Lesson 7 Review Answers

Submodule 7

Question 1) What does it mean to be enmeshed with your parent?

When you are in an Enmeshment situation, you haven’t been able to detach yourself from your parent. You could say that the umbilical cord wasn’t cut successfully. This emotional intertwinement can be so strong that you may even depend on that moment of getting your parent’s (or other caregiver’s) approval to experience feeling alive.

So, it’s not surprising that, on a daily basis, you’re doing your very best to put that smile on your caregiver’s face and get that approval.

Enmeshment happens if you haven’t been given the building blocks to develop a Healthy SoS, but instead, have been forced to develop strategies to get that approval, that replaces true acknowledgement of you as your own person.

All these individual strategies become a part of what the SoS Method calls your Early Childhood Survival Strategy, that in its totality is aimed at gaining that approval. The approval makes you “Feel-good-about-self.” And this state of “Feeling-good-about-self” functions as a substitute for your Sense of Self.

Later, this entire structure becomes the blueprint for how you function as a person. It then is stored in your subconscious mind where it becomes your autopilot. It’ll make you select people and situations that allow you to mimic and act out this initial blue print.

Question 2) Give a few practical examples of how Enmeshment can show up.

In an Enmeshment, you have internalized your parents’ preferences and criteria and you have a need to identify yourself with them because that makes you feel safe. So you have a tendency to copy him or her in specific things, for example:

• By eating specific foods your parent loves,
• By buying specific gadgets or little trinkets your parent might appreciate for yourself.

Note that it has never occurred to you to develop your own taste and preferences.

So, you tend to do things your parent likes: even when choosing a career or a partner. By doing so, you’re creating a virtual experience of making your parent “Feel-good” and with that you’re providing yourself with that much-needed sense of safety.

Again, you have never asked yourself what you really like or want. Unfortunately, you aren’t aware of this unhealthy situation because it has always been that way. So, you think, that this is how it is supposed to be.

Question 3) What is the main cause of Enmeshment?

Let’s look at this problem from the child’s perspective. Later, you might want to try seeing this from the parental angle, to deepen your understanding of both sides of this type of relationship.

The main cause of Enmeshment is based on the fact that your parent is unable to step outside of his or her own world and is mainly focused on him or herself during your childhood. That means that your parent is unable to really “see” you as your own person.

It may very well be that your parent is in need of securing their own “Feel-good-about-self” state. This forces them to control and manipulate you, to ensure you won’t hinder their process.

This is a setting where there is no room for a true relationship with mutual understanding and respect. What you are being taught is to focus on getting approval, instead of on building your own Sense of your Self.

So, you never grow your own “mental spine”; instead, you use your talents to establish what-you-have-to-do and how-you-have-to-be in order to get approval.

The videos in Unit 7 graphically portray this process. We advise you to study them so that you get a better understanding of the process that leads to Enmeshment.

Question 4) How does the Internalization of the Parental Voice takes place?

The Internalized Parental Voice (IPV) emerges all by itself, through the repeated verbal and nonverbal messages you, as a child, receive from your parents. In your childish, emotional world, these messages turn into indisputable truths about who-you-are.

Imagine, for example, that your mother always criticized you, saying things like: ‘Oh please! You’re always ill; there’s always something wrong with you; you are a pain in the neck!’ Later in life, this so called “truth” may instantly come to mind when you are confronted with, or even just remember your mother’s facial expression that used to be connected with this kind of reproach.

The IPV is related to the Sense of Self term, Mirroring.

Question 5) How does an IPV normally manifest?

Your IPV is expressed by:

• You copying your parent’s opinions, tastes and preferences
• Using their values to judge yourself (and others!)

It can also show up as a physical symptom, caused by the fear of what might happen if you were to counteract the conditions for getting your parent or other caregiver’s approval or be unable to live up to them (Note: for Fear of Annihilation).

Some physical symptoms are: Extreme tension in neck and shoulders, back pain, headaches, migraines, maybe tinnitus, and certain forms of sleeplessness can all be symptomatic indications of the presence in you of an Internalized Parental Voice.