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Enmeshment is a dysfunctional relational pattern characterized by unclear personal boundaries, often leading to emotional dependency between family members. It can stem from protective parenting during crises or generational family patterns, hindering emotional autonomy and development. Recovery involves recognizing enmeshment signs and practicing mindfulness to establish healthier emotional boundaries.

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33 views4 pages

1-Enmeshment-_Symptoms_and_Causes

Enmeshment is a dysfunctional relational pattern characterized by unclear personal boundaries, often leading to emotional dependency between family members. It can stem from protective parenting during crises or generational family patterns, hindering emotional autonomy and development. Recovery involves recognizing enmeshment signs and practicing mindfulness to establish healthier emotional boundaries.

Uploaded by

i-performance Management Consulting
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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com/enmeshment-symptoms-and-causes/ Page 1 of 4

ENMESHMENT: SYMPTOMS AND CAUSES

Enmeshment: Symptoms and Causes

A word that frequently comes up in family therapy is “enmeshment.” It’s a therapeutic


term that is sometimes misused and often misunderstood. Just what is enmeshment
and how can a family recover from this dysfunctional relational pattern? To find out, we
asked David Prior, LMFT. Prior is a family therapist for InnerChange, a family of
treatment programs for adolescent girls and young women.

What is “enmeshment?”

Enmeshment is a description of a relationship between two or more people in which


personal boundaries are permeable and unclear. This often happens on an emotional
level in which two people “feel” each other’s emotions, or when one person becomes
emotionally escalated and the other family member does as well. A good example of
this is when a teenage daughter gets anxious and depressed and her mom, in turn,
gets anxious and depressed. When they are enmeshed the mom is not able to
separate her emotional experience from that of her daughter even though they both
may state that they have clear personal boundaries with each other. Enmeshment
between a parent and child will often result in over involvement in each other’s lives so
that it makes it hard for the child to become developmentally independent and
responsible for her choices.

What causes two people to become enmeshed?

The causes of enmeshment can vary. Sometimes there is an event or series of


occurrences in a family’s history that necessitates a parent becoming protective in their
child’s life, such as an illness, trauma, or significant social problems in elementary
school. At this time the parent steps in to intervene. While this intervention may have
been appropriate at the time, some parents get stuck using that same approach in new
settings and become overly involved in the day to day interactions of their children.

Other times, and perhaps more frequently, enmeshment occurs as a result of family
patterns being passed down through the generations. It is a result of family and
personal boundaries becoming more and more permeable, undifferentiated, and fluid.
This may be because previous generations were loose in their personal boundaries and
so it was learned by the next generation to do the same. Or it may be a conscious
decision to stay away from family patterns of a previous generation that felt overly rigid
in its personal boundaries.

CONSCIOUS
COACHING METHOD™
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Is enmeshment really a bad thing or is it just when two people are very close?

Enmeshment is different than two people being very close. Close relationships are a
wonderful part of life and often allow for appropriate independence within the
relationship. Enmeshment, however, becomes a problem because the individuals
involved start to lose their own emotional identity. They lack a certain level of
autonomy that they need in order to grow emotionally and relationally. In a parent-child
relationship this creates a dynamic in which teenagers who need to develop
appropriate autonomy become developmentally stymied. They are either too afraid to
venture into increased autonomy and become dependent on their parents, or they
become reactive to the enmeshment and run too far in the other direction, sometimes
making poor choices in their effort to be independent.

Is it possible to love your child too much?

No. I don’t think it’s possible to love your child too much. Love and enmeshment are
two different things. However, enmeshment can be a misdirected expression of love.

Do fathers or mothers tend to be more enmeshed with daughters or is there not a


clear trend one way or the other?

You can definitely have enmeshment that goes in any direction in relationships. You
can have enmeshment between one parent and a child, between both parents and
numerous children, and between siblings. Probably the most common dyad we see
with enmeshment in is between a mom and daughter, but we see it all over the place.

What’s the opposite of enmeshment? Is that just as problematic?

The opposite of enmeshment is disengagement, in which personal and relational


boundaries are overly rigid and family members come and go without any apparent
knowledge of what each other is going through. This can be just as problematic as
enmeshment. In fact, in its extremes, disengagement can be more difficult to work
with because it’s easier to teach an engaged relationship how to redirect some of their
energy than it is to get a disengaged relationship to engage.

What’s the right relational balance between these unhealthy extremes?

A good relational balance involves family members recognizing that they have different
emotions and can make independent decisions, while also recognizing that their

CONSCIOUS
COACHING METHOD™
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decisions affect others. In these relationships a parent can see that their daughter is
upset and anxious and can even empathize with her, but this does not get the parent
into an aroused emotional state in which they feel like they have to fix the emotion (or
that which caused the emotion) of their daughter. They empathize and show nurturing
concern for their daughter but allow her the emotional space to solve her own
problems with their support.

How can I know if I am in an enmeshed relationship?

Those in enmeshed relationships are often the last to see it. But with awareness you
can start to recognize some of the signs: 1. If you cannot not tell the difference
between your own emotions and those of a person with whom you have a relationship.
2. If you feel like you need to rescue someone from their emotions. 3. If you feel like
you need someone else to rescue you from your own emotions. 4. If you and another
person do not have any personal emotional time and space.

If you can release yourself from a relationship that’s too fused, a lot can change.
Personal as well as professional goals can be identified and then realized. Jean, for
example, completed her college degree and started a family of her own once she
began to separate from her mother.

How do you disentangle an enmeshed relationship?

One way out is to get back in. By this, I mean deepening your relationship to yourself,
beginning with increasing your connection to your body. A good place to start is with
the practice of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is paying attention to thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations with


acceptance and without judgment. Sit quietly for as little as 5- or 10-minutes a day,
listen to and feel your breath entering and exiting your body and notice the tingling in
your toes, the pulsing in your fingers.
By heightening awareness and sensitivity to our own physical experience we become
more self-loving. We gain a deeper appreciation of our psychological boundaries. Our
investment and preoccupation with others loosens.

As you remain still, observe your thoughts without attachment as though they were
clouds passing through the sky. By decreasing reactivity, we gain control over our
feelings and behavior. We have the freedom to choose what to do with how we feel.

CONSCIOUS
COACHING METHOD™
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And we are more able to tolerate pain and discomfort as we get better “sitting” with
our experience.

Mindfulness helps improve mental and behavioral control as we face challenging


relationships. We stay grounded in our own experience, focusing on what we feel while
we separate psychically from others—we can clear up the confusion that comes with
fusion. We feel less afraid of conflict because we feel calmer and less invested in the
other person’s experience.
The internal space provided by practicing mindfulness offers a path toward separation
from those with whom we are enmeshed, as well as one toward renewed and balanced
closeness to oneself and others.

CONSCIOUS
COACHING METHOD™

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