Month: June 2025

Taking Control of Your LIfe

Emotional Incest: When Parents Treat Their Kids Like Partners

by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment on Emotional Incest: When Parents Treat Their Kids Like Partners
Emotional Incest: When Parents Treat Their Kids Like Partners

There’s a particular kind of wound that doesn’t leave visible scars. It’s not the kind you scream about or even know how to name until years later, usually in therapy or during a quiet moment of reflection. It’s when your parent made you their emotional partner, their rock, their confidant, long before you even knew how to spell the word confidant.

This isn’t about physical or sexual abuse. It’s about a subtle and often invisible boundary being crossed: emotional incest.

It happens when a parent leans too heavily on a child for emotional support, validation, or companionship in a way that disrupts that child’s development.

And the worst part?

To the outside world, it looks like love.

What Emotional Incest Looks Like

Your mom tells you everything.
Not just little things. Everything. Her problems at work. Her issues with your dad. Her fears. Her disappointments. She calls you her “best friend” or says, “You’re the only one I can really talk to.”

Or maybe your dad constantly talks about how lonely he is, how he doesn’t know what he’d do without you. He vents to you about his dating life. He needs you to cheer him up, to be strong for him.

It feels like love. It’s closeness.

But it’s not the right kind.

Why It’s So Damaging

Children aren’t supposed to be emotional caretakers.

They’re supposed to be… children.

But when you’re put in that role, it changes how you see relationships, yourself, and the world:

  • You grow up too fast.
  • You become hyper-aware of others’ emotions.
  • You feel guilty prioritizing yourself.
  • You often attract relationships where you play the caregiver role all over again.

And often, you carry a deep, unspoken grief.
Because while you were being someone else’s support system, no one was being yours.

How It Shows Up in Adults

Emotional incest doesn’t always look like trauma.

It shows up in subtle, painful ways:

  • Struggling to set boundaries
  • Feeling guilty when saying no
  • Becoming the “therapist” in all your relationships
  • Fear of abandonment if you stop being useful
  • Confusion about your own needs, wants, and identity

Sound familiar? That’s not just personality. That’s survival.

What Healing Looks Like

Healing starts with naming it.
Then:

  • Set boundaries – even if they feel unfamiliar or scary.
  • Reparent yourself – give your inner child the space to be cared for.
  • Seek support – from people who don’t need you, but see you.
  • Release guilt – for prioritizing your own needs.

And most of all, remember:
It was never your job to carry their pain.

You Deserved More

You deserved to be protected, not depended on.
You deserved to play, to rest, to mess up, and still be loved.
You deserved a childhood.

If no one told you that before, let me be the first:
It was never your job to hold it all together.

What You Can Do Now

  • Talk about this openly , even if your voice shakes.
  • Seek out spaces where you don’t have to be “the strong one.”
  • Give yourself permission to rest without earning it.

Join the Conversation

Have you ever experienced this?
How did it shape the way you love, trust, or care for others?

Drop your story in the comments. Let’s make this a safe space to unpack, release, and grow together.

You are not alone.

Taking Control of Your LIfe, Therapist are Humans Too

Navigating FOG: Understanding Fear, Obligation, and Guilt in Unhealthy Relationships

by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment on Navigating FOG: Understanding Fear, Obligation, and Guilt in Unhealthy Relationships
Navigating FOG: Understanding Fear, Obligation, and Guilt in Unhealthy Relationships

Recently, I was on the phone with a good friend of mine who is a Psychiatric ARNP and we were discussing relationships when she reminded me of the term FOG, something she was introduced to when attending an event featuring Dr. Anita Phillips.

In clinical practice, it’s not uncommon to encounter individuals who feel emotionally trapped in relationships where fear, obligation, and guilt—collectively known as FOG, heavily influence their decision-making. I’ve seen this dynamic surface time and time again, both in the lives of my clients and, if I’m honest, sometimes in my own.

The term FOG was introduced by Susan Forward and Donna Frazier in their work on emotional blackmail. It describes the psychological pressure people often experience when involved with individuals who may have features of a personality disorder, or who simply engage in manipulative behavior patterns. Understanding this concept is essential when working with clients navigating boundary-setting, relational conflict, or recovery from emotional abuse.

Defining FOG: Fear, Obligation, and Guilt

  • Fear is an adaptive survival response. It’s what prepares us to react quickly to threats. However, chronic fear, particularly fear rooted in emotional manipulation, can lead to long-term stress, anxiety, and difficulty making sound decisions.
  • Obligation is closely tied to our need for social belonging. Our natural desire to contribute to our community or maintain relationships can become a vulnerability when leveraged by someone seeking control.
  • Guilt is a normal emotional response to harming or disappointing others. But in the context of manipulation, guilt is often triggered when an individual resists complying with unreasonable demands. This can make even healthy boundary-setting feel selfish or wrong.

Clinical Examples of FOG Dynamics

FOG often shows up in relational patterns that may not seem immediately concerning but carry significant emotional weight:

  • A partner threatening self-harm if the relationship ends.
  • A parent shaming adult children for not participating in family events.
  • A child or adolescent using emotionally charged language (“you’ve ruined my life”) to pressure caregivers.
  • Colleagues misrepresenting group consensus to influence decisions.

These scenarios may initially appear like typical relational conflict but can signal chronic patterns of emotional coercion when sustained over time.

The Emotional Impact

Clients who live in persistent FOG environments often present with feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and powerlessness. Over time, these feelings can contribute to symptoms consistent with learned helplessness, a state where the individual believes that no action will improve their situation. This can lead to withdrawal, diminished self-efficacy, and difficulty trusting their own perceptions.

