What Is Enabling?
The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines enabling as “a process whereby someone (i.e., the enabler) contributes to continued maladaptive or pathological behavior (e.g., child abuse, substance abuse) in another person.”
It goes on to say who usually does it: “The enabler is typically an intimate partner or good friend who passively permits or unwittingly encourages this behavior in the other person; often, the enabler is aware of the destructiveness of the person’s behavior but feels powerless to prevent it.”
The word has a second, positive meaning in the same dictionary, “the process of encouraging or allowing individuals to meet their own needs and achieve desired ends.” This article is about the first meaning.
The Cleveland Clinic says: “Enabling happens when you justify or support problematic behaviors in a loved one under the guise that you’re helping them. That can be things like giving money to an adult child who hasn’t spent theirs wisely. Or making excuses for a spouse’s anger management issues.”
In families dealing with drinking or drug use, the same page notes, “We often hear about enabling in the context of a loved one who steps in to support a person living with addiction in an attempt to keep them from ‘hitting rock bottom’ or experiencing the consequences of their actions.”
Enabling Versus Helping
Help is not the problem. “The difference is that enabling takes helping to an extreme,” the Cleveland Clinic says. “Enabling happens when you see a loved one making unhealthy life choices, so you assume the role of problem solver. But your help keeps them from learning to make better choices and to stand on their own two feet.”
A review in the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s journal, Alcohol Research: Current Reviews, describes the family behaviors that help a person begin to change: “Key family behaviors that support the initiation of change include ignoring behaviors associated with using alcohol or drugs, reinforcing positive or desirable behaviors related to sobriety or help-seeking, allowing the drinker to experience the naturally occurring negative consequences of drinking, and making specific and positive requests for changes in behavior related to drinking, such as reducing consumption or seeking help.”
Set side by side:
| Enabling | Helping |
|---|---|
| Covering for the person or making excuses to others | Letting the natural consequences of drinking or drug use happen |
| Paying for things the person can and should handle | Responding warmly to sober choices and steps toward help |
| Taking over their chores and duties | Making specific, positive requests, such as cutting back or getting help |
| Drinking or using with them | Keeping limits you have said you will keep |
The same NIAAA journal review also says family behavior can make things worse: “AUD harms individual family members and the functioning of the family as a whole, and family members’ actions may exacerbate problematic drinking.” AUD is alcohol use disorder.
What Enabling Looks Like
One study measured it. Researchers gave a questionnaire called the Behavioral Enabling Scale to 42 people in a couples program for alcohol dependence and to their partners (Rotunda and colleagues, 2004). They found that “the majority of both clients and partners reported the partner took over chores or duties from the alcoholic client at some point during the relationship, drank or used other drugs with the client, and lied or made excuses to others to cover for the drinker.”
Other common forms:
- Making excuses. “Making excuses can be one way you help cover up problematic behavior and keep your loved one from being held accountable for their actions,” the Cleveland Clinic says.
- Giving money, the Cleveland Clinic’s own example being “giving money to an adult child who hasn’t spent theirs wisely.”
- Trying to manage the drinking for them. Al-Anon describes it from experience: “We try to control their drinking for them. We take on the blame, guilt, and shame that really belong to the drinker.”
- Keeping the peace. “When helping becomes a way of avoiding a seemingly inevitable discomfort, it’s a sign that you’ve crossed over into enabling behavior,” the Cleveland Clinic says.
Why People Enable
“Enabling usually comes from a place of love,” the Cleveland Clinic says. It often grows out of wanting to avoid a fight or another bad night. And as the APA definition notes, many people see the harm and still feel unable to stop it.
Labels do not help. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s 2026 guide for families warns that “Negative labels can sway how family members or service providers respond to a person’s needs and hope for recovery.” One research team notes that the female partners of men with alcohol problems “have been labeled as codependents or enablers” (Rotunda and colleagues). It is more useful to look at what you do than at what to call yourself.
Enabling often overlaps with codependency, which the APA Dictionary describes as “a dysfunctional relationship pattern in which an individual is psychologically dependent on (or controlled by) a person who has a substance use or non-substance-related disorder (e.g., alcohol use disorder, gambling disorder).”
What Enabling Does to a Family
Living with someone’s drinking or drug use is hard on everyone in the house. The NIAAA review says “Family members take on additional household and childcare responsibilities, social events are disrupted, and families may experience significant financial difficulties,” and that spouses and children of adults with AUD or another substance use disorder “experience psychological distress as well as health and behavioral problems.”
A study of health plan records in Northern California (Ray and colleagues, 2009) found that “In the year before initial diagnosis of the index person, AODD family members were more likely to be diagnosed with substance use disorders, depression and trauma than diabetes or asthma family members.” AODD is alcohol or other drug dependence.
The person doing the enabling feels it too. The Cleveland Clinic lists what happens: “Money runs out.” “Your emotional capacity dwindles and you can become more irritable or anxious.” “Your work suffers.” “Your relationships with other people are affected.”
How to Stop Enabling
Let consequences land. Stop calling in sick for the person, paying their fines or explaining away a missed event. The NIAAA review lists “allowing the drinker to experience the naturally occurring negative consequences of drinking” among the behaviors that help change start.
Reward the sober moments. Notice and respond warmly to time spent sober and to any step toward help. The same review calls this “reinforcing positive or desirable behaviors related to sobriety or help-seeking.”
