A Guide for Adult Children of Alcoholics
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- A Guide for Adult Children of Alcoholics
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"If you only read one book on adult children of alcoholics this year, make this the one."
—A wareness
"Gravitz and Bowden provide the first practical guide for adult children of alcoholics. Their
creative description of the stages of recovery is especially useful. At last there is a rationale for
deciding what issues and what treatment services are most relevant to each individual. Adult
children of alcoholics will feel they have made two new friends by the time they nave finished
this very readable book." —Timmen L. Cermak, M.D.
President, National Association for Adult Children of Alcoholics
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"Dr. Gravitz and Ms. Bowden have definitely filled a much needed area for adult children of
alcoholics in their new book. This is the first book that attempts to answer many of the
'silent' questions of the millions of adult children of alcoholics in our society. Their years of
experience, perceptions and sensitivities are obvious in this well-thought-out book."
—Robert J. Ackerman, Ph.D., Children of Alcoholics
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Rich with insight and awareness. Recovery explores the secrets, fears, hopes and issues that
confront adult children of alcoholics. Authors and widely respected therapists and ACOA
workshop leaders Herbert Gravitz and Julie Bowden detail in a clear question-and-answer
format the challenges of control and inadequacy that ACOAs face as they struggle for
recovery and understanding, stage-by-stage: Survival • Emergent Awareness • Core Issues •
Transformations • Integration • Genesis. If you feel troubled by your past. Recovery will start
you on the path of self-awareness, as it explores the searching questions adult children of
alcoholics seek to have answered:
• How can 1 overcome my need for control?
• Do all ACOAs play the same kind of roles in the family?
• How do 1 overcome my fear of intimacy?
• What is all-or-none functioning?
• How can ACOAs maintain self-confidence and awareness after recovery?
• How do ACOAs handle the family after understanding its influence?
• And many other important questions about your past, family and feelings.
Written with warmth, joy and real understanding. Recovery will inspire you to meet the
challenges of the past and overcome the obstacles to yo' »r happiness.
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A Fireside Book
Published by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
New York
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Herbert L. Gravitz, Ph.D, Is a Clinical Psychologist In Santa Barbara, California. He is a
founding Board Member ot the National Association tor Children of Alcoholics
(NACOA), and currently serves on the Advisory Board.
Julie D. Bowden, M.S., Is a Marriage, Family, and Child Psychotherapist in priva^^^^
practice In Santa Barbara, California. She is a founding Board Member ot the Nation^
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Association for Children of Alcoholics (NAC0A), and Its first treasurer. She current^.^^d
serves on the Advisory Board. She Is the adult child of an alcoholic
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alcoholic,
Together, they conduct recovery retreats. Individual and group psychotherapy, anB
educational oAminnre
seminars fnr
for nHiiit
adult rhiWron
children nf
at nimhnlins
alcoholics ns
as well
well ns
as other
other adult
adult children
children of
of
trauma and the professionals who serve them.
Cover design by Barry Littmann
Herbert Gravitz's photograph by
Imagery Photography, Santa Barbara
Julie Bowden's photograph by Tony Lopez
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Mcoholics
y Herbert LGravitz
« and julie D.Bowden
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Founding members of the Board of Directors of the
National Association for Children of Alcoholics
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RECOVERY
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A Guide for Adult
Children of Alcoholics
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Herbert L. Gravitz, Ph.D.
Julie D. Bowden, M. S.
With a Foreword by Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse
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A Fireside/Learning Publication Book
Published by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
New York
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Copyright © 1985 by Herbert L. Gravitz
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and Julie D. Bowden
All rights reserved
including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
First Fireside Edition, 1987
Published by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Simon & Schuster Building
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Published by arrangement with
Learning Publications, Inc.
FIRESIDE and colophon are registered
trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States
Acknowledgments
Thanks to: Bill B., John M., Linda B., Jerry W., Pam D., Rick U.,
Suzanne E., and Sue Y.; our first psychotherapy group for “Adult Children
of Alcoholics” at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1981;
The Santa Barbara City College Adult Education Program, particularly
Ellen Downing for faith in us and the opportunity to work with over 1,500
adult children who taught—and continued to teach—us countless lessons;
John Stoddard for encouragement and cheer; Luis Tovar for insightful
assistance on minority adult children; Raymond Wilcove for his proof
reading acumen; and Danna Downing for her enthusiastic, negotiable, and
humane approach to editing.
Especial thanks go to Linda Mears of Copy Desk for her heroic and
talented help. She unselfishly met every difficult deadline we asked. She
transcribed our initial tapes and typed on first draft. Without her, this book
would have stumbled and stalled.
We also thank our teachers and colleagues on the Board of Directors
of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics, who very early
expressed faith in our work. We have never seen a finer group of human
beings! Dr. Robert Ackerman was especially encouraging and supportive.
Finally, we thank the many others who gave of their time, their heart,
and their pain and who are not mentioned by name because of lack of
space—not gratitude.
of America
10 9 8 7
pbk.
Library of Congress Catalogmg-in-Pubhcation Data
Gravitz, Herbert L., date.
Recovery: a guide for adult children of alcoholics.
Rev. ed. of: Guide to recovery, cl985.
“A Fireside/Learning Publication book.”
Includes bibliographies and index.
1. Adult children of alcoholics—United States—
Miscellanea. 2. Alcoholics—United States—Family
relationships—Miscellanea. 3. Alcoholism—^Treatment
United States—Miscellanea. I. Bowden, Julie D.,
date. II. Gravitz, Herbert L., date.
Guide to recovery. III. Title.
87-8796
HV5I32.G73 1987
362.2'9286'0973
ISBN 0-671-64528-5 Pbk.
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Special Acknowledgments
Herb: To Leslie, my wife and soul-mate, in recognition of our love and
commitment to each other. We have traveled so many winding and
difficult paths together. May each new turn bring us even closer. And may
our Journey allow our generations to embrace life with more joy.
And to my parents, Philip Benjamin Gravitz and Sophie Korin
Gravitz, with love, honor, and respect. Survivors of a different kind, may
you know and enjoy knowing how far through the generations your seeds
are spreading.
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Julie: To my children, Dondra, Tony, and Danae, who continued to love
me through all the crazy years, and grew into three courageous, beautiful,
and precious individuals.
And to my mother and father who did their very best, and whose gifts
I am still discovering.
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This book is dedicated to all the
adult children of alcoholics who, in
sharing their lives with us, taught
us what we now offer back.
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Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
Chapter 1 Introduction
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Chapter 2 Roots
1. What is an adult child of an alcoholic?
2. What is an alcoholic?
3. Why is alcoholism called a family disease?
4. What is a home like when there is an active alcoholic
in the family?
5. What is a “normal” home like?
6. Does it make a difference how old I was when my
parents or parent became alcoholics or if they left
home when I was a child?
What
if both parents are alcoholic?
7.
8. How does all this apply to me if my parents were
addicted to drugs other than alcohol?
9. Do all adult children of alcoholics feel the same?....
10. Why do I feel so strange, confused and scared?
11. When did all this begin?
12. Where does this leave the children of alcoholics?....
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Chapter 3 Survival
13. Why are adult children of alcoholics called “survivors”?
14. I feel like I was never a kid. What happened to my childhood?
15. What happens when children are raised in a home where
it is forbidden to talk openly about what is happening
in the family?
16. What are the rules that implicitly or explicitly guide
an alcoholic family?
17. What impact does this family atmosphere and these rules
have upon the children?
18. How do children adjust to this very repressive environment?
19. I have played every one of these roles. Can a person
play more than one role?
......................................
7
8
8
9
10
12
12
12
13
14
14
15
17
18
19
21
21
22
26
20. I am very successful and seem to have a good life; yet,
I feel empty and unhappy. What is wrong with me?.. .
21. What needs to happen in the survival stage so that adult
children of alcoholics can begin their recovery from
the effects of parental alcoholism?
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Chapter 4 Emergent Awareness
22. What is emergent awareness?
23. What happens as a result of an intervention?
24. What feelings follow coming out?
25. What are some of the pitfalls at this stage?
26. What is the best way to take care of myself at this stage?
27. What resources are needed?
28. How much can I count on other people to be helpful?. . .
29. How do I deal with my parents at this stage (whether
they are dead or alive, near or far)?
30. Is it necessary to deal with the past and dredge up all
that pain?
31. I don’t remember much from my childhood. Is that common?
32. Why is it important to acknowledge the alcoholism in
my family?
26
27
29
29
30
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34
35
37
37
39
40
Chapter 5 Core Issues
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33. What happens to children of alcoholics as they grow up?
34. In what ways do childhood roles and rules later work
against adult children of alcoholics?
35. What are the main problems of adult children of alcoholics?
36. What are the most common personal issues with which
adult children of alcoholics struggle?
37. What other personal issues might result?
38. In what situations are these issues most noticeable?
39. Why do I dread holidays?
40. What is the best way to take care of myself while I am
confronting core issues?
