November 4, 2025 • 26 mins
Today we unpack the hidden cost of enmeshment and chart a clear path to attunement, we break down how enmeshment shows up in families and partnerships...oversharing, emotional fusion, control, and the chronic belief that your harmony depends on keeping everyone else regulated. Then we contrast that with attunement: staying connected and compassionate without losing your internal reference point. You’ll hear a practical walk‑through of the C‑NEAR method (Circumstance, Nervous system thoughts, Emotions, Actions, Results) to spot when you’ve picked up someone else’s emotions and how to return to steady ground.
We also tackle a common trap: swinging from fusion to isolation. Hyperindividualism may feel powerful, but it’s avoidance in disguise. You can witness another’s pain and remain centered, offering care by choice, not by reflex. With a faith-rooted lens, we affirm empathy as a gift that needs structure. Expect clear language, actionable steps, and a compassionate reframe that helps your relationships breathe.
If this resonates, follow the show, share it with someone who needs lighter emotional labor, and leave a review to help others find these tools. What’s one boundary or micro‑pause you’ll practice this week?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:04):
Welcome to Islamic Life Code School Podcast.
Apply tools that you learn inthis podcast and your life will
be unrecognizably successful.
Now your host, Dr.
Donal Aphtar.
SPEAKER_00 (00:15):
Hello, hello, hello everyone.
Peace and blessings be upon allof you.
Inshallah, today's podcast willhelp you relieve some of your
enmeshment patterns.
Enmeshment is when people becomeoverly entangled with other
people's emotions, feelingresponsible for their feelings,
and creating a loss of overallindividuality.
This enmeshment is important foryou to learn because once you
(00:37):
unlearn this pattern, a largeburden of relationship toxicity
falls off of your shoulders.
Opposite to enmeshment, which isthe healthier response to
relationships, is attunement,where you engage with a person
by choice, you stay connectedand empathic without losing your
sense of your own emotions,without losing sense of
(00:59):
yourself.
Getting rid of enmeshmentwithout learning healthy
attunement dynamics createshyper and toxic individualism,
which is not what we're goingfor.
And if this hasn't occurred toyou until now, I will invite you
to notice where in yourrelationships are you enmeshed.
The concept here is essential tounderstanding because it exposes
(01:22):
one of the most invisible forcesbehind relationship exhaustion.
When you operate in an enmeshedpattern, your nervous system is
constantly scanning for otherpeople's emotional cues, trying
to maintain peace throughanticipation.
That constant vigilance createsan illusion of closeness because
you're constantly thinking aboutthe person, but actually keeps
(01:46):
you in a state of internallabor.
Enmeshment makes you believethat constant hypervigilance is
closeness, that reading everysmall bit of data and signal
makes it about your worth andsecurity of the relationship.
And learning enmeshmentdismantles all of this invisible
workload.
(02:06):
When you recognize that anotherperson's emotions are not your
signal to regulate them, youremove an entire layer of
psychological noise from yoursystem.
The space that opens up mightlook like emotional distance in
the beginning, but it's actuallymental clarity and peace.
You stop managing your energythrough the moods of other
(02:27):
people and start makingdecisions from your own internal
reference point, which by theway is the best reference point
and the only real referencepoint to begin with.
This shift of going fromenmeshment to attunement rewires
your sense of intimacy.
When you no longer manage yourconnection through other
(02:48):
people's emotions around you,you begin experiencing
steadiness in yourrelationships, and that feels
much better than the controlyou're trying to exert on them.
And then by no surprise whathappens also is that everyone
else starts to treat you withattunement and respect of your
own opinions and your values,and they all drop their own
(03:08):
enmeshment burden on you.
And this reciprocity between thetwo people transforms the
relationship dynamic.
The toxicity you thought livedin the relationship dissolves
because the fuel which is yourconstant emotional management of
others and others control of youis gone.
Once you unlearn enmeshment, yourelease yourself from emotional
(03:30):
labor, which up until now mighthave looked to you like love or
real connection, but it is not.
This transition from enmeshmentto relating with relationships
and going to attunement is aprocess.
It involves learning torecognize which emotions are
yours and which belong tosomeone else, and understanding
(03:51):
that creating healthy boundariesdoes not mean you're abandoning
the relationship.
It means you're engaging morehealthily.
Getting rid of enmeshmentwithout learning healthy
attunement createshyperindividualism, the kind
that mistakes withdrawal forhealing.
When someone detaches abruptlyfrom enmeshment, they often
(04:14):
confuse isolation withself-protection.
The nervous system that oncesurvived in a relationship
through merging now tries tosurvive through avoidance.
And it might feel powerful inthe beginning, but it's just
another form of fear, and thatfear hides behind independence.
Healthy attunement requires thecapacity to stay relational
(04:37):
without losing yourself-command.
This is a very evolved nervoussystem skill.
This is not a personality or agenetic trait that you're born
with.
It demands awareness, skillbuilding, pacing, your own
emotional literacy.
The goal is not detachment, it'sthe differentiation of
enmeshment and attunement bychoice.
(04:58):
To remain aware of the otherperson's emotional field without
absorbing it or dismissing itcompletely.
