When you love someone struggling with addiction (for example, drugs, alcohol, food, porn, gambling), your world often shrinks until it revolves entirely around their choices, their safety, and their moods.
You may find yourself trapped in a cycle of “saving” and “rescuing” them, only to watch the same patterns repeat. The hard truth that many families and loved ones of addicts face is that if you are enabling, you are part of the problem. This can be hard to hear, and it is important to understand. Enabling occurs when you consistently do something for a loved one that they can – and in fact should be – doing for themself. While this behaviour from family members is almost always rooted in love and a desire to help and protect, it is a codependent dynamic that ultimately does not help them recover.
The incentive to change is one of the most difficult concepts for family members to grasp. Having worked with the loved ones of people struggling with addiction for more than 30 years, I have seen that an enabled addict has no incentive to change. Why would they? If someone else is always there to pay the bills, provide a place to stay, or smooth over the consequences of their decisions, the person struggling with the addiction is left believing they are incapable of doing these things for themselves. By doing everything for them, you inadvertently reinforce the idea that they are powerless. To stop this cycle, it’s so important to realize that “If nothing changes, nothing changes.” If you want to see a positive shift in your loved one’s behaviour, you have to look in the mirror and identify what you need to change about your own actions first.
Helping your loved one navigate addiction in recovery means that there is healing that the family must do as well. When everything has been about and for the addict, it can feel uncomfortable and vulnerable to focus on you. Your self-care and well-being are important parts of this journey. Anchoring hope in their ability to make choices that are good for their health, life, relationships, future and recovery is important. Even if it takes some time, change can definitely happen.
Learn How to Set Boundaries
Stopping the cycle of enabling requires the implementation of boundaries. For many families, this is the scariest part of the process because addicts often become experts at using guilt to manipulate their loved ones. To avoid this, families often “pussyfoot” around the addict, trying to keep the peace at all costs. However, this lack of structure is not helpful for the addict and is devastating for the family, often leading to a total loss of self-respect and deep-seated resentment.
Setting a boundary is not about giving up on the addict – it is about putting your mental health at the forefront. It is an act of self-care that requires you to be assertive, self-respectful, and respectful of the addict. You must clearly define what you will and will not put up with, and communicate those limits firmly. While you cannot control their choice to use, you have total control over how you respond to that behaviour. By changing your response, you make it more difficult for them to continue their addiction while protecting your own peace of mind.
Best Case Outcomes of Personal Change
It is a common misconception that setting boundaries is being punitive. Boundaries are not a “punishment.” In reality, boundaries help both the addict and their families. When you stop giving in to manipulation and start owning your choices, you begin to reclaim your life. Their addiction has less control or hold on you. You move from a place of hopelessness to hopefulness and positive action in your life.
Recovery is a family issue, and it is fundamentally unfair – and ineffective – to expect an addict to change if the people around them – their families and other loved ones – are unwilling to make what can seem like uncomfortable changes themselves. By ending the enabling, you provide the addict with the one thing they truly need to find recovery: the necessity to make a different choice.
Watch for my future blogs and articles where I will share concrete steps to set boundaries that preserve your self-respect and communicate clearly without blame, shame or anger. Remember that every step you take toward your own well-being and self-care ultimately helps the addict you love.