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Enabling. It’s bad right? You don’t want to be called an enabler. The person that is just letting their loved one use without consequence. Because all those consequences like being homeless, not eating, being totally alone when you do your street drugs, they are going to get you clean or sober, right? We have Jenny join us to take a deep dive into the idea of enabling. We discuss if enabling is harmful behavior, or if it’s possible that it keeps you alive long enough to possibly seek treatment. Is tough love really the answer? Are people really better off on the other end of tough love? Are those types of consequences really what pushes people to get clean? We’ve considered the idea of enabling to be a bad thing for a long time, but it’s time we think more about harm reduction and helping people stay alive. Join the conversation by leaving a message, emailing us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, or find us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or find us on our website at www.recoverysortof.com.
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Enabling. It’s bad right? You don’t want to be called an enabler. The person that is just letting their loved one use without consequence. Because all those consequences like being homeless, not eating, being totally alone when you do your street drugs, they are going to get you clean or sober, right? We have Jenny join us to take a deep dive into the idea of enabling. We discuss if enabling is harmful behavior, or if it’s possible that it keeps you alive long enough to possibly seek treatment. Is tough love really the answer? Are people really better off on the other end of tough love? Are those types of consequences really what pushes people to get clean? We’ve considered the idea of enabling to be a bad thing for a long time, but it’s time we think more about harm reduction and helping people stay alive. Join the conversation by leaving a message, emailing us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, or find us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or find us on our website at www.recoverysortof.com.
Transcript:
recovery sort of is a podcast where we discuss recovery topics from the perspective of people living in long-term recovery this podcast does not intend to represent the views of any particular group organization or fellowship the attitudes expressed are solely the opinion of its contributors be advised there may be strong language or topics of an adult nature
hey welcome back it’s recovery sort of i’m jason i’m a guy who by classical definition uh was enabled in my addiction and i’m here with i’m billy i’m a person in long-term recovery and and i’m jenny and i don’t have to drink today and this is episode 100 and so we’re gonna have like party packs and we’re gonna give away millions of dollars and we got lots of surprise guests and none of that is true at all but it is episode 100 and that is uh congratulations man uh we have set out to do something i i kind of so as i overthink everything remember we were on like episode nine and i was like should we go to season two yeah and then i was like [ _ ] seasons and then i you know leading up to this i was like do we celebrate episode 100 or do we celebrate episode 104 which is two years and i was like i don’t know do we celebrate twice four episodes apart like i don’t know but either way episode 100 sounds like a rounder number so that’s [ _ ] awesome we i was told there would be cake is there cake that’s episode 104 okay but we just uh we keep showing up and we keep doing it for no good reason but we’re committed if nothing else people cannot say we are not committed yes we have overcome some big challenges of vacations and family issues and all sorts of things yeah we have locational challenges that’s right and we have not missed a week though it has not always sounded pretty we have not missed a week uh and and i think that actually probably will change from here i’m like all right we hit 100 we can replay an old episode if we have to [ _ ] it it’s all right um so today we’re going to talk about enabling right this concept of enabling uh billy talked about it a couple weeks ago it got brought up what were we even talking about we were talking with caroline and she had mentioned i can’t remember specifically but she had mentioned something about enabling people and i said i don’t know if that’s a thing i believe in anymore i don’t know if you know i think we enabled the topic of that episode the topic of it was expectation expectation right and you were saying that you saw that uh that intervention show and the mom who decided it was safer so the actually go ahead recap that because that’s important yeah so i used to watch that intervention show if you’ve never seen it it’s on a e or one of those networks and it’s basically a person that’s in chaotic use and their family does like an intervention to try to get them help and get them into treatment um and they’ll tell their story and it was a mom was telling the story of her daughter who they were getting ready to do an intervention with the daughter had been using the mom did the tough love type things threw her out of the house the daughter started prostituting and living off the streets and all that um the mom got a call one night to basically come identify her daughter’s body at the hospital because some john or the pimp had beat her up and left her for dead in an alley and uh they found her and brought her to the hospital and and pretty much assumed she was gonna die and so now what was going on at the point of this intervention was the mom the daughter recovered the mom brought her back to the house and did all the i think over the top things which was like going out to get her daughter’s drugs and things like that but from the mom’s perspective she said you know after she got that call and and really knew what her daughter was doing to use she felt like it was just better and safer for her just to buy her drugs and keep the daughter at home so that she could have her alive and that’s hard to argue with right i remember in hampden growing up in the middle of baltimore city there was a young lady that i had gotten high with not i didn’t get high with a whole lot of people often right i was like stingy i was like you didn’t i didn’t want you around you might interfere with my drugs somehow but i do remember her being around we’d hop in the same cars together to go over to to buy drugs and stuff and uh she was found beaten to death right by somebody and it’s like damn i i bet her parents who thought they weren’t enabling her might think differently about it at this point and so i think it brings up an interesting conversation because we’ve had this idea forever you know i think it’s it’s well established in like the al anon world if we don’t want to enable the people to use we want them to face these consequences because that’s what’s gonna get them clean i and i don’t know is that changing like doing some research on google what i found was there are no articles about that idea changing like there’s still very many articles about enabling and how it’s bad and why we don’t do it and you know it’s an interesting idea right so if we conceptualize that the way to get clean is through consequences that’s going to be enough i guess yeah we don’t enable we want people to have consequences and then they they find sobriety or or clean time or recovery but if that’s not what we think is going on so to speak if if it’s not necessarily consequences i mean how many people have od’d because they were getting high in a place where nobody was there watching them to be able to narcan them or or call help and why are they doing that well because we’re not going to enable them and let that in our house right and i think that idea of you know not enabling people is a barrier to a lot of the harm reduction techniques that we’re seeing nowadays i mean it’s one of the biggest things you hear from you know politicians or people in the community is like oh you’re just giving them needles you know you’re just enabling them to use and to some i mean if you want to look at it from the definition of enabling like yeah you’re denying them the consequences of death and hepatitis and you know aids and all these other health community risks but at what point do you i guess from my perspective on this enabling ideas like we look at and i think we’ve talked quite a bit about it like addiction the idea that it’s a moral failing or a moral dilemma and that you need to suffer some horrible consequences in order to get better i think that’s an old idea that’s starting to change i think we look at it now as usually these are people that have suffered you know most of the time a lot of severe abuse neglect some sort of trauma and that if we can keep them alive long enough to get them into the right sorts of treatment for their trauma or past you know issues that they have to deal with then they can get better but us