The Gathering – Recap of Group Discussion on Enmeshment

Finding Autonomy in the Face of Enmeshment (Part 1) July 2025

 

Dear Community,

Thank you for showing up so fully for The Gathering – Enmeshment (Part 1) - Finding Autonomy in the Face of Enmeshment. Your presence and vulnerability helped create a space of shared learning, healing, and connection.

These conversations are not common, and not always easy, but they are so necessary to better understand how to work with our personal energy to improve our wellbeing. We’re building a community rooted in self-awareness, compassion, and personal sovereignty.

This work is drawn from the foundational concepts of the HigherCx protocol, a trauma-informed healing approach that emphasizes embodiment, energetic balance, and self-responsibility. In HigherCx, we understand that many of the challenges we face are not fixed identities, but states—temporary patterns that can shift when we bring awareness, curiosity, and intention.

Enmeshment is one of those states. It's common, often subconscious, and deeply tied to cultural conditioning, early attachments, and a desire to protect or connect.

The good news is that with the right tools and support, you can recognize when you’re in that state, and you can shift out of it.

This recap highlights the core themes, insights, and tools we explored together during our Gathering —and serves as a reminder that you have the power to return to yourself at any time.

🔹 Why Are We Talking About Enmeshment?

• Enmeshment is one of the most common and misunderstood energetic imbalances.

• It’s a major drain on life force and a significant obstacle to healing.

• In HigherCx, sovereign energy is foundational. Healing can’t integrate when your energy is fused with others.

• Enmeshment is often subconscious, but learning to recognize and balance it is a key part of client empowerment.

• It shows up in family, partnerships, friendships, caregiving roles, power dynamics, and even through collective or global trauma.
  

🔹 What Is Enmeshment?

• A loss of emotional and energetic boundaries

• A fusion of identity, energy, or attention with someone or something else

• Can be temporary or chronic

• In HCx, it’s tested for early in the session to make sure we are working with only the client’s energy

• Common terms used - group brainstorm : codependence, empathy overload, people-pleasing, emotional caretaking, empath, emotional fusion, over-responsibility

  
  

🔹 Signs You May Be Enmeshed

The following signs were brought up in our discussion -

• Chronic over-giving or care-taking

• Absorbing other people’s emotions or physical symptoms

• Guilt or fear when prioritizing your needs

• Difficulty saying no

• Worrying about someone else's situation more than they are

• Thinking about what someone else might think of you—instead of what you think of you

• Feeling responsible for other people’s reactions

• Loss of clarity or paralysis in decision-making

• Doing or saying things to “keep the peace” at the expense of your own values

• Feeling out of body, ungrounded, anxious, or fatigued

• Feeling overwhelmed by news events or global tragedies

• Carrying energy or emotions of someone even when they’re not present

  
  

🧭 Reflection Prompt: Do I feel more aware of someone else’s needs than my own? Do I shape my behavior around someone else’s emotions or expectations?

🔹 Why Does Enmeshment Happen?

• Early family dynamics (lack of modeled boundaries)

• Childhood trauma (especially when survival required attunement to others over self)

• Social and cultural conditioning (especially for women: “be nice,” “don’t get angry,” “take care of others”)

• Religious or spiritual messaging (self-sacrifice as virtue)

• Being rewarded for people-pleasing or emotional suppression

• Empathy overload or high sensitivity without boundaries

• Desire to be loved, needed, useful, in control

• Fear of loss, failure, or being “bad”

• Lack of internal differentiation or self-trust

  
  

🔹 Impact of Enmeshment on Health & Energy

• Chronic fatigue or exhaustion

• Nervous system dysregulation (hypervigilance, anxiety, shutdown)

• Poor immune response

• Cognitive fog or difficulty making decisions

• Lack of motivation or forward movement

• Disconnection from body, purpose, or intuition

• Internalized pressure to carry the emotional or energetic load of others

• Risk of long-term disease from chronic energy leakage
  

⚡ Metaphor Shared by a Participant: “It’s like they are plugged into you - you’re paying everyone else’s energy bill.”

🔹 Important Distinctions & Themes from the Discussion

Presence vs. Carrying

• It’s natural to share energy when present with someone—but it becomes harmful when you’re carrying someone’s emotions long after the interaction ends.
  

How Do I Know It’s Enmeshment?

• When your thoughts, identity, or actions are shaped by what you think someone else thinks

• When you care more about someone’s growth or choices than they do

• When you feel someone else’s pain in your body—but it’s not yours

• When your sense of self disappears in a relationship or emotional exchange

• When you are worried or ruminating about an interpersonal exchange

• When you are trying to control or influence outcomes for others
  

💔 The Pull to Control or Save/Rescue

• Often comes from fear (of loss, failure, disconnection)

• Reflects mistrust in others’ capacity to navigate their own lives

• May mask a lack of self-trust or discomfort with surrender

• Also includes feeling controlled by others—being on the receiving end of enmeshment
  

🔹 Recognizing Enmeshment: Clues & Awareness

• “I feel emotions or sensations in my body that aren’t mine.”

• “I feel angry or resentful when someone else doesn’t care or follow through.”

