Enmeshment & Un-Enmeshing
“My friend, you have not grown up with an enmeshed family who escaped communism but brought the psychological and emotional features of communism with them.”
My friend and I used to have this debate. It’s one you may have heard before.
“Communism is good for the family, but bad for society. It doesn’t scale up.”
This was the argument of my friend, to which I would reply:
“Communism is bad at all levels. What we get in society is a two-way mirror with the structure of the nuclear family.”
My friend would say, “But in my family, I am the breadwinner. It is from each according to his ability, to each according to their needs. I provide to my children because I am able, and they need my resources.”
“But,” I would reply, “this is based on a voluntary arrangement. As adults, we have dominion over our children until they come of age.”
We would go on and on, my friend saying that communism works best at the family level, socialism at the local, and as we scale up to governments and supranational organizations, we should move towards classical liberalism, and then anarchy.
But this is not how it works, I would protest. The more we see the psychological markers of communism in the family unit, the more the society will reflect those structures as a value system. And the more we see communistic elements in a society, the more dysfunctional the nuclear family unit.
And then I would put it bluntly: “My friend, you have not grown up with an enmeshed family who escaped communism but brought the psychological and emotional features of communism with them.”
What is Enmeshment?
The AI summary of enmeshment:
“In psychology, enmeshment refers to a dysfunctional relationship pattern characterized by blurred or nonexistent boundaries between individuals, leading to a loss of personal autonomy and an inability to differentiate one's own thoughts, feelings, and needs from another person's. Essentially, it's a state where individuals are excessively emotionally involved with each other, often to the detriment of their own well-being and sense of self.”
Enmeshment is a term to describe the relationship between people, but in this case, I will talk about the enmeshed family, its usual manifestation. The enmeshed family has porous boundaries, or no boundaries. Respect is seen as absolute obedience and compliance to the parents, elders, or power holders of the family system. No one is okay unless everyone is okay. People meddle in the affairs of their family members, and this is to be expected, usually despite deleterious consequences.
If you hold different ideals, visions, or morals, you must be brought back into line with the dominant values of the family system, which change depending on the whims of the rulers. It is an authoritarian family system, but it is usually more of a maternal than paternal flavour of authoritarianism. The dark feminism, the devouring mother archetype. Soft control wrapped in excessive care and worry. The love and protection is entangled with intrusion, smothering, and lack of freedom. There is covert or overt rejection of individual identity within the group.
The underlying feeling that drives behaviour and decisions is a pervasive, irrational, and overwhelming sense of guilt.
Everyone is meant to not just be equal, but to be the same. If one child is smarter than the other, they must downplay their intelligence to save the feelings of the other. If one child is more handsome than his brother, he must become weaker in another area so as not to provoke jealousy. If one decides to take their own path, they will be criticized and ostracized. Decisions must pass through the committee of family.
Everybody is running around trying to save the other, while neglecting their own needs. Your thoughts, feelings, and actions must reflect the cult of the family system. The family does not welcome outsiders, unless they acquiesce to the unwritten rules and dogmas of the system, without question. And when one challenges this system, they will become the accused; the scapegoat.
The enmeshed family, in other words, is collectivist.
Repetition Compulsion
Enmeshment is the kind of thing you have to live to viscerally understand.
It is something I have spent years differentiating from, and I do not know if the process can ever truly be complete.
Growing up in enmeshment creates a psychic programming, a hardware if you will. You can do a gazillion software updates, but overriding the original hardware code? Not sure if it’s possible.
Even so, being aware of it and uncovering the self—individuating in the Jungian sense—, will provide you with uncanny pattern recognition. You will recognize your own responses (sometimes after the fact), and be able to sniff out enmeshment where you see it.
So I recognized it when we became friends with an enmeshed family. Saw all the signs, the patterns, the roles each member played. How our friends related to their parents, how their family of origin contributed to their ways of being. I saw it, and knew it was a red flag, but decided to proceed anyways, thinking I could work around it.
After all, they were likeable people. Neurotic sometimes, yes, but likeable. Fun, welcoming, joyful, caring, and thoughtful.
My nervous system immediately recognized the way being with them felt. Anxious, on edge, sometimes exhilarated, and eventually, safe and at home.
I saw it as a challenge. I could take the good, and discard the bad, and try to channel my inner zen buddhist monk despite my amygdala running on hyper-drive.
Carl Jung said, “What we resist, persists.” So basically, an extension of Freud’s idea of repetition compulsion, where we attract the same kinds of people and situations so that the psyche feels familiarity. But Jung continued, “Embrace it and it will dissolve.”
By embracing the repetition, can we finally resolve it?
Maybe that is what I set out to do, unconsciously.
The friendship eventually imploded. Lines were crossed that damaged the relationship slowly, and then all at once. There were various factors, but it all involved the trappings of enmeshment: family dysfunction and filial duties leading to pressure, demands of secrecy, impulsiveness, manipulation, betrayal, and lies. DARVO and drama. Emotional self-sacrifice. Guilt, guilt, and more guilt.
These pathologies that eventually come to surface in enmeshed systems are designed to maintain the status quo at all costs. Keeping the system intact is what matters. The end is more important than the means.
