Many people enable addicts without meaning to because they believe they’re being loving and helpful. When others point out enabling behaviors, they often defend their actions as a sign of care. Sometimes, addicts even convince their loved ones of these things to keep the cycle going. But enabling doesn’t help anyone in the long run, and breaking this cycle is one of the key ways to get your loved one real help for their addiction.
Understanding Enabling Behaviors
You are an enabler if you continually support or justify your loved one’s harmful behaviors or habits. These behaviors include unlawful activities, manipulation tactics, self-harm, or alcohol or substance use. You will often focus on covering the areas where your loved one is deficient, and you will make excuses for them. Enabling behaviors are common in relationships where codependency is a factor.
Recognizing the Signs of Enabling
With addiction, actions that enable are those that shield your loved one from facing the outcomes of their addictive habits. It is necessary to recognize actions that support an addiction instead of helping overcome it. Some common enabling examples:
- Financial Help:
This can include handing over cash, settling bills, or settling the addict’s debt. Although done to avoid urgent problems, it allows the individual to maintain their addiction without facing the outcomes.
- Emotional Enabling:
This refers to giving too much emotional support or helping an addict escape from their guilt or discomfort. It might look like a comfort after the person has had a binge, but it reduces their accountability and responsibility.
- Avoiding Difficult Chats:
This can include a bling eye to drug use when you see signs like finding substances at home or smelling alcohol on someone’s breath. By avoiding the problem, you might think that you are maintaining harmony, but this lets the addiction go on without being confronted.
- Support in Daily Tasks:
This can include doing household chores for them, looking after their kids, or dealing with their responsibilities. Often, this is done out of love, but it can stop them from feeling the direct effects of their addiction, which can prevent them from seeking change.
To avoid embarrassment, they may lie to relatives and friends about why the individual is absent at family gatherings or conceal how serious the addiction is. This can isolate the addict and the enabler and worsen the issue.
Consequences When You Enable an Addict
Enabling shields addicts from consequences, making them deny their problem’s severity. Without experiencing consequences, they often believe their behavior isn’t harmful or that they have everything under control. This false sense of security typically leads to worsening addiction and health problems.
The impact on enablers themselves can damage their mental and emotional well-being.
The constant stress of protecting an addict can cause:
- Physical health problems like insomnia and headaches
- Money strains in helping with addiction-related costs like legal issues or property damage
- Shame and a desire to hide what the addict does
- Withdrawal from friends and family, cutting off vital support
In these situations, children can have lasting issues. Improper care can impact their development and self-esteem until the addiction is addressed.
How to Help Someone With Addiction
It is important to support a loved one’s recovery without enabling them. Help them accept and be responsible for their behavior and the healing process. You can suggest they make individual goals connected to overcoming addiction, like going to several group meetings every week or keeping a diary about what they think and how they are advancing. Taking charge of their recovery helps individuals develop personally and become stronger.
Some professional interventions that can help someone with addiction include:
Helps addicts swap destructive patterns for healthier ones, teaching them to manage their thoughts and actions. Treatment options include residential treatment, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient programs, or all of the above.
Recover in the safety of a facility for a few weeks and take part in educational sessions. Individuals also meet with chemical dependency professionals and licensed therapists. Perform recreational activities and enjoy nutritious meals in a comfortable environment.
Experience the same programs as those in residential care but with the flexibility to maintain other commitments, like child care and work. Individuals go home or to sober living homes at the end of the day.
This is less rigorous and usually suits those with milder issues or who have completed a higher treatment level before. Schedules are more flexible, and individuals live at home or in a sober living house.
Overseen by a doctor, this can help with lessening withdrawal effects and preventing relapse.
Holistic Approaches for Addiction Recovery
Much research demonstrates the importance of celebrating success milestones. Acknowledge every milestone with heartfelt conversation or small celebrations, as recognition fuels motivation. Create a trigger-free space by removing substances and avoiding risky situations, establishing safety for recovery. Above all, practice active listening—give your full attention without judgment to show you understand them during the sensitive stages of healing.
Setting Boundaries With an Addict
It is important to set boundaries when interacting with someone who has an addiction. These limits help keep you and the person you care about safe by making it clear what behaviors are acceptable and which ones aren’t. Express these limits clearly to maintain healthy relationships with addicts. This can also help them with a steady healing process.
Should you find it hard to establish limits with someone close, think about getting help for yourself. A therapist can offer advice on which boundaries to put in place and demonstrate ways to do it effectively.
Addressing Codependency and Addiction
Many times, behaviors that enable a loved one’s addiction are a result of codependency. This is when a person tries to feel good about themselves by rescuing or repairing another’s life. If you find yourself doing this, seek guidance in changing these habits.
If you go to therapy or join support groups, it might help you make sense of how you act and teach you ways to build better relationships. You can also create a deeper connection with the people close to you that does not depend on being overly reliant on each other.
Help for Addiction Without Enabling
Your job is to give your loved one support with healing and independence while not protecting them from the truth of what they did. Find a balance between caring, setting limits, and knowing when it is important to step away. Giving power instead of just helping creates a strong foundation for your loved one’s success.
At Liberty Bay Recovery Center in Portland, Maine, we provide professional rehabilitation for those struggling with alcohol and drug addiction. We offer continuous recovery services to male and female clients at our facility. Beyond the usual addiction treatment plans, we customize treatments for each person’s unique needs. At Liberty, we help people heal physically, rebuild their personal lives, and support loved ones in creating the enriching life they deserve.