You may be confusing these terms and keeping yourself stuck in an emotionally abusive relationship. When your self-talk rationalizes your behavior by confusing caring for enabling, you will experience continuing emotional abuse. Get VERY clear on these differences, so you can be honest with yourself, and then take healthier actions. Listen in.
You want to be a good person, a nice person. Your parents probably wanted that for you, too. Yet, you find yourself on the receiving end of emotional abuse, and you don’t understand what you did wrong.
Nothing, likely! Hijackals–narcissists, anti-socials, borderlines-histrionics–look for “nice” people who they hope will bend over backwards to do things for them. Especially, they are delighted by enablers who go the extra mile to allow the emotional abuse of Hijackals. No need to wonder about those dynamics as you’ll soon see when you listen to this episode.
HIGHLIGHTS OF TODAY’S EPISODE:
- Why caretaking is not always a positive thing
- How you get trapped to continue caretaking a Hijackal
- Recognizing enabling so you can stop doing it
- Escaping the trap of doing for emotional abusers what they can do for themselves
MACHINE TRANSCRIPT
Tonight, we’re going to be talking about an important distinction. I think it’s important for us to make these distinctions to understand these distinctions. And to be able to know if you’re carrying caretaking or enabling.
When you realize the distinctions, you can choose very carefully what it is that you want to be doing as opposed to what you might by default be doing.
And when you know that, it’s important to take it in.
If you are a carer, that simply means that you are kind, and you have concern for other people – you’re caring as a general way of being.
But if you’re a caretaker, you will soon learn that that has all kinds of difficulties that it can it can bring about.
And if you’re actually enabling, that is even digging a deeper hole.
We’re going to talk about those distinctions, so that you can reflect and say, What am I actually doing? And am I am I actually telling myself the truth? Is what I am doing, am I am I covering it up? Do I think I’m being a nice person, a good person, and I’ve got it confused with what actually is happening, then not that you’re not a nice person or good person, but that you haven’t confused?
Because you don’t want to be the person who says, I have found myself in a caretaking or enabling role. And so you want to be much more feeling good about it to say, oh, no, no, I’m not doing it, too, we want to be clear. And I know that sounds like I’ve said a lot about a few times. But this kind of clarity does not come easily, because of the way that we’ve been cultured over time.
So let’s talk about these few things. Because we want to be caring humans, I hope we want to be caring humans, we want to genuinely care about other people genuinely care about ourselves, and we want to be kind. So caring, great, is a good thing. We want to do more of it. We want to make sure that that it is a focus for us that we’re caring. That makes sense.
People who don’t have any empathy, people who are out to use and abuse people, they’re not caring, and you can’t make them care.
That’s a big thing to understand that you might want to think you can make them care, but you cannot make them care. Because they’ve already learned things in their earlier life, that make it so that they are not going to do anything except take caring, but they are not going to give it every now and again.
Of course they’ll do something very transactional. They’ll appear to be caring because they want you to come on board or do something or not go away from them. So they’ll appear to be caring, but it is not their basic nature.
So then we come to the important distinction of caretaking. Now, caregiving is when somebody is in a difficult spot and we take care of them until they get better. It’s just automatic give and take and solid good thing but caretaking has a little more sinister side to look at. We want to see that there’s that just distinction, you know, when you’re caregiving, you know, somebody is not well, or they need some help or whatever they need, but you know, it’s temporary. And you know, and expect and believe that it will be reciprocal. That’s what we call friends, you know, we can call on a friend, because then they are, they can call on you. And it’s not a give to get situation. It’s simply what we do for each other, because we value each other. And we are kind and considerate humans.
But caretaking gets into a different spot. It’s, it’s more than just taking care of someone, it could go terribly sideways. Now, you may think these are distinctions without a difference, but hold on a minute. And let me just continue to explain this to you. Because it does go a little sideways and can go a lot sideways. So in caretaking, there’s a certain dependence that’s inferred. And it will be for a short or a long period of time. But care taking is something that Hijackals want to hook you into that you will start taking care of them. And for them, it can be a way of hooking you in for you, it may even be a covert form of control or for them, because if they can hook you into caretaking, they have some control over you. And if you find them in firm, you can have some control over them.
Now this gets really tricky in certain places. But many times we’ll do caretaking in order to avoid rejection, or to protect ourselves from rejection. So we will take care of someone else. So they’ll like us. So they’ll approve of us. So they’ll validate us. So they’ll want us around. And then you’ll find yourself in that horrible situation where you’re actually giving all the time. And you become over giving, but seeing yourself as caregiving, And it’s a focus on the other person. So you don’t think about yourself. And you can get very involved in that, particularly if you’ve had certain kinds of attachment style when you were younger.
