Most people who enable loved ones don't intend to cause harm. In fact, enabling generally begins with the desire to help. Enabling behaviors can often seem like helping behaviors. You may try to help with the best of intentions and enable someone without realizing it.

What causes a person to be an enabler?

Why Do Enablers Enable? Enablers have an innate desire to be needed and feel that the only way to get people to like or love them is to become indispensable. Enablers often get self-worth and self-esteem from their acts of kindness. They feel important and relevant.

What happens when an enabler stops enabling?

People who are in the grips of addiction use manipulation to control their enablers. But when you stop enabling those addictions, your loved one may become enraged to the point of making threats of physical violence or self-harm, in order to regain control.