This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀

Welcome to another post in the Alphabet Series. So many great E’s to choose from. E is for excuses, egocentric (and a bunch of other ego-related words), emasculation (check out my Emasculating Shears. Oh, I’m just joking or it’s just fantasy or satire or art or free speech – don’t be so sensitive, boys… sheesh), education, equality, eggshells (as in ‘walking on’), etc. But I’ve chosen to take a little dive into a world so many women know well, both as a player of the role and as the victim of our E-word.

Hold on tight because E is for Enabler.

I’ll define it and a few other jargony words first, so we’re all on the same page – dang it if psychologists don’t love their effing jargon. Next, I’ll talk about the Cult of Positivity – my little moniker for those sunny, but vicious, defenders of the world as it looks through rose- and usually penis-coloured glasses. Then, I’ll get into the machinations of enablers in two specific contexts a) male domination–female servitude (patriarchy), and b) Narcissistic Personality Disorder. And finally, I’ll provide some examples of things enablers love to say to victims of the abusers they support.

So let’s all think happy thoughts with the goodest of intentions and get on the train bound for the Land of Reality Denial!!!!!!

Enablers: What Are They and Where Did They Come From?

Compassion and empathy – concern for and an ability to understand the suffering of others – are good things. They are a uniquely human quality; marks of an advanced intellect; and of course, devalued because they are much more biologically common in females. Because of the way males are biologically wired for sadism and violence, compassion and empathy are quite rare to find in a pure form in them. So, in a world run on male violence and manipulation, these qualities end up being vulnerabilities, rather than strengths, highly exploitable and twisted and weaponized through patriarchal socialization. As a result, for women who are biologically wired for compassion and empathy, being raised in patriarchy means that these qualities are used to maintain the system through supporting the masters (males) and using them as weapons against their fellow oppressed (women and girls). If one knows how to manipulate the naturally compassionate as well as how to falsely play the victim, one can do an enormous amount of damage and keep a steady supply of real victims at the ready for one’s own personal use.

Very simply, an enabler is a person who supports or facilitates (aka ‘enables’) harmful behaviour in another person. The behaviour being supported can be self-harm or it can be harm towards other people. And the support can take a number of forms such as providing substances or tools used in the harmful behaviour or a whole range of psychological support that protects the abuser from taking responsibility or paying consequences for abuse. A lot of people immediately think of those in co-dependent relationships with substance abusers when they hear the word ‘enabler’. But these folks exist in all sorts of abusive relationship dynamics. Sometimes, enablers are completely unaware of what they’re doing as they’ve grown up with abusive and dysfunctional family members and are just living the patterns they’re used to over and over and over. But there are plenty of enablers who have more going on than a twisted version of empathy in the mix in addition to their history of abuse. Some of these folks have an idea of what they’re doing, couldn’t give a shit that they are doing harm, and may themselves be narcissists or psychopaths with their own host of enablers.

Co-dependent: Enabling is part of a co-dependent relationship, which is what you’ve got when one person is very needy and has a very weak sense of self-worth and identity. The co-dependent requires outside approval to feel loved or valued, is in poor touch with their emotions, has trouble making decisions, and is willing to completely subordinate themselves to a seemingly stronger (but in many ways, just as weak and damaged) persona in order to feel of any value or have a sense of purpose. These are people who’ve been emotionally abused as children and gravitate to relationships that are familiar abuse-wise. There is usually a sense that they are helping, even when they are facilitaing harm.

‘Flying Monkeys‘ – as much as I hate this stupid term, it is very commonly used when talking about narcissism (which I’ll get into later). I wanted to define it to differentiate between these folks and enablers, although it is possible to hold both roles in an abusive relationship. A flying monkey – a term that comes from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – refers to people who do harm on behalf of an abuser, just as the flying monkeys did evil deeds on behalf of the Wicked Witch of the West in the book. These people are a sort of proxy or stand-in with their own sense of nasty power, while the enabler is a bit of a cum rag wiping up after the abuser. Now, like I said, a person can act as both an enabler and a flying monkey, both covering for/propping up and dishing out shit on behalf of their overseer. It really depends on personality (disorders) and history.

The Cult of Positivity

Have you heard the term ‘toxic positivity’ before? Well, don’t worry if you haven’t; I can guarantee you that you have met at least – at LEAST – one member of the Cult, and likely, if you tried to have a real conversation with them, the encounter left you wanting to shake them, at the very least.