41. What are the pitfalls at this stage?
42. How do I deal with my parents in this stage?
43. These issues seem to apply to a lot of people. Are they
really unique to adult children of alcoholics?
44. What about the culturally different or the ethnic minority
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adult child of an alcoholic?....
45. How will I ever be able to get rid of all these problems? 61
43
43
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46
49
52
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56
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Chapter 6 Transformations
46. What is a transformation and how does the transforma63
tions stage fit into the recovery process?
47. How can I begin to work through what happened to me? 63
48. Why are issues of control and all-or-none functioning so
central to adult children of alcoholics?......................... 64
49. How can I begin to come to terms with my all-or-none
67
functioning?
68
with
the
control
issue?
50. How do I begin to come to terms
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51. I do not fully trust anybody. I believe others
somehow going to hurt me. What does this mean? Is
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something wrong with me?
............
71
How
can
I
begin
to
work
through
my
trust
issues
with
others.
52.
72
53. How do I begin to deal with my fear of intimacy?........
54. Dealing with feelings is still scary for me. What are
some guidelines in dealing with them, especially with
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the new feelings?
55. Friends and family are telling me I am getting self
centered. Am I focusing too much on nry self and my past? 76
79
56. What about this notion of self-esteem?..........................
57. How important is it for my own recovery to confront
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my parents at this stage?...........................................
58. How do I know that I am working things through or
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that transformations are really occurring?
Chapter 7 Integration
59. What is integration?.
60. Why is integration so important for adult children of
alcoholics?............
61. I have been reading this book and feel frustrated and
confused because I do not seem to be feeling better.
Is there something wrong with me?
........
62. How can I maintain my progress and growth without
creating a crisis and without sabotaging myself?
myself? . . .
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63. What are the pitfalls in this stage?
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64. What are some of the most important processes in the
integration stage?
..............
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65. How can I continue the process of taking better care of myself? 92
66. What resources are needed?
.................. 94
67. How can I avoid being “selfish”?
95
68. What kind of relationships can I expect to have with others? 95
69. What are my rights as an adult child of an alcoholic?... 98
70. Is there a cure?
............................................ 100
71. Where do I go from here?
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Chapter 8 Genesis
103
72. What is genesis?
73. What can I do to cultivate genesis-like experiences?... 104
104
74. Does genesis embrace religion?
75. Must I go through the stage of genesis? I feel like I am
just getting comfortable with everything I have been
learning
.........................................................
105
76. If I experience genesis, will I finally get to be perfect?.. 105
77. What other pitfalls might occur in genesis?
106
78. How do I deal with my parents in this stage?
106
79. What now?
107
Appendices
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We are hearing more and more about adult children of alcoholics,
how widespread their identification is becoming, the serious emotional
and sometimes physical problems they face, and now how their issues can
be addressed. In the last few months, many books have become available
in addressing adult children of alcoholics. One of the best is this work
by Julie D. Bowden and Herbert L. Gravitz. Their book is written in a
clear, concise, easy to read question and answer format. As I travel around
the country, I am continually asked questions very similar to the ques
tions raised in this book. It will help me a great deal to be able to refer
to their book in order to bring answers, ideas, and new information to
the countless numbers of adult children who are so eager for clarity. Clarity
of what happened to them and understanding of how to self-help are two
very helpful themes that run through Herb and Julie’s work. On a per
sonal level, it is comforting and exciting for me to know that Herb and
Julie have facilitated countless sessions (personal and group) with adult
children and truly know what they are talking about. May you enjoy this
book as much as I have and may you enjoy sharing it with your clients
and friends.
—Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse
A Final Note From The Authors
A. Recommended Reading..
B. Where To Get More Help
Foreword
111
113
References
115
Index
119
Preface to the 1987 Edition
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It has been two and a half years since Guide to Recovery was first
published. Since that time much has happened. It has become clear
that we are in the midst of a healing energy, a spiritual force that is
finding its way into countless homes in our country. The children
of alcoholics, of all ages and numbering in the tens of millions, are
in the midst of a profound social movement.
NACoA, the National Association for Children of Alcoholics,
continues to flourish. Whereas it started in 1983 with little over
twenty members, NACoA is now over 7,000 strong and growing.
Each and every day, as newly formed state chapters emerge,
people are coming to join its special mission. And not only is there
NACoA, there is CACoA, the Canadian Association for Children
of Alcoholics. Things are indeed happening!
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As we have traveled, presenting lectures and workshops on the
recovery process for children of alcoholics, we have come upon
i another simple but powerful truth. In towns and cities throughout
the country, people have come to us saying, “I read your book and
j it really helped me. But I’m not the child of an alcoholic.” More
and more people began to tell us that the book didn’t really begin to
match their experience until they read the chapter entitled “Core
Issues.” Then they would say, “You hit me right between the
eyes!”
So we continued to learn and we began to see what many of our
colleagues were discovering as well: children of alcoholics are but
the visible tip of a much larger social iceberg which casts an
invisible shadow over as much as 96 per cent of the population in
this country. These are the other “children of trauma.” Surviving
their childhoods rather than experiencing them, these children of
trauma have also had to surrender a part of themselves very early
in life. Not knowing what hit them, and suffering a sourceless sense
of pain in adulthood, they perpetuate the denial and minimization
which encase them in dysfunctional roles, rules, and behaviors.
These are the hidden depths of the iceberg, these children of
trauma. Over 200 million of us are denying our past, submerging
our realities, and ultimately misplacing both our “little” self and
our “big” Self. This is quite a legacy to inherit from our parents,
and we pass it on to our children.
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Who are we? Who are children of trauma? We are children
raised in other kinds of troubled family systems. We may have
grown up under the influence of such compulsive behaviors as
over- and undereating, gambling, spending, working, or “loving” j
too much. We may have experienced life through the horrors of
traumatic stress, as have genocide survivors, be they Jewish
ative American, African, or other. We may have had a schizo
phrenic or manic-depressive parent or a parent with chronic mental
or physical illness whose denial and misinformation fueled a fire of
guilt and blame. Most have come from perfectionist, judgmental
critical, or other non-loving families who appeared normal or welltunctionmg on the surface.
In all of these families rigidity prevents normal childhood
development. In the name of love, children are ignored, isolated
abandoned, and abused. Visible as never before, child abuse is
marring untold millions. The number of abused children is stag
gering. Who would believe it? Perhaps 230 million children of all
ages m our country! All are children of trauma, the children of our
time.
These survivors of childhood are learning to recover. And we
have come to believe that the very same process that offers
recovery to children of alcoholics produces recovery for children
of trauma. Like children of alcoholics, children of trauma reach
adulthood feeling sick, bad, crazy, or dumb—feeling inherently
flawed. Not all children of trauma make it through to adulthood so
recovery begins with the survival of childhood for them, too. Until
recently survival was the only stage of recovery. That is changing,
s one of our clients stated, to find out about the trauma is to find a
way out. So, we are discovering that emergent awareness for
children of trauma is as powerful and liberating as for children of
alcoholics, and their core issues are strikingly similar. A transforma ion can occur which leads them to a life-enhancing integration
o t eir past and ultimately leads them back to a new beginning a
genesis.
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Without abandoning our commitment to the more than 30
children of alcoholics, we would like to open our hearts to
hurtr Ch^en Of trauma’ and acknowledge that they too have been
hurt, and they too have a road map to recovery.
We have been blessed by so many along the way who have 1
given us support, guidance, new learnings, and love. We hope that
this 1987 publication of Recovery by Simon & Schuster will allow
children of alcoholics and other children of trauma to acknowledge
their own history, and provide relief and initiate recovery.
So if you are all grown up on the outside, but feel little and bad
on the inside, then this book may be of help to you. You might want
to take a moment now and thank the child you once were for
helping you survive the trauma, bringing you to this time and this
place. Welcome. We wish you well on the journey. This time it’s
your time to recover.
—Herbert L. Gravitz
Julie D. Bowden
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Introduction
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Leslie was mesmerized. The muscles around her eyes tightened as the
shock of recognition crossed herface. The stories she was hearing sound
ed just like hers! The other people in this group, who looked so picture
perfect, had experienced the same abandonment, the same loss of childhood,
the same sense of betrayal that she had felt in a home dominated by an
alcoholic parent.
Ann, who had recently celebrated her eighty-first birthday, relaxed
as she heard others describe the embarrassment of their childhoods—the
humiliations, the insults, the times they were afraid to come home, and
those terrible holiday scenes. As the shrouds ofsilence slowly disappeared,
she was no longerfeeling isolated and alone. There were no secrets here.
These were her stories too.
Brian was trembling. He was thinking of his parents. Pangs of guilt
pierced his stomach. For the first time he actually talked about what went
on in his family. He dared say out loud to others that his parents were
alcoholic. He fidgeted as he forced himself not to pretend anymore. But
it was hard! Scary! Yet, somewhere at the edge of his awareness, there
was a feeling, a real feeling, that he did not want to deny.
Eric felt detached, as if he were a million miles away. He did not
like to think about what had happened. He wanted to forget. What was
the use anyway? Nothing changes; nothing really makes a difference. If
only he could get rid of those recurring nightmares. He barely remembers
them in the morning. He just knows they come.