When you integrate attunementafter unlearning enmeshment, you
develop a relational authoritythat is magnetic.
You sense connection and otherpeople sense that connection
with you and they seek it out.
(05:20):
During this process, yourinternal reference point is the
guide.
You experience closeness withoutbeing consumed by it.
And this is where maturitylives, the ability to hold
proximity and boundaries at thesame time.
Without the development of thisskill, liberation of your
enmeshment will simply turn intoanother dependency, but this
(05:43):
time the dependency will be onisolation instead of attachment.
Enmeshment describes a state ofbeing deeply entangled when
other people's sadness, anxietymeans the same for you.
This happens with blurred ornon-existent boundaries.
This is where you yourselfhaven't learned emotional
independence.
In an enmeshed family system,role and expectations are
(06:07):
confused and the members of thefamily feel overly responsible
for each other's emotions andwell-being.
In an enmeshed family system youmight think that your actions
cause other people's happinessand sadness.
There are very typicalcharacteristics of enmeshed
relationships that include lackof boundaries, emotional fusion,
(06:27):
where family members feelemotionally dependent on one
another and they experience eachother's emotions rather than
their own.
It includes poor emotionalindependence, where you struggle
with your own identity and yourown emotional self-regulation.
It includes oversharing andexcessive control.
Parents get overly involved inthe children's lives, or one
(06:50):
partner attempts to control theother.
It also includes difficulty withseparation.
In family dynamics, it shows upas a child who feels responsible
for their parents' happiness, ora family where members feel they
cannot have their own separatelife or opinions.
In romantic relationship itinvolves a partner who lies to
(07:12):
keep the significant otherclose, or a relationship where
one person's identity isentirely dependent and defined
by other people's approval.
I know most of you want otherpeople to stop controlling you.
You can absolutely feel it whenthey try to manage your choices,
your timing, your values, allbecause they believe that their
(07:32):
happiness depends on yourbehavior, on your compliance,
your endless availability.
This type of enmeshment shows upas dominance and looks like
authority over you.
Their control is absolutelynecessary for their own inner
peace, because they're afraidthat if you make your own
independent choices, thenthey're gonna feel loss of
(07:55):
control.
They're afraid that if youchange, they'll lose access to
the version of you that keepsthem emotionally stable.
Which of course is all a lie.
These are all just thoughterrors that can be easily
corrected.
While trying to get out of thisenmeshment dynamic, you can
teach them through confrontationor explanation.
(08:17):
But unfortunately that type ofinstruction doesn't rewire
people.
The moment you stopparticipating in their emotional
fusion is when their controlloses its anchor, and that's
when they start to learn byexample.
You heal the enmeshement dynamicof another individual by not
demanding it from them, but byembodying it, by exemplifying
(08:41):
it.
When your nervous system learnsattunement, presence without
absorption, care withoutcompliance, everyone around you
will start to recalibrate.
They sense that your stabilityis no longer negotiable, and
they will learn that forthemselves.
That recognition alone does moreteaching than any lecture or
(09:03):
explanation ever could.
Teaching others attunementwithout enmeshment in your
relationships becomes moreeffortless once you've learned
it yourself, because yourregulation becomes their
instruction manual.
And you can shift this entiredynamic without a single
argument, without ever having tomake a single point of view and
(09:25):
having wish that you wereunderstood.
So the way you're gonna starthealing it is think of it like
your nervous system as basicallybeing your internal dashboard,
your database.
Every time you think you'refeeling somebody else's
emotions, what's actuallyhappening is that your thoughts
are interpreting their signalsand your nervous system is
creating your own emotionalresponse.
(09:47):
So to say you're not actuallycarrying their emotions, you're
carrying your emotions abouttheir emotions.
And that's where my C-nearalgorithm comes in extremely
handy.
C-near.
C standing for circumstance thatis someone else being close to
you, feeling upset or anxious.
(10:08):
N being your nervous systemthoughts, which picks up on the
cues.
Maybe they're sighing, maybethey're making microfacial
expressions, maybe they'repacing.
Your body starts to feel thattension through your thoughts
that kicked in, and it picks upon their anxiety and stress.
This is happening through yourown nervous system.
Then comes the E, which is youremotions.
(10:31):
Your thoughts about theirfeelings generate your emotions.
You might feel anxious becauseyou think, oh no, they're upset,
I need to immediately fix it.
Then comes A, which is theaction.
Because you feel the anxiety,you might jump up at the first
opportunity to soothe them or tomake them feel better.
(10:51):
Mistakenly thinking that themfeeling better would then result
in you feeling better.
Mistakenly thinking that if youtook on their problem and solved
it for them, you manage theirfeelings well enough, then you
would feel better.
When in reality their feelingsare their responsibility.
You can teach them, but again,that won't happen through
(11:12):
enmeshment.
That will only happen throughattunement.
The last one is results, the R.
From taking responsibility fortheir emotions, anxiety, and
stress, the result becomes thatyou are staying enmeshed.
You've blurred the lines betweenyour own emotional state and
theirs.
This is a strong call towardsawareness and realization.
(11:35):
With this you can start to shifttowards attunement.
