Seems simple. And one's heart is usually in the right place, but it's really a complex relational behaviour.
It can be as obvious as giving a son or daughter rent money because they spent their pay cheque, or allowance, on other things...
... or, it could be passing a fellow employee in the hallway at work on Monday morning, smelling alcohol on their breath, and not saying anything about it - to the person or their supervisor.
Addiction and enabling go hand-in-hand. In fact, if individuals: friends and family, or the community: employers, social or health services - stopped enabling a chemically dependent person, addiction would not thrive the way it does.
If the enabling system is cut off - if the chemically dependent person can't get away with anything - he or she has two choices: (1) change, or (2) run away.
That's why treatment and recovery must include helping people in relationship with the addict. Friends, family, employers, service providers - everyone - needs to learn about, and understand, their part in enabling the addiction of their friend, loved-one or client.
People need to learn about their enabling behaviour and stop doing it.
If you don't, the person you care about may never get better.
But how, you ask, do I stop doing it - this enabling?
Let's look again at the simple definition: anything I do, or don't do, that protects someone from experiencing the consequences of their behaviour.
The simple answer is: stop protecting, ignoring, avoiding, defending, supporting - in short, stop shielding that other person from experiencing - or suffering - the consequences of their behaviour.
Easier said than done. In most cases, learning to stop enabling requires much of the same intensive, honest, responsible and forgiving work of deepening one's self-knowledege that an addict has to undertake to recover from their addiction.
And sadly, few of us are willing to do that work.
And so it continues ..................
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