you know forcing them into worse and worse situations so that they’re homeless out on the street having to prostitute having to steal lie cheat for drugs like is that really what we need to do to get them help right in comparison like would we let the uh you know our loved one get to stage four cancer before we give them help i mean hmm is that a good comparison is it trying to think of something that would be really similar we always well the needle thing or the narcan we always talk about the insulin right is that similar in any way would we like yeah so if we if we are coming from a disease model which i don’t know if we are anymore or not it’s up in the air but if we are coming from a disease model if this is truly a medical disease of you know substance abuse then what good is it to just let them sit right we wouldn’t let them get to stage four cancer we wouldn’t uh not intervene or help the guy who’s diabetic we wouldn’t watch him in a diabetic coma and be like oh he just needs to you know have harsher consequences and he’ll he’ll start producing sugars yeah right or or digesting sugars or whatever it might be well it almost gets back to that n a saying you know some may must die so that others can live it gets back to that idea it’s like wow that’s a [ _ ] terrible thing to you know i don’t know that saying yeah it’s a it’s a recovery saying and narcotics anonymous yeah well and and i think you know we we look at that as like i don’t know i don’t know how i’ve looked at in the past honestly but really and we talked about this a week or two ago too that idea that like when i keep saying oh yeah i keep you know offering to help these people in recovery and they’re not getting the help they’re still using but i’m clean right i think that ties into that statement of some must die so that like that’s not a good idea like if i’m not helping these [ _ ] people then who gives a [ _ ] if i’m still clean or not i’m not helping at all i don’t know that’s weird yeah but as far as you know the enabling part i mean it’s really hard right like most of these cases there’s not a one-size-fits-all to recovery stuff and there are going to be people that no matter what you do they don’t want your help and they’ll take whatever you want to give them anything you want to give them they will just take and then when you aren’t looking they’ll take some more and i think as an individual like we do need to have boundaries and we do need to have limitations i mean i wouldn’t necessarily say just because i was worried my daughter might go out on the streets and and use and become a prostitute that i’m gonna let him live in my house and steal everything i own and abuse my wife or you know other siblings like i don’t think i would necessarily do that but at the same time it feels a lot when people talk about like enabling an addict that’s like i guess in my head what i hear is we need to like shame them and let them suffer and make their life harder so that they’ll go seek out some sort of help so yeah i agree and that kind of reminds me of that old saying like the givers have to have established limits because the takers don’t right i get that right we we need to have boundaries we need to be concerned about our own health but i was surprised and maybe i just had the wrong google search terms maybe i didn’t look at page five i only got to page four i don’t know but i was surprised that in 2021 there wasn’t more dialogue about whether enabling is a bad thing a good thing when it might be useful when it might not be be like everything i found like all the top searches were all enabling’s bad don’t do it this is what it looks like so did you search in reference to just addiction i tried to search for in reference to addiction and around the idea of mental health okay because i just did some general like enabling type stuff and apparently there is some pretty positive information about enabling through different therapies to try to help people become the best versions of themselves i didn’t read much about it because it wasn’t what i was looking for but i did find some of that being something like how do you enable someone to get over different traumas and things like that so but i wasn’t searching specifically around addiction or anything i just looked up enabling and is enabling good and how you know what is enabling like when i was thinking about enabling for this episode i was thinking about how you know addiction is a family disease and so the addict is you know [ _ ] up in their substance abuse ways but the other members of the family and loved ones are kind of [ _ ] up in their like enabling ways like they’re adjusting to the addict’s life in subtle ways or sometimes major ways like compromising their own self-care or morals to help the addict and so it’s almost like enabling is its own disease is that so uh to speak to what billy said uh i think like in my social work learning we talk about the role of being an enabler as a social worker right enabling people to access resources enabling them to better their situation but i think it’s got a whole different connotation from the enabling that we talk about around addiction most of the time right which is what you’re talking about i think that’s we’ve often said like oh well there’s the addict and then the enablers around them are the co-dependents right they’re co-dependent on this person being okay and so out of fear they enable them to continue because they don’t like the other idea of what will happen if they don’t um is there a difference between enabling and codependency i would say that people who believe in enabling strongly probably believe that enablers are codependent because if not why wouldn’t you do something else and the way you said it makes sense the uh they’re co-dependent on the addict being comfortable yeah and there’s for me at least in in what i read centered around addiction there seem to be two different ideas around enabling one of them being you know kind of read this because this i think makes more sense to where i would say yeah this would be enabling it says uh where the family members excuse justify ignore deny and smooth over the addiction like those are all ways that i think yeah i wouldn’t want to do those things no matter what situation my family member was going through but to think of enabling as anything that we do that minimizes the consequences of someone’s actions or allows them to continue a certain behavior i think that’s different
top top result on google right it’s on health line says what is an enabler 11 ways to recognize one right interestingly and i just noticed this this article was written by crystal rapel who i believe is a female i’m assuming just by the name crystal that’s an assumption but uh you know probably a valid one but it’s got a little picture and i just assumed the little picture was the author but the picture’s a dude and it says medically reviewed by timothy j legge and i’m like so the guy who medically reviewed the article gets his picture up but the the writer does it like what a patriarchy world sorry it just uh it stuck out just interesting right so it says uh the term enabler generally describes someone whose behavior allows a loved one to continue self-destructive patterns of behavior i take exception with that idea right from the get-go that it describes someone whose behavior allows a loved one like [ _ ] you don’t have control over other people right you don’t have the ability to deny or allow anyone to continue their self-destructive behavior so i think that’s a shitty way to frame it just from the get-go like it’s not up to me to allow or deny some other human anything and that’s just a weird way to frame it that it allows them to continue self-destructive what about parent and child i i they’re not my property like i i mean i don’t think so i don’t get to choose what they do and don’t and as evidenced by any parent who’s ever dealt with the child with mental health or substance abuse struggles you don’t get to win like get whatever the [ _ ] you get there’s no like golden ticket of oh do these 10 things and you’ll have to have success controlling your child like [ _ ] no kids do what they want yeah i mean it’s interesting we and this gets a little off topic but we always do right so we jen and i watch this show now it’s called evil lives here or something it’s about violent evil people that live in homes and one was about a kid growing up you know and at four his mom and their stepmom and dad you know he had all these signs that he was going to be violent and evil he was threatening to kill him in their sleep and all kinds of stuff we went through that with my son when he was very young he was incredibly violent he would say horrible things he actually at times would like try to get knives out of the kitchen and act like he was gonna stab us i mean it’s i chuckle now because now it’s so much different but you know and in this show they ended up putting this kid at an institution and all sorts of things and we didn’t end up going that route