The Leslies, Anns, Brians, Erics, and the millions of others like them,
are adult children of alcoholics. Reared in a home in which one or both
parents are alcoholic, they are united by the bondage of parental alcoholism.
Most adult children of alcoholics have always suspected that something
is wrong. They often experience loneliness and they are likely to believe
that they are different from other people. They are! Without fully
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INTRODUCTION
RECOVERY
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identifying the source of their emptiness, they have endured and suffered.
They have survived the experience of living in a family where unpredic
tability was the one thing that could be counted on. They seldom knew
what to expect from parents—a frown or a smile, a slap or a kiss. They
have survived the experience of living in a family where inconsistency
was the rule. No two days were the same and they could not believe in
what others said. Subjected to denial, broken promises, and lies, they were
often at the mercy of parents whose feelings, perceptions and judgments
were clouded by a mind-altering drug—alcohol. They have survived the
experience of living in a family where everything was arbitrary—things
were always happening by whim or impulse in ways that seemed out of
control. And because their families were like this, they have survived liv
ing with a family in chaos. Almost every day there were crises and emergen
cies at home. It was never really safe to relax—or be a child; Since their
families represented their worlds, they lived in a world of unpredictability,
inconsistency, arbitrariness, and chaos. These are the children of alcoholics.
This book is for these survivors, the children who grew up in an
alcoholic family and became adultsTlt describes the costs they have had
to pay to survive. More important, it presents a way they can re-evaluate
their survival techniques in light of the problems they now face as adults.
This book will help adult children of alcoholics to use these techniques
as resources to propel themselves forward to a life of meaning and joy.
As one adult child of an alcoholic said, “If I can use the debris of outrageous
misfortune and turn it into something positive, then none of what happened
to me occurred without rhyme or reason.”
This book reflects recent changes in the field of alcoholism and growing
efforts to identify and assist adult children of alcoholics. New and exciting
things are happening. It was not until 1955 that alcoholism was recog
nized as a disease by the American Medical Association.40 In the 1960s
and 1970s it slowly became increasingly clear to professionals that the
family develops a parallel disease of its own.633-50-53 And in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, explicit acknowledgment has been given to the adult sur
vivors. 8-14 3058 Then, on Valentine’s Day of 1983, the National Associa
tion for Children of Alcoholics was formed to recognize the needs and
problems of children of alcoholics of all ages.44 Yes, things are
happening!
This book is a part of what is happening. It is about a neglected minority
numbering in the millions. Recent estimates indicate there are between
28 and 34 million children of alcoholics, over half of them adults.7’31
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Because their survival behaviors tend to be approval-seeking and socially
acceptable, the problems of most children (and adult children) of alcoholics
remain invisible.44 It is not that they are not being treated. They are-in
mental health agencies, psychotherapists’ offices, hospitals, employee
assistance programs, and the judicial system.44 But the importance of
their parents’ alcoholism often does not receive the focus and attention
it merits. Despite the increasing recognition of alcoholism as a family
disease, children of alcoholics continue to be ignored, misdiagnosed, and
inappropriately treated. Many limp into adulthood behind a facade of
strength. They survive adulthood, too, but do not enjoy it.
This is a book about how children of alcoholics of all ages can begin
to enjoy their adult lives. We want to share what we have been learning
from the adult children of alcoholics we have encountered as therapists
and educators. Most of all we want to share our enthusiasm and excite
ment as well as convey a message of hope and understanding. We have
seen dramatic, positive changes in adult children of alcoholics once they
understand how their earlier experience with familial alcoholism continues
to influence them.
We invite you to join us on a journey in which we are all pioneers.
The journey will help you to uncover the influence of family alcoholism.
The approach we will use is a question and answer format. The questions
addressed are those we have been asked most frequently by adult children
of alcoholics. As we have journeyed with others, we have come to ap
preciate that there will be a number of responses to what is discovered.
Some people are surprised, shocked, or overwhelmed by the answers. Some
become angry and frustrated. Others remain skeptical and want to know
where the “research” is. Some become very sad and cry, while others
feel relief, elation, and hope. Few remain unaffected. There are reasons
for the strong emotional responses provoked by the questions and answers
presented in this book.
First and foremost, we will be talking about all those things that
children of alcoholics of all ages are taught not to talk about. One of the
cardinal rules in an alcoholic home is, “There’s nothing wrong here and
don’t you dare tell anybody!”8'53 So we are most reverently breaking the
shroud of silence that encases the alcoholic family. We dare to discuss
things as they are, not as they should be or as you might like them to be.
We know alcoholism is one of the most prevalent diseases, one in ree
families are affected.26 The alcoholic family is “the family next door.
Alcoholism is also a complex and puzzling disease; we still do not know
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RECOVERY
INTRODUCTION
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exactly what ca
it?2 We kn{w * js a devastating disease It
the hody mmd, and spirit.3’ It affects the individual, family, and
‘ *S generatl0nal' And because it is generational it affects the
future
There are almost 15 million Americans suffering from
alcobohsm or problem drinking. Their numbers are increasing by almost
a.mi,
PeoPIe each year. Over 75 million Americans are affected
and alcoholism costs this country over $120 billion a year.55 Every two
and one-half minutes there is an alcohol related death.15
Second, adult children of alcoholics are profoundly affected when they
overcome the barrier of denial because this requires them to confront the
consequences of this ravaging disease in a very personal way. Children
of alcoholics are at maximum risk of becoming alcoholic themselves or
developing other addictive behavior. They are at the risk of marrying an
a cohohe one or several times. And they are at the risk of developing
predictable problematic patterns of behavior in which they get stuck over
an over again. 8J’-6 Yet most do not even understand what hit them
lhere is no such thing as growing up unaffected when alcoholism is pre
sent in a family, but it is difficult for the individual to acknowledge these
problems. Arrested emotional development is inescapable unless the effec s of this disease are dealt with. Alcohol is an equal opportunity
destroyer. Whoever gets in its path is affected.
Third, a multitude of powerful feelings is provoked when the individual
begins to come to terms with the past. Over and over we have seen adult
ch' dren experience spontaneous age regression. This means that as adult
children break the demal and silence, they find themselves thrown back
eh Mb Paf cPartiCU?ur WOrds’ music’ or places trigger memories from
childhood^ Some of these experiences have not been remembered or felt
in years Some are pleasant; many are not. All are real. Remembering
and exploring the effects of growing up with alcoholism in the family it
Part,°f a, lar.8er process of learning, growth, and development. In other
words, this is a journey of change. And change is always scary. No mat
ter how miserable you are, at least your life is predictable as it is. Adult
children of alcoholics often confuse stability with consistency and rigidly
cling to what is familiar even though it is destructive.
discu^UThChlldreniOf alcoholics already know much of what we shall
know ed
Y JUSt d° n0‘ kn°W that they know! Our task « to make this
Lch
aCCeSSlble’ meanlngft11’ and USefu1' We believe ‘bat in
more resoA t‘S
W,Sd°m
Strength' The human mind has
resources than it can possibly use. It is a vast territoiy of undiscovered
5
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potential. We believe people make the best choices they can with the in
formation they have and that with new information they will make better
choices. While this means our parents made the best choices they could,
it does not mean that they did not make terrible mistakes at times. We
believe that people grow best in an atmosphere of freedom and choice;
that people with the most choices are usually the healthiest and happiest.
Sometimes adult children of alcoholics are so eager to change that they
will reject valuable parts of themselves. Yet there is a positive aspect to
almost every part of us if we can just find the right context for its expression.
In reading this book, you may find that your experiences do not match
everything that is described. Use this material as a place to begin. Take
what is helpful and leave the rest. We could not possibly cover everything
and we have probably left out some questions that are important to you.
Begin to trust the validity of your own experiences, knowing you will make
sense out of our words and find your own meaning. It is up to you to decide
what kind of changes you want to make, if any, and how this book can
best serve your needs. You can decide, for instance, how much of this
book to read, when to read it, and with whom to share it. Sometimes the
best way to move quickly is to go slowly! Honor your own pace and speed.
It has been our experience that the book works best when read in sequence.
However, maximum benefit will come if you also feel free to put the book
down at times. Taking a walk, talking to a friend, developing a support
system, or going to Al-Anon can help you get through difficult sections.
Reading the book when you are under the influence of alcohol or other
drugs will not be helpful.
Finally, this book provides a way to share the questions and experiences
of adult children of alcoholics. Together, we will explore the inner work
ings of an alcoholic family. We will discover what roles the children adopt
and how these bear on their adult lives. We will look at the personal and
interpersonal difficulties in which adult children frequently become
enmeshed. We will also talk about what can be done to overcome these
difficulties and describe the recovery process. We will show that traumatic
incidents in childhood can lead to abilities and personal strengths that the
individual can draw upon during the recovery process. We will see how
strength can be restored from wounding. We shall discover new paths to
freedom.
So we welcome you on what we anticipate will be a most important
journey—your journey, your recovery. It is time!
