Helping vs Enabling: Whats the Difference?

Helping them out each month won’t teach them how to manage their money. They say they haven’t been drinking, but you find a receipt in the bathroom trash for a liquor store one night. The next night you find a receipt for a bar in your neighborhood. Instead of asking them about the receipts, you decide not to press the issue.

One of the most significant effects of enabling is the strain it puts on family dynamics. As you might prioritize the needs of the individual battling addiction, other relationships may suffer due to neglect or the constant focus on the addiction issues. This can lead to feelings of resentment or isolation among other family members who feel sidelined or less important. When you’re not sure if you’re doing the best thing or what to do next, try coming back to the concept of boundaries. Enabling behaviors lack boundaries and perpetuate the problem. Supportive behaviors empower a person to make choices toward their recovery.

How can you make sure you’re supporting, not enabling?

If your loved one is dealing with alcohol misuse, removing how to safely wean off alcohol 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. But you don’t follow through, so your loved one continues doing what they’re doing and learns these are empty threats.

Enabling also involves sacrificing or neglecting your own needs to care for the other person. This might involve experiencing financial hardships in order to keep providing for the other person financially or neglecting your own health in order to care for the other person physically. 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. Your resentment may be directed more toward your loved one, toward the situation, both, or even yourself.

For example, tell them that fetal alcohol syndrome celebrities they cannot come to your home or be around you when they are drinking. Having boundaries minimizes enabling behaviors and protects your mental health and well-being. Put simply, enabling creates an atmosphere in which the individual can comfortably continue their unacceptable behavior. Learning how to recognize the signs of enabling can help loved ones curb this tendency and deal with the problem rather than avoiding it. When worried about the consequences of a loved one’s actions, it’s only natural to want to help them out by protecting them from those consequences.

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. But in an enabling relationship, a person who’s used to being enabled will come to expect your help. So, you step in and fulfill those needs in order to avoid an argument or other consequence. She offered some questions that can be helpful to ask yourself if you think your support might’ve crossed over into enabling territory.

People dealing with addiction or other patterns of problematic behavior often say or do hurtful or abusive things. They might insult you, belittle you, break or steal your belongings, or physically harm you. 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. Even if you personally disagree with a loved one’s behavior, you might ignore it for any number of reasons. The following signs can help you recognize when a pattern of enabling behavior may have developed.

Sacrificing or struggling to recognize your own needs

1. The problem is that while avoidance might be a short-term, temporary solution, it can make the problem worse in the long run.
2. Helping is doing something for someone that they are not capable of doing themselves.
3. Someone struggling with depression may have a hard time getting out of bed each day.
4. For the loved ones of people with an alcohol or substance use disorder, sometimes this isn’t easy.
5. 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.

If you are seeking drug and alcohol related addiction rehab for yourself or a loved one, the SoberNation.com hotline is a how to flush alcohol out of your system for a urine test confidential and convenient solution. You may want to try to control their behaviors or help by giving money and bailing them out of trouble. As long as someone with an alcohol use disorder or other issue has their enabling devices in place, it is easy for them to continue to deny the problem.

Set (and stick to) boundaries

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. Recognizing enabling behaviors in oneself or in others is the first step towards creating a healthier environment for someone struggling with addiction. It’s important to understand the fine line between supporting and enabling.

It might be due to enabling, a concept that’s as complex as it is misunderstood. Enabling refers to behaviors that unintentionally support negative actions, making it harder for the person involved to change. For the loved ones of people with an alcohol or substance use disorder, sometimes this isn’t easy. There’s a difference between supporting someone and enabling them. Someone struggling with depression may have a hard time getting out of bed each day.

They may work with you in exploring why you’ve engaged in enabling behaviors and what coping skills you can develop to stop those. They can also help you learn ways to empower, rather than enable, your loved one. A sign of enabling behavior is to put someone else’s needs before yours, particularly if the other person isn’t actively contributing to the relationship. You might put yourself under duress by doing some of these things you feel are helping your loved one. Boundaries begin by recognizing the difference between enabling and supporting someone. Maintaining boundaries between enabling and supporting may be key to helping friends, family members, and loved ones.

The enabling version would be an adult who just ties the child’s shoelaces every time because they don’t want to deal with the frustrations and tantrums that arise in the learning process. When you show support, you have establish healthy boundaries and be honest ― ideally without being judgmental. It’s about promoting the other person’s growth and development by allowing them to learn from their own mistakes and failures. The study further demonstrates how having strong bonds with others encourages and supports a person’s quality of life. This is an option that protects the family and leaves the individual to deal with their problem.

Ignoring or Tolerating the Problematic Behavior

Helping involves actions that encourage an addicted individual to take responsibility for their behavior and its consequences. This might involve researching drug rehab options, discussing different therapy techniques, or providing resources to help them remain sober. It’s about empowering them to make positive changes in their life. On the other hand, enabling typically shields them from the consequences of their actions. This could be as simple as making excuses for their behavior or as complex as financially supporting their addiction without setting boundaries. Understanding and addressing enabling behaviors is a crucial step in the recovery process.

There’s nothing wrong with helping others from time to time. No one is saying you should never give a friend a ride to the store when their car breaks down. Or that it’s necessarily problematic to help an adult child pay an overdue bill here or there. But these behaviors often encourage the other person to continue the same behavioral patterns and not seek professional help. 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 might feel torn seeing your loved one face a difficult moment.