When you empower someone, you’re giving them the tools they need to overcome or move beyond the challenges they face. For example, giving them information about mental health professionals in the area that might help. Sometimes, when all your time and energy is focused on your loved one, you might feel like your efforts aren’t appreciated or reciprocated. 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.
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. Learning how to identify the main signs can help you prevent and stop enabling behaviors in your relationships.
This may encourage them to continue acting the same way. You may find yourself running the other person’s errands, doing their chores, or even completing their work. This can also include larger obligations, like caring for a sick relative. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness. Add enabler to one of your lists below, or create a new one.
Set your boundaries and uphold them
Most people who enable loved ones don’t intend to cause harm. In fact, enabling generally begins with the desire to help. Enabling behaviors can often seem like helping behaviors. You may try to help with the best of intentions and enable someone without realizing it. This term can be stigmatizing since there’s often negative judgment attached to it. However, many people who enable others don’t do so intentionally.
- Establishing boundaries can help prevent you from enabling your loved one’s problematic behaviors.
- The term “enabler” refers to someone who persistently behaves in enabling ways, justifying or indirectly supporting someone else’s potentially harmful behavior.
- There’s often no harm in helping out a loved one financially from time to time if your personal finances allow for it.
- Over time you become angrier and more frustrated with her and with yourself for not being able to say no.
Meaning of “enabler” in the English dictionary
Instead of asking them about the receipts, you decide not to press the issue. 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. Enabling behaviors include making excuses for someone else, giving them money, covering for them, or even ignoring the problem entirely to avoid conflict.
- Breaking this pattern can be the first step toward breaking the cycle of harmful behavior.
- They say they haven’t been drinking, but you find a receipt in the bathroom trash for a liquor store one night.
- You reassure them you aren’t concerned, that they don’t drink that much, or otherwise deny there’s an issue.
- Your partner has slowly started drinking more and more as stresses and responsibilities at their job have increased.
- Covering up for a colleague’s consistently poor performance.
How to Spot and Stop Enabling Behavior
Enabling usually refers to patterns that appear in the context of drug or alcohol misuse and addiction. In this case, an enabler is a person who often takes responsibility for their loved one’s actions and emotions. They may focus their time and energy on covering those areas where their loved one may be underperforming. When you engage in enabling behaviors, you may find that the bulk of your time and energy is focused on the other person.
Set (and stick to) boundaries
You reassure them you aren’t concerned, that they don’t drink that much, or otherwise deny there’s an issue. You might tell yourself this behavior isn’t so bad or convince yourself they wouldn’t do those things if not for addiction. 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. 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.
Taking on someone else’s responsibilities is another form of enabling behavior. You may also feel hesitant or fearful of your loved one’s reaction if you confront them, or you could feel they may stop loving you if you stop covering up for them. Enabling behavior might be preventing them from facing the consequences of their actions. Without that experience, it may be more difficult for them to realize they might need help. You may also justify their behavior to others or yourself by acknowledging define enabler person they’ve gone through a difficult time or live with specific challenges.
Browse Nearby Words
You may not have trouble limiting your drinks, but consider having them with a friend instead. Tell your loved one you want to keep helping them, but not in ways that enable their behavior. For example, you might offer rides to appointments but say no to giving money for gas or anything else. They may not agree to enter treatment right away, so you might have to mention it several times.
This resentment slowly creeps into your interactions with her kids. Say your sister continues to leave her kids with you when she goes out. You agree to babysit because you want the kids to be safe, but your babysitting enables her to keep going out.
WORDS THAT BEGIN LIKE ENABLER
The term “enabler” generally describes someone whose behavior allows a loved one to continue self-destructive patterns of behavior. Managing enabling behavior may require that you first recognize the root cause of it. For this, it might be helpful to reach out to a mental health professional. You might feel depleted and blame the other person for taking all your energy and time. At the same time, it may be difficult for you to stop enabling them, which in turn might increase your irritation.
This may allow the unhealthy behavior to continue, even if you believe a conflict-free environment will help the other person. But it’s important to recognize this pattern of behavior and begin addressing it. Enabling can have serious consequences for your relationship and your loved one’s chances for recovery. 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. People dealing with addiction or other patterns of problematic behavior often say or do hurtful or abusive things.
Establishing boundaries can help prevent you from enabling your loved one’s problematic behaviors. This is particularly the case if the funds you’re providing are supporting potentially harmful behaviors like substance use or gambling. Recognizing the pattern of enabler behavior is important because it can help us understand the role the enabler is playing in the person’s harmful habits. Breaking this pattern can be the first step toward breaking the cycle of harmful 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.
You might feel hurt and angry about spending so much time trying to help someone who doesn’t seem to appreciate you. You may feel obligated to continue helping even when you don’t want to. Enabling behavior is often unintentional and stems from a desire to help. In fact, many people who enable others don’t even realize what they’re doing.