The person
with a Substance Use Disorder (SUD) is driven by many motivating
factors, in order, to maintain their continued usage. One
overwhelming motivation is the desire to avoid any of the pain and
suffering in their life. Paradoxically, everything they do only
increases their pain and suffering created directly by the
consequences of their usage. Being unwilling to acknowledge that
their alcohol or other drug (AOD) usage is the primary problem, they
attempt to deflect responsibility from themselves, they seek to blame
the world and particularly, those individuals closest to them for the
reasons they suffer so much.
They will
tell anyone willing to listen how their employer does not understand
them and how they work hard all day without any appreciation. They
tell their friends that their spouse cannot be trusted with money,
relationships, household responsibilities, etc. and attempt to
convince their friends that if their spouse only took better care of
them, they would not have all those other problems. They will tell
any story which makes them look good and places responsibily for
their troubles upon others.
Drug
dependent individuals seem to intuitively recruit others who are
willing to enable their usage or accept the blame. Their behavior
attempts to shift the responsibility away from them (where it should
be) and give it to others who unknowingly might believe the
responsibility might be upon them. Enabling is any action that
removes, alters, or reduces the natural, harmful, often painful
consequences of another's behaviors, decisions or choices. For
example, if we pay the electric bill for our son's apartment because
he spent the money on alcohol or drug purchases. Our action of
paying the bill prevents him from dealing with the painful
consequences of making payment arrangements, living in the dark,
accepting personal responsibility, and/or facing his drug dependency.
Our enabling
behavior only prevents our son from confronting his destructive
lifestyle. We may view our actions as helpful and compassionate and
typically they might be, except when related to drug usage behavior.
Our enabling behavior only continues to allow the dependent
individual to believe there is no problem, because any painful
consequences were avoided. What they learn from our enabling is that
they can make us responsible for their future harmful behaviors.
When we finally decide to stop our enabling, either due to our
inability to help or because we realize it might be counter
productive, then the drug dependent person turns the blame on us for
their painful consequences and continued problems. Rather than being
helpful our actions simply establish a cycle of co-dependent behavior
for the individual.
Intuitively,
the AOD dependent person establishes a circle of family and friends
whom they can call upon to help them avoid the major consequences of
their addiction. They may use pleas, guilt, threats within this
circle of family and friends to get what they believe they need to
avoid the consequences of their poor choices and decisions. They
frequently pit one enabler in their lives against another by asking
them to keep the secret of their assistance from other family and
friends. They may convince you that revealing the secret would cause
pain to someone else within your family or friends.
Often, a
necessary step to stopping enabling within a family system is for the
family to have a discussion with outside assistance to begin the
process of sharing the secrets. We
enable, because we are fearful of exposing their problems to the
world. We don't want their employer to know, their neighbors to
know, or we don't want them to go to jail and have to live with a
criminal record. Within most families stopping their enabling
behavior cannot be achieved without outside assistance. Someone who
can education, encourage and support the family through the process
of changing their behaviors is vitally important to their finding a
successful conclusion.
To help guide
people with SUD into recovery requires others to stop enabling and
end their repeated attempts at stopping the individual's descent
toward hitting bottom. Witnessing someone descending to a point
where they will accept help is an unpleasant and painful sight to
witness and will break your heart, it is distressing, painful and a
fearful moment in their life and in ours. Which is why, we should
never do it alone.
Here are some
questions to ask yourself when considering whether you are an
enabler:
- Do you often ignore unacceptable behavior?
- Do you find yourself resenting the responsibilities you take on?
- Do you consistently put your own needs and desires aside in order to help someone else?
- Do you have trouble expressing your own emotions?
- Do you ever feel fearful that not doing something will cause a blowup, make the person leave you, or even result in violence?
- Do you ever lie to cover for someone else’s mistakes?
- Do you consistently assign blame for problems to other people rather than the one who is really responsible?
- Do you continue to offer help when it is never appreciated or acknowledged?
Above list
based on Psychology Today article by Karen Khaleghi, Ph.D. and
Morteza Khaleghi, Ph.D., co-founders of Creative Care, Malibu, a
rehabilitation and recovery center.
Lee
McDermott, Contributor
