046 | Running Away From Enmeshment Is Still Enmeshment

Colt (00:00)
Hello, my name is Colt Gordon and today, talking about how running away from a measurement is still a measurement. And in this podcast, I’m going to continue to focus on self-differentiation, which is essentially a fancy word for becoming a more well-defined, healthy, valued-based person, right? Thoughtful, someone that is healthy.

functional. And functional is someone that has problems like we all do. We’re all human, but actually resolves their problems.

This concept is really important when you’re working on self-division because a lot of times when we’re working on ourselves, we may get this sense or notion that we don’t need anybody, we need to be healthy on our own, we don’t have to go home for Christmas. And fair enough, sometimes it’s really important that you don’t go home for Christmas or that you don’t go to all the holidays, especially if boundaries aren’t being honored, etc., etc. But just the idea of

Throwing away an opportunity or pushing family away within itself can actually ironically be the thing that keeps you stuck in your life. So I’m going to talk about that today. Quick refresher on Bowen family systems theory. Bowen family systems, family systems theory is the concept of need to think in systems. Don’t just look at yourself as an individual stovepipe amongst other individual stovepipes, right? We’re more so in a web.

right, our family system, the people we come from, the culture we come from, the dynamics we come from. If we don’t become aware of that, we could be repeating patterns eight generations ago. So family systems, there is a deep, deep well that helps you when you use that framework to start looking and thinking at yourself and systems in order to, if you choose to do so, have a more workable…

have a more free, have a more healthy existence. understanding the paradox, how cutoff is still enmeshment. So reactive nature of cutoff is my first point. The reactive nature of cutoff. A lot of times you’re gonna hear me talk about the difference between reacting and responding. When you’re reacting all over the world, you’re not really in control. You’re in disempowered, you’re not empowered. And…

whatever people, places, and things are doing, whether it be politics, coworkers, that’s going to be in charge of your emotional world. So when you hear me talk about reactive, I’m talking about in the pejorative sense. It’s something you can work on. You don’t need to be someone that’s reacting. You can be someone that’s responding. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have opinions. No, you can sell opinion doesn’t mean be a doormat. No, you need to have boundaries. But you can work on not being reactive and being more responsible, responsive.

the world you’re in. So cut off as a reaction to unresolved emotional ties. So there’s enmeshment, is essentially being so lacking of an individual self that you’re just going to do whatever people, places, and things want you to do to be OK. You’re going to over function. You’re going to be whatever the world needs you to be to be OK, to be justified, to be a good person. You’re going to.

Take the temperature of the room to figure out who you need to be. For obvious reasons, that’s not a fulfilling, meaningful way to live in the world. But if you don’t believe you’re enough, it makes sense why someone might live that way. I need to jump and run and be everything for everyone else, so I’m okay. Obviously not a fulfilling way to live, but it makes sense why someone might adopt that in order to survive a very narcissistic or abusive environment. So cut off.

is a reaction. Cut off is the opposite behaviors, if you will, of enmeshment. I’m just going to push everyone away because it’s so overwhelming to be enmeshed. I’m going cut everyone out of my life. I’m going to cut my family out of my life so that I can finally be free. And this really lacks self-differentiation. This lacks a sense of self because I can only regulate myself by disconnecting. Right? So

I can only be okay if I’m not around those people anymore. And so really, what does that mean? That means wherever you go, there they are. They’re still in you. And why is that a problem? Because let’s start dating now from a place of unresolved enmeshment, right? And you’re going to continue to push people away if you smell anything like closeness. Because then you never learned how to actually have boundaries.

Right? So that’s a very important concept. The second part of understanding the paradox is hitting emotional entanglement. Emotional cutoff perpetuates an underlying emotional dependency, like I was saying, right? So you actually provide fuel to that emotional dependency. You’re emotionally dependent on the behaviors of other people around you. You’re dependent on what they do or say versus becoming more individualized and becoming

more confident not letting people make you feel a certain way. And that’s a really important practice in self-differentiating work. Whether you believe it or not, think how useful it would be if you were practicing, nobody can make me feel anything. Again, whether you believe that or not, or it’s something that you think aligns with reality, what if you practice that? That would really help you become emotionally

independent Not cutting off right you hear the difference. There’s emotional independence emotional healthiness versus emotional cutoff the role of avoidance in maintaining and measurement dynamics so Avoidance maintains Entanglement like I said you when you cut people off you avoid people You bring them with you wherever you go

you’re running around being triggered by people that may act like your parents that you’re running away from, your boyfriend that you just pushed away and didn’t work on those boundaries. You’re constantly reacting and finding archetypes to react to that represent that unfinished work that you still need to do. So three is examples of cutoff as a mesh of family members who avoid visits, but it’s still preoccupied with guilt or anger.

