28/06/2025
Are You Being Trained To Enable Your Addicted Loved One? These 7 Signs Say You Are.
Enabling is doing for someone what they can and should be doing for themselves. Enabling prevents individuals from developing critical coping mechanisms and problem-solving skills. In people struggling with addiction, enabling removes the natural consequences of their actions. Without consequences, there's no incentive to seek help and recover.
People who enable are often well-meaning family members or friends whose intention is to help. However, help has the reverse effect in relationships with addiction. Enabling not only creates a permissive attitude towards substance abuse and pathological behavior, but it also takes away the person's desire to seek treatment.
Enabled addicts lose faith in their ability to recover and do not respect the people who make it easier for them to destroy themselves.
So why would friends and family members choose to enable? Why would you help someone you love stay sick?
This is a difficult question, and there is no single, correct answer.
Some of us grew up with addiction. Others come from fractured or dysfunctional homes. We learned not to rock the boat. The number one rule in any household with addiction is Don’t upset the addict.
Why?
Because all hell will break loose!
No family intentionally sets out to hurt their loved one by enabling them. In essence, families are trained to say yes when no is the correct answer. So, how do you know if you're being trained to enable?
These 7 signs say that you are.
1) You feel emotionally beat up after talking to your addicted loved one.
Conversations with the addicted person are difficult. They leave you feeling hurt, anxious, emotionally bruised, and sick to your stomach. You wonder if you did som**hing wrong.
2) You second-guess yourself.
After talking with your addicted loved one, you feel crazy. You find it difficult to focus on daily tasks. You question your every thought and second-guess yourself. You have trouble sleeping and constantly feel anxious.
3) You feel guilty.
Every bad choice your child makes seems to be your fault. You don’t tell anyone this. Logically, you know it’s not true. You aren’t the one shoving drugs into them, but deep down inside, you believe it anyway. You learn that saying yes is easier than saying no, even when no is the correct answer.
4) You feel overly responsible for everything they do.
Control becomes an issue. You want to know who they’re with and what they’re doing at all times. You check through their drawers, pants pockets, cell phones, and wallets. You might even drive by the places they claim to be to see if they’re really there. By now, you’ve become their banker, manager, lawyer, counselor, and cop. Your well-being is dependent on their behavior. If they’re having a good day, then you are too. If they’re having a bad day, it's your job to make it better.
5) You walk on eggshells.
You sugarcoat your words. You don’t say what’s on your mind. Instead, you hint at it. Then you gauge their reaction to see if you can continue. You are hypersensitive to their every mood and need. You choose your actions accordingly. You feel like you're walking on glass, and one wrong move could break it all apart. Stress is your constant companion. Physically, you may suffer from headaches, insomnia, weight gain or loss, jaw pain, high blood pressure, heart disease, depression, and exhaustion.
6) You make excuses and tolerate abusive behavior.
Your friends and family tell you that you’re being taken advantage of. They plead with you to set boundaries and learn to say no. You make excuses for your loved one’s behavior. ‘They’re stressed out. They’re sick. They have an illness. They didn’t really mean to say that. They only borrowed the money; they weren’t stealing it. You just don’t understand them as I do. If you were a better parent/sibling/friend, maybe they wouldn’t have turned out like this.’ You protect the addict’s unhealthy behavior and normalize verbal, emotional, mental, and physical abuse. You may even display the same reactions when being confronted on enabling.
7) You lower your standards to stay in the relationship.
At one point in your life, you wouldn’t put up with the behavior you’re putting up with today. You’ve made threats to leave or kick the addicted person out of your home. You lay down a bottom line – If you ever do … again, I will… They cross the line – and you move it. Instead of doing what you said you would do, you give them another chance and another and another.
Addiction is an irrational illness for both the person struggling with addiction and their family members. No one sets out to live like this. It builds over time. Just as the frog in the pot becomes accustomed to the boiling water, so does the family grow accustomed to putting their wants and needs on hold.
Enablers enable because it allows them to escape uncomfortable emotions such as guilt and anxiety. The act of enabling brings relief, just like getting high brings relief for the substance abuser. Both family members and their addicted loved ones are doing the same thing, seeking temporary relief through self-destructive measures.
If you’re tired of waiting for someone else to change, there’s good news. You don’t have to wait one minute longer. The person struggling with addiction isn’t the only one who needs support.
Instead of waiting for the impaired thinker to see the light, be the light and lead the way. Statistics show that addicted individuals have a much greater chance of succeeding when their family is educated and in recovery.
Lorelie Rozzano
www.jaggedlittleedges.com
