Episode #145

Enmeshment & CBT

Enmeshment can happen in a relationship when boundaries become blurred.

How can you avoid becoming unhealthily enmeshed in a relationship?

And how can you correct things when it’s already happened?

Join me, Dr Julie Osborn, as I share with you the CBT tools that can help you avoid and correct enmeshment in your relationships.

Click to listen now!

Full Episode Transcript

Hi, it's Dr. Julie from My CBT Podcast. I'm a Doctor of Psychology and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life.

Thanks for being with me. I hope everyone's doing well. And I wanted to start off, as always, by sharing an email I received by a listener. I'm just going to read the beginning and just share what she's I got captured from listening to the podcast and how it's been helpful.

So it says,

“Hi, Dr. Julie.

“This is Denny from Bulgaria sending warm greeting. I've been listening to your podcast for months now after my therapist told me about attachment styles, and I've had a lot of aha moments on this and so many other topics. It's amazing how you put into words aspects of life that one can vaguely capture with their feelings, but not really deep dive. Thank you for all the work you put into your podcast to provide a source which I believe can make lives happier.”

So thank you, Denny, for reaching out and sharing that with me. And as always, I appreciate hearing from you guys.

If you have any questions, she went on to ask me about doing some ideas for my podcast, and I'm going to definitely take her up on that. But it's really cool hearing from people all over the world. So again, I hope you guys are well, and thanks for being with me today. I wanted to talk about an issue that comes up in relationships and how you can use your CBT tools to help. So the topic I wanted to address today was on enmeshment. So let me define that first so you guys can understand it better. So enmeshment in a relationship refers to a situation where the boundaries between individuals become blurred. And this often results in a loss of autonomy, a loss of independence, and a loss of your own sense of self. In enmeshed relationships, the personal boundaries of the individuals involved aren't clearly defined, and it leads to an excessive emotional involvement and dependency. So it's definitely not a healthy thing. You don't want to be enmeshed with someone. So let's talk about what the signs are. So You can identify if maybe that's something you're in or someone you know that's in, but you haven't been able to really put your finger on it, on what's going on, and why some people might say, Oh, we're so connected, but what's the difference between being connected with someone and being enmeshed?

So one of the differences is having a lack of boundaries. So individuals that are in a mesh relationships really struggle to maintain their own personal boundaries, both emotionally and physically. They can feel responsible for each other's emotions and decisions. So you can see what a burden that would be. It's a heavy weight to bear for you to feel responsible for another person's emotions or decisions when you actually have no control over that. So that's really a mesh. And that's why there would be lack of boundaries if that's what you're feeling about the relationship that you're in. Another sign is over-involvement. So that's if you become overly involved in each other's lives to the point where personal decisions, thoughts, and feelings are intertwined. Instead of having that individuation, who am I? Who are you? We can work together, be close, but where it's really overly involved. So this sounds like codependency, right? I have a podcast about that. This is one of the signs, where there's an excessive reliance on each other for emotional support, validation, and identity. So one person might feel that they cannot function without the other. Codependency also is when your self-worth is all about how someone else feels and sees you as a person.

So you're screwed if you're letting someone else determine how you feel about yourself because, again, you have no control over that. So if they decide to be pissed off at you one day, or you're in bad mood one day, your day is messed up because you're putting all of your selfworth into that other person. So again, there's just no... You're losing yourself, as I said earlier, that loss of self, the loss of identity. So losing your sense of self, or as their identity, I should say, excuse me, becomes increasingly dependent on the relationship. So their personal needs, their goals, maybe their desires may be sacrificed for the sake of the other person. So when I say their personal needs, that other person, yourself. So are your own needs being affected? Are you able to reach your goals? Are your desires important? Or are you sacrificing these things just to have the relationship because you're so enmeshed? Also, another sign is when there's emotional manipulation or guilt going on. Feelings of guilt. The definition of guilt is that you did something wrong. Or pressure might arise when one person attempts to assert independence or pursue individual interests.

So when you're like, I think I'm going to do this one on my own. I'm going to really try to make my own decision and feel comfortable in the things that I want to do. And then that person in your life, a lot of times it's a parent, it could be a partner, tries to manipulate or make you feel guilty that you want to do something on your own because they're getting scared of this thinking you're pulling away. It's like, No, no, no, we're connected. We're connected. Everything has to go through both of us. So if you're feeling like someone's not giving you that autonomy and they want to make all the decisions and make you feel bad for trying to step out of the relationship in a healthy way, that's also a red flag. And the last sign to look for is difficulty in the separation. So when you're in a mess relationship, it's going to be hard to be apart, even for short periods of time. There may be an emotional need to be constantly connected. So that can come in always. If you've been out with a friend and their partner calls them 500 times when you're out for dinner, or they have their phone on the table in case that phone call comes.