So you get into a place where you’re, you’re happily focused on someone else, you don’t have to think about the pickle you’re in or the pain that you have, or your own worries and concerns. And we’ll get a caretaking role.
Many times Hijackals play on that in a big way. They will pretend that they’re more ill than they are. They’ll say they have a diagnosis they don’t have, they will tell you that they’re constantly exhausted and they need a break. And they look to you to always be the one that gives them a break. But it never works in the opposite direction. So caretaking is sacrificing your own can be sacrificing your own needs. And your wants to take care of someone else who’s quite caring, capable of taking care of themselves.
But we think, Oh, let me do that for you, then they will like us better. Now, sure, every now and again, we love to have somebody do something for us, especially if it’s spontaneous. And it comes from a place of love. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about people hooking other people into taking care of them. You know, in the Hijackal spectrum, if you like I have had clients who have actually had a Hijackal spouse who tells the client that they need to take care of them, they need to be able to stay home from work and have their partner take care of them.
They don’t have a need to earn money because it’s your job and if you had a better job, you would care take me better. And you should want to do that. You know many times you see some iteration on Facebook, you know no one falls in love faster than a narcissist with no house or no job. Well, they want you to care take them. They want you to be the one who sacrifices on their behalf while they’re quite capable of doing it for themselves. And it’s an important distinction because when you are caretaking in a caretaking relationship, you are are operating from fear not from love. fears that the other personnel go away. If you don’t care, take them fear that the other person who continuously threatens to leave or to commit suicide, perhaps, that you have the power to stop them.
And they want you to do more for them so that they can make the threats that they never intend to carry out in most cases, and you will be beholden in that role, and you will do it for longer, maybe do it for forever. So caretaking involves a lot of underlying nastiness. In many cases.
Caregiving remember is a different thing you want to give, you are giving out of the goodness of your heart from that caring place, you understand is temporary. And yes, there are professional caregivers. There, they do it for money. Other people do it from the goodness of their heart for a while. But if there’s a Hijackal involved in this situation, one of those people who hijacks relationships for their own needs and purposes, and then scavenges, the relationship for power status and control, they want to hook you in to the caretaking role, you should you should give me money, you should have a better job so that we can have a better life, you should give me all of your time. You shouldn’t want anything from me, the relationship will always be unbalanced. And of course, as I’ve said so many times before Hijackals are the masters of the plausible lie, they will be just enough truth in what they say sometimes to have ego Well, that could be the case, it could be true. And if I don’t believe it’s true, and I don’t act on it, I believe it’s true, I might have a regret. And so they hook you in in that way.
care takers have low empathy for themselves. Are they the perfect people for Hijackals to glom on to to be to take care of them. Because the Hijackal has no empathy for other people, then caretakers have low empathy for themselves, Oh, I can keep going, a good person would keep going. If I had it together, I would have lots to give. So it’s important to see that where these differences lie, because in the Hijackal relationship, which is what I talked about, mostly, they’re just looking for a way to get to you know, in my book escaping the Hijackal trap, you will see a whole chapter called the gotcha factor.
You know, they’re all sweetness and light love and and things in the beginning. You think, Oh, how did I get so lucky this person listens to me, this person remembers when I say this person is in such a ration and so much love. They want to marry me live with me have a baby caught me mingle our finances. Oh, it’s so wonderful. But you don’t realize that that wonderful is a Come on. It’s not what you’re going to get all the time later. It is something that they’re in a big hurry to do the gotcha factor.
So they don’t have to pretend to be listening all the time, or remembering or taking you to the places that you’d like to go or impressing you in any way that will be withdrawn either quickly or over a long period of time. People ask all the time. Okay, when when does the Hijackal show their stripes? Well, depends on the Hijackal
I had one sad situation where everything was sweetness and light up until the wedding. On the after the wedding, they left the reception in grand style. They man dropped the wife off at the hotel wasn’t seen again for five days. It was immediate. Other people had a good two or three years. And then it started to seem to denigrate that, at least that’s when they noticed it. Then when we talk and we go back through it all, when they become my client, then they say oh, you know, I made rationalizations and justifications for their behavior for probably a year before. I really believe that that’s who they really were. And that’s very important to see.
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So when I’m talking to people in their experience, they’re good hearted, you know, they want to believe that the other person just made a little mistake. Didn’t mean to be nasty. Didn’t didn’t mean to forget to do the thing that they said they would do didn’t mean those nasty words that came out of their mouth. healthier, people make exceptions, they make compromises, they recognize people make mistakes. So they give them much more time, much more benefit of the doubt for much longer than is actually turns out to be healthy.
