From Survival to Sovereignty: Healing Enmeshment
To deal with certain people in our childhood, we developed ways to cope that taught us to ignore our nervous system. Our intuition expressed pain or longing or needs, but our minds were forced to ignore that. It was our only option to survive our circumstance; however, what we really learned was how to abandon our true selves. Until we heal from these early coping mechanisms, we can't fully listen to ourselves.
Before we are aware of how those patterns affected us, we often find ourselves in codependent relationships and other unhealthy relationship dynamics. This can happen with groups, the workplace, marriages, and friendships. It can be an enmeshment, and even if it feels unhealthy, we stay in it because it feels familiar. It's how we've operated our entire lives.
One person must actively choose to change the dynamic and it’s often the person who wants to heal first. Weaning yourself off that dynamic can be a process–it’s not a clean break. Even if we leave a relationship with no contact afterwards, it's still a slow weaning process–learnings continue to unveil themselves to us over time as we have the space to see things clearly and start listening to ourselves more fully.
We begin to examine what put us in those dynamics initially; old emotions and patterns pop up and pull us in to feel them again, grapple with them in this newfound space. This time, however, we can look at those patterns, those unconscious pulls, from a state of sovereignty, curiosity, more detachment, and allow for the continual release of those patterns.
Once we choose healing as our main path, we come back online. We no longer betray ourselves by overwriting what our nervous system is clearly telling us–our feelings. Instead, we honor them.
As Alain de Botton states in this short soundbite, we can thank the patterns and defense mechanisms that served us so well in childhood during rocky experiences—and then release them consciously as we step into the adult version of self that we choose. From the present, we create new rules—sovereign rules—helpful to us now.
When we obey ourselves, our values, we become sovereign; we don’t have the same need for dependence. This is not to be confused with healthy inter-dependence that we all need as social beings, but enmeshment is a different beast; it's taking on someone else’s energy as our own. And that's on us; it's not the other person's fault.
Instead of pouring our energy into better understanding ourselves, we pour into others, wanting to help them, save them, avoid them (whatever our defense mechanism is) to ultimately avoid facing ourselves, and in that process we become enmeshed in another's energy.
Often it takes intention, space and time for emotional clearing to allow us to separate the wheat from the chaff–our energy from another’s, separating our old, rooted patterns from new awareness. We can give ourselves time and space to hear what our hearts and bodies are telling us.
Soul-Prompt: With whom do I feel enmeshed? How does it feel? Can I clearly decipher what their energy from mine? What emotional patterns placed me in this dynamic?
