Sometimes, learning how to say just a “no” is not enough. It requires more than that. You have to be assertive. A lot. And selfish. It is ok to be selfish sometimes when you are responsible for a job, a relationship, and a troublemaker in the relationship.
It is a healthy thought when you want to help someone you love. But sometimes there is a thin line between “help” and “enabling”. Let’s call the “fixer” an enabler, and the troublemaker a “dependent“.
It is hard to detect signs of enabling in a relationship. It is OK to take a breath and recognize your love for the person, which is making you accept and deal with their problematic behavior. This kind of behavior sounds stigmatizing, but identifying that an enabler is involved in such a relationship can be tough sometimes. Here are 11 signs of enabling behavior.
What is Enabler Behavior?
Enabler behavior means protecting or defending a loved one with his destructive or problematic behavior, going beyond “support”. It may be described as protecting someone from the consequences of their own bad habits or actions. It reduces the accountability of the dependent, making them irresponsible and irrational.
It is very different from transforming a person’s habits by support and empowering them to become a fresh new person. Enabling becomes an unhealthy cycle that traps both the dependent and the enabler. It also stands in the way of the dependent’s personal growth.
Examples are blind support, such as an alcohol addict, and saving them during problems as a result of their actions. The enabler could call their employer to tell them they are sick, but in reality they drank too much during the night to function during the day. This creates a toxic cycle, because it takes people away from reality. This process works by defending them from the natural consequences of poor choices.
What happens to the Enabler in the Process?
The problem lies in the fact that it is very easy to end up playing the enabler role. It is due to the initial motivation that comes from love and care to save the loved one from suffering. This eventually turns into habits and leads to crossing the border between caring and taking responsibility for the other person’s choices.
Being an enabler is draining and degrading for a person since it can result in always feeling tired, being afraid of letting the loved one suffer or leaving, feeling guilt, and ignoring one’s own needs.
One will be alone among friends, ready for the next drama, and thinking that self-worth depends on solving problems of the loved one. However, all of this does not mean that the person who wants to help is bad, since there is compassion, but the situation has to change for the better.
Small steps such as setting boundaries, getting some help, and saying no can help change the whole process.
11 Signs of Enabling Behavior
If you perform a person’s neglected chores, cover up or make excuses for the dependent’s actions, or even spend money on their bad habits, then you are practicing active enabling behavior.
You should recognize that enabling doesn’t help at all. The best and only way to truly help someone is by helping them cope, teaching them what’s wrong and right, and making them adopt good practices.
- Tolerating Difficult Behavior
You are quietly tolerating their rude behavior, while helping and supporting them in every way that you can. It seems unjustified, but you are making an emotional compromise by trying to understand their situation.
Instead, you are justifying their actions based on this condition and taking responsibility for their actions. This results in a lack of accountability on the dependent’s part. This cycle goes on, as you are completely drained. But compassion and harmony don’t have to fuel the dependent’s destructive behavior. They are supposed to learn accountability and enable change for empowerment.
- Supporting their behavior with finances
Helping someone towards empowerment and supporting their bad habits with money has a huge difference. It is a common enabling behavior, which doesn’t teach the dependent the real consequences of their actions. One example: Parents who financially support an adult child who has been unemployed for a long time. This makes you feel trapped and drains you of your resources. You shouldn’t be the one absorbing their responsibilities with generosity.
- You are making excuses.
It is a sign of enabling behavior when you are the one making excuses for someone’s behavior. “That’s how they have always been” or “They are under pressure” can be the thoughts fueling these excuses.
These excuses not only make you feel undervalued but also foster an unhealthy environment of toxicity. The unjustified rationalization of their actions completely shifts the focus on the negative effects that person has on you.
- Your own needs are overshadowed.
You are constantly prioritizing someone else’s needs over yours, and it’s leaving visible signs. On top of caring for the ‘dependent’, facing the consequences of their actions, and working a 9-to-5, you are completely drained and ignoring such physical or mental signs. You are disconnected, feel undervalued, and have lost your ‘self-respect’ in such enabling behavior.
- You are denying resolution of the real issue.
Another subtle sign of enabling behavior is denying that there is any resolution of the real problem at hand. Instead of dealing with what needs to be resolved — be it some bad behavior, mistakes made again and again, or some unresolved conflict — you deal with something else.
This way the cycle will go on, and nothing new or better will happen. When you avoid dealing with the main problem, you actually help the person avoid changing his behavior. Fixing a problem temporarily and justifying their actions might seem like the right method when involved in such a relationship.
- You are doing more than what you are responsible for
You are trying hard to pretend that everything is in place. The dependent has become used to and is aware that you are going to support them out of care. As a result, not only do they ignore the consequences of their own actions, but they also leave important chores to your attention.
By taking on their responsibilities, you might feel like you are being helpful, but you are not. What they really need is to get out of this toxic cycle on their own to become a transformed person. It is time you get to protect your own energy and time for a better life.
- You make sacrifices that hurt you.
In this toxic cycle of enabler behavior, your sacrifices and support go unnoticed. You are letting go of your dreams just for someone else’s comfort. Sacrifices can seem like the right way towards a resolution– but it only ends up with you feeling diminished.
