Enabling or Empowering? – Episode 261

How have you enabled your loved ones’ alcoholism? What is enabling, anyway? How do you know when you’re doing it and when you are empowering them, instead? * What does the dictionary say? * Merriam-Webster * 1 a : to provide with the means or opportunity: training that enables people to earn a living * b : to make possible, practical, or easy: a deal that would enable passage of a new law * c : to cause to operate: software that enables the keyboard * 2 : to give legal power, capacity, or sanction to: a law enabling admission of a state * From Urban Dictionary * Enabling Shielding a person from the consequences of a destructive behavior; Allowing a person's destructive behavior to persist by managing or minimizing the ill-effects of the behavior.”Enabling” vs. “Empowering”Enabling: supporting a person's behavior that (repeatedly/habitually) instigates a negative or destructive resultEmpowering: supporting a person's ability or effort in a positive or progressive endeavorEnabling can be as destructive as the behavior itself . . . a person enabling a destructive behavior is motivated by their need to do so and is gratified by reinforcing their superiority or control over that person; An “enabler” holds a person in an inferior state by denying them the motivation to change and therefore, the opportunity to grow. * What does enabling mean to you?  How does that relate to the definitions we just read? * Did you understand/head you heard of enabling before you came to Al-Anon? * What are some ways in which you have enabled others' dysfunction/addiction/behavior? * How can we (especially as parents) distinguish between supporting, helping, empowering, and enabling? * Can we look at our motivations, expectations, fears? * Slogans * Let Go and Let God * How Important is it? * WAIT * THINK * Boundaries * Detaching with love * Clarity: “mine or not mine?” * “When in doubt, don’t” * Serenity prayer (knowing the difference) * “Al-Anon pause” * What are healthy ways to be supportive without enabling? We read from or discussed these resources: * Courage to Change, Jan 5 and Feb 1. * How Al-Anon Works, chapter 26, “A Mother Lets Go And Lets God”. * Wikipedia article “Enabling“. * Psychology Today blog, “Are you empowering or enabling?“ * Hazelden Betty Ford, “What is enabling?“ * Through an Al-Anon Filter blog, “Helping or enabling?“ * In All Our Affairs – p. 76 “Choosing not to enable” Please call us at 734-707-8795 or email [email protected] with your questions or experience, strength and hope. Or just leave a comment right here. Music from the show Katy Perry: Circle the Drain Jason Mraz: Beautiful Mess Reba McEntire – She Can't Save Him The music we open and close the show with is Teleportationism by Nostalgic Afterlife. If you enjoy it,