Enabling Is Misguided Love

“Affirmation Only” Is a Form of Enabling

Photo by lilartsy on Unsplash

Most people think of drug addiction or alcoholism when they hear the word “enabling.” Many of us know someone who has harmed their body, health, and relationships as they spiraled downward from the effects of drugs or drinking. We may understand that the person’s use stems from their desire to relieve pain. Perhaps they experienced trauma, loss, anxiety, or depression, and the drugs or alcohol offered an escape.

The pain driving the behavior or habit may not be evident unless one knows the drinker or user well. Because self-medicating with substances may take the edge off the root issue, the person using or drinking may be able to camouflage the underlying suffering at first. Over time, it usually becomes evident to others that not all is well because untreated trauma or underlying conditions surface eventually. The drugs or alcohol harm the body and affect the person’s relationships, particularly with loved ones.

An enabler ignores or minimizes the problem and enables the addicted person by providing support, affirmation, money, transportation, or housing so the person can continue using/drinking and masking their underlying issues. The enabler may not know they are enabling, especially at first. But over time, they may come to realize that drugs and booze are not solutions and that enabling their friend or family member is not the best choice.

If someone asks the user/drinker questions about their addictions or directly asks them to stop, the user/drinker may have a strong response because they do not believe they could go sober; the substances are a crutch they think they need to survive or the cycle and power of addiction seems too strong or deep to overcome.

Those who truly want to help the individual improve their life, health, and relationships will encourage the user to explore options, such as entering a 12-step program or a rehab facility or joining AA or NA. It can be a long rehabilitation process to repair, make amends, and create a sober and healthy life, but it is possible, and many of us know someone who has turned their life around.

A similar story is playing out with enabling in terms of affirming individuals who self-ID with a new gender identity as the opposite sex of their birth sex. There are usually many reasons for such a declaration, and it behooves family and friends to ask questions and find out what is going on.

The kid or adult with underlying pain, trauma, confusion, or anxiety often seeks a quick fix for relief. Those who promote and profit from gender identity ideology and its medicalization model proclaim to be helping, even saving, distressed individuals. But they are not telling the person the truth that it is not possible to change one’s sex and that cosmetic attempts to look like the opposite sex by blaming the body as the problem and modifying bodily appearance are not the answers to the complexity of underlying issues.

Enabling is not appropriate whether the situation involves an individual using drugs/alcohol or cross-hormones and body-modifying surgeries. Once one understands their role in enabling, they must stop. In gender identity ideation, the enablers are often called “cheerleaders” or “allies.” In a podcast episode entitled, “RODG Boys Exist!” mother and advocate Lydia talks about girl “cheerleaders” who enable boys with gender dysphoria. It is chilling to hear about what is happening to vulnerable boys, many of whom are confused, don’t fit in, may be fleeing masculinity, or have underlying comorbidities. We must examine and course-correct enabling behaviors even if we used them initially with good intentions.

200 - ROGD Boys Exist! with Lydia

Consider these statements:

· Enabling distorted thinking is not love or care.

· Enabling maladaptive coping mechanisms is not love or care.

· Enabling a child to run away from growing up is not love or care.

· Enabling a boy or girl to opt out of the responsibility of becoming a woman or man is not love or care.

· Enabling black-and-white thinking associated with autistic traits is not love or care.

· Enabling the perpetuation of unresolved trauma, which manifests in self-sabotage and self-harm, is not love or care.

· Enabling behaviors that cover up underlying comorbidities of any kind is not love or care.

· Enabling public displays of self-harm scars is not love or care.

· Enabling the mocking, undermining, or shunning of parents is not love or care.

· Enabling the recruitment of other vulnerable children or adults to engage in self-harm is not love or care.

We must love and care for our kids and those who are gender non-conforming. Individuals who prefer a more masculine or feminine side of themselves should be supported while leaving their bodies and health intact. It crosses the line when people encourage and celebrate those individuals, especially minors, who undergo drastic medical procedures to lock in masculine or feminine appearances. It is incomprehensible to know that kids can get healthy body parts removed because they like the opposite sex stereotypes of clothes, games, and activities. How is it justified to medicalize children for non-conformity of gender roles and/or these stereotypical preferences?

The gender industrial complex and all those who participate in and profit from it are starting to be investigated and exposed. Those involved in the medical and pharmaceutical fields are being sued in a similar way as when the opioid epidemic was uncovered.