we went to therapy and we came up with a plan and for us it worked the [ _ ] out you know what i mean like it the therapy and those things worked out pretty good yeah and he doesn’t do that anyway yeah right but it’s like for for this family things went very much a different direction and i don’t know that i get to i mean some of that shit’s just luck is that fiction or non-fiction just curious that show is real oh it’s real people you can google their names and it’ll tell you what they did afterwards it’s a real show with real family they did john wayne gacy his family members of his were on there and they talk about growing up with him and you know anyway so the the article goes on it says the term can be stigmatizing since there’s often a negative judgment attached to it which i i agree there is often a negative judgment attached to enabling if you’re considered an enabling parent or an enabling partner like your view yeah i never think of that in positive terms but you could enable your child to greatness you know right didn’t really think about that till today no we’re we’re definitely like oh you’re enabling you’re you’re saying right what’s wrong with you uh it says enabling usually refers to patterns that appear in the context of drug or alcohol misuse and addiction but according to the apa american psychological association it can refer to patterns within close relationships that support any harmful or problematic behavior and make it easier for that behavior to continue enabling doesn’t mean you support your loved one’s addiction or other behavior you might believe if you don’t help the outcome for everyone involved will be far worse yeah it could be right i mean the situation you talked about if everybody in the world had to vote on that like i’m thinking the majority of people kind of side with the idea of like hey let’s keep this daughter safe and alive you would you i would hank i would hope so looking at it from that situation’s context like you might believe if you don’t help the outcome for everyone involved will be far worse i would say the outcome for the daughter would be worse if she got beat up and died i would say the outcome for the mom would be far worse if the daughter got beat up and died like right so i don’t know that that’s an interesting idea so i i guess it’s interesting if i read on it says maybe you excuse troubling behavior lend money or assist in other ways but it’s important to realize enabling doesn’t really help and i look at that situation and i’m like are you [ _ ] sure yeah that sounds helpful so and those are the exact arguments against things like the syringe exchange and what the evidence is bearing out here in cecil county is that that has been the single highest uh whatever you call it intervention point to get people into treatment most of the people that are getting into treatment through voices have come through the syringe exchange program and you know so is it enabling them to use maybe but it’s also helping to keep them alive long enough to get them into treatment so that they have someone they know where to go when they want to get help does that mean that every person that access those services is going to get help or that it’s going to make the outcome better for every single individual absolutely not you know is that what they mean when they say evidence-based yes okay yeah it means there’s actual science and numbers behind it right but the whole goal and idea of that is we just need to [ _ ] keep people alive like people dying because of addiction in general is a bad thing for the community right so yes that is a consequence that comes along with using but if there’s something we can do to stop that you know should we worry that it’s labeled enabling you know should should well it’s enabling so we shouldn’t do it like no we keep these people alive we try to keep them healthy there are some other positive outcomes for the community as far as reduce risk of different you know diseases and things but you know you just want to keep people alive and that’s so the the paragraph goes on but it’s important to realize enabling doesn’t really help over time it can have a damaging effect on your loved one and others around them it’s difficult for someone to get help if they don’t fully see the consequences of their actions i’m definitely thinking this is like tied into an old belief of what addiction is and how we solve it i really am exactly so but why do we like we i feel like the belief is changing but this idea isn’t right over time it can have a damaging effect i think it’s more damaging if more people in the [ _ ] community die like that is bad for like you just said that’s terrible for the entire community that’s more people who have the trauma of losing their kid their loved one their their whoever that’s more families who [ _ ] struggle every christmas when it’s not the same as it used to be like that’s a more damaging effect over time than anything so yeah i don’t want to give my kids money every day so that they can go do drugs i’m not saying that’s what i want to do but looking at it from this other light and you were talking about trying to make it uh compared to a medical thing i’m looking at this like what about homeless people let’s stop feeding them because if they have less food and more consequences they’re hungrier they’ll work at a job right there’s a lot of people who still believe that definitely but that’s ridiculous like you just aren’t gonna feed them like that’s [ _ ] crazy right and that’s what i’m i don’t know that’s one of the things that just popped up on my mind reading this paragraph like how how is not helping people better i don’t know so it talks about enabling versus empowerment empowerment is like giving them tools helping them access resources teaching them skills um so it does have some situations on here well it’s got examples so maybe we can run through them and and talk about what we think i would love to can i shout something out so i’m thinking about like based on what billy was saying there’s like an arc of enabling to harm reduction i mean am i thinking about this right like a spectrum like there’s enabling which is just giving the addict something but if there’s like harm reduction it’s more like a like a package or a philosophy of giving them and hoping they’ll stay alive long enough to get treatment or is it just enabling isn’t it’s all harm reduction i’m just trying to understand well i think there’s the the community level enabling right the harm reduction methods and i think there’s the personal family or one-on-one level of enabling which is more probably familiar to what we’re we’re talking about most of the time a lot of times this is viewed as enabling your partner or your kids um you know do you give them money do you overlook the fact that they come in late do you ignore the signs that’s there’s a problem because it’s just easier to ignore than it is to cause the conflict of dealing with it and some of it’s a little more complicated even than that so the article i was one of the articles i was reading was talking about like let’s say you’re a wife of a husband that’s an alcoholic and he drinks too much and can’t make it into work well then you go and call his work you know oh he’s sick he can’t make it in today you know to cover for his using well if he loses his [ _ ] job you know what i mean that affects the family that affects the kids that affects you know so and in the article it sort of was making this wife out like she’s an enabler for her husband like yeah what the [ _ ] happens if he loses his job you know what i mean and she becomes homeless and her kids you know now have no but if they’re going they keep going down the road they’re going he’s going to lose his job anyway maybe or maybe you sort of point out hey look these are the things that can happen this is the road you’re going down i love you i want to support you you know we so then yeah that move was part of a bigger package a bigger philosophy yeah well then what if he loses his job in in 10 years once all the kids are 18 and out of the house it’s a little less impactful and drastic then right or she can see it coming so she can get some things in place i can start stocking away some savings so when he loses his job or what if two years from now miraculously he decides he has a problem and wants to do something about it and gets help right like i don’t think i i get it i get what you’re saying right oh well he’s going to lose it anyway one day and maybe that’s true but i think that’s doesn’t mean we should have worse outcomes sooner just because that might be a possibility in the future i don’t know i’ve read that same article and i was thinking the same thing i didn’t get that right like if he loses his [ _ ] job everybody suffers you know what i mean it’s not just like she’s not denying him of the concept she’s got [ _ ] consequences wrapped up into that [ _ ] too right and so i guess from a clinical standpoint you know what i would say is my belief and i think the