It isn't easy to tell the difference between support and enabling sometimes. Neither is it easy to determine whether someone needs advice or they just need to be heard. These are both issues that I have been learning about recently. I've noticed in my classes on counseling that almost everybody has a tendency to jump in and offer advice way too soon. It's easier said than done to wait and listen for a while first and understand how someone feels and what their real needs are. Often the need to feel understood and accepted as a human being is much more important than getting someone else's opinion on how to fix the problem. People will also make better use of solutions that they find themselves (including with help) than of answers that someone hands to them or even worse tries to force them to accept.

The question of supporting vs. enabling comes up constantly with the girls I work with in residential treatment. One girl could be struggling to pick up her belongings from the ground while already overloaded with other things she is carrying, and another walks by and refused to help her because "I don't want to be an enabler." One definition of enabling has to do with helping, but what the girls fail to realize is that helping isn't a bad thing. We just have to look at what we are helping or enabling someone to do. Helping a substance abuser to get access to drugs or to stay addicted in any way would be a bad kind of enabling. Helping a member here to continue wallowing in self-pity would go into the same category. But helping someone to understand themself and feel cared about is different. Sometimes it is hard to tell which is which though.

There is a lot of good support to be had here, and I'm sure there is some enabling too, so I voted yes on both.