but it is the dance that we see that works.

[00:55:13] Gabriel Mizrahi: So this is going to sound a little weird, Dr. Adams, but there are some benefits that come from this level of enmeshment/trauma. It seems to me, based on your books, that people who have these parents often tend to be very empathic. They can be very good listeners, they can be excellent caretakers, which in certain situations can be very helpful or useful, sometimes beautiful. There's some beauty to that level of care, but obviously, it can become compulsive. It can come at the cost of the person. It can become a whole identity. How do you break out of that mold? Can people with these parents stop living up to the expectations of other people and start living for themselves? How do they do that without losing some of these admirable qualities?

[00:55:54] Ken Adams: I think the empathy precedes the role. I think most of these people are naturally, so temperamentally empathic. Some kids are more, "Screw you, I don't want to deal with it." right? There's a little more punch to their temperament. I think the empathy is temperamental and also developmental. So yes, I do think these roles increase caring and empathy. I'd like to use this phrase, "I think you have to learn to regulate your empathy. You can't give it away to everybody." when I worked with therapists, therapists were always burned out by the end of the day, right? You give yourself to eight people in session. This is one of my experience. I come home from work and I didn't want to talk to my wife or my son. I was just burned out. You have to learn — I can care and feel for you, but I'm not giving it all to you.

[00:56:44] Gabriel Mizrahi: Mmm.

[00:56:44] Ken Adams: Learning to regulate the empathy is your key. "Mom, I love you. I care about you, but I'm not going to listen to your problems with dad anymore. You going to work it out with him. I'm sorry. How's the weather?" So regulating how much you give — I already have this much in the tank. That's all you're going to give. Learning to do that becomes a skill that helps you navigate so that you don't feel depleted in relationships.

[00:57:13] Jordan Harbinger: Dr. Adams, thank you so much. It's a world I didn't know existed, and I think a lot of people probably didn't know they were even in these kinds of relationships with the parents. So I think it's really informative and very helpful. Thank you so much.

[00:57:24] Ken Adams: Yeah, thank you. You guys did great. Love working with you.

[00:57:27] Jordan Harbinger: Take care.

[00:57:28] Ken Adams: Nice to see you guys.

[00:57:31] Jordan Harbinger: You're about to hear a preview of The Jordan Harbinger Show with a guest who committed a white-collar crime, went to federal prison, and now advises lots of people that you've heard on the news.

[00:57:41] Justin Paperny: I'm going to speak openly about breaking the law. I'm going to speak openly about living in denial.

[00:57:46] I'm going to speak openly about what I've learned from this experience. I'm going to speak openly how I was a privileged rich kid who had all the breaks in life, and I deserved to be scrutinized. I deserved to be punished. And I'm going to talk about how I'm going to climb back up. I knew that it was wrong. I knew that while I was sitting in a meeting and someone was being told that a certain return existed, I knew that it was a lie and people were hurt as a result of that. Even though in my case all of the money was repaid, all the victims have got their money back, some of the humanity was stripped away. It comes back to intent. The government doesn't care. It doesn't matter if you were swept into this. They think you broke the law. They have a narrative. And they are out to punish and they love cooperators. I broke the law. I cheated. I created victims. It is a lifelong stigma. You know it, it takes some time. It takes some peppering and understanding of reading and learning and thinking. You've got to find that perspective. You've got to become grateful for what's left versus all that's lost. And that was really a big transformation for me, focusing on what was left — my family and my mind, and a willingness to work hard and be competitive versus obsessing over everything that had crumbled down. The hardest part isn't prison, it's frankly the easiest part. There is a value in being in prison and losing everything. There is a freedom that comes with it. I didn't have a career to return to. I didn't have money to return to. I didn't have a relationship to return to. Everyone has to find value in the climb. I found great value in climbing back to a sense of respectability.