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1. What is an adult child of an alcoholic?
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The phrase “adult children of alcoholics” was used by a few
alcoholism professionals in the 1970s when research and clinical obser
vation began to demonstrate that children growing up m families where
there is alcoholism are particularly vulnerable.91859 They are susceptible
to certain emotional, physical, and spiritual problems.8,9-48 55 The Na
tional Association for Children of Alcoholics considers adult children of
alcoholics as having an adjustment reaction to familial alcoholism which
is recognizable, diagnosable, and treatable.44 Based on our work, we
consider an adult child of an alcoholic to be anyone who comes from a
family (either the family of origin or the family of adoption) where alcohol
abuse was a primary and central issue. We have found that almost everyone
who has an alcoholic parent has been and is profoundly affected by the
experience.
Mental health professionals have encountered adult children of
alcoholics by the millions, but have not accurately diagnosed the roots
of their complaints. Children of alcoholics appear for treatment for a host
of reasons other than for being children of alcoholics. For example, they
are treated for alcoholism, co-alcoholism, eating disorders, learning
disabilities, depression, and severe stress. Until recently, explicit
acknowledgment has not been given to their plight as children of alcoholics.
It is time to identify them more meaningfully. It is time to call them adult
children of alcoholics. To do so is an important step in uncovering the
nature of their difficulties and providing effective interventions. It initiates
recovery!
Some people are not sure whether their parents are or were suffering
from alcoholism. We have found that if the question is there, then it is
likely the problem is there. It is very similar to asking, Am I an
alcoholic?” If I am asking that question, chances are I am an alcoholic.
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2. What is an alcoholic?
As the alcoholic becomes sicker and sicker, there is a parallel breakdown
in his or her family. As the alcoholic loses more and more control, others
in the family adapt by assuming increasing amounts of responsibility. Some
one begins to do those things the alcoholic is not doing. Someone makes
excuses to friends and family. In this way, alcohol reaches beyond its
chemical effects on the individual abuser and becomes a family affair. The
family’s demoralization is as devastating as the alcoholism itself.
Initially, the family is not aware of what is happening. Like the
alcoholic, family members do not want to face the reality of their situa
tion. Their denial becomes a hallmark in the same way that denial is a
hallmark of alcoholism. It seemingly protects them from the terror of
acknowledging that their lives are out of control. The family is no longer
a safe place in which to communicate, to grow, or to love. Implicit rules
guide the family along a path of sickness and, at times, destruction. Family
members easily begin to develop unhealthy ways of coping with family life.
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Alcoholism is a devastating, potentially fatal disease The „ •
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4. What is a home like when there is an active alcoholic in the family?
No <one
— sets out to lose control and thereby become an alcoholic
Alcoholism develops subtly and i;
becomes pro.resd^b;;,™'/
“sidmusly. If untreated, alcoholism
progressively worse.
Alcoholics
not hdrink n°t because they are depressed, not because they
are scared, inot because they are sad, not because they are happy. They
drink because the*y no longer have a choice. They have lost control 5™-52
3. Why is alcoholism called
a family disease?
fami^therapy6 Ast"?
in the
!a
of alcoholism and
Jis
observed that the spoustJ of the al""b r '‘C0-dePende^ ''“'5’It was
process.22-57 In the 1970s and 1980 th ° 1C *S drawn lnto the disease
fessionals that other familv
k
lncreasing1y clear to pro
alcoholic.
y members’ t00> are seriously affected by the
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In a home where one or both parents are actively alcoholic, family
life has a distinctive character. Family life is inconsistent, unpredictable,
arbitrary, and chaotic'0™ These four words typify life in an alcoholic
family. For example, what is true one day may not be true the next day.
A child may have a conversation with a drunken parent one night, but
when the child refers to it later, the parent may have absolutely no recollec
tion of that conversation. In an alcoholic “blackout” a person experiences
a type of chemical amnesia and cannot remember what was said or done.
The child does not understand what has happened. Even alcoholic parents
may not realize they have experienced a blackout. That is one reason life
is so inconsistent and unpredictable. Another is that personalities change
with alcoholism. For example, if I am the child of an alcoholic, my mother
might be the most loving, wonderful woman when she is sober, but just
the opposite when she is drinking. I cannot be sure which person I am
going to meet when I come home. Children of alcoholics learn specific
lessons from this. They learn to repress spontaneity, to first check things
out to see if their parents are sober, and how to shrug off disappointment.
There is a whole set of behaviors and attitudes a child develops and car
ries into adult life as a result of such lessons.
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RECOVERY
The arbitrariness stems from the whimsical and impulsive changes
that occur from one day to the next; and, of course, children are unable
to determine the basis for these changes. They cannot understand that the
arbitrariness stems from the alcohol abuse. For example, very often parents
are unable to agree on rules for their children. If I am a child of an alcoholic,
it might be that this week my parents have decided that I am old enough
to go out and stay out as late as I want. Next week, for no apparent reason,
I am not allowed out of the house. Or, my father might have a rule that
says I cannot date until I am 18. My mother decides that this is loo harsh.
She believes I should have much more freedom. So I have two conflicting
rules.
children about how they view rules. Rules tend to be realistic, humane,
and not impossible to follow.
The rules take into account the unique feelings, beliefs, and differences
of family members. When feelings are expressed, they are listened to and
accepted. Children are heard and treated with respect in a functional family.
There are rules that state: “Don’t be violent; don’t be abusive, cruel, or
mean Tell us what is wrong so we can help.” It is also permissible to
be separate, have your own things, and your own identity. Boundaries
between each individual are accepted, encouraged, and respected. Com
munications tend to be open instead of closed. When communications are
open one can talk to others ■’bout what they think is happening. For ex
ample, if my mom falls off her chair at the dinner table, I can say, Hey
mom fell off her chair . . . What’s happening? . . I m scared
Wha
can we do?” In a closed, alcoholic system the rules say, Don t talk. Don
So much in the alcoholic home is arbitrary, unpredictable and incon
sistent because everything is based on a drug which impairs functioning.
Chaos is the natural result. Include in this picture the certain emotional
abuse, as well as the potential for physical or sexual abuse and you can
see that life in an alcoholic home is like living with an accident every day.
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trust. Don’t feel.”8
In a functional family children depend on adults. Children trust that
they will be cared for. They are allowed to be children and they know
it will be that way tomorrow, too. In a functional home children are: laugh
how to cope and how to assume responsibility. New roles are not th
upon them in one drunken weekend, but are conveyed over years of nur
turing They will not suddenly be expected to take on parental tasks fo
which they are not prepared when a parent vanishes into a bottle or d1Sap-
5. What is a “normal” home like?
This question is often asked by adult children of alcoholics. There
is no such thing as a “normal” home. Unfortunately, children of alcoholics
often believe that somewhere, somehow, there exists a perfect family. This
notion of the perfect family is the standard against which they judge their
own family life. They have unreasonable expectations with which they
compare themselves unmercifully. It appears to them that everyone else
is happy and well adjusted while they are different and damaged.
Let us say that a “normal” family is simply one without alcoholism
or where members can talk openly about their experiences. However, in
stead of looking at things in terms of normal or abnormal, it is more useful
to think in terms of functional and dysfunctional. Functional homes pro
mote children s sense of well-being; they are relatively consistent, somewhat
predictable, minimally arbitrary, and only occasionally chaotic. In terms
of family roles, there is appropriate delegation of authority. Youngsters
are not expected to drive cars, or do the grocery shopping, or run the
household. Children are not given the responsibilities of parenting. The
parents are not children and the children are not the parents.
Rules are more explicit in functional families.53 They do not change
from day to day or from hour to hour, so children usually know what is
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pears to a bar.
Children do not live in fear in a functional family. In too many alcoholic
homes, children live in fear because of the abuse to which they are su jected. Common fears are that they will be hurt or abandoned, that they
are unlovable, and that things are out of control. This is a result of t
parents not being emotionally and physically available. In a functional fam
ly children know there is someone more resourceful than themselves
a functional family children know they will not be abandoned regard e
of what they do. In an alcoholic home the child feels abandoned again
and again. As one adult child of an alcoholic said, “When I was a little
child, my parents abandoned me, and they never le t t e ous .
Still functional families are human; they are not perfect. That is im
portant to know. In a functional family there may be yelling and
screaming—but not typically. There may be anx.ety and tension
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RECOVERY
13
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on a daily basis. There may be unhappiness—but not usually. And there
may be anger and hurt—but it is not chronic.
6. Does it make a difference how old I was when my parent(s)
became alcoholic or if they left home when I was a child?
!
What seems to be true is that the negative effects of having lived in
an alcoholic family are greater the younger the child is as the disease pro
gresses and the longer he or she lives with an alcoholic parent.
So
yes, we believe it does make a difference how old the child is. And if
the alcoholic parent leaves home, there will be some difference in effects,
but the child must deal with literal abandonment issues and is then often
raised by a co-alcoholic who is sick also. It has been said that the only
difference between the alcoholic and the co-alcoholic is that one does not
drink?3 In other respects, this parent engages in many of the same
behaviors that undermine the child’s sense of safety and well-being.
