Enmeshment by narcisstic parents

[Hazy111]

http://narcissismschild.com/2015/03/16/the-consequences-of-enmeshment/

Saw this and thought it could be helpful. Could definitely relate.

[Blueberry]

Thanks for this link, Hazy. I read it yesterday. It's the first time I've been able to say "Yes! My M is narcisstic."

[Hope66]

Hi Hazy & Blueberry,

I also really relate to this article.  I was definitely enmeshed with my M - and all the things in the article are relatable for me.

Thank you for sharing it.

Hope 

[Barclay]

Thank you for this article, Hazy.

I've suspected that I suffer with C-PTSD for some time - the reason I recently joined this forum - and reading this has given me a frame of reference to work with.

My enmeshed/neglectful relationship with my mother is described rather well, as is my subsequent marriage, from which I am, happily, now free - I have had five years alone to analyse the past forty five and am now able to see my predisposition toward pleasing others as taking precedence over my own independent wants and needs.

My concern, now, is avoiding similar pitfalls in the future..

[Spencer]

Thank you for sharing Can totally relate.

[integrity]

Oh, wow. This really explains a lot! I never thought to connect a fear of success to M. Thanks for posting. Very helpful.

[Blueberry]

I've just re-read parts of this article. The "It's my child. I can do what I please with him " struck me. My M: "They're my children. I can do what I want with them." EnF didn't say that, but he didn't contradict it either.

I've been realising recently in a more visceral way how damaging the enmeshment was. M didn't want to raise me to be successful in the society we lived in because she didn't want to live in that society. She dreamed of going back to her home country, not realising, as apparently immigrants tend not to, that parenting in her country of origin had changed too. Meanwhile I was growing up in a society and being positively denied tools to become successful in that society.

I don't remember the word "self-esteem" being used when I was growing up, I think it became popular around the time I went to university, and I remember then M and enF making a mockery of the word.

But before that, it was pretty obvious that I lacked confidence whereas B1 was full of it. I can't remember what M said exactly, but it was something along the lines of "we don't want you being all self-confident like the girls in this country" - this in a moment when she was being nice and friendly and matter-of-fact instead of yelling insults at me. But didn't realise (or care?) that I wouldn't be able to compete with other girls, and I don't just mean for boys and men. I mean with just learning to be in a group, be a leader or be a follower, but maybe not always the one nobody wanted. With learning to see the good in myself and express that. Pretty difficult at school in non-academic subjects like sport and drama where people were looking at body language. Pretty difficult when looking for student jobs - prospective employers knew something was wrong. My body language and later even my facial expression gave it away. And anyway I couldn't for the life of me answer questions about my strengths. Strengths? What strengths? I don't have any strengths.

M isn't very self-confident deep-down and she couldn't possibly have me being more self-confident than her. So she did her best to quell any confidence I might have had and ended up with me pretty incapable of becoming a functioning member of the society I grew up in. I live in a different country now. Although I have been back and sort of made peace with that country, when I think about living there again and especially about having to look for employment  and the memories are visceral.

My Bs were permitted to become more self-confident. I don't know why exactly. B1 was in certain ways a replacement partner for M, maybe that's why.

You'd think, and I know people have suggested it, that my FOO is anti-women / anti-girls. I accused them of this when I was a child/teen (because that's the only explanation I could think of for all this), but M said she never would have married a misogynist and B1 claimed he was "a feminist" and it was just me Blueberry who was the problem. M has a problem with  other women who are not like her, which makes quite a lot of women tbh.

Well that's enough for now.