you’re constantly feeling resentful of your mom and dad or family members, right? You’re constantly feeling guilt or anger. And by the way, resentment just means to re-feel. So if you have a lot of unresolved issues with family members, even if they’re justified, if you’re living in resentment, you’re constantly re-feeling those dynamics. And when you avoid visits, when you avoid…

finally having those boundaries or getting to the other side of them, you actually reinforce that resentment. It’s unresolved, unfinished business. Okay, and also silent treatment, romantic or family relationships as an unresolved tie. So that’s another example is distancing, right? Emotionally, you may actually be there, but you’re not actually available. And again, that keeps you stuck. You’re going to…

echo that in all your relationships. Okay, so the next big point here is the path to true self-differentiation. The first part of this is defining self-differentiation. So this is the idea of balancing, knowing if you’re there or not, right? And no one can perfectly self-differentiate, right? This is a dance. It’s not a black and white issue. It’s a dance between codependence and counterdependence. Counterdependence being

I don’t need anybody and co-dependence mean I don’t know who I am unless I’m just melting into other people. So self-difficulties is this piece where I know where others end and I begin and I’m in that dance. I’m practicing that and I’m not being religious or rigid about it, legalistic about it. I’m learning to be okay in this middle place, right? For those who are anxiously attached folks, you’re learning to just hold and not chase.

For people that are anxiously avoidant, they’re learning to hold and not run away. Another way of saying that, people that are meshed, anxiously attached, right? And people that are used to cutting off are anxiously avoidant and learning to hold, like in the movie Braveheart, hold. Okay, so the second point here is challenges and moving beyond cutoff. Is the fear of confrontation or vulnerability?

So if I stop cutting off, if I stop running away, then I might start to feel things. Yes, you might. And learning to build resilience around that, learning to build a, I’m not going to die, I can handle it, which is a great mantra, I can handle it, would be very useful. Be very useful to get to this place of.

not being intimidated by vulnerability. And it’d be very useful to allow yourself to practice voice, your voice, right? Becoming a well-defined self like, you know what? That doesn’t work for me.

They’re gonna be upset if I say that cold. Yeah, they might and You didn’t make them feel that way. They might have trained you that you made them feel that way, but that’s not true and learning to Let that guilt die because it’s not real guilt It’s guilt coming from system from your family system and allowing that to just fall off you that’s a practice Does it happen overnight? Okay so and the discomfort of staying connected while asserting boundaries

Someone that’s used to cut off or anxiously avoidant, right? When they set a boundary a lot of times in their mind They might have been trained to say a boundary means I don’t love you But what if a practice could become this boundary is? Because I’m learning to Practice self and I’m learning to love myself and I’m going to be honest and that’s loving to you as well it’s not loving to be dishonest it I can absolutely love and

hold boundary, right? There’s a lot of ways to love and be kind that doesn’t involve lying. Lying, but if I tell the truth, wouldn’t that hurt them? If you telling the truth and being honest hurts someone, that’s a relationship you can actually work on. Like, you know what? No, you can work on that boundary of…

practicing love in other ways that doesn’t mean lying and no you telling the truth and Someone trying to make you responsible for you how they feel because you’re telling the truth is not on you It really is not your problem and you can work to just sit on your hands and let them deal with that make them deal with you

Okay, step towards self differentiation. I’m really thinking of an example. Recently I heard of someone articulating how it was such an epiphany for them to realize that they could love someone without lying. They really thought lying was the only way they could connect because it’s my job to make everyone else feel good.

Man, I can’t remember what that is. But anyway, if I think about it for the next podcast episode, I will share that more in depth. again, steps towards true self-differentiation, cultivating self-awareness, right? What are my values? What are my guiding principles? Because if you’re living from a very messed or cutoff space, you’re just looking through at the world through the lens of what am I feeling? And you’re going to feel a lot of shame and guilt if you self-differentiate. But if you focus on your values, I’m a person of courage.