Instead of saying like, Hey, I'm going to dinner with my friend. I'll see you when I get back home. There's that constant connection, constant connection, that they can't be separated. So if you're hanging out with someone like that, you don't feel that they're present with you. You don't feel important. It's very uncomfortable. It's like you got that other person there with you all the time. This is, you can see, I'm talking... Let me just go over. It's lack of boundaries, over-involvement, codependency, loss of identity, Emotional manipulation or guilt, and difficulty in separation. These are all signs that you're in an enmeshed relationship. Does not feel good, doesn't sound good when we talk about it, right? So what's the impact? There's going to be a lot of different things that impact you if you're in a relationship like this, right? So the first is just have an emotional burnout. So this constant emotional involvement can really lead you to feel exhausted and stressed, right? Which makes total sense. You can start feeling resentful. Yourself or maybe even your partner might start feeling resentful over time because there's a lack of autonomy, and you're not going to have your own personal needs being met because They're always focused on the other person, or they're always focused on you and wanting you to meet their needs.

There's no space for you. So resentment might start coming up for you. You're really not going to have much personal growth. That's going to get stunted, because this enmeshment limits your own independence, and you can struggle to develop personal skills or explore your own interests. Who am I as a person? What are some things I want to do? What are some things maybe I just want to do on my own? Are there some personal skills that I think I need to work on? Maybe being comfortable being by myself, making my own decisions, not always asking for reassurance, not always checking in before I make a decision. You can really have some strained relationships, because when you're in a mesh relationship, it can really lead to conflicts in lots of other areas of your life, such as friendships, as I was mentioning before, if you went to dinner with somebody like that, it can affect your family relationships. As the mess relationship can dominate your own attention and your own energy, you don't have space or time for other relationships in your life. And that's where that codependency really just feeds on each other. So having an enmeshed relationship doesn't always mean that you're seeking it as well as the other person, because a lot of times it's really common in family dynamics, particularly in parent-child child relationships.

So it's really going to take a lot of self-awareness and intention to create healthy relationships and some boundaries. So when I was talking about the parent-child relationship, if you're in a relationship with a parent that's really enmeshed, most likely the parent is going to be really dependent on you emotionally and has created you to be emotionally dependent on them. They're going to make you feel responsible for their happiness. They're not going to allow you to make decisions decisions unless you check in with them. They may come and ask you if you think they're making the right decision, right? So you might grow up faster than you need to. And it takes away your self-confidence if you're a child of being independent, having that autonomy and being able to make decisions on your own. You'll be like, Oh, I need to check with my parent. I need to check with my parent. What if I make a mistake? Oh, if I did make a mistake, which we all do, you're going to think, Oh, I should have just checked in with my parent first. So you lose that clear independence of who am I? So I'm Julie, right?

I'm going to make my own decisions. I may go to a parent and say, What do you think of this? Have you ever experienced this situation before? This is what I think I'm going to do, versus saying, Oh, my God, what am I going to do? What should I do? And I'm only going to take your advice. I don't want to make a decision because maybe I'm going to be wrong, which is something I would have learned in an enmeshed relationship, right? So it's a really unhealthy relationship, and that's why it's not just in interpersonal relationships, but with the intimate partner, but definitely parent-child, and the parent can create that. I did a podcast about a month ago about having a parent who has a personality disorder. This can be part of that, right? That if you grew up with a parent that had a personality disorder may have really affected your own ability to be an individual, right? And you having to feel like you have to manage their personality versus developing your own, that can create an enmeshment as well. So that's another way of looking at it and learning about these different personality disorders and how you were affected.

So it's really important. You don't want to create enmeshed relationships, especially once you get out of one. And if you grew up like that in your home, I really recommend going to therapy to identify this so you can learn how to set healthy boundaries. And I'm going to talk about in a second how to address them and by using your CBT tools. It can be a real game changer. So the first First thing you want to do is set healthy boundaries. You want to establish and maintain, which is the tricky part, clear boundaries. You want to ensure that you and your partner or whatever relationship that you're in can respect each So there's personal space and autonomy. So boundaries can be scary if that's not something you're used to, because I think a lot of times people don't set boundaries because they're afraid if they do, the person will reject them. And that's why it's so It's important to have that autonomy that even if you do reject me or you don't like it, that's still my boundary, and I'm not going to change that. So setting healthy boundaries. And a lot of times with boundaries, one of the most important things is just being consistent.

No means no means no means no. And the more consistent you are, people will start to respect them. I have a whole podcast on Boundaries if you want to listen to it. But when you set healthy boundaries and you're consistent, consistent. People might fight them at first and test you and push back. But if you're consistent, they will start to respect them, or they maybe just won't be in your life. And that's probably a good thing anyways, right? Sometimes people need to leave our lives or we need to leave other people's lives. Another way to address the enmeshment is really encourage being an individual, right? For yourself. You're wanting everybody in your life. Say if you are a parent, sometimes some kids are a little anxious, maybe hold on to a little too tight. And if you're thinking, I don't want this to mess relationship with my kid, it's really important to encourage them to pursue their own interest, their hobbies and their goals, and help them foster a sense of their self outside of the relationship. So if they're, Oh, come do this with me. Come do this with me. Mom, can do this with me, dad.