From my perspective as both a clinician and a human being, I can attest that navigating FOG is profoundly challenging. Even those with strong self-awareness can struggle to distinguish between legitimate relational responsibility and manipulation-induced obligation. The who reason my friend mentioned FOG was to point out to me some of the reasons I stayed in a toxic relationship way to long. I did it out of fear (of leaving), obligation (feeling responsible for that persons happiness) and guilt (over a past transgression).

How to Step Out of the FOG

  1. Name It.
    Awareness is power. When you can identify Fear, Obligation, or Guilt at play, you start to reclaim control.
  2. Use the Internal Pause.
    Before responding, take a breath and ask:
    “Is this choice coming from a place of love or fear?”
  3. Challenge the Narrative.
    Ask yourself:
    “What would I say to a friend in this situation?”
    That lens can help you cut through distorted beliefs.
  4. Set Boundaries with Clarity, Not Shame.
    Saying no doesn’t make you cold. Taking care of yourself isn’t betrayal—it’s self-respect.
  5. Get Support.
    Whether it’s a therapist, a support group, or trusted friend, healing from FOG often requires safe, validating spaces where you’re not being gaslit or guilt-tripped.

Clinical Recommendations: What Helps

When working with clients (and even in personal reflection), several approaches can support FOG recovery:

  • Psychoeducation: Learning about personality disorders and emotional manipulation can empower individuals to understand the patterns they’re experiencing. I personally had to read a book on borderline personality disorders in order to get out of a toxic relationship with a former girlfriend.
  • Boundary Work: Clients often benefit from structured boundary-setting exercises that help them regain a sense of control without falling into emotional reactivity.
  • Support Systems: Encouraging clients to build networks outside of the manipulative relationship provides a necessary reality check and emotional grounding.
  • Cognitive Techniques: Teaching clients to pause and apply rational, logical thinking to emotional decisions can help them break the cycle of fear-based responses.
  • Values-Based Decision Making: Guiding clients to align their actions with their core values, rather than reactive emotions, can help them move toward healthier relational patterns.
  • Safety Planning: In cases of emotional abuse or high-stakes manipulation, helping clients develop clear safety plans, including the removal of themselves and dependents from harmful environments, is critical.

Final Thoughts

FOG can cloud judgment, erode confidence, and trap individuals in unhealthy relational loops. A a clinicians, it’s my role to help illuminate the pathways out through education, validation, and skill-building.

I’ve seen first-hand how challenging it can be to untangle fear, obligation, and guilt from genuine connection and responsibility. But I’ve also seen people, including myself, find their way out of the fog with support, patience, and compassionate guidance.

If you find yourself walking this path, know that clarity is possible. The fog does lift.

Popular Psychology, Uncategorized

Behind the Masks: How Immigration Crackdowns Shatter Mental Well-Being

by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment on Behind the Masks: How Immigration Crackdowns Shatter Mental Well-Being
Behind the Masks: How Immigration Crackdowns Shatter Mental Well-Being

Across the country, images of ICE agents detaining families flash across our screens and the images of protests in cities like Los Angeles and Baltimore echo through city streets. I’m not here to get into politics or views on immigration reform. I’m here to discuss one critical story that remains hidden: the quiet, unseen impact of immigration enforcement on mental health.

While political debates rage on and policies tighten, countless immigrants, documented and undocumented alike, live in a state of chronic stress. For many, every knock on the door triggers a spike in heart rate. Every siren in the distance evokes a rush of panic. Children go to school wondering if their parents will still be home when they return. Adults skip medical appointments out of fear. Entire communities fall silent.

This isn’t just fear. It’s trauma.

Clinically, we know that chronic anxiety, hypervigilance, and a lack of safety are precursors to more serious mental health issues like generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, PTSD, and even somatic symptoms like chronic pain and gastrointestinal distress. The emotional toll doesn’t just affect the individuals targeted by enforcement, it ripples outward, impacting families, classrooms, and entire neighborhoods.

I work in a level one trauma center and have seen first hand the ear on immigrant patient faces that instead of living the hospital better, they will leave in handcuffs or zip tied on their way to a deportation facility. I know someone in the process of getting his green card who works at a prestigious company, but is so anxious that he or someone in his family will be deported that he temporarily stopped driving his car to limit the risk of him being stopped by law enforcement and possibly detained. As much as he loves America, he has considered moving to Canada for his own mental health. I know other professionals, some who are even citizens, but are so disturbed by the way immigration is being enforced that they are actively looking into leaving the country.

For mental health professionals, the challenge becomes how to provide support in a context where clients may not feel safe enough to seek help. Therapists working with immigrant populations often have to do more than just offer counseling; they become advocates, educators, and sometimes the only place where someone feels human again.

You don’t have to protest to make a difference. So what can we do?

First, we must listen. We must create safe spaces where individuals feel seen and heard without judgment or risk. Second, we must acknowledge that systemic stress is a real form of trauma. And third, we must advocate. Mental health care must be part of the conversation in immigration reform.

This is more than just a news headline. Lives are getting ripped apart when they are just trying to survive, to raise their family, and to breathe without fear.

We see the images. We hear the stories. Not the ones of the criminals who don’t deserve to be here, but the ones of the families just want to have the opportunity to make it in America. For them, we need to address the silent suffering, and provide support that’s not just reactive, but proactive.

Mental health is a human right. And no one, regardless of status, should be left behind.