belief of a lot of people right now in therapy is the idea that if you take away someone’s coping resources without having resources already put into place that they can use that’s malpractice like for someone to come see me and me to not give them anything i i haven’t given you any breathing techniques any meditation we haven’t talked about anything we haven’t calmed your nervous system and i’m just like you need to [ _ ] stop drinking if they stop drinking that’s going to be bad they got nothing to put in the place of it so if i haven’t resourced someone i am really like committing malpractice by trying to get them to stop something when they have nothing else to put in place of it and i don’t know if that spreads out to this idea in in the the layman world right like i don’t know if we’d be it’s not malpractice obviously because you’re not practicing anything but it does seem inhumane like hey i’m gonna take the coping skills you’ve learned in your life and just rip them away from you and now you can just sit there and suffer in pain yeah and and i believe this idea of enabling needs to change because our views on addiction change you know it’s like the johann hari you know the opposite of addiction is connection thing and like say the belief that addiction comes from trauma like those ideas like you said lead us to look at addiction like oh this is a result of you know abuse neglect trauma maybe bringing in those sorts of therapies and those sorts of interventions are better than just trying to force someone into some bad consequences right right i mean if you haven’t given someone something else to do you are taking away the only way they’ve been capable of dealing so if you look at at addiction as less of a moral failing as less of a disease and more of a i had a life that felt intolerable to live and i was either going to kill myself or find a way to make it tolerable and drugs alcohol whatever you want to call it that was my way to make it tolerable well now if i take that away from you i’m putting you right back into that intolerable life right it’s like if you get out of the car and you leave the radio on 18 when you get back in the car the radio is on 18. right like when you get out of that pain when you go back into it it’s the same pain and so if we don’t give you anything we’re really doing more harm than good we’re you know to not enable that person until they have resources is to say hey uh [ _ ] you i don’t care if you’re hurting it’s like if they were gonna do an operation on your broken arm right and they didn’t give you pain medicine until the operation they were like ah just sit there and [ __ ] you know writhe and cry and puke out of your pain and then we’ll operate and it’ll get better then but that’s three weeks from now we can schedule it right what no no help me till then
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so okay first one is they say first enabling behavior is ignoring or tolerating problematic behavior tolerating i like that so here’s the situation your partner struggles with alcohol misuse right you got that so your partner’s struggling with alcohol misuse they say they haven’t been drinking but you find a receipt in the bathroom trash for a liquor store for me last night uh do you bring it up or do you not bring it up oh yeah i think you would bring it up okay so they’re saying enabling would be to not bring it up because i would give them i would give them that if you just ignore it or act like it’s yeah i would but if you go back to this idea of let’s say a man who’s a stay-at-home father right and the woman who’s got a job and she’s saying she’s not drinking and they’re already having a lot of struggles in their relationship and his concern is to cause more conflict she’s gonna roll out and leave him in the kids without any way to survive now we get more complex so yeah and it definitely gets complex based off what are the values in your relationship so like when i say that it’s because honesty is a big value that is in my relationship you know what i mean i don’t it’s good point lie to my wife i don’t expect her to lie to me we’ve talked about that like that’s a shared value so if she tells me she’s doing one thing and then she does something else i’m gonna i mean it doesn’t matter what it is if it’s oh i’m gonna be working today and then she doesn’t go to work and she goes to the beach be like how come he went to the beach and didn’t tell me you know what i mean like it’s not it’s not necessarily that i would need to bring up the the drinking receipt in this god damn it you know what i mean you’re drinking again you son of a [ _ ] you know that sort of thing but it might be like hey i thought you said you weren’t drinking what’s this receipt from but does the alcoholic feel that any different no matter how you say it like when i was using it didn’t matter if you were cussing me out about my using or you were just like hey i found drugs in your room i’d have felt the same way either way i’d be like i just gotta get the [ _ ] out of here well that gets back to the spiritual principles and the principles that i try to live my life by well but you’re also coming from a place and i mean where else could you come from this is where you’re at but a place of two pretty healthy people in recovery right in their relationship right like that looks a lot different if we’re too you know actively yeah i’m with somebody that’s actively used and obviously that also says something about my mental health statement to begin with and like our ability to communicate effectively and not yell and scream and i don’t know i i mean i get it i i do think you bring it up um talking to a guy last night he was talking about how when he was getting high as a teen his parent was in n a and knew he was getting high and told everybody he was clean because they didn’t want the stigma of having to kick him out or over the pressure of the people in the rooms to say you you’re enabling him or any of those things so it was easier for them to just ignore and i look at my own life and my parents like i mean i 15 neon pot leaf poster on the wall like it was pretty ignored for me too right like and that was my two it was ignored yeah my parents didn’t want to know and look i don’t know if it changes anything if they’re like super serious and force me into therapy or i don’t know if that changes anything at all but i i kind of do think it’s the best better way to handle it i guess i wouldn’t want to ignore it in my household oh no and with our kids we just i mean we try to talk not we don’t beat them to death with addiction stuff but we talk to them about it they know what my wife does they know that we’re both involved in recovery they know that we’ve had addiction problems and we bring it up from the perspective of look if you decide at some point you’re going to drink because they’re going to be adults and do what they want nowadays maybe even smoke pot because that’s going to be legal everywhere in the next couple years i think for sure you know so they may do these things in their normal life and at least what we’re starting to think or believe now is that if they’re healthy and well-rounded individuals that they should be able to do those things socially without severe consequences in their life and so if they want to do those things good for them but they need to be aware that one we have a history of those things and two the warning signs of like hey this might be the signs that shit’s starting to get a little out of control and you just kind of need to be aware that if this comes up you need to take a look at your behaviors right so number two providing financial assistance okay so here you go your adult child struggles to manage their money and never has enough to pay their rent helping them out each month won’t teach them how to manage their money instead they may become more dependent on you what do you do do you help them out with money each month or no this is such a [ _ ] weird one i’m not gonna lie i’m like if you have the money why wouldn’t you help your kids so my wife and i have always said my kids can [ _ ] live with us as long as they want forever and if if we can afford it and it’s and this gets to the enabling things i know i’m enabling my 19 year old daughter to be [ _ ] lazy and some millennial you know like these millennials this is why the world sucks really yeah i’m gonna let my kid have fun in life how dare i son of a [ _ ] that’s a really i think like they didn’t even put any drug context in this one so i felt really weird i was like crazy and that’s what i think of like my daughter now like she’s not into drugs or anything we’re just like hey you got your whole life to figure out what the [ _ ] you want to do just because you’re 19 doesn’t mean you know now if she was 45 and sitting on the couch all day watching video games i don’t know if i’d be okay with that or playing video games you don’t watch video games maybe you do nowadays that’s crazy but anyway you know i probably wouldn’t be okay with that i