[00:59:11] Jordan Harbinger: To hear why Justin Paperny says his 18 months behind bars was one of the best experiences of his life, check out episode 226 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

[00:59:22] Interesting conversation. Again, I'd never thought about most of this stuff. Sometimes, covert incest victims pick a similar partner to their parent, but sometimes they choose somebody very different. Somebody who's actually incompatible so that they have an excuse for a marriage that just doesn't work. And I — this happens subconsciously a lot of the time. And it shows up in dating, it shows up in partner selection and often, these folks divorce because they're actually trying to divorce their parent and dissolve that emotional bond. So the whole thing kinda gets projected onto their partner. So they just keep repeating that pattern because divorcing their actual spouse doesn't solve the problem. It's the parent they need to kind of distance themselves from.

[00:59:58] And Dr. Ken Adams, he is big on setting boundaries with the parent in question. This is like the most important part of the healing process, which is allowing for, as he puts it, the unfolding of your true, authentic self as opposed to playing the role that was defined for you by your parents. And if you're a parent listening right now and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm doing this to my kid." You're not a bad person. But you going to identify the line between healthy intimacy with a family member and what's called covert incest. I definitely recommend picking up the book. A therapist is a good place to start. Again, you're not a terrible person, especially if you nip this in the bud. And there's a difference between being close with your child and being enmeshed. And if you're doing it with young children, obviously, you know, good, stop now. But if it's an older child, it's not too late to stop. Like, you can rescue these relationships and help them become more healthy at pretty much any time.

[01:00:47] So how can you identify the line between healthy intimacy and covered incest? Well, when the relationship primarily serves the emotional needs of the parent, not the child. And I asked Bruce these questions, so these are his answers, not just me speculating. When the child's closeness to one parent is used in a tug of war with the other parent, that happens a lot in divorces, but it also happens a lot in families that are still together. When the implicit and explicit demands for obligatory loyalty, love is used transactionally, in this case, to the parent, interfere with the child's identity unfolding and becoming like a standalone adult. Also, when the parent's needs and demands interfere with the romantic relationship of the adult child, leaving the partner essentially, second fiddle. So like, you're in a weird relationship with your mom so that your current wife or girlfriend can't really form a healthy bond with you. There's a lot more to this, but essentially, the line between the sweet and normal love between parent and child, it crosses into this covertly incestuous feeling when the parent parades the boy or girl around as sort of a romanticize person who will never leave them. And this can occur, again, I want to highlight this without any inappropriate sexual touch at all. And it's still icky, right? It's still icky. It's still too much. It's still too invasive. The best options for parents who find themselves doing this is to seek adult companionship needs outside the bond with their child, obviously. To encourage autonomy and independence, to extend a feeling of confidence and trust in the child's independence, to contain worry, neediness, and helplessness that would normally be expressed to the child. And to extend space and respect for separateness to the child. And sort of see this as an act of its own love. And I know there's a lot there, but I think for people who are really listening, because they need this stuff, they get it and they know where the rewind button is. There's a lot more in the book especially, which of course, will be linked in the show notes and on our books' page at jordanharbinger.com/books.

[01:02:32] Transcripts will be in the show notes as well. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. You're welcome to email me. I'll surface any code for you. Yes, it's that important Also, hey, newsletter. Every week, the team and I dig into an older episode of the show. We dissect the lessons from it. If you are a fan of the show, you want some important highlights and takeaways, or you just want to know what to listen to next, the newsletter is a great place to do just that. jordanharbinger.com/news is where you can find it. And we are going to be doing giveaways on there as well. I know I've said that before. There might even be something in there by the time you listen to this, so keep your eye on your inbox. Don't forget about six-minute networking as well over at sixminutenetworking.com. I'm @JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

[01:03:16] This show created an association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Thank you for tag teaming this one with me. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends and you find something useful or interesting. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who could use this episode or the advice from this episode, and you probably do, feel free to share this episode with 'em. Actually, please do so. You could save their life, or at least their relationship with their future romantic partner and/or their parents.

[01:03:47] In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.