Enabling: How to Recognize the Signs

Its scary because your loved one is out of your control and probably making some pretty bad and risky choices. Unfortunately, you are powerless to prevent harm from happening. Nothing that you do or dont do can save your loved one or force him/her to make better choices. He or she may gradually accept a self-concept that includes these negative traits, destroying self-esteem. Furthermore, enabling can create a culture of denial within the family unit. By covering up or excusing the addictive behaviors, you inadvertently make it more challenging for other family members to acknowledge the problem and seek help.

What Is an Enabler? 11 Ways to Recognize One

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. When you engage in enabling behaviors, you may find that the bulk of your time and energy is focused on the other person. This may make you feel like your own needs have fallen to the wayside. In this case, an enabler is a person who often takes responsibility for their loved one’s actions and emotions.

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. If your loved one is dealing with alcohol misuse, removing alcohol from your home can help keep it out of easy reach. You may not have trouble limiting your drinks, but consider having them with a friend instead.

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. Victims of emotional or physical abuse should contact authorities whenever possible, and reach out for help from support groups or meetings. With all that being said, there are a few shortcomings to the concept of enabling. One sign of codependency or enabling is the failure to follow through on boundaries and expectations. John C. Umhau, MD, MPH, CPE is board-certified in addiction medicine and preventative medicine.

By Buddy TBuddy T is a writer and founding member of the Online Al-Anon Outreach Committee with decades of experience writing about alcoholism. Because he is a member of a support group that stresses the importance of anonymity at the public level, he does not use his photograph or his real name on this website. Only when they are forced to face the consequences of their own actions will it finally begin to sink in how serious the problem has become. Enabling can also involve excusing or covering up their behavior so that they don’t have to face the consequences. For example, you might call their employer and say that they are sick when they are really too hung over to go to work. The problem is that while avoidance might be a short-term, temporary solution, it can make the problem worse in the long run.

1. The enabled person often displays poor money management, as well as disorganized academic and/or career-planning choices.
2. You may try to help with the best of intentions and enable someone without realizing it.
3. 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.
4. They say they haven’t been drinking, but you find a receipt in the bathroom trash for a liquor store one night.

Many times when family and friends try to “help” people with alcohol use disorders, they are actually making it easier for them to continue in the progression of the disease. It can take many forms, all of which have the same effect—allowing the individual to avoid the consequences of their actions. More than a role, enabling is a dynamic that often arises in specific scenarios. People who engage in enabling behaviors aren’t the “bad guy,” but their actions have the potential to promote and support unhealthy behaviors and patterns in others. In order to stop enabling, you have to break through your denial.

Seek Professional Addiction Treatment

The road to recovery and change is almost never a spotless one, so it’s important not to guilt trip or shame them if and when they slip. When there’s a setback, start again at step one (provide a nonjudgmental space to talk) and offer to help again. When this didn’t work, they started making excuses for him, explaining that his smoking was a coping strategy after a tough day.

There’s often no harm in helping out a loved one financially from time to time if your personal finances allow for it. But if they tend to use money recklessly, impulsively, or on things that could cause harm, regularly giving them money can enable this behavior. But it’s important to realize enabling doesn’t really help. 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.

Your addiction does not have to define who you are.

It may be a decision you make consciously or not, but at the root of your behavior is an effort to avoid conflict. If you are doing anything that your loved one would be doing if they were sober, you are enabling them to avoid their responsibilities. “Enabling an alcoholic” means that you’re doing things for a person who is misusing alcohol that they could and would do for themselves if they were sober.

Support Your Recovery

It often makes it worse since an enabled person has less motivation to make changes if they keep getting help that reduces their need to make change. 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. This is an obvious red flag that their alcohol or drug use is affecting you enough to cause pain, and they are unwilling to change their substance use.

If you’re offering financial support to a person who is misusing alcohol, you may find it’s not much different than if you bought the alcohol for them. You are giving them a “safety net” that allows them to lose their job or skip work because of their alcohol or substance use with no real consequences for these actions. In relationships, enabling can be a sign of codependency—an excessive reliance on a person who may need more support because xanax replacement of addiction or illness.