Episode #180

Failure To Launch & CBT

Increasing numbers of adult children live at home with their parents, which can lead to frustration for both.

What are appropriate boundaries and how can you identify them?

How can you know if you’re enabling your adult child?

How can you use CBT tools to approach the situation in a healthy way?

Join me, Dr Julie Osborn, as we talk about how to navigate this often-challenging situation using CBT tools.

Click to listen now!

Full Episode Transcript

Hi, and welcome to My CBT Podcast. This is Dr. Julie. I'm a Doctor of Psychology and a licensed clinical social worker specializing in cognitive-behavioral therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life.

Thanks for being with me.

I hope everybody's doing well. I wanted to start off with a little celebration news. Is when you guys hear this podcast, it will be almost to the date of my 6-year anniversary since I started my CBT podcast. It's hard to believe. I started taping in January of 2020 and it came out in March, right when COVID hit of 2020.

Didn't know where it would take me. I probably didn't think I'd be around this long, 6 years still doing this, but I want to say thank you for all my, to all my listeners, It's because of you that I keep going with this. It's a labor of love. My intention is always is to get CBT out into the world so people can live happier lives, have tools on how to change how they feel by changing how they think. So 6 years, pretty exciting.

I just wanted to share that with all of you. And again, thank you for being listeners and supporting me along the way.

I'm going to share an email to get started today.

It says,

“Hello, I wanted to write and tell you how excited I am to have found your podcast. I'm a 56-year-old male who, like always, wanted to work as a therapist.

“In my 40s, my wife and I went back to school and eventually finished our master's degree, passed our exams to pursue our candidacy, and I even completed some required hours. At the time, it made more sense for my wife to finish her candidacy, which she did, and I am so proud of her. Now it's my turn. I passed my exam again and I'm anxiously awaiting permission to restart my candidacy. I honestly never really gave CBT much of a thought, but yesterday it occurred to me that exploring it again might be very important since I will be seeing clients soon.

“I first found a book by Judith Beck and found some of the things that didn't catch my eye the first time to be quite interesting. While searching for a podcast by her, I actually landed on yours. Although I've only listened to your initial introduction podcast, I find your way of teaching the subject matter easy to follow and interesting. I look forward to learning more about CBT from you.

“Just wanted to say hello and thank you, Jim.”

So thank you, Jim. I'm excited for you to get your career started, be a therapist, and hopefully teach other CBT as well. Just want to get the word out there.

So today I'm going to talk about an important subject, and I'll share why I haven't thought about it. I've had quite a few people reach out to me, as I always ask you guys to. I love hearing from you, getting email suggestions. And, um, handful of people have children at home that have what they call failure to launch. They're adults living at home, not really doing much, not motivated.

Really frustrating and a lot of, or not even a lot, most of the time the emails are like, what can I do to make my child do this or that? How can I make them get motivated, make them, you know, do this or this? And so when I respond back, I said, you know, we all know we can't control another human being no matter what. It really comes down to how we're behaving and how we're enabling, which is my topic for today. The behavior of what's going on in the home with this other person.

So I'm going to talk a lot about adult and child relationships, but everything I'm going to share with you guys today is relatable to any relationship in your life that you may be enabling. So that could be your partner in your life, family members, friends, co-workers. So again, instead of going back and forth and identifying all different people, It is information that if you're an enabler, you will learn a lot, get some insight and some tools, some CBT tools on how to make healthy changes, which in turn will help the other person as well. Because I know we think we're helping others when we enable them, but we're really not. So that's why I picked this topic.

I think it'll be really helpful. For you to start getting that insight if you need that. And what do I actually do to make changes? So let's start with what enabling means. So enabling is when someone's actions unintentionally make it easier for another person to continue harmful or dysfunctional behavior.

That's the definition. So it's definitely important to remember I said unintentionally, okay? People are usually coming from a really good place.

