Hey there. It's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson. Today I want to talk to you about the difference between support and enabling. Now, this is a vlog I've been thinking about shooting for a long time because I've noticed in our Bright Line Eating® community that often people who are by their own admission not succeeding with Bright Line Eating right now, not breaking their Bright Lines a lot, struggling with their program, have a buddy that they're committing their food to regularly, but then they're not eating that or they're certainly not eating only and exactly that or they're messing around with their food a bunch. I notice that in this scenario, that support buddy often is playing unknowingly and unwittingly, they're not meaning to, but they're playing the role of a blocker to joyous Bright Lines, successful Bright Lines instead of someone who's facilitating successful, joyous, Bright Lines. Because by being there to take the food commitment and love and support but turn a blind eye to the fact that they know the person's not eating what they're committing to eat, they know the person's struggling. By receiving that food commitment whenever it comes in and then just giving reassurance, love, support, connection every time the person breaks their Lines, they're blunting the pain and the awareness that would lead to the change and the shifts that would result in getting Bright for real, for real, and because they're blunting that pain, because they're softening the blow, because they're essentially saying, "I'm here with you. " I mean, the story I make up in my head is most often that buddy is not Bright either, and this co-support in not being Bright, not following through on eating what we're committing to eating is keeping it easier, making it easier to keep going on this path of dickering around and kind of not facing the reality that this is not working. This not serving me. This is not the way I want to live my Bright life. Being out of integrity with what I say I'm going to do, not doing it. I just wanted to call out this dynamic.
Now, I do not think that this means that that relationship needs to end necessarily. It might. It might be better off for both if this relationship ends, but I do think it needs to shift in some way. And I do think that a hard conversation is in order, like an honest conversation of, "Hey, I notice that I sent you my food commitment and I ate something else. You sent me your food commitment and you ate something else. And that that's happened the majority of the time or a lot of the time over the last month, six months, five years. Here's what I'm thinking and feeling about that. " How do you have a conversation like that? Not alone. How I recommend you do it is with the Failsafe Feedback Framework. This is a conversation script. It's just a page that gives you talking points like how to structure the conversation so that they don't get defensive and so that you stick with the facts and your thoughts and feelings, but structured in a certain way so that nobody gets heard and everybody can stay open and really hear what needs to be heard. Annie Hyman Pratt came up with this conversation script. My team has been using it for over a decade. It's absolutely brilliant. And I'm going to put a link to it below this vlog, so you can just download it. I have Annie Hyman Pratt's permission to do that and I just want to offer it to you. I use it all the time. I use it all the time.
As the name implies, it's a conversation script for giving feedback for when you have something to share with someone and it might be hard for them to hear. So, whenever you have feedback to give to someone, this is what I recommend you use, the Failsafe Feedback Framework. It might mean that that relationship needs to end. It might mean that the relationship needs to shift. It might just mean that the two of you need to face facts and recommit to if we're going to commit our food, actually following through on it. All that said, I feel like a few words are in order about the idea of support versus enabling more broadly. How do we know what the difference is? How do we know when we're providing support to someone versus when we're enabling them?
Here's what support looks like. You're supporting someone when you're not trying to rescue them. You're not trying to control them. You're not assuming that you know better than them. And you're not thinking about them a whole lot in between. Their situation, whatever it is, isn't renting a whole lot of space in your head. You're interacting with them sometimes and then you're thinking about them, but in between times you're focused on yourself and living your life. You're helping them when they're asking for help. You're not intervening a whole bunch to offer your help when they're not looking for help. They're helping themselves. You're believing and trusting they have what it takes to solve their own problems. They have their answers deep inside them and you can share your perspective, you can share your experience with similar circumstances, but you're not thinking that you're rescuing them or saving them. That's what support looks like.
Enabling on the other hand is when you see yourself as the hero. You're swooping in and doing things for them, including some things that they could or should be doing for themselves. You feel tense and stressed in your body. You're thinking about them a lot in between times and it's actually impacting your well-being. The strain and stress that they're under is really something you're taking on and it's affecting you. It may get to the point where you feel resentful, you feel burned out, you feel like the load of helping them with their life is taking you away meaningfully from what you should be attending to in your life. You can build up quite a grudge about that. It can be something that can really, really burn you out. That is what enabling looks like.
What do you do if you find yourself in an enabling role? Well, it all comes back to focusing on yourself and your life, your well-being. Your well-being is your responsibility. They are not your responsibility. You are your responsibility. And so, shining the flashlight back on yourself, making sure that you're attending to your life, your self-care, your needs, that is the main antidote and keeping your focus on yourself repeatedly over and over and over again and trusting them to work out their life. They are not your responsibility. then when your cup is full and you have extra to give and someone's asking for help, you can provide it if you're agreeable and available. That's the way it works. If you have extra despair, that kind of love makes the world go round. That kind of kindness makes the world go round. We all want to be there for each other. Trying to pour from an empty cup doesn't help anybody. It's not actually giving. Support versus enabling. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
