What Does Therapy for Enmeshment Look Like? A Therapist’s Guide to What Can Change
Hi, I’m Michele Ross, LCSW, and I’ve been a trauma therapist in Los Angeles for over 25 years.
One of my specialties is offering therapy for adult children of narcissistic parents, particularly daughters of narcissistic mothers. Often, this type of dysfunctional family system goes along with enmeshment.
In this article, I’ll explain what therapy for enmeshment looks like and can help you to change. You’ll see how that work looks like in your daily life.
I see clients in-person in my Larchmont office, and offer California-wide therapy virtually. If you’re looking to build your own identity and learn how to create and uphold boundaries, let’s talk.
I offer free 15 minute consultations to see if I’d be a good fit to help you get your life back.
What Can Change After Enmeshment?
Enmeshment with a parent goes beyond a healthy level of closeness. This kind of bond discourages boundaries, independence, or emotional separation.
Part of the healing process is understanding how enmeshment harmed you in the past. Healing happens when you change these patterns and become your own person.
A therapist can help you see how the way you grew up affects you, both with your parents and in other areas of your life.
Here’s how a therapist who specializes in dysfunctional family systems can help you heal from enmeshment:
Learn how to be yourself
Your parent may have seen you as an extension of themselves, so your likes had to be their likes, your needs had to correspond to their needs, and your beliefs had to match theirs.
When you spent your childhood enmeshed with a parent, it can be hard to tune in to who you are as your own person. You might struggle to know what you want in your life, so you make major decisions based on other’s emotions instead of your own.
Working through enmeshment with a therapist helps you name your actual preferences and values. It might be hard to separate your feelings from your parent’s expectations at first. You might start practicing with small decisions, like ordering something you’ve always wanted to try at a restaurant.
When major decisions come up - like moving to a new neighborhood, going back to school, or picking a vacation spot - you’ll already have a better understanding of what you want.
Build healthier relationships with friends
Your parent might have isolated you from others when you were younger. You might not have been allowed to see certain family members, or you might have had disagreements with your parent about who your friends were.
As an adult, it can be a struggle to know how people actually become friends. Therapy gives you a place to figure that out. You can talk through the awkward parts of getting to know someone and deciding when to reach out, or figure out if a new acquaintance is someone you’d like to get to know better.
Some people with a history of enmeshment might think that they need intense closeness with someone in order for them to be a friend, or might find themselves oversharing with new acquaintances.
Others might feel like friendships are too overwhelming and intrusive, so distance is more comfortable than connection.
A therapist who understands enmeshment can help you notice what feelings you experience in friendship. You’ll figure out what’s comfortable for you so you can give a friendship room to grow without coming in too strong or altogether avoiding it. Eventually, friendship will feel more ordinary.
Decide how to deal with family conflicts
An enmeshed parent can still be difficult to interact with, even when you’re well into adulthood. No matter how much work you’ve done on boundaries or how well you communicate, your parent might still try to pull you back into old patterns.
You might hear classic responses like “Is that the thanks I get after all I’ve done for you?” or “You’re too sensitive.”
It can be discouraging to see that you’re doing all of the right things for yourself, but your parent still responds in their own inappropriate way. In therapy, you can look at what’s actually happening during these interactions. What patterns keep showing up for both you and your parent? What roles do they want you to go back to?
I help clients determine how they want to participate in difficult family situations, without losing themselves in the process. When you see the pattern more clearly, you can decide what you want your relationship with your parent to look like, and how to respond when these dynamics come up again.
Understand and enforce boundaries with others
Boundaries can be so hard to enforce after an enmeshed childhood. If you learned that you had to keep other people happy, you might carry that people-pleasing role into adulthood.
For example, you might decide not to answer emails and complete tasks outside of work hours. Then your boss responds with “We’re all team players here! This is what it takes to get the promotion you’re working towards.” You might feel like maybe you’re just being difficult and should make an exception.
This is the kind of situation that we can look at in therapy. Do you actually need to fix their disappointment? What emotions do you have when someone is unhappy with your decision? How will you respond?
You can keep your boundary, even when someone challenges it.
Feel and regulate your emotions
It’s one thing to understand your emotions after the fact. But it can be hard to manage your reactions to certain situations at the moment.
You might know that something bothered you, but not really process your feelings until days later. This can happen if you heard that you were “too sensitive” growing up, or if your emotions were constantly dismissed.
Therapy gives you space to notice your feelings as you’re experiencing them. It’s easier to know what you need when you can name what you’re feeling.
Create stronger romantic relationships
Experiences you had with your family growing up can carry on in your romantic life. Sometimes, people who grew up in a dysfunctional environment set aside their own needs to avoid conflict. It might even be hard to bring up little things, like asking your partner to bring their dishes into the sink instead of leaving them in the living room. You might feel like you need to manage their emotions, so you just avoid bringing it up.
One of the things I work on with clients is how their trauma response and attachment style comes through in their romantic relationships. We can look at whether a request like “Can you put your dishes in the sink?” is actually about the dishes, or whether it brings up older fears of conflict, rejection, or someone else's anger.
A note on your relationship with your parent
Clients often hesitate to start therapy because they don’t want to make any absolute decisions about how they’ll interact with their parent. As a therapist, the decision to go no-contact, confront your parent, or continue contact is not mine to make for you. Ultimately, that’s for you to decide.
What I’m do is help you understand what you need, so you can make choices about your family that match what’s best for you.
Therapy for Enmeshment in Los Angeles and California
In our sessions, we’ll work with somatic modalities that will help you to break repetitive patterns and start to tune in to your core self.
Curious to learn more?
