Enmeshed realtionships are not where it's at

Enmeshed parental relationships are not a good idea. Don't pressure your kids with your emotional turmoil

Doc David

Transcript

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Have you ever heard of enmeshment? Well, let's talk about it.

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You are listening to Hedge Drinking. Your answers to life, relationships, and daily living.

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Well, hello friends. Yes, I'm still alive. So I had a I had some inspiration today. So I thought, eh, I'll get on and record a podcast. I also had several people um cancel sessions today. So it freed up some time for me to do it as well. Um what I've been up to, let's see. I've been to Europe since we talked last. I dropped off a child in Germany for college, so I went over to Europe. Um, I have found out that in about a month, well, I didn't find out, just find out, but in about a month, I'm gonna hopefully fingers crossed, be a grandfather. There's a baby coming. And then I just found out a month ago that my son's having a baby. So grandbabies are on the way, which is kind of crazy to think about because I don't feel like um internally, I don't feel like a grandfather. Physically, maybe I feel older. Um, mentally, I definitely don't feel older. Anyways, it's a weird, weird place to be. Um, other than that, still seeing families, still working with couples and individuals. Um I have a TikTok. I don't think I've talked about that before. I have a TikTok under Doc David. So if you have TikTok, come over there and follow me. And I do assembl, I kind of do short form videos related to relationships or comments on other um TikToks I see. Um and it's it's a much better, I find it it's a much better platform than Instagram is. Instagram, I tend to just do memes, but if you want to interact on TikTok, love to see over there. Doc David is where I'm at. So today I want to talk about a type of relationship in families that is a it's ultimately a dysfunctional type of relationship, it's a dynamic that happens, and the dynamic that usually happens is between uh parents and kids. Um and it's this dynamic that's um in my field is called enmeshment. So, what is a meshment? Umeshment describes the type of relationship between a parent, and often it's um often you see it between a mother and a daughter. Um, how it's described by people that are in an enmeshed relationship is and it is it's an immediate red flag for me when I hear a mother say, My daughter is my best friend. And now let me just be clear. That's I think that adult um parents and adult children can be close friends. I think that um there they can be best friends because they're two adults. Um where it becomes problematic is when it's a teenager and their parent and they're both saying, Oh, it's my best friend, because you should not be best friends with your kid, your minor child. Um, and again, I don't think that's an unpopular opinion. Um, I'd be surprised if if people push back on that, because the problem is when you're a best friend with your kid, um, you have difficulty holding them accountable for things, you have difficulty giving them consequences. It becomes confusing to your kid because if best friends don't give consequences to their best friend, um best friends share typically best friends share uh information, right? Intimate type of information. Kids and parents should not be doing that. Parents should not be doing that with kids. Now, kids should be doing that with parents because they need to have parents that can trust them with challenging things going on in their lives, but parents should not be sharing intimate details of their life with their children, it's just not appropriate, it puts pressure on kids, and so um a meshment verbally looks like, oh, this kid is my best friend, and the kid then saying, Oh, my mom or my dad is my best friend. Um, what it looks like practically is there's um a blurring of the lines between uh a per parent and a child. There's um there's lack of boundaries, there's lack of um independence, there is a kind of sense of we have to or I have to be around this person 24-7, and obviously you can't be 24-7. I mean, I suppose you can be if you're like a kidnapper or a stalker, but it's just this idea. It's think of a helicopter parent. Often helicopter parents are um parents that kind of overdo it with their kids. And this would be the same kind of concept, except it's way more involved than a helicopter parent. Um, a story that I saw on on TikTok, a woman was talking about a meshment, and basically she said, I was obsessed with my parents. Um I had to do whatever my parents were doing. If I was going to do something, I had to invite my parents. If my parents didn't get invited, or if I didn't get invited, I would have hurt feelings and be upset about it. And the idea of the TikTok that I saw was that this woman recognized that was an unhealthy place to be. And so once she went to therapy and started kind of started um creating boundaries for herself with her parents, her parents got very upset. Um, they put guilt trips on her, they they started kind of operating in a way that was hurtful to the kid, and basically then the kid went no contact with the parents because they were not able to manage their emotions well. Um, and so this idea of a mesh starts, it doesn't just start when your kid becomes an adult, a meshment starts when kids are very young, and so a lot of times you can see it like uh a mom or a daughter will dress the same. Um, the mom needs to be involved in all kinds of aspects of the child's life. Um, the parents want to have the friends over all the time, the the parents become friends with the kids' friends. Um it's it's a very unhealthy type of relationship to be in. And typically I see when I work with people, I see those relationships. They tend to be the mom and the daughter. Now, when it's a mom and a son, um, that can still happen, but I think what the outcome of a mom and son enmeshed relationship is that a son is created, and we call that son usually like a mama's boy, um, because the son can't do anything or won't do anything without their mother's approval. Where that becomes problematic, I mean it's problematic in and of itself, but where it becomes really problematic is when