It’s important for us to see these distinctions. Because if, if there’s a caretaking role going on, I had a client recently who said that, every time he thought of leaving her, she would get some kind of ailment, or she would want to quit her job and start a new one, there was always a reason that she needed to have a caretaker again, the pattern would did not appear to him for quite a while, because he thought that he was doing a wonderful thing. And he was, if he were with a healthier person, they would have appreciated, it wouldn’t have been a pattern at all, it would have become those three things that are the hallmarks of a healthy adult relationship, there would have been equality, reciprocity, and mutuality. And therefore, these things would flow beautifully in both directions, and it would be fine.
So that’s what you’re expecting, when you’re in a healthier person in a relationship, and takes you a while to get with the program to say, you know, this never happens, it never comes my way, it never comes to be my turn. And then you start to see that you begin to resent, you know, this is not good. So that in itself is an unhealthy relationship. But then there is the thing that is going to make things much worse over time. And that is to be enabling.
And enabling my definition of enabling is when you usually or frequently step in to fix, solve, justify, rationalize, or make the consequences go away for the poor choices of another human, especially that last bit, enabling us when you make the consequences go away for the poor choices of another.
So you started thinking, there’s going to be equality, reciprocity and mutuality. And then you find that there isn’t, and you start noticing that things are particularly one sided. And that’s very, very difficult, because then you beat yourself up, oh, how could I say that? Am I being selfish? Am I being the difficult one to you argue with yourself for a while, and yet the pattern still is one sided. And you you give them the benefit of the doubt, and you lean in, and you do things for them. And you think that you will be rewarded at some point that it will come back to equality, reciprocity and mutuality?
No, no, no, it’s never going to happen when you have a Hijackal. It’s not going to go there. Because you definitely cannot be equal with them, they will not allow it. They’ll give you the sense occasionally in the beginning of the relationship, that it’ll be equal, but they’re not going to allow it over time. So as you start feeling is getting one sided, held that your people say, Oh, well, I’ll just explain that and say, I need something I want something I I’m, you know, really great if my needs were considered or that we could do something I’d like to do. And then you begin to see the Hijackal.
Like what you have needs you have once you have preferences. Well, maybe later, but right now, today, I need this to happen. And then we get trapped in again, in the future, faking that one day. It’ll be different than this. And we buy it, because we want to be fair, we believe relationships involve compromise. But remember, the idea of a Hijackal. A Hijackal says that they will convert that they’re compra willing to compromise. But when they say that they believe they’re standing in the middle already, they’re not going to move at all. So I know it’s sad to think that people are wired this way, but they are.
And when we start to realize the patterns, and we find that we can’t make any headway with changing the patterns, no matter what we say, no matter how kindly we say, then we have to follow some strategies for dealing with Hijackals and that’s what I talk about a lot as you know, because you may have been following the podcast or you may be a member of my emerging empowered community. If you’d like to be in your not you can go to join in today.com join into data calm, save fully off social media, on my website, where you can talk to others who are going through what you are going through whatever stage you’re in, there are different groups for different stages. And then you can get support. Along with that, you can also get to a group Ask Me Anything calls with me a month, in all kinds of wonderful things.
So you start to feel it’s one sided news, and you, you say, oh, maybe I’ll just work a little harder, maybe I’ll try to engage them, I, I should not be selfish. So you reinvest, you think, okay, I’ll just put a little more in, then you get a little more tired. But you believe if you do it, it will come right again. Now, you know, that urban myth about how to boil a frog, you put the frog in cold water. And you very slowly turn up the heat until the frog is uncomfortable, but they think you don’t mean it. And then they begin to be hurt. And they give you the benefit of the doubt. And then all of a sudden, you’re boiled. And it’s over, you’re in a pattern where you are constantly hurt, you’re constantly uncomfortable. And it’s very similar to life with a Hijackal. You don’t want to believe it, but at some point is necessary to see it. And if you go to my website for relationship help, and click on the free checklists, you can start there by taking the checklist that says Am I in a toxic relationship that can help you as free just go there. But this resentment is building. And you want to believe the waters not getting harder, but it is getting harder. And this pattern makes makes the balance more for them less for you more for them less for you. And and it keeps shifting, so you’re getting less and less, they’re getting more and more, and the resentment builds up again. And you give up, you give in and you just get exhausted, us maybe wear yourself out so much from being put down, torn down or worn down, that you you just give up and give in all the time, why bother, it’s not going to have a different result. When you ever get to that place, please come and use the the new client one time opportunity to talk with me because you’re too exhausted to think that through. And I’m certainly here to help you at be a client calm. But you can get so worn down that you don’t think that you can get out of the part before you get