might not i’m probably not going to throw them out but i would maybe say hey look here’s things you got to do around the house or here’s other things you can do but i what do i care my wife’s all the time is like i hope all you guys live with us forever and that when you have families and kids they can live here too like i think me and jen have that same like uh attachment style where i’m like oh my god my kids will move out and it’s going to [ _ ] crush me yeah like no stay stay forever and just in different contexts i mean when we were in utah with the mormon community like that’s exactly what they do like they have property and they’ll build a [ _ ] house right next to their house for their kids like they want them to stay there and with their families and raise them together like that a lot of times the parents either give them the property build the house like they do all that so that just so that the families stay tight and together so what if your daughter’s 45 does work right but it’s maybe not the best paying job and every time she gets paid just blows her [ _ ] money on whatever the newest computer whatever it is she likes just blows it right but never has i mean are you going to be like thinking that you’re what does this say that she’s more dependent on you and can’t manage your money and you need to do something different like would you even give a [ _ ] i can’t manage my own [ _ ] money i gotta let my wife do it because i’m irresponsible with money i mean but would you my wife is enabling me goddamn right damn it our family needs to suffer financially because i’m bad with money
i mean you’re in a unique situation i think for this one oh i am i i think right you kind of plan on financially helping that’s yeah so one of my daughters probably will stay with me because she has down syndrome um but i always say mil i would love it if millie stayed home with you know forever two but and she she’s only seven and she’s like i wanna live right next to you mom she wants to buy the house next to her but you know thinking about this scenario um i’ve seen the um like there’s a house in my neighborhood close by the uh adult children you know go out in the world get messed up with drugs again and come back and they keep coming back and now they’re in their mid-30s and um i’ve often thought of the mom as enabling and i think there’s a little bit of resentment because when the kids move back the crime in the neighborhood goes up too so i have that kind of fear based resentment towards the situation but you know what would happen if the mom didn’t take these kids back um so you can enable people yeah it’s not in your neighborhood all right yeah yeah just not just my neighbors not my section of the neighborhood please but we i mean all of us neighbors have watched this scenario happen i’ve lived in this house for almost 20 years and we’ve been watching it this whole time like oh they’re back this is still from that idea that like everybody is supposed to move out and have their own house and like this is a really weird idea and very american for sure and i’m like did did the [ __ ] mortgage companies write this example right who wrote this yeah i think it’s uh i thought i was shocked to hear that all three of us wouldn’t mind if our kids stayed with us forever i mean
because my i mean like my parents are states away you know and you know i just want my kids to be with me and that’s for me is a newer belief i mean if you’d asked me 20 years ago before i had kids i’m like i need to you know raise these individuals to go out and conquer the world and be some representation of me right you know now i don’t care about anything like i don’t care what my kid does as long as she’s happy you know just needs to be happy so number three covering for them or making excuses uh you might call your partner’s work to say they’re sick when they’re hungover or blackout drunk or you may call your child school school with an excuse when they haven’t completed a term project or studied for an important exam your actions may seem to help in the moment they keep your partner from facing a reprimand or even losing their job and source of income they prevent your child from experiencing academic consequences that could affect your future but your actions can give your loved one the message that there’s nothing wrong with their behavior that you’ll keep covering for them i definitely disagree with this one there’s got to be more of this story like yeah you’re not going to do it and then not talk to them right right you know like i did this now pull up pull up please my parents did oh they got me lawyers and all kinds of [ _ ] we never had like big conversations about you know you really need to stop drinking and driving in the car all the time that was not the case it was like oh here’s legal trouble let’s get a lawyer and let but yeah there wasn’t it got worse and that’s where i think the issues come up it’s like it’s not the enabling behavior that’s the problem it’s the we need to have conversations about [ _ ] reality you know well i think this one brings up a really good point honestly in my mind at least the idea of this is again going back to they need these consequences to seek help right they need these financial consequences these bottom of the barrel you and your family need to get evicted from your house and you need to take your kids and sleep on the street because of your spouse’s alcohol abuse and they lost their job right you need to be hungry you need to eat at shelters that’s the kind of consequences we need then your partner will see the error of their ways and do something different your partner needs to die frozen to death because he’s an alcoholic or she’s an alcoholic out on the street during the winter because they got kicked out and lost their job like these it’s i don’t think the consequences necessarily were the answer and i look back at my life and you know prison didn’t make me think that i needed to do something different loss of jobs unemployment being homeless none of these consequences actually got me clean maybe maybe they were part of the process i can’t say they weren’t right i don’t know that maybe they led to this other consequence which is what i think did get me clean this like what we call in narcotics anonymous at least what i think it’s called a narcotics anonymous this spiritual emptiness right this spiritual death this void of anything where i just felt so lifeless and like i i’m sick and tired of being sick and tired and couldn’t take any more emptiness inside right that’s the consequence that led me to do something about my problem or to change my behavior it wasn’t really the homelessness did all those possibly contribute to that possibly right if i was living some posh lifestyle if i was like a musician and still had money and still had a bed to sleep in and maybe i don’t get that spiritual emptiness but i don’t see that because i see rich people that still get crying right like they still have their house and [ _ ] and they can find this other spiritual death consequence or whatever oh there’s plenty of examples of those people nowadays there’s these incredibly successful people that financially never struggle whatsoever but it was the spiritual death was their bottom yeah right so i don’t think we need to give these people the consequences of like being homeless or or losing your job or or dying from an overdose or getting aids i don’t think we need to give those consequences in order to still have this background stuff going on like we can protect them from those things hey i’ll call out of work for you because you’re blackout drunk and still have these conversations and try to lovingly get them to seek the resources that they can put in place so that they can have the other desire to find recovery whether that’s a consequence or not well and you brought up a good point about like coping mechanisms like just because you help someone do something you can still or or you can work with them towards how to cope with those things you know like just because you help them deal with their drunken calling out of work doesn’t mean you just go oh i’ll just do that for you forever now and that’s just how we handle this situation you might still have a conversation be like no look you know we got to figure something out here we can’t this isn’t going to keep happening we can’t keep doing this so this sounds like to me the word keeps popping up in my head is compassion like so compassion for your loved one and compassion for yourself so taking care of the loved one so yeah you you lie to the teacher or employer but there’s got to be a follow-up because that protects you compassion for the addict and then compassion for yourself it’s for the better outcome because if you have that conversation to say like yo we can’t do that we can’t keep doing this you know well and that’s where i think this idea of enabling just falls flat for me is is the opposite of enabling when you say you need to stop enabling what we’ve considered the opposite to be