Soulshine

What exactly is enabling ? Darlene Lancer, in her book Conquering Shame and Codependency , offers a solid definition. She says “The term enabling can be applied to any form of help that removes the natural consequences of someone else’s behavior.” So when we feel responsible for someone else’s behavior and choose to fix their problems for them, we take away the consequences of what they have done and we let them off the hook. They are then never held accountable for their actions and they never learn to be responsible for their self-destructive behaviors. I remember several years ago a man came to talk to me about his brother, who had a severe gambling problem. This man, we’ll call him Brendan, had been enabling his younger brother’s addiction by bailing him out every time he gambled-away more money than he had in the bank. In effect, Brendan became his brother’s personal banker; and whenever his brother—let’s call him Tom—had money-lenders at a given casino breathing down ...

Setting boundaries is essential for everyone’s health. When we fail to set proper boundaries, we abuse ourselves and we abuse others by enabling them to stay stuck in unhealthy behaviors. Unhealthy codependents typically build their self-worth on their ability to do for others what those very others should be doing for themselves. This is called enabling. We do it under the guise of being helpful, but the only “help” we are giving to the other person is the “help” to stay stuck in their victimhood or addiction. Enabling results from good intentions and poor boundaries. We enmesh with others and we choose to own their problems. We then think we are justified in fixing their problems. Subconsciously, we also are eager to earn their praise and gratitude for having fixed their problems for them, so we engage in our great powers of enabling. In her book Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children , Allison Bottke has a wonderful checklist for identifying enabling ...

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” Soren Kierkegaard Being who we are is essential to our happiness. And yet, so many codependents have no idea of who they really are. We rejected and lost our real selves years ago. We buried them under a false self; often times an “ideal” self that reflected the person that our parents or others wanted us to be. For some of us this ideal self was fueled by perfectionism. The real self underneath ached with inadequacy. It was the frog underneath the prince we were attempting to project to the world around us; or the raggedy Cinderella underneath the princess we wanted the world to see. We were two people in one and that drained a lot of energy out of us. It’s exhausting to live with two personas. First off, it takes a lot of energy to suppress our real selves. We are constantly on-guard that some part of our unacceptable real self with accidently pop-out and be seen by others. But it’s equally as exhaus...