When they're enabling and they just don't see how it is actually harmful in the long run. So that's the definition. So some examples just to get started with, and I'll give you more and more as we continue here, is covering up someone's mistakes or consequences, constantly rescuing them from problems they created, taking over responsibilities that they should handle, and avoid setting boundaries because of guilt or fear. I have an earlier podcast on boundaries that could be helpful for you guys to listen to as well if that's something that you struggle with. Enabling usually comes from good intentions, as I was saying, you know, you love the person, you want to protect them, you want to avoid conflict, but it can prevent the other person from taking responsibility or changing.

And it's really hard to see the difference sometimes between enabling and helping, so that's why we're here talking about it. So a couple examples is if a parent repeatedly calls their adult child's employer to explain absences caused by the child's poor choices, or if a partner pays off debts created by the other partner's reckless spending. Those are just a couple examples.

So how CBT is connected with enabling and how we look at it is that it's a behavior that's often connected to thought patterns and beliefs that drive the behavior, right? So remember, we got thoughts create your moods, your moods affect your behaviors, which also affect your physical reactions, right? Physical is, you know, the difficulty concentrating, crying, if your sleep and appetite are messed up, anything physical, you know, however you feel when you're feeling anxious. So the way you're thinking and your beliefs is what creates probably feeling anxious, worried, scared for that person. And then your behavior is enabling.

So enabling is a behavior. So within the context of CBT, that's where it comes out. But all of our behaviors are based on our thoughts and our belief system, right? So we got to figure out what am I thinking that's making me feel anxious or worried or scared, overwhelmed, whatever moods you're having, that's causing me to think enabling is going to be helpful. And what I want to do, right?

So it's not just that you think you're helping somebody, but you're probably calming down yourself as well. Like, oh, okay, I called his employer and he's not going to get fired, right? Or I called school and he's not going to get, you know, suspended from school, or they'll give him an extra day to do the test. I also feel calmer. So it's, you know, it's not just about the other person, it's also about yourself.

And there's definitely some common CBT thought patterns that are behind the enabling, like I just shared right now. So I'm going to go over some more. So the over-responsibility, your hot thought might be that it's my job to fix this. If I don't help, everything will fall apart. If it's guilt-based, your hot thought would be that if I say no, I'm a bad parent or partner.

Catastrophic thinking, Your hot thought would be that if I don't step in, something terrible will happen.

And if you're a people pleaser and that's where your belief system's coming from, then your hot thought's going to be my worth depends on keeping others happy. So remember, the hot thoughts, the thoughts that are not 100% true, and those are the ones that really feed our moods and we want to figure out so we can work on balancing those thoughts out, right? Right? So these are some categories, some examples of that. So how can we make some changes, right?

We're here about CBT, which gives you tools to make changes. So first you wanna identify the situation, right? So we're talking about a thought record basically here. So say the example would be that your adult child missed work and asked you to call their boss. So what are your hot thoughts here?

If I don't help, they'll lose their job. A good parent helps. That hot thought gives you permission to enable, right? That is a hot thought, right? And we want to challenge our hot thoughts.

So some good questions to ask yourself is, you know, is this actually my responsibility? What might happen if I don't intervene? And am I preventing them from learning consequences?

Those are some questions to get started with to challenge these hot thoughts you're having. And some balanced thoughts would be that I do care about them, but they're responsible for their own job. And another balanced thought would be allowing consequences may help them grow.

So that's, you know, a quick thought record to go through when you're feeling that angst or that need to step in, or when they ask you to step in, right? It's not always that you're just jumping in and doing it. Sometimes you're asked and you don't have those healthy boundaries, as I mentioned before. So you want to start setting some healthy boundaries. That's how you're going to change your behavior.

So something you can also say is, you know, I'm not comfortable calling your boss. That's something you need to handle. That's your first step in setting a boundary. So I'm going to talk about what healthy support is versus enabling in these situations, right? So healthy support is encouraging responsibility.

Enabling is taking over responsibility. You have to ask yourself, is that something I do? Healthy support is listening and empathizing, and enabling is fixing every problem. Healthy support is offering advice when asked. Enabling is preventing consequences.