7. What if both parents are alcoholic?
Research suggests that if you have two alcoholic parents, you are go
ing to be younger the first time you get drunk, you are going to have more
behavioral problems before you get into a treatment program, and the period
between the first intoxication and treatment is going to be much shorter.
You will also tend to develop alcoholism much more rapidly?’ Common
sense would also suggest that with both parents alcoholic, the child has
even fewer resources available than if one parent was sober. It is getting
both barrels of the shotgun, so to speak. Neither parent is available in
any consistent, meaningful, protective way. So, children who have two
alcoholic parents have an even more difficult time and are even more
susceptible and more vulnerable to all the problems affecting children of
alcoholics. Recent research supports the idea that children with two
alcoholic parents have a greater genetic sensitivity to alcohol and, if alcohol
abuse occurs, to develop alcoholism more rapidly.34
8. How does all this apply to me if my parents were addicted to
drugs other than alcohol?
Much of it applies, depending on what other drugs we are talking about.
Alcohol happens to be the number one drug of choice in many cultures;
it is legal, very acceptable, and easily accessible. Children reared by parents
who are addicted to illegal drugs have all of the problems and concerns
of children reared in homes where alcohol is abused. They also have one
additional problem-the illegality of the substence abused and the
corresponding need for duplicity, breaking the law, and concealing infor
mation. In addition there is the fact that parents who deal with illegal drugs
are also more prone to deal with unsavory people and to be in violent situa
tions For instance, if we are talking about a drug like cocaine, people
can become so financially indebted to their dealer that physical threats
or actual physical violence may occur.
Prescription drugs can be very similar to alcohol in that they are quite
acceptable. Again, we have a very insidious drug about which some physi
cians may say, “It’s all right to take this, Mrs. Jason. Go ahead and refill
it whenever you need to.” Only when the patient or the addict begins ly
ing to get more prescriptions or when the mood swings are extreme is
it no longer acceptable. Often the family does not know what it is dealing
with because nobody sees the drug being used. Valium and similar drugs
are also less toxic to the human body than alcohol; the user may therefore
appear outwardly more healthy than an alcoholic?6 Yet, if you have a
mother who is up and down on Valium and “speed” under a doctor’s
orders, you may have some crazy situations that are just as unpredictable,
just as inconsistent, just as arbitrary, and just as chaotic as those with an
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alcoholic parent.
$
9. Do all adult children of alcoholics feel the same?
ll
Although children of alcoholics each have a different perspective and
see the environment, their parents, and their situation from their own van
tage point, we consistently find that they identify with certain general ex
periences. Often after we have described the “typical childhood of an
adult child of an alcoholic in a class, someone will approach us and say,
“Everything you said sounded like you were talking about me.” Most
develop similar feelings and fears. It is a relief for many to discover that
they are not alone.
Nevertheless, not all children of alcoholics experience identical emo
tional and physical effects. A number of variables account for this beyond
the fact that each and every child is unique. Again, one factor is the child s
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RECOVERY
ROOTS
Hi i
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famik° bHh0' d6 fad!er,wh0 ,s alcoh°lic; *6 number of children in the
family, birth order; whether the spouse is working on his or her recoverywhether or not there are other, helpful influences available, such as famiabuse^Jther ‘J*0
Whether °r nOt there is Physical or sexual
mav
^iTaJ tOrS SUCh aS the family’s so^oeconomic status
may affect the child of an alcoholic.1
Even in the same family not all children will react the same way For
example one child may clearly see the alcoholism, while another may
the sMn?/ “ 3 P
f3Ct’ he °r ShC might get £Juite “Pset with
±e sibling for even insinuating that alcohol is a problem in their family
ano?h adult.|hlldren of alcoholics have told us that when they spoke to
another family member about alcoholism in the home, the other reacted
with disbehef, saying, ‘‘What alcoholism? Who was an alcoholic? Dad
from ■ r alCOhO!,c! Sometimes they encounter very hostile responses
ch Id inleT a-l 3 8Leat
°f anger f°r “maligning” a parent One
child n the family might remember a series of horrors in childhood, while
wonderT “Whvd mig* ch°Ose t0 remember only the good times and
in a farnilv mt F\UP
Ug'y thingS?” While
10. Why do I feel so strange, confused, and scared?
to catsl aacVhildefenfdefCribin8 3
atmosPhere that is almost certain
to cause a child to feel inadequate, tense, and upset. It seems impossible
to grow up in this kind of environment without feelings of confusion guilt
anger, shame, or fear. These are “normal” responses to an “abnomal”’
situation. It is no wonder that you feel strange, confused, and scared' If
UiereTastt U ‘
°f a" alcohoIic’ y°u 2rew UP in a family where
fomfly pai J3111^ SeaSC’ 3
SeCret’ and Shared but unacknowledged
11. When did all this begin?
15
often children of alcoholics and still traumatized when they become parents.
If parents consume enough alcohol, it can affect the unborn child.17 The
chances of being affected by fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) are high for
children whose mothers drink heavily during pregnancy. The genetic,
biochemical, and neurophysiological mechanisms involved in alcoholism
may begin to affect the child at the moment of conception.I9-40-48-52 This
is in addition to the environmental impact we have been describing. Since
heredity and environment have an impact on the development of the child,
the effects of parental alcoholism begin very early in the child’s life, long
before he or she is aware that there is a problem.
12. Where does this leave the children of alcholics?
Children of alcholics have acquired biological and psychological
vulnerabilities that follow them into adulthood and which, if not addressed,
can become a permanent disability.918-20-59 It is as though the child has
been wounded and was never properly treated. Like an injury not allowed
to heal properly, it carries over into adulthood as a chronic health problem.
Yet, what we have found particularly exciting and what makes us op
timistic is that children of alcoholics have learned to cope with a variety
of truly difficult, sometimes life-threatening situations. In the face of stress
and trauma they have learned to survive. This same strength can be drawn
upon to recover from the negative effects of parental alcoholism.
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Survival
13. Why are adult children of alcoholics called “survivors ?
This term acknowledges that adult children of alcoholics made it
through childhood, and stayed alive in what could be described as a war
zone Like shell-shocked war veterans, there were many times throughou
their childhoods when their lives were threatened-emotionally and
spiritually as well as physically. Some were sexually violated. Children
of alcoholics do an amazing job of dodging, negotiating, hi ing, earn
ing, and adapting just to stay alive. They learn to be survivors despite
the demand that they pretend there is nothing wrong. They have had to
shut down their own emotional life many times. They learned to deny i ,
block it out, repress it, isolate it, dissociate from it. Otherwise, their feel
ings could have overwhelmed them. Terribly traumatic things happen to
children of alcoholics. And it is a testament to their skill and courage that
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they arrive at adulthood.
Children of alcoholics had to survive essentially alone, because that
is the nature of the disease of alcoholism. It is an isolating, separating,
and lonely disease. Most of these children had to suffer in silence. They
thought nobody would believe what they said even if they would dare say
it. Who could believe it? In fact, they probably had the experience of be
ing told in no uncertain terms not to speak about what was happening^
In the classroom it may have been clear to them that talking about such
issues with the teacher was not acceptable. They may have known relatives
who watched what was happening and did not speak up. There was a secret
a shroud of silence everywhere.'3 Nobody would speak. No one would
acknowledge the obvious. One woman we worked with spent a great dea
of time deahng with her anger-and later all the hurt-at the adult relatives
around her who saw that her parents were alcoholic, that she was b: g
abused, that she was very troubled, and still did not reach out to help her.
They said nothing. She felt betrayed.
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SURVIVAL
RECOVERY
consistent or predictable way. The boy loved him very much and did not
want to be a burden. Since he often could not be sure whether his father
was drunk, he devised a test. When his father came home, he would
challenge him to a game of basketball. If his father lost, the son knew
he had been drinking and there would be a long night ahead. If his father
won, then he was sober and the evening would be safe.
We know another child who would be invited to play at a neighbor’s
house, yet never felt free to say, “Sure, I can do that. I don’t have to
do anything until dinner.’’ Rather, the child was very aware of a need
to go home at the end of the school day to check on everything that was
happening. The child needed to know who was sober, who was there and
whether or not she would be needed to care for the other children or start
preparing the family dinner.
All of these children had their childhood usurped by premature
adulthood. Typically, there is a reversal of parent and child roles. This
means that the children really never had a chance to play and have fun,
never really had a chance to be free of the shackles of all that respon
sibility, guilt, worry, and caretaking. Many children of alcoholics, by the
time they reach their late adolescent and early adult years, are already
burned out—weary from being an adult for the first 20 years of their life.
So adult children of alcoholics are called survivors because they have
been through a war—and made it. If they are alive and reading this book,
we know they made it through. We know that they can, have, and will
survive.
14. I feel like I was never a kid. What happened to my childhood?
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This is an experience that children of alcoholics very often report.