To say, What do you want to do? What are some hobbies? What are some goals? And help them connect with other friends to do that if your kids are young. And what you're going to teach them is, You know I'm always here for you, but you are your own person, and I really want you to have a sense of yourself outside of this relationship. So if you're in a relationship and someone seems really dependent on you or you guys are working on that together to maybe say, what are some things you do that you haven't done because you don't want to leave me or you think I'll be upset? And maybe help each other talk through that. What would be one thing each of us could pick that we would do without each other, whether it's by ourselves or with other friends or colleagues? What does that look like? Because you want to develop some really good emotional independence. You want to work on managing your own emotions to not rely solely on each other for that emotional regulation, as they say. So one thing I learned a long time ago that really always stuck with me is that you're not responsible for your partner's anxiety, right?

You're not responsible for your partner's happiness, right? Or making them feel like they can do things unless you're there with them. So when you think about this, if my partner has anxiety, I need to know that they can work on managing it, and I will be there to support them. But they're going to be the ones working and learning to manage their anxiety and not wanting me to fix it. And you see that. I see that with people where somebody's just coddling their partner or somebody says something to them, their partner speaks up and makes things okay for them? It might look like, Oh, isn't that loving? They care about them so much. But it really is an unhealthy pattern that they're not allowing them to speak for themselves to be an individual. That can happen again in this parent-child relationship I'm talking about is somebody could ask the kid, What do they think about something? The parent answers for them? So the message is, you don't have your own voice. You need me. You need me, you need me for all these different things. And that's how you can start developing a child, to be enmeshed with the parent.

So you want that emotional independence. Again, we're there for each other. We're there to support each other, depend on each other. But when push comes to shove, I can make that decision, even if I don't check in with you, and I can feel good about it, whatever the outcome might be, because I feel that independence to be myself, and I can regulate my emotions okay. You definitely want open communication. This is, as I was just saying, having some honest conversations or conversations about your feelings, your your own needs, your own boundaries, and to ensure that both of you are comfortable expressing yourself. So this is the conflict. I'm talking like, Oh, here's these two mesh people. Now we're not going to be meshed. That could happen. Probably need some therapy for that to happen. One person might be more on board than the other. It would be hard, not impossible to have both people on board. But a lot of times it's going to take one person to say, This doesn't work for me anymore, and I need to feel more of myself, more of an individual, healthy, and not feel like you're totally dependent on me and vice versa.

So I need to start communicating and really being honest, which is going to be scary because that other person might just grab onto you like, No, no, no. You can't do this. We always do this together. You need me. You know, you know. Possibly, I would think going to some individual therapy to really talk this through, figure out where this started, how you got into relationship that's enmeshed, and what you can do to try to change it or if you need to get out of it. So that would be a place to start, possibly, is just doing it on your own so that when you go have that conversation with your partner, you're going to be strong enough emotionally so you can have that honest conversation, feel comfortable, and really stick to those new healthy boundaries you're setting for yourself. So therapy, obviously, is beneficial for couples and individuals, right? When you're struggling with the enmeshment, because it really helps to understand the dynamics so you can develop healthier relationship patterns. So again, it's not that you both can't change at the same time, but there's going to have to be that motivation and that desire to be able to change.

So I wanted to go over what is a meshment, what's the impact. I talked about how to address it, and now how can you use your CBT tools. So you know me, you can always use your CBT tool. So A lot of things that came up in my thoughts just talking to you guys about this is obviously addressing boundary issues and definitely core beliefs. If you haven't listened, I have a core belief podcast, and I share my own story. But identifying these core beliefs. If I'm in a master relationship as an adult, was that in a master relationship as a child with my parents? And what did that look like and why did that even develop? Was that for my parent? Was I an anxious kid that really had a lot of separation anxiety? And maybe my parents did their best but didn't handle it well, and I became just too enmeshed and too dependent on them. Let's understand that. So what are these core beliefs I developed? Possibly that I'm weak, I'm bound to be abandoned. I'm different. I can't do this on my own. I'm inadequate. There's lots of different core beliefs about yourself.

