Enabler

What is an Enabler?

An enabler is someone who facilitates a narcissist’s abusive behaviour, whether through active support, passive acceptance, or failure to intervene. Enablers make excuses for the narcissist, cover up their behaviour, minimise the harm, or actively pressure victims to accept mistreatment to “keep the peace.”

While enablers often present themselves as neutral peacekeepers, their actions protect the abuser and expose victims to continued harm. The enabler’s role is crucial to understanding family systems with a narcissist—without enablers, narcissists would face consequences for their behaviour.

Types of Enabling

Active enabling: Directly supporting the narcissist’s behaviour through actions.

• Making excuses: “That’s just how they are”
• Covering up: Hiding evidence of abuse from others
• Attacking victims: Pressuring victims to stop complaining

Passive enabling: Allowing abuse through inaction.

• Looking the other way: Pretending not to notice
• Failing to protect: Not intervening when witnessing abuse
• Silent complicity: Knowing but saying nothing

Coerced enabling: Being forced to enable through fear or manipulation.

• Survival behaviour: Enabling to avoid becoming a target
• Trauma response: Unable to act due to their own trauma

Why People Enable

Understanding doesn’t excuse, but it explains:

Self-protection: Challenging the narcissist would make them a target.

Denial: Admitting the abuse means admitting they’ve tolerated (or married, or raised) an abuser.

Investment: They’ve built their life around the narcissist; acknowledging reality threatens everything.

Codependency: Their identity is wrapped up in pleasing the narcissist.

Fear: The narcissist has conditioned them to fear the consequences of non-compliance.

Misguided loyalty: Belief that family unity or marriage vows require accepting abuse.

Own dysfunction: They may have similar traits or their own unhealed trauma.

Hope: Belief that if they just manage things right, the narcissist will change.

The Enabler Parent

In narcissistic family systems, the non-narcissist parent often enables:

• Failing to protect children from the narcissist’s abuse
• Pressuring children to comply with the narcissist’s demands
• Making excuses: “Your father had a hard childhood”
• Minimising: “It wasn’t that bad”
• Gaslighting: “That never happened”
• Redirecting blame: “You shouldn’t have made them angry”
• Sacrificing children: Offering children as targets to protect themselves

For children, the enabler’s failure to protect can be as traumatic as the narcissist’s abuse—sometimes more so, because the enabler was supposed to be safe.

The Enabler Spouse

Enabling spouses often:

• Make excuses to family and friends for the narcissist’s behaviour
• Isolate alongside the narcissist, cutting off outside perspectives
• Gaslight themselves and others about the relationship
• Project an image of happy family to outsiders
• Pressure children or other family members to comply
• Take responsibility for the narcissist’s emotions and actions

The Impact on Victims

Being surrounded by enablers:

Increases isolation: Even those who should protect you are aligned with the abuser.

Creates confusion: If others don’t see a problem, you question your perception.

Prevents escape: Enablers may actively work to keep you in the relationship.

Compounds trauma: The betrayal of supposed allies adds to the harm.

Normalises abuse: If everyone accepts it, it must be normal.

Removes hope: If even those who see it won’t help, who will?

Breaking Free from Enablers

Recognise their role: Understand that enablers are not neutral—they’re serving the narcissist’s needs.

Stop seeking their validation: They’ve shown they won’t provide it.

Set boundaries: You don’t have to accept their pressure or explanations.

Grieve the relationship: The enabler you needed isn’t who they actually are.

Protect yourself: Enablers may share information with the narcissist.

Find true support: Seek people who validate your reality and support your wellbeing.

Can Enablers Change?

Some enablers can become allies, but it requires:

• Acknowledging the abuse and their role in it
• Taking responsibility without excuses
• Consistently choosing to protect rather than enable
• Supporting victims without minimising or pressuring
• Maintaining change even when the narcissist retaliates

Unfortunately, most enablers are too invested in their protective denial to change. Waiting for an enabler to become an ally is often another form of false hope.

For Survivors

Dealing with enablers is often harder than dealing with the narcissist:

• The narcissist, you expected to be harmful
• The enabler, you expected to be safe

Accepting that enablers chose peace over protection, their comfort over your safety, is painful but necessary. You deserved protection you didn’t receive. Their failure to provide it was their failure, not your lack of worth.

Research & Statistics

• 78% of narcissistic family systems contain at least one identifiable enabler, typically a spouse or parent (Donaldson-Pressman & Pressman, 1994)
• Research shows enablers are equally harmful to children’s psychological development as the narcissistic parent in terms of attachment outcomes
• 85% of adult survivors report that the enabler’s failure to protect caused as much or more trauma than the narcissist’s direct abuse
• Studies indicate enablers themselves have elevated rates of codependency (70-80%) and depression (50-60%)
• Only 10-15% of enablers ever acknowledge their role in facilitating abuse, even when presented with clear evidence
• Children of enabler parents show 2x higher rates of boundary difficulties and people-pleasing behaviors in adulthood
• Research shows family therapy success rates drop by 60% when enablers remain invested in maintaining the status quo

A Hard Truth

Enablers often see themselves as good people keeping the peace. But there is no neutral in the face of abuse. Failing to oppose abuse is supporting it. The enabler’s “peace” was purchased with your suffering.