They are the ones who clean up the messes of an adult child and provide a roof over their heads. Full of good intentions, they help someone with a substance use disorder (SUD) in various ways. Enabling someone doesn’t mean you agree with their behavior. This may be hard at first, especially if your loved one gets angry with you. For example, you might offer rides to appointments but say no to giving money for gas or anything else.
What is enabling?
It’s not that you need to cut the person out of your life necessarily, but they need to know that they are no longer welcome to come to you for support. First is recognizing that you’re contributing to a cycle of enabling. Enabling can be hard to spot for the people within the enabling relationship. You may need to take care of children or aging parents. But in an enabling relationship, a person who’s used to being enabled will come to expect your help. The specifics can change, but at its core, enabling behavior tends to have some common themes.
Anyone could be an enabler without even realizing it. You might feel torn seeing your loved one face a difficult moment. It can be difficult to say no when someone we care about asks for our help, even if that “help” could cause more harm than good.
What Is an Enabling Behavior?
Sandstone Care is here to help you learn how to set the right boundaries with your loved ones to help them recover from substance use and mental health issues. With enabling, the person might not always rely on the other person, but they might be emotionally attached, which causes them to do things they think will keep them happy, even if their actions are harming them. Help them celebrate their wins and promote healthy behaviors by doing things that are beneficial for both of you.
If your help makes it easy for a loved one to continue with their problematic behavior, you may be enabling them. Rather than helping them understand the consequences of their actions, you’re letting them get away with it. But these behaviors often encourage the other person to continue the same behavioral patterns and not seek professional help. However, most people who engage in enabling behaviors do so unknowingly. Establishing boundaries can help prevent you from enabling your loved one’s problematic behaviors.
What Is an Enabler & What the Signs of Enabling
Over time you become angrier and more frustrated with her and with yourself for not being able to say no. Say your sister continues to leave her kids with you when she goes out. Resentment can damage your emotional well-being, but it can also help you realize the situation may not be healthy. You might feel hurt and angry about spending so much time trying to help someone who doesn’t seem to appreciate you. Your resentment may be directed more toward your loved one, toward the situation, both, or even yourself. Or, “I can’t stay in this relationship if you don’t get professional help.”
Characteristics of Enablers
- No, usually enablers have a heightened sense of empathy, which is why it can be difficult for them to hold the other person accountable or allow them to face consequences.
- Disconnecting from a loved one is a self-protective measure — and it’s usually a last resort
- If you believe your loved one is looking for attention, you might hope ignoring the behavior will remove their incentive to continue.
According to studies, overprotective parenting is defined as a parent being overly restrictive in an attempt to protect their child from potential harm or risk. Emotional and psychological dependencies might be seen in a romantic relationship or a relationship between a parent and child. For example, this might look like constantly paying off the other person’s debts or irresponsible spending habits. Desperate enabling causes stress and difficult challenges for everyone involved. This stage is often filled with guilt, frustration, and overwhelming stress, but it can also be the first step toward acknowledging the need for change and setting healthier boundaries. The parent might think, “I’ve been trying so hard to help, but now I see it’s only made things worse.”
What Is the Psychology Behind Enablers?
It’s not always easy to distinguish between empowering someone and enabling them. You might believe if you don’t help, the outcome for everyone involved will be far worse. Pointing out how their behavior makes you feel and giving them projects to own can help you both
How Do I Know If I Am Enabling Someone?
Enablers, even if well-intentioned, allow a person to continue destructive behaviors. The opposite of an enabler is someone who prevents or discourages another person from engaging in destructive behaviors. The behaviors of a codependent person and an enabler can often share similarities, but they are not the same. With financial dependency, a person might provide excessive support for another person, causing them to not face the full consequences of their actions. However, this ends up in the other person continuing their destructive and addictive behaviors, and the situation worsening over time.
If this is sounding familiar, it may be time to reassess your role in allowing problematic behaviors to continue. In a lot of cases, it’s other people around you who are more likely to recognize that you’re helping someone who isn’t helping themselves,” Dr. Borland explains. When helping becomes a way of avoiding a seemingly inevitable discomfort, it’s a sign that you’ve crossed over into enabling behavior. When ‘helping’ others is unhealthy for you, it’s time to set firm boundaries
We Care About Your Privacy
Unfortunately, most people don’t have the skillset to navigate things like addiction appropriately. This often happens out of a desire to help or protect close relationships, but it actually ends up preventing the person from facing the consequences of their actions or taking responsibility. Enabling behavior is when someone unintentionally supports or encourages another person’s harmful habits or choices. When the term enabler is used, it is usually referring to drug addiction or alcohol misuse.
The more you spend time, energy and financial resources on others, the more effect it can have on your own well-being. There are consequences to our own well-being when we enable others.” “If you’re giving and giving and giving to someone else, eventually, you’re going to start running on empty. So, when you start taking on tasks to help others, it’s only natural that eventually something has to give. Enabling can also be a way of protecting those we love from others’ scrutiny — or protecting ourselves from acknowledging a loved one’s shortcomings.
How to stop enabling a loved one
At the same time, it may be difficult for you to stop enabling them, which in turn might increase your irritation. You might feel depleted and blame the other person for taking all your energy and time. Sometimes, when all your time and energy what does being an enabler mean is focused on your loved one, you might feel like your efforts aren’t appreciated or reciprocated. By allowing the other person to constantly rely on you to get their tasks done, they may be less likely to find reasons to do them the next time. Taking on someone else’s responsibilities is another form of enabling behavior.
It can be extremely difficult to help a person you care about who has a drug or alcohol dependence without becoming an enabler of their addiction. Confronting your loved one can help them realize you don’t support the behavior while also letting them know you’re willing to help them work toward change. Missing out on things you want or need for yourself because you’re so involved with taking care of a loved one can also be a sign you’re enabling that person.
Instead of confronting the issue, the mother’s support promotes further drug use and delays the real help the child needs for recovery. Because she loves her child, she provides financial support and makes excuses for why her child is struggling at school or work. She might not realize it’s a serious problem, or she may be in denial of the problem and view it as a bad habit vs addiction. An enabler can be anybody, but it is often a family member or close friend who is enabling another family member or friend. While you may not be able to change their ways, it is important to understand your own actions, and begin to set healthy boundaries.
- Paying a person’s bills and giving them money with no expectations of repayment will only fuel more drug use.
- With codependency, a person is addicted to a relationship in a way where they rely excessively on another person.
- If they violate any of the rules, there will be consequences and they will lose your support and possibly be out on their own.
- Sometimes it’s neglect because more energy is being dedicated to helping the family member with the dependency.
- Even if you personally disagree with a loved one’s behavior, you might ignore it for any number of reasons.
This includes managing all personal responsibilities they have been neglecting. You will only support them in positive ways that have a direct impact on their healing and recovery. If they want your help, they will need to be open and honest about their addiction with themself and others.
Oro Recovery provides compassionate care, combined with evidence-based treatment therapies for people struggling with addiction and mental health. Being able to identify the signs of enabling someone and taking steps to correct them is crucial for promoting healthy behaviors. Even if empowering bad behavior leads to unhealthy consequences, it is almost always done from a place of love and support. Let them know you understand how your previous financial support was enabling their addiction and bad behavior, and it will end now. You need to be in a healthy place to properly support a person who is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Identifying enabling behavior can be challenging, but it’s even more important to know how to stop being an enabler.
It may be a decision you make consciously or not, but at the root of your behavior is an effort to avoid conflict. Enabling becomes less like making a choice to be helpful and more like helping in an attempt to keep the peace. Often, we think we’re helping others because we want to. In the dynamics between parents and their grown children.