When you watch a person you love go through addiction, it’s natural to want to help them in any way you can. Parents especially will want to offer their support, no matter the circumstance. However, whether their child is a teenager or older, that desire to help may have a negative impact on their recovery. They will want to empower the addict to succeed in life, but doing this is only contributing to their vicious cycle of dependency. The more enablement the addict has to help them continue their unhealthy behavior, the longer they will wait to change their life. They will also become used to always relying on their parent to pick up the fallen pieces. It’s important to watch out for the signs of enabling behavior and make changes to prevent worse consequences, ultimately resulting in prolonging someone’s addiction.
Signs of an Enabler
When it comes to helping an addict, there’s a fine line between showing them support and enabling their bad behavior. When you’re being a source of just support, you are basically helping them do things they can’t do alone. On the hand, if you’re enabling, you are regularly doing things that the other person could and should be doing by themselves to be self-sufficient.
Other signs of being an enabler include putting the person’s needs ahead of your own time, sanity, and schedule. This could range from going out of your way to miss important responsibilities or taking the blame when the addict gets into trouble. Other red flags are feeling resentful towards the addict since you’re taking on more responsibilities than you can handle, lying to yourself about how acceptable the addict’s behavior is, spending excessive energy focusing on the addict, and bailing them out when legal consequences eventually happen. Doing any of these behaviors only is contributing to the harmful environment that addict is living in. Over time, they will only start to believe that no matter how bad things get, you will always be there to mend the stitches and bring them back on their feet.
Breaking the Cycle
Since addiction affects everyone in the addict’s network, breaking your habit of enabling can make a huge impact on how well they can break their cycle of substance abuse. If a person finds that they’re enabling on a consistent basis, it’s their job to seek therapy or advice to create an action plan to change how they react to the addict. They need to stop making excuses, lying, and covering up for the sake of the addict.
The Final Straw
Many people battling addiction find that turning to the aid of therapy and support groups provided by rehab centers can make a huge difference. Instead of practicing enabling behavior, turn to them for help for the sake of you and your family. Over time, you can learn about how to help an addict break their ties with dependency and build a stronger and more disciplined body overall.
