A critical look at enmeshment trauma

Signs of Enmeshment

These are some characteristics of families where there could be enmeshment trauma. Enmeshed families lack boundaries, there is a lot of over-sharing or demands to know all about your life. Members are expected to conform to the family’s values and norms, and if they don’t there is great guilt put on them. Parents may treat children as friends or helpers rather than children with needs for structure, attention and food. The trauma comes from the fact that children are not allowed independent personalities and to have their own opinions and values. Loyalty is expected and children are not expected to criticize the family. Children feel guilty if they don’t conform to the family’s strict ideals.

Narcissism thrives in family cultures where the purpose of the family isn’t a simple coming together to promote the welfare of each member but to particularly promote a lifestyle, a way of life and/or a concept. This concept comes from the mother or father, who may have a deep fantasy about how her or his family should be. Thus they may put a lot of pressure and effort to create the perfect family.

Enmeshment trauma means that the child identifies as a family, an extension of the parents rather than as an individual. In fact the child may feel that the survival of the family or the mother depends on the child. Therefore, what the family thinks, how they feel about the child becomes the basis of the child’s self worth. The child does not learn how to draw boundaries, in fact boundaries are not encouraged or allowed because the mother or father choose to enmesh in the child and see the child as an extension of themselves who will fulfill all the desires of the parents. Words like, ‘us’, ‘our family’, ‘we’ are commonly used to discourage independent thinking or choices. The family may exert control on choices such as clothing, food, choice of career, choice of partner and may criticize any attempts to become independent.

Narcissism thrives because the person who embodies the values of the family for example, ‘academic excellence, beauty, obedience, masculinity or religion’ becomes the golden child of the family and the other members emulate the same traits in order to earn power. The narcissistic family teaches that the purpose of the family members is to gain power and self worth by emulating perfection, rather than respect, love, support and belonging.

Good behaviour does not lead to either acceptance or respect, even if it is stated that good behaviour (kindness, respect) will lead to reward, reward in fact comes from power. Thus the narcissistic family’s disequilibrium in power creates maladaptive roles because of the projections of the parents and the lack of honest assertive communication. There is bound to be low trust in family systems where perfection is more important than feelings. There is an inbuilt lack of psychological safety. People walk on eggshells.

Enmeshment also creates codependency which is a need to please others in order to survive.

Enmeshment can be a case of too much indulgent love, and many pleasers, helpers, rescuer personalities have a deep sense of the other in their personality make up. Perhaps the impact of enmeshment is as traumatic as neglect, because enmeshment is a sort of neglect. The child’s sense of self or independent identity is sacrificed so that the child can meet the unmet emotional needs of the parent. It is a wound that goes deep in the core of a child, and to them it can feel that they can never be loved or accepted for who they really are, and they deep down believe that they will be never good enough, because they did not meet the parent’s needs.

Children raised in this way, may struggle to form secure attachments. They may struggle to find trustworthy partners. They may repeatedly fall in love with narcissistic individuals and then resent the way they lost themselves in the relationship.

The first step to recovery is to identify the trauma is the lack of belonging, the deeply held sense of being an outsider than many children feel in family systems that revolved around the emotional needs of the parents or other family members rather than the needs of the child. The second step is to draw effective boundaries and to integrate i.e, heal enmeshment trauma.