And you can use the sameformula, but add layers of
awareness.
And the way that looks like isthat you pause and you ask
yourself, is this my emotion ortheirs?
You remind yourself that yournervous system is responding to
your own thoughts about thesituation.
The other person's emotions arenot directly living inside you,
(12:00):
or vice versa.
Over time, practicing thisawareness lets you stay engaged
and compassionate without losingyourself.
This is you learning tofine-tune your empathy so it
doesn't drain you.
It lets you connect in ahealthier way.
Letting go of enmeshment doesnot mean that you're detaching
(12:20):
yourself.
It does not mean toxicindividuality.
It means that you're choosing tobe attuned.
And that is extremelyempowering.
There are multiple relationshipsin my life that I choose to be
attuned.
And you might do the same.
Because imagine if you have afriend who's really anxious
about a job interview, they'repacing, they're talking fast,
(12:41):
they're sweating, and you startto feel a familiar knot in your
own stomach, now you're in thatenmeshment mode, and you might
immediately think, oh no, I needto fix this, I need to calm
them, and you'll jump intoaction.
When in reality, there's yourown nervous system reacting to
your thoughts about theiranxiety, creating your own
(13:03):
anxiety.
If you apply this separation,this little boundary, what
happens is that you've created aspace for yourself to think,
okay, the circumstance is thatmy friend has an interview, the
circumstance is that she'sanxious, my nervous system is
picking up on all of these cues,but my emotions are my own.
(13:24):
In this way, instead of jumpingto fix it, you might say to
yourself, I can be supportivewithout taking on their burden
of anxiety.
I can listen, I can offer a calmpresence, I can even offer
solutions, but I don't have tofeel what they feel, and I don't
have to get dysregulated justbecause they are dysregulated.
(13:44):
Similarly, it happens in afamily dynamic where a person is
upset and you always feltresponsible for keeping their
peace or keeping them happy.
In an enmeshed state, you willimmediately jump into soothing
them.
You will say whatever you thinkwill calm them down, you will do
whatever it takes to help themfeel comfortable so that in turn
(14:05):
you can feel comfortable, evenif it means sacrificing your own
opinions and feelings on thematter.
But through the space you giveby learning that their emotions
are theirs, you will create aspace where you might have an
opportunity to think, mydiscomfort about their upset is
being created by my ownthoughts.
Do I want to create it or do Iwant to step back and offer
(14:27):
support without taking a burden?
The more you practice this ineach micro situation, the more
you train yourself to noticewhen you're slipping into
enmeshment.
And this way you can gentlyguide yourself back to
attunement.
Over time you're building thismuscle.
Over time you'll start torealize with more and more
practice that you're feelingthis emotion because you are
(14:50):
experiencing it or becauseyou're picking it up from
somebody else and thinking it'syours to carry.
When you start this transitionfrom enmeshment to healthy
attunement, one of the mostcommon questions that surfaces
is around self-doubt.
Your mind unquestionablypresents, have I gone cold in
this relationship?
Am I starting to care less?
(15:12):
Am I dropping them out as animportant relationship in my
life?
And this confusion happensbecause the nervous system
equates the newfound calm withdistance.
When you stop absorbing otherpeople's emotions, the internal
noise quiets down, and thatquiet and peace will feel
unnatural in the beginning.
(15:33):
When you have started to equateconstant worry about other
people's emotions as yourresponsibility, when you start
to equate that responsibilitywith a strong relationship, and
when you start to take a stepback from that, there's a space
that's created.
And this is the space where youstart to fill it with
attunement.
(15:53):
And I want to highlight thisparadox because when you find
yourself in that space, thestrangeness of peaceful
relationships, your mind isgoing to want to flag it as
danger.
Because to the lower brain,anything that's new gets flagged
as danger.
But what you might beexperiencing is regulation, the
(16:14):
nervous system recalibrating andrelearning how to stay present
without constant surveillance.
You're observing, listening, andresponding to relationships
without tension.
Your mind will have a tendencyto call it hyperindividualism in
the beginning.
Because remember, your lowerbrain calls it danger and your
(16:35):
mind has to label it somethingin order for it to protect you
from it.
When what you're creating is nothyperindividualism, it's
attunement by choice.
It takes some time to recognizethis new neutrality as strength.
Eventually what will happen iswhat once felt like detachment
will start to sound like you'rebeing available in a
(16:57):
relationship by choice.
And through this you perceiveanother person's pain and you
remain centered, and you chooseto accompany them through that
pain.
This is a much more upgradedlanguage of care that sustains
connections over a long periodof time.
Hyperindividualism is theopposite extreme of enmeshment.
(17:18):
It's emotional indifference andit's complete detachment.
When you stop caring about otherpeople's pain, that's what toxic
individualism is.
It feels regulating, but it'sstill based on fear and
avoidance.
And this avoidance is notfreedom.
It looks like independence, butbut it's far from it.
(17:39):
Humans are wired for connection.
We're designed to coexist, towitness, to accompany, to love
people.
The goal here is not to detachfrom the suffering of others,
it's to stay present with itwhile knowing whose pain belongs
to who.