And so, I had to walk away. And in doing so, I have had a desire to explore my own psyche more deeply, and to individuate further. By peacefully detaching and turning inwards, I have brought to surface some formerly unconscious things about myself and how I relate to the world. And also, have had some pretty big epiphanies about enmeshment and the culture around me.
La Familia Sagrada
I am a Canadian living in Mexico. Over the course of the last year and a half, I have been enjoying this incredibly rich culture and its people.
Mexicans are welcoming, friendly, warm, and value hard work. They have a healthy distrust of government. Their social life is at the forefront of everything they do. Fiestas, celebrations, gatherings, dinner and outings are essentials of weekly life here. But above all, the family is central to the Mexican person.
La familia is everything. It is sacred.
With our former friends, there was no way around it. Despite ourselves, we became part of the family, and by that I mean the extended family. We knew the grandparents and where they lived. We drank mezcal with the aunts and uncles, and met the cousins and the second cousins. Before long, we found ourselves having a big Mexican family around us, despite being 3000 miles away from our own families.
It turns out that the very things that attracted us to the culture: the friendliness, the social life, the feeling of belonging, were on their way to becoming things that equally repelled us. For there is a dark underbelly to the Mexican insistence on the sanctity of the family, and that is… enmeshment.
Mexicans Are Enmeshed
I am making a sweeping statement. This doesn’t mean all Mexicans of course, but what I have observed in my contemplation of the friendship implosion and other aggregate incidents has made me aware of a phenomenon characteristic of the Mexican psyche. And it is, as I have mentioned at the beginning of this, a two-way mirror between the family and the society at large.
I wrote down a few notes about my experiences and put it into Chat GPT, which pointed me to the book “Psychology of the Mexican: Culture and Personality” by Rogelio Diaz Guerrero. A psychologist who left Mexico for America at 25 years old, and had his first experience of buying his own underwear at that age (a task formerly employed by his sister), Guerrero compiled evidence in 1975 which supports my own observations.
Without using the word enmeshment, he describes how Mexicans are enmeshed with their families to an excessive degree. It is a cultural phenomenon, a culture which in his words, is collectivist.
His first chapter is titled “Neurosis and the Mexican Family Structure”. Good grief!
From this chapter:
“The Mexican family is founded upon two fundamental propositions: (a) the unquestioned and absolute supremacy of the father and (b) the necessary and absolute self-sacrifice of the mother.”
Daddy issues and mommy issues.
“But what seems to be even more commonplace in one degree or another is the existence in the Mexican male of a syndrome for which the common denominator is guilt.”
Bingo! He talks about the Oedipus complex, how the very young and very old are to be venerated like little gods, and highlights how the intense (and unhealthy) attachment to the family of origin is reason for much strife, both inner and outer.
“From this vantage point one could say that many of the neurosis-provoking conflicts in the Mexican are “inner” conflicts, that is, provoked more by clash of values than by clashes of the individual with reality.”
Don’t worry, Mexicans, my neurosis-provoking conflicts have quite commonly been “inner” conflicts, too.
But as I grow, as I shed parts of myself that are inauthentic, my conflicts tend to be more often clashes with reality.
Interpersonal Harmony
Another feature of enmeshment is the quest for interpersonal harmony. What matters not is who was right or wrong, who got the facts in order, or that things were justly resolved. What matters is that the harmony of the relationship returns. This, in enmeshed families, means eating the blame, swallowing your resentment, sweeping things under the rug, forgiving instantly, and abuse amnesia. In an enmeshed system, separation is like a hole in the united psyche of its members. Relationships must be conserved, at all costs.
A result of growing up enmeshed is that you become, to some degree or another, a people pleaser. You tend to read the emotional barometer of people, learn to read the room, and adjust yourself to keep the other person at equilibrium. Pair that with excess empathy, and you can go from understanding another’s perspective to taking it on as your own. Auto-gaslighting one’s self to adopt the other’s point of view is a self-protective measure meant to keep the peace. But it means that you bury parts of yourself that later resurface as the shadow aspects, leading to manipulative or defensive responses, neurotic behaviour, and even lying to protect your self-image as a good, agreeable person.
Recently, my family and I had an outer conflict of this type, with a business that lied and twisted facts rather than be honest about a decision that affected us.
But they did not do so aggressively. It was wrapped in people pleasing, and trying to maintain interpersonal harmony. Again, I found an explanation in Guerrero’s book:
“An interpersonal reaction is evaluated on the basis of the immediate pleasure and satisfaction it brings. By this I do not mean getting bridges built or even getting a job, but providing human rapport for the people involved.”
We wanted the bridge built, and we were asking why the bridge was not being built when we had paid for the bridge, and now construction had suddenly halted. But the answer was not straightforward. It was elusive, confusing, and the story kept changing. To us, this was unacceptable— a lie, somewhere in there— but I realize that this obfuscation was a necessary to attempt to people please us.
“Simply because he cannot answer your question, the Mexican would never get the real thing, the pleasant interpersonal encounter, go to waste.”
