How Professional Interventions Can Help Families Recognize and Address Enabling Behaviors

When we enable someone, we undermine their ability to change, effectively validating their negative behavior. When a person engages in a behavior and receives a positive outcome, they’re likely to continue that behavior. By enabling your loved one and creating a system where their negative actions yield positive results, you’re preventing them from accepting help or recognizing the need for change.

In the stages of change, the second stage—ambivalence—is critical. Ambivalence is when someone begins to see the need to do something different. If you’re enabling, you’re comforting them and allowing them to remain stuck, hindering their progress through the stages of change. Many people believe their loved one “has to want it” or “hit rock bottom” to recover. However, enabling them actively prevents them from wanting help or reaching that point.

Recognizing enabling behavior is a great first step—most of you already know what you’re doing. But it’s equally important to understand not only how enabling affects your loved one but also what it provides you. People enable for the same reason others use substances: it feels good. Our curriculum aims to help families understand why enabling is harmful and what motivates them to continue. What are you gaining from it?

Enablers often feel needed and purposeful in the relationship. However, by focusing all their resources, love, and attention on the person who needs help, enablers neglect everyone else—their spouses, children, coworkers, and others. This creates a ripple effect that impacts the entire family.

What is the difference between helping and enabling?

Helping and enabling may seem similar, but they have starkly different impacts on a spouse struggling with alcoholism or drug addiction. Helping involves supporting your addicted partner in ways that promote their recovery and accountability, such as encouraging them to seek professional help or attend a treatment center. Enabling, however, involves actions that inadvertently validate or sustain negative behaviors, preventing substance abusers from seeing the need for change.

For example, helping might mean staging a professional intervention to guide your spouse toward substance abuse treatment. Enabling, on the other hand, could involve paying their bills to shield them from financial consequences or excusing their behavior to family members. Enabling keeps the addicted person comfortable in their addiction, blocking their path to ambivalence—the stage where they recognize the need to do something different. 

Understanding this distinction is crucial for spouses and family members to foster healthy relationships and support recovery effectively.

What are examples of enabling behavior?

Enabling behaviors are actions that protect an addicted person from the consequences of their substance use, often with good intentions. 

Common examples include:

• Covering Up: Lying to friends, family, or employers about your spouse’s addiction to shield them from judgment or consequences.

• Financial Support: Paying for their expenses (e.g., rent, car payments) when their money goes toward drugs or alcohol.

• Taking Over Responsibilities: Handling their household or parenting duties to compensate for their neglect.

• Avoiding Confrontation: Staying silent about their substance use to keep the peace, even when it harms the family.

• Excusing Behavior: Blaming their addiction on stress or mental health issues rather than holding them accountable.

These behaviors may feel like love or support, but they prevent the addicted partner from facing the reality of their actions. As the provided content notes, enabling validates negative behavior, making it harder for your spouse to hit “rock bottom” or want help. Recognizing these patterns is the first step toward change.

How to stop enabling bad behavior?

Recognizing that you’re enabling is a start, but the deeper question is: Why are you enabling?

Our S.A.F.E.® Family Recovery Coaching program helps you explore this question. You’ll learn how to stop enabling by practicing detachment and holding your loved one accountable. They’re unlikely to stop until they face negative consequences for their negative behaviors. Enabling prevents those consequences, keeping both you and your loved one stuck. By addressing why you enable and learning healthier ways to support your loved one, you can help them—and yourself—move toward recovery.

How do you encourage without enabling?

Encouraging an addicted spouse without enabling requires a delicate balance. 

Here’s how to do it effectively:

• Offer Support for Recovery: Encourage seeking professional help, such as attending a treatment center or joining a support group, rather than offering emotional or financial bailouts.

• Use Positive Reinforcement: Praise their efforts toward sobriety, like attending therapy or staying sober for a day, to reinforce positive behaviors.

• Communicate Clearly: Express your love and belief in their ability to recover, but be firm about unacceptable behaviors. For example, say, “I support you getting help, but I won’t cover for you anymore.”

• Model Healthy Behavior: Demonstrate self-care and boundary-setting in your own life, showing them what healthy relationships look like.

• Avoid Rescuing: Instead of fixing their problems (e.g., paying debts), guide them toward resources like recovery centers or family therapy to address their challenges.

How do family interventions work?

Family interventions are structured processes designed to confront an addicted person about their substance abuse and motivate them to seek professional help. 

Our approach involves:

• Preparation: A professional interventionist works with family members to plan the intervention, addressing fears and anxieties that might paralyze them.

• Team Approach: A team of professionals, not just one person, guides the family before, during, and after the intervention, unlike many intervention services that focus solely on the confrontation.

• Confrontation with Love: Family members express how the addiction affects them, using “I” statements to avoid blame. They present clear consequences, such as withholding support, if the addicted person refuses treatment.

• Offering Solutions: The interventionist connects the addicted person with treatment facilities, ensuring a clear path to substance abuse treatment.

• Post-Intervention Support: Unlike many services, Family First Intervention provides ongoing support through the S.A.F.E.® Family Recovery Coaching Program, helping families navigate the volatility that follows and addressing enabling or codependency.

Interventions break through denial and create accountability, turning a loved one’s “no” to treatment into a “yes,” as emphasized in the provided content.

Professional Family Interventions

Our S.A.F.E.® (Self-Awareness Family Education®) Family Recovery Coaching program and intervention process help families recognize and understand their enabling behaviors. By understanding the difference between helping and enabling, recognizing enabling behaviors, and committing to interventions, you can support your addicted partner while protecting your family’s well-being. Don’t let fear or anxiety hold you back—take the first step toward healing today.