While these actions might seem supportive, they allow the person struggling with addiction to continue their destructive patterns without facing the natural consequences of their actions. While these actions are usually born from a place of love and concern, they inadvertently contribute to the cycle of addiction. They remove the immediate impact of the addicted individual’s alcoholic eyes choices, making it harder for them to see the need for change. Enabling usually refers to patterns that appear in the context of drug or alcohol misuse and addiction. But according to the American Psychological Association, it can refer to patterns within close relationships that support any harmful or problematic behavior and make it easier for that behavior to continue.

Give them a choice where the wrong option has natural consequences

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. Enabling can be hard to spot for the people within the enabling difference between crack and coke relationship. 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.

How to Talk to Someone Struggling With Addiction

An enabling behavior can happen when people try to help or protect someone with a mental health condition from the negative consequences of certain behavior. They may do things for that person that the person should do for themself. For example, a family member might pay bills for someone who misses work because of a substance use disorder. These actions gabepentin: uses dosage safety and more can keep a person from recognizing and seeking care for the condition. After all, enablers want to help their loved one, too, and codependency might feel like healthy support. But enabling allows the status quo—drinking or using drugs—to continue, whereas healthy support encourages a person to address their addiction and all of its consequences.

Why It’s So Easy to Slip Into Enabling

Enablers usually go out of their way or neglect their own needs to help. The word help means to give something, assistance, or support to someone that will make their situation better. In the truest sense, you’ve helped if you assisted someone with achieving something positive they’re unable to do by themselves, such as getting a meal or finishing a task.

Giving Them Financial Support

Oftentimes, when a loved one is ill or in recovery, it’s difficult to find a balance between providing support and giving space. You may even find yourself struggling with the desire to control their behaviors. At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives. You can enable someone’s bad behavior in many ways, but it all boils down to the things you do to keep them in the status quo. You were trying to help, but after months or years of trying, one day you look up and realize that your college-aged son is still being irresponsible with money or your friend is black-out drinking…still.

The friend who lends money to a drug addict “so he won’t be forced to steal” is enabling that addiction. Another reason that enabling behaviors persist is because often it’s easier to go along with the problem than trying to fight it. Ever wondered why some people seem stuck in harmful patterns, despite having support from those around them?

I’m In Recovery

While you might know that there is an issue, it is sometimes easier to let yourself believe their denials or convince yourself that the problem really isn’t that bad. We may think we’re helping someone by enabling them, but we need to understand that we’re only making the problem worse. Even though we might have the best of intentions, we need to recognize the harm we’re causing and take steps to break the cycle—for the person’s own good as well as our own.

Those who habitually enable dysfunctional behavior are often referred to as co-dependent. It’s a telling word, because an enabler’s self-esteem is often dependent on his or her ability and willingness to “help” in inappropriate ways. This “help” allows the enabler to feel in control of an unmanageable situation.

There are strategies that friends and family may wish to pursue.4 For starters, individual counseling and family counseling can be beneficial. Our team is available to guide you through the steps of assessing your insurance coverage for addiction treatment. Maybe you no longer confide in your best friend about paying your adult sons phone bill because you know that shell shake her head in judgment. Also, I always recommend enlisting the advice of a qualified professional, such as a psychologist or experienced counselor. If that’s out of your reach, talk about your situation with a wise person in your life, whose relationships are going well.

Below Ive outlined several components that will help you to stop enabling. Enablers often make vague, feeble hints that they hope will get the message across. These won’t even register on the radar of a precontemplator, who by definition is determined not to change, and is resistant to any feedback that they need to change. Helpers directly and frequently recommend behavior change. Last year I attended a lecture by the legendary behavior change expert, Dr. James Prochaska, at the Harvard Institute for Lifestyle Medicine. I’d first studied his “Stages of Change” model many years before, in an undergraduate Health Psychology course.

Your friend or family member may thank you later for assisting them in creating a productive life on their own. If you can work and earn money to take care of yourself, why would you allow someone else to enjoy the fruits of your labor for free? I’ve seen a blind family member go to college and work teaching children who are visually impaired. She chose independence although her husband has a great career and covers all the bills.

AddictionResource fact-checks all the information before publishing and uses only credible and trusted sources when citing any medical data. The importance of stopping any enabling behavior that you may be demonstrating cannot be overstated. Enabling only makes an addiction work, and you are not helping the addict in any form apart from going down the wrong path.

You or your loved one may not have accepted there’s a problem. You might even be afraid of what your loved one will say or do if you challenge the behavior. Enabling often describes situations involving addiction or substance misuse. Enabling can describe any situation where you “help” by attempting to hide problems or make them go away. Give them ample space to talk through their thoughts and feelings. Don’t interject with your own opinions and advice just yet.

1. If you think that anxiety and worry fuel your enabling, getting help to manage your anxiety may be necessary in order to change your behavior.
2. It affects and is affected by a wide social network, and enabling can inadvertently come from any corner of an addict’s life.
3. They could say they’ve only tried drugs once or twice but don’t use them regularly.

This can make it more likely they’ll continue to behave in the same way and keep taking advantage of your help. It’s certainly important to take care of yourself first, especially when taking care of a sick loved one, but you may not mind missing out on some of your typical activities for several days or a few weeks. It also makes it harder for your loved one to ask for help, even if they know they need help to change. But after thinking about it, you may begin to worry about their reaction.

It’s often frightening to think about bringing up serious issues like addiction once you’ve realized there’s a problem. This can be particularly challenging if you already tend to find arguments or conflict difficult. They say they haven’t been drinking, but you find a receipt in the bathroom trash for a liquor store one night.

Offer to teach them how to manage their money and increase financial independence. 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. More recently, however, it has developed the specialized meaning of offering help that perpetuates rather than solves a problem. A parent who allows a child to stay home from school because he hasn’t studied for a test is enabling irresponsibility. The spouse who makes excuses for his hungover partner is enabling alcohol abuse.