Understanding Enmeshment and Its Impact on Sexual Addiction & Recovery w/ Kenneth Adams

In this episode, host Tara McCausland speaks with Dr. Kenneth Adams, a top expert in the field of enmeshment and sex addiction. Dr. Adams explains the concept of enmeshment, its impact on family dynamics, and how it may play a role in the development of  sexual addiction. He discusses the difference between enmeshment and covert incest, shares examples, and elaborates on how these dynamics can impede healthy adult relationships and sexuality. The episode provides insights into the recovery process from both addiction and enmeshment, focusing on the need for both partners in a relationship to create a sacred, boundary-rich space. Dr. Adams shares hope for recovery and the importance of self-acceptance and ownership in the healing journey.

Register for the 2025 SA Lifeline Virtual Conference HERE.

Want to connect with Dr. Adams? Find him at overcomingenmeshment.com

00:00 Introduction and Announcements
02:13 Guest Introduction: Dr. Kenneth M. Adams
03:36 Understanding Enmeshment
08:49 Enmeshment and Sexual Addiction
10:45 Case Studies and Real-Life Examples
19:13 Impact on Relationships and Recovery
36:13 Hope and Healing

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Announcements
• 2:13 Guest Introduction: Dr. Kenneth M. Adams
• 3:36 Understanding Enmeshment
• 8:49 Enmeshment and Sexual Addiction
• 10:45 Case Studies and Real-Life Examples
• 19:13 Impact on Relationships and Recovery
• 36:13 Hope and Healing

Transcript

Introduction: 0:06

This is Pathway to Recovery, an S.A. Lifeline Foundation podcast, featuring hosts Tara McCoslin, who is the S.A. Lifeline Executive Director, and Justin B., a sex addict living in long-term recovery. We have conversations with experts and individuals who understand the pathway to healing from sexual addiction and betrayal trauma because we believe that recovering individuals leads to the healing of families.

Tara McCausland: 0:39

Hey friends, before we get started, a couple of announcements. We do have our SAL 12-step men's free virtual workshop coming up on September 13th. This will be a couple hour event. And for more information on that, go to sal 12step.org. Also, we're very excited to announce that registration for our annual SA Lifeline Virtual Conference is now live. Our theme this year is From Surviving to Thriving, Transforming Pain into Purpose. It's on November 7th and 8th. And again, this is a virtual event. We are excited to have eight qualified therapists speaking to us on the subjects of sexual addiction, betrayal trauma, and healing couples and families. For example, we will hear from Michelle Mays on Finding and Using Your Empowered Voice After Betrayal, Dwayne Osterland from Shamed Resilience, A Journey to Relational Healing, Jeannie Vittoni, Coming to the Fence, The Power of Partners Sensitive Recovery. And while this is virtual, it's very much interactive. You'll be able to fill out polls and surveys, ask questions of our presenters during five live QAs. You'll be able to download worksheets and gain access to recordings of the conference. Also, there are scholarships available if you are in need of some financial support and you can register for this event on salifeline.org. This will be a great event to really help you get some momentum in your healing journey. Now to the show. Kenneth M. Adams, PhD and CSAT, is a licensed psychologist since 1981, faculty member with the International Institute of Trauma and Addiction Professionals, and the clinical director and founder of Kenneth M. Adams and Associates in suburban Detroit and the popular overcoming enmeshment workshops. Dr. Adams is a national lecturer, workshop leader, and consultant in the areas of child abuse, dysfunctional family systems, and sex addiction. He is the author of numerous peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and the books Silently Seduced, When He's Married to Mom, and A Light in the Dark, as well as co-editor of Clinical Management of Sex Addiction Revised. He is a certified sex addiction therapist, a CSAT supervisor, and CSAT training facilitator, as well as an EMDR practitioner. Welcome to the Pathway to Recovery Podcast. I'm your host, Tara McCausland, and I'm really excited to introduce to you Ken Adams. This may not be an introduction for some, though. There may be many here that recognize your name. So glad you're here with us. Thank you.