You feel guilty of ‘abandoning’ someone when they need you most, instead of shifting focus to your difficulties. You are enabling self-harm by ignoring the depression, chronic stress, and health issues they are directly or indirectly causing you.
- Protecting the dependent from consequences
One of the most obvious enabling behaviors is when the dependent person is protected from consequences. This will typically mean intervening to defend them from the consequences of their actions – whether paying their fines, fixing things up for them, or even hiding any mistakes that they might make. Though you think you are helping them out of love, the truth is that they are never learning about the consequences of their actions.
Real help is not shielding them from all the consequences of their actions but rather enabling them to grow through the experience of consequences.
- Not creating healthy boundaries.
This whole cycle creates situations when you avoid saying ‘no’. You are just so trapped and unaware of your own condition during this cycle, that taking responsibility seems like the only resolution. You are absorbing the shock from their consequences, making personal sacrifices and draining your monetary resources.
Healthy boundaries are a sign of mutual respect. Such boundaries can be helpful for teh well-being of both the enabler and the dependent.
- You threaten separation fruitlessly.
This sign of enabling behavior occurs when you threaten ultimatums such as “I will walk out if this keeps on happening,” but you fail to act on it. Although your threats might be from your frustrations, your inaction makes the other person learn that you do not mean what you say. You will end up having your trust eroded and becoming helpless as well.
In case you keep on making false threats, you will be communicating your pain but failing to safeguard yourself. You have to ensure that you honor your commitments of stepping back.
- Blaming yourself or the circumstances
At this point, you look at the result and say “I’m too sensitive to tackle and resolve this” or “The situation is to blame”. However, clearly the dependent was the one carrying out these actions.
Instead of bringing real support, you are defending and making excuses for the negative actions of the dependent. Internalizing the blame silences the truth that it is not just them, but you are becoming invisible by absorbing all the harm.
How to Stop Enabling Behavior?
Remember that support and boundaries can coexist, even when your loved one really needs your help with their ‘degrading’ actions. If you said ‘yes’ to any of the above signs, you need to recognize the harm that this enabling behavior cycle causes to both you and the dependent.
Self affirmation
Reflect on the sacrifices and harm you had to make or go through as a result of the enabling relationship. Realize that you are not just a caretaker anymore. You have become an enabler in a toxic environment which destroys everything indirectly, including yourself. Mark the signs of enabling behavior.
Create healthy boundaries
You might not know where to draw that fine line between “love” and “endurance”. This has created an enabling relationship and enabling behavior. It is high time that you start communicating and create healthy boundaries that maintain the essence of well-being. This discounts the patterns of unhealthy rescuing, excuses, and procrastination. You are no longer the one doing the dirty laundry after a huge fight.
Be Assertive
Instead of just saying ‘no’, learn to be assertive and commanding. Shift the focus from “you” to “I” and reinforce that change is far from becoming. Stop hiding the sacrifices that have transitioned from ‘efforts’. Talk about your needs and be the one controlling the change instead of the one being held responsible.
Take care of yourself.
Acknowledge your feelings. Your emotions no longer have to be the ones getting set aside. Not only that, detach from the blind faith and love that harbors the enabling factors. You are an individual in your rights, and you have your own unique needs. Care for yourself instead of the dependent who doesn’t recognize your efforts or renders them fruitless.
FAQs
How to stop enabling a kid or adult child?
You must start recognizing the signs of enabling and acknowledge the effects the small actions can have on a child’s psychology. Not just kids, even adults can harbor bad habits and overdependence when you don’t set clear boundaries. Make them experience the consequences of their actions. Encourage independent habits and become their mentor, not rescuer.
How to create healthy boundaries in an enabling relationship?
Learn to let go– of the attachment, of pretending that things are smooth, of rescuing them and taking responsibility to pick up what they left. Shift the focus to how you are doing in the relationship.
If you have the role of the caregiver, you deserve your own peace and self-respect. Define everything, from the enabling behavior signs, destructive behaviors, clear boundaries, and empowering actions. Use “I” sentences, be assertive, let the dependent be the one who absorbs the shock, and create an action plan.
How to shift the role from an enabler to a mentor?
An enabler is the one who bears the problems; a mentor is the one who solves the problems. You should be the one motivating and inspiring the other person with your sacrifices and selfless responsibility.
There is no magic solution if you keep solving problems temporarily and do not help transform the dependent person on their own. The goal is to make them independent by allowing them to figure things out. Stop taking responsibility; guide and praise them.
What are some examples of enabling?
Addiction support, workplace enabling, family dynamics, unhealthy behavior enabling of a spouse, and parental enabling are all real-life examples of enabling behavior.
Is paying for someone’s alcohol addiction a sign of enabling?
Yes. You are encouraging the person to drink more, instead of letting them feel the financial and health consequences of drinking. It creates dependency and harms both the enabler and the dependent. The latter becomes demotivated and unmindful of their harmful behavior and consequences.
Is helping always enabling behavior?
No. It is natural to want to help someone. You can only help someone when you let them bear the consequences of their actions. This brings responsibility and strength into their lives. Helping fosters independent behavior by letting them achieve what they can’t do alone. Enabling behavior, on the other hand, is overdependence.
What are the four types of enabling?
The four types of enabling behavior are rescuing, defending, caretaking, and overdependence. This drains you of resources and mental peace.