They are right when they say, “I was never a kid.’* They really did not
experience the freedom and the carefree years of childhood. They were
too busy surviving, placating, picking up the pieces, adjusting, and being
responsible. In other words, they were too busy being everything but a
child.
In an alcoholic family, as the alcoholism progresses and co-alcoholism
develops, there really is very little time left for the children to be children.
They are not treated as children, and may even come to have difficulty
seeing themselves as children. Children need a certain availability and a
certain responsiveness from parents who are not often present in an alcoholic
family.8 Many times the children are instead required to be available and
responsive to the parents’ needs. Children are vulnerable and rely upon
their parents to take care of them, to protect them. However, in an alcoholic
family it is not safe for children to be children. Often there is no one there
to take care of them. To cope with the situation and hide the fear of hav
ing no one to turn to, children of alcoholics learn to build a facade of
strength and competence. They learn to act like an adult while they are
still children.
An eight-year-old girl we worked with described how frightened she
became when she heard a fight starting between her parents after she had
gone to sleep. As the shouting increased and other sounds mounted (glass
breaking, slapping), she made her little sister moveto her bed. Over the
smaller child’s weeping, she reassured her, “It’s all right. Daddy won’t
hurt Mommy, and they’ll make up. Everything will be fine, just you wait
and see.’’ She set aside her own terror to parent her sister. The following
day she continued this pseudo-adult role by taking care of her mother and
offering to help with household chores, while reassuring her that everything
would be fine.
Another child lived in a home where the alcoholism was less obvious.
His father, while not a stumbling drunk, was not available in any
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15. What happens when children are raised in a home where it is for
bidden to talk openly about what is happening in the family?
First and foremost, children are taught to disown what their eyes see
and what their ears hear. Because of denial in the family, children’s percep
tions of what is happening become progressively and systematically negated.
Overtly or covertly, explicitly or implicitly, they are told not to believe
what their own senses tell them. As a result, the children learn to distrust
their own experience. At the same time, they are taught not to trust other
people. How can it be otherwise when they are actually observing one
thing while the significant adults around them are telling them another.
For example, a boy may see his alcoholic mother fall off her chair at the
dinner table and not get up. His stomach muscles tighten, he gasps for
breath, and starts reaching for her because he senses she needs help. His
father, with a glaring look from across the table, insists that there is nothing
wrong. His look says nothing happened and not to move. “Mother is fine,
he states. “Leave her alone, ignore her, and go on eating. So the child
20
RECOVERY
sits carefully at the table with tears beginning to run down his cheeks as
his mother struggles to get up. He tells himself to be quiet, to pretend
nothing unusual is happening, and he tells his throat, tight from the tears,
to swallow that next bite of food.
This child is being taught many lessons. He is learning that his judg
ment is poor and incorrect. “Nothing is wrong,’’ he is told, but everything
seems wrong. “I must be misperceiving. I must be wrong,’’ he starts think
ing, “because how could my father deny my mother help if she really
needs it?’’ The child learns to tolerate many intolerable situations. After
all, the child concludes, “I am not seeing it right. I do not understand
what is happening. Maybe I should just accept the situation. The child
learns that his natural responses are somehow unacceptable, wrong, not
to be trusted. The child also learns that at least one of these adults is lying
to him or telling him something that goes totally against everything he
is sensing, everything that his experience tells him is real. Ultimately, the
child is taught not to trust himself or others. The results are disastrous.11
When people learn at an early age not to trust experience and not to
trust body signals, they begin to ignore feelings. When the boy in our ex
ample sat at the table and his mom fell to the floor in the middle of a meal,
and he was told to sit there and eat, he learned still another lesson. He
learned to set aside a whole set of important feelings and continue on
through mealtime, or through another experience, or through life, just as
if nothing had happened. To do that, he had to separate from his feelings.
So. 20 years later, he may be sitting with a friend or in therapy talking
about mealtimes at his home when he was a child. And he might say that
when he was nine-years-old, mealtimes were pretty interesting, because
his family would be eating and his mom would fall off her chair. And
he might describe this with a calm voice and a stilted smile. He might
tell you this with absolutely no sense of the feelings that initially accom
panied that experience. In fact, the feelings are there, but he has been taught
to keep them separate. As a result, he never learned how to fully integrate
his feelings, thoughts, and observations.
A child who is not allowed to talk openly about the alcoholism in the
family begins to think there is something wrong with him or her. He or
she feels confused, scared, bad, sick or crazy. And there can be no discus
sion of the situation and no explanation that such feelings are common
when you live with an alcoholic.
SURVIVAL
21
16. What are the rules that implicitly or explicitly guide an alcoholic
family?
Three primary rules are described by Claudia Black, in her pioneer
ing work with children of alcoholics.8 The rules that she found over and
over are, “Don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel.’’ Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse,
another pioneer who has written extensively about the alcoholic family,
notes that the rules in an alcoholic home tend to be unhealthy, inhuman
and rigid.53 She describes the alcoholic’s use of alcohol as the issue
around which everything else is centered. No other issue affects the fami
ly so deeply. Yet family rules state that alcohol is not the cause of family
problems; someone or something else is at fault; alcoholism is not the prob
lem. Additionally, the status quo must be maintained at all costs, and
everyone must take over the alcoholic’s responsibilities, cover up, pro
tect, accept the rules and not rock the boat. No one may talk about what
is going on to anyone else, and no one may say what he or she is really
feeling. To abide by these rules is to be safe; to break these rules is to
court disaster.
We find that two different sets of rules occur. One set consists of rules
the parents give to the child. These rules are built on domination, fear,
guilt, and shame. We have already talked about those. Another set of rules
is developed by the child in response to the parents’ rules. They go
something like this: “If I don’t talk, nobody will know how I feel, and
I won’t get hurt. If I don’t ask, I can’t get rejected. If I’m invisible, I’ll
be okay. If I’m careful, no one will get upset. If I stop feeling, I won’t
have any pain.’’ The prime directive becomes, “I must make things as
safe as possible.’’ But “safety’’ can exact a heavy price.
17. What impact does this family atmosphere and these rules have upon
the children?
In the midst of an atmosphere of unpredictability, inconsistency, ar
bitrariness, and chaos, the children try to make sense out of what is hap
pening. When placed in such an unstable world, they begin to think that
they are unstable and that the instability in the family is their fault. If you
could listen to what the child cannot say, you might hear something like
this: “This is crazy, so I must be crazy. Something’s wrong so there must
be something wrong with me. I haven’t got love, so I must be unlovable.
rr
22
Then further translations occur. “I must be unlovable” becomes “I don’t
need love.” “I don’t need love,” becomes “I don’t want love.” “I don’t
want love,” becomes “I will reject love when it comes because there is
no such thing; I cannot trust it, it’s not safe!” So, “I don’t need love,
I don’t want love,” ultimately become “I won’t take love. I can’t take it!”
It is easy to forget how profound the parent-child relationship is.
Children are completely dependent upon their parents’ good will and nur
turing. Parents are the people who make it possible, literally, to stay alive.
They provide the home. They provide the food. Parents are also a primary
source of a child’s sense of self worth. When the people who love them
the most hurt them the most, children often conclude that there must be
something dreadfully wrong with them. “I must be bad, sick, or crazy.”
In this way, children of alcoholics learn to distrust both themselves and
others. They learn to endure, to suffer, and to resent. They survive by
distancing themselves from their feelings and denying their needs. Feel
ings and needs are too dangerous, too painful. Instead, children in families
of alcoholics learn to control; they learn to pretend or to lie or both. As
a result, they learn to blur, distort, and confuse.30 Love becomes con
fused with caretaking, spontaneity with irrationality, intimacy with smother
ing, anger with violence. Just as alcoholics blur their view of the world
due to alcohol, children blur the boundaries of feelings, thoughts, and
behaviors due to the alcoholism of the parents.
Often a child is explicitly told by a parent, “You are the reason why
I'm feeling this way. . .why I’m drinking. . .why I’m this. . .why I’m
that. It’s your fault. If only you. . .” Children are wonderfully self-centered.
All young children tend to think that they are the center of the universe;
so it is very natural for them to incorporate these immensely powerful
statements or suggestions by the parent. When told something often enough,
we believe it. The children of alcoholics often do believe they are the cause
of the problems in the family, and therefore feel they should be able to
cure or control the situation. That need for control follows them through life.
18. How do children adjust to this very repressive environment?
Research from the field of family therapy shows that family members
adopt identifiable role behaviors when they are under stress. And all
alcoholic families are under stress. These roles are adopted both to save
the family and to save the child. Virginia Satir, a noted pioneer in family
therapy, first described these roles for distressed families in general.5
II
SURVIVAL
RECOVERY
'•
S
23
More recently, both Claudia Black and Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse, a stu
dent of Satir, separately described common roles specific to alcoholic
families.8,53
Black’s initial work came from her observations of the children of
alcoholics seen in inpatient treatment programs.6-7 She noticed that
although most of them seemed to have adjusted quite well on the surface,
they did not seem to feel. While there are certainly many overtly pro
blematic children from alcoholic homes, the majority are so busy looking
good, so busy people-pleasing, that they are overlooked and ignored. In
addition to the “acting-out” or delinquent child, most children adopt one
or a combination of the following three roles: the responsible one, the
adjuster, and the placater.
