Our lives begin with a deep biological dependence on our mother, making our relationship with her our earliest and one of the most fundamental influences on our sense of safety, connection, and developing identity. When our developing sense of self becomes entangled with our mother’s unmet needs and unresolved trauma, we unconsciously take on aspects of her experience. This psychological impact of maternal enmeshment is frequently overlooked, because speaking about the ways mothers can unconsciously harm their children often remains taboo in society.
This article explores maternal enmeshment through the lens of Identity-oriented Psychotrauma Theory (IoPT), looking at how early identifications can affect our sense of self well into adulthood, and how working with these inner dynamics can help us loosen unconscious entanglements, reconnect with our own experience, and strengthen our healthy I.
Understanding psychological enmeshment
Psychological enmeshment describes a dynamic in which the boundaries between parent and child become blurred, which makes it difficult for the child to develop and maintain a separate sense of self. It can involve intrusive parental control, guilt induction, and the psychological invalidation of the child's autonomous self (Thompson et al., 2024). This means that in the mother-child relationship, our feelings, needs, and decisions become entangled with our mother's emotional needs and expectations. Our mother does not fully recognize us as a separate individual with an inner life of our own, but instead we have a psychological function in ways that serve our mother's emotional needs (Kirik et al., 2026).
This can leave us with the feeling of being used or emotionally consumed by our mother. Unconsciously, our attention and energy are continually directed towards our mother's emotional state, leaving less or no room to explore our own feelings, develop our own preferences, and establish a sense of who we are independently of her. Over time, we may struggle to distinguish between our own needs and emotions and those we have internalized through identification with our mother.
Psychological enmeshment can also overlap with parentification, in which a child takes on responsibilities that are inappropriate for their age and would normally belong to the parent (Stanić et al., 2025). Enmeshment and parentification frequently coexist, because blurred boundaries can make it very difficult for us as children to recognize where our responsibility ends, while parentification further reinforces the expectation that we need to prioritize our parent over ourselves.
From an IoPT perspective (Identity-oriented Psychotrauma Theory), these dynamics can also be understood through the concept of identifications. In IoPT, identifications refer to unconscious entanglements with aspects of another person's psychological and emotional experience, which often develop as trauma-related survival strategies. In the context of the mother-child relationship, this shows how a child can unconsciously become entangled in the mother's unresolved trauma experiences and emotional needs, thereby developing survival strategies that make it difficult to establish an independent sense of self.
Prenatal psychological enmeshment
During infancy and early childhood, our sense of self and identity are still developing. We do not yet have a fully developed sense of our own I. Our sense of self develops through our earliest relationships, initially through our relationship with our mother and, later, with other primary caregivers. Already the time in the womb is very formative for our psyche, and can deeply impact our developing sense of self. From an IoPT perspective, an important question is whether we are recognized as the subject of our own life, with our own needs and individuality, or whether we have to serve a purpose in our mother's psyche due to the unresolved trauma she carries.
During pregnancy, our development is influenced by our mother's physiological and psychological state. Her stress, health, emotional availability, unresolved trauma experiences and the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy shape the environment in which we develop during the first nine months of our lives. From an IoPT perspective, prenatal identifications are among our earliest survival strategies. They serve to protect our developing body and psyche while also providing a way to maintain attachment with our mother.
In the following, you will find some common examples of how such identifications can develop:
The mother may unconsciously want her child to fulfil her unmet needs from her own childhood. She may long for the love she never received, hope that becoming a mother will finally give her a sense of identity, or imagine that the child will fill an inner emptiness. We may become entangled in her expectations and fantasies about who we should be and what we should provide for her.
A child may also become the mother's primary source of meaning during a period of grief, depression, loneliness, or emotional instability. She may unconsciously expect the child to give her a reason to live, rescue her from an unbearable situation, or compensate for the emotional emptiness she experiences. This dynamic overlaps with the expectation that the child will provide the love the mother never received. The distinction is that the child becomes responsible not only for fulfilling a relational need, but also for sustaining the mother's sense of purpose or emotional stability.
The mother may hope that having a child will save her relationship or make the father stay with her. In this case, the child may unconsciously take on the role of holding the parents together. The child is needed for what they can provide to the mother or the relationship, rather than being fully recognized for who they are. This can create an early entanglement with the mother's unmet needs and fears of abandonment.
