How to Support Loved Ones Without Enabling
Witnessing a loved one’s struggle often causes a desire to jump in and help to decrease their pain and suffering. Whether they are struggling with mental health, substance use, or something else, it can be hard to know how to help them through tough times. However, there is a fine line between supporting and enabling, and it may be difficult to tell when you are crossing it. One of the differences between supporting and enabling is accountability.
Support is defined as helping someone do something they couldn’t do themselves, and ideally includes both active listening and being attentive. Think about support as being beside someone as they are going through challenges, or helping without shielding. An example of supporting someone may look like sending them a text or calling to check in and follow up with something you know they have been dealing with. You can ask questions, specifically about what they need, validate their emotions, empathize, be present, and just listen.
Enabling differs in that it often results in preventing accountability, and is typically seen as rescuing. It is described as mitigating consequences that would be the result of choices. Enabling can look like going out of your way to help your loved one take action on something that you define as necessary or important to improve their life. Another example could be providing your loved one with money that will be used to support their problematic behaviors, such as addiction, and justifying their harmful choices. As you are showing up to support them, the goal is to be able to help without causing harm to yourself or the other individual. This is where boundaries come into play. Boundaries are essential to protecting your well-being, energy, and emotions, and setting and holding these boundaries will limit patterns of enabling..
If you are unable to differentiate how you are helping, consider the goal of empowerment. Empowerment is defined as increasing autonomy, overcoming powerlessness, and having influence and control over one’s life and their decisions. Empowering someone can come in the form of labeling their strengths, helping them acknowledge what is in their control, and encouraging them to take small steps towards change. Following an empowerment approach will help you offer a more supportive response.
It will likely be challenging to see your loved one struggling and knowing that you cannot take it away. It will be important for you to have your own support system, as you try out a new approach and set some of your own boundaries. Just know that all you can do is your part, and they will have their own part to do in order to help themselves. When you solve their problems for another person, it robs them of the opportunity to develop their own skill set to problem solve for themself in the future.
Here are some questions that will help you increase your own awareness if you are enabling or supporting your loved one.
What are the long-term effects of how I am offering help?
Are you compromising your own morals, values, well-being, and abilities?
Are you making excuses for your loved one?
Are you ignoring their dangerous behavior?
Do you feel emotionally empty after helping?
Are you doing things that they can do themselves?
Are you acting out of fear?
Porter, S., & Bejerholm, U. (2018). The effect of individual enabling and support on empowerment and depression severity in persons with affective disorders: outcome of a randomized control trial. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 72(4), 259–267.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08039488.2018.1432685
Bologna, C. (2023, September 18). Supporting vs. Enabling: How to Recognize the Difference. HuffPost.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supporting-enabling-difference_l_64c004ffe4b00356919b39ae