When you love someone, theirdifficulty might move you, as it
(18:01):
should, because that's what wedo with people who we choose to
love.
Your compassion here is evidenceof your humanity.
But your nervous system alsodoes not need to collapse over
it in order to prove arelationship.
You can recognize that theirpain is theirs, and your pain is
the ache of witnessing it.
Those two different experiencesand the clarity between them is
(18:26):
what keeps compassionsustainable.
Attunement is the ability toaccompany someone in their
difficulty by choice, and thatis an incredibly empowering
choice you're gonna get to make.
You don't do it by guilt,obligation, or reflex.
You do it by consciousparticipation.
You choose to stay near, youchoose to offer support, to
(18:49):
hold, to listen, all the whileremaining grounded in your own
nervous system safety.
You are connected and you're notconsumed.
This is what mature love andconnection looks like.
Proximity, empathy, andboundaries with structure.
All of this care happens withagency.
(19:10):
When you're in isolation throughhyperindividualism, you're not
connected to anyone at all.
Enmeshment appears empathic, butit's over surveillance.
Surveillance of other people'smoods, approval, reactions.
This is your nervous system'sattempt to secure safety through
hyperattunement.
If this is familiar, then inthis state you're constantly
(19:33):
living in overfunctioning,monitoring, anticipating, trying
to stabilize the emotionalenvironment around you.
Believing that your own harmonydepends on your management of
other people's emotions.
Attunement, on the other hand,is very much a regulated
awareness.
It's your capacity to stayconnected.
It operates from internalsteadiness.
(19:54):
In this state you notice, yourespond, and you stay available
while remaining anchored in yourown perception and your own
authority.
This is a whole new level ofemotional leadership.
What ends up happening,especially for Muslim women, is
that their empathy is usuallythe first doorway into
enmeshment.
(20:15):
It's an extraordinary humanfunction that allows you to
sense and interpret the emotionsof other people.
But without structure, withoutguidance, without skill
development, it creates a formof self-neglect when this
empathic nervous system startsto use empathy as a survival
strategy.
(20:35):
And if that's happening, empathyis not serving you.
Another dynamic I commonly seeis from women who are trying to
heal from their enmeshmentpatterns, and when they
recognize that that's howthey're living, reflexively,
through a knee-jerk reaction,they try to drop their empathy
altogether because they start tothink that this is a weakness.
(20:57):
The realization that you areenmeshed with someone does not
call for immediate abandonmentof your own empathy.
The goal here is not to abandonempathy or suppress sensitivity,
it's to build a mental distance.
And the work evolves in a waywhere your empathy turns into
strong attunement and verystrong relationships.
(21:18):
And all of that happens throughcreating a little bit more of
awareness intentionally.
Just as empathy might have beenyour first gateway towards
enmeshment, it is also yourgateway towards attunement,
towards creating safe, loving,long-lasting relationships,
relationships that feel safe.
And this differentiation issuper helpful because women go
(21:41):
through their entire lives beingweighed down by their empathy
when it's actually a superpower.
If enmeshment is the mostdominant way you've learned how
to relate to people inrelationships, then it will take
you a hot minute to relearnthese patterns and to come into
attunement.
And one of the most promisingoutcomes here is that empathic
(22:03):
attunement becomes aself-generating energy.
And you'll notice that empathicenmeshment is completely
exhausting.
So if you've been navigatinglife through a high degree of
empathic enmeshment, you mightwant to start to expect that
things are gonna change rightafter listening to this podcast.
And now that you can tell thedifference between healthy
(22:26):
attunement and toxic empathicenmeshment, then all of a sudden
your patterns will change andyou will release these
immediately.
And you might even feelfrustration if you can't release
them immediately.
But be patient with yourself.
This is the step in the rightdirection.
Once you continue to take stepsor continue to practice this
(22:46):
shift, you will land inattunement.
It might be tomorrow, it mightbe next month, it might be a
year from now.
I don't know how many ingrainedpatterns you're working with and
how the journey will unfold foryou, but consider this the
absolute first step.
As a Muslim woman, you're taughtthat making somebody else's mood
(23:07):
or comfort your responsibilityis the very definition of
caring, which leads you tofurther believe that love might
mean effort, acts of service,selflessness, contribution.
And when these are the qualitiesthat you adopt willingly, that's
going to create the differencebetween enmeshment and
(23:28):
attunement.
Through socialization andcultural upbringings, enmeshment
gets confused with labor oflove.
But when in reality it's basedin fear, afraid of losing
connection, afraid ofdisappointing others, afraid of
being misunderstood, afraid ofbeing alone.
That's what keeps you entangledin exhausting emotional labor.
(23:51):
And this exhaustion is beyondwhat can be explained by the
work you put in a relationship.
Healthy work that you put in arelationship can be and is
tiring a lot of times, but thatlabor of love is not exhausting
beyond explanation.
When you're choosing to holdspace for your kids' emotions,
when you're the anchor of thefamily, when you're doing all of
(24:12):
this emotional labor, it istiring.
But at the end, the choice isusing conscious engagement with
someone.
And when you've done this work,you look back and you say, Yeah,
that was time and effort wellspent.
