The Right Thing

The question, friends, that is always on the tongue of those who live with a loved one with mental illness, is startling in it's simplicity. Because after you have come to grips with a diagnosis, or at least wrapped your mind around the reality that your child, spouse, parent, or sibling is not okay in the traditional sense of the word - after you have educated yourself about that malady and done your homework by reading book after book or endlessly surfing the net - after you've sought out support groups and doctors and counselors and social workers - after all due diligence you find yourself still grappling with that one question.

What is the right thing to do?

I live in America. This is a the "land of the free, home of the brave." This is a culture that looks disapprovingly upon failure, weakness and lack of a stiff upper lip, whatever that is supposed to mean. Homeless? You've failed to 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps.' Jobless? You aren't taking advantage of your opportunities. Ill? Well, how long can it take to get better? Take your pills for heaven's sake and get on with it. Addicted? That's just pathetic; we'll let you hit bottom and then you'll see the error of your ways and become a responsible citizen.

This is how the New Collegiate Dictionary defines the term enabler: "one that enables another to achieve an end; especially: one who enables another to persist in self-destructive behavior (as substance abuse) by providing excuses or by making it possible to avoid the consequences of such behavior." This has become the dirty word to fling at the family of the afflicted - as if they have caught some vile social disease by association. Not enough to blame the victim... blame the victim's family as well. This is how compassionate our culture is to the most vulnerable.

The flipside, of course, is that often our loved ones become most ingenious at using our compassion for them to their own ends. That just because a person is ill, does not mean he or she is not capable of being devious and manipulative, or lazy and unwilling to compromise. A person with mental illness may very well have the ability to decide that sitting at home playing video games trumps working at a dull minimum wage job hands down, or that Mom will clean up the mess if I don't. A little show of temper or the silent treatment may get the family back to walking on eggshells - and off my back. Which brings us back to the question.

What is the right thing to do?

The line between "enabling someone to achieve an end (recovery)" and "enabling someone to continue self destructive behavior" is always in motion. The ability to discern when a behavior is a direct result of the disease or a reactive coping mechanism is an ongoing learning curve - and just when I think I've got it down, I catch myself and have to reevaluate. The line is dependent on so many factors - what illness, how severe, what stage of recovery are we in, what outside factors are contributing, are the meds working, are they being taken... and so on and so on and so on. Sometimes it's too much to grapple with and I abdicate - and my fall back position is usually to help in some way, even if that help is enabling. But I fear that if I am always there to clean up the mess, to provide comfort, or just plain to save his butt from consequences that a normal (as in not mentally ill) person would have to face - that I am somehow doing him a disservice. How will he mature and grow and learn to handle things himself if I never let him deal with his own mistakes?

What is the right thing to do?