The mother may experience conflicting feelings about the pregnancy. One part of her may want the child, while another part rejects the child, or the pregnancy may be entirely unwanted. These conflicting inner dynamics can deeply impact the child’s developing sense of self. Especially when we feel not welcomed or wanted, this leads to a severe prenatal entanglement between the mother's rejection and our own relationship with our existence.
The mother may have a strong wish for a child of a particular sex. If the child is not the sex she hoped for, she may struggle consciously or unconsciously to accept the child as they are. The child may become entangled in the mother's disappointment or expectations and can develop a sense that who they are is wrong, or that they are born in the wrong body.
From an IoPT perspective, these examples illustrate a central conflict in the development of our identity, also called the Trauma of Identity (Ruppert, 2019): the experience of not being wanted for who we are, combined with an intense longing for connection with our mother.
As children, our connection with our mother is fundamental to our sense of safety and belonging. We depend on her, and we cannot simply turn away from her when something in the relationship feels painful or rejecting. Especially during pregnancy, we are entirely dependent on her for our survival. Therefore, maintaining connection and attachment to her is an existential need, even when doing so comes at a cost to the development of our healthy I.
In IoPT theory, this is described through the split structure of the psyche and involves splitting off painful feelings associated with the trauma experience (Ruppert, 2019), such as grief, fear, anger, hopelessness, helplessness, or the longing to be accepted for who we truly are. The psychological parts holding these experiences are called trauma parts. At the same time, we also develop survival parts that protect us from coming in contact with overwhelming feelings and sensations from the trauma experience, by suppressing, denying, distracting or numbing or identifying with someone else’s emotional state. In relation to our earliest identity trauma, this may look as follows. Rather than experiencing the painful truth that we may not have been wanted, welcomed and protected in the way we needed, we may feel that something is wrong with us, that we are not worthy of love, or even that we should not exist.
From an attachment perspective, it can often feel psychologically safer to believe that something is wrong with us than to face the truth that the person we depend on for survival is unable to meet our fundamental emotional needs. This creates a deeply confusing inner dynamic. The part of us that longs for connection with our mother remains, while other parts carry the pain of rejection and the feelings we could not safely experience.
The impact of enmeshment on the developing self
When enmeshment and identifications begin during pregnancy or early preverbal development, they can deeply influence how we experience ourselves and relate to the world around us. From an IoPT perspective, when our developing I becomes entangled with our mother's trauma and survival parts, it can become difficult to develop a separate and stable sense of who we are, what we feel, and what we need. Instead of experiencing ourselves as individuals with our own inner world, we often learn to orient ourselves around our mother's emotional experience and what we need to be for her. This can shape our sense of identity and continue to influence how we relate to other people throughout our lives.
The following examples describe common consequences of such trauma dynamics that often develop in early childhood:
Psychological fragmentation and our split self: When our I develops in an enmeshed relationship, our inner parts reflect the conflict between our own experience and the psychological states from our mother we have become entangled with (Broughton, 2021).
When we move between different parts of our self (split identities), we can experience very contrasting emotional and physical states. In our healthy parts, we may feel calm, connected, and alive. In our trauma & survival parts we may suddenly experience ourselves as worthless, frightened, invisible, or deeply inadequate, experience intense despair or feel as though we do not want to exist (Schorr & Goldner, 2023). These states can feel contradictory, leaving us confused about who we really are. We may also experience our mother's emotions or inner states as our own, struggling to distinguish between what belongs to us and what we have taken on through identification. Our sense of self can therefore feel fragmented, unstable, or even absent, and in extreme cases as though we have no separate identity beyond the relationship with our mother.
Feelings of inferiority and low self-worth: When we are not welcomed or accepted for who we are, we may internalize this experience as a reflection of our own worth. Rather than recognizing our mother's limitations or her unresolved trauma, we often start to believe that something is wrong with us, that we are not good enough, or that we are somehow less worthy than others. From an IoPT perspective, this can be understood as part of the identification with the mother's rejection. Instead of experiencing the rejection as something coming from the relationship, we turn it inwards and experience ourselves as the problem.
