When a parent turns to their child for the emotional intimacy a romantic partner should provide, it becomes emotional incest.

Emotional incest syndrome — often called emotional incest — doesn’t involve physical sexual abuse. But some who have experienced emotional incest report that the effects can be similar.

Emotional incest is also called covert incest. It’s closely related to the concepts of:

  • Enmeshment. Enmeshment involves relationships, often in a family, with blurry or nonexistent boundaries.
  • Parentification. Emotional incest is closest to the type of parentification known as emotional parentification, in which a child is forced to take on the emotional burden that a parent or caregiver would usually shoulder.

While similar to these concepts, emotional incest differs in that it specifically describes the relationship between a child and their parent or primary caregiver and doesn’t include siblings or extended family. And rather than taking on the emotional role of parent, children take on the role of partner.

It’s not known yet how common emotional incest is. It’s even possible to grow up without realizing you’ve experienced it.

Still, emotional incest can impact mental health in ways that bleed into adulthood — and mental health support can lend a healing hand.

It’s not a diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, text revision (DSM-5-TR). Instead, covert incest is a phenomenon psychologist Kenneth M Adams highlighted and named in the 1980s.

In his book “Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners – Understanding Covert Incest,” Adams uses examples to demonstrate how emotional incest can impact relationships and emotional well-being far into adulthood.

Researchers have developed a Childhood Emotional Incest Scale (CEIS) to help people understand if they’ve experienced it.

According to the CEIS, emotional incest is connected to both childhood emotional abuse and neglect. The CEIS involves two key factors: A surrogate spouse and unsatisfactory childhood.

In other words, experiencing emotional incest means you felt pressured to play the emotional role of partner to your parent — and as a result, you may have missed out on key parts of childhood such as friendships with people your age.

Emotional incest often takes place when a parent lacks or has lost their own emotional support system, including their partner or spouse. They might feel isolated or not know how to find constructive outlets for difficult emotions in these cases.

For instance, emotional incest may be more common in cases of:

Parents who experienced emotional incest as children may also expect their own child to play the same emotional role that they did with their parent.

In parents, emotional incest can look like the following:

  • crying and expecting your child to offer comfort
  • divulging deep or intimate secrets
  • requiring one-on-one time with your child while discouraging their friendships with peers
  • showing jealousy when your child spends time away from you
  • sharing responsibility for adult decisions such as finances, employment, or where to live
  • expecting compliments or praise from your child

While it doesn’t involve explicit sex, emotional incest sometimes enters sexual territory. Parents might:

  • talk about their own sexual encounters
  • spend time with their child while nude
  • invade their child’s privacy
  • comment on their child’s body in sexual ways
  • take their child out on dates

Additionally, you might show some of the following signs if you were enmeshed with your caregiver as a child:

  • ignoring your own needs in favor of your parent’s needs
  • missing out on child-appropriate activities such as extracurriculars or time with friends
  • feeling responsible for the emotions of others
  • people-pleasing behaviors or trouble saying “no”
  • alternating feelings of love and hatred for your parent

Emotionally incestuous relationships also create a lack of safety and warmth in the parent-child relationship, according to the CEIS.

If you grew up in an enmeshed relationship with a parent, you might be familiar with the mental health impacts it can cause. These can include:

A 2015 study on the effects of family enmeshment on children also associated it with trouble regulating, or managing, emotions.

If you experienced emotional incest syndrome, it’s possible to heal from the impacts — although this can take time.

While no set path to treatment exists for survivors of emotional incest, you might find the following helpful:

  • Practice setting boundaries. A key sign of emotional incest is the breakdown of boundaries between parent and child. If you’ve been enmeshed with a parent, establishing healthy emotional boundaries may feel foreign or strange but it is possible.
  • Talk with a therapist. Some forms of therapy are particularly suited to helping you heal from emotional incest. Consider finding a therapist who specializes in topics such as family of origin and family dynamics.
  • Try inner child healing. Inner child work involves imagining talking with the child version of yourself and showing them the compassion and support you wish you’d received.
  • Find your support network. Creating space between your parent and you probably won’t be easy if you’re used to them crossing your boundaries. As you practice setting those boundaries, knowing you have a safe, supportive circle of friends and family to fall back on can help.
  • Journaling. Emotional incest can make it difficult to recognize and accept your own thoughts and feelings. By allowing you to practice getting your thoughts and emotions onto the page, journaling can help you exercise those muscles.

If you’re under the age of 18 and think you might be experiencing emotional incest (or aren’t sure if what you’re experiencing is sexual abuse), you’re not alone. Help is available:

  • You can chat or call the National Sexual Assault Hotline 24/7, 365 days a year at 800-656-4673.
  • Consider talking with an adult you trust about next steps if you’re not sure where to start.
  • For immediate help, you can call your local law enforcement or Child Protective Services.

And if you’re an adult survivor of emotional incest, you might find the following resources helpful:

Emotional incest is a family dynamic that oversteps healthy boundaries between children and parents. While it doesn’t involve physical sexual abuse, it can share many of the effects of physical incest and emotional abuse.

Recognizing that you’ve experienced emotional incest can be a challenge since you may have developed tough defense mechanisms to protect you from emotional harm when your boundaries were crossed as a child.

Healing is still possible.

By setting some strong boundaries and building a constructive emotional support network, you can empower yourself to take part in thriving adult relationships and break the cycle of emotional incest if you chose to become a parent.