Kenneth Adams: 3:08

I really impressed - you gave me a little background of your of your organization and started by your parents and so forth. I've been very impressed. I I didn't know a lot about it, but delighted to hear the people up there doing the good hard work.

Tara McCausland: 3:22

Yes, and it is hard work, but worthy and purposeful. And that's what drives us, right? Well, so this topic is one that I've wanted to discuss for months now. I've been trying to pin down Dr. Adams for some time. So I'm so grateful to have this opportunity to discuss a topic that some of you may have never heard of before, but the topic of enmeshment and how that plays a role for some in sexual addiction. And so Dr. Adams is one of the big players in this field, and I would say probably one of the primary people that's spoken to this issue. And so we'll make sure that before we leave this conversation, that people know how to find you, because I know we'll have questions. But just to start off, that term enmeshment, they may have never even heard of it. Can you define enmeshment and maybe give us some examples of how this might look in a family dynamic?

Kenneth Adams: 4:16

Yeah, in enmeshment, it's a giddy uh term, it's getting more and more used in the popular culture. I don't know if you've noticed, but it's popping up more and more. Uh my son was at a dinner party. He's a young man and uh making his way in LA these days as a music photographer, and he was at a dinner party, and somebody brought up the topic of covert incepts, which is a pseudo cousin of enmeshment. And uh these podcasters were talking about my book, and so they asked my son what his father did. So it's out there in people in their 20s now, picking up on it. Enmeshment, and I'll give you both definitions of mesh reading and covert incepts. Where there's excessive dependency, a loss of identity, primarily in the part of the child or the adult child, where that person feels a tremendous guilty, obligatory loyalty to align themselves in a care taking position, an assignment to co-regulate the distress of the other parent. And they become entangled so that they don't know what the heck your needs and feelings are. If you ask them what they're feeling, they're feeling what their parents are feeling. I first discovered this when I, my first professional assignment was um as a practicum student at Children's Hospital in Detroit after Michigan, and we saw these school four big kids. And my supervisor said to me, Well, Ken, what do you think of that? And he said, But you're not afraid to go to school. They can't leave their mothers. Their mothers are depressed, they're anxious, and these are these sweet, empathic, it's always, almost always the primary empathic children, sometimes birth order, sometimes gender will define it, who sort of very sweetly and lovingly don't want mommy or daddy to feel bad. And they begin to organize, and the parents, most of which I think is non-malicious, uh say, geez, this feels good. I got a jerk for a husband or a wife. Why don't I just let my son or daughter make me feel better? And before you know it, you've got a long-term dependency in which the child loses their identity. And the parent gets clingy, demanding, intrusive, sometimes narcissistically and intentionally. And then you get these adults that we saw, or I saw them for years before I wrote my first professional article on the subject. We see these adults who are ambivalent, can't commit, are addicted, marry people who are addicted, try to fix the family. And what we see is that they've never left the original family marriage. They're still marrying the marital dynamic and they wind up replaying it. So in in the in an emesh system, because people say, well, what's wrong with being close to your family? Well, nothing, of course. I want to make a distinction, because this is I get asked this all the time, particularly for people from cultures, for example, either religious or uh different cultures in which family loyalty or religious loyalty is front and center as the primary value of that of their cultural or religious system. And what we notice though, even within those systems, that loving systems, cohesive loving systems flex, don't make the children feel bad for their own separateness. In an emesh system, don't you dare move away from me. And I don't like who you're marrying. I, you know, and so pretty soon what you have is you have a burning in the mesh system of the parents dictating too much terms and authority and leaving the adult child guilty, anxious upon separation, uncertain of themselves, unable to commit, looking for ways to get some freedom from feeling obligated.

