Mother-Enmeshed Man: Does A Mother-Enmeshed Man Need To Drop His Nice Guy Mask?

If a man is in a position where he focuses on his mother’s needs and neglects most of his own, he is unlikely to have a strong connection with his own feelings. What this comes down to is that he will probably be out of touch with his own body, which is where most of his needs and feelings will be found.

As a result of this, he will be out of balance but he might not be aware of the feelings that would make it clear to him that this is so. With these feelings out of the way and the fact that behaving in this way will just be what is normal, there will be no reason for him to change his behaviour.

An Invisible Prison

He is then going to be trapped in a reality that is not serving his highest good, but he won’t have the awareness that is needed to break out of it. Now, this doesn’t mean that he won’t ever experience anger or frustration; no, what it is means is that he is likely to have the tendency to repress and suppress these feelings.

For him to wake up, so to speak, and to change his behaviour, he will most likely need one of two things to take place. Either he will need to get into a relationship or he will need to have a breakdown or both.

Living a Lie

Until this takes place, he is likely to continue to act in a way that is out of alignment with who he is and to carry on abandoning himself. Deep down, he is going to be carrying a lot of pain, but, on the surface, he can create the impression that this is not the case.

In general, he can come across as happy, easy-going and needless, and he can do what he can to be there for others and his mother, in particular. He will be the quintessential nice guy and he can be used to receiving positive feedback from others.

An Act

Still, this is not to say that certain people won’t be aware of what is going on and see right through how he behaves. For someone like this, he can be seen as someone who lacks backbone and is simply a people pleaser.

They will know that his niceness is a way for him to manipulate other people into giving him approval and is not coming from his heart. However, what could also occur to them is that this is unlikely to be something that he is consciously aware of.

In A Bad Way

In other words, it is not that he is coming from a place of strength and his intention is to deceive others; it is that he is out of touch with his power and is doing what he believes that he needs to do to survive. Other people will be being deceived but he will be deceiving himself more than anyone else.

At the core of his being, he will want to drop this act and to freely express himself. The part of him that wants to be real will play a part in what will allow him to change his life.

The Catalyst

This will be the part that will play a part in what will allow him to end up in a relationship or to have a breakdown. What will take place exte
ally can be seen as being separate from what is going on within him, but this is just an illusio

His unconscious mind will end up manifesting a situation that will allow his conscious mind to see clearly. It is then not that what will take place exte
ally will be random, it will be an expression of what is held in his consciousness.

One Outcome

If he was to have a breakdown, getting to the point where he simply no longer has the energy to behave in the same way, this will be a time when his mask will start to crumble. He can start to say and do things that will surprise the people in his life.

Before he would have typically hidden his true feelings and now, he will start to allow how he truly feels to shape his behaviour and what he says. He will have fallen into himself and he will start to be inner, as opposed to out outer, directed.

Two Parts

Although what is taking place will allow him to feel alive and it will be a good thing, this can also be a time when he will experience a number of “negative” feelings. He can feel guilt and shame, and he can feel fear and anxiety.

What is unlocked within him will be a consequence of what took place during his early years. Most likely, this was a stage of his life when his mother used him to meet some of her adult and unmet childhood needs.

A Clear Message

To survive, he would have had to focus on her needs and to be who she wanted him to be; this probably would have been when his nice-guy mask first started to form. If he didn’t do what she wanted, he is likely to have been punished, disapproved of and/or abandoned.

Thus, it wasn’t safe for him to be connected to his needs and feelings, his true self, and to freely express himself. He had to play a role to survive and he would have continued to play this role throughout his adult life.

Awareness

It won’t matter that this stage of his life is over as it will have had a big impact on his whole being. He is likely to be carrying a lot of trauma and emotional pain, and he will need to work through this baggage.

If a man can relate to this and he is ready to change his life, he may need to reach out for exte
al support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.