THE ENDURING ENABLER

Do you have an overwhelming desire to help someone, beyond your boundaries? Do you find yourself attempting  constantly to run people’s lives, with step by step instructions on what to do, but never allowing them to give their input? Do you always dive in and fight other people’s battles to the point they expect you to fight all their battles? Do you feel it is easier to do the tasks of others because they will not do them correctly or at least the way you think? Have you been called smothering, controlling, overprotective, or overbearing? You may be an enabler?

An enabler is a person who causes someone or something to be inactive or impedes the full potential. This person may start off to be helpful, but somewhere along the way their good intentions becomes overbearing causing a hindrance of full success in others. They do way too much expecting way too little. Instead of encouraging independence, because of their overprotective nature they allow people to be dependent upon them to the point of harm. I will call them the Enduring Enabler because their enabling qualities are continuous and long lasting.

In the previous post, I discussed the Durable Dependent, a person who depends on others to the point of destruction. However, the Enduring Enabler are just as guilty as the Durable Dependent, if not more.

An enabler can be parents, friends, family members or spouses. Unknowing, an enabler may have something to prove to themselves or others; lack something in their lives; or harbor negatives emotions of  fear, loneliness, low self-esteem or other negative feelings pushing them to allow other people to dependent excessively on them.

Some of the same examples I listed for the Durable Dependents:

• Adult children living at home way beyond a suitable or allotted time
• Women relying solely on men to support them without commitment
• Unestablished men moving in and leaning upon established women

I can switch it around and the Enduring Enables emerges:

• Parents why do you allow adult children to live at home beyond an allotted time?
• Men why do you feel a need to support women without any commitment?
• Established women why do you allow unestablished men to live off of you?

Behind a Durable Dependent there may be an Enduring Enabler. Have you allowed someone to lean on or rely on you to the point they lack or loss the desire to reach a level on their own making them slothful or always putting things off? A child? A spouse? A coworker?

You may not see yourself as an Enduring Enabler. Ask yourself:

• Could you be doing more with your life, but you are too concerned about running someone else’s life?
• Do you have an overwhelming desire to be liked so you allow others to keep taking from you and depending on you?
• Are you lonely and you need people to be around so you overcompensate?
• Are you empty and allowing others to dependent on you to fill the void?
• Do you have a need for people to need you?
• Do you elicit fear, worry, and doubt in others so they can remain with you?
• Have you made mistakes in your life so you are attempting to make it up in another person’s life?
• Is it easier for you to do versus to teach?
• Do you have low self-esteem allowing others to compliment you or stroke your ego and get whatever they want?
• When others fail or obstacles occur do you encourage them to go back out and try again? Or do you embrace the fact that they are back with you, under your wings?
• Do you do way too much allow little in return.

There are going to be exceptions to the rules to the above examples. But, if you are stopping the success of others by allowing them to lean on you and you secretly embrace their dependency on you, there is an issue. The same advice I suggested for the Durable Dependent will apply to the Enduing Enabler.

Maybe you do not recognize or believe you are an Enduring Enabler.  However if you remotely see yourself as one and want to change, the first step is simple. Recognize that you are an enabler. Being an Enduring Enabler is a problem, and the first step in overcoming a problem is admission.

• Go to God. With His assistance do some deep soul searching. Allow His Spirit to bring things to the surface, things you may have buried deep inside. Once they come to light ask God how to overcome them.
• Fear is the biggest culprit that hinder hopes, dreams and aspirations. The fear of living your life, the fear of being alone, not being liked, or any fear that chokes you.
• Pray for answers and direction. Be honest with God. He already knows all about your concerns and worries.
• Listen to the directions of God and do them. Sometimes, there are definite directions, but excuses and emotions crop up and the clear instructions become blurred and dull.
• Trust God. Believe in Him. Depend on Him. Teach others to depend on Him and not on you.

Learn to set rules, boundaries and deadlines in your life and others. Get a life and allow others to live theirs. Help people to be independent in the world, but depended on God and not you.

⁵ Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. ⁶ In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Proverbs 3:5-6 (KJV)