And healthy support is setting boundaries. Enabling is ignoring your own limits. Right, just talking about this, I got feelings coming up. I'm like, whoo, this is not good stuff, right? That when you're enabling, you're not honoring yourself and you're not honoring the relationship, and you're really not respecting the other person, even though you probably think you are.

But you're not giving them a chance to be who they are, create, you know, decisions for themselves, let them be autonomous. Right? Their behavior is just, or their life, whatever it's going on, is just affecting you way too much and you wanting to fix it so you feel better.

So a good reframe here is that helping someone avoid consequences may feel loving in the moment, but it can keep them stuck long-term. So again, it might feel like, oh, I'm glad I helped them out. I really love them. I don't want to see them struggle.

Right? But you need to reframe that and see, like, I'm really not helping them. What I think is help is really hurting them. And it's really important to start to see that because that's— you need to see that so that you can start making some healthy changes, right?

So when I was saying earlier, you know, enabling in that parent-child relationship, Happens when the parent, again, out of love or worry, does things that prevents the child, no matter what age, from experiencing responsibility, consequences, or growth. Right? And again, you keep telling yourself, I think your big hot thought might be that I have to fix this, or if I don't help, I'm a bad parent. Right? So let me talk about some more examples.

Um, cause I really want this to resonate with you guys. So Say your teenager skips school or breaks some rules, right? And then you call the school and you invent an excuse so the child won't get in trouble. So what are you teaching your child? You're teaching your child that someone else will clean up their problem.

They don't have to be accountable. They don't have to be responsible. You always have to say, you know, what's the message I'm sending in my behavior? Even if it isn't your intention. Right?

I don't think your intention would be like, I don't want my child to ever be responsible or take, you know, action in their life. But that's the message you're sending. Right? And so the healthy alternative obviously is to let your child face the consequences with school and discuss with them how to handle it better next time. This is what they call natural consequences, right?

You choose your behavior, you choose your consequences. If you're gonna skip school or break some rules, there's some consequences with that, right? And if we step in, we take that opportunity away for them to learn or grow, right? So that's what natural consequences are. That's— I believe that's how people really learn the best, the natural consequences, right?

Why is this happening? You're not some victim. You know, no one's punishing you. You made a choice that wasn't a good choice. You got caught.

And now there's consequences. It's very black and white, right? So we want to— it's, it's always a good opportunity, you know, when there's problems in our lives and our people we care about, whatever, you know, instead of like, oh no, no, no, it's like, oh, here's an opportunity to learn so we can do better next time, right? And that's a, that's a better balanced alternative thought. Here's an opportunity for my kid or whoever's in my life to make better choices, right?

Be more responsible, be more mature, and hopefully they won't do it again because they're going to actually feel it. When you make that phone call for them, they don't feel anything, right? And so they're not going to learn. We don't learn when we don't feel some pain from something, right, or some discomfort, right? Another one is if you're taking over responsibilities Right?

So if you have an adult child who has trouble managing basic responsibilities, you might be paying their bills, you might be scheduling their appointments, you may be handling work or school issues, right? And what happens to your adult child is that they never develop that independence that you're really wanting them to have. So a different alternative that's healthier is just offer them some guidance, but let them handle the tasks themselves. You know, so you can still be there for them if they're open and they want your guidance, they want your opinion, they want your suggestion, but then let them do it. And if they choose not to, again, that will be their natural consequence.

Financial bailouts, that's a biggie, right? An adult child repeatedly overspends or gets into debt, right? And as the parent, and you're— if you're an enabler, you keep paying off their credit cards or loans. And what happens is the spending behavior continues because again, there's no real consequences. In the back of their head, they're like, oh, mom or dad will bail me out, or sister or partner or whoever, right?

Because I don't want to see something bad happen to me, so I'm just going to keep doing this. It's not even that it's fully conscious, but it could be subconscious that they just know you're going to bail them out. So a healthy alternative is to stop paying their debts. And encourage them to learn how to budget, maybe get some financial counseling, right? Those are some options that they can do, but I'm not going to bail you out anymore.