is tough love i don’t think tough love and compassion exist in the same [ _ ] right like those seem like two very different ideas right i’m not saying that at times when we’re being compassionate to ourselves the best thing we can’t do is love from a distance maybe that is what we need to do right maybe that’s all we can handle maybe that’s the boundary we need but compassion and tough love couldn’t sit in this basement together i don’t think well a compassionate boundary could look like tough love maybe i’ll have to think of an example but yeah well i mean as a parent i mean if my kids stole everything that i own and i came home from work every day and the tv’s [ _ ] gone i don’t know that i can allow that kid to continue to live in my house but i don’t think it looks in the basement yeah right [ _ ] tags on my tv or like if my children did steal from me like i don’t i would probably call the cops at some i mean maybe not the very first time we might have a conversation be like look the next time you steal my [ _ ] i’m calling the police you know what i mean and telling them that you stole my [ _ ] passionate boundary um yeah you know i might not need to throw them out at that point but if they steal my [ _ ] i’m calling the cops and we all know but i think the boundaries is where that becomes important it’s like what am i willing to tolerate i mean maybe i financially i don’t care about tvs and i like buying a new tv every other week so you know who cares just give them the money they’re only getting right quarter price for the goddamn tv okay right i’ll just give you 50 bucks you’re only getting 25 on tv quit stealing my tv i learned so much from this show my parents put an alarm system on the house and it was like the option of you can be in or out but you can’t go in and right like you can stay in here with our [ _ ] safe or you can be outside where our [ _ ] is in here safe but you can’t be carrying [ _ ] in and out of the house that’s not gonna work wow how’d you smoke cigarettes yeah that’s a good question i don’t think i ever chose to stay in i was like okay i mean just saying to my kids like look here’s the rules if you want to live here you know this is how we’re living like you know i’ve always said and now i’m lax on it but because she’s got her own key but i’ve always said with my daughter like look like you need to be home by midnight i don’t want people [ _ ] coming into the house at one and two in the morning now my daughter’s super quiet she woke me up and made a bunch of noise i would be pissed but you know my 19 year old she does sometimes she stays out late and stuff but she’s responsible i don’t really worry that much she locks the door when she comes in she’s very quiet and respectful of us and i just think back to me as a kid like i wasn’t those things at all i’m [ _ ] coming in drunk and making all kinds of noise and going to my bedroom turning [ _ ] music on you know my parents got to work in the morning knocking the [ _ ] coffee table over and i’m like but i’m so oblivious right and that’s all they’re doing they’re yelling like would you be quiet please like right and i just think that’s [ _ ] crazy like i would never tolerate so i mean i you know looking at this from my standpoint right now with my daughter and like uh there’s the belief that she’s been sneaking out more than we’re aware of and like we just bought two camera systems and we’re gonna but it’s not a it’s not like a tough love i’m not gonna let you sneak out it’s like uh i’m here to protect your [ _ ] safety that’s my job and i need to know if you’re leaving this house like we we need boundaries around this so i don’t consider that tough love but i’m also not going to allow the behavior that i see as dangerous to continue if there’s something i can do about it so i don’t know where that falls in enabling or not enabling but it’s from a compassionate place when they’re under 18 i think because like especially in schools nowadays like in public school like you can’t just let your kid [ _ ] fall behind because they like to play video games like as a parent like i mean you can but actually now it’s ridiculous dude you can like do none of your work and then turn it all in at the end of the year like half done and they’ll still give you credit and pass yeah but i think as a as a parent i mean most kids you know they’d much rather play video games and hang out with friends and go do stuff than do homework and [ _ ] like that and like as a parent you gotta so here’s what’s funny you’re saying this and i’m sitting here thinking and i’m like yeah enabling’s [ _ ] stupid it doesn’t work and yet when i look at the school system enabling kids to turn in late work like after the due date i’m like they’re [ _ ] enabling my kids and [ _ ] them all up they’re not teaching them life skills like you can’t turn in your work late at work like that don’t work you get out i don’t think the school system should do it i think as a parent you almost have an obligation to enable your kids to succeed and the whole game is rigged like it’s a [ _ ] rigged game like you better 11 year old doesn’t understand the rig game of the public school system and that failing a couple of grades can [ _ ] you up on your credit in the rest of your life when you’re [ _ ] 19 they’re looking at your sixth grade [ _ ] math [ _ ] to make credit decisions like that’s nuts wow i didn’t even know that i think looking at the public school they seem more and more like a business to me these days like it’s a racket i went to get a job at 25 in the union and they were like it looks here like you failed french in 10th grade i was like are you [ _ ] serious yeah they were like what’s up with that i’m like uh i was in 10th grade did you ever [ _ ] [ _ ] 12 like what do i know right like i i don’t know like what do you want me to say about that girl and all of a sudden i didn’t give a [ _ ] about nothing yeah i didn’t finish high school i didn’t even finish high school and they asked about the [ _ ] grade in french yeah i’m like i didn’t even finish high school like i didn’t care about life back then obviously and i’m different now that’s what i’m here for wow it was weird anyway uh number four take wait don’t go too far so back to the parent child thing so earlier um you were talking about how much control you can have over your child this was earlier in the podcast and you were saying something like you know you can’t control but but in this question it sounds like you know you do have some level of responsibility to not enable your child you can do your best but i don’t think ultimately no amount of punishment no amount of reward no amount of system i’ve put in place yet has had really any effect on my daughter right and from a therapy standpoint that everybody might not agree with that’s because i believe her nervous system her fight-or-flight responses her freeze responses like all that [ _ ] is so misattuned and out of whack that consequences don’t [ _ ] mean anything when life seems like life or death you don’t worry about oh i don’t have my phone like that’s not even a factor anymore you’re worried about like i just don’t feel safe in my body maslow’s hierarchy right right so like when it’s life or death down here all other systems get out of whack they either shut down or they over exert so that you can flee the situation fight it or or you just your whole body like when those animals play dead that’s not playing dead that’s literally their [ _ ] body shutting down like his whole systems just go offline that’s what really happens in them and so if you think of a human doing that like it doesn’t matter if i tell my daughter you won’t have your phone for a month you can’t go see your friends for a month hey when you do these behaviors i like we’re going to give you money we’re going to give you clothes or whatever it is you’re looking for like none of that matters she will do whatever it is the [ _ ] her body screams is gonna be a relieving behavior right now so how do you like what do you do with that what control do i have i get it now i understand so the cameras weren’t for consequences the cameras are really just safety yeah baseline like i need to know if you’re getting out and if you are i need to monitor this somehow find a way to make it not happen uh because i from what i understand she’s going out to meet up with people she’s never met in person and it’s it’s dangerous right like i don’t want her doing that so it’s more like i need to keep tabs on this because if this doesn’t find a way to change i need to do something more drastic put you in impatient therapy somewhere long term like i need to keep you safe that’s my job that’s job number one if i can’t do that then [ _ ] all this you have a phone or don’t like you got to be here and alive first and foremost yeah so it’s not it’s not about punishments or any of that yeah totally safety based and that’s what happened i mean it wasn’t i wouldn’t call it enabling with our daughter because she had a she has a mental disability but it was similar kind of stuff like we had to look at all right ultimately it’s her safety first and you know similar we had to actually put like these bars on the window because she had people come in there that she didn’t know or boys from school and [ _ ] like that and eventually she ended up going to an impatient place originally we had thought she would probably live with us and we would take care of her most of her life and then as she got older the the limitations got more so are we ready now number four ready all right uh taking on more than your share of responsibilities is enabling according to this website here’s the example oh my [ _ ] god you might let your teen avoid chores so they can have time to be a kid quote unquote but a young adult when was this written 2019 okay you uh but a young adult who doesn’t know how to do laundry or wash dishes will have a hard time on their own it’s important to strike a balance are you [ __ ] kidding me like ah google
