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Category: Enmeshment

  • What Is Enmeshment?

    What Is Enmeshment?

    Welcome back! Today we are talking about enmeshment: what is it? It’s not something most people are aware of – perhaps you’ve never even heard the term.

    So let’s dive right into it.

    Enmeshment is a parenting style that’s mischaracterized as loving and loyal. In reality, there are elements of psychological and emotional incest in enmeshment.

    This gets perpetrated through the behaviors and communication styles of the parents, as well as actions. It’s similar to codependence, but there are some key distinctions.

    In an enmeshed dynamic, the parent uses the child for intimacy, companionship, romantic attachment, advice, ego fulfillment, and/or emotional release.

    The key is the parents are completely unaware they’re doing this. They are also completely unaware that they struggle with unmet emotional and psychological needs, broken from their own childhood trauma.

    Society and media have not educated us on what healthy parenting looks like – it’s not the parents’ fault. We aren’t blaming; they just didn’t know. If you find in this article yourself or your family, don’t beat yourself up. It’s widespread. Give yourself grace but take ownership.

    It will allow yourself to heal.

    These parents do not see the harm they are imposing. Many see themselves as wholly devoted and self-sacrificing in their child’s best interest.

    They don’t realize they’re using their child to satisfy their own needs. This happens most commonly in single-parent households and in households where the partners aren’t getting along.

    Let’s move on to some of the characteristics:

    I’ve zoomed in on 17 of the most prevalent traits with examples. First, I encourage everyone to get a copy of The Emotional Incest Syndrome by Dr. Patricia Love.

    Don’t shy away from the title – there is excellent information in that book so tackle it.

    1. Over-involved parents. Their lives center around their children even into adulthood. They feel lost and lonely if their children are gone.
    2. They will lament when the child grows up – they are losing the romantic connection they developed.
    3. Parents who have few friends and/or little support.
    4. Parents who know too much about their child’s personal relationships, activities, and problems.
    5. They demand to be included. A prime example is a mother I know who spent the first week with her daughter at her college! That’s severe enmeshment.
    6. Parents who share too much personal information create feelings of unhealthy dependence. This happens most commonly when they lament to the child about their spouse or ex.

    Children are not developed enough to handle all of that emotion

    1. It’s very abusive. When I was little, my mom once told me she “took me for granted.”
    2. That’s the first memory I have of my mom enmeshing with me, where I felt a massive responsibility towards her.
    3. Parents whose self-worth depends on the child’s success and accomplishments.
    4. This is the classic screaming parent at the little league game. Sometimes they are trying to realize their unmade dreams through the child.
    5. This ties significantly with the recent college admissions scandal – horrific abuse. My father used to say to me.
    6. “you’re the easiest of all the kids.” The book mentioned above details a comment that it is an “unconscious device” meant to relieve the parent from the “burden of parenting.” Underneath is an ultimatum.
    7. The parent isn’t able to handle the needs of the child. Dr. Love also details these phrases to bolster the parent’s ego – it makes them feel like they are a good parent and thus a good person.

    Parents who don’t encourage them to follow their own dreams and impose their goals onto the child.

    1. They pick the activities, schools, careers, friends, all of it. They subtly or directly criticize a child’s independence. “Why do you want to live there? It’s so far from us.” Or “Fine, go out. I’ll be fine by myself.”
    2. There’s a subtle bind to keep the child there. Children owe us nothing .
    3. we chose to have children. Enmeshed parents think their children owe them something – they don’t. Our job is to create an emotional environment to let them become what they want, not what we want.
    4. Parents who expect their children to still follow their rules, even into adulthood, accept their morals and values.

    How many secrets do you have from your parents because you know they won’t approve?

    1. You’re sacrificing your own belief system to make your parents happy.
    2. Parents that shun the child if they don’t be and do what they want.
    3. Incessantly worried parents. They’re always worried their child will get hurt, not letting them do anything.
    4. Frequently, the parent is scared, and yet the child is excited! Nothing terrible will happen in most instances
    5. Allowing the child to get a scraped knee and learn from the experience is far better than acting out of parental fear.
    6. Parents spoil their children or take care of them financially. I have a client with a horrific case of abuse
    7. This woman came to me in her late 20s has not had a real job. She would rack up huge bar bills, and her mom would pay for all of it, no questions asked.

    Mom was an alcoholic and needed someone to drink with .

    1. Bad habits were OK. If my client tried any self-care like a yoga class, the mom would threaten to cut her off. She used finances to keep her daughter close to her.
    2. Thankfully this woman has made incredible progress, and remember you always can too.
    3. Parents react with anger if their adult child tries to set limits or boundaries of any kind. Parents who respond angrily to this article would be a prime example.
    4. An opposite-sex parent criticizes their child’s partner or competes with the partner for love.
    5. They’ll do anything to prevent you from feeling closeness with your partner. They’ve made you a surrogate spouse .
    6. my mother did this to me, wanting me to be her emotional support system. My mother also sexualized our relationship . she’d comment on how I look, say I was “gorgeous,” and it was said with lust. This is covert sexual abuse. She never touched me physically, but my mom’s comments and looks were indirectly sexual, which is still abusive.