Tara McCausland: 8:30

I'm curious, what are the major impacts of enmeshment on an adult? How will that impact sexuality, the development of healthy sexuality, and perhaps lead to a sexual addiction?

Kenneth Adams: 8:43

So if I'm a young man and my mother is in this case, we'll pick on men and their mothers, but this happens to daughters and mothers and daughters and fathers, and it happens. But if you're a parent, you know this, you know, kids fall in love with their parents. It's just the way it works. No one's learning it on the Disney Channel. It's a biologically driven sexual, erotic love template. What we know about eroticism as an adolescent or a young person is different than we know it at five, but make no mistake, five-year-olds are falling in love with their parents. It's an early bud of romance, and you hope it goes well. But if if mommy's intrusive or even a little inappropriate, talking about daddy not being sexual enough or maybe not dressing appropriately, pretty soon that kid feels intruded on emotionally, sexually and otherwise. And he's looking for a way out. What he learns though is that mommy needs absolute loyalty, whatever she wants, I give her. So he has two parts to her. He's he learns to submit himself to his mother as a way to get free from her. And then he goes over here to a porn image or a sex worker and says, Oh, I don't have to be obligated. Anybody over here. And once he's exposed to that opportunity, it's like wildfire. It's like, oh, it's relief, it's freedom, I no longer feel neutered. So now we have the makings of driver in sexual addiction in many, many cases. Not all, of course, there's different ways to get there. I I wrote my first professional article based on this case, but I was treating a guy. I moved from working with kids to working with adults, and I was working with adult children and alcoholics, and this guy was seeing uh prostitutes on a regular basis, and he lived outside the city of Detroit, but he he worked in Detroit, so he he lived with his mother for most of the week. Single, single woman, divorced, alcoholic, you know, the whole story. So he said, How do I stop this? I didn't know much about sexual addiction, and we didn't have any groups. There was one 12-step program in the whole metro Detroit area of Michigan. So it was a new deal for me. And I said, Well, move out from your mother's house now. To my surprise, he did that. He stopped staying, and immediately you saw his compulsion to F dumps actually drop precipitously. It was like somebody flipped a switch. So then all of a sudden, now I I discovered, and we know, working in the field, that it takes more than a cathartic moment of shifting to maintain long-term sobriety, but it was a stunning realization that that you don't need to be physically sexually violated to have your sexuality hijacked by intrusive parent-child relationships. In any case, remember in a cohesive system, there's closeness. There may even be frequency of contact. So frequency of contact by itself doesn't define imagination. It's more the dynamic that you are obligated to meet first, second, and third, then maybe your partner, maybe your kids, and maybe you, but everybody else comes down the list. In cohesive systems, the parent blesses the adult child's separateness. The parent takes the loss. One of the last spiritual assignments for a parent is to bite your tongue.

Tara McCausland: 12:34

Yes.

Kenneth Adams: 12:35

Take a loss and not burden your adult child with your loss. It is not their job to take care of you. In cohesive systems, that message is clear. Don't worry, sweetie, I got this handled. You know, you don't have to worry about me. I'll take care of it, I'll figure it out. There's permission to separate. In an Mesh system. Oh no. So that's a clear line in the sand. So when I talk to when I talk to um audiences, therapists or otherwise, where the system, the cultural or religious system is the mesh system in the way it operates, I say to them, look, we're going to set aside all your questions about the nuances of your culture and religious system. Because first I want to define what the trauma is. And then I will ask or try to answer your ass questions.

Tara McCausland: 13:30

Well, this is fascinating. And for some people, this might even be a little bit hard to hear because that parent-child relationship, it can be really hard sometimes to find that balance where you're really cleaving to your wife or husband, but also feeling connected to and enjoying a healthy relationship with your family of origin.

Kenneth Adams: 13:50

Enjoying the family is a reconstruction.

Tara McCausland: 13:54

Yes.

Kenneth Adams: 13:55

Of the relationship that must be reconstructed.

