Are You Supporting or Enabling Your Addicted Loved One?
Over the many years I have spent working with family members of individuals with substance use disorders (SUD), the number one question I get is, “What can we do to help?” The question leads to a discussion about supporting and enabling behaviors to engage in while attempting to get a loved one to acknowledge a problem with substance use. Family members often ask, “What’s the difference between supporting and enabling my loved one? I’ve done everything I can do to get them to stop using!” Another frequent question is, “What if I say or do the wrong thing, and they start drinking/using again?”
Are You Supporting or Enabling?
Being helpful or truly supportive to someone does not always mean doing an act specifically or directly toward that person. What is useful to someone with an addictive disease is very difficult to initiate and maintain for a family member because they have also been suffering from addiction’s consequences. When I facilitated family education groups at Sanford Behavioral Health, people walked in to view a whiteboard that said, “Addiction is a brain disease. It impacts the individual who has the disease and everyone else who has a close relationship with that individual.”
What does this mean? The family becomes centered around controlling the behavior and negative consequences of the loved one’s behavior on the family. As a family member, you have likely taken your loved one’s disease personally. You might begin to believe thoughts like:
- If they really loved us, they would stop drinking alcohol or partaking in drugs!
- They just aren’t themselves anymore.
- What did we ever do to deserve this?
Challenging Feelings and Seeking Help
These thoughts give rise to some very challenging feelings: feelings you never wanted to have about someone you love. In fact, you are likely to feel guilty about having those feelings and begin to shame and doubt yourself. It is understandable to have these thoughts and feelings, given your closeness to someone with active addiction. The truth is, a brain disease causes these horrible thoughts and feelings, not the person you love! As you learn more about the disease of addiction, you will be able to separate the person from their disease.
Separating the person from their disease is not easy, and it takes time to transition your perspective, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to see the difference between enabling and supporting a loved one with a SUD. In many situations, it is a family member who acknowledges they need help. My advice to the question above (“What can we do to help?”) is to seek help for yourself first. Learn about addiction and the skills you will need to help yourself deal with your loved one’s behaviors. Once you are in your recovery environment, you will learn that you have influence, NOT CONTROL, over your loved one.
Let’s Compare the Actions of Supporting or Enabling
Enabling in Recovery
The word “enabling” means to allow, permit, and make possible: a means or opportunity. In terms of addictive disease, these behaviors are not helpful but harmful – these behaviors contribute to assisting the disease process to escalate. Enabling blocks a person from experiencing the natural consequences of their behavior and reduces their motivation for change. Examples of enabling are arguing about substance and consumption, trying to please an addicted loved one, protecting, covering, shaming or blaming, fixing problems, caretaking, and giving financial help multiple times.
Supporting in Recovery
The word “supporting” means being part of something, sharing the weight, assisting, holding up, bracing, or propping up. When it comes to addictive disease, these are helpful behaviors and contribute to motivating a person to seek treatment for their substance use. When you support, it assists a person in experiencing accountability and natural consequences for their substance use. Examples of supportive behaviors are seeking help for yourself, taking the focus off your loved one, staying connected to your loved one by using Assertive Communication techniques, setting emotional and physical boundaries, and treating yourself and your loved one with respect, compassion, kindness, and patience as you all go through behavioral changes.
A Commitment to Support
The process of transitioning your beliefs, feelings, and actions from enabling to supporting is long and challenging. It requires a commitment to look at one’s deeply held beliefs and gain insight into one’s motivation and the impact of those behaviors on loved ones. The recovery process is lifelong and a significant aspect of the family journey. It is a process that cannot be accomplished alone and requires professional mental health intervention and support from community recovery groups. Also, like addiction recovery, there may be lapses in former behavior patterns that will require analysis and debriefing. However, traveling this path is well worth a family member’s time and effort. It can lead to quality collaboration, more satisfaction in your loved one in recovery, and the bonus of a better life for all involved!
For more on Family Recovery with articles by Cari Noffsinger, LMSW, CAADC, click HERE.
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