The “responsible one” is usually the first-born and often the only
child. This child’s behavior is organized around the principle, “In the midst
of chaos. I’ll do it and take care of it.” This is the child who begins to
pick up responsibilities left behind by a trail of alcoholism and co
alcoholism. These children typically are the marvel of the neighborhoodup very early, to bed very late and, in between, doing everything that needs
to be done to run the household. Mature and reliable beyond their years,
these children will set their own alarm clocks for the morning, get their
younger sisters and brothers up, and make sure that the other children
get breakfast. They may even be the ones who are in charge of getting
their parents up for work. They are the children who will come home,
fix dinner, and then do laundry. They are like the child Black described
who had seven sheets of paper along the wall in her room outlining her
duties every hour of the day, including one specific hour to relax and play.
The child was so responsible that, amid everything else, she also knew
she was a child and should play. So that was scheduled in, too. This is
a child who does very well in school, and does not come to anybody’s
attention as having problems. In fact, these children are often seen as very
good, very well-adjusted. This might be the teenager who stays after class
with her English teacher to help grade papers, who helps other children
with projects during class hours, who hands in her paper early. This ac
complishes several goals. Not only does the child represent the family
positively to the community, she also acquires a sense of stability and control
in one area of her life.
The second role is one Black refers to as “the adjuster." The ad
juster’s guiding thought is, “In the midst of chaos. I'll ignore it." For
example, this is the child who seems impervious to the effects of the
24
environment, and he or she adjusts or adapts by detaching. This is the
child who sits at the dinner table, watches his mother fall from her seat
and seems not to notice, continuing to eat without missing a single bite.
This child can sit in a room watching TV while there is screaming going
on and continue with whatever he or she is doing no matter what is hap
pening, apparently oblivious to the environment. The neighbors or the
parents might say, “How wonderful that Aaron doesn’t seem to be affected
by the problems at home.” Or the teacher might say, “Aaron? Who is
Aaron? Oh! He is the quiet kid who sits in the back of the room and never
says anything.” These children can go through many situations, even an
entire school year, and not be noticed. They adjust so well; they make
so little noise that it is easy to completely miss them. These are the children
who will go along with any and every suggestion because they seem
unwilling or incapable of making decisions. They will shrug their shoulders
and say. “It doesn’t matter,” since they have no sense of their own needs.
Somewhere along the line they lose that sense of power and self through
a belief that they cannot affect their environment or their own lives.
The third role Black calls “the placater.” The placater’s guiding prin
ciple is, “In the midst of chaos, I’ll fix it and make it better.” What placaters
fix are people’s feelings, worries, troubles. They learn to be so sensitive
and perceptive to what is happening that they can walk into a room, and
without even consciously realizing it, figure out just what the level of ten
sion is, who is fighting with whom, and whether it is safe or dangerous.
And reflexively they begin to diffuse whatever tension is in the room.
Placaters are excellent conflict resolvers and negotiators. They work hard
at taking care of everyone’s feelings and needs—everyone’s except their
own. Placaters are typically their parents’ marriage counselors at age five.
They seem to have been born with a master’s degree in social work. When
mom and dad are fighting, the placater does something to reduce the ten
sion. When dad comes home from a hard day. this child might meet her
father at the door, take his hand and lead him to his favorite chair as she
quickly explains. “Mama’s not feeling well. She’s upstairs lying down.
Dinner's in the oven. Don’t worry about anything. She’ll be just fine later;
so let’s just go ahead and eat.” At school they are Mr. or Ms. Congeniality.
Often among the most popular kids in the class, they seldom have an enemy
in the world because they are continually pleasing, pleasing, pleasing. The
only thing that you might notice is that at least a dozen times each day
they say. “Excuse me! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do that.” They even
apologize for apologizing.
I
25
RECOVERY
i
i
i
Wegscheider Cruse describes the adjustmerw^'niad^by children of
alcoholics from a different vantage point.53 She ii^k4if^4^erms for
some of the same roles and includes a fourth one. ^he^Ql^eSt daughter
or son usually assumes the role of the “hero.” The hero provides self
worth for the family with hard work, success, and achievement. He or
she will show everyone that the family is all right. The hero will make
up for the family’s weakness. He or she is admired and respected, but
feels like a failure and inadequate. The hero is similar to Black’s respon
sible child. The second child in the family often ends up playing another
role, the “scapegoat,” which corresponds to the delinquent or acting-out
child Black mentions. The scapegoat takes the focus off the family prob
lem of alcoholism by running away, failing, stealing, drinking, or using
other drugs. He or she appears consumed with anger, but the characteristic
feeling is hurt. By the time the third child comes along, a child who makes
no demands is needed. Enter the “lost child” (similar to Black’s “ad
juster”), who contributes by not being a problem. He or she makes no
demands and becomes a loner, preferring privacy to the family’s chaos.
The lost child spends a lot of time in his or her room, playing alone, and
feeling lonely in the role of the forgotten child. This child tends to be shy,
withdrawn, and quiet. There is little expected from him or her.
Wegscheider-Cruse’s last role, the “mascot,” is usually assigned to a
latecomer, most often the youngest child. The mascot is similar to the
placating child, although much more of a clown and a goof-off. Rather
than resolving and helping people to work through their feelings, the mascot
will typically alleviate the tension by doing something funny. His or her
charge is to distract in order to diffuse. The price, however, is high. Im
maturity, hyperactivity, fragility, and emotional impoverishment are the
result.
With these roles in place, the family is destined to repeat its own
history. Each member has his or her own unique function to sustain, rein
forcing the unhealthiness in other members as well as in the family as a
whole. These roles are progressive, too. This means that they become more
rigid and encompassing unless they are interrupted. As we will see, the
responsible child becomes the responsible adult, the adjuster child becomes
the adjuster adult, and the placating child becomes the placating adult.
It is also true that children from other kinds of dysfunctional families
take on similar roles. However, children from alcoholic families have a
rigidity about these roles. Unlike other troubled families, the pervasive
denial in the alcoholic family deters anyone from talking about what is
happening.1 •l3 Because of this rigidity and denial, there is little chance to
change the situation.
SURVIVAL
26
r(
27
RECOVERY
19.1 think I have played every one of those roles. Can a person play
more than one role?
Yes. As your experience has already told you, children can learn more
than one role; they can go through the roles sequentially and sometimes
they will exchange roles. We have often heard an only child joke about
having to assume all of these different roles at one time or another.
Sometimes, when the hero or the responsible child leaves the home, a child
who had another role—perhaps as the scapegoat—finally gets a chance
to take on the hero role. Children can also trade roles over the years.
20.1 am very successful and seem to have a good life; yet, I feel empty
and unhappy. What is wrong with me?
What is wrong is that you are the child of an alcoholic, but probably
have not yet realized and fully acknowledged the meaning of that experience
or the power of that pain. Like many children of alcoholics, you have
severed the connection between the alcoholism in your family of origin
and the feelings and problems that you are having now. Becoming an adult
and moving away (the “geographic cure”) does not erase what you learned
in that family. The lessons you learned in childhood—for better or worse—
tend to endure. There exists in the present an eternal yesterday.
Maybe you have established a brand new family, a family in which
there is a real opportunity for intimacy, warmth, trust, and caring. But,
unfortunately, all you can see and expect—without realizing it—is another
war zone. Reacting out of reflex, you respond to the current situation as
if it were your childhood family. You often feel anxious and worried, and
you try to control the situation as if it, too, were volatile. Your current
perceptions are contaminated by your perceptions of the past; and your
perceptions of the past have taught you to be very wary of warmth, car
ing, trust, freedom, choice, negotiation, give and take. It is no surprise
that even in the midst of plenty, many adult children continue to starve.
Or you may find that long-term intimate relationships are not possible for
you. One after another, relationships become troubled and come to an end.
Without a relationship, the child of an alcoholic often feels frightened and
empty. However, while involved in a relationship, he or she feels mistrustful
and obsessed with it. Children of alcoholics often place themselves in situa
tions in which they feel they cannot win.
Often the adaptive behaviors children of alcoholics learn at home help
them become professionally successful adults. For example, they have
learned how to take responsibility, how to control, how not to be spon
taneous, and to put up a front of bravado—or whatever is needed for the
situation. They have learned to read people. Some of those skills can
enhance their careers. Indeed, these skills may even predict their career
field. But these are also the same skills that can keep them feeling unhappy
inside and uncomfortable in their intimate relationships. While they have
learned the hows and whens of control and responsibility, they do not know
the hows and whens of letting go and surrendering.
