Woman doubts ability to help friend / Woman addicted to enabling
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DEAR ABBY: I am in my early 40s, and married with two daughters. I have a friend, "Sally," whom I have known since the third grade. We are like sisters. Sally has been profoundly depressed for at least 15 years. She sees a therapist and a psychiatrist on a regular basis and is on medication. My question. Abby, is what do you say to someone who calls at least once a week, for at least an hour, crying so hard I can barely understand her? She calls to tell me how sad she is and how she doesn't think anything in her life will improve. While I'm concerned for her and care about what happens to her. I don't feel l can give her any advice or guidance that her counselor/psychiatrist isn't able to give. Short of listening and providing the proverbial shoulder to lean on, what more can l do? l feel l need to be there for her. but I also feel drained dry because this has been going on for several years.
Any guidance you might offer would be greatly
appreciated. —CONCERNED FRIEND IN FLORIDA DEAR CONCERNED: You are a supportive friend, but when Sally calls crying so hard she can hardly talk, tell her that the person she needs to be talking to is her therapist. By allowing her to vent to you, you are preventing the therapist from evaluating her while she's in crisis and giving her the tools she needs to improve. Your friend may need to have her meds adjusted or changed, and seeing Sally while she is "at the bottom" could give her therapist valuable insights. If Sally isn't capable of placing the call to her therapist, offer to do it for her. —Abby |
Gabby's Reply:
Hi Concerned: It's so great that you wrote. The majority of readers have one or more similar relationships, people they try to support whom instead they enable. Because of your service to your friend it's now time for you to be served, ten-fold.*We bring others into our lives to mirror that which we need to address ourselves; your friend mirrors your addiction to enabling. Most importantly, she has been mirroring for you that your integrity is out, ergo this breakdown in communication. Let's re phrase your inquiry: You write, ". . . what do you say to someone . . .?" Notice that you were unconscious when you wrote (and proof-read) that sentence? Specifically, you didn't notice that the question is rhetorical. A conscious person would have written, "What should I say . . .?" However, what I or a columnist would say won't work for you. Advice, as with help, is similar to giving someone a fish rather than teaching them how to fish.
Re: "I don't feel l can give her any advice or guidance." This reveals your misunderstanding about communication. It also reveals that you are not clear about the word feel. I assure you she has been taking your non-verbal advice these past 15-years; you have been unaware of your own intentions and therefore you've been sending mixed messages which causes confusion and less-than-desirable results.
One significant difference between therapists and a communication-skills coach is that a coach will not accept you as a client if you keep hanging around abuse addicts and enablers. She abusively dumps her problems in your space with no intention for your support (or her therapist's support) to work. Most would advise her to find another therapist. "15 years" reveals that her therapist is also an enabler. Sally is not clear about responsibility, she has has become stuck in describing an incident from blame.
You have discovered that helping another causes more of the same (it creates dependency) and, that there are different kinds of support skills. We each use our leadership-communication support-skills towards different ends; based upon the results you've been producing for yourself and your friend we see that you have unconsciously been using your skills to keep her stuck. Yikes! Shock shock! Gabby, you mean to say I have been unconsciously intending that she remain stuck? Depending upon how powerful you're willing to be, yes. The results are obvious no matter what your mind believes.
Communication mastery begins with intending what's so to be so. You have become stuck in trying to change her. This is not love.
Re: "Sally has been profoundly depressed for at least 15 years." I noticed you didn't mention what happened, the specific incident, after which she has not been the same—that was a fork in the road for both of you—you now have the opportunity to handle it differently, consciously, from choice.
Here's some questions that will produce different results:
1) What is it about the way I communicate, the way I relate, that causes a friend to stay stuck?
2) What's in it for me for her to stay stuck, what has been my payoff? (You might need another's mind to find this answer. It's there, hiding.)
3) What thoughts have I been withholding from my friend that possibly have kept her stuck?
4) Have I been giving my friend the full benefit of my experience of her or, have I doing my imitation of communication, pretending to be in open, honest, and spontaneous communication with her?
5) Have I been using her problem so as to not have to address my addiction to enabling?
Thoughts withheld serve as barriers to the experience of communication.
We see that support is not always positive. It could be said that you have supported her in staying stuck. Is it possible, no matter how much our mind wants to believe otherwise, that she'd be "normal" if she had moved to another country, completely away from you, when she was 3-years-old? Often others on the way down (crashing and burning) need to drive everyone out of their life so as to be motivated to heal. What would happen if she drove everyone out of her life? We don't know do we? What we do know for certain is that something about her relationship with you isn't positive for either of you.
It's a given that we often bring someone with a seemingly larger problem into our life so that we can focus on their problem rather than acknowledge and address our own, equally debilitating, problem.
We all know how unsupportable some men can be when they refuse to stop and ask for directions. Ostensibly this behavior is gender specific. Not. So too do teachers arrogantly, with their self-righteous (I can do it myself) position, refuse to ask a communication-skills coach, "What is it about my agreement-making skills that causes many of my students to not turn in their homework neatly and on time?" In other words, you too have been stuck in ignorance. Only now are you reaching out responsibly, wondering if your friend's condition has something to do with your leadership-communication skills.
What's exciting about your letter is that you are confronting the possibility that she can't heal with you in her life until you handle your own addiction to enabling. Your timing couldn't be better what with the responsibility of two daughters. —Gabby
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Last edited 12/10/21
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