Episode 6: The Trap of Enabling
What to do when you want to help, but helping hurts.
People pleasers have good intentions when they take on the burden of trying to make someone feel better. We truly just want to help and to offer our own wellbeing and happiness as a resource. After all, wouldn’t the world be a better place if we could keep people from getting depressed in the first place? But not only is this endless output exhausting for the one doing all the work, it also limits the other person from developing the skills to cultivate their own emotional health. Happiness takes effort and action, and if we believe it is our job to make the other person happy, and we take too much responsibility for their wellbeing, we may actually be leaving them in worse shape.
All I ever wanted was to make my ex-husband feel better. And at one point in the early days of our relationship, I was the only one who could. When he was down (which was often), I could cheer him up. When he was angry (also often), I could calm him down. When he thought life was pointless (again, often), I could inspire him and offer a glimmer of hope. Each time I was able to do this for him, I got a little dopamine hit, a little buzz of pleasure in my brain that told me I was valued, needed, and fulfilling my purpose.
What I didn’t recognize at the time was that my enjoyment of the buzz would become an addiction, and that both of us would get hooked into a cycle of enabling and depression that could not end until the helping stopped. He couldn’t heal until I stopped trying to heal for him.
My father was an altruist and enabler, and from a young age my desire to be of service and to help those who could not help themselves was celebrated and encouraged. Being a helper, a caregiver, and a peacemaker was valued and needed in my chaotic home, filled with traumatized adopted children, and I learned to get acknowledgment by being the one who didn’t need help, cheered others up, and brought nourishment and resilience into the darkest places.
Don’t get me wrong, it is a wonderful thing to serve meals at the homeless shelter, to do service work in homes where people cannot afford upkeep and repairs, and to share the goodness of my heart with those who are suffering. However, it can easily go too far into the territory of over-helping and keeping people stuck in their own mess. We all need a little help from time to time, and sometimes it can be very challenging to ask for it. But the fine line between service and enabling is drawn when we overstep and offer help that isn’t asked for and does not actually support recovery and repair.
Here’s an example: My mom has always enjoyed tequila. She is not an over-drinker, but a casual sipper from time to time, and she is quite petite, so a little goes a long way. For as long as I can remember, she has kept a liquor cabinet and occasionally enjoyed a “special treat.” My father, being the enabler that he is, purchases the tequila as he always has. One day, shortly after my mom left their assisted living apartment to join her friends for bingo, he heard a knock at the door. When he opened the door, there were two unfamiliar women and my drunk mother in a wheelchair, slurring and nearly unconscious.
“How did she get drunk?” my father asked.
The women did not know, and my drunk mother didn’t know either. But when he went to the cabinet and checked the bottle of tequila he had just recently bought, he suddenly understood. Over the past few years, she has started to experience cognitive decline, and has been forgetting familiar faces and losing track of what day of the week it is. Both of my parents are in understandable denial, but the dementia is real, and it is progressing. My mom was drinking much more than she intended because it was a deeply engrained habit and she simply didn’t remember that she had already had a drink. As soon as he told me about this situation, he said, “I’m a life-long enabler. I don’t know if I can stop.”
“Dad, you have to stop,” I said. “It’s not helping, it’s hurting her. She doesn’t need to have tequila available in the apartment. Just because you’ve always bought it for her doesn’t mean you have to keep buying it. And you need to tell the staff about her cognitive decline so that they don’t serve her too much at the bar.”
Fortunately, he was able to see that I was right. But then he still had to face the hard part, answering to my confused mom who kept going to the cabinet for tequila, and demanding to know why it wasn’t there. It didn’t matter how many times my dad explained it to her. The dementia made it difficult for her to remember and put into context why something so familiar had changed. He had to deal with her frustration, again and again.
This is a pretty clear example in which it’s easy to see the harm being done by perpetuating a habitual cycle, and seeing the harm makes it easier to break free from the tendency to enable. In depression and emotionally abusive relationships, it can be harder to see how your efforts to help are hurting.
When you love someone, you want to help them feel better. But truthfully, there is only so much you can do for them. They have to want to be helped for anything you do to make a difference. It becomes enabling when you’re either over helping someone who won’t help themselves, or when you make it easy for them to stay stuck where they are.
Sometimes people need tough love. They need us to stop coddling them and draining ourselves of happiness in the hopes that they will absorb it. They may need professional help, fresh air, exercise, new skills for navigating difficulty, none of which you can do for them. You can drive them to therapy, but you can’t heal for them. You can walk them outside into the sunshine, but you can’t enjoy the warmth on their skin for them.
It took years for me to realize that it wasn’t my job to make my ex-husband better, and even more years for me to learn that continuing to communicate with him about his mental health simply perpetuated the cycle. It was a hard lesson for me, and with it came big waves of grief. All I ever wanted was to help him be happy. And I failed. Maybe I even made it worse by trying.
How to Stop Enabling:
Bring awareness to the enabling. Notice that what you are doing to help may be hurting. Ask yourself: Is my participation helpful? Are my efforts to help being received with appreciation? Did they ask me to help? Do they have the capacity to help themselves? Am I trying to do for them something only they can do for themselves?
Feel your feelings when you recognize that your help has actually caused harm. It’s okay if you feel angry at yourself, sad, lost, irritated, exhausted. These feelings make sense given that you probably have expended a lot of effort that hasn’t done much good in the end and has maybe even added to the other person’s suffering. Become aware of sensations in your body that arise as you allow yourself to feel what you feel.
Set a boundary for yourself and others. Make this something clear and non-negotiable that you can commit to in the interest of stopping the cycle of enabling. In the case of emotional abuse, DO NOT ENGAGE. In the case of an addict, don’t provide access to the drug. In the case of depression, don’t offer to do something that the depressed person needs to do for themselves. You can join them or set them up for an activity (such as a hike or trip to a therapist), but you can’t do the work for them.
Offer yourself the care that you want so much to offer to others. How can you turn your longing to be of service and to bring happiness to others toward yourself?
Forgive yourself and the other person. You can use the following forgiveness prayer as a meditation if it supports you. Alternatively, write a letter of forgiveness to yourself and the person you’ve been enabling.
Forgiveness Prayer - by Eric Kolvig
I allow myself to be imperfect. I allow myself to make mistakes. I allow myself to be a learner, still learning life's lessons. I forgive myself. If I cannot forgive myself now, may I forgive myself some time in the future.
Just as I allow myself to be imperfect, so I allow you to be imperfect. I allow you also to make mistakes. I allow you to be learners, still learning life's lessons. I forgive you. If I cannot forgive you now, may I forgive you sometime in the future.
Please allow me to be imperfect. Please allow me to make mistakes.
Please allow me to be a learner, still learning life's lessons. Please forgive me. If you cannot forgive me now, please try to forgive me sometime in the future.