Healing Your Emotional Self by Beverly Engel Page A

necessary separation- individuation process and have independent lives. I want you all for myself is the underlying theme, and the mirror the smothering parent holds up to the child is “You are nothing without me.”
    Mark’s mother did everything for him. When he was a child she continued to cut up his food even after he was capable of doing so
    himself. She continued to clean his room well into high school and never required him to do any household chores.
    Both his parents were overprotective to the point of smothering. They constantly warned him about the potential dangers all around him. “Don’t go into the deep water, you’ll drown,” “Don’t ever use a public toilet or you’ll get a disease.” They discouraged him from roller- skating because they were afraid he’d fall and break a bone, and they didn’t let him take the training wheels off his bicycle until he was seven years old.
    This overprotectiveness doomed Mark to become an under- achiever as an adult. His parents’ negative views of life became a self- fulfilling prophecy, and because his mother had done everything for him, he never learned how to assume responsibility for himself or his possessions. His lack of survival knowledge was embarrassing to him, and he tended to neglect his health and his physical appearance.
    Smothering parents emotionally and sometimes physically engulf their children. They can be controlling, overbearing, or simply ever- present in their child’s life. This engulfment discourages independ- ence and breeds unhealthy dependence. It also can create an attitude of hopelessness and powerlessness on a child’s part. If everything is done for you, as it was in Mark’s case, or if you are discouraged from trying things on your own, how can you know what you are capable of?
    There are several types of smothering, possessive parents:
Those who are motivated primarily by fear (fear of something bad happening to their child) as with Mark’s parents
Those who need to control their children
Those who want their children to think, feel, and do just as they do
Those who do not feel separate from their children and there- fore do not want their children to be independent from them
Those who fear being alone and therefore attempt to tie their children to them by making them dependent on them
Those who see their children as reflections of themselves— narcissistic parents
Those who use their child to satisfy needs that should be satis- fied by other adults

    While people who were neglected or abandoned often feel invisi- ble, those who were smothered often feel the opposite. They tend to feel overly scrutinized—so much so that they wish for a place to hide from the ever-present gaze of their parent. Often the look is that of a disapproving parent who is just waiting for them to do something wrong. Other times the look is that of a worried parent who fears someone or something will hurt the child. Whatever the intention of the look, the result is that children who are smothered and engulfed often have a difficult time discovering who they are apart from their parent and in separating from that gaze. “Even when I was out of my mother’s sight I still felt her looking at me,” my client Samantha told me. “It was as if her eyes followed me wherever I went. As a matter of fact, I still feel those eyes on me today—judging my every move.” Still another client, Monica, explained it like this: “It is as if my eyes are my mother’s eyes. I see everything from the context of whether or not she would approve of what I am doing, or whether she would approve of a person I am with. It’s like I’m never really on my own, to make my own decisions, to make my own mistakes.”
    The reason Samantha and Monica experience life this way is that their mothers discouraged their individuality. Both mothers were overly invested in their daughters’ becoming replicas of themselves. They wanted them to think, feel, and act just the way they