that um young man wants to date, um then what you find is he then is forced to choose between this woman that he maybe is going to marry and his mother. And the power there is strong because I've seen relationships where the the boy who's a man and who is married inevitably will choose the mom to the detriment of his marriage. And um it's a it's a hard thing to see and it's a hard thing to deal with because what's happening is you have a weak boyslash man um who's not able to cut off or make boundaries away from his mother. So if you're in a dating relationship currently and you're dating somebody who you suspect is a mama's boy, my encouragement to you is one of two things either get in therapy and directly address it, or break up with that person because you're going to have a miserable relationship with your mother-in-law if you think that you're marrying a mama's boy. Now, what you may what you may be telling yourself is like, oh, that won't happen to me. That's that's like such a classic um statement that people make about themselves when they hear someone like me talking about a thing that applies to them potentially, they think they are the exception to the rule. And typically they're not. And so, my encouragement again to you is if you're a parent that's in an enmeshed relationship, that's hard that is going to be hard for you to identify and to address because you get something out of that enmeshed relationship. People get things out of these kind of dysfunctional relationships, and what you get out of an enmeshed parental uh child relationship is usually related to how you were raised. So let's say, for example, you grew up in a home where um you weren't treated well and people you didn't feel close to your parents or you were neglected or something like that. And so a lot of times then what will happen is we tell ourselves, when I have kids, I'm going to fill in the blank. I'm gonna make sure that my kids know I love them, I'm gonna make sure my kids feel connected to me. Uh it could be any number of things. But in this thing specifically, it could be I wasn't connected with and shown emotional intimacy when I was growing up. So when my kid, when I have my kids, I'm gonna make sure that I am emotionally intimate with them and uh be there for their every need. The problem is that people tend to overdo it. And kids don't know any better, right? And so they grow up in this home where there's this expectation of, oh, I need to be connected to my parent. Because if I'm not connected to my parent, then there's negative repercussions. There's guilt. Why won't you connect with me for all the things I've done for you? I can't believe, right? So there's this guilt that gets placed on kids. And what you're doing when you do stuff like that is you're creating trauma for that kid that they're gonna have to like grow up at, you know, they leave your home, they're gonna go to therapy, have conversations with the therapist, and recognize, oh, I was in this, my parents relied on me for emotional support, and that was not healthy. So if you are a parent that is doing that, if you are a parent that is relying on the emotional support of your child, um, and if you don't get that emotional support, you're hurt, you're sad, you want things to change, and um you start to guilt them into it, you're doing the wrong thing as a parent. And again, I don't think that's an unpopular opinion. I think it just makes sense that you should not be burdening your kids with your emotional baggage. And typically that's what an enmeshed relationship does. It burdens your children with your stuff as the parent. But it's all under the guise of we're besties, we're close, I can tell my kid anything, my kid can tell me anything. Um, and you know, on the surface it's great because you want to have confidence, but it should not be your kid, it should be your partner, it should be your therapist. I I heard this phrase um just today, someone was talking about going to their hairdresser and they called them their thairdresser. And I thought, oh, that's that is true because I have some clients that are hairstylists, and they tell me all the time people open up and say some of the most secretive things when they're getting their hair cut. And I I don't know why that happens in that kind of setting, but apparently it happens a lot. I don't cut hair, I just help people here in my office, and and so it is an interesting thing. So whether you're talking to your therapist, your your fair dresser, whoever it is, it should not be your kid. You should not be having intimate, um, emotionally intimate relationship conversations with your kid about things that you're struggling with as a parent because it puts this pressure on your kid that they're supposed to solve it for you, or because they love you, right? Um, but their job is not to solve it for you. And it's it's interesting, and and we'll probably talk about this in another podcast in eight months. Not really. I'm gonna try to do this more um consistently, as I always say, but another topic of conversation, and it's really big on TikTok, is this idea of estrangement that happens or low contact that happens with parents. And it is very fascinating to me that there's a lot of estranged parents who don't who are just so confused on why their kids are estranged. And if I can give you anything, if you take anything away from this episode, it would be that enmeshment could be one of the things that is going to lead to estrangement for you someday from your kid. And so if you don't have good, um, very clear boundaries about what you talk about with your child, you need to get those now. Because if you don't get those, your kid is going to someday recognize that you put an unneeded burden on them because you were sharing all of your emotional turmoil with them, and that is not your child's job. All right. Hopefully, I was clear about that. Hopefully, that's not some kind of um thing that's radically unpopular. Um, it to me, I think it's kind of common knowledge that you should not be enmeshed with your child. And I would love for you to have comments or questions if you have them, and email me headshrinkinc at gmail.com or come over on TikTok and comment there or ask me questions there. Um hope you have a good weekend. Enjoy Halloween as it's coming up, and have a great day.