How Professional Interventions Can Help Families Recognize and Address Enabling Behaviors

A significant part of our S.A.F.E. family recovery coaching program and intervention process helps families recognize, address, and understand their enabling behaviors. When we enable people, we disable their ability to do something different. 

“A negative or positive behavior does not define behavior. Behavior is defined by the outcome of the behavior. When a negative behavior yields a positive reward, a person will engage in more of the negative behavior. When we enable people, we reward their negative behavior. The person does not change the behavior until the negative behavior yields negative consequences”.

The Law of Unintended Consequences From Enabling Behaviors

The definition of enabling, per the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is 

• To provide the means or opportunity
• Make possible, practical, or easy 
• To cause to operate

When somebody engages in a negative or positive behavior, they will engage in more of the same behavior, regardless of whether it is negative or positive, if they receive a positive outcome. Engaging in both negative and positive behaviors can and will change if there is a negative effect. So when you enable and create a system where enabling behaviors produce a positive outcome for negative behaviors in your loved one, you’re preventing them from accepting help or seeing the need to do something different.

In the second stage of change, the patient must acquire something called ambivalence. Ambivalence is seeing that the consequences of the behaviors are greater than the benefits, which leads to the need to do something different. If you’re enabling your loved one and allowing them to stay where they are, you are not helping them move out of the second stage of change and on through the remaining stages of change. Many say they have spoken to other people and are told their loved one must want help and hit bottom, or they will never do something different; there is truth to this. The problem is that if you enable them, you prevent them from wanting help and hitting bottom. 

“Wanting help and having to get help are two entirely different things.”

Furthermore, the next step in realizing the unintended consequences of enabling is recognizing that the enabling behavior provides comfort for the enabler. Most enablers know what they’re doing and understand what it’s doing for their loved one. The question is, why are they doing it, and what is it providing you in return? People enable for the same reason people use substances, because it feels good and provides relief.

Why Do Families Enable?

With our S.A.F.E. Intervention Services, the curriculum helps a family understand that their enabling is not solely about the loved one with a substance use or mental disorder. Aside from enabling feeling good and providing relief, what else does it provide? Remember, people continue engaging in a negative or positive behavior if that behavior offers a positive reward or consequence. So, what positive reward are you getting from enabling? For starters, an enabler feels needed in a relationship. It feels they have a purpose. What seems innocent is not. What the enabler is doing is they’re affecting the entire family, because when an enabler has all their eggs in one basket, i.e., they’re giving the majority of, if not all of, their resources, love, affirmation, and attention to the one person who needs help, they forget about everybody else. They forget about their husbands, wives, children, and coworkers. There’s a ripple effect to the enabling, and the actions affect several people directly and indirectly.  

So, when you recognize you’re enabling, that is a therapeutic step forward. Now, we have to address the problem, and the real question is, why are you helping them stay sick and stuck? You’ll learn why in our Safe Family Recovery Coaching program. Enabling must be replaced with detachment, and until you detach and hold your loved one accountable, they will not feel negative consequences for their behaviors, and they won’t stop. The same applies to the enabler. Often, the family has to hold the enabler accountable for his or her actions in order for the enabler to see and feel the negative consequences. For the enabler, they may feel it is not a negative behavior. Not only is it a negative behavior for the one doing it, but it also has a negative effect on the intended patient on the receiving end.  

Trickle Down Effect from Enabling

The primary enabler is the most likely to ask, “What if they say no?” at the intervention. The question is never asked the way it sounds. 

The translation of the question “What if they say no” is “What if they hate me and won’t talk to me again. What will happen to me if I lose my purpose, identity, role of being needed, and illusion of control?”

The primary job of a loved one with a substance use or mental disorder is to create chaos and drama and to shift the entire family into a dysfunctional system that only benefits the intended patient. The job of the enabler is to take the bait and react to this chaos and drama. The reaction creates a trickle-down effect that changes the others in the family and moves them into a maladaptive state. Most do not see it, and it happens to every family every time, whether certain family members prefer to admit it or not. The truth about enabling is that it starts at the top and trickles down to disrupt and dismantle the entire family. The dismantling of the family system is what causes all family members to not be on the same page. Every family that has ever told us that everyone is on board has never once been true. The family may be on board with some things, but never the same. For this reason, setting up an intervention for a family is significantly more difficult than intervening on the intended patient. People with substance use and mental disorders are far easier to address than their families. 

Family members will realize later on in their recovery that their resentments are more with the primary enabler than they are with their loved one who has a substance use or mental disorder. All the reasons a family waited so long to address the problem will eventually come to the surface. All the reasons a family worked against each other and talked each other out of helping their loved one and each other will be realized one day. If it is not recognized or realized, the chances of recovery for the family and the intended patient are minimal, if not impossible.