I would do that again any day ofthe week because I choose to
love these people.
With that I pray to Allah, YaAllah, give us loving people in
(24:35):
our lives that we can attune to.
Grant us wisdom to recognizewhere our responsibility ends
and where trust in you begins.
Help us show up for people froma place of strength.
Let our empathy be a form ofworship.
Ya Allah, make our heartsspacious enough to love deeply
(24:56):
while remaining anchored in you.
Amin Ya Rabul Amin.
Please keep me in your du'az.
I will talk to you guys nexttime.
Welcome to Islamic Life Code School Podcast.
Apply tools that you learn inthis podcast and your life will
be unrecognizably successful.
Now your host, Dr.
Donal Aphtar.
SPEAKER_00 (00:15):
Hello, hello, hello everyone.
Peace and blessings be upon allof you.
Inshallah, today's podcast willhelp you relieve some of your
enmeshment patterns.
Enmeshment is when people becomeoverly entangled with other
people's emotions, feelingresponsible for their feelings,
and creating a loss of overallindividuality.
This enmeshment is important foryou to learn because once you
(00:37):
unlearn this pattern, a largeburden of relationship toxicity
falls off of your shoulders.
Opposite to enmeshment, which isthe healthier response to
relationships, is attunement,where you engage with a person
by choice, you stay connectedand empathic without losing your
sense of your own emotions,without losing sense of
(00:59):
yourself.
Getting rid of enmeshmentwithout learning healthy
attunement dynamics createshyper and toxic individualism,
which is not what we're goingfor.
And if this hasn't occurred toyou until now, I will invite you
to notice where in yourrelationships are you enmeshed.
The concept here is essential tounderstanding because it exposes
(01:22):
one of the most invisible forcesbehind relationship exhaustion.
When you operate in an enmeshedpattern, your nervous system is
constantly scanning for otherpeople's emotional cues, trying
to maintain peace throughanticipation.
That constant vigilance createsan illusion of closeness because
you're constantly thinking aboutthe person, but actually keeps
(01:46):
you in a state of internallabor.
Enmeshment makes you believethat constant hypervigilance is
closeness, that reading everysmall bit of data and signal
makes it about your worth andsecurity of the relationship.
And learning enmeshmentdismantles all of this invisible
workload.
(02:06):
When you recognize that anotherperson's emotions are not your
signal to regulate them, youremove an entire layer of
psychological noise from yoursystem.
The space that opens up mightlook like emotional distance in
the beginning, but it's actuallymental clarity and peace.
You stop managing your energythrough the moods of other
(02:27):
people and start makingdecisions from your own internal
reference point, which by theway is the best reference point
and the only real referencepoint to begin with.
This shift of going fromenmeshment to attunement rewires
your sense of intimacy.
When you no longer manage yourconnection through other
(02:48):
people's emotions around you,you begin experiencing
steadiness in yourrelationships, and that feels
much better than the controlyou're trying to exert on them.
And then by no surprise whathappens also is that everyone
else starts to treat you withattunement and respect of your
own opinions and your values,and they all drop their own
(03:08):
enmeshment burden on you.
And this reciprocity between thetwo people transforms the
relationship dynamic.
The toxicity you thought livedin the relationship dissolves
because the fuel which is yourconstant emotional management of
others and others control of youis gone.
Once you unlearn enmeshment, yourelease yourself from emotional
(03:30):
labor, which up until now mighthave looked to you like love or
real connection, but it is not.
This transition from enmeshmentto relating with relationships
and going to attunement is aprocess.
It involves learning torecognize which emotions are
yours and which belong tosomeone else, and understanding
(03:51):
that creating healthy boundariesdoes not mean you're abandoning
the relationship.
It means you're engaging morehealthily.
Getting rid of enmeshmentwithout learning healthy
attunement createshyperindividualism, the kind
that mistakes withdrawal forhealing.
When someone detaches abruptlyfrom enmeshment, they often
(04:14):
confuse isolation withself-protection.
The nervous system that oncesurvived in a relationship
through merging now tries tosurvive through avoidance.
And it might feel powerful inthe beginning, but it's just
another form of fear, and thatfear hides behind independence.
Healthy attunement requires thecapacity to stay relational
(04:37):
without losing yourself-command.
This is a very evolved nervoussystem skill.
This is not a personality or agenetic trait that you're born
with.
It demands awareness, skillbuilding, pacing, your own
emotional literacy.
The goal is not detachment, it'sthe differentiation of
enmeshment and attunement bychoice.
(04:58):
To remain aware of the otherperson's emotional field without
absorbing it or dismissing itcompletely.
When you integrate attunementafter unlearning enmeshment, you
develop a relational authoritythat is magnetic.
You sense connection and otherpeople sense that connection
with you and they seek it out.
(05:20):
During this process, yourinternal reference point is the
guide.
You experience closeness withoutbeing consumed by it.
And this is where maturitylives, the ability to hold
proximity and boundaries at thesame time.
Without the development of thisskill, liberation of your
enmeshment will simply turn intoanother dependency, but this
(05:43):
time the dependency will be onisolation instead of attachment.
