I always find it challenging when I’m asked for advice from someone who wants to be helpful to someone they care about who’s struggling.  It’s such a natural and wonderful thing to want to be a support to someone, but there’s often a fine line between being supportive of someone you care about and enabling them without intending.   Often, if unhealthy behavior is involved, the helper’s actions may be potentially contributing to the situation they seek to ameliorate.  It’s so easy to lose perspective when love is involved.  So this week, given several questions that came up over the past couple of weeks, I decided to step back a bit and gain a broader perspective on how to bring awareness to the difference between enabling and supportive helping behavior.

Especially as a parent you’re faced with a constant and never ending series of choices about when to step in and when to hold back.  Should I let them cry themselves to sleep or pick them up?  Should I talk to their teacher or let it go?  Do I lend them money or do I let them figure it out on their own?  It’s so hard to see someone we care about suffer and it feels so natural to want to lend a hand when we can.   The question that comes up in most literature delineating the line between helping and enabling is the  effect of the longer term consequence of the helping gesture.  Is the helping gesture going to keep someone from being able to grow and be accountable for themselves in the long run or is it a step to help them move forward toward this freedom?  Simply stated, supporting or helping includes assistance with things that a person is incapable of doing for themselves or doing things that help facilitate them gaining control of their behaviors and life.  Enabling on the other hand, is behavior that keeps someone from dealing with the negative consequences of their action, therefore giving the impression that their behavior is somehow acceptable or will be successful in the long term.  For example, a parent who lets a child skip school when they haven’t finished an assignment because they started too late is enabling.  Calling in sick for your partner when they have a hangover is also enabling.  

Enablers often try to solve the problem for the people they are trying to help, believing they are doing something good for them.  Unfortunately, in doing so, they keep the person from learning how to own and conquer the situation, which would build skills, esteem, and resilience. Enabling tends to encourage a negative dynamic in relationships, wherein the person being helped becomes dependent and both parties become resentful.  When a helping behavior is enabling, it tends to perpetuate and keep a stagnant situation stuck, whereas supportive behavior helps to move someone toward greater freedom.

Of course, every person is different and every situation is unique, which makes it so tricky to be sure if what you are doing is helping or hurting.  It may help to ask yourself some clarifying questions to evaluate your intention with the effect of your behavior.  A yes to any of these questions may indicate a need to take a closer look at the results versus hope of your behavior. One question to ask yourself is if you find yourself making excuses for someone, such as “he’s had some bad luck lately” or “it’s just hard for her right now?”  Another question is if you have a feeling that the behavior you are seeing is unhealthy or irresponsible, below what is normal to expect from someone of the person’s age or from their peers?  Have you lied for someone or justified the behavior to others who express concern or question if the situation is healthy if it continues?  Have you kept your helping behavior secret because you sense others would disapprove? And finally, do you avoid talking about the situation directly, but secretly hope that things will change or are you afraid to bring up the situation for fear of the person’s negative reactions?

Most people who come to realize that they are, in fact, enabling, initially started out with firmer boundaries and good intentions.  Over time, the avoidance and or giving in to someone’s requests began to become a habit or expected.  At this point, it becomes hard to undo the situation without feeling you are being too harsh or unrealistic.  But to keep enabling is actually doing more harm in the long run for both of you.  Loving someone means wanting what is best for them.  Often what is best for us in the long run takes sacrifice and short term struggles to obtain.  When we protect someone from the consequences of their poor choices, we rob them of the opportunity for learning and growth. We also give them the message that we don’t believe they can accomplish what is hoped for or expected. 

Healthy and appropriate support is empowering rather than enabling.  It should bring pride and a sense of teamwork and increasing responsibility.  But this can mean setting clear expectations that feel uncomfortable at first.  “Tough love” can sometimes be tougher on the person giving it rather than receiving.  That’s why it’s good to have support in finding balance in a relationship you feel is unhealthy.  It’s easy to get lost in your emotional connection to someone you love and your desire to protect them from the consequences of poor choices.  But good help supports someone in the long term and allows them to be proud of who they are and what they do.  Being a supporter instead of an enabler does not mean you lack empathy, love, or concern.  It just means, as the old adage instructs us, that better than feeding someone is to teach them to fish. Ok, and maybe buying them a fishing pole is all right, too?  And some bait? And a making them a snack?

HAPPY NEW YEAR and thank you for reading my meanderings!!!