Mother-Enmeshed Men: Has A Mother-Enmeshed Man Been Conditioned To Ignore Himself?

Even though a man will have his own needs and life to lead, based on how he behaves, it can be as though he doesn’t have any needs or only a few basic needs and doesn’t have his own life to lead. Due to this, he is going to neglect himself and his own life will pass him by.

It can be hard for someone to comprehend why a man would live in this way, especially as it is not serving him. To use an analogy: it will be as if he has a car and his mother has a car, but he ignores his own car and makes sure his mother’s car is taken care of.

Another Part

To make matters worse, his mother could be caught up with herself and not see that he has turned his back on himself, let alone encourage him to focus on himself. Therefore, she is not going to play a part in changing the direction that his life is taking.

And, if he were to ‘wake up’ and start to change his behaviour, his mother could do what she can to make sure that he goes back to how he was before. She is then not going to be on his side, so to speak.

Out of Alignment

Anyway, as he is living in the wrong way, he should realise that he needs to change his life. Most likely, there will be a part of him that stops him from coming into contact with the needs and feelings that would allow him to see that he is ignoring himself.

This part of him, his false self, will dominate his true self and thereby, make sure that he focuses on his mother and pleases her. To his false self, then, pleasing his mother will be the only thing that matters.

Another Scenario

If he were to merely think about changing his behaviour, he would probably soon feel anxious and fearful. At this point, it will be as though his false self is not on his side; it is on his mother’s side.

But, as this part of him will be stopping him from being able to listen to and express himself, this is to be expected. However, this self won’t be his enemy and it won’t be on his mother’s side; it will simply be doing what it can to keep him alive.

A Closer Look

Yet, as behaving in this way is not serving him, this is not going to make sense. What needs to be understood is that his false self is not responding to how things are; it is responding to how things were.

This part of him will have been created during his formative years, and this is likely to have been a time when he was greatly deprived and deeply wounded. A stage of his life when he needed an attuned and caring mother was probably a time when his mother was emotionally unavailable and out of reach.

Role Reversal

Most likely, she had also been greatly deprived and deeply wounded during her formative years. As a result, she couldn’t provide him with what he needed to move out of an emotionally underdeveloped state and looked toward him to be there for her.

To handle what was going on, his brain would have repressed how he felt and a number of his developmental needs. He would then have lost touch with his connected, true self and developed a disconnected, false self.

Self-Alienation

This false self would have caused him to be focused on his mother and do what he could to please her. At this stage of his life, his survival depended on her, so he had to do what she wanted.

When he expressed himself, he was likely to have been disapproved of, rejected and even abandoned. Thus, it was vital for his true self to be repressed and for another self to be created.

An Anachronism

But, as he is now an adult and his survival no longer depends on his mother, his false self is not going to serve him. For his life to change, first, he will need to ‘wake up’ and second, he will need to heal the trauma that he experienced during his formative years.
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It will be this trauma that is keeping his false self in place and preventing his true self from seeing the light of day. This is something that will take courage, patience and persistence.

Awareness

If a man can relate to this and he is ready to change his life, he may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.