Enmeshment describes a state ofbeing deeply entangled when
other people's sadness, anxietymeans the same for you.
This happens with blurred ornon-existent boundaries.
This is where you yourselfhaven't learned emotional
independence.
In an enmeshed family system,role and expectations are
(06:07):
confused and the members of thefamily feel overly responsible
for each other's emotions andwell-being.
In an enmeshed family system youmight think that your actions
cause other people's happinessand sadness.
There are very typicalcharacteristics of enmeshed
relationships that include lackof boundaries, emotional fusion,
(06:27):
where family members feelemotionally dependent on one
another and they experience eachother's emotions rather than
their own.
It includes poor emotionalindependence, where you struggle
with your own identity and yourown emotional self-regulation.
It includes oversharing andexcessive control.
Parents get overly involved inthe children's lives, or one
(06:50):
partner attempts to control theother.
It also includes difficulty withseparation.
In family dynamics, it shows upas a child who feels responsible
for their parents' happiness, ora family where members feel they
cannot have their own separatelife or opinions.
In romantic relationship itinvolves a partner who lies to
(07:12):
keep the significant otherclose, or a relationship where
one person's identity isentirely dependent and defined
by other people's approval.
I know most of you want otherpeople to stop controlling you.
You can absolutely feel it whenthey try to manage your choices,
your timing, your values, allbecause they believe that their
(07:32):
happiness depends on yourbehavior, on your compliance,
your endless availability.
This type of enmeshment shows upas dominance and looks like
authority over you.
Their control is absolutelynecessary for their own inner
peace, because they're afraidthat if you make your own
independent choices, thenthey're gonna feel loss of
(07:55):
control.
They're afraid that if youchange, they'll lose access to
the version of you that keepsthem emotionally stable.
Which of course is all a lie.
These are all just thoughterrors that can be easily
corrected.
While trying to get out of thisenmeshment dynamic, you can
teach them through confrontationor explanation.
(08:17):
But unfortunately that type ofinstruction doesn't rewire
people.
The moment you stopparticipating in their emotional
fusion is when their controlloses its anchor, and that's
when they start to learn byexample.
You heal the enmeshement dynamicof another individual by not
demanding it from them, but byembodying it, by exemplifying
(08:41):
it.
When your nervous system learnsattunement, presence without
absorption, care withoutcompliance, everyone around you
will start to recalibrate.
They sense that your stabilityis no longer negotiable, and
they will learn that forthemselves.
That recognition alone does moreteaching than any lecture or
(09:03):
explanation ever could.
Teaching others attunementwithout enmeshment in your
relationships becomes moreeffortless once you've learned
it yourself, because yourregulation becomes their
instruction manual.
And you can shift this entiredynamic without a single
argument, without ever having tomake a single point of view and
(09:25):
having wish that you wereunderstood.
So the way you're gonna starthealing it is think of it like
your nervous system as basicallybeing your internal dashboard,
your database.
Every time you think you'refeeling somebody else's
emotions, what's actuallyhappening is that your thoughts
are interpreting their signalsand your nervous system is
creating your own emotionalresponse.
(09:47):
So to say you're not actuallycarrying their emotions, you're
carrying your emotions abouttheir emotions.
And that's where my C-nearalgorithm comes in extremely
handy.
C-near.
C standing for circumstance thatis someone else being close to
you, feeling upset or anxious.
(10:08):
N being your nervous systemthoughts, which picks up on the
cues.
Maybe they're sighing, maybethey're making microfacial
expressions, maybe they'repacing.
Your body starts to feel thattension through your thoughts
that kicked in, and it picks upon their anxiety and stress.
This is happening through yourown nervous system.
Then comes the E, which is youremotions.
(10:31):
Your thoughts about theirfeelings generate your emotions.
You might feel anxious becauseyou think, oh no, they're upset,
I need to immediately fix it.
Then comes A, which is theaction.
Because you feel the anxiety,you might jump up at the first
opportunity to soothe them or tomake them feel better.
(10:51):
Mistakenly thinking that themfeeling better would then result
in you feeling better.
Mistakenly thinking that if youtook on their problem and solved
it for them, you manage theirfeelings well enough, then you
would feel better.
When in reality their feelingsare their responsibility.
You can teach them, but again,that won't happen through
(11:12):
enmeshment.
That will only happen throughattunement.
The last one is results, the R.
From taking responsibility fortheir emotions, anxiety, and
stress, the result becomes thatyou are staying enmeshed.
You've blurred the lines betweenyour own emotional state and
theirs.
This is a strong call towardsawareness and realization.
(11:35):
With this you can start to shifttowards attunement.
And you can use the sameformula, but add layers of
awareness.
And the way that looks like isthat you pause and you ask
yourself, is this my emotion ortheirs?
You remind yourself that yournervous system is responding to
your own thoughts about thesituation.
The other person's emotions arenot directly living inside you,
(12:00):
or vice versa.
Over time, practicing thisawareness lets you stay engaged
and compassionate without losingyourself.
This is you learning tofine-tune your empathy so it
doesn't drain you.
It lets you connect in ahealthier way.
