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Addiction and enabling
I have two younger sisters. I suspect the youngest is doing drugs. She has been divorced three times and is currently living with a schizophrenic boyfriend. She has three children and I am very concerned for her and have told her so. I have told her she needs to change the way she lives.
The other sister babies her and tells her that she's just had rotten husbands and bad luck. She tells her things like, "Oh, poor baby."
How do I approach this sister and tell her that she is hurting her by babying her?
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I believe that you need to be as frank with your sisters.
But first, lets consider the depth of how you've spoken to your youngest sister about your concerns for her. If you haven't already, you need to specifically ask the sister you suspect is using drugs about her drug use (how often, how much, for how long, etc). Drug use is a manifestation of an
addictive spirit, so before there was drugs, there was probably something else (perhaps contributing to her divorces?). If she gets defensive and angry, so be it- you've planted a seed of thought. She will seriously think about what you said. It's easy to rationalize our behaviors when the world is telling us what a raw deal we've gotten in life.
In our society, everybody's a victim. When we go
through life feeling that we've had it so bad, we think it absolves us of personal responsibility. It doesn't. We are all responsible before God for our choices and actions; He won't accept rationalizations and excuses of why we didn't obey His laws.
When you speak to your middle sister about the situation, you then can start out by saying " I've
talked to (youngest sister) about drug use, etc".
You've laid a foundation for then talking to her about her responsibility in the situation. Don't use accusing statements like "you should" or "you shouldn't"- Say "I feel that (youngest sister) needs....". Most times, people think they're helping to make a person feel better by saying "Oh, poor baby", not realizing that they're paving the way for more destructive behavior. When they see that they are just enabling the downward spiral of addiction, they will hopefully adjust the way that they deal with the person.
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