Tara McCausland: 13:59

Yes. And in fact, you had talked about parents not only biting their tongues, but they have to grieve the loss of that child and allow the healthy bird to leave the nest, because that's what healthy birds do, right? But you're absolutely right. While this may be even hard for people to understand or bring into their current conception of what healthy family dynamics look like, I have seen the havoc that enmeshment wreaks on marriage relationships, just enmeshment. And then when you add sexual addiction to it, it can seem like a brew that is really hard to find a solution to.

Kenneth Adams: 14:35

You know, so I used to be a little more political and diplomatic and try not to say too much that would be stirring to parents. But the truth of the matter is that parents are responsible for cleaning this up. And there's no quit around that. They're spiritually assigned to do what's right. And I I've sort of had a point in my career where I'm not soft pedaling that anymore. I h I hold myself to account, you know. My son, he's 23. That transition, we were close, you know. We we played catch every day. We were big baseball fans. And uh we played catch in the snow. But so he went on his own journey. And it wasn't what I imagined he should be doing. I had to learn to bite my tongue and back off. And it was difficult. It was difficult. And uh as it was to my wife uh earlier on, he stiffed on her first. Little did I know it was coming my way too. But now, now he circles back. I hired him into my business, overcoming a mesh man, because he's a whiz at social media. And now I have an adult, a young adult man who is my son. My grief has been replaced by pride. And so that's the reward for a parent. In mesh systems, the parent refuses to grieve. They burden their child with the responsibility to cushion my loss. Parent, you may be stirred up about that, but you you're violating your spiritual mandate. Yeah. I know that that's its own topic, right? And in my book, When he's married to mom, I actually have a section for parents and I talk in a subsection on the spiritual mandate. So I mentioned to you that sexuality can get hijacked by an intrusive parent. Sexuality is a developmental phenomenon. It's not your first orgasm or your first crush. That's its first sort of recognized sort of, oh, this is different. But it was developing long before that. And your primary caretakers have a big role in how you hold your erotic desires. So if things go good enough relatively well, you're not intruded on, and you know, sex isn't treated as an extreme issue one way or the other, then eroticism can be used in the service of attachment. I can love and lust, lust being biological in this sense, not immoral. I can love and lust in the cinema package. I can bond with somebody and be attracted to them. I can be attracted to somebody and also bond with them. So lots of studies on infant mother attachment, the early studies on the Reese monkeys and pulling them away from their mothers and terrible. So we have lots of evidence that sexual reality is a developmental phenomenon that's integrally linked, not just to biology, but to the primary relationships. So if they get intrusive and I can't leave, it feels neutering to me, dis-empowering. And this can be true for women too. So I get into a relationship because I was taught, if you want to marry me, I'll marry you. I call that my first marriage. I've been in two. Thank goodness no more than that. So emeshed adults learn to be loyal and commit regardless of whether it's good for me or not. So now I'm stuck. Now, how the heck do I get out of here? Oh, there's that ad, there's a pornography image. Now I take my lust, my biological lust, and I split it off. Compartmentalize it. I'm free. I'm not disempowered over here because they want nothing from me emotionally. So I can be fully sexual over here, whereas over with my partner, I feel disempowered because I have a whole another set of dynamics. So now, if you're married to someone like that, you're betrayed by their sexual infidelity, but you also notice that they're seeing and talking to their mother every day, and that you don't even get that kind of attention. So you're betrayed, you have two betrayals now, which which string do you pull on? Where do you take your energy and efforts to confront this? You know. So that's how I hope that makes some sense to you and to your listeners. That's how enmeshment robs somebody from the freedom to say, this is my sexuality, I'm in charge of it. And I'm and I'm responsible for it. When we're doing our enmeshment workshops, we get guys who are recovering sex addicts, and they say, Oh, they say, I didn't realize that I wasn't fully in a recovery until I dealt with my enmeshment, because now I'm 100% responsible for my choices. Because up until then, their sexuality isn't there, it's their mother's. So in our investment workshop, it's not an addiction workshop. We are helping them disentangle that from their mothers. This is mine, not yours, Mommy. You don't get any say. It's always anxiety-producing for a partner because they think, oh my God, what are you doing with this guy? You're giving him too much freedom here. I understand that, but there you can't have it both ways. You can't have him emancipate and be submissive in the same way. It just doesn't work that way. So a partner of an imesh sex addict is going to be much more secure with the guy who says, I make charge with this. I'm I'll be the one steering my sexual share. And my past isn't, my addiction isn't. And yes, sweetie, you get a vote on things, but ultimately under this order here. Now you have somebody you can trust.