Letting go of enmeshment doesnot mean that you're detaching
(12:20):
yourself.
It does not mean toxicindividuality.
It means that you're choosing tobe attuned.
And that is extremelyempowering.
There are multiple relationshipsin my life that I choose to be
attuned.
And you might do the same.
Because imagine if you have afriend who's really anxious
about a job interview, they'repacing, they're talking fast,
(12:41):
they're sweating, and you startto feel a familiar knot in your
own stomach, now you're in thatenmeshment mode, and you might
immediately think, oh no, I needto fix this, I need to calm
them, and you'll jump intoaction.
When in reality, there's yourown nervous system reacting to
your thoughts about theiranxiety, creating your own
(13:03):
anxiety.
If you apply this separation,this little boundary, what
happens is that you've created aspace for yourself to think,
okay, the circumstance is thatmy friend has an interview, the
circumstance is that she'sanxious, my nervous system is
picking up on all of these cues,but my emotions are my own.
(13:24):
In this way, instead of jumpingto fix it, you might say to
yourself, I can be supportivewithout taking on their burden
of anxiety.
I can listen, I can offer a calmpresence, I can even offer
solutions, but I don't have tofeel what they feel, and I don't
have to get dysregulated justbecause they are dysregulated.
(13:44):
Similarly, it happens in afamily dynamic where a person is
upset and you always feltresponsible for keeping their
peace or keeping them happy.
In an enmeshed state, you willimmediately jump into soothing
them.
You will say whatever you thinkwill calm them down, you will do
whatever it takes to help themfeel comfortable so that in turn
(14:05):
you can feel comfortable, evenif it means sacrificing your own
opinions and feelings on thematter.
But through the space you giveby learning that their emotions
are theirs, you will create aspace where you might have an
opportunity to think, mydiscomfort about their upset is
being created by my ownthoughts.
Do I want to create it or do Iwant to step back and offer
(14:27):
support without taking a burden?
The more you practice this ineach micro situation, the more
you train yourself to noticewhen you're slipping into
enmeshment.
And this way you can gentlyguide yourself back to
attunement.
Over time you're building thismuscle.
Over time you'll start torealize with more and more
practice that you're feelingthis emotion because you are
(14:50):
experiencing it or becauseyou're picking it up from
somebody else and thinking it'syours to carry.
When you start this transitionfrom enmeshment to healthy
attunement, one of the mostcommon questions that surfaces
is around self-doubt.
Your mind unquestionablypresents, have I gone cold in
this relationship?
Am I starting to care less?
(15:12):
Am I dropping them out as animportant relationship in my
life?
And this confusion happensbecause the nervous system
equates the newfound calm withdistance.
When you stop absorbing otherpeople's emotions, the internal
noise quiets down, and thatquiet and peace will feel
unnatural in the beginning.
(15:33):
When you have started to equateconstant worry about other
people's emotions as yourresponsibility, when you start
to equate that responsibilitywith a strong relationship, and
when you start to take a stepback from that, there's a space
that's created.
And this is the space where youstart to fill it with
attunement.
(15:53):
And I want to highlight thisparadox because when you find
yourself in that space, thestrangeness of peaceful
relationships, your mind isgoing to want to flag it as
danger.
Because to the lower brain,anything that's new gets flagged
as danger.
But what you might beexperiencing is regulation, the
(16:14):
nervous system recalibrating andrelearning how to stay present
without constant surveillance.
You're observing, listening, andresponding to relationships
without tension.
Your mind will have a tendencyto call it hyperindividualism in
the beginning.
Because remember, your lowerbrain calls it danger and your
(16:35):
mind has to label it somethingin order for it to protect you
from it.
When what you're creating is nothyperindividualism, it's
attunement by choice.
It takes some time to recognizethis new neutrality as strength.
Eventually what will happen iswhat once felt like detachment
will start to sound like you'rebeing available in a
(16:57):
relationship by choice.
And through this you perceiveanother person's pain and you
remain centered, and you chooseto accompany them through that
pain.
This is a much more upgradedlanguage of care that sustains
connections over a long periodof time.
Hyperindividualism is theopposite extreme of enmeshment.
(17:18):
It's emotional indifference andit's complete detachment.
When you stop caring about otherpeople's pain, that's what toxic
individualism is.
It feels regulating, but it'sstill based on fear and
avoidance.
And this avoidance is notfreedom.
It looks like independence, butbut it's far from it.
(17:39):
Humans are wired for connection.
We're designed to coexist, towitness, to accompany, to love
people.
The goal here is not to detachfrom the suffering of others,
it's to stay present with itwhile knowing whose pain belongs
to who.
When you love someone, theirdifficulty might move you, as it
(18:01):
should, because that's what wedo with people who we choose to
love.
Your compassion here is evidenceof your humanity.
But your nervous system alsodoes not need to collapse over
it in order to prove arelationship.
You can recognize that theirpain is theirs, and your pain is
the ache of witnessing it.
Those two different experiencesand the clarity between them is
(18:26):
what keeps compassionsustainable.
Attunement is the ability toaccompany someone in their
difficulty by choice, and thatis an incredibly empowering
choice you're gonna get to make.
