It’s difficult for someone to get help if they don’t fully see the consequences of their actions. Enabling doesn’t mean you support your loved one’s addiction or other behavior. You might believe if you don’t help, the outcome for everyone involved will be far worse. Maybe you excuse troubling behavior, lend money, or assist in other ways. Remember, your worth isn’t determined by how much you do for others.
- As you work on overcoming your enabling tendencies, you might find that your relationships change.
- While parents should protect their children, overprotective parenting is excessive and often shields the child from learning from experiences and important life lessons.
- It’s like having a personal trainer for your mental health.
Enabling Overprotective Parenting
Her mantra for living life is “What you seek is seeking you”. Enabling someone doesn’t mean you agree with their behavior. You might simply try to help your loved one out because you’re worried about them or afraid their actions might hurt them, you, or other family members. 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. Minimizing the issue implies to your loved one that they can continue to treat you similarly with no consequences. It’s often frightening to think about bringing up serious issues like addiction once you’ve realized there’s a problem.
Mental Health Treatment
It is important for enablers to seek their own professional help alongside their loved one who is struggling with substance abuse. This can help break the cycle, establish healthy boundaries and coping skills, as well as create a healthier relationship between the two individuals. As the other person completes their treatment program, the enabler can also learn to prepare for the new life in recovery. Enabling someone’s unhealthy behaviors—often unintentionally—can have serious and long-lasting consequences. An enabler is someone who, knowingly or not, permits, tolerates, or even supports another person’s destructive actions. While the intention is usually to help or protect a loved one, enabling frequently perpetuates the very behavior that causes harm.
What Happens When an Enabler Stops Enabling
They may focus their time and energy on covering those areas where their loved one may be underperforming. For example, an enabler might protect a person from facing the consequences of their actions and addiction because they think that that is the only way to keep them safe. However, this ends up in the other person continuing their destructive and addictive behaviors, and the situation worsening over time. Avoiding conflict might seem like the easier path, but sidestepping real issues can validate harmful actions. For example, refusing to address a loved one’s shopping addiction—even though you see them drowning in debt—signals acceptance of the behavior. This can be a difficult situation to break free from, as many enablers feel guilty about cutting off support.
Lifestyle
One of the biggest risks of being an enabler is that it can end up becoming extremely draining and distressing for both the enabler and the person being enabled. People may engage in bad behavior for a number of different reasons. With codependency, a person relies on the other person for support in essentially all aspects of their life, especially emotionally. Emotional and psychological dependencies might be seen in a romantic relationship or a relationship between a parent and child.
For example, in a relationship, you might see them doing chores, completing important work, and running errands without asking for support. When an enabler supports or encourages someone to be involved in harmful actions, they get so focused on their needs that they tend to ignore their personal needs. For example, in a codependent relationship, one partner actively contributes to the relationship knowing that the other person won’t be able to do much. Enabling behaviors can be commonly seen in codependent relationships.
It is not uncommon for enablers to be unaware that what they are doing is actually unhelpful and allow the other person to continue their harmful behaviors. Recognizing where this behavior comes from and setting healthy boundaries is the first step toward breaking the cycle and building healthier, stronger relationships. An enabler takes responsibility for all unhealthy actions or behaviors even knowing the consequences of doing so.
- 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.
- In fact, enabling generally begins with the desire to help.
- You might even insist to other family or friends that everything’s fine while struggling to accept this version of truth for yourself.
- When helping becomes a way of avoiding a seemingly inevitable discomfort, it’s a sign that you’ve crossed over into enabling behavior.
- And if the problem is never discussed, they may be less likely to reach out for help.
- Enabling behaviors can be commonly seen in codependent relationships.
But substance misuse is only one context; enabling can happen in any scenario where a person’s harmful conduct goes unaddressed, ignored, or even indirectly supported. When a loved one engages in impulsive or self-destructive behavior, it’s normal to want to help and make things better. While you may not be able to change their ways, it is important to understand your own actions, and begin to set healthy boundaries.
But you don’t follow through, so your loved one continues doing what they’re doing and learns these are empty threats. Sometimes we want to characteristics of an enabler make sacrifices for the people we care about. 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.
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. Temporary support can help them make it through a difficult time and empower them to seek help. When worried about the consequences of a loved one’s actions, it’s only natural to want to help them out by protecting them from those consequences. Most people who enable loved ones don’t intend to cause harm.
The Road Ahead: Embracing Change and Growth
Addressing enabler behaviors is crucial for personal growth and healthy relationships. It’s like weeding a garden – it might be hard work, but it allows space for beautiful things to grow. Childhood experiences and family dynamics play a huge role in shaping our personality. Rather than confronting a loved one or setting boundaries, someone who engages in enabling behavior may persistently steer clear of conflict. They may skip the topic or pretend they didn’t see the problematic behavior.
The fear of losing someone can drive us to enable their behavior, creating a vicious cycle of dependency and insecurity. Trauma and past relationships can also contribute to this personality type. Maybe you were in a relationship with someone who took advantage of your kindness, and now you’re stuck in a pattern of over-giving to prove your worth. Let’s dive into the world of enabler personalities and explore how this well-intentioned trait can sometimes do more harm than good.
