Have you ever found yourself repeatedly loaning money to a family member or bailing a friend out of sticky situations time and again or helped cover up a partner's

drinking problem and wondered if you were really helping? When a loved one is in

crisis we sometimes enable their self-sopataging behavior without even realizing it.

Hello and welcome back to savvy psychologist.

I'm your host Dr. Jade Wu.

Every week I'll help you meet life's challenges with evidence-based research,

a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

Today we'll talk about how to recognize enabling and what to do instead.

First let me tell you a story about my family.

When I was a teenager, I heard through the family grapevine

that my favorite cousin, a bright and beautiful

young woman in her early 20s, got married to a man with an alcohol and gambling problem.

He stole her hard-earned money and gambled it all away.

He often stumbled home if he came home at all, blind drunk. My cousin sacrificed

her own future for years, paying off his debts, nursing his health problems,

shielding him from his own family, trying every which way to help him overcome his addictions.

And many people find themselves in similar situations.

They're trying to help a loved one make major life changes and they're failing. I've met people who've done things like

trying to help a spouse quit smoking by hiding their cigarettes, trying to get their roommate out of an

abusive relationship by secretly sabotaging their dates,

or trying to smooth over family relationships by just doing whatever a manipulative parent wants to do. The people caught in these binds tend to be kind

and giving just like my cousin. Their sympathy overflows and they want so much to help their loved one. They say, if I don't try to help,

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