Avoiding enmeshment requires that we assume responsibility for ourselves while rejecting responsibility that belongs to others. While we can control our thoughts and actions, we cannot control the thoughts and actions of others. When we rescue others—when we enable others—we prevent them from learning from their own mistakes—we retard their emotional and spiritual growth. When we assume responsibility for another’s mistakes or bad choices, we cultivate a dependency that prevents the other person from growing emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. Because they have never had to suffer the consequences of their behavior, dependent people lack a sense of competence or completeness. Without a sense of identity, they define themselves solely by their relationships. To put it more simply, we turn people into babies when we try to rescue them from their mistakes.
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Anonymous
2 Dec 2013How true…for grandparents, for spouses, for friends. But not for doctors, whose job is often to rescue people from their mistakes in smoking, in drug addiction, in diet, in sedentary choices??? -Bill
John Ingram Walker
9 Feb 2015That's true. We help them. We educate them. We give them options and recommendations. We let them make thier choices. That's all we can do as doctors.
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