The Difference Between Helping and Enabkling

A reminder to parents, brothers, sisters, friends and families. Helping is good ... but clear-cut demarcation lines are now written in the sand whether our help is really aiding our loved ones ... or are we making them worse?

The first thing we have to know is to differentiate helping from enabling.

Helping is doing something for someone else who cannot do it for themselves.

Enabling is doing things for someone who is ABLE and should be doing that things for his benefit. It is doing something for the person who is totally FIT and BUFF and is CAPABLE of doing things for themselves.

Enabling happens when you defend and rationalize why you help. You justify the obvious behavioral issues of your loved one under the pretense that you are only helping them.

One classic example of enabling is giving a loved one money who has a chronic problem of spending it on something else other than the intended purchase.

Another example is when you make excuses as to why a loved one resort to borrowing money instead of looking for a stable job. It will get worse if you invent stories justifying why he has to borrow money or stay at home instead of hunting for decent work.