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. You enable them by prioritizing their demands more seriously than the needs of the rest of the household. Our hope is merely to capture the spirit of the fellowships, and to approach people with the language they commonly use to describe the disease of addiction. Victims of emotional or physical abuse should contact authorities whenever possible, and reach out for help from support groups or meetings. If you clearly outline your expectations and your loved one disrespects them, you have to follow through with your predetermined consequence, regardless of how painful it may be.
There’s a big difference between supporting someone and enabling them. Noticing a recurring cycle of negative behavior without consequences or change. By shifting the blame away from themselves and convincing their family to go along with it, they are able to continue their pattern of substance abuse with a clear conscience. Any attempts at changing the enabling is met with guilt, hope, fear and victim manipulation by the substance user.
The Link Between Enabling and Codependency for Addiction and Mental Health
This article will explore the definitions of supporting and enabling, highlight the key differences between the two, and provide strategies for establishing healthy relationships based on support rather than enabling. If all of the family is in a different role, casting all their attention on the substance user being the problem, chances are they will not see the need to change. Without this change it is most likely the family will worsen as will the substance use. Our experience and research show, families are never on the same page, not even close.
But avoiding discussion prevents you from bringing attention to the problem and helping your loved one address it in a healthy, positive way. It’s tempting to make excuses for your loved one to other family members or friends when you worry other people will judge them harshly or negatively. Financially enabling a loved one can have particularly damaging consequences if they struggle with addiction or alcohol misuse. 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. 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.
- Not following through lets your loved one know nothing will happen when they keep doing the same thing.
- You agree to babysit because you want the kids to be safe, but your babysitting enables her to keep going out.
- Conceptualization of resilience at various levels was another pattern discovered as the literature search progressed.
- Acknowledge the harmful behaviors of your loved one instead of ignoring or minimizing them.
Ask yourself, “Am I doing something for this person that they could do for themselves?”
For instance, an alcoholic or addict’s parents usually feel a deep sense of responsibility to ensure the well-being of their child. This need can be satisfied, at least in the short term, by making sure that the alcoholic or addict’s basic needs are being met. Dependency on substances on the part of the addict or alcoholic is fairly straightforward. Because the cycle of addiction is difficult to maintain alone, substance users rely on the people closest to them to enable their behaviors. As we have previously discussed, this dependence usually manifests itself as receiving financial and emotional support. From the perspective of hope-based enablers, the addict or alcoholic will always appear to be on the verge of making a positive breakthrough.
- There’s often no harm in helping out a loved one financially from time to time if your personal finances allow for it.
- Funding a habit allows addicted people to avoid the full consequences of their behavior.
- People who engage in enabling behaviors are aware of the destructiveness of the other person’s behaviors and try to do what they can to prevent further issues.
- Enabling reflects our own discomfort with boundaries, uncertainty, and letting go of an outdated identity.
- People dealing with addiction or other patterns of problematic behavior often say or do hurtful or abusive things.
What are some strategies for providing effective support?
When we point out enabling, it can feel like we’re blaming a loved one for the presence of addiction. As in, “You enable him, so it’s partly your fault.” But no one is to blame for addiction, and it’s okay to respond imperfectly to the disease—in fact, it’s to be expected. We’re all learning how to respond to addiction and move toward recovery, and that’s what matters. Here are five of the most common patterns found in codependent relationships where partners enable their loved one—and a few suggestions to change the dynamic. Although there might be some helpful short-term damage control, enabling allows people to continue making bad choices without feeling the gravity of it ― thus fostering the narrative that their behavior isn’t so bad. Helping friends, family members, or other loved ones who are experiencing mental health conditions or substance misuse can be challenging and confusing.
The categorization phase
Trying to manage your own life along with others’ starts to wear down definition of enabling someone your reserves. As the popular saying goes, “Give a person a fish, and they eat for a day. Teach them to fish, and they eat for a lifetime.” Shania’s attempts to support Louis end up being more enabling than helpful. They reinforce his overreliance on her and underreliance on himself. When this happens, there’s a risk we’ll actually harm those we most want to help by enabling them rather than allowing them to find their own way, make their own mistakes, and master the challenges life presents them with.
They are all at various points emotionally and have taken on unhealthy roles that pits one against the other. As this occurs the substance is allowed to continue while the family is lost and at odds. Study results show that enabling can significantly impede recovery, making it harder for the addicted individual to recognize and accept the need for change. For instance, a 2020 study published in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment found that individuals whose enabling family members reduced such behaviors saw a higher rate of engagement in treatment programs and longer periods of sobriety. Navigating the terrain between supporting a loved one in their journey toward sobriety and enabling their addiction can be tricky.
Contrary to what many believe, enabling an addict or an alcoholic goes much deeper than simply providing them with money or a place to stay. Whenever you behave in a way that delays the moment when the addict or alcoholic is held accountable in order to see and feel the full gravity of the situation, you are enabling the addiction. Understanding enabling is crucial, not just for those directly involved but for anyone looking to foster healthier relationships.
It doesn’t mean someone else’s harmful behaviors are on you, either. But even if all you want is to support your loved one, enabling may not contribute to the situation the way you might think it does. This notion was further supported by the fact that the presence or absence of a factor could influence how an individual or system becomes resilient in the presence of a deficiency within its environment. Further reading enabled us to identify resilience as a quality that emerges as an interaction between present deficiencies and the inherent qualities (that are dynamic and subject to change) intended to overcome the impacts of a crisis. The system or individual will have a relatively stable trajectory after experiencing a transient perturbation that doesn’t produce enduring stress in the system’s environment 6. Such acute stressors will create a negative feedback loop that will enable the system to resist or absorb its impact by using the system’s existing capacities 14.
Although life circumstances can indeed cause undue stress, some things—like excessive alcohol or drug use—can’t be explained away by stress. She recommended working with a therapist to change these patterns and explore how they developed in the first place. Additionally, she shared some helpful reminders to keep in mind as you shift away from enabling.
A 2021 study found the risk of becoming codependent is 14.3 times more likely if the family or loved one lacks coping resources. In this scenario, the person with a mental health condition or substance use disorder loses their independence and isn’t empowered to recover or make necessary changes. Tell your loved one you want to keep helping them, but not in ways that enable their behavior.
What Is the Difference Between Supporting and Enabling?
The format of “Concept Analysis” for developing concepts considers a strong quantitative requirement for evolving a concept, and involves describing or identifying a model case with all the attributes of the concept of interest to enable measuring the concept. This was not appropriate for the current conceptualization of resilience because of the concept’s highly abstract nature and difficulty in reducing the concept so as to obtain its exact or universal attributes. The presents exercise is not about having a quantitative evaluation of selected papers, but rather to figure out the broader philosophical limits of the concept which then can be utilized to define it in the context of public health.
Therefore measuring resilience without accommodating the diversity of outcomes and the pathways that result in such outcomes may fail to capture its multi-dimensionality 11. When addressing such measurement complexity, one should take into account the non-linearity of the occurrence of events as it may result in a variety of resilient outcomes. For instance, resilience could be a cyclic process when the system is able to resist or absorb the impact of a perturbation 12. Alternatively, it can be transformative and spiral when the impact of shock is more than the system’s capacity to endure, when the challenge threatens the existence of the individual or system 13. When a family is in the grip of another’s addiction, the primary enabler often puts all of their attention on the substance user. Rather than therapeutically confront the cause or the person who is giving all of their time to the substance user, family members often focus on the addiction.