So you're going to have to figure this out and hopefully make better choices. So again, you're, you're changing your behavior, right? Because enabling is a behavior. You're giving them some suggestions and then it's going to be up to them. They're adults.

Right? It's going to be up to them to figure it out. And if, you know, whatever excuse you might— oh, I never really taught them about money— which, you know, is very true. Lots of people, uh, out in the world do not have that intelligence, or, um, intelligence is a big word, so maybe that's not the best word, but just, you know, financial literacy is a better way to put it, you know. And maybe you didn't take the time to teach your kids how to budget how to, you know, how to manage how credit cards even work, right?

So you may say, oh, well, I didn't teach them, so now I have to, you know, help them out. No, it's never too late to teach them, right? You could step in and say, hey, you know, this is, uh, how credit cards work. This is how you budget. I'm going to teach you how to do this so you can make better choices.

And if there's a situation that you're like, I just have to help them out, I need to pay for this, Make them accountable. Okay. If it's $5 a week, have them give you $5 a week to pay you back. I don't care how long it takes, but you need to make them accountable. Right.

I always, you know, think when people borrow money, oh, I'll pay you back when I have all of it together. And then you never see any of it. Right. And then nobody says anything. And then people just ignore it and just hope it goes away.

Right. Hopefully a responsible person is like, I can give you $5 a week. I know it's not much, but I want you to know I'm, mindful, I want to be accountable, I appreciate it, I'm making an effort. So if your adult child or whoever this person is in your life doesn't offer that, just say, oh, I'd like you to pay me $5 a week until it's paid off. And if you get a chunk of money down the road and you can pay it off, great.

But we need to come up with a plan if I'm actually going to help you this time, because, you know, you need to respect that I'm going to help you out. You need to respect this is my money I'm putting out. That I normally wouldn't have to, but I'm choosing to do that. But you also have to be accountable. So that's really important to come up with a plan, I think, especially with financial situations.

So it's being addressed right at the get-go. Another situation that a lot of parents are really in relationships, I'd say too, is avoiding conflict. Why people enable. So, um, say your child behaves disrespectfully or irresponsibly Right? And the parent ignores it to avoid arguments, so they just let it go.

So what happens is the behavior just continues to escalate because there's no clear boundaries, right? And I can scream or be disrespectful or do whatever and nothing's going to happen. So people will continue to do that. So what do you have to do to be healthier is to set those clear expectations, have good boundaries, and enforce them. Probably the most important thing with boundaries is consistency, right?

Because if you do it sometimes, you don't do it other times, and people don't believe you're going to really follow through, and they'll take their chances on maybe this will be the time they won't follow through. So you need to definitely be consistent, super important. And another situation is if you're doing things that your child can do for themselves, right? So if a capable child or a teen or even an adult living— adult child living with you refuses to do any chores or responsibilities that you're asking of them, right? And you end up doing it for them to keep the peace.

That's the enabling. And what happens is the child learns helplessness or entitlement. And I'm telling you, it is no fun being in a relationship with someone who's entitled. Woo! Not at all.

So you have to set those boundaries. You know, if it's an adult child, it might be like, you either help out here at the house or you need to move, right? And if it's your younger child, then there need to be some consequences if they don't follow through and do the things that you're asking. That's really important because again, what is the message you're sending? I'll do it, I'll do it.

You don't have to. Nothing really bad is going to happen. Yeah, I'll be a little irritated for a while and then it'll go away. So that's just going to repeat and repeat. Then you end up getting pissed off.

You end up having resentment. Right? And yes, it's not okay that they didn't do what you asked, but you really got to look at yourself. Why am I so angry? Am I more angry at them or myself?

Right? Because I'm enabling. I'm not honoring myself. I'm not respecting myself. I'm not respecting this relationship.

Right? It all comes back to you in the way of, you know, that's something you have control over, which is good news. Right? We want to focus on what we do have control over, not focusing on what we don't. Because then we can make some changes, which is wonderful.

