Building a stronger, healthier, or better relationship with your adult child requires intentional effort. Like any relationship, you can’t put it on autopilot and expect it to work. Nor can you continue to treat your adult child as you did when they were younger. As children grow into adulthood, the parent-child relationship naturally changes. As […]
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No parent expects to find themselves searching “how to deal with abusive adult child” in the middle of the night, yet here you are. The child you raised, worried about, and sacrificed for now leaves you walking on eggshells, questioning your reality, or dreading their phone calls. This isn’t the relationship you imagined when you
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Most people value close, supportive family relationships. We want to feel loved, understood, and connected. But when families become too tightly connected—or enmeshed—that closeness can interfere with our ability to develop our own identity, make independent choices, and pursue our goals. In this article, we’ll discuss: What Is Enmeshment? Enmeshment is often confused with closeness
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Unspoken Family Rules: Don’t Talk, Don’t Trust, Don’t Feel Rigid family rules and roles develop in dysfunctional families that help maintain the dysfunctional family system and allow family members to continue mistreating each other. Understanding some of the characteristics of dysfunctional families can help us break free of these patterns and rebuild our self-esteem and
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Are your boundaries too weak or too rigid? Either can cause problems. In this article, you’ll learn the difference between weak, rigid, and healthy boundaries–and how to set better boundaries. What is a healthy boundary? Most of us are familiar with the concept of boundaries. Boundaries serve as limits, telling others how we want to
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Setting boundaries doesn’t come easily or naturally to a lot of people, but you can learn to set healthy boundaries. I’m going to share ten tips that I find helpful. Boundaries are limits that we set to protect our time, energy, and physical and emotional wellbeing. Boundaries are a way to tell others what we
Codependency is often misunderstood. In this article, I’ll dispel six myths about codependency and help you understand what codependency is, where it comes from, and begin to explore how you can recover from it. Signs of codependency Codependency is a confusing term. And regardless of whether you like the term or not, it’s become a
Everyone has needs — for love, attention, affirmation, touch, and so forth. And some of our needs are met in relationships with others. There’s a big difference between having needs and being needy. Read more to understand the difference between having needs and being needy. Overcoming codependency and poor boundaries requires us to notice and
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Detaching with love helps codependents and enablers. When we detach with love, we stop worrying and interfering and let others take responsibility for themselves. What is detaching with love? Detaching (or detaching with love) is a core component of codependency recovery. If you’re often worried about a loved one, disappointed or upset by their choices,
Why is it so hard to end codependent relationships? In this article, we’ll explore why it’s so difficult to leave a codependent relationship (even when you know it’s in your own best interest) and you can start to change codependent patterns and create healthier relationships. Codependency is a hard pattern to break. Even when you’re
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