These are the folks who wax on about forgiveness and bliss and gratitude and cultural sensitivity and everyone having good in them and sending positive thoughts out into the universe and why can’t we all just get along???!!! They also have a whole fuckload of annoying platitudes that they trot out when you attempt to talk about REALITY that say nothing, but are designed to shame you, guilt you, and shut you up. It is impossible to have a real conversation with these people, and if you have bothered trying, at some point early on, they are going to call you ‘negative’ or ‘toxic’ or make some passive aggressive, superior comment about it being really difficult for them to be around negative thinking (meaning you and your cloud of doom). Note that talking about reality and problems are not negative thinking – they are essential to raising awareness and developing strategy for solving problems. Let’s look at an example illustrating the difference between how different approaches sound:

Cult: If we just try hard enough and send out our positive intentions around the world, global warming will be like over! I’ll knit some owl arm bands for solidarity and start a prayer circle for polar bear luv on Facebook! What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger!!! Grrrrl power!

Realist: At our current global effort, the effects of global warming will take a greater and greater toll on both human and animal species. I do my part so I can sleep at night, but I don’t have much expectation that everyone will do what’s needed to make a difference.

Toxic, Negative Thinker: Humans were doomed before they even started. There is no point in even trying to solve global warming, so you may as well do whatever the fuck you want. Drive your SUV to go to the corner store ten times a day! Bring back aerosol hairspray cans! After you’re dead, are you really going to care?

Okay, that was fun, but what about enablers? Don’t worry, I didn’t forget. Well, you will find an army of these folks in the Cult. Enablers don’t like to face reality – it is very threatening to them. They have been taught from an early age that talking about problems or having a complaint will inspire anger and punishment in people who are supposed to love them unconditionally. They learned to keep the peace at home by keeping things light and happy and non-threatening. And for most, it persisted into adulthood. Pure avoidance and people (abuser) pleasing. As a result, they end up letting bad people get away with things and hurt actual victims by silencing them. They are weak people, but you still may want to hit them when they gaslight the fuck out of you when you try to talk about something bad that happened to you. Stay away from them. You exist on two different planes of reality, and they will always support an abuser over you, while telling you to forgive and give people a second chance and that so many other people have it worse than you.

Enablers and Patriarchy

I don’t have data on this, but I would strongly suspect that most enablers are women. Females are abused psychologically, physically, and sexually more as children, they are the ones groomed for subservience to males through heterosexual programming, and as mentioned earlier, they more often are born with the capacity for empathy. And all of this abuse, grooming, and exploitation and twisting of a good, but vulnerable, natural trait serves to give males a free pass for the disgusting shit they do to us. And it’s not just blindness to or acceptance of the shit, it is the excuse-making, the rationalizing, the forgiveness, the second (50th, 100th, millionth) chances given, the actual victim-blaming and prey-policing, and the whole range of enabling behaviours that are taught to young girls so that they have mastered male bolstering in time for marriage. Most women enable men. They are not all Cult members, but even the most skeptical, negative Nellies will give a male a free pass when he hurts women.

Now, if you consider yourself to be a Black Pill type, you’ll think that females are born to do this. I have to completely disagree. I’ve talked about this extensively – I see nature and nurture working together in complicated ways – and I don’t think people realize how ubiquitous pro-male programming is in the world. So let’s put it this way. If it were natural to enslave ourselves to men, men wouldn’t need to brutalize us, or punish us for rebelling or fighting back, or threaten us with rape. Remember that the natural needs no forcing. It just happens. And if you really look closely at what little girls are exposed to – the way they are pushed and taught and punished for natural behaviours that don’t serve the male agenda (over and over and over), you can see that there is nothing natural about the behaviour you see in adult women. They are as programmed as robots.

But you can get out of it. You can deprogram. You can stop enabling males. It is just really hard, and living in the world post-programming is freeing, but demoralizing, and really, really fucking isolating.