Another and last example I'm going to give you here from another reason with enabling is protecting them from natural consequences. So say an adult child repeatedly loses jobs, right? So you may enable them by letting them live rent-free indefinitely, give them spending money, or you sit there with them and you blame the employers. Somebody else's fault. So what happens is the pattern continues without motivation to change.

I don't have to pay rent, right? I still get money when I want it. I can have someone commiserate with me and blame the employer. You know, I talked to some, you know, parents, even some clients, to be honest. And, you know, I'm like, you know, change isn't happening because, you know, nothing is actually going to happen.

Your parent is not going to kick you out, right? Based on their behavior, they get upset and you're like, ooh, you know, you go to your room and then, you know, after a while you go out and everybody's watching TV like nothing happened, right? Like if you're in a situation that you know nothing is going to happen and you're not already self-motivated, you're not going to change, right? So you may get pissed off initially at your parent for setting boundaries or doing something, you know, regarding the situation. And it's hard to see things in the moment because it might be stressful that it's going to help you.

But, you know, if you're the child, the adult child, if you're the parent in the situation, if you're a spouse, right, and this person that you're enabling knows that nothing major is going to change, nothing really is going to happen Most likely they're not going to change. That's a really tough place to be in, but it's something you really need to look at. You know, just to share a story, I remember a long time ago, um, I shared this in my other podcast. My husband's in recovery and I used to go to, um, like Al-Anon meetings. I'll never forget one of the moms I met, her daughter lived with her.

She was an addict, you know, wouldn't get sober, wouldn't get sober. This is back in the day when we all had water beds. You don't hear about water beds anymore. But anyways, um, They were fun to have. But, uh, she drained her daughter's waterbed while she was out of the house, put it on the front lawn, and the daughter came home and the mom was like, you're not living here anymore.

And the mother, I can't, you know, can you imagine how scary knowing your kid's an addict? You know, I like to think a lot of parents let the addicts live at home because they're afraid if I kick them out, they're just going to die on the street. But that's what she did. What happened? Her daughter finally got sober.

And back then, you know, she'd been sober for years and years. And it's not the first story I heard that when someone finally said, we're done, you need to go figure it out, I'm not going to enable you anymore. You know, it's hard, but a lot of times it works. So I always remember I was very young back then when I was going to these meetings, and I was like, wow, that took a lot of courage and a lot of love because that daughter could have died even living in her house because she continued to use drugs and alcohol. So everything's easier said than done, but what's going to be best for me and the person in my life?

So let's go back a little bit more to some of these hot thoughts you might be having, you know, and why as parents or partners you might be enabling, right? So when it comes to parents, some other hot thoughts that, you know, my child will suffer if I don't help, right? Good parents always rescue their kids. If I say no, they won't love me. It's easier if I just fix it.

I'm just chuckling because these are all so true, right? I just, I'm a parent. I can just see thinking this way. And another one is, you know, no one helped me and I resent it still. I'm going to be different with my children no matter what age they are.

You know, when we didn't get things in our childhood and we feel resentful or angry or depressed or whatever about it, I'm going to be a different parent. You know, that can be really good in many different ways, but not if you end up just enabling because you didn't get anything and now you're going to give everything. So that's really important. That might be like an underlying thought and part of your core belief that you need to figure out for yourself and address, because that's not how you fix the pain you have from not getting what you didn't get in your childhood, because now you're really just going to harm your child by not giving them that opportunity to really grow and be independent, mature. Adults who feel competent and confident in themselves, which is really— I know what you want, right?

And I think, I believe that's your intention, but you might just be going about it the wrong way. So you want to challenge these beliefs and replace them with the healthier ones that we talk about. There's a lot of— if you're— if you want to learn more about core beliefs, I also have a podcast called Core Beliefs. Talks about these underlying thoughts, uh, or beliefs, I'm sorry. And they're from usually our childhood.

