Enmeshment occurs between two or more people in a relationship where personal boundaries are permeable and unclear. Boundaries between people are so weak and damaged that their individuality disappears. This is when the other person's pain becomes your pain. Their struggles become your struggles.

For example, parents who enable an adult child with a drug addiction. This happens because the parents don’t have strong, healthy boundaries. They cannot separate themselves emotionally from the situation in order to see it clearly. Everything is controlled by the child's emotions and what this person wants, rather than logic and what is the right thing. The parents subject themselves to abuse and more importantly, they are not doing right by their child - because they are too blinded by their child's emotions and pain to care for themselves or their child, and because they are blind to the fact that their own needs are being met this way as well. They operate on the premise that relieving their child's discomfort - which is now their discomfort - makes them good parents. They tell themselves that giving their child money is better than what their son or daughter might go do if they didn't. They tell themselves giving their child the money keeps the peace.

There is a belief that this happens because the parents can't stand to see their child in pain. While this is certainly true, it happens because they cannot separate themselves from their child. It's the parents who cannot take the pain. If they were able to think clearly and were able to distance themselves from the situation, they would realize that they are not helping at all. They are not relieving their child's pain. They are actually enabling the problem and making it worse.