Dwelling in Hope

Have you ever found yourself overwhelmed and exhausted because you are constantly swerving into your loved one’s lives working harder than they are? Perhaps it is time to do an inventory and examine if the things that you have on your plate are really meant for you, or if you have possibly taken on items that were not yours to start off with.  I have fallen into this trap and learned a few lessons along my journey I would like to share.

Enabling is doing something for someone that they could have done for themselves. If your actions are shielding someone from growing and learning, then you are crippling them from walking on their own. Enabling is just an illusion that we have control over the situation or someone.

Ask yourself, am I inserting myself into their story, or was I asked to help them with something they truly could do on their own. Enabling can be stopping someone from feeling the full consequences of their behavior in which they could learn a valuable lesson from.

Signs that you may be enabling:

• You have resentment when doing something for them.
• You make excuses for their behavior.
• You put their needs before yours.
• You are working harder than they are.
• You do things for them out of fear.
• You feel responsible for their life or for their choices.
• You give multiple chances.
• You lower your standards due to their behavior.

We can justify enabling or think things might be too hard for them to achieve a certain task. Especially if there’s a learning difference, mental health struggle, addiction, or other major obstacle in their way. However, by doing the task for our loved one, we are essentially telling them we don’t have faith they can do it on their own, and we become a crutch.

Perhaps we make these enabling gestures because we are afraid to see our loved one fail. But we must redefine what failing means. In society, failing is a shortcoming, weakness, or incompetence. There is shame associated. But a failure can be redefined as a learning opportunity, a First Attempt In Learning, then we can fail forward. Perhaps if we embrace the idea of failing being tantamount to learning, that will change how much we step into our loved one’s life to solve their issues.

If we exercise a “no” when it is a better answer and use restraint without getting involved, our loved ones will be able to wrestle through their mess then learn and build muscles for future trials. We need to surrender it all to God and trust our loved ones that they have the tools and resources to solve their own life issues.

If there has been an enabling relationship established, changing the parameters of those interactions will be difficult. It will take prayer, intentional pre-determined boundaries, and verbiage that is established before you interact with them. As interactions come up, you can guide them towards their resources, tools, and ensure your confidence in them by coming up with the best solution for themselves. Be firm on your “no”, understand where you will help and where you will let them work through things.

When these relationships are right set, you will experience freedom. They cannot blame you nor drag you into their situations or consequences. Your loved one will then have the freedom to make their own decisions and if they fail, with prayer and God willing they can fail forward learning problem-solving, and then build some confidence for the next trial. They also get to celebrate the successes in partnership with God, that they are capable of things they didn’t think they were adept in, and they won’t think that the successes that they encounter are due to other people’s efforts.  A true win-win experience can come out of the relationship if everyone stays in their own lanes, and they learn what they need to learn.