They can be any time in our lives, but it could be why If you're thinking that because no one helped you, you're going to do everything for your kid no matter what, then that really becomes a problem. So a good reframe here is, you know, telling yourself that supporting my child doesn't mean removing every obstacle. Sometimes the most loving thing is letting them learn, which is so true, right? Supporting your kid, it's really important to understand the distinction is being encouraging, teaching them, listening, right? Enabling is when you remove the responsibility or the consequences.

So it's just a really easier way to, to make the distinction for yourself. You know, right now, am I encouraging my child or my partner? Am I teaching them what maybe they need to know? Maybe what I didn't teach earlier that I'm going to do now? Am I listening?

Right? Or am I removing their responsibilities and their consequences to make it easier? And if I'm doing that, I need to take a breath, pause and breathe, pause and breathe, and think about what are my hot thoughts. Do a thought record, figure it out. What's the best way for me to support my kid right now?

I believe a lot of people have a hard time changing behaviors because stopping enabling, I think a lot of people worry about damaging the relationship, right? And it's really about changing how you help, not withdrawing that lover's support, right? So using your CBT tools, you can focus on shifting your thoughts, right, balancing them out, challenging them, and your behaviors that lead to apparent to not over-rescuing or over-functioning for their kid, right? And maybe one of the hot thoughts is, I'm going to damage the relationship, right? Or some of those hot thoughts I shared earlier about, you know, they won't love me, all that stuff.

So really, the idea here I'm trying to share with you guys is you can stay caring and supportive while still allowing your adult child to take responsibility. You can do both, right? You can have a really positive outcome.

Right? And when you can change that internal thought pattern, right, that again, if I don't help, I'm abandoning them. Whoo. That's a biggie. A lot of, you know, my experience, including myself, most of us have been abandoned on some level in our lives.

And it's like, oh, I don't want my kids to experience that. It was very painful. But not helping someone is not abandoning them if you're supporting, encouraging, teaching, listening, like I said earlier, right? You might also tell yourself that a good parent fixes things, and also they won't be able to handle it, which is really sad if you're thinking they won't be able to handle it, because it's like you're pulling the rug out from under your kid. You're not even giving them a chance to learn and do better, right?

Like, I think of— I'm sure you guys all have your own stories, right? I can think of my own stories of when, like, oh, it would have been nice if I had some help or support or some financial support at times when I was really, really struggling. And looking back, although I felt like it sucked at the time, right, boy did I learn from that. And it sticks with me to this day. And I did make better changes, and I didn't get myself in that place that I was in many years ago financially because nobody stepped in and rescued me.

So I know, you know, it's that shades of gray, right? It's like, oh, I could be so pissed and think about that I could also be grateful and I can be, you know, yeah, it was tough, but wow, I really learned from it and it was really what was best for me. There's a really good balanced thought for me doing a thought record if I was still, you know, frustrated or angry that certain people didn't step in and bail me out back then, right? So again, changing those internal thought patterns, which is what we're here for, right, is, you know, the old thought is that I have to fix this. Your new thought could be that my child's responsible for their choices.

My role is support, not rescue, right? Write that on your phone, Post-it notes in your house. My role is support, not rescue. That's in your relationships, that's with your friendships, that's with the coworkers, right? Allowing the responsibility is not rejection, it's respect for their adulthood.

Allowing responsibility is not rejection, it's respect. For their adulthood and seeing them as capable human beings.

It's so different than what maybe you've been walking around thinking for a long time. And you want to separate support from rescue, right? So as I said earlier, you know, the 3 questions you can ask yourself: Is this the responsibility or mine? Am I preventing a natural consequence? And will my help build independence or dependence?

I think the third one is really important, and I think it's, it's an easier one. I think you can answer that easy. I think any of these you can answer pretty easy. Sometimes it's hard to separate the, you know, my responsibility or theirs. But number 3, will my help build independence or dependence?

I think that's one you can answer for yourself. And if it builds dependence, then it may be enabling, and you want to question that. And if you're not sure, you know, if you have a therapist, talk to them about it. If you have a friend, someone you trust, So when you respect, you know, say, this is my thought process, I'm thinking of stepping in and doing this, what do you think? Right?

