What are we saying ......

Given that this is a psychotherapy forum and we discuss so much going on with our therapists, I think it's perfectly reasonable that a reader would believe this question referred to therapy/therapist.

Maybe the OP could have elaborated more what was the intention of question.

Getting back to topic, I find enmeshment a very interesting concept but I wonder if anyone actually WANTS it or SEEKS it consciously. It would seem to be a bit of 'enslavement' in the sense that the person HAS lost his individuality. idk - just rambling thoughts here.

Oh it is very attractive to some, and quite consciously so. It could be that the person has never had an identity to 'be' with.

My mother was like this too and I found it terrifying and enraging as well. I sense people like this a mile away, and run. Though, truthfully, I am likely *too* wary and misjudge people sometimes.

I have a co-worker like this. It's not like she's a terrible person or anything, but my reaction to her, I knew on some level, was way over the top. She literally terrified me in some ways. Long story. But one day, I just realized, cliché I know, the woman reminded me of my mother. I haven't encountered many people like this in my life, probably because I try and stay away, but in situations like work, where you don't have a choice in who you work with, it can happen, unfortunately.

To me it is about boundaries, to an extent. I don't know how to explain it, really, except that I've found that people who enmesh are not good at navigating them. I do know that my mother's boundaries were horrendous. Maybe someone else can explain that better than me.

Hence my harping on the 'adult self' stuff, mourning the child. Children enmesh, I think, when they're very young, they don't yet have a strong sense of self. Or at least that's one of many takes on it.

This all feels like what I call "emotional vampirism." I, too, run as fast as my little feet will take me in the other direction. What feels icky to me about this--and I don't think either of my parents were like this--is that such behavior seems weirdly narcissistic to me, perhaps in the insistance of their needs (and so boundary violations). It's all about the need, even as they profess their admiration, etc, for you. I've experienced the feeling of being invisible in the face of this behavior. It's very objectifying, so if it came from a parent, it could feel very demeaning. Sometimes it has shown itself as passive aggressiveness, too, if I choose to disengage, or not engage at all. I suspect it is the need acted out to replace the underlying emptiness and lack of self.

Well, I think that boundaries define the self (versus others), so I would agree it has something to do with boundaries.

Yes, I agree that it is about survival, and about denial of self, something we internalized.

Yes. Not everyone who struggles with 'this,' (I'll say 'enmeshment' as a shorthand, but could call it other things) does in the ways you describe, but it was my experience with my mother. You have so much empathy, feralkitty, you describe this so well yet have not experienced it, or not in the specific/parent way you're referring to, and I so admire that. Of all of the important descriptors you use, icky is the worst... Thanks so much for this.

I guess I can only speak to my own therapy--
My T has good boundaries. But that doesn't stop me from feeling like "I'd Die without him". Through my work on my own childhood neglect issues, we both came to the realization that I might have been actually in physical danger at one point, due to a caretaker's negligence. I know that I had a severe medical condition caused by neglect. Maybe the feeling of impending death has a basis in reality. Emeshment feels safer, with the right caretaker.