It is natural to want to help when someone you care about is going through a difficult time, such as struggling with addiction. But that desire to help can sometimes turn into enabling.
Enabling can occur when families think they’re helping, but what they’re doing is actually protecting their loved one from the consequences of addiction. It may solve an immediate problem or prevent a short-term crisis, but it can unintentionally make it easier for the cycle of addiction to continue.
However, having support is important when dealing with detox and recovery. Support involves maintaining healthy boundaries and allowing your loved one to take responsibility for their choices.
The line between support and enabling is sometimes blurry. Families that mean well can cross over to enabling, which can unintentionally make continued substance use easier.
Recognizing the difference between enabling and supporting can assist families in helping their loved one deal with addiction without sacrificing their own well-being.
What Is the Difference Between Enabling and Supporting?
Understanding the difference between enabling and healthy support is the first step in recognizing when your actions cross from support into unhelpful territory.
What Is Enabling?
Enabling comes from love, fear, and a strong desire to help or protect your loved one. In some cases, enabling stems from not wanting something worse to happen. For example, you may allow a loved one to continue to live with you even if they are using drugs in your home. You may feel that at least they are not on the streets.
Enabling often involves shielding your loved one from the fallout of their behavior. But in that process, it may make it easier for the addiction to continue because the person does not face the natural consequences.
What Is Healthy Support?
Healthy support doesn’t mean protecting your loved one from the repercussions of their use. It’s about actions that encourage safety, treatment, recovery, and personal responsibility instead.
When you stop protecting your loved one from the impact of their substance use, it can remove some of what helps keep the cycle going. This can help someone take ownership of their choices.
Enabling vs. Supporting: Real-World Examples
The comparison below provides real-world examples to contrast enabling and supporting.
Encouraging responsibility
- Missed work — Allowing the person to deal with the consequences
- Legal problems — Helping find resources for legal assistance
- Emotional issues — Listening to your loved one without judgment and offering support
- Financial trouble — Setting limits regarding financial help
- Neglected responsibilities — Allowing natural consequences to occur
- Behaviors at home — Clearly stating which behaviors are and are not allowed and consistently enforcing rules
- Recovery efforts — Positively reinforcing recovery-oriented behaviors, such as attending treatment or following through on commitments
Protecting from consequences
- Missed work — Calling in sick to their employer for missed work
- Legal problems — Paying legal fees or fines
- Emotional issues — Trying to solve every problem
- Financial trouble — Paying bills repeatedly
- Neglected responsibilities — Taking over responsibilities the person neglects due to substance use
- Behaviors at home — Ignoring substance use to avoid conflict
- Recovery efforts — Continuing the same assistance even if your loved one's behavior does not change
The difference between enabling and supporting is not always clear-cut. The same action may be enabling in one situation and supporting in another depending on the circumstances. For example, paying someone’s bills continually is often enabling. But paying their bills while they are in treatment, so they don’t get their car repossessed or evicted is different.
Ask yourself whether your action encourages responsibility and recovery or protects your loved one from the consequences.
Why Do Families Enable Addiction?
Enabling is not intentionally done to sabotage someone’s recovery. It often comes from a deep desire to protect and help someone you love. But understanding why enabling may develop can help you change certain patterns.
Common emotional and psychological reasons for enabling a loved one with addiction include those listed below.
Fear
Fear is one of the biggest motivators for enabling. You may worry about your loved one overdosing or ruining their life.
Avoiding conflict
Some people have trouble dealing with conflict. It may seem easier to allow certain behaviors than to deal with anger or arguments.
Guilt
Guilt is a common reason people may develop enabling behaviors. A parent, spouse, or sibling may feel responsible for the substance use.
Fear of judgment
Some people may not want family members or friends to know about the addiction. So, they cover up substance-related behaviors to try to hide the problem.
Codependent patterns
A family member can become overly focused on always trying to fix their loved one's problems or addiction while neglecting their own needs.
How to Set Healthy Boundaries With Someone Who Has an Addiction
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) explains that watching someone you care about struggle with addiction can be exhausting and make you feel alone.
But setting healthy boundaries with someone who has an addiction can help you break patterns of enabling while still offering support.
Suggestions include:
Identify what you can and cannot accept: Identify behaviors that negatively affect your home, finances, or safety and decide what you will not accept. Set boundaries around your own actions and responses rather than trying to control your loved one.
Communicate boundaries clearly: Share your boundaries with your loved one clearly and without ambiguity. This may be a difficult conversation. But it is important to be clear and consistent. Examples of boundaries may include:
Make consequences realistic: Boundaries are not effective if you don’t maintain limits. Do not make threats you will not see through. For example, if you tell your loved one they must move out if they do not go to treatment but don’t follow through on the consequence, that boundary loses effectiveness.
Be consistent: Consistency is one of the most important aspects of setting boundaries. It helps decrease the risk of returning to the cycle of enabling and rescuing.
Consider evidence-based family approaches: Evidence-based approaches, such as Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT), can provide guidance to families, friends, and significant others.
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, CRAFT teaches concerned family members strategies for promoting positive behavior and can be more effective than a confrontational intervention.
Families Need Support and Recovery, Too
Addiction affects more than the person struggling with substance use. Recovery can be a process for the entire family, not just the person with a substance use disorder.
Families need their own support, and they shouldn’t wait until their loved one with addiction seeks treatment.
Setting limits can help families avoid rescuing their loved one from the effects of their substance use. Partnership to End Addiction explains that boundaries, along with positive reinforcement, can be effective ways to promote behavioral change.
Resources can include:
- Al-Anon for people affected by another person’s drinking.
- Nar-Anon for families and friends affected by someone else’s drug use.
- Family therapy, particularly with a clinician experienced in substance use disorders.
- Individual counseling to cope with feelings of guilt or fear.
- Family education programs offered through addiction treatment centers.
How Believe Detox Center Can Help
Family support can play an important role in recovery. But addiction often requires professional treatment.
Comprehensive addiction treatment can help address substance use as well as the behavioral and emotional factors that may contribute to it.
At Believe Detox Center, our team understands that addiction affects both individuals and the people who care about them. We provide individualized counseling, group sessions, and family therapy to support recovery.
Contact Believe Detox Center to learn more about treatment options and support for your loved one.