i mean you can google laundry you can watch youtube videos right people fix their cars watching youtube videos i’m pretty sure they can figure out the [ _ ] laundry or the dishes or what kind of [ _ ] did you raise i can’t figure out the seven buttons on a [ __ ] washing machine normal start colors i mean and this is acting like laundry like does anybody do colors and lights anymore like the light lights like
it’s yolo you only load once all that [ _ ] in there is good to go i mean look if you get a new piece of clothing yeah maybe you wash it by itself for a time or two so you don’t turn all your goddamn socks pink but beyond that who gives a [ _ ] it all just goes in there and comes out great yeah i this baffles me like i guess we’re thinking about enabling from the idea of addiction and this is like are you [ _ ] serious like i mean i’m not saying that in my house like i don’t expect people to do laundry or help out or have a chore but it’s not because i think they couldn’t learn it in five seconds once they moved out it’s because i want help around the house it has nothing to do with them dude if you send you out on your own you’re gonna [ _ ] learn how to do the dishes it’s not that hard like you’ll phone a friend right who wants to be a millionaire i’ll just call my buddy how do you do the dish like what yeah wow all right i’m not even gonna say any more about that let’s go to number five yeah avoiding the issue your loved one tends to drink way too much when you go out to a restaurant instead of talking about the issue you start suggesting places that don’t serve alcohol this is one i guess i agree with only because i think communication and talking about things is part of the key to help right hey let’s have a loving communication about this let’s talk about what we can do what are you willing to do right because i i can’t take this behavior so what are you willing to do and i’ll work with you from there and we’ll try to get you more willing to do more but right and if your communication is based in honesty hope that hopefully the person that’s in chaotic use is going to tell you like i don’t want to change i’m going to keep doing this and then you make plans according to that you know like you can you can protect yourself if but if you base your communication on dishonesty or not talking about it then nobody knows who’s doing what yeah that one seemed like a no-brainer i like that one i know a woman i know a woman through a a who uh used to throw community parties and she would have alcohol at her own party she just didn’t drink and one neighbor would always come and get like wasted and make a scene so they’re um as they were coming up it was like a christmas it was an annual party she’s like hey you’re more than welcome to come but i don’t want you to drink and the neighbor was like what she’s like every time you do you know it becomes a scene or whatever and i really want you there and i love having your company but hey maybe this year don’t drink and she put that like boundary in place and uh it didn’t go over oh no yeah yeah well and the woman hosting the parties in aaa um and she’s like this doesn’t have anything to do with me not drinking because i’m still going to serve alcohol but you know i’ve seen you cause scenes or get dangerous or whatever and um let’s get her on the show yeah yeah and anyway the neighbor got pissed and didn’t go and um yeah good right right and the party went on and like you know the other guests had a great time and there was no scene you know that’s great wow uh six feels a lot like the last one it says brushing things off which sounds like ignoring things to me uh your partner frequently ridicules you in public because they also struggle with alcohol addiction you tell yourself it’s the alcohol talking and they don’t really mean it even though it’s starting to affect your emotional well-being you even tell yourself it’s not abuse because they’re not really themselves when they’ve been drinking well they’re not really themselves i agree with that but yeah this comes back to the idea of we i’m not saying enable your loved ones i’m saying compassion like jenny said to your loved ones but also you need to have your own compassion and and know your boundaries and what’s good for you if anything’s negatively impacting your life you can’t just learn any forms of abuse you don’t tolerate any forms of rice no matter what whether they’re using or not right to the best of your ability i mean you know i i get it not everybody’s ready to i don’t want to shame anybody right if you’re in an abusive relationship and you’re not ready to stop like i that sucks it really sucks and i hope you find a way to to get out of that situation i guess but yeah you know we would hope that abuse is not people would recognize that it’s they deserve better god this one sounds like the same thing are you sure there’s 11 of these ladies crystal who wrote this article i i think there’s she just needed no wonder she didn’t have a picture she had a number of shames she wanted to get to a number so seven denying the problem your partner has slowly started drinking more and more as stresses and responsibilities at their job have increased you remember when they drank very little so you tell yourself they don’t have a problem they can quit at any time does anybody really say that to that themselves that sounds like denial like yeah i guess that’s like what are you doing for them by not saying anything i could tell you my last year of drinking well i with the last question yeah i said terrible things in blackouts things that i don’t even believe but i you know i said terrible things to my husband and in the last year of my drinking he asked for a divorce two or three times and i was like no no no i’ll stop and i would stop for like a couple days you know um but he never followed through um so i guess it was that enabling because he never right he let you keep drinking because he didn’t divorce you yeah and if he’d divorced you you’d have stopped six months well and but i mean because i was a real ass you know like he he should have divorced me but i mean those times of him asking for a divorce kind of built up to help me get help you know like he didn’t leave me but i remember those like as like pinpoints in the last year of my drinking you know i was like wow james is going to leave me you know like and so he didn’t leave me thank god but but did he say jenny we’re getting divorced or was he like hey jenny i love you but like th this behavior is going to make us get a divorce it was like that yeah nice yeah yeah healthy yeah he’s remarkably healthy i don’t know why she’s with me that sounds really good yeah that’s cool he’s like yeah i think he did he said it in this in this i think maybe of the three times it was like a couple months apart each like one time he’s like we’re done we’re through but then other times it was like i can’t live this way and you know and our daughter deserves better and so so i i almost feel like you’re living proof that enabling is [ _ ] because your husband kind of enabled you and didn’t follow through on what he said and yet you still found sobriety so yeah this is this whole we okay i guess we could stop talking it’s over then we figured it out world enabling’s dumb yeah um let’s finish these out eight sacrificing or struggling to recognize your own needs your teen spends hours each night playing video games instead of taking care of their responsibilities this sounds like your son billy i don’t mind yeah uh you fill your evenings with their laundry cleaning and other chores to ensure they’ll have something to wear and a clean shower to use in the morning but you also work full time and need the evenings to care for yourself you’ve let this slip by the wayside you figure it’s just a fact of life i don’t know if this is enabling but i would say this is the kind of [ _ ] my wife does that drives me crazy like over exerts herself and then gets stressed out and resentful about it and i’m like don’t yeah my wife doesn’t make somebody else i mean to some degree but i don’t