SOUL TIE – PARENT/CHILD
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. I Thess. 5:23
A soul tie is an unholy connection between people. The basis of the connection is meeting each other’s needs in a way that enables the other person to circumvent the sufficiency of Christ. One person feels that the other should give them what they need, and vice versa, and the soul tie is formed. Entitlement is at the root.
The problem is ~ God is to be ‘the cake’ and people are to be ‘the icing.’ I am to look to God first for what I need and people around me are to be supplemental resources. But when I make people ‘the cake’ and God ‘the icing’, idolatry is set up to run its course. It ends bitterly as each person in the relationship comes up against the other one’s sinfulness and physical limits.
Parents and children can easily develop soul ties. Sometimes a mother who has known limited opportunities and frustrated dreams will try to live her life through her child. Because she wants the emotional payoff and/or the attention that goes with her child’s success, she smothers them.
So many adults have a soul tie with an aged parent. They visit a nursing home or assisted living center and try, with every visit, to get their parent to tell them that they are proud of them and love them. Unable to forgive, the drive of the soul tie continues to act out, demanding something from those who don’t have it in them to give it. No parent can give away what, first, they have not experienced for themselves!
Parent/child relationships are complicated but where one feels smothered, there is usually a soul tie. There is also manipulation or domination. The best thing one can do is to spiritually break the soul tie by repenting of it, ask God to sever it, and then consciously turn to Christ for the very things the other person was providing. I’ve had more than one person say to me, “If I stop meeting their needs, things will fall apart.” They’ve been the peacemaker, the fixer, in the family. But here’s the thing. Sometimes things need to fall apart in order for God to put things back together. God’s message to any of us would be, “Stop standing in the way of them coming to me!”
Give me grace to obey You and sustain another’s anger when I no longer jump when they come calling. Amen
Daughters of promise 
Excellent article, short and sweet, yet I would like to see you expand more, if Holy Spirit leads you to do so. My mother was not affectionate to the six of us children because she as the first born in her large family suffered emotional and psychological abuse from her father. At this stage in my adult life she has refused for our relationship to mature and evolve as friends, yet she doesn’t know what kind of mother-daughter relationship she desires. Growing up as the only daughter, I was more of a servant, and I believe that’s what she desires from me now in her older years. I cannot return to the past to be that servant again because that’s not a mother-daughter relationship at all. I cut the soul-tie so I could be free from expecting affection from her, and I truly am free inside. God bless you!
I come from a strict-parent house home and my mother holds a lot of ego and narcissism. Shes a good mother but constantly tries to live through me And I am trying to grow as a person and make decisions thru God and live freely. But she has made herself the “God” of my life. My desires only come true when she feels like I’m ready. And I am done done done with that. I deserve freedom and healthy love and i am so happy i found this website my soul ties with her is Now broken.
I think I am that woman you talked about. I tried to live through my children and smothered them; especially my eldest. Our relationship is very fragile now, almost broken. I don’t know how to repair it. I don’t know if I should repair it! Maybe as you said, Should I pray for the soul tie to break. I always thought it was my Christian duty to keep feeling like this. I thought it to be the only expression of true motherly love. Maybe I was wrong. Thank you for this article.
Teach me more
Good message