Chronic alertness to other people's emotional states: When our attention is organized around our mother's emotional world, monitoring her feelings and reactions may become essential to maintaining a sense of connection and safety. We may learn to notice subtle changes in her mood, facial expressions, tone of voice, or behaviour, adapting ourselves to avoid rejection, disappointment, or conflict. Over time, this pattern can extend to other relationships. This ongoing alertness can keep our nervous system in a state of hyperarousal and make it difficult to relax, feel safe, or develop a stable sense of ourselves independently of others.
Emotional shutdown and numbness: Enmeshment also makes it difficult to remain connected to our own feelings when they conflict with our need for attachment with our mother. If our longing for closeness is repeatedly unmet, or if expressing our needs does not lead to the connection we look for, the emotional pain can become overwhelming. As infants and young children, we depend on our caregivers for safety, comfort, and connection. We cannot simply leave the relationship, and we have very limited ways of understanding or changing it.
We may therefore begin to suppress not only the pain of disconnection, but also our longing for connection itself (I am better off alone). From a trauma-informed perspective, withdrawal and emotional numbing can be protective responses associated with hypoarousal. We may become disconnected from our feelings and bodily sensations, or struggle to recognize what we experience emotionally. In the context of enmeshment, this can further interfere with our developing sense of self. When we cannot access our feelings, we also have less opportunity to discover what we need, what matters to us, and who we are.
The feeling that our right to exist depends on serving others: When our mother relates to us primarily through her own emotional needs, we may unconsciously experience that our value depends on what we can provide for her. We may feel that we need to comfort her, fulfil her expectations, maintain her emotional stability, or prevent her from feeling lonely or rejected. Rather than experiencing that we have a right to exist simply as ourselves, we may feel that we need to earn our place through what we give to others. Our mother may unconsciously experience our needs and individuality as a threat, particularly in the context of her own unresolved trauma and split dynamics in her psyche.
Suppression of our own needs and loss of inner direction: When we are continually oriented towards our mother's emotional state and expectations, our own inner experience may become difficult to recognize. We may learn to adapt before we have a chance to notice what we feel or want. Over time, this can develop into a habitual way of relating: we automatically consider what others need, how they might react, and what is expected of us, while our own preferences remain unclear. In other cases we genuinely do not know what we want at all, because we have had so little experience of relating to our own needs as something separate and important. We may struggle to make decisions, trust our inner responses, or distinguish our own wishes from expectations we have internalised from our mother or other significant people.
The consequences of early psychological enmeshment in adulthood
Early psychological enmeshment at its core is a consequence of a trauma of identity and if unaddressed and not integrated, can have a severe impact on our lives even through adulthood.
Examples include:
A fragile or unclear sense of self: Not knowing who we are beneath the roles we fulfil, struggling to connect with our own inner experience, or feeling that we have no clear identity of our own.
A sense of unreality or disconnection from ourselves: Feeling detached from our bodies, emotions, or existence, or experiencing life as though we are observing it from a distance rather than fully inhabiting it. We may be capable, active, and successful in everyday life while feeling disconnected from our actual experience and feelings.
A deep sense of being unwanted or not belonging: Struggling to feel that we are genuinely welcome, even when others show us love and acceptance. We may carry an underlying feeling that there is no real place for us, or that we are somehow not meant to be here.
A fundamental sense that something is wrong with us: Experiencing shame about who we are. We may feel inherently inadequate, defective, or unworthy of love without understanding where these feelings come from.
A deep fear of being a burden: Feeling uncomfortable receiving care, expressing needs, or depending on others. We may experience our needs as something that places an unfair demand on others, rather than as a natural part of being human.
A conflicted relationship with our own existence: Experiencing a deep sense of not wanting to be here, struggling to feel connected to life, or feeling that our existence itself is somehow wrong.
A feeling that we must earn our right to exist: Believing, often unconsciously, that we need to be useful, successful, caring, or needed to justify our place in the world. Simply being ourselves may not feel like enough.
Difficulty knowing which inner parts actually belong to us: Struggling to distinguish our own feelings, beliefs, desires, and perceptions from those of our mother or other significant people. We may live according to expectations we have internalised without recognising that they do not necessarily reflect who we are.
