Helping vs Enabling: Whats the Difference?
Enabling is a complex and often unconscious behavior where a person supports or facilitates another individual’s harmful actions. While the intention behind enabling might be to help or protect, the result is often the opposite, leading to negative consequences for both the enabler and the person they are trying to help. This blog explores the science behind enabling, how to recognize it, and its detrimental effects on individuals and their relationships. The key to breaking the pattern of enabling is to return responsibility to the person it belongs to.
- If you think your actions might enable your loved one, consider talking to a therapist.
- An intervention can be a good way to help them understand their problems.
- Perhaps the worst type of enabling is when family members do nothing at all.
- You may also feel hesitant or fearful of your loved one’s reaction if you confront them, or you could feel they may stop loving you if you stop covering up for them.
- But supporting behaviors can empower a loved one to recover.
Enablers will often blame other people for the person’s bad behavior. If you find yourself instinctually siding with the addicted person at all times, you may be an enabler. Enablers do not like or feel OK with what the enabled person is doing. To the contrary, enablers are often the ones most affected by, and most disturbed by, the negative behaviors of the enabled person.
So, when you start taking on tasks to help others, it’s only natural that eventually something has to give. Trying to manage your own life along with others’ starts to wear down your reserves. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness. You may find yourself running the other person’s errands, doing their chores, or even completing their work. This can also include larger obligations, like caring for a sick relative.
This is a very similar pattern to what is almost always necessary to help a substance user see the need for help. Depending which role you take on within the family system, you may be enabling the primary enabler. People often engage in comforting coping skills, regardless of enabled person meaning the long term consequences they may bring to themselves or the rest of the family.
You Engage in the Same Behaviors Around Them
Supporting someone empowers the person to take active steps in their recovery. By downplaying the seriousness of the situation, the enabler avoids facing uncomfortable truths, but this denial only allows the harmful behavior to continue unchecked. Recognizing where this behavior comes from and setting healthy boundaries is the first step toward breaking the cycle and building healthier, stronger relationships. 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. First is recognizing that you’re contributing to a cycle of enabling.
The closer you are to a person needing help, the more likely you will enable them. This is because it’s harder to draw the line between acceptance and unacceptable behavior. There are no particular personality traits that make someone an enabler. Instead, it’s determined by your emotional connection to a person. Maybe a few months later they get discouraged and want to quit—so you talk them down and help them stay motivated to continue their treatment.
Therapists often work with people who find themselves enabling loved ones to help them address these patterns and offer support in more helpful and positive ways. They may also feel that you’ll easily give in on other boundaries, too. There’s a difference between supporting someone and enabling them. Someone struggling with depression may have a hard time getting out of bed each day.
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However, enablers usually have good intentions that are misplaced, while abusers are typically trying to gain something over their victims. The behaviors of a codependent person and an enabler can often share similarities, but they are not the same. One way to stop enabling a person with a mental health disorder is by first educating yourself on their condition. While parents should protect their children, overprotective parenting is excessive and often shields the child from learning from experiences and important life lessons.
Why Do Parents Enable Addiction or Mental Health Conditions?
If you love someone with a mental health condition or substance use disorder, you may feel as though you’re doing everything in your power to help them, but it’s just not working. Enabling behaviors can encourage unhelpful habits and behaviors, even if it’s unknowingly. But supporting behaviors can empower a loved one to recover.
Do Enablers Lack Empathy?
Or you may call your child’s school with an excuse when they haven’t completed a term project or studied for an important exam. If your choice is to provide, enable, and comfort, then ask yourself why you are doing this and what it is doing for you. KCC has a combination of employees and business partners that we contract with to provide services. Independent contractors are established corporate entities that are responsible for their own work hours and treatment plans, and liabilities.
- Being an enabler can take a toll on a person’s mental health, physical health, and overall well-being.
- Enabling, therefore, is a distorted attempt to solve problems.
- As an adult, they might enable a brother’s substance use by calling his boss to make excuses when he misses work.
In fact, enabling generally begins with the desire to help. You may try to help with the best of intentions and enable someone without realizing it. If you’re concerned you might be enabling someone’s behavior, read on to learn more about enabling, including signs, how to stop, and how to provide support to your loved one.
Parents frequently rely on their children to bring a sense of purpose and meaning to their lives. When parents finally accept that their addicted child needs more help than they can provide, they may feel like they have failed to fulfill their most important role in life. When you are close to a person struggling with addiction, it can be difficult to accurately assess the role you play in his or her life. Just so we’re all on the same page, allow me to briefly describe and define enabling.
There are rehab and detox programs for them when they’re ready to change. When they ask, you give them money without asking how they’ll use it. You let them get away with substance abuse because you know that calling for an intervention could upset them or even drive them away.
This involves setting boundaries between yourself and your loved one. You can no longer attempt to take on responsibility for anyone else’s actions but your own. Your loved one’s choices are (and have always been) his or hers. Your loved one’s outcomes and consequences, as well, belong to him or her alone.
It’s not easy for someone with substance abuse problems to avoid drugs or alcohol. Keeping alcohol or other drugs accessible can make it difficult for someone with an addiction. In one sense, “enabling” has the same meaning as “empowering.” It means lending a hand to help people accomplish things they could not do by themselves.
Breaking this pattern requires setting firm boundaries and encouraging the child to take responsibility for their own recovery. For example, imagine a parent whose adult child is struggling with substance use. But in an enabling relationship, a person who’s used to being enabled will come to expect your help. So, you step in and fulfill those needs in order to avoid an argument or other consequence. We may think we’re helping someone by enabling them, but we need to understand that we’re only making the problem worse.
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An experienced individual and/or family counselor can be a valuable source of support for anyone who is looking to break enabling patterns. You must accept that while your enabling behaviors come from a place of love, enabling is an ineffective way of solving problems at best; debilitating to all involved at worst. You may buy another day or prevent another emergency, but in the end, you are only postponing the real solution. In order to recover from a mental illness, the person needs to make some changes—whether that means lifestyle changes, seeing a therapist, or taking meds.
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