You may choose to believe them or agree without really believing them. You might even insist to other family or friends that everything’s fine while struggling to accept this version of truth for yourself. But after thinking about it, you may begin to worry about their reaction.
Signs You May Be Enabling Someone (Enabling Behaviors)
But identifying the latter is necessary to stop doing it and to help a person overcome their problem. An enabler is someone who helps a person suffering from substance abuse issues continue to use drugs and alcohol. They may provide the person with money, housing, or transportation, and make it possible for them to keep using.
Making Excuses for the Person’s Addictive Behaviors
- You may try to help with the best of intentions and enable someone without realizing it.
- However, if you find yourself constantly covering their deficit, you might be engaging in enabling behaviors.
- When someone you care about engages in unhealthy behavior, it can be natural to make excuses for them or cover up their actions as a way to protect them.
- They might insult you, belittle you, break or steal your belongings, or physically harm you.
- This can help break the cycle, establish healthy boundaries and coping skills, as well as create a healthier relationship between the two individuals.
- This might make you feel like you want to do something to mend the relationship.
Taking on someone else’s responsibilities is another whats an enabler form of enabling behavior. Enabling behavior might be preventing them from facing the consequences of their actions. Without that experience, it may be more difficult for them to realize they might need help. In other words, enabling is directly or indirectly supporting someone else’s unhealthy tendencies.
For this, it might be helpful to reach out to a mental health professional. This is particularly the case if the funds you’re providing are supporting potentially harmful behaviors like substance use or gambling. This may allow the unhealthy behavior to continue, even if you believe a conflict-free environment will help the other person. When someone you care about engages in unhealthy behavior, it can be natural to make excuses for them or cover up their actions as a way to protect them.
Not following through on consequences
The person with the addiction will not get the help they need, and the enabler may end up feeling overwhelmed and stressed. “When you’re on the inside of an enabling dynamic, most people will think they’re just doing what’s best, that they’re being selfless or virtuous. 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. 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.
Signs someone is enabling
- Enablers often try to protect their loved ones from the consequences of their addiction.
- You may also justify their behavior to others or yourself by acknowledging they’ve gone through a difficult time or live with specific challenges.
- By not setting boundaries or requiring a person to be accountable for their actions and the support provided by the enabler, an addict will continue their bad behavior.
- In addition to regular financial support, some enablers will also pay for a person’s bail or court costs to further avoid any negative consequences of their actions.
This may encourage them to continue acting the same way. Practice self-care to ensure your physical and mental well-being is prepared to take on the journey of recovery. When this occurs, it can cause the relationship of all family members to suffer. Handling a person with SUD is stressful and challenging. Substance abuse disorder (SUD) is a disease, and they need professional help.
If you want to stop enabling another person, you must get help for yourself first. You need to be in a healthy place to properly support a person who is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Enablers will give addicts money, food, and a place to live despite continued substance use or any attempt to stop using drugs or alcohol.
Paying a person’s bills and giving them money with no expectations of repayment will only fuel more drug use. Spouses and parents sometimes lie and make excuses to other people about their family member having a problem with drugs or alcohol. Covering up the problem does not make it go away and further enables substance use. There is a fine line between providing support and enabling. If your help makes it easy for a loved one to continue with their problematic behavior, you may be enabling them.
You’re making excuses for problematic behavior
It may be hard, but it’ll be better for them in the long run. Quit making excuses for them, covering up for them, and blaming others for their problems. Indeed, the lion’s share of the blame goes to Joe Biden and the coterie of enablers who encouraged him to run again. What he had to buoyantly make happen two decades ago, he now makes seem like it has to happen, that there is a natural force in operation and he its enabler.
You fill your evenings with their laundry, cleaning, and other chores to ensure they’ll have something to wear and a clean shower to use in the morning. By pretending what they do doesn’t affect you, you give the message they aren’t doing anything problematic. It’s not always easy to distinguish between empowering someone and enabling them.
Support groups like Al-Anon may be useful for people whose loved ones are living with addiction. And talk therapy, Dr. Borland suggests, can be helpful for anyone who finds themselves in an enabling situation or who could benefit from developing assertiveness. Enabling can be hard to spot for the people within the enabling relationship. This may be hard at first, especially if your loved one gets angry with you.
Covering up for a colleague’s consistently poor performance. Making excuses for a partner’s excessive drinking habits. Enabling behaviors include making excuses for someone else, giving them money, covering for them, or even ignoring the problem entirely to avoid conflict. Enabling recovery by offering incentives to change is a healthy way to empower someone you care about to get treatment. Setting boundaries can be difficult, but necessary for staying on track. Clearly explain what you expect them to do and what behaviors will not be tolerated.
محمود عبد الحميد