These experiences can be difficult to recognise as consequences of early relational trauma, particularly when the relationship with our mother seems outwardly loving or when our childhood experiences are not remembered consciously. We may feel shame or confusion around our struggles without recognizing the deeper relational dynamics that have shaped them.
The process of working through these inner dynamics
In IoPT therapy, we can explore identifications that have become deeply embedded in our sense of who we are. When an identification becomes visible during a self-encounter, we can explore it further by choosing an object or resonator to represent the person we have identified with. This gives a previously unconscious inner dynamic a visible and tangible form, allowing us to observe and explore it. As we engage with the identification through the resonance process, we can begin to notice how it shapes our feelings, bodily sensations, beliefs, and relationship with ourselves. Oftentimes, our felt sense changes remarkably quickly when setting in an identification resonance.
Externalizing this inner part (i.e. how we perceive someone in our psyche) can create a deep psychological shift inside of us. As we begin to distinguish our own experience from the perspective, feelings and experiences of the person we have identified with, our healthy I can increasingly become the reference point from which we relate to ourselves and our inner world (Stjernswärd, 2021). Feelings, needs, and impulses that were suppressed or difficult to access can become more available, and the energy held in a frozen state in the trauma part, or bound in a state of mobilization in the survival part, can begin to release.
In this process, our healthy I can then gradually reconnect with our fragmented and overwhelmed trauma parts, through gently acknowledging, witnessing and integrating the experiences that were once too overwhelming to process. Thereby, we can become more and more able to experience ourselves as separate individuals with our own truth, feelings, needs, and boundaries.
When we loosen an identification, we can begin to free ourselves from the unconscious entanglement with another person. We can learn to consciously sense and attune to another person’s feelings and emotional state without losing ourselves in their experience or unconsciously taking it on as our own. The difference is that we remain connected to ourselves, with our own healthy I as our internal reference point, while staying in contact with the other person. This also allows us to release identifications with people who have harmed us, including perpetrators whose perspectives, attitudes, or ways of relating we may have internalized as a survival strategy in childhood, even though we would never consciously choose to remain connected to them.
In this way, we loosen enmeshment and become increasingly able to remain connected to others without experiencing ourselves through the lens of their inner world. Our sense of self becomes less dependent on the roles we once needed to fulfil, and we can create the space that is necessary to experience ourselves, our needs, and our boundaries from within. We can begin to build a relationship with ourselves that is grounded in our own experience, rather than in what we once needed to take on in order to survive. 💛
✏️ Questions for Reflection
How did I experience the emotional connection with my mother during my childhood?
How do I feel today when I think about my mother or am in contact with her? What emotions and bodily sensations do I notice?
When I imagine simply being myself, without having to achieve anything or do anything for others, how does that feel for me?
What helps my body feel safer and more connected to myself?
If this article resonates with you, you are warmly invited to share your thoughts, reflections, or questions in the comments below.
If you are looking for support in exploring your own experiences, I offer 1:1 IoPT trauma therapy and somatic therapy sessions, both in person in Oslo and online for international clients.
You can find more about my work and current offerings here.
Thank you for being here.
Julia 🌸
References
Broughton, V. (2021). Trauma and identity: Identity oriented psychotrauma therapy: Theory and practice. Green Balloon Publishing.
Kirik, B. N. Y., Akdoğan, R., & Çimşir, E. (2026). Self-Coldness, Rather Than Self-Compassion, Mediates the Link between Parent–Child Emotional Enmeshment and Feelings of Inferiority. Mindfulness, 17, 2438 - 2449.
Ruppert, F. (2019). Who am I in a traumatised and traumatising society? Green Pharmacy Balloon Publishing.
Schorr, S., & Goldner, L. (2023). “Like stepping on glass”: A theoretical model to understand the emotional experience of childhood parentification. Family Relations.
Stanić, L., Branica, V., & Bulat, L. R. (2025). Conceptualising and Measuring Parentification. Psihologijske teme.
Stjernswärd, S. (2021). Getting to Know the Inner Self. Exploratory Study of Identity Oriented Psychotrauma Therapy—Experiences and Value From Multiple Perspectives. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12.
Thompson, M. J., Platts, C. R., & Davies, P. T. (2024). Parent-child boundary dissolution and children's psychological difficulties: A meta-analytic review.. Psychological bulletin.