And when you do set those boundaries, the healthy ones are clear, consistent, as I said, and not angry or punitive. So your tone really matters when you're setting your boundaries with people in your life. You want to deliver it in a calm way so then you can protect the relationship, not in an angry way. So you want to be clear, consistent, not angry or punitive. Right?

So care helps you set the boundary, which creates confidence and protects the relationship. But I also want you to expect some discomfort, not because the relationship's going to be damaged, but that you're changing your behavior and that's uncomfortable, right? So when the enabling stops, you know, the adult child may initially feel frustrated with you, angry with you. Shock, right, and even make you feel guilty. This is common because you're changing, like, the system, you're changing the dynamics.

It doesn't necessarily mean the relationship is being harmed, right? And that's why consistency usually leads to more respect over time. When you're consistent, people do respect you. And I always say, you know, if you respect yourself, other people respect you. When you don't respect yourself, you're not going to be respected, right?

Think about someone in your life maybe you don't respect because they probably don't respect themselves. But when you're consistent and you set those boundaries and, you know, you stick to that 99.9% of the time, people are going to get it who's in your life, right? And when things change, even when it's good change, people get discomfort. People don't like change. People like to, you know, not everybody, people out there like to be enabled though, right?

If you're one of those people like to be enabled, you're not going to like change. And the people you're enabling aren't going to like it because they allow you also to enable them because they like it, right? That, you know, I don't want anyone to enable me. If somebody tried to step in, you know, I would say, hey, I really appreciate that, but I'm going to handle this myself. You know, I appreciate your input, but I don't need you to do that for me.

That makes me more uncomfortable. Like, you're going to call my boss? Like, I'm not a child. Let me do that, right? So sometimes I would say too, I want to add here, sometimes I think parents enable because they just— that's their identity.

I'm a parent. And they continue to treat their children younger than they are. So that's something you want to look at yourself as well, right? And hopefully your child will become healthier and actually set boundaries with you if necessary. That could also happen, and that could make you uncomfortable.

Oh, my child doesn't need me anymore. Oh, now they're just angry. They don't love me. They don't reach out as much anymore. So again, it can be, you know, twisted around as well, right?

If you're enabling someone that doesn't want to be enabled, that can also be an issue. So when you are setting boundaries with your kids, I'm going to give you a couple kind of scripts you can use. You can write these down or listen to the podcast again, but When you can validate someone and set a boundary, that shifts the responsibility. So for example, when they ask you to fix a problem, right, your new balanced alternative thought could be, I understand this is stressful for you. I care about you, but this is something you'll need to handle yourself.

I believe you can figure it out. That sounds good, huh? That sounds good. I would like to say that when they ask for money repeatedly. I love you and I want you to succeed.

Unable to give money for this anymore. I'm happy to talk about ways you can work through the situation. Right, so I'm validating. I love you. I'm setting my boundary and our responsibility, shifting responsibility back to them, saying I'm happy to talk about ways you can work through the situation.

When they want you to solve work or life problems, You can say, "That sounds frustrating. What do you think your next step should be?" This shifts the responsibility back to them. And when people can work out their problems, it creates that self-competence, which creates self-confidence. When they try to make you feel guilty, this is tough, right? Remember, the definition of guilt is that you did something wrong.

So that's something you can always ask. "Did I do something wrong here? I don't think so." So you can say, I care about you very much. Saying no doesn't mean I don't care, it means I don't trust— oh, let me reword that because I just messed it up. I care about you very much.

Saying no doesn't mean I don't care, it means I trust you can handle this. It's like, oh, somebody trusts that I can handle this? Well, that's pretty cool. Maybe I can. Let me try.

Let me try.

And when you're used to rescue them, you can say that in the past I may have stepped in quickly to fix things. So you're owning it. I'm trying to step back so you can handle more on your own. I'm still here to support you.

