In this podcast, we describe what the chaos of "desperate enabling" looks like, how it starts and how it can be arrested by a wake-up call.
We learn the following from Alice, the mum in this story:
- A family's journey down the slippery slope toward desperate enabling starts slowly and imperceptibly, without the slightest suspicion that there is anything brewing.
- Enabling is well-meaning, but it is misguided because it simply gives the disease the oxygen it craves to keep thriving.
- The family deludes itself into believing that it has any power to arrest the disease when the truth is that they are powerless over the ultimate course of a progressive disorder.
- Chaos will rule the house unless some form of intervention takes place, almost always with the help of a professional trained in addictive disease.
- When Alice and her husband made the decision that they needed to live their own lives without guilt did the chaos subside. That decision meant that they could finally live happily together, one day at a time.