This question really got me thinking about the nature of support, and when support becomes enabling.

I think one of the key elements of "enabling" is shielding a person from the consequences of their actions. And I think that element is also the most difficult to navigate when trying to support without enabling. When you care about someone, you want to protect them, even from themselves. And it sure doesn't feel much like support if you stand by while someone gets themselves into trouble. In my experience, it is a very rare person who can really support someone without it ever crossing the line into enabling.

Of course, that element of enabling doesn't come into play here...we don't really have the ability to protect people from the consequences of their actions in the 3D world. But we can guide people toward an interpretation of their circumstances...did this thing happen because the world is cruel, or could there be someone we are doing to draw this cruelty toward us?

I think the nature of this site makes giving that kind of guidance extremely difficult. For instance, I go to group therapy once a week, and one of the people there has anger management issues. Well, she might come in and talk about how horrible someone at work was to her...but since this is a conversation, we will continue talking to her, and will eventually find out that the situation started with a minor incident, but she reacted in a very antagonistic manner, and escalated it into something big. So, we can help her work on ways to diffuse problems rather than escalating them. Well, at an online forum like this, the person posts the story about how someone was horrible to her at work, and we don't really have the ability to have the same back and forth to get at the root of things. So the responses will tend to focus on support and comfort, "oh, that's too bad," "what a horrible coworker you have!" I'm not sure there's anything that can be done to change that, and I don't think that there's really anything wrong with it, but perhaps it is an argument for why these types of forums should not be considered substitutes for therapy, but supplements.

It has been suggested here that we should respond to what someone is asking for...I tend to disagree that we should only offer advice to those asking for advice. After all, when someone is feeling really stuck, they are often in a place that is so helpless that they don't believe any advice will help, and so won't ask for it. But, I also think that the nature of an online forum means that when someone offers advice, they need to be very sensitive to the notion that the person may not be ready to accept it, and might even react negatively to it. It doesn't mean the person is really attacking the advice giver, just that they aren't at a place where they can recognize that the advice is well-intentioned. Maybe a rule of thumb when seeking to support through guidance would be to offer the advice, then back away, and accepting that the person may need to travel further down the path before they can acknowledge the guidance. Going back to my group therapy, it's *very* "guidance-oriented." We tend to call people on the carpet for repeating bad patterns, wallowing in self-pity, etc. But the difference is, there is a therapist there who is in charge of all of the conversations, so when someone feels attacked, she can bring things back around to a more comforting place. In a community support forum, there isn't a therapist making sure someone's not being given more "guidance" than they can handle, so I think it's really incumbent on people offering advice to be as gentle as possible.

As several people have suggested already, different forums have different atmospheres. I visit another site that is very guidance oriented...people are actrively encouraged to challenge each other's thinking and behaviors. But that is not a mental health site, it is a place where people are going specifically with the goal of recovering from a particular disorder. I think many people come here because it is a place to feel safe, comforted and supported. Therefore the atmosphere is going to be one more of gentle guidance that open challenge. These different atmospheres will suit different people, but that, as they say, is why God made chocolate *and* vanilla.