Set limits and keep them. “You have to establish and maintain firm boundaries,” the Cleveland Clinic says, and “Ending an enabling relationship requires assertiveness.” SAMHSA’s guide for families frames limits this way: “Think of boundaries not as barriers, but as bridges to stronger, healthier relationships.”
Ask clearly, at the right time. The NIAAA review lists specific, positive requests among the behaviors that help, for example asking the person to cut back or to get help. The NIAAA’s Alcohol Treatment Navigator gives practical advice on timing: “Thanksgiving dinner is probably not a good time for a thoughtful discussion about alcohol treatment. Neither is when your loved one is intoxicated.”
Do not try to force it. SAMHSA’s page on helping someone says “You can’t force someone to get care, so, the best thing you can do for a person is to be there for them and listen without judgment.”
Take care of yourself. The NIAAA advises: “If you are developing your own symptoms of depression or anxiety, think about seeking professional help for yourself. Remember that your loved one is ultimately responsible for managing their own illness.”
Safety comes first
Pulling back help can make some people angry. The NIAAA review notes that “Couples with at least one partner with AUD have high rates of intimate partner violence, regardless of the sex of the partner with AUD, and drinking is common during episodes of interpersonal violence.” If a loved one has been violent, make a safety plan before you change anything, and if you are in danger, call 911.
What Is CRAFT?
CRAFT stands for Community Reinforcement and Family Training. SAMHSA’s guide for families describes it as “an approach for families who have a loved one with substance use conditions. It provides strategies that help family members support their loved one in making positive behavior changes while also improving their own well-being.”
According to the NIAAA review, “CRAFT helps concerned family members to change contingencies for drinking by decreasing behaviors that protect the drinker from naturally occurring consequences of drinking, increasing positive family responses to changes in drinking, learning self-care and protection from intimate partner violence, and learning how to communicate positive requests for change and/or help seeking.”
The NIAAA’s Alcohol Treatment Navigator says CRAFT “has been shown to be more effective than confronting the person in an ‘intervention.’”
What the trials found:
- In a 1999 randomized trial with family members of problem drinkers, “The CRAFT approach was more effective in engaging initially unmotivated problem drinkers in treatment (64%) as compared with the more commonly practiced Al-Anon (13%) and Johnson interventions (30%)” (Miller, Meyers and Tonigan, 1999).
- With family members of people using drugs, “CRAFT alone engaged 58.6%, CRAFT + aftercare engaged 76.7%, and Al-Nar FT engaged 29.0%,” the last being an Al-Anon and Nar-Anon approach (Meyers and colleagues, 2002).
- A 2010 review of four trials found that “CRAFT encouraged approximately two-thirds of treatment-resistant patients to attend treatment,” usually after four to six CRAFT sessions (Roozen and colleagues).
- A 2020 review of 14 studies found CRAFT “to be twice as effective as controls/comparison groups” (Archer and colleagues).
The results are not the same everywhere. In a 2024 trial with parents of young adults aged 18 to 24 in Stockholm, “19 (33%) of CRAFT participants and 17 (31%) of counselling participants had reported young adult treatment entry, with no difference between conditions” (Siljeholm and colleagues). In the early trials, family members’ own well-being improved whichever approach they used.
Support Groups for Families
These programs are for the family member, and they are free.
- Al-Anon is for people affected by someone else’s drinking. “Al-Anon is not a program for finding or maintaining sobriety. It is a program to help the families of alcoholics recover from the effects of someone else’s drinking.” There are “no dues or fees,” and “The meetings are on a walk-in basis” (Al-Anon).
- Nar-Anon is “a worldwide fellowship for those affected by someone else’s addiction,” and “Nar-Anon has no dues or fees” (Nar-Anon).
- SMART Recovery Family and Friends meetings “are a dedicated space for those with loved ones who are struggling with addiction,” held online and in person (SMART Recovery). The NIAAA describes it as “a research-based support program that focuses on building skills needed to support recovery” (Caretaker Support Services).
Does Enabling Make an Adult Child Less Motivated?
Parents ask this often. We did not find a study that measures it directly. What the research does show is that the things families do day to day can move a person toward change or away from it, as the NIAAA review describes, and that parents can learn those skills. In the 1999 trial, “Overall treatment engagement rates were higher for CSOs who were parents than for spouses,” CSOs being the concerned family members. The 2024 trial with parents of young adults is a reminder that no approach works every time.
Where Leora Behavioral Health Fits
Leora Behavioral Health is an outpatient provider in Columbus and Dayton. It does not provide overnight or emergency care.
A family member can call admissions on someone else’s behalf to ask how an assessment works and what the person should bring. If your loved one starts treatment, family therapy is one of Leora’s services, and it happens only with the consent of the person in treatment.
Leora runs partial hospitalization, Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 4:15 pm, and intensive outpatient, three hours a day, three to five days a week. Both let a person keep living at home. Leora accepts every Ohio Medicaid plan and every commercial carrier, and admissions can check coverage on the call.
Leora’s page for families has more on helping someone who does not want treatment, and our guide to Casey’s Law in Ohio explains how a family can ask a probate court to order treatment when someone’s use has become dangerous.
If Someone Is in Danger Right Now
If someone is in immediate danger, call 911.
For a mental health or substance use crisis, call or text 988. The 988 Lifeline says of itself: “The 988 Lifeline is available 24/7/365.”