boiled. But you can’t. And I’d love to talk that through with you. But you know in your cheating yourself when you enable, because there’s no balance in it. And when there’s no balance in it, it can’t go anywhere good. It just simply can’t. So you start recognizing that the more and more you give in a Hijackal relationship, the lesson less you get. And then they demand that you give them what you have been giving them and question you as to why you don’t give them more. So you can see why it was important for me to bring this conversation to this episode. We can think we’re being really good people, we’re definitely being the healthier person in the relationship with the giving nature that we have the kindness that caring for others, and we go the extra mile. But when we’re in a Hijackal relationship, or with the Hijackal they are counting on the fact that they can get you to do anything they can manipulate you, they can wear you out, tear you up, spit you out, completely emotionally exhaust you to the point where you’re just compliant. And that’s very, very unhealthy. That is never going to be a relationship that you will thrive in. And if you’ve had relationships or you’ve had parenting situations where even as a young child, you were taught that you didn’t matter. So you keep trying to please so that you can get some approval, you can get some validation, the Hijackal is counting on you to do that. They’re absolutely think isn’t as clever look what I can get this person to do. And if you enable them, if you jump in to fix us off and justify and rationalize or make the consequences go away for their poor choices. You are setting that in stone. You are enabling them. I promise personally don’t believe it’s loving to let another person be and loving to me. I’d love you to think about that. Because if you allow people to be unloving to you, you’re actually being unloving to them. Because you are not teaching them about boundaries, you’re not teaching them that there needs to be some balance in the equation. And that’s not good. Hijackal is on high alert, to find out how much can I get from you? And how easily can I get it? Does it mean that I throw you a little hand a handful of breadcrumbs, and you say, Oh, thank you for the meal. They’ll do that small investment. If they think making you feel guilty, will work. They will do that. If they think making you filled with obligation and fears he will do that. You know, in Susan forewords book, emotional blackmail, she calls it fog and f as an acronym for fear, obligation and guilt. People who are emotional abusers will use the fog all the time, you should a good person does. If you had any brains, you would, they’re always keeping you in the fog. When you start to see these things, and, you know, I’ve got over 500 episodes for you to look at between save your sanity and emotional savvy podcasts. So there’s lots to support you there. But please look at this distinction between being a caring kind person with concern for others, a caretaking role, where you are actually taking over the responsibilities for somebody else. And then you become manipulated in that, or the enabling role, where you just think I’ll give myself away and they will be so grateful at some point, that there will be something coming back to me, no, that’s not going to happen. They’re going to take take take, take take and you’re going to fall on your face. And they’re going to say next, who wants to take the place of the person who’s fallen on their face. I know, that’s pretty straightforward. But that’s what happens. And we need to wake up and smell the herbal tea, you know, we really need to do it today. Because if you discern some of these patterns have been talking about, and you thought that by being the better person going the extra mile, giving till it hurts. That’s a phrase I’d like to have taken out of the English language. But if you have been thinking that, and when you reflect on what I’ve said today, you realize that nothing is coming back. Yeah, little sprinkling here and there when they really want something or they’re afraid you’ll go away. But nothing is coming back a value, nothing is coming back that sustainable. Nothing that is coming back that fills you up. It is just enough to have you giving to them again. So these are important pieces of the puzzle. And as I’ve said, reflect on them. Is it possible that your mind as you listen to this episode went into a place of oh, well, that’s not fair. You’re just supposed to do for others to do Do for others. No, that won’t work. That’s an imbalance. There’s no balance, have compassion for others and compassion for yourself. And always remember that self care is not selfish. Self Care demonstrates that you want to be in the top shape to live your life fully. To never mistake self care with being selfish. A Hijackal will want you to do that. They’ll tell you that you’re selfish because you want a day off or you want to go for a beach, the beach or you don’t feel like doing the dishes tonight or whatever it is. But I hope listening to this episode that has caused you to think about some of the things that you’re telling yourself about how you are going the extra mile and being a good person. And now you realize that you’re going the extra mile because they’re taking you for a ride. So until we speak again, take very good care of yourself. Because you’re precious, and you matter. And come on over and visit me at for relationship help calm Talk soon. Thank you for joining me on the save your sanity podcast today. I hope you’ve had some new insights, some ideas and strategies to help you gain clarity and confidence from moving forward toward greater emotional health and safety. You deserve that and so to your children if you found value here and would like to support this podcast with $1 of five each month, please do so at patreon.com/save your sanity? Learn more about how to work with me via video conference, join me optimize circles, or subscribe to this podcast on my youtube channel at my website transforming relationship.com Talk soon
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