    People who feel each other’s emotions.

    1. This is the classic “empath.” That’s just a new buzzword – it really means the person has no boundaries, is severely codependent, and enmeshes quickly.
    2. They can be happy, but if someone negative or in pain comes around, they immediately drop. This could be a child to parent or vice versa.
    3. Usually, it’s the child becoming the parent’s emotion. This creates the “empath.” That used to be me! It took massive work to stop doing it .
    4. it’s not healthy. Genuine empathy is excellent, but it doesn’t mean we get sucked in. We shouldn’t lose ourselves. We must heal from our abuse to grow from this.
    5. Genuine empathy has boundaries – We don’t become, absorb or take on the sadness and pain of others.
    6. Parents that expect the adult child to call them daily or frequently visit.
    7. They’ll expect the child to drop their plans and revolve around the parent. If the child doesn’t, the martyr will come out of the parent.
    8. Parents that make the child the scapegoat or conversely make the child the “golden” child. Sometimes it’s both .

    you may be in limbo and never know which it truly is.

    1. Neglectful parents. This happens in single-parent households when parents need to work and aren’t there. Or the parents have an addiction, and the children are left alone. It forces the child to become an adult far earlier than expected.
    2. Parents that sexualize their children, like the example I gave earlier. Unfortunately, I see this happen a lot – “Daddy’s little girl” and “Mommy’s little boy” is an unhealthy romantic dynamic.

    I could go through hundreds of more traits – there are so many more. I implore you, if you feel you have gone through these or are doing these things, please read the book mentioned above by Dr. Love.

    You will learn much about yourself and perhaps why you are struggling in relationships. Every parent does a level of this to their child . we all can know. Part of the recovery process is to gain knowledge to develop skills that become tools.

    I believe if you are reading this, you want to love your child as best you can. Unfortunately, we haven’t been taught the most loving ways, but we can learn now.

    If you believe you experienced this type of parenting and want to gain the knowledge, skills, and tools to heal your codependence, I have created masterclasses that will empower you to do so.

    Enjoy The Journey!

    Kenny Weiss

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  • The Signs Of Enmeshment

    The Signs Of Enmeshment

    In this article, I’m talking about the signs and characteristics of enmehttp://kennyweiss.net/what-is-enmeshment-2/shment. I’ve spoken about what it is (because many people are unaware). Breaking down the differences between enmeshment and codependence in previous articles and videos. I encourage you to check out those videos.

    But now we are getting into how it shows up in your life.

    When we learn new things about ourselves, it can be not easy – especially if we were enmeshed. The general reaction is shame or low self-worth.

    If the feeling of shame hits you, I’ll use the old metaphor of a grape becoming wine to give you hope – I want you to hold onto something.

    Think of a grape. On its own, it’s perfect. Great color, shape, and taste.

    Perfectly imperfect, just how it is. How does it become wine? First, it must be crushed, pulverized, and completely disintegrated. Each grape experiences this process together. They are sharing in that process.

    Then they are fermented and allowed to sit and rest before they mature into wine.

    That’s all of us. We are all born perfect like a grape, nothing wrong with us. But life and parenting crush us. There’s only one way to reclaim ourselves:

    that crushing and pulverization. To become wine, first, we have to understand what happened to us with others. Then, like wine.

    we must gain additives (skills and tools) to turn ourselves into our potential. We then need a period of rest where we navigate the change and new knowledge.

    That is how it all comes together to form our best version. That is the recovery process that we must all go through. Please keep this metaphor in mind as I go through the signs of enmeshment, as they may be difficult to hear.

    Here are the signs of enmeshment:

    1. They’re driven to save as many people as they can, even if it’s just one.
      They have the impression that they require assistance from a third party.
      They are disconnected from reality. what they think and feel about themselves is not right. Often this comes in the form of being overly nice (see below).
    2. They are overly nice. The way they are nice is incredibly manipulative and meant to get attention .
    3. It is not freely given, but they are not aware of this truth. For an enmeshed person, a simple “thank you” is not enough; it feels rude.
    4. Often, they have to get the last word in. They don’t understand that constant niceness is not genuine.
    5. They have a history of dysfunctional and chaotic relationships.
    6. Divorce, narcissists, abusers are common in their history. They have general disarray and chaos in their life.