Tara McCausland: 20:46

Can I ask, have there been any studies done on the the association between sexual addiction and enmeshment and how many addicts are dealing with an enmeshed relationship?

Kenneth Adams: 20:58

I did some uh very rough screening years ago at our treatment centers for sexual addiction, and therapists were reporting 25 to 45 percent of the addicts had that issue. I did the reverse. We have about probably 2,000 now, but I have the statistics of 1,500 surveys from imeshed men, and we have probably about 500 from women. I don't have them in front of me right now, and if I did, I'd be more observed, but I'll give you a rough estimate. So we ask in that survey, and I think it's about 60%, roughly, it could be a little less, but it's over 50, maybe up to 60% of the men are reporting after sexually. So over half, so we'll say roughly 60% of the enmeshed men of 1,500. So this is a self-reporting now, but it has some meaning. Over almost 60% of the guys coming in, so we we into the enmeshment workshops are reporting they have after now. Of course, we see it by a sample. By the time they come in or enmeshment workshops, there's some extreme cases, they're troubled, or their their partners have pushed them in, or you know, I don't know out there in the general population. Now, I can tell you with the women, it's not quite as high, but it also is elevated in the women. Andor they'll marry somebody or bond with somebody who has sexual actinel problems, too. Uh, we also see more eating disorders of the women than we do sexual disorders. Um, we just ran a workshop for women a couple months ago. You know, the six women, five of the six never marry, and they were in their fifties because they were so loyal and bonded to their mothers or fathers. Now, we we're we're more debate about marriage being a mental health goal, but they never had a choice. They couldn't leave.

Tara McCausland: 22:56

Right. So I'm sure one of the questions on listeners' minds then is if both enmeshment and sexual addiction are present, which one are we treating first? Or if we treat one, how is it going to affect the other? What are your thoughts on that?

Kenneth Adams: 23:12

Yeah, so ultimately it's a case-by-case basis, but in general, you know, if you're dealing with sexual betrayal of secrecy, God knows what kind of secrets are going to emerge publicly, et cetera, et cetera, you really have to deal with that first. You know, you you've got to develop some degree of safety, disclosure, impact. So if we have somebody in that's the that that's the best route. You know, so you that's the general consensus before anybody deals with family of wars and problems, because one is that we don't want to distract too much from all the energy that's needed to average sobriety. Get the management of the impulses sexually under control. See if you can rebond and start to heal in the relationship with your partner and begin to assist her. That's its own heavy list. Of course, the partner is going to be very sensitive. I don't want you blaming your parents for what you're responsible for. I think they see that early acknowledgement that my mother's control of me was the cause as an excuse. Now, I would disagree with them. I think it's an important realization, but I understand that in the early stages it just doesn't translate. You know, so the early stages really need to be about that early stabilization and recovery and safety. And then the sooner the better that you start dealing with the measurement. Uh, because it if the mother again, we're picking on the men and their mothers and heterosexual couples, I'll let your audience do the translation. Because we've seen this with women with with their men and heterosexual couples with their men and their lives and being married to their mothers or fathers. Exact, except for some differences in the sexual acting out. Uh I was I I when we did the in-depth interviews, I were I was doing the one for the women's, they had a handful of women. I was shocked. I don't know, maybe it was my own bias, and I hadn't worked with a lot of the women, but they seemed to like the men. I don't want them too close to me. He wants to get married, I don't want to get married, he wants kids. I know, I mean, it was stunning for me to hear the same phobia, phobic reactions. So, anyways, so if he's stabilizing his recovery, let's just turn to the attic for a minute. Maybe he has seen prostitutes, maybe he has looked at poor ambiguity or had affairs, and he quickly understands about six months into his recovery, his wife maybe has always known, but she's clearer now. His dependent, what she saw as a close relationship with his family, particularly his mother, every time he visits with her, he's picking up a prostitute afterwards. Oh. So now he has to begin to deal with that imagination right away. Because if he's in a recovery and he doesn't, he may provoke relapse if he's over there being a good boy. Because he walks away angry.