And you want to offer healthy support instead. So instead of fixing it, you can listen, you can brainstorm solutions, you can encourage them. You can ask questions. You can provide emotional support. You can tell them, you know, I can't solve this for you, but I'm happy to talk it through.

Shifting from a supportive parent instead of being a directive parent, telling them what to do, helps create that mutual respect I was talking about earlier and understanding.

And one other thing I want to share that a lot of parents find helpful regarding a powerful CBT reminder is the new thought that if I keep solving the problem, my child never learns they can solve it themselves. And you know what? We're not always going to be here on this earth for our kids, and we want to know that when we're not here, that they can still solve things, they can make good decisions, they can feel confident and competent in themselves. And also, you know, when your kids live far away from you— my kids live far away from me— you know, I know and I believe that They can handle difficult situations and they have. They may call and talk to me, but in that moment, I'm not right there to do anything and they can handle it because we focused on raising them to be independent and self-competent and have that self-confidence so they could go live their life and explore and not feel like they had to stay close to us because they needed our help with stuff.

Like, that's not healthy, that's not fun, right? So it really goes a long way. It's not just everything right now, You're creating a really healthy relationship with your child, your spouse, friend, whoever it is, so that it can be more of an equal relationship regarding, you know, they're not just depending on you and you're fixing everything, right? You're there to support them and they're also living their life. So that's really good.

So before I wrap this up, I just wanted to mention two other things that are happening when you are enabling. Is you also may feel responsible for their happiness or stability, right? So the parent believes the adult child will fall apart without their support.

And you might say, well, in the past I tried this and they did fall apart. Well, what happened? They're still here, living, breathing, right? But now they're just more dependent on you. So what can you do?

What do they, you know, what do they need so they can start feeling more competent? Know how to problem solve, make better decisions? What is it that they need so that they won't, you know, fall apart? If they did before, then they obviously need support in some way, you know, maybe going to see a therapist or whatever it looks like. You know, again, that's where you can step in and you can help problem solve with them, not to fix it for them, right?

But telling yourself that allows you to enable, right? If I don't help, something bad will happen. They can't handle it on their own, and it's my job to make sure they're okay. Now, when they're adult children, when they're your children, yes, and you're raising them, you know, it is your job to make sure they're okay, but you can still help them problem solve, think through things, make good decisions, because then you end up creating this emotional over-responsibility. And the last thing that I think is really important I wanted to add here is that you end up gradually lowering your expectations, which is really sad, right?

Over time, you adjust to expectations, and this can be in relationships too, downward, to avoid disappointment, right? So you might accept chronic unemployment, you might accept disrespectful behavior, you may accept a lack of contribution at home, right? And then the standard for the adult functioning— again, this can be with your partner too slowly disappears. That's why it's enabling. Your standard for an adult in your home, in your relationship, slowly disappears because you keep lowering expectations, because you're not realizing that what you're doing isn't working and it's really harming, and you need to start recognizing that.

And so just kind of a rule of thumb is a behavior may be enabling if your help removes the consequence that would otherwise motivate growth, right? And you can support them with empathy and not rescuing them. Again, I'm going to repeat: clear boundaries, allowing natural consequences, encouraging independence, and offering guidance rather than solutions. So I hope I wasn't too repetitive in some areas, but I think the things I did repeat were just really important. I really want you to hear and have it resonate with you.

There's many different facets of enabling, and don't minimize if you're like, oh, well, I just do that sometimes, or I only do one of them out of the 5 Dr. Julie mentioned. Enabling isn't a place, a behavior we want to practice. There's so many other healthy options that we can still be there for those that we love, but it can be a win-win for both of us. So I hope you found this helpful. Definitely share with anyone that may benefit as well.

You guys know you can find me on my website at mycognitivebehavioraltherapy.com.

You can also find me on Instagram under My CBT Podcast, Dr. Julie Osborn on Facebook and YouTube.

Please keep sharing your thoughts, your concerns, your questions. I love hearing from you guys and getting your feedback.

Please hit the subscribe button to make sure you never miss an episode.

And remember, as always, to make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel.