The Billie Cedillos Podcast

Today we’re talking about something many survivors feel, but don’t have language for enmeshment.

Enmeshment is not love.

It feels like love at first… but it slowly erases you.

If you’ve ever felt like someone’s mood controlled your peace,

If you’ve lost clarity, boundaries, or your sense of self in a connection,

If walking away felt like losing oxygen

This episode is for you.

We’re going to talk about what enmeshment is, why it happens, how it happens, how to recognize it, how to avoid it and what God says about it.”

WHAT IS ENMESHMENT (Word for Word Teaching)

“Enmeshment happens when emotional boundaries between two people become blurred or nonexistent.

It’s when:

• Their feelings become your responsibility

• Their needs outweigh your own

• Their approval determines your worth

• And separation feels threatening instead of neutral

Enmeshment is not closeness.

It’s fusion.

You’re not choosing the relationship

you’re surviving inside it.”

WHY ENMESHMENT HAPPENS

“Enmeshment doesn’t start in adulthood.

It starts in childhood.

It happens when a child learns:

Love must be earned

Safety depends on pleasing others

Boundaries cause abandonment

And connection equals survival

Many of us grew up emotionally fused to a parent who:

Needed us emotionally

Couldn’t self-regulate

Used guilt, fear, or obligation

Or made us responsible for their feelings

So later, our nervous system confuses attachment with identity.

Holy Truth Collection -Podcast

Holy Truth

Here’s the holy truth abused women need to hear:

God is not neutral about what was done to you.

He saw the manipulation.

He heard the lies spoken behind closed doors.

He counted every tear you cried in silence.

And the same God who is gentle with the wounded

is fearsome toward the one who caused the harm.

Scripture says the Lord is close to the brokenhearted,

but it also says He opposes the proud and brings the hidden things into the light.

1 Peter 5:5 (ESV)

“Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’”

Proverbs 3:34 (ESV)

“Toward the scorners He is scornful, but to the humble He gives favor.”

I want to talk about something that changed the way I understand love.

Because for a long time, I thought I just had a bad picker.

I thought I kept choosing the wrong people.

But the truth is, it wasn’t my mind choosing my partners.

It was my nervous system.

Your nervous system is shaped in childhood.

Before you have language.

Before you have logic.

It learns what feels safe, what feels familiar, and what feels like home.

And here’s the hard part.

Safe doesn’t always mean healthy.

Safe means recognizable.

If you grew up in a home where love was inconsistent, your nervous system learned to stay alert.

If affection came and went, you learned to wait.

If you had to earn attention, you learned to perform.

If emotions were unpredictable, you learned to monitor the room.

So later in life, when you meet someone who creates that same emotional atmosphere, your body lights up.

Not because it’s good for you.

But because it feels known.

That anxiety you call chemistry?

That intensity you call passion?

Often, that’s your nervous system recognizing a pattern it already survived.

Calm can feel boring when your childhood was chaos.

Consistency can feel suspicious when love was conditional.

And peace can feel unfamiliar when your nervous system was trained to stay in fight or flight.

So we don’t fall in love with people who treat us well.

We fall in love with people who activate what we already know how to navigate.

Your body chooses what it thinks it can survive.

This is why we stay in relationships that hurt us longer than we should.

Because leaving doesn’t just feel like losing a person.

It feels like losing a strategy that once kept us connected to love.

As children, we couldn’t leave.

We adapted.

We learned to chase.

We learned to wait.

We learned to shrink or overgive or stay quiet.

And as adults, those adaptations show up as attraction.

We’re not chasing the person.

We’re chasing the feeling of finally getting what we didn’t receive the first time.

We believe, somewhere deep inside, that if this person chooses us, it will rewrite the original wound.

That this time, we’ll be enough.

This time, they’ll stay.

This time, love won’t leave.

But healing doesn’t come from repeating the wound.

It comes from recognizing it.

When you understand that your nervous system is driving attraction, you stop shaming yourself for past choices.

You stop asking, “What’s wrong with me?”

And you start asking, “What did my body learn to expect?”

The goal isn’t to never feel activated.

The goal is to learn the difference between familiar and safe.

Because real love doesn’t keep your nervous system in survival mode.

It doesn’t make you prove your worth.

It doesn’t feel like a chase.

Real love feels steady.

And at first, that can feel uncomfortable.

But discomfort doesn’t mean danger.

Sometimes it means you’re learning something new.

And that’s where the pattern begins to change.

Chaos felt familiar because it mirrored your childhood emotional environments. Criticism, neglect, mocking etc.

We talk about how familiarity is not compatibility although it may feel like it. The cost of not stopping the cycle and choosing toxic/abusive partners. How we choose chaos because it’s all we knew growing up.

It is not about intelligence or ignorance, it’s about poor programming as a child. It depend on the severity of childhood trauma. We can all have some type of childhood dysfunction as no family is perfect, but there is childhood trauma that leaves some at a higher risk for abuse later in life.

Take Away

Practical step: Write down what felt “normal” in your first relationship

Reflective question: What did I confuse with love because it felt familiar?

There’s always a seed where chaos and confusion start. For me it started in childhood with codependency with my caregivers. That later carried on into my romantic relationships. Today I share a brief part of my life as a teenager where the seed began in choosing abusive unhealed men in my life.

If this resonates with you I encourage you to subscribe and to share with with someone else who might relate and feel a piece of belonging on their healing journey OR to begin their own healing journey.

Blessings!

Hi, and welcome to the Billie Cedillos podcast. I want to thank you for joining me today, and I have a special word for the woman who feels unseen. Let me remind you, dear soul, that you are not invisible, even when your prayers feel like they echo back in silence, even when you pour yourself out, and no one notices, God does. 
God sees you, beloved. And the Bible says in Genesis 1613, you are the God who sees me. That wasn't spoken by a woman on a mountaintop. 
It was spoken by a woman in pain, overlooked, and pushed aside. And God met her right there. Beloved, let me remind you. 
If people missed you, it doesn't mean you were unworthy. If someone walked away from you, It doesn't mean that you were not loved. If you were overlooked, it doesn't mean you were forgotten. 
And if you were silenced, it doesn't mean that you are insignificant. God sees the tears you cried alone. He sees the strength it took for you to get back up today. 
He sees the parts of you that no one has clapped for. And here's a holy truth. Being unseen by people often means you're being hidden by God. 
For healing, for protection, and for preparation. Your story is not over, beloved. Your value is not up for debate. 
Your presence matters, right here, right now, just as you are.

"I grew up in a home where love came with strings, where boundaries were blurred, and where chaos was... familiar. It shaped how I saw relationships, how I responded to conflict, and how I measured my worth. Ilearned early that keeping the peace sometimes meant ignoring my own truth. "it meant serving others and meeting their needs and abandoning myself. Codependency is not a badge to wear though, as a codependent, control was at the forefront of our relationships too, not to hurt someone like a narcissist does, but to "fix" or "rescue".

And this podcast is about the moment clarity replaces confusion.

Here, we talk about trauma, healing, relationships, and faith — without minimizing the hard parts or spiritualizing pain.

This space is for women who loved deeply, ignored their instincts, and are learning to trust themselves again.

Because when you know…

you don’t go back.

Welcome.”

Hi and welcome! I’m Billie Cedillos.

This podcast is about the moment clarity replaces confusion.

Here, we talk about trauma, healing, relationships, and faith — without minimizing the hard parts or spiritualizing pain.

This space is for women who loved deeply, ignored their instincts, and are learning to trust themselves again.

Because when you know…

you don’t go back.

Welcome.”