4 Steps to Break the Bonds of Parental Enmeshment

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Have you ever felt disloyal to a parent for simply growing up or moving away? For wanting to make decisions on your own? Even for having your own life?

It’s a crazy feeling. And very confusing. Because everything on the surface looks great. It looks to others like a deep love between parent and child. While on the inside, for the “child,” it feels much more like a responsibility to be who your parent needs you to be.

The dynamic is called enmeshment. And it’s a huge problem because that loyalty to your parent—that message that you’re their “person”—means you’re not supposed to leave them. That's not always a spoken expectation. But even if you move, your duty is still to remain available.

What's the difference between empty nest and enmeshment?

Most parents want their kids to launch—to go out into the world with the skills they’ve hopefully learned at home, at school, at work—and succeed.

And some parents will need to grieve that now, their nest is empty—or emptying.

So if you're the "child," you might hear from those parents:

• “What am I going to do without you?”
• “I love you so much, and I can’t stand to think of not having you around.”

These can sound like a stage of separation—or a transition that is often tough for a parent.

And of course, that can be exactly what it is. A transition.

Your job is never finished when the bonds of enmeshment remain

But what if it’s not? What if a parent can emotionally rely so heavily on a child that encouragement or even permission to build their own life, away from the parent, is never given? In its most serious form, this kind of enmeshment, in which the child's life is never separated from the parent’s life, means it remains the child's “job” to be there for the parent.

It’s enmeshed. Overly connected. And, as the child, it can feel like your job will never end.

Why?

Because you don’t actually have the ability to make your parent happy in the long haul. They are the only one who can do that.

The irony of enmeshment

The irony of enmeshment is that to others, it can look like an incredible bond.

I lived enmeshment out with my mom. And I remember well when my therapist said, “Your mom is never going to give you permission to leave or to grow away from her.”

Years later, I shared a memory with my dad: "When I'd call home, and you'd answer, you'd always say a cheery 'Hi Pris...' But then you'd go get Mom." His very quiet explanation was, "Your mom needed you more."

Again, my mom wasn’t preventing me literally from having my own life.

But she called... a lot. (Texting wasn’t a thing yet. I shudder to think about how much contact there would’ve been if it existed.) She called multiple times a day. I’d get home, and there would be several messages, all loving. “Just wondered how that test went.” Or, “Call me when you get home. Can’t wait to hear how work went today.”

But the message might also be:

"I really need to talk with you because you’re the only one who understands how I feel.”

People can even say, “I wish I had a mom (or dad) like yours, who really cared about me.” What they don’t hear or see is how stuck you are in the relationship—and how it’s inhibiting your ability to live your own life.

If you’re connecting with this, you’re among many people who have experienced enmeshment with a parent. But it can also be with a friend or a partner. That lack of boundary—feeling as if you don’t have your own identity in the relationship—is one of the problems. Maybe you’re always accommodating to your friend’s needs, or your partner isn’t okay with you having a separate life from theirs.

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4 steps to break the bonds of enmeshment

1. The first step is awareness. This is almost a relabeling of your relationship. It's when you begin to see how what started as you filling a special role as child for a parent—not a sexual one, but an emotional one—has become a heavier burden for you to carry. You have to fight a sense of disloyalty for questioning what has been labeled for you as a deep love that your parent has for you. You may need professional help to see how this dynamic affected your own life.
2. The second step is realizing how your own growth as an individual has been hampered by the dynamic between you and that parent. Maybe it's hard for you to make your own decisions, even the tiniest of them. Maybe your "closeness" to that parent has replaced or gotten in the way of you creating intimate relationships or friendships with others.
3. The third step is slowly beginning to disentangle yourself from your parent's expectations, while fighting off entrenched beliefs that you're abandoning them. Maybe you decide to not always include them in things, for example. Or maybe you stop telling them things that need to remain more private. At the same time, you begin to build other relationships that can act as support.
4. If you count on that parent always being there, it's important to not only become aware, but to see how you might've developed a kind of dependence on that parent that also needs your attention.

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.