When Helping Turns Into Enabling

The intention is always positive and the thought process revolves around protection and keeping stability. However, there is a very fine line between the actions that we take as supporters in order to help our loved ones and when we enable our loved ones to follow a potentially dangerous path. Not only can this cause more room for issues down the road for our loved ones, but it can also push supporters into going against our own beliefs and values.

Priority one is almost always keeping stability once we find it and even during times of duress, the first order of business from a supporter’s perspective is to provide a warm, comforting and safe environment. At times, and I’m definitely guilty of this, we tend to go overboard and jeopardize our own rules of life and bend, if not break them altogether as long as it opens a fast path to stability once again.

I am one to very rarely bend against my own values and if I am crossed or put into an uncomfortable position, I make it known and will not jeopardize those values and affect my integrity. To illustrate this, I’m one of those guys that will have no problem making a scene in a store if someone decides to test my patience, or my favorite, which my wife hates, if I hold open the door for somebody and I do now receive some kind of acknowledgment for my good deed, I go out of my way to loudly speak out, “You’re Welcome!” with a smile and see what kind of reaction I get.

On a deeper level, some of the challenges that have been introduced within my own marriage due to our bipolar relationship, there are indeed some of those episodes that push my wife into a place where she may exhibit such behavior that I would normally consider extremely unacceptable and would, in any other situation, simply let her know my opinion and she would never see me again. Yes, our own marriage, based on my own standards, probably would have ended numerous times if I wasn’t willing to accept most of those issues as being a part of our relationship due to the disorder. After all, there must be points where I cannot judge her when she doesn’t even appreciate what she’s doing due to a hypomanic or depressive episode.

Truth be told, and only to illustrate the point…I’ve been screamed at, accused of cheating countless times, cursed at, had plates shattered at my feet, a cell phone thrown at me and have been kicked, punched and slapped. Again, I know that this is not exactly a pleasant situation and I will also say that, if bipolar disorder wasn’t a major part of our relationship, I would have walked years ago. However, after learning as much as I have and have experienced what we go through, I am willing to overlook these types of outbursts with the insight to know that even though it is my wife doing such things, it’s not really her and I do my best to absorb that and still wait for her stability to return to us.

Now, on my side of such issues, I have also taken steps in my own life that I normally would not have such as pushing away friends that have played a major pert of my life, minimized interactive with people simply due to them being female and even walked away from such social media venues such as Twitter and Facebook and the site here was even hit and went down for a number of weeks based on my intention of protecting my wife and keeping her from feeling threatened in any way.

One of the best ways to learn, unfortunately, is to try petting a snake and see if you get bitten. If you do, then you live the rest of your life trying to stay away from that snake at all costs, even if you end up going against your own values and stop being true to yourself. Although my decision to run away from the things that matter to me, my decision to run away from such things that mattered to me, only ended up adding that much more pain to me, but it also supported and enabled her irrationalities to grow and we have seen several facets of this materialize into new anxiety sources, no matter how irrational they are.

Although we only mean to help our loved ones and make all of our lives better, it is truly imperative that we not let bipolar disorder take advantage of us enough to start making us change who we are simply to succumb to its wishes. Once we start letting go of the things that we would normally not lose sight of in the first place, we start to lose the battle even if stability is common. Trading in stability for integrity is a long, hard path to come back from and if we simply keep going down this path, our loved ones will only learn to know that the disorder truly can rule the world around them.

As a supporter, have you taken steps that were intended to help only to end up enabling the disorder to gain more momentum? As a sufferer, how do you feel when your loved ones end up passing along the means that can only make things worse down the road?

With a passion to reach out and to help others, Rich opens up a direct view into the trials and tribulations that come with managing a bipolar relationship and how to use real-world techniques to aid in stability and support.

Rich Wallace

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