There's negative core beliefs other people, right? I can't trust other people, so I just need to have that one person I hold on to. So that would be a really good place to start in your therapy. It's like, what negative core beliefs do I have that are creating these thoughts, these feelings I have, and these behaviors, right? So the behavioral strategy is what I call it, is what am I doing to avoid dealing with my core belief because that's really painful normally. So my strategy might be to find somebody to be enmeshed with. That feels good. That feels comfortable. I know this relationship. So I'm going to attract that and I'm going to be with that person. So just understanding all of that. So addressing your core beliefs. Again, using your thought records. I want to talk to my partner that I want to do something on my own, but I'm afraid how they're going to react to it. That would be your situation if you're doing a thought record. My moods are feeling anxious and overwhelmed and scared, maybe guilty, because I've also played a part creating this relationship. And then what are my health thoughts?

They'll never let me go. We'll never be able to work on things. We'll never be a healthy couple. I won't be strong enough to step up and stand strong with my new boundaries. All those different hot thoughts you're going to have going on that's going to keep you from me be addressing this. And they're all hot thoughts, right? None of them are 100% true. And if you're someone that's in a relationship like this and you want to make changes, I really I give you a lot of courage and respect. I give you courage. I see your courage and I give you respect that it's really scary to take that step because it might not work out. But if you're willing to take that risk, that tells me that you're starting to love yourself and you're starting to honor yourself, and you really want to have a better relationship. And maybe you're hoping it'll be with that person, but no matter what, you can't continue going forward the way it is. And you don't want to repeat repeat what you had as a child, if that's where it started. And you don't want to have that with the child you may have one day because we do repeat what we know.

Our brain's like, I know this, this is comfortable. Our brain doesn't say if it's healthy or not, it's just, Oh, I know this. It's comfortable. And that's how we end up having generational trauma, repeating situations, being in relationships that you never thought, I'm never going to have one like my parents, and you end up in the same one. There's a lot to uncover here, and it's opportunity. I always say everything Thinking is an opportunity instead of like, Oh, no, no, this is hard. Instead, if you can say, This is an opportunity for me to change, to use my tools that I've learned, and to really create or find a healthy relationship. And if you're single and you've been in a messed relationship or that was with a child who was like, These are some good things I'm talking about for you to notice. If somebody becomes overly dependent quickly, somebody that is looking for an enmeshed relationship will jump into a pretty fast. It's not going to take time, all of a sudden, like, Oh, how did we get enmeshed? It's going to be pretty clear at the beginning, right? And the message is that partner tells you about how you guys need to be together all the time.

And that's what a healthy relationship is, right? That we have this symbiotic relationship that we feel 24/7, which is not true, right? Symbiotic relationships where you really feel connected. You have those moments, but it's not going to be like that all the time because otherwise, you're probably being meshed. So these are things you want to look for when I'm going into a relationship. And let me just say one thing about relationships is I have this little 18-month rule, I call it, is it takes you 18 months to really get to know the person to see if this is my life partner. And I'm telling you, people say all the time like, What, Dr. Julie, 18 months? That seems so long. And I'm like, That is nothing when you're looking at a lifetime together. And I'm telling you, about that one year mark, people are like, Oh, you were right. Right about a year in, you're going to start seeing how people cope. Do they have that self-reliance? Are they independent? How do they deal with finances? How do you guys resolve issues? All of that stuff. So you're going to see all of this pretty early on, I think, when somebody is not coming from a healthy place and wanting to be connected super fast.

And I have people just say, You think this is normal, Dr. Julie? I don't know I don't know that. I say, Listen to your gut instinct, right? The person is overly involved, super quick, and you're like, This doesn't feel comfortable, pay attention. Pay attention. I think we all ignore that inner voice because we want things to work out, or we think that we're being hypercritical or too judgmental. This is your life. You can have whatever you want. You don't know anybody anything, especially the beginning of a relationship. Take all the things you've learned along the way, all the work you've done on yourself, and go forward with it to bring a healthy person in and be able to change the old patterns. You can change. I change. You can change old patterns. When you can identify those core beliefs and say, This is what I don't want going forward, you can make better relationships. And enmeshment is exhausting. It can suck the soul out of you because you're not your own person. You're two people that are moving along in life at the same pace, and nobody's making their own decisions, nobody has their own ideas.

And there's underlying fear that if I don't go along or if my partner doesn't go along with me, then something's wrong. Instead of really appreciating your differences. You probably have more similarities than differences, but differences can be positive too. Coming from different cultures can be different, or life experiences, or different interests with hobbies. Your could bring into a new hobby you've never done before because you never thought about it. There's so much to be gained from being an individual and then creating a relationship with somebody. So I'd love to hear your feedback. I'd love to hear your own experiences. If you've been in a messed relationship, if you've been able to change that, if you're stuck in one now, what does that look like? If you've been able to identify where it started. I love to hear from you guys as always. And Any comments, suggestions? I'm always open. I'm just here for you guys to be able to teach you the tools of CBT to help you in all these areas of your life. And I wanted to just really clarify what's an enmeshed relationship because I think we hear about it, but we don't always understand exactly what it means.

So as always, I hope this was a helpful podcast.

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