The American Principles Project shares a report on its website about the gender-industrial complex. This report breaks down the estimated $4.4 billion market for transgender hormones and surgeries, including analyses of the costs of various drugs and procedures, as well as the pharmaceutical companies and medical providers that have the greatest financial investments in these areas.

How many more people will be harmed by enabling confused or hurting kids and adults before the gender industry is shut down? “Trans” activists, who manipulate words to achieve their goals, call enabling “affirming” because it sounds better, but it’s not. Those who recklessly push drugs and surgeries on our most vulnerable kids and adults will be held accountable. They may try to disappear and pretend they were justified in their “affirmation only” care of those needing real care, but those who have been harmed are seeking reparations. We are entering a time of reckoning.

Once someone realizes that they might be participating in enabling behavior, it is time to step back from it. Whether the enabling involved supporting another person’s use of alcohol, drugs, cross-sex hormones, or the behaviors that surround those usages, it behooves the friend or family member to extract from supporting those choices. There is always a risk that the cessation of enabling language or actions will not be well received by the user, and naturally, parents and others don’t want to risk losing contact with the child, so they may continue enabling and affirming. However, fear of a reaction does not merit continued avoidance of the discussion.

An episode on Gender: A Wider Lens discusses how to roll back affirmation and that it can be a gift to do so. The advice may empower parents who don’t know how to back out of affirming once they have engaged in it.

53 - You Affirmed Your Child's Gender... How to Roll Back

A talk framed with love and care for the person’s health and well-being may not initially be received in a positive manner. Still, the disengagement of enabling is a necessary step to open the possibility of moving in a better long-term direction. Like drugs and alcohol, the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones has substantial adverse health effects, which worsen over time. And enabling irreversible surgeries is profoundly troubling. When the friend or family member courageously speaks about their concern and desire to support the underlying reasons for the use or behaviors to be addressed and treated with love and care, this brave conversation may be a turning point in a more healthful direction.

There will always be those who are not open to changing directions, but we have a responsibility to speak up and to illuminate a gateway out from self-harming behaviors involving those we love. We must provide an exit ramp to those on a highway of self-destruction.

I have personal experience with this topic. A dear friend attacked me verbally when I confronted her about her alcohol use and expressed my concern. The relationship essentially ended, but she knew I cared, and years later, she acknowledged the conversation and apologized for her reaction to it. Another friend died in 2024 from drug and alcohol use, which ultimately caused her organ failure. Despite my attempts to get her help, she could not change course. I was the one who found her body and had to talk with the police and coroner.

My daughter also rejected my attempts to guide her to address the underlying distress that prompted her use of testosterone and surgeries to modify her body. Although I never affirmed my daughter’s sudden cross-sex identification and choices and decisions around that identification, I can imagine that some parents do feel pressured to affirm because they were blindsided by their child’s declaration of a new identity and were unequipped to respond to it initially. Then add the gender industry’s capture of medicine, education, and other entities that disempowered parents, many of whom felt they had no choice but to succumb to affirming drugs and surgeries on their kids.

Not being able to help friends or kids is heartbreaking, but I will never regret trying to guide and support people I love out of maladaptive coping behaviors. It is never too late to speak up and support someone and show them options and opportunities for changing directions. The longer and deeper they are immersed in unhealthy choices, the more difficult it is to extract from those pathways. Not all stories and lifetimes have a good ending, but those who remain must live with their conscience. Each day is a new opportunity to support and care for those we love. Their choices are not in our control, but our interactions with them are in our control.

There is grace for those who realize they were not helping someone when they thought they were. There are even groups such as Al-Anon or Nar-Anon for family members and friends of those who are drinking and abusing substances, and those groups help them understand their role in co-dependency and facilitating maladaptive behaviors and choices in others.

We need to develop programs such as a 12-step program for those wishing to exit from using the drugs prescribed for “trans” bodily modifications, and a “Trans”-Anon for family and friends of detransitioners. Many detransitioners report little to no medical care or support for returning to their natal sex identification, and they need help to navigate the effects of the drugs they were on once they cease to use them. They also need guidance to repair strained or broken relationships that occurred during their “transitioning” times. It seems insurance and medical professionals have little interest in helping detransitioners in their quest to return to better and natural health as much as they are able.

May truth-telling be valued again, because enabling distorted thinking and maladaptive coping mechanisms is not care or love. May the reasons a child or an adult might declare a new opposite sex “identity” be uncovered, and may the underlying distress be addressed. That is care, and that is love.

Lisa Shultz advocates for parents’ and women’s rights. She is deeply concerned about the influence of gender identity ideology and the lack of comprehensive, ethical care for children and vulnerable adults.