**⏺️ With:** [[Narcissistic Family]] **\#️⃣ Tags:** #Trauma #Relational > **🌱 Planted:** Fri 31 January 2025 --- ***Family enmeshment sacrifices individuality and autonomy for closeness.*** ![[Family Enmeshment.png]] When we grow up in family environments where our thoughts, emotions and desires are shaped by the needs and expectation of others (like our parents), we learn that we aren't separate and unique individuals, rather our identity and essence is blended, merged and mixed in with those around us (psychologically speaking). This kind of dynamic is known as "enmeshment" or "family enmeshment", a concept introduced by family systems therapist Salvador Minuchin to describe family systems where personal boundaries are "diffuse", i.e. weak or nonexistent. Relationships in enmeshed family systems are marked by psychological and emotional over-involvement where the needs, identities and ways of being of the familial system trump any autonomy or individuality. Instead of feeling free to develop an identity of their own, children of these families become psychologically merged ("enmeshed") with those around them. Without any encouragement or support to understand themselves, or their own needs, wants and desires, children from these type of families typically take on the expectations, anxieties and unspoken rules on how they should be, and how they should exist. Although enmeshment often stems from a deep desire for closeness or fear of separation, this prioritisation of the needs and expectations of the family over individual autonomy and development is often framed as love, yet it brings with it a huge cost... the abandonment of our self-identity and true essence.