On a fairly minor level, i have realised I have been enabling a friend of mine.
I know from personal experience, that feeding anxiety makes it worse. But I am also aware I am a 'fixer' by nature, so have been trying to be a sympathetic ear and not jump in with solutions. Various things have made me realise that im actually contributing to her continued anxiety, so I very gently challenged her on something the other day (essentially said - your expectations of X person are your normal, but they arent everyone's normal, and you are getting upset over the idea that they dont care about you when it probably wouldn't even occur to them to do what you are expecting, its not that they have considered it and dont care enough to do it) and she took it very well and it seemed to calm her down. Not an overnight fix, but something.
A friend of mine's parents have finally thrown down the gauntlet to her 'failure to launch' younger brother and have stopped doing washing, cooking, shopping for him, have said he needs to pay them xx amount a month or move out, have taken him off their car insurance etc, and he has stopped gaming endlessly, has gone back to full time hours at work, saving for his own car and is actually engaging in life again. They have for years been at the mercy of worrying about his mental health and wanting to support him because of that, have tried everything you can think of, but had reached the 'nothing else has worked' stage and now feel like they have failed him by not trying this approach sooner (he is 24)
I can look back in my life and realised that as a people pleaser, i have definitely enabled people to a certain extent... certainly enabled partners to not treat me well. Has anyone else realised they've enabled someone in their life and what made you realise? And did you do anything about it?