Enablers and Narcissistic Personality Disorder

If you grew up with an NPD parent or parents, I’m so sorry. Truly. I know what you have gone through, and how you feel now as an adult. Both of my parents were narcissists, different flavours. My mother was the chief NPD. Father was her enabler, a psychologist, and NPD himself. It was an absolute fucking nightmare, and it took years and years to figure out what I had gone through, and to name it, as both parents were abusive in different ways, and the psychologist-enabler-dad did a really good job of making me feel like I was the one with the problem. And when a ‘professional’ is telling you that you have a problem, should you doubt it? When you’re a kid and you don’t know anything except that you’re doubting your sense of self, your very identity and experience of reality? Well, I’m still working through it all decades later – not sure I’ll ever heal completely, but I know what’s what now, and let me say, I’m an expert on NPD and mindfuckery, and sadly, how to effectively destroy a child from the inside…

So yes, enablers can be male. They can make excuses for narcissists who are male or female. The husband-wife / father-mother tag team where the female is the narcissist is a common dynamic. I can’t remember how many times I heard from my father (moreso later in my teens and early adulthood) that my mother loved me, despite all evidence to the contrary, despite some of the completely fucked up shit she did to me. Parent enablers are sort of trying to keep the peace (at least they think they are), but are actually making things worse in the long-run by allowing abuse to continue for years and years and years. And those years are crucial in breaking down the identity that is supposed to be forming in a child. From the child’s point of view, the enabling parent’s key feature is under-protection. And when you are not protected as a child, you grow up never expecting to be safe or even knowing what it means to be safe.

You can also run into enablers of narcissists in your adult life, especially in the workplace, and although you can escape this more easily that you can in a family situation, it can make life difficult. If you have grown up in an NPD family, you have been groomed for this kind of abuse and will mostly likely find yourself in relationships of this sort without meaning to. It will be familiar to you, but still damaging. If you didn’t grow up with narcissistic abuse, you will be thrown for a loop and wondering what the hell is going on. How you deal with the narcissist will depend on a whole host of personality factors stemming from your biology coupled with how you learned to deal with problems growing up.

Some of the things enablers of narcissists will do (and all involve elements of gaslighting) include:

[1] The enabler uses some excuse of victimhood to explain away abusive behaviour.

You’ll be pressured to forgive, negate your own victimhood, give second chances, etc. The narcissist doesn’t mean to abuse you or they can’t help it – they had a rough childhood, or have a lot of pressure at work. Result: You feel guilty and feel like you are the one picking on the abuser.

[2] The enabler reinterprets the intention of the abusive event.

“They didn’t mean it.” or “I think you’re misinterpreting what happened.” Or some variation on this theme. This gaslights you or paints you as oversensitive or crazy or just plain wrong. Result: You question your experience of the abuse.

[3] The enabler tells you that no one else has had the problem/abuse you are claiming to have.

It is clearly not true. The narcissist abuses many people – even the enabler themself. But the enabler isolates you and implies that perhaps it is you who has the problem. Result: you feel alone and unsupported, and start to question whether it really happened to you.

[4] The enabler tells you that everything will get better soon.

Cult of Positivity anyone? This is a clear denial of reality. Abuse doesn’t have an end date, so the implication here is that there is no pattern of abuse, what happened is not serious, and that you are blowing things out of proportion. Result: you hesitate to speak out again because what you think is serious is being dismissed as temporary or a glitch or that you are too sensitive or paranoid. The temporary abuse of course, ends up going on and on and on.

[5] The enabler tells you things aren’t so bad.

Immediately, the abuse is minimized, and this false sentiment may be coupled with another silencing statement that other people have it worse than you. They may even try to tell you how privileged you are. Result: you question your experience of the abuse as you haven’t been validated – clearly you must be oversensitive or seeing something that isn’t there.

[6] The enabler tells you that you are making too much of a fuss.

There is nothing like complaining that someone is complaining to make them shut up. Sometimes, this is accompanied by a listing of the narcissist’s positive contributions (especially if you benefit from them) in order to excuse the behaviour in question and to invalidate your complaints. After all how can such an amazing person be so bad? Result: you feel guilty for complaining, and wonder if the narcissist can really be that bad if they are doing so much for you. Likely, you are some kind of princess used to getting your own way.

Conclusion

There is a ton more I could say here, but this is just a blog post to help you understand what you may have experienced and to validate your feelings of helplessness when you encounter people who minimize or negate your reality. Enablers can be just as dangerous as those they enable. Many of them don’t realize what they are doing due to their own personal trauma, but I’ve never been one to excuse bad behaviour because of a sad personal history. My advice is to avoid enablers if you can, as they will screw with your head and can’t have a frank conversation with you anyhow. And while some believe ignorance is bliss, it is ultimately healthier to live in reality. Wait til I get to talking about psychosomatics 😉

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