Integrity you actually have those values articulated in English. There’s like a bullet point list of maybe three to six It’s really gonna help you cultivate self-awareness and the principles that you’re gonna live by Because if you’re living by your feelings, you’re gonna be waiting a long time to feel the right way to live the right way Okay, and what are you running from? I talked about earlier running from your emotions. It’s it’s too emotionally taxing to be vulnerable What if you could regulate those emotions?

and move forward in such a way that’s effective. So we’re talking about effective living, we’re talking about interpersonal effectiveness, practicing emotional regulations, which I just mentioned, but staying calm in the face of relational tension. Calmness is everything, as my mentor Jerry Wise would say. Calmness is everything. And there’s gonna be a fake it till you make it principle there, which I think it’s important in the very beginning, but eventually, when you work on actually

becoming a more well-defined calm self, you become calm in tense situations. You don’t have to fake it and just do it. Right? There is a part of this that is just do it. You need to behave differently. But there’s also a part of I’ve done so much emotional work that I just am calm. I’m just in self-dimfurgate. I’ve become a person that doesn’t freak out now. I’ve become a person that stays connected, not just practicing connection.

But if become the person that stays connected, that work can be done, especially if find a coach, a book, resources that help you do that indirect work, not just the direct work. In building emotional endurance, sitting with discomfort without reacting impulsively, right? And for me, prayer and meditation has been vital to that process. I’m okay. It’s going to be okay. Right? Other people’s response to me doesn’t define me.

not responsible for other people’s feelings. I’m responsible for my own feelings. And by the way, my own feelings matter, but they’re not in charge. Okay, next part here, the fourth point is just more of the practical applications. Questions for reflection. A lot of clients ask me, what kind of questions journaling can I do here? What unresolved emotions am I avoiding by cutting off? Right? For me, a lot of that is abandonment.

I don’t want to be abandoned again. So I’d rather push people away when I feel like there’s going to be some tension and working on that. And I have, and I continue to. How might staying engaged with boundaries help me grow emotionally? So if I stick with this is just who Colt is, this just where I’m at. And by the way, I might be wrong. can, I can correct that later, but if I can just sit with that and engage in my boundaries, it’s going to help me grow in a way where I’m not.

allowing other people’s reactions be my world. Those are just other people’s reactions. It’s not about me. Those are their reactions. It’s not about me. And frankly, when you first start doing this self-differentiation work, it sounds like a foreign language. No, no, no, no, no. I made them feel that way. No, no, they made me feel that way. You can work on that. Because no, that’s not how that works. Well, it is, but you don’t have to live that way.

So healthy engagement, re-engage with family members while maintaining boundaries. That’s something you can actually work towards. And if that means you’re re-engaging them in a way as a more healthy version of you and they’re still not okay with it, they can also learn to be okay with it. Because that’s just who Colt is now. And when you re-engage in a thoughtful, humorous way, you’ll be amazed that, my family changed mainly because I changed.

And that’s the only person that needs to change is you. Does that mean tolerate abusive environments? No, I’m not saying that. Okay, invoicing discomfort in relationships with that overreacting and withdrawing. No, I’m uncomfortable with that. That’s not something I’d like to do. So I want to encourage journal prompt, reflect on one relationship or cutoff and what emotions linger. Practice role playing, practice in calm, non-reactive conversation.

with a difficult family member, actually use your imagination. It’s helped so much to actually visualize it before you actually do it. In daily practice, find some grounding techniques. I use a lot of mantras and memorization, right? Something, it can be corny. It doesn’t really matter what it is, but it’s helpful, use it. So emotional cutoff is a reactive process that keeps us tethered to enmeshment.

Emotional cutoff is a reactive process. You wanna learn how to start responding, reconnect and become a more well-defined self. So simple, but emotionally, it’s hard. So it might help for you to reach out to me, it might help for you to find other resources around Bowen Family Systems, systems thinking, to start thinking in systems. It’s challenging to self differentiate, but it’s so rewarding.

The alternative is just don’t do it that’s okay. If your life’s working the way it’s working, then you don’t have to do any of this. But you can. All right, so what are you voiding? Where are you running away from? And remember that running away from a measurement is still a measurement.