You don't do it by guilt,obligation, or reflex.
You do it by consciousparticipation.
You choose to stay near, youchoose to offer support, to
(18:49):
hold, to listen, all the whileremaining grounded in your own
nervous system safety.
You are connected and you're notconsumed.
This is what mature love andconnection looks like.
Proximity, empathy, andboundaries with structure.
All of this care happens withagency.
(19:10):
When you're in isolation throughhyperindividualism, you're not
connected to anyone at all.
Enmeshment appears empathic, butit's over surveillance.
Surveillance of other people'smoods, approval, reactions.
This is your nervous system'sattempt to secure safety through
hyperattunement.
If this is familiar, then inthis state you're constantly
(19:33):
living in overfunctioning,monitoring, anticipating, trying
to stabilize the emotionalenvironment around you.
Believing that your own harmonydepends on your management of
other people's emotions.
Attunement, on the other hand,is very much a regulated
awareness.
It's your capacity to stayconnected.
It operates from internalsteadiness.
(19:54):
In this state you notice, yourespond, and you stay available
while remaining anchored in yourown perception and your own
authority.
This is a whole new level ofemotional leadership.
What ends up happening,especially for Muslim women, is
that their empathy is usuallythe first doorway into
enmeshment.
(20:15):
It's an extraordinary humanfunction that allows you to
sense and interpret the emotionsof other people.
But without structure, withoutguidance, without skill
development, it creates a formof self-neglect when this
empathic nervous system startsto use empathy as a survival
strategy.
(20:35):
And if that's happening, empathyis not serving you.
Another dynamic I commonly seeis from women who are trying to
heal from their enmeshmentpatterns, and when they
recognize that that's howthey're living, reflexively,
through a knee-jerk reaction,they try to drop their empathy
altogether because they start tothink that this is a weakness.
(20:57):
The realization that you areenmeshed with someone does not
call for immediate abandonmentof your own empathy.
The goal here is not to abandonempathy or suppress sensitivity,
it's to build a mental distance.
And the work evolves in a waywhere your empathy turns into
strong attunement and verystrong relationships.
(21:18):
And all of that happens throughcreating a little bit more of
awareness intentionally.
Just as empathy might have beenyour first gateway towards
enmeshment, it is also yourgateway towards attunement,
towards creating safe, loving,long-lasting relationships,
relationships that feel safe.
And this differentiation issuper helpful because women go
(21:41):
through their entire lives beingweighed down by their empathy
when it's actually a superpower.
If enmeshment is the mostdominant way you've learned how
to relate to people inrelationships, then it will take
you a hot minute to relearnthese patterns and to come into
attunement.
And one of the most promisingoutcomes here is that empathic
(22:03):
attunement becomes aself-generating energy.
And you'll notice that empathicenmeshment is completely
exhausting.
So if you've been navigatinglife through a high degree of
empathic enmeshment, you mightwant to start to expect that
things are gonna change rightafter listening to this podcast.
And now that you can tell thedifference between healthy
(22:26):
attunement and toxic empathicenmeshment, then all of a sudden
your patterns will change andyou will release these
immediately.
And you might even feelfrustration if you can't release
them immediately.
But be patient with yourself.
This is the step in the rightdirection.
Once you continue to take stepsor continue to practice this
(22:46):
shift, you will land inattunement.
It might be tomorrow, it mightbe next month, it might be a
year from now.
I don't know how many ingrainedpatterns you're working with and
how the journey will unfold foryou, but consider this the
absolute first step.
As a Muslim woman, you're taughtthat making somebody else's mood
(23:07):
or comfort your responsibilityis the very definition of
caring, which leads you tofurther believe that love might
mean effort, acts of service,selflessness, contribution.
And when these are the qualitiesthat you adopt willingly, that's
going to create the differencebetween enmeshment and
(23:28):
attunement.
Through socialization andcultural upbringings, enmeshment
gets confused with labor oflove.
But when in reality it's basedin fear, afraid of losing
connection, afraid ofdisappointing others, afraid of
being misunderstood, afraid ofbeing alone.
That's what keeps you entangledin exhausting emotional labor.
(23:51):
And this exhaustion is beyondwhat can be explained by the
work you put in a relationship.
Healthy work that you put in arelationship can be and is
tiring a lot of times, but thatlabor of love is not exhausting
beyond explanation.
When you're choosing to holdspace for your kids' emotions,
when you're the anchor of thefamily, when you're doing all of
(24:12):
this emotional labor, it istiring.
But at the end, the choice isusing conscious engagement with
someone.
And when you've done this work,you look back and you say, Yeah,
that was time and effort wellspent.
I would do that again any day ofthe week because I choose to
love these people.
With that I pray to Allah, YaAllah, give us loving people in
(24:35):
our lives that we can attune to.
Grant us wisdom to recognizewhere our responsibility ends
and where trust in you begins.
Help us show up for people froma place of strength.
Let our empathy be a form ofworship.
Ya Allah, make our heartsspacious enough to love deeply
(24:56):
while remaining anchored in you.
Amin Ya Rabul Amin.
Please keep me in your du'az.
I will talk to you guys nexttime.
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