Breaking the Enmeshment Cycle - Part Four: In the Aftermath of Collapse
From collapse to clarity in my own voice.
After the collapse, the air is different. The noise of the relationship is gone, and what’s left are the echoes. The unspoken truths, the choices I made, and the space that opened when I stopped holding what was never mine to carry. In the quiet, the patterns become visible. The distance, the dismissal, the re-enrollments — all the moments I once endured without question — now stand in sharp relief.
“The true meaning of fighting for your life is fighting to see yourself clearly”
I am learning to what degree my point of view differs from someone else’s. I am learning to read deeper meaning into what is being said without projecting my own story back. I am practicing accountability through what I call the Art of Being Integrous — keeping my word to continue to choose myself, even when the pull to abandon my truth is clouded.
At this point, I find myself being re-enrolled into their old story. I take an action, and it is met with a response that pulls me back into their narrative.
In my experience, this is the moment my point of view is dismissed. When I allow this to happen, I erase my own existence to live in theirs. If I stay, I choose to comply. And in doing so, I abandon myself.
Active listening allows me to understand their point of view. I acknowledged their perspective as different from mine. I recognize how their point of view reflects back the parts of myself I have outgrown. This recognition begins subconsciously, but as I fight to keep seeing myself clearly, it becomes conscious. I realize I am fighting to see myself — and that is the true meaning of “fighting for your life.”
There is a difference between taking accountability for myself and asking someone else to take accountability. My focus used to be entirely external. I needed them to take responsibility while ignoring my own choices and actions. This played out in our conversation. I was so hyper-focused on what was done to me that I dismissed what I did in return. I see the imbalance.
As human beings, we each carry our own sense of what is acceptable, shaped by lived experience and external conditioning. When we are aligned physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and energetically, our internal compass knows when we are in or out of integrity.
Much of my life was spent unconsciously living inside the lives of others. I was enrolled into my parents’ story so many times that, over time, I lived entirely in their reality and dismissed my own.
This is enmeshment.
Blurred boundaries where my sense of self became intertwined with — and sometimes dependent on — another’s reality, until my own voice, needs, and identity felt secondary or nonexistent.
It has taken me years to see this shift clearly.
This is the dynamic my relationship with my spiritual teacher hinges on: my enrollment in their story while consciously abandoning my own. I say consciously because I now see this choice for what it is — my decision to re-engage.
In the past, my endurance was measured by how long I could remain in an unhealthy environment. Now I am learning to recognize when the lesson has reached its expiration date.
Standing up for myself also means using my voice to name when I am being mistreated. There is a fine line between using my voice and being allowed to use it.
The truth is, I have always spoken up — until I realized no one was truly listening. That is when I chose silence.
There are many tactics designed to keep someone silent. The one I am most familiar with now is what I call The Art of Being Dismissed.
For me, this “art” is rarely loud or obvious — it lives in the silence, the quick change of subject, the way someone’s eyes glaze over while I speak. It is the quiet message: Your experience is inconvenient. Your truth is too much.
In conversation: I share my point of view, and I’m met with a look of confusion — maybe a smirk, widened eyes, or a slow headshake. I pause and ask, “What is that look?” naming the moment I feel dismissed. They stop, think for a moment… and then continue speaking from their perspective, inviting me back into their version of events — a familiar dynamic that no longer feels aligned. The lack of empathy lands heavy — my lived experience removed from the conversation.
This dismissal causes an energetic imbalance that triggers me to begin fighting for my life. When we are in that fight, our focus becomes getting our story right inside another’s story. We argue our point of view in an attempt to change theirs. In working with my spiritual teacher, I have learned that I am really arguing with myself — shouting at my own reflection, mirroring back the person I am choosing to be.
The rupture I created rippled into lives I may never see. I know the ripple will return in ways I cannot predict. I have been accused of leaving silently, yet my actions were visible to anyone who was truly watching. The one most confused was the person who supported me in moving on. From my perspective, they never believed I would actually leave — that I would keep holding the space even as they quietly stepped back, creating more distance between us and leaving room for others to step in.
In the aftermath, they said, “But you said…” I realized that in every conversation I believed was passive, they were collecting evidence I would never leave. I realized I needed more to stay — more effort, more connection, more attention. In my mind, "I could hear the unspoken exchange:
“You’ll adapt. You always have.”
”But I need something to meet me here.”
”This is what there is.”
That imagined conversation wasn’t about words we spoke out loud — it was the truth beneath our interactions. The gap between what I needed and what was offered had grown too wide to bridge.
The breaking point was the question, what is being integrous? I had been told that if the living situation changed, I would be informed and asked to leave. I witnessed firsthand that actions speak louder than words. In their silence, I created a story that the living situation had already changed — and it was from that story that I chose to leave.
Closing Reflection
Leaving was not an act of erasing the past. It was an act of honoring what I could finally see. The collapse was not the end, but the clearing. And in that clearing, I stand on my own ground — no longer fighting for my life inside someone else’s story.
Where Wholeness Speaks, Staci
Author’s note: This is what is means to recognize the re-enrollment, to name the dismissal, to choose departure from clarity rather than collapse, and to remain whole.
Part Five will explore what it looks and feels like to be pulled back in, why I chose it in the past, and why I am choosing differently now.
