Helping vs. Enabling: the line families can't see

Am I doing this for them, or for me?

A family calls. They've been trying for a long time. They've adjusted, accommodated, stepped in when things fell apart, stepped back when told they were doing too much. They've read the books, attended the family weekends, had the hard conversations. And they're exhausted in the specific way people get exhausted when they've been working very hard at something that isn't working.

At some point in that first conversation, I ask a question nobody has asked them yet.

Is what you've been doing serving you, or serving them?

The room gets quiet. Not because the question is unfair. Because they already know the answer and haven't let themselves say it out loud.

"I just need to get them through this semester."

I hear some version of this constantly. Get him through graduation. Get her through the engagement. Get him to the first day of work, just to the first day, and then we'll deal with the rest. But the whole idea of getting your child through something raises the same question: is that serving you, or is that serving them?

When I was running a long-term extended care program on the East Coast, I had this conversation regularly with fathers who'd traveled from the tri-state and beyond. They'd sit down across from me with a plan already formed. Their son needed to finish school, complete the internship, stay engaged to the fiancée he hadn't been showing up for in months. It was a reasonable-sounding list. It was also entirely the father's list. So I'd ask him, okay, can we tease out what your goals are for him versus what his goals are?

I'd meet with the young man separately. Sit down, ask what he wanted to do when he graduated. And he'd tell me, quickly and confidently, exactly what his father did for a living. Then I'd ask: is that something you really want, or do you feel like you have to do it because of the system? Nine times out of ten, it came down to a commitment to the system: "This is what my dad did. This is what my grandfather did."

A recovery built around someone else's goals doesn't hold. It can't. That's the only way someone actually gets well: their purpose has to be greater in their life than whatever they've been reaching for.

A recovery built around someone else's goals doesn't hold. It can't. Recovery only sticks when they can claim the sober life as their own. They have to find their own purpose and pride, rather than just going through the motions of a life they felt forced to live.

What the Support is Actually Doing

It’s not just about setting goals, though; it’s about the day-to-day actions families take. Most families don't recognize the moment their support stopped serving their loved one and started serving themselves. It doesn't happen all at once. It's a series of small adjustments, each one reasonable in isolation, that add up to a system running on the family's anxiety rather than the client's recovery.

What families need to understand is that, often...what they think is support for the identified patient isn't support. It's serving the family, not the client, and in almost every case, it's actually harming the client.

None of this is a moral failing. So much of this is what happens when you love someone who is struggling, and you have the resources and the instinct to use them.

The move that makes you feel better in the moment (the call you make, the bill you pay, the crisis you absorb before it lands) creates the conditions for the next crisis.

You still love your loved one. That move just served you more than it served them.

Yasmin often tells this story: a father who was driving his daughter to buy drugs. When the group confronted him about it, they expected defensiveness or shame. What they got was clarity. He told them, "If I don't drive her, she'll find another way, and I won't be there. At least this way I can keep her safe."

That logic makes complete sense to a terrified parent. It served his desperate need to know she was alive, but it also kept her trapped in the cycle of addiction. You can't hand someone a different tool until you understand which problem they were trying to solve with the one they had.

The Right to Take Care of Yourself

There's a version of this conversation I have with family members who hesitate to call us, or anyone, for help at all. They're not sure they have the right to reach out without their loved one's knowledge, and they're worried about how it will be received. They've been so focused on someone else's wellbeing for so long that asking for help for themselves feels like a betrayal.

So I ask them, "How do we help you take ownership of your right to ask for support?"   "How do we help you take care of yourself, and find the strength to say, 'I can no longer stay in this capacity in this relationship, because it's no longer serving me."?

That's the work: helping someone see that the way they've been showing up is no longer sustainable, and that something different is available. Nobody's asking them to abandon the person they love.

The families who make the most progress are willing to turn the lens on themselves and get honest about what's driving the decisions they've been making, without collapsing into self-blame.

That kind of honesty is uncomfortable.

It's also the beginning of something that actually has a chance of changing.

The question isn't whether you love them. That's not in doubt. The question is what the love has been doing, and whether you're willing to find out.

If you recognize yourself in this, if you're the one holding it together and starting to wonder who that's actually for, that's the conversation to have with us before it becomes a crisis, not after.

Reach out to schedule a complimentary evaluation.

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Molly Bierman, CADC, is a co-founder of YES Family Consulting. She works with families navigating addiction, behavioral health crises, and the clinical systems meant to help them.