# Enmeshment: I grew up with an easily offended mom



## seafoamneon (Jul 16, 2014)

Basically, all of my negative feelings are associated with the "background" feeling that Im hurting other people. It's torture, and my imagination makes things worse.

My mom is always quick to say that Im doing something wrong, or disgusting, or offensive. Or that the music I listen to is offensive. It's hard to explain, I can only talk about this with my sister, who understands just as much as I do. Because the way she acts is EXTREME.

I think this has caused me to be invalidated of feelings that Im a good person. Im like a harmless chihuahua running around carrying the guilt of someone who murdered their best friend.

Am I an offensive person? NO FREAKING WAY! I'd never try to purposely hurt someone's feelings. It sucks that I've felt that way for so long... but I think I have some closure now.

(I posted this in how I feel, because I tend to delete my blog posts lol)


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## missjess (Jun 1, 2012)

My mother is the same...I think enmeshment is the absolute worst even worse then codependance...makes u feel like u r suffocated in a spiritual and emotional prison

I plan on "divorcing my family" for good I really don't like being around any if my family members, not my mum, not my sister or brother and especially not my dad.

Do u walk around the house always protecting urself? I dissociate like crazy around my mum and I'm just fkn disgusted at myself and at her


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## retep (Mar 19, 2013)

Man, I can relate to all of that!

The stuff about music- one of the funniest things was when I was in 5th grade I was listening to the song by the Temptations called Papa Was A Rolling Stone. The lyrics are about a dad who basically didn't care about his kids and left his wife to raise the children, and was just an overall loser. The lyrics didn't really relate to my dad at all, but my mom heard me listening to it and asked me not to play it in from of him.

Speaking of enmeshment, often times when I would tell my mom about something that was bothering me about another person, she would somehow imagine herself as that other person, and defend them even if she didn't even know them. She had nothing in common with them (usually the other person was an asshole and my mom was nice), but somehow I was victimizing her (and therefore the other person) because she would put herself so much in the other persons shoes without considering that maybe that other person just just a jerk.

It was a large part of why I DP'd and took me a long time to start seeing others from a different perspective- but for the longest time I felt like I needed to be completely aware and considerate of other peoples feelings and disregard my own. It is a helpless feeling to feel like you are somehow responsible for everyone's happiness. It also can make one an easy target for people who do have a victimizer mentality because it's so easy to take advantage of. When that would happen with me, I would feel like my hands were tied and I couldn't defend myself because I didn't want to hurt them- and I would just lock all that anger within myself and not know what to do with it.

I still do it to some degree, but becoming aware of it, and seeing how I can change it has helped me not feel nearly as responsible.

Thanks for posting that, I'm glad to know there are others who deal with that issue.


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