Soliciting Enabling

It’s 2024. People know the difference between good choices and bad ones. They know what they should be doing and what they shouldn’t. This is true in all areas: nutrition, work, parenting, exercise, relationships, etc.

That doesn’t mean that my expectation is for people to always do the right thing. There are copious reasons for people to wander off the path of righteousness. Maybe you’re tired. Maybe you had a rough day at work. Maybe you’re on vacation. Maybe you got fired. Maybe you made a bad business decision. Maybe you and your significant other broke it off. These are all legitimate reasons (excuses) to take negative actions. I’m not saying you should, but I get it.

Previously, when you went down the gloomy rabbit hole, you kept it to yourself. You were embarrassed by your actions. By making more ill-fated decisions, you were compounding an already tough situation. And you didn’t want others to know about it. Hopefully, before your spiraled too far off course, you rebounded, and began taking actions to get back on track.

A major concern I have, is that people are no longer ashamed of their negative actions. Instead of trying to work through them, they are sharing them via social media. At first, I found this extremely confusing. When I mess up, the last thing I want to do is post it for everyone to see. But then I realized what they were doing.

They aren’t solution seeking. They aren’t trying to fix the problem. They want affirmation for their terrible choices. They are looking to have their actions justified. They are soliciting enabling from any and everyone.

EXAMPLE

A teacher does a lot of prep work for a science experiment with her fourth grade class. She has aligned the activity with her standards. At home, she tested it multiple times to ensure she would get the same results at school. She even paid out of pocket for consumables that were not included in the grade level’s science budget.

However, on the day of the lesson, everything goes wrong. There is a fire drill five minutes into the lesson. The students have a hard time transitioning back to the instruction. An incident during lunch has riled the students up, and the teacher is having no luck silencing the sidebars. When it’s time for the big chemical reaction, something goes wrong, and instead of “oooos” all the teacher hears is laughter. To make matters worse, the principal came to observe the lesson.

Depressed and disheveled, the teachers goes home and polishes off a gallon of rocky road ice cream. Instead of feeling guilty for eating 3,200 calories and 480 grams of sugar, she decides to post the brain freeze binge on social media, making sure to include information about her lesson disaster from that day.

Social Media Responses

• “You deserve it after the day you’ve had.”
• “What flavor you want me to pick up for round 2?”
• “Be sure to turn in the ice cream receipt for school supplies reimbursement.”
• “If you eat it straight from the carton, the calories don’t count.”
• “You should take tomorrow off as a mental health day.”

Now what these commenters will have you believe is that they are being supportive. That is a lie. They are enabling you. Commending a poor choice (I recognize that eating a gallon of ice cream is a relatively minor offense) is not helping, it is hurting. The real reason they are “supporting” the teacher is because it is only a matter of time before they want to eat a gallon of ice cream, and they want to feel justified in doing so. Thus, begins the enabling cycle.

Two Ways to Stop the Cycle

1. Don’t be an enabling solicitor. If you make a mistake, don’t look to social media for coddling and affirmation. Recognize that everyone has lapses in judgment. Then, start taking the necessary steps to course correct.
2. If you see someone on social media looking for approval for a less than stellar choice, don’t take the bait. If willing, reach out to them, privately, to offer support around whatever the root problem is.

Remember the Cherokee legend about feeding the wolf inside us that is filled with joy, hope, peace, love, humility, bravery, empathy, and truth instead of feeding the wolf inside us that is filled with anger, hate, fear, greed, resentment, and ego? Social media is a lot like that. Don’t feed the solicitors with unwarranted comfort and praise, instead feed them with the truth and support they need to work past what is really going on. And for heaven’s sake, don’t feed the wolf rocky road ice cream, they much prefer moose tracks.