How to Train a Man to Become an Enabler
How to Train a Man to Become an Enabler
How To Train A Man To Become An Enabler!
by Ken P
An enabler is any person who does for another person what that person could and should be doing for themselves. These twin diseases of addiction and codependency, especially in the later stages, render both sides in the dance less capable as people on all fronts…physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. However, this loss in capacity happens in such a gradual way that those suffering from the diseases cannot recognize the symptoms. To understand, for example, how the codependent is inexorably pulled into the downward spiral of another’s addiction it helps to understand a learning process behavioral biologists call “habituation.”
If he somehow overcomes all of the stumbling blocks mentioned so far, the codependent man has one more hurdle to overcome, and this one can be the most difficult of all. Through the process of habituation, he has been trained! Put another way, the codependent man has been trained by his addicted loved-ones’ disease to accommodate the addict’s need for the drug in thousands of subtle ways. Here is how this works.
Biologists have distinct classifications of animal behavior, on a continuum from instinct to critical reasoning. (12) Just above instinct is this process called “habituation.” Habituation is a sort of non-behavior. It means that some stimulus in the animal’s environment results in neither reward nor punishment, so it is ignored. As an example, if you take a horse out of the pasture and put it under a police officer in a major city that horse is suddenly exposed to an entirely foreign environment. The first time an irate driver blasts a horn that animal will be startled. However, after a period of habituation, the horse ignores all horn blasts.
Habituation comes into play with a co-dependent married to an addict. The constant angry looks, the general air of depression throughout the home, the smells and sounds of the addiction (i.e., how distinctive is the sound of a beer can opening?)…all of these stimuli eventually become habituated and ignored.
Addiction and respect.
A common ploy of the addicted individual is bluster. In the end of the third chapter we will tie up these first three chapters with the story from a real codependent man…MJR. Here the reader will be given an almost perfect illustration of how an alcoholic wife alternates between bluster and threats in her desperate ploys to hold the codependent just a little longer so that he can continue enabling her addiction, but first, let’s deal first with the bluster…the threats.
There are various ways to gain respect. The most difficult is to use the personal discipline to grow first on an individual basis (by maturing in areas such as self control, patience, etc.) and then to go out and lead a fruitful life.
Another way is to intimidate, fight, and bluster at other people (12). This method makes the incorrect basic assumption that respect and fear are synonymous.
Unfortunately, addiction is progressive. That is, it starts at a seemingly innocent level and then slowly grows until it takes the addicted person’s everything, including their body, mind, soul, bank account, relationships, career…and respect. Psychologists studying the members of families suffering from addiction cannot pinpoint the exact point when true respect is replaced by false bluster, but they know that it eventually happens. The addicted person has to become a bully because he or she senses the loss of their genuine respect from others (and even themselves) in time to their disease. Unfortunately, the other members of the family, being human beings themselves, respond to the abusive bluster in various predictable ways.
A common response for a man is to answer in kind. How many times have I encountered terribly successful men in their careers who go home and react like irresponsible teenaged boys when forced to interact with an abusive addicted teenaged child or wife? He may be the beloved senior manager at the office, but, like Rodney Dangerfield, he “gets no respect” at home! The children witness the disrespect shown by the addicted wife, for example, and then they begin losing respect for both parents. In order to survive, since loud profane abusive behavior seems to work so well for the parents, the children sometimes join in the fray. At this point, the family members are no longer members of a family. They each devolve into an individual organism trying his or her best to survive in a threatening environment.
We have many tools to reverse this downward
Pages: 1 2