All About Emotional Incest Syndrome

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.