i’m like i am not doing work that i don’t have to do so if i find a way to blame this on somebody else and make them clean it up it’s all theirs no i just i less of mine it’s not uh i think less of mine is whether compassion enabling tough love it’s more just i’m not doing that like i got enough of it i feel like our kids learn more by what we do than what we say right so won’t they pick up on the fact that we do everything right and realize like if they want these things they’ll learn them without us this is that whole dichotomy of uh i can’t oh never mind i’m not even gonna get political um nine not following through on consequences oh here it is jenny uh there may come a time in your relationship when you’ve had enough you might say if you spend this money on anything other than rent i’m not going to give you any more money or i can’t stay in this relationship if you don’t get professional help you might also say i’m only paying my share of the rent this month so if you can’t pay yours you’ll need to find somewhere else to live but you don’t follow through so your loved one continues doing what they’re doing and learns these are empty threats but we’ve just proved that’s [ _ ] because jenny’s here with us yeah or there’s other things you can do like hey what’s the landlord’s address i’m gonna send them the [ _ ] rent yeah and then you just pay the rent and not give them the money like yeah or or get your name on there but they make it sound like paying someone’s rent is this terrible thing yeah i don’t know yeah there’s a lot of rent paying in this thing i never thought much about rent payment although i did continue to use the entire year my mother paid my rent when i was renting a room from somebody and she bought me groceries every week too so enabling yeah she shouldn’t have done that i might have got recovery sooner i don’t know or not at all right or i might have been dead because i od on the street or froze today 10 not maintaining your stated boundaries if your loved ones start shouting during a discussion and continue the discussion instead of walking away they may get the message that the problematic behavior isn’t that big of a deal to you they may also feel that you’ll easily give in on other boundaries too that’s a stretch yeah right oh you’ll let me yell at you you’ll also let me steal your money borrow your car whatever i want yeah wow these feel ridiculous uh 11 feeling resentment say your sister continues to leave her kids with you when she goes out she says she has a job but you know she’s lying you agree to babysit because you want the kids to be safe but your babysitting enables her to keep going out over time you become angrier and more frustrated with her with yourself for not being able to say no this resentment slowly creeps into your interactions with her kids holy [ _ ] like i don’t even know where to start with this one i i mean it’s an important one to bring up do you yeah i do because because the kids are are human victims it’s not like money or like it’s not like an intangible thing this is like a like a living being that’s going to suffer if you don’t step in and help yeah so is that enabling or is it like taking care of the kids well that’s why i thought this was so ridiculous i’m like i see people in therapy who who maybe are in similar situations right and i’m like well what the [ _ ] are you gonna do not take care of the kids right bring your kids over more why don’t you bring them over for dinner i’ll make sure they eat they can hang out here tonight you go [ _ ] do whatever you need to do help your kids and look you might get a resentment no doubt about it you’re going to resent your sister for this extra work you got to do but what are you going to do if the kids don’t come over yeah you’re going to sit there and wonder well who the [ _ ] did she leave them with where are they are they home alone hopefully you have people in your community sorry i mean well i just we have a guy at work going through exactly that situation with his sister-in-law’s kids and they were like the kids were like living with him for a while and i repeatedly tried to tell him dude that is amazing it’s really awesome that you’re doing that stuff for these kids that is so cool like you really you know and try to like just praise them at every opportunity because them [ _ ] kids need that you know yes i i just i see grandparents who are raising their kids kids uh they’re raising their grandkids and i’m like kind of that going on yeah do you just leave them with the practice and addict because that’s better like they’ll get consequences if their kids are sitting there with them while they get high no they [ _ ] walk oh my god yeah it takes communities to raise kids as it is let alone someone who’s in you know chaotic views by watching their children yeah [ __ ] nuts so i mean what’s the general consensus we’re we’re getting low on time here i mean so for me i think it’s like i am always in a place where i want to help people as much as i possibly can within my own personal limits and boundaries if i start sacrificing you know my own morals and values and and beliefs and allow people to abuse me and things like that then it’s probably unhealthy but if i’m financially okay and i want to let my kids live with me until they’re 45 you know then that should that’s i don’t know that we should have this negative look at that as a society yeah i think enabling and the idea of enabling versus tough love is really centered in this old line of thinking that is based on the idea that if there is these consequences and if they get bad enough people will do something different i think it’s very far apart from the idea of like we need to save people’s lives i think it doesn’t take into account that these consequences are often like death or or life altering for the worse it’s not based in my understanding of what substance abuse or addiction is which is you know a way to try to cope with life that seems unculpable i don’t think the consequences that we’re providing through enabling are really the consequences that are gonna make people they’re not gonna make people find recovery right can they be part of the process sure if that’s what we’ve ended up doing and if that’s what we have to do like what you’re talking about if i have my healthy boundaries and i just have to kick my kid out because they won’t stop stealing then that’s what i have to do and maybe that is a part of their process to get to whatever they need to get to to decide to recover right but i don’t think necessarily that us just forcing these consequences on people is getting them anywhere any faster i don’t think it’s leading to great outcomes and it doesn’t fit in with my understanding i think you know jenny mentioned compassion and i would say empathy that’s where i want to come from at all times for myself and for anybody around me right i yes i need my healthy boundaries to keep me in a good place but i also just want to keep people alive and as healthy and be as useful as possible until they can get somewhere better not just force-feed consequences to them of pain you need more pain in your life that’s what you need that’ll fix you suffer and i guess i look at it as you know there’s no guarantee that we’re going to be able to help a loved one or a friend or family member you know get into treatment but are we more likely to love that person into treatment or to like shame and consequence them into treatment and pain is the answer i would argue that shaming is enabling right final thoughts danny oh i just and just sell if you think you’re enabling i guess self-care first take care of yourself and then uh lead with your good intentions and the good intentions of you know compassion like we talked about and getting them help isn’t that what the road to hell is paved with
yes it’s not going to be easy yeah right is that it that’s it thank you i feel like i have a better understanding of this now so yeah uh you know not to say that if someone says you’re enabling people or enabling the loved ones in your life that it might not be a good idea or prudent for you to seek some professional help or even seek some of these support groups like uh coda codependence anonymous or al-anon or naranon like i think these are useful places to learn more about it right 100 and to help you because it could be that you’re struggling with some codependency or attachment category type stuff that is making it i don’t want to say worse but works for you right it might not have any effect positive or negative on your loved one but it could be making your life experience worse and so seeking out uh some more information about it and possibly some help with your behaviors might ultimately make you feel better which i think is always wise but don’t just i don’t think it’s a good idea to just overarchingly say oh enabling’s bad tough love is good let’s go [ __ ] do it pain for everyone and they’ll all get better all right agreed cool i’ll see you next week
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