• “I’m thinking about what they would think of me or what I did.”

• “I’m tied to the outcome—I care more than they do.”

• “I’m replaying a conversation or situation over and over in my mind.”

• “I say yes when I mean no.”

• “I feel like I have to take it on because no one else is.”

• “I feel like I can’t relax until they are okay.”

• “I feel like I’m in trouble, even when I’m not.”
  

Key Awareness Questions:

• Is this mine?

• Do I trust them to handle it?

• Am I trying to control the outcome?

• Do I want to be enmeshed right now?

• What emotions are coming up, and are they guiding me or distracting me?
  

🔹 Detachment ≠ Disconnection

• You can love and care without merging or rescuing.

• This is called detached compassion: caring without carrying.

• It is love with boundaries. Love without worry.

• The moment you feel resentment, over-responsibility, or frustration—it’s a sign you may be enmeshed.
  

🌱 "How do I care without carrying?" becomes a core self-responsibility practice.

🔹 How Do We Care Without Carrying?

This question emerged powerfully in the group. Here’s how it can be used to guide:

• Through detached compassion (holding space without entanglement)

• By reclaiming your energetic boundaries through embodiment, intention, and practices like zip-up Central Meridian and clearing statements

• By building trust in self, others, and the greater unfolding

• Through developing the capacity to be with someone in their process without taking it on
  

🔹 Trust Is Essential to Sovereignty

“Enmeshment often fills the gap where trust is missing.”

What We’re Learning to Trust:

• Trust in Self – I can hold my energy and regulate my nervous system.

• Trust in Others – They have an inner guidance system, too.

• Trust in Life / Universe – Life will teach, guide, and shape us all—without us having to control it.

• Trust in the Process – That discomfort, failure, and uncertainty are part of learning and evolution.

  
  

If there’s a crack in trust, you can become conscious of it and work to restore it.

Ask:

• What support do I need to come back into trust?

• Can I find evidence that life is working itself out?

• Can I allow others to “fail forward” and build their own skills?
  

🔹 Processing & Shifting Enmeshment

Steps to Shift

1. Awareness – Recognize that you’re enmeshed

2. Curiosity – Ask questions to explore the why

3. Processing – Feel, reflect, or journal as needed

4. Choice – Choose to return to self

5. Clearing Statement – Give your energy a directive

   
   

🗣️ Examples of Clearing Statements

• “I am me. You are you.”

• “This is my energy, and I stand in it.”

• “I take back all of my energy for myself.”

• “I trust in the universe to take care of this.”

• “I am responsible for my life, and others are responsible for theirs.”

• “I am at peace with the actions of others.”

• “I choose right now for my energy to be mine.”

  
  

🎤 Saying it aloud makes it real. Your voice is your wand.

🔹 Reframing Enmeshment: It’s a State, Not an Identity

• “Being empathic” or “taking on others’ energy” is not a personality trait—it’s a state.

• States shift. States can be cleared.

• “Sometimes I get into it and stay for a while, other times I catch it and shift.”

• The more often you shift out of enmeshment, the more often you live in sovereignty. Your energy is more easily sustained instead of drained.
  

🧘‍♀️ Practice & Integration

• Visualization: Create your energetic boundary (zip-up, light bubble, field)

• Speak your clearing statement aloud

• Ask yourself regularly: What is mine to carry, and what is not?

• Journal Prompt: “When I’m enmeshed, what do I most need to remember?”
  

Powerful Reflections Shared by Participants

• “When I feel resentment, I know I’m enmeshed.”

• “Saying my statement daily changed my life.”

• “Trusting that others have their own path is how I reclaim my peace.”

• “This is a lifelong skill. I’m learning to be comfortable when it’s uncomfortable.”

• “I didn’t realize it was codependency—I thought I was doing a good job.”

• “It’s so liberating to know this is a state I can shift.”

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We hope this recap helps you continue to reflect, integrate, and return to your own center, especially when triggered or you are overextending your energy.

Remember: you are not “an enmeshed person,” “a people pleaser,” “an empath" or "someone who can’t say no.”

These are states you may pass through, not permanent truths about who you are. The more you practice noticing and shifting, the more time you’ll spend in clarity, peace, and energetic sovereignty. Your energy is your life force.

Thank you again for being part of this community. Your willingness to explore these deeper truths helps not only your own healing, but creates ripples of awareness for those around you. We are learning from each other, and look forward to continuing this work together.

With gratitude,

The HigherCx Team

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If this topic resonated with you, we invite you to join us for an upcoming Gathering, a space to explore these conversations in community and practice the tools that support energetic clarity and alignment.

If you’d like more personal guidance, a private session with one of our facilitators can help you identify and clear what’s keeping you out of balance so you can return fully to yourself.

We invite you to explore more about the work we’re doing with HigherCx, including our research study on long COVID and persistent recovery states. For more information visit ZenbrioHouse.com

Sara McRae | Creator of HigherCx™ Wellness practitioner, teacher of Touch for Health, and guide for recovery from Long COVID, trauma, and the Void State.

Exploring resilience, energy, and conscious integration.