They can also help you learn ways to empower, rather than enable, your loved one. It’s somewhat puzzling that people who understand enabling often continue to enable bad behavior again and again. One reason enabling persists has to do with a set of emotional beliefs that support enabling behavior and make a ‘failure’ to enable look like the wrong move. Like most beliefs, none of them are universally wrong or right. Most of them play more towards emotions than to logic, which makes them harder to shake.
- Enabling is a complex and often unconscious behavior where a person supports or facilitates another individual’s harmful actions.
- Enablers commonly lie to family, friends, and coworkers to 'cover’ for the addict.
- So for instance, someone too drunk to come in to work may have a coworker cover for them with the boss, thus keeping their job, at least for the moment.
- However, many people who enable others don’t do so intentionally.
- There’s often no harm in helping out a loved one financially from time to time if your personal finances allow for it.
Conditional Love Psychology: Exploring Its Impact on Relationships and Self-Esteem
Over time it can have a damaging effect on your loved one and others around them. It’s difficult for someone to get help if they don’t fully see the consequences of their actions. Establishing boundaries can help prevent you from enabling your loved one’s problematic behaviors. Instead of focusing on what you feel you did wrong, identifying concrete behaviors that might have excused your loved one’s actions could help. Sometimes it may mean lending a financial hand to those you love.
A loan to pay off a portion of this debt could free them up to take supervisor training, so they can get a raise, and eventually climb out of their financial hole. When the person is ready to change–to get off drugs, leave a toxic relationship, make a monthly budget–you can be ready to keep them accountable if they ask for help. Our loved ones often come to us in a moment of crisis. They’ve been caught cheating and need a couch to crash on. Licensed medical professionals review material we publish on our site. The material is not a substitute for qualified medical diagnoses, treatment, or advice.
Minimizing the issue implies to your loved one that they can continue to treat you similarly with no consequences. Your loved one tends to drink way too much when you go out to a restaurant. Instead of talking about the issue, you start suggesting places that don’t serve alcohol.
Other people tell you you’re enabling
- Last year I attended a lecture by the legendary behavior change expert, Dr. James Prochaska, at the Harvard Institute for Lifestyle Medicine.
- And it’s counterproductive to the person you’re trying to help.
- Neither shaming nor excusing helps a person change their behavior, and going back and forth between the two is even worse.
- 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.
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. As with other behaviors, you can manage and change enabling tendencies. They may be painful initially, but they will be more productive in the long run then as I said before….just bumping along the bottom hoping something one day will change.
“They will be terribly harmed or even die!”
Well, hold onto your hats, because we’re about to take a trip down memory lane to uncover the roots of enabling behavior. Enabler behavior can have negative consequences for the enabler and the person they’re enabling. It’s basically a lose-lose situation for everyone involved. There’s often no enabler psychology harm in helping out a loved one financially from time to time if your personal finances allow for it.
Beliefs that Enable Enabling
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. After hearing him speak, I went home and ordered his book, Changing for Good. John C. Umhau, MD, MPH, CPE is board-certified in addiction medicine and preventative medicine. He is the medical director at Alcohol Recovery Medicine.
Enabling vs. empowerment
The impacts of enabling extend far beyond the immediate situation, leaving lasting psychological scars on both the enabler and the enabled. For the enabler, the constant stress of managing another person’s problems can lead to anxiety, depression, and a loss of self-identity. It’s like carrying a heavy backpack up a steep mountain – eventually, the weight becomes unbearable.
This may allow the unhealthy behavior to continue, even if you believe a conflict-free environment will help the other person. But if making excuses for destructive or harmful behavior becomes a habit and gives room to more toxic behavior, you might be inadvertently reinforcing said behaviors. In many cases, enabling begins as an effort to support a loved one who may be having a hard time. If you help a loved one set realistic, incremental milestones right from the start, there will hopefully be many opportunities to celebrate.
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. But these behaviors often encourage the other person to continue the same behavioral patterns and not seek professional help.
Psychological empowerment plays a vital role in this process. By focusing on your own growth and well-being, you become better equipped to support others in healthy ways. It’s like putting on your own oxygen mask first in an airplane emergency – you can’t help others if you’re struggling to breathe yourself.
Because they’re so stuck in their own denial, precontemplators need help from others to change. They need people around them who see the truth of the situation and mirror that to them. So, my fellow travelers on this psychological journey, I encourage you to keep pushing forward. Celebrate your progress, no matter how small it may seem. And don’t be afraid to reach out for help when you need it. 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.
If I forget to pay my power bill, I could soon be sitting in a dark house. Taking away consequences robs others of the chance to learn, not intellectually but at a gut level, that what they did is wrong and that change is needed. Just so we’re all on the same page, allow me to briefly describe and define enabling. Simply put, people find ways to manipulate others in order to avoid the negative consequences of their actions. So for instance, someone too drunk to come in to work may have a coworker cover for them with the boss, thus keeping their job, at least for the moment. 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.
What Is an Enabler & What the Signs of Enabling
Consider Sarah, a loving mother who consistently covers for her teenage son’s tardiness at school. She believes she’s protecting him from consequences, but in reality, she’s denying him the opportunity to learn time management and responsibility. This is a classic example of enabling masquerading as help. Being overly polite might seem kind, but it often leads to problems anyway, in relationships, with friends, and at work. I hope this has provided some insight into the ways you interact with the people you love, and that it will help you be more effective in the way that you love and care for them. Enablers prefer to avoid discussions and confrontations.