Tara McCausland: 26:09

Of course, yeah.

Kenneth Adams: 26:11

Resentful. Yeah, resentful. And so that's a trigger. And then he gets home and his wife was where were you? He lies because she knows she's upset about not just the addiction, but now his mother, he goes, Well, you know, kind of hems and haws, and then now he's deceiving, and there's this whole rupture again. And now he stiff arms the wrong woman. Now you're the problem. And of course, unfortunately, given her acute distress, she has become the front and center intrusive individual, which is a bind for your listeners. Right, is that in these acute uh phases of distress, it's hard to be appropriate all the time and not to not to react or not to investigate or do things what we now call safety seeking, which sometimes can be weaponized, and I think it shouldn't be, and I'll just again say that because I'm further in my career and I'm not hiding what I think needs to happen, but I completely understand the need for safety seeking. But if along the way, I then take partner trauma model, where I've been taught or told by therapists that at least in the early stages, whatever I need should go around safety, right? If I want to see his phone, there shouldn't be an issue, or if I'm gonna know where he was, or if he went or if he's out of town, I want him to call me when he gets to the hotel room. So these are safety measures that we understand in early stages of healing, this stuff's just gotta happen. And so we work with the addict/emeshed guy to understand that that it's not submission like mommy, it's choice. But if over time she uses that partner trauma model and begins to try to manage his involvement with his family, we have trouble. And it gets very complicated and it doesn't work. So if you're enmeshed, you can't recover from your enmeshment in your SA program. If you're a partner of an enmeshed sex addict, you can't use your partner trauma model exactly the same way you would use it to recover from infidelity. So there are some nuances and sometimes very clear differences. And it's an unfortunate role. How do you as a partner state your concerns or fears without looking like you're the controlling parent? You know, and that's just a hard deal. But it's a necessary position because what we see, and it's the part of our work as working with the meshme, it's the most difficult, is the collision between that moment in time where there seems to be some stability. You know, if you were to pin down the partner, she would say, Yeah, I don't think he's acting out, but he's still visiting his mother. And pretty soon you you feel that escalated concern, and now he starts getting defensive. I want to be able to see my family and be separate. I can do both. Sometimes she's fooling herself, sometimes she's inaccurate. So that becomes a problematic collision of models. And boy, it's just, I have to tell you, we we don't have a lot of clear answers, we have clear objectives. Both individuals have to unhook from bringing the parent into the couple. Because sometimes the enmeshed addict will have the boundary, but the partner is so fearful she'll be bringing up the mother-in-law during the anniversary dinner. We have to help them both keep the family system out of the Of their romance, to learn to be protective. That's the ultimate recovery, healing, and this is true addiction and amashment, is that the couple have to be co-creators of a sacred place between them, in which they are each other's priority, fidelity is clearly defined and honored, and safety is established. Both people have to own up and do that. That could start in a very small space, like a once a week date. Recovery can't be weaponized, mother can't be brought up, mother-in-law can't be brought up, we are here for each other, we are equally responsible for creating safety and uh ritual space, sacred ritual space in which nobody interferes. Now we get asked this a lot from partners. Well, what if he doesn't think he has a problem with his family? It's trouble. Because if there's no acknowledgement that his dependency is an issue, if she says in one way or the other, choose me or your mother, in a way that's invitational rather than dictorial, then he can't do it. He can't do it. And it's just one more piece of uh the acceptance uh package for the partner to have to contend with. Without that, without some acknowledgement, some soberness around the way the dynamics affect him by him, she has to take a backseat.