Ahhhhh yes. I know this one too. The preservation of interpersonal harmony is more important than figuring out the truth. Another core aspect of enmeshed families.
Un-Enmeshing
Un-enmeshing, as I said, is extremely difficult. Never mind that first you have to be aware that the whole thing is unhealthy and causing you tons of inner conflict, but imagine if the whole culture around you considered this the norm?
Enmeshment is not only a family or cultural thing, but an intergenerational one. All three are tied up: family, culture, and intergenerational ways of relating. So to break through enmeshment, you have to confront all three; not an easy task, but an essential one if you want to save yourself.
For our former friends, I have a lot of compassion. I know what it is to be stuck in it and have no idea, and to act out in ways that you don’t understand. I attempted to talk to my friends in earnest about it, because I care deeply about them and see the terrain. I know the terrain. I know how to work my way out of the terrain, but I still get caught up in the quicksand myself.
I looked up a Mexican-Spanish translation for enmeshment and it doesn’t exist. Language is the voice of a culture, and if a concept has no word, it has no concept.
Likewise, sometimes words have different meanings depending on who you ask. For example, the book highlights how Americans have a different definition than respect from Mexicans:
“The American pattern was a relatively detached, self-assured egalitarianism.
The Mexican pattern was one of a close-knit, highly emotionalized, reciprocal dependence and dutifulness, within a firmly authoritarian framework.”
So the meaning of words, or the absence of words in a culture affect the social behaviour of the people. How can you un-enmesh when you don’t know what enmeshment even is?
How would a therapist treat anyone in therapy following such a fall-out situation? I highly doubt there are many Mexican therapists telling clients to go no contact with their abuela.
But I may be wrong. Maybe the West is rubbing off here, as it does. Mexico is a place of deep traditions and contradictions. It is unique in its ways. The personality of the Mexican, as a generalization, differs from the American. “Mexico”, the author writes, “is still a socioculture of love, and final decisions are made in terms more of affiliation than of power.”
The Shadow
So what have I learned from all this?
I am still exploring. I am halfway through the book and kind of slowed down, because I feel like I am intellectualizing the whole thing instead of working out my feelings. The truth is, a part of me thinks I have attracted the same kinds of people in my life, and the same kinds of situations, in a synchronicitous order. Part of me is attracted to, and part of me repelled by, enmeshed families. I can relate to them, understand them, and feel comfortable with them in a way that is natural to me.
I also accept that I can feel ambiguously about the fallout. I can miss the conversations, the bonds, the Mezcal nights and laughter, and their company, the same way I miss singing with my mom on the porch. I can miss the good, feel sad for the loss, and also know that trying to hold onto something that no longer exists only brings pain, and stunts emotional growth.
Another part of me understands that enmeshment seems to be a cultural norm, and I will have to take my time to get to know people as individuals. I will have to feel comfortable being focused on myself and my family for now, and not trying to fill any voids by rushing into friendships.
I have also found this strength in accepting when lines are crossed that require you to walk away, even if temporarily. I have found myself finding some kind of peace, contemplating my own people pleasing tendencies and revolting against them by saying no. I am allowing distance to potentially be mistaken for coldness, to unapologetically take space even if it means I am seen in a way that doesn’t fit my ideal self-image.
I have found myself having dreams and wanting to decode them. Looking inwards, trying to glimpse at the shadow. Being more assertive and not trying to be likeable. Attempting new kinds of communication with old bonds. Striving to be authentic, even if it is sometimes unpleasant for others.
And I am accepting that we live in a culturally collectivist place, which starts with the family. Honouring the values of my own little family— personal freedom, authenticity, and self-actualization— requires discernment about who we let into our circle. Enforcing healthy boundaries will be more foreign for some than others. We also have to be careful not too be too rigid, or risk social isolation.
I think in the end it’s about both embracing the light side, and knowing the dark underbelly, of the socially vibrant, tight-knit, welcoming Mexico.
And lastly, knowing that it’s all a process. Everyone is where they are at on their journey. We meet them where they are at, and where we are at. I like to hope that the whole situation with our friends planted a grain of knowledge that they can use to benefit them in their individuation, should they ever take that path. I know that I am learning a lot, about who I am, about how I react and respond, and about what dark corners need a light shone on them so I can continue to grow.
“What we resist, persists. Embrace it, and it will dissolve.”
Thanks for reading, please share your thoughts below, and if you liked this, recommend to an (enmeshed) friend. ;)
PS- Thank you
for being a soundboard for this article, for your insights and friendship.
I echo Paulina: “All of it resonated (a little too much!)”
This tug-of-war between individual and collective is both fascinating and painful.
Powerful and moving essay, Kate. Thank you for sharing your insight. All of it resonated (a little too much!) As I too am on this confusing path between discernment, pain, grief and search for meaningful connection. I wrote something eerily similar in the first Medea essay. Not sure if you read Susan Forward? She had some powerful pieces on enmeshment but I can't recall the reference. Also what you describe is exactly why I avoid my more distant relatives in Poland, same story. Nothing feels lile family even though everything is familiar. Hard to find yourself again. Hugs from Canada xx