    While in a relationship,

      1. They lack friends and activities. Except when they’re with their partner, parent, or child, they’re all by themselves. They try to find methods to connect.
        There is no stopping them from thinking of each other.. There is no freedom.
        When their partner is sad, they can’t feel happy. They don’t have any limits. They can’t keep their tempers in check and can’t feel real empathy.
        Instead of understanding, they feel the same way.
        In relationships, they hold in their anger and sadness. They can’t speak up to say what they need and what they want.

      Often they silently resent the other person. Sometimes they are needless and wantless because that was the role they were placed in during childhood.

    3. They can’t say no or set boundaries. However, I have an article and video on how to say no – if you struggle with this, please check it out.
    4. They have constant health problems. Enmeshed people get their power back by becoming sick or hurt. Headaches, autoimmune disease, and arthritis are some common illnesses that are self-inflicted .
    5. The science behind it is overwhelming. Genes do not mean you are guaranteed to have an ailment; a gene requires a specific environment to be activated.
    6. The emotional turmoil in a person’s life is the most common activator. I experienced the veracity of this myself. Growing up.
    7. I had no health issues. After I found my mom passed out naked on the toilet, I was in and out of hospitals all of high school.

    They could never find out what was wrong.

    1. Finally, I discovered it was all self-induced. If I were sick or hurt, my mom would stay sober to take care of me. That’s what most everyone who is constantly sick or hurt is doing.
    2. Check out the book When the Body Says No by Dr. Gabor Mate – it lays out the studies and science showing our emotional condition determine our health.
    3. Sadly, our doctors aren’t taught about emotional trauma.
    4. They give pills to fix anything and everything. Healing needs to be all-inclusive with mind and body. I’ll end this point with an example: there’s less than a 3% difference between an antidepressant and the placebo pill.
    5. Your belief in the system gives you the benefit. And pharma companies are trying to get rid of these tests. We have been robbed of the root solution.

    They avoid intimacy and connection in relationships.

    1. They tend to feel smothered when asked for intimacy or help. Showing any sign of care could make them uncomfortable.
    2. As a result, they don’t want to have deep discussions, and they run away from arguments.
    3. They are afraid to support their partner for fear they may alienate their parents.
    4. So they’ll cancel plans for their parents.
    5. In my first marriage, everything was run by my ex-wife’s parents. We had to get their approval for everything. So you become a prisoner to their parents.
    6. They have addictions, especially to food.
    7. It makes me sad to see society normalize obesity. It’s a maladaptive excuse to avoid unaddressed pain.
    8. For an average person: it takes 1500 calories to feed us. Everything we eat after that is from emotion.
    9. Diets don’t work.
    10. The single greatest determinate of your weight is your emotional condition .
    11. This has been shown in many studies. We overeat because we are in emotional pain. Other addictions are familiar too: alcohol, tobacco, working, sex.

    They use it all to medicate.

    1. A healthy adult is moderate and doesn’t live at the extreme – enmeshed people do.
    2. They have a fear of conflict and being abandoned
    3. . Therefore, the enmeshed avoid fights to avoid being left alone.
    4. If their partner has ambitions or goals that are unrelated to them, they may feel intimidated.
      If you don’t stay with them, they’ll play the martyr and demand that you focus on them.
      They want to be in charge. They aren’t only a dictatorship. But they feel responsible for everyone and everything. They blame themselves for everything or sometimes take no responsibility at all.
    5. Their will has become disabled from childhood. Over-owning a situation is an attempt to gain control.

    The following traits will be specific to an empath.

    Having the ability to connect is great but being an empath goes too far. They become far too consumed with others. People will wear it as a badge of courage.

    A healthy adult has empathy where they relate but do not become the situation. Being an empath is destructive, invasive, and a sign of dysfunction.

    They lose themselves and cannot stay contained.

    1. Other people instantly or easily shift their emotions.
    2. They feel guilt, shame, or anxiety. The empath cannot do something for themselves without feeling guilty.They don’t understand the concept of a healthy boundary.
      As a result, individuals typically end up with narcissists or abusers since they don’t feel like they have a say in their lives.
      Their identity is unknown to them. It’s a wonder what they think, like, and don’t like.
    3. As a result, they have difficulty making decisions. That’s why they may have poor relationships or careers.
    4. They personalize. The empath makes everything about themselves and turns everything into criticism (even though it may not have been about them). As a result, they quite often feel attacked about everything.

    I hit on what I believe to be the most prevalent signs that will resonate with you all. Additionally, I urge you to read When the Body Says No by Dr. Gabor Mate if you would like to learn more about the connection between emotions and our health and The Emotional Incest Syndrome by Dr. Patricia Love to help you further understand the inner workings of enmeshment.

    I hope you will start on the journey of recovery. Be one of the grapes to jump in the circle and join others.

    If you are looking to begin your journey to heal enmeshment, my masterclasses will provide you with the knowledge, skills, and tools to do just that!

    The Greatness University
    Learn how to master your emotions and become the greatest version of yourself!
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