Tara McCausland: 31:44

Which you think a healthy relationship it cannot be, right?

Kenneth Adams: 31:48

I don't see how you do that.

Tara McCausland: 31:50

Right.

Kenneth Adams: 31:50

Both people need equal vote in participation around the sacredness between them. And I mean, certainly there are times at which somebody's needs or feelings may top over the priority of the other, for there may be some accommodation, but it can't be an ongoing difference in power and have that work out. It will lower the esteem of at least one person. Yeah. So I think it's untenable.

Tara McCausland: 32:20

Do you have an assessment on your website or a way that that couples can look at this, maybe from a more objective standpoint, so that rather than her saying, you're totally enmeshed with your mother, and this is why she lists all the reasons versus I listened to a really interesting podcast. And apparently there's this pre-assessment. How do you even start that conversation if he or she doesn't think there's a problem?

Kenneth Adams: 32:45

There are some surveys. They are they have face validity on the face of it, they are reported issues that enmesh people present. They're just based on percentages. If you answer a third of these this way, there's no particular hypothesis in enmeshment. If you answer two-thirds, it's moderate. One-third it's moderate, two-thirds, and more, it's it's more extreme. It seems to reflect accurately what we see, a symptom profile. I'm stunned, you know, I've we've probably seen well over a thousand women from all across the globe in these enmeshment workshops in the last 12 years. And there's probably 90% shared variance of the symptoms. Commitment struggles, sexuality issues, over dependency, no clear boundaries, uncertain about what they feel or what they need. Why didn't you tell me? I don't know. I didn't have a clue. I don't know how I feel.

Tara McCausland: 33:44

So differentiate.

Kenneth Adams: 33:47

And that becomes, that's exactly right. The word differentiation is the key here. So they can take the survey. There's tons of short videos on there that are free of charge. You know, what is a measurement or your mesh? Should you take, should you consider the workshop? There's ones for women, there's ones for partners. There's a lot of education that we have currently on the website. We are in the process of rebranding it so that there will be a lot of cleaning up a bit better. Right now, there's enough on there to educate. And then, of course, there's the books. I silently seduced and when he's married to mom. Oh, I did mention to you earlier that I was going to make a distinction between a meshment and covert incest. So if you imagine imeshmin has the big umbrella, underneath that is a group, a subgroup who we might say had covertly incestuous relationships with their with one of their parents, in which it was it felt icky, sexualized at moments, inappropriate comments, dress, too close. She took me out for romantic dinners rather than my dad. We hear stories like that all the time. Where now it feels, whoa, a little icky. So now we have more, not just an enmeshed dynamic, we have a bit of an incestuous, too close sexually dynamic without physical touch. And then of course the the second, the third subgroup, second subgroup are people who could have been violated sexually. But you can have, you can that can be absent and you can get lots of damage from the meshment and covert incest.

Tara McCausland: 35:23

And you said that looking at these people coming to you first for enmeshment, um, how many of them were dealing with some type of a sexual addiction issue, a lot of addiction?

Kenneth Adams: 35:32

Uh close to 60%. If my I'm arm chairing, I can't, I don't have the stat in front of me, but of the men, a lower for the women, but over half of the men report in FDL outside their committed relationships.

Tara McCausland: 35:47

So maybe before I asked you the last, last question, is there any hope for these couples? What are you seeing as far as healing and recovery for both enmeshed and sexually addicted men and women in their fellowship?

