Enna – meshment?
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Enna? = What (in Thamil)
Enmeshment = not knowing where you end and your family (or partner) begins—a blurring of boundaries that happens at the expense of your individuality. Enmeshment may feel good sometimes if you’re the ‘golden child’ or bad if you’re playing a role in the family-like ‘scapegoat’, ‘caregiver’, ‘the stubborn one’. It can feel smothering, painful and confusing when you want to start expressing your own identity.
How this might look in a Western nuclear family system:
In every family system, when a rupture occurs in the relationship between partners – in most cases a mother and father – AND the partners no longer problem-solve together; they will often ‘triangulate’ or be drawn in a third party to stabilize their relationship. Often the lonely parent will ‘triangulate’ a child, either the firstborn or the most sensitive child. The other parent might find comfort in other addictions like work, friends, ‘fishing’, substances or an affair. This leads to the ‘parentification’ of a child. While the family might look stable or functional from the outside, the child in this situation is used to meet the parent’s needs. Some symptoms of parentification include (Psychology Today, Whitney Goodman):
- Over identifying with adults over children
- Being praised for being responsible from a very young age
- Being pulled into adult arguments and conversations
- Feeling that self-reliance is better than trusting others
- No or few memories of “being a kid”
- Excessive caretaking of others
- Feeling like you need to be the peacemaker
How this might look in a multi-generational household:
There are many reasons for rupture in nuclear families. In Thamil families and other immigrant and refugee families, some of the reasons might be: gender roles, struggles with acculturation after moving to a new country, over-identification with the family of origin/low-differentiation of parents, caste and power-play between parents, poverty, financial struggles, trauma from war, substance abuse and many more. In a larger family, there are more people to ‘pull in’ to the triangle. Parents/caregivers may pull in their parents, siblings, children and friends into partner relationship issues rather than resolving them within the partnership. Adults may have issues with one sibling and pull in another or their partner to take sides. As an immigrant child, you may have felt torn between family members, obliged to have loyalty to certain family members, unable to speak up for truth and pulled into problems that were not your own. With more people, a culture of loyalty first and pride, it’s natural that family enmeshment can look messier in South Asian and other multi-generational households.
As a child in this environment, you may learn that it’s not safe to speak up, love is conditional on loyalty or that your role is to take sides. The truth is that it’s not and has never been your responsibility to shoulder the emotions of the adults (parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents) in your life. The adult’s responsibility is to model self-responsibility, healthy problem solving, and conflict resolution in adult relationships. There are many reasons why our parents may not have had the tools to do this appropriately and traditions passed down that uphold unhealthy relational dynamics. Your pain about ‘parentification and enmeshment’ and your parents’ reasons for avoiding conflict and passing down trauma can be held true at the same time. The assignment now is to detangle from your role in the family and learn to love yourself unconditionally to speak your truth, and not pass it down any further.
Why it matters:
When you’re made to ‘grow up early’ and take on adult responsibilities as a child; part of your childhood and self-development are stolen from you. You may focus more on the needs of others than your own, you may struggle to identify your own needs and wants, and you may rely heavily on the validation of others to feel worthy and lovable. Overly close relationships with adults when you’re a child can also result in covert-incest. I know this sounds like a lot, but it’s a really important concept because it helps explain sexuality and sexual expression difficulties. When we’re made to grow up in specific ways like caregiving for our siblings, mediating family conflict and helping with adult finances but are still treated like a child in other ways, it can have serious consequences on our self-perception and sexuality.
A child is not ready for an adult emotional and physical relationship. Pulling a child into a parent’s emotional needs can feel ‘icky’ and inappropriate for the child because an adult partner should meet these. Ex. Always grocery shopping with a parent, going to the movies with a parent, feeling like your ‘dating’ your parent. These things can also be done healthily. The frequency of your support and the dynamic between your parents/caregiver’s relationship will give you a clue about whether this was healthy or not in your case.
If a child is overly emotionally attached to a parent (covert incest), they may have trouble fully connecting in appropriate romantic relationships for their age. Their love and emotional energy are flowing to the parent, so they may become unavailable to their partners. They may act out sexually as this is the only part of their ‘adult identity’ that is unacceptable to the parent. They may also shut down sexually as a result.
When you’re made to feel like an adult at a young age, you may attract unwanted sexual attention from adults that feel inappropriate. As you might look, feel or act ‘mature for your age,’ it’s not uncommon for adults to fetishize or sexualize you. I’ve talked to many a south Asian girl who feels this in the form of a creepy uncle’s gaze, touch or worse.
Overt and covert emotional incest can result in a person being emotionally unavailable for meaningful adult relationships with partners and friends because they feel obligated to choosing their parents or putting their parents at the top of their list.
In a healthy parent-child relationship, as a child grows up, the parent will take on the responsibility (take the L) of feeling the loss and grieving for the change in the parent-child roles. In unhealthy relationships, parents may continue to cling onto or burden their children with the role of mitigating their empty nest grief.
The good news is that there is literature on this, resources for healing and ways to set boundaries and reconnect with yourself. Whitney Goodman (LMFT) suggests starting with becoming aware of relational dynamics, get to know what your inner-child needs, take responsibility by recognizing ways you may have been hurt and choosing to heal those wounds, become a friend to your ‘inner-child’, change your ‘inner-parent’s’ voice to one with more compassion, create structure where possible in your life, commit to things you love to do and follow through, create time for play and freedom that you may have missed out on and find ways to connect with people around you who are interested in you and allow you to be yourself. Finally, set boundaries in relationships that are draining you.
If this has been a heavy read, take good care of yourself. Journal, learn or spend some time breathing to ground into your body.
Here are some resources that might help if you’re on this healing journey:
Signs you were parentified as a child – Psychology Today