Kenneth Adams: 36:01

Absolutely. I I think the so, first of all, it's through organizations like yours and other hardworking people in the 12-step programs and therapists who we train in the in the C SEC community, in the ITEC community, who are working hard to help people understand that they have a disorder that needs to be managed. And there's a chance to both love and lust in the same package. Again, lust being biological, non-sinful in this case. And I I think for sure we see we see enmeshed, uh recovering enmeshed individuals who are now fully in charge of their own journey sexually and otherwise. And they they have a sense of being unburdened and they're having sometimes limited, boundaried, but more free to choose relationships with their parents. Most of the parents we have seen have learned to resign themselves. They know better. If they want their kid to come around, they'll learn to bite their tongue and peep the welcome that over. And because if you don't, it's if you make them feel guilty, they don't want to come around you. It's the bottom line. Right. If you offer freedom, they want to hang with you. They want to connect with you. And that's the so that's what we see. We see more and more of cohesive love relationships between the recovering enmeshed individual and their family and their partner. I'm here by choice. I want to be in this marriage. I'm not here because I have to be. I'm here because I want to be. Now that's a scary proposition for both people to face. Right. Yeah. They our commitment is by choice, but you get a much more present partner.

Tara McCausland: 37:56

Oh, 100%. And that's what we're after.

Kenneth Adams: 37:59

I'm completely hopeful. Completely hopeful. I'm also working on a book with the meditations for a meshment.

Tara McCausland: 38:06

Oh, fantastic.

Kenneth Adams: 38:07

If you want, I'll read you the one I just wrote. Let's hear it. Okay. Let's see if I can pull it up here. As a result of a measurement with a parent, it is often difficult to take ownership of our wants, needs, desires, and even hard fought accomplishments. We learned early on in our childhood that the sacrifice of these fundamental aspects of ourselves pleased and stabilized our needy, anxious, and or narcissistic parent. So rather than being celebrated for our uniqueness and individuality, our accomplishments and personhood became extensions of what our meshing parent needed for themselves. Consequently, we often feel guilty in our attempts to claim our fundamental right to own what is ours. Potential conflicts or disagreements become anxiety-ridden prospects as a result of not knowing where we stand. Even if we do know, we struggle to unapologetically own it. Until the enmeshed adult can define and claim without guilt what they want and need, compromises designed to resolve disagreements are just a masquerade of self-submission. In enmeshment recovery, we must learn to define and own our circle of power without diminishing others. Only in doing so do we become fully committed participants in our own journey of passion and purpose. I will take full ownership of my accomplishments, wants, and needs to and learn to stand up for my race to claim them as mine.

Tara McCausland: 39:41

I think that's beautiful. I love that.

Kenneth Adams: 39:43

So that that's the hope. I wanted to share that with you because when you asked me, I just I wrote that yesterday out of my own two days ago, out of my own struggle I was having. So by the way, this stuff doesn't go away.

Tara McCausland: 39:56

Yeah. Well, powerful stuff. And before I let you go, because I know you've got a another appointment just around the corner here. What would you tell someone who's just started their work in recovery? And what would you tell somebody that's been doing this work for a while but maybe needs a little encouragement?

Kenneth Adams: 40:11

Yeah, don't give up on yourself. Recovery is freedom. And uh learning to operate and accept limits of who we are, where we've been, what works and what doesn't work, uh is is the path to freedom. Acceptance is the first step in any change process. And so I hope your listeners will stay with it and don't give up to fighting. And don't fight unnecessarily, but don't give up to fighting.

Tara McCausland: 40:41

Well, this has been such a pleasure and very eye-opening. I've got a zillion questions, and I'm sure our listeners do as well. But I'll make sure that we put in our show notes ways that they can find your books and how they can connect with you. Well, thank you for your time.

Introduction: 40:57

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