Even though adult children of alcoholics may have married very car
ing persons, set up a household, and started a family, they may still find
that they do nof fully trust and fully share. They are still separate and empty,
isolating themselves even in that situation. They might be aware of not
having any real, objective reason not to trust. Yet, they get caught up in
the feelings of mistrust, guilt, and anxiety that rapidly follow. If they many
someone who is an alcoholic or who comes from an alcoholic family, the
problems are potentially compounded, because now we have two people
living together who do not trust, do not talk, do not feel. They also do
not necessarily know why they feel empty and unhappy, although they
look successful to other people and seem to have a good life. Too often
they begin to feel that there must be something really wrong with them,
that they must be bad, sick or crazy.
21. What needs to happen in the survival stage so that adult children
of alcoholics can begin their recovery from the effects of parental
alcoholism?
The first thing children of alcoholics need at this stage is awareness.
Becoming aware that something is not working becomes the doorway to
change Children of alcoholics need to be aware that, as a result o com
ing from a family in which one or more parents are alcoholic, they have
certain biological and psychological vulnerabilities. Things are not quite
right, and this stems from the alcoholism in their childhood families.
y
need to make that connection.
Such awareness may come to people when they pick up a newspaper
and suddenly see an article about alcoholism or children of a1^
Or
Or, they might Find
find out
out about
about aa seminar,
seminar, or a workshop, or a class called
28
recovery
‘•Adult Children of Alcoholics.” They might be browsing through a
JI
'id nick up a book about children of alcoholics. They m.ght
I anders orPSOme local columnist who mentions that children
1 holies are affected by alcoholism in the family. Or they might be
XXoZ “ a fnend who »,s. ■•He,, toe s •
»«'”S
!
4
Emergent Awareness
men on children of alcoholics. Why don'l we go?" In other words.^some
rt of “intervention” needs to occur. Thts intervention becomes a
springboard for the next stage of their recovery, which we call emergent
awareness.
22. What is emergent awareness?
physiological, and genetic vu nera i
emergent awareness
to^ —gtong b. to.
,db ml„
tercXS^^
“ Arson's
““ pr0,'‘‘“ n™
®
23. What happens as a result of an intervention?
a landscape Pre"“s'’
!£Xa undcrsLd.He, Hop.
something is wrong with lit
y
^rnvides the light the space,
emerges. Clarity seems possib e. nterven
Q
in v/hen children
XZ2-;TW « "»>»”8“
bian
community.
However,
we recognize and label themselves
as such,
children
of alcoholics
of all ages
themse
and shame that is the
They no longer maintain the shroud of secrecy
-
I
r
30
RECOVERY
hallmark of an alcoholic family. By coming out children of alcoholics
explicitly acknowledge the vulnerabilities resulting from parental
alcoholism.
Initially, coming out is a personal acknowledgment. For example, while
reading this guide, you may be making connections between the written
words and your personal experiences. Later, when you are ready, and
there is an appropriate opportunity, it is important to share what has been
learned. This “public” statement—perhaps made to a friend, perhaps ex
pressed by attending a class for children of alcoholics—is a second and
very powerful step. When this sharing is done with other adult children
of alcoholics, a wonderful discovery is made— You are not alone!
Often the person raised by alcoholic parents thinks that his or her story
is so unique, so totally different that nobody else could have experienced
it. One of the things that we have noted in our classes as we describe the
typical experiences of children of alcoholics is that people begin to feel
as though we already know them, as though somehow we had told their
personal life stories. When adult children are around other adult children
and listen to their stories, their jaws drop and their eyes widen. They realize,
often for the first time, that they are really not as alone, as different, as
bad, as sick or as crazy as they thought. What a liberating experience!
The power of this awareness is remarkable. It is this awareness that releases
energy and allows the unfolding of the subsequent stages. It precipitates
the end of suffering without meaning and the beginning of awareness that
there really is a reason why you feel the way you do.
24. What feelings follow coming out?
We have just described the breaking down of the isolation from which
children of alcoholics suffer. One of the main messages the child of an
alcoholic gets at home is, “There is nothing wrong here, and don’t you
dare tell anyone about it!” So children of alcoholics build walls that separate
them from their own experience as well as from other people. As these
walls crumble in emergent awareness, there is an initial relief and excite
ment. Often there is also a desire to share what is happening. Then
something else may begin to develop. Shortly after acknowledging that
a parent is alcoholic, adult children may begin to feel bad. They begin
to feel guilty. They feel as though they have betrayed the family secret
and, therefore, the family itself. In reality, they have simply stopped col
luding with the family on the issue of alcoholism.
EMERGENT AWARENESS
31
Coming out, which is so profoundly essential to the recovery pro
cess, is in many ways a declaration of independence. It allows the adult
child to begin an emotional separation from the family of origin and the
family illness. Physical separation may have occurred through a geographic
move or a death, but emotional separation inevitably comes late, comes
slowly, and comes with difficulty. Frequently, a sense of violation and
guilt signals this important transition.
Other feelings that can soon follow are grief and anger. An awareness
grows that not only was much missing in childhood, and many of their
needs were unmet, but also that they deserved better care. What occurs
is not unlike mourning—a mourning for a lost childhood. As recovery pro
gresses, the belief that adult children of alcoholics did deserve more will
begin to infuse all aspects of their lives. At first, this is a foreign feeling.
It may be upsetting and even frightening. It may cause the adult child of
an alcoholic to think of himself or herself as “selfish,” or “uppity.
As adult children become increasingly aware of having been cheated
out of their childhood, a wave of anger is likely to ensue. The adult child
may want to be forgiving, but will still feel angry. Sometimes the anger
is directed not at the alcoholic, but at the sober parent—the parent who
seemingly should have known better and should have protected the child.
Or, anger may surface towards relatives or neighbors. As one man stated
through his tears, “They saw what was happening. They knew how I was
being treated. But they didn’t do a thing!
Soon all kinds of feelings begin to pour out as the adult child makes
more and more connections. A rush of anxiety, sometimes bordering on
terror, is not uncommon. You have probably had the experience of walk
ing into bright sunshine after being in a darkened room. Initially, the in
tensity of the glare is so bright that it is painful. It takes a moment for
the eyes to adjust. Gradually, things begin to clear up and become
recognizable. Similarly, when you remove the lid from a pot of boiling
water, pressure and steam are released. When adult children of alcoholics
release their pent up feelings, the experience may be equally intense. A
flood of powerful feelings can be frightening. Children of alcoholics,
especially, are taught to fear such strong emotions. These early feelings,
however frightening, will be useful later as a reference point from which
to gauge progress. And, feelings do change—that is their nature. They
will not always be so intense or overwhelming. Remind yourself also that
feelings are not the same as behavior. If every thought or feeling were
equal to action, we would all be in trouble.
EMERGENT AWARENESS
32
The experience of fear or anxiety at this point is a clear signal that
you are beginning to allow yourself to experience long-hidden emotions.
This is absolutely necessary for recovery.
I
25. What are some of the pitfalls at this stage?
!
33
RECOVERY
There are common pitfalls we see over and over. It helps to be
forewarned so that when they occur, recovering adult children can negotiate
them successfully. What often initially occurs is an urgency to share their
new learnings with immediate family members. Many want to rush home,
call up siblings or write a letter to every family member saying, “Guess
what I found out?’’ Much to their surprise and pain, they often discover
that others do not want to hear it. They may find a door slammed in their
face, a cold reception, or no acknowledgment at all. As we have men
tioned earlier, it is not at all uncommon for one sibling to say to the other,
“What alcoholism? What are you talking about? Don’t say that about our
family! There’s no alcoholism here. What’s the matter with you?*’
We suggest that you be thoughtful and move at a slow pace. Do not
rush forward hoping to be the salvation of the family. When we describe
the core issues adult children face, we will talk about the urge to do
everything or nothing, and the need to take care of or rescue other peo
ple. This is one of the first points in the recovery process where the child
of an alcoholic has the opportunity to practice a new behavior and to in
itially savor his or her emergent awareness as a personal gift. It will be
much more rewarding to share coming out with a receptive group of friends
or other children of alcoholics who are experiencing a similar awareness
than to try to force changes on unwilling family members.
Another pitfall which many adult children of alcoholics experience
is a tendency to attribute either all or none of life’s troubles to parental
alcoholism. Neither extreme is helpful. We knew one man who used his
emergent awareness as an excuse for every problem he had, including polio.
Another woman, still deeply caught in her own emergent guilt, could not
allow herself the comfort of the adult child of alcoholic label; she would
not “use that as an excuse.’’ What she could not see was that while she
was not responsible for being a child of an alcoholic, she was responsible
for doing something about her recovery.
A related problem that children of alcoholics frequently face is lack
of patience. Armed with their new found awareness, they immediately
assume they should be cured. They believe they should become perfect.
They often expect to stop experiencing pain, or to stop repeating their co
alcoholic or para-alcoholic behaviors. If you find yourself at this stage,
be generous with yourself. Allow yourself to continue to make mistakes,
use them as opportunities to gather more information about yourself For
example if you let someone treat you badly while you say nothing (on y
to seethe’afterward), congratulate yourself for recognizing what happen^Give yourself permission to avoid that person in the future or plan how
you would like to handle it next time. Consider it as an area where you
will have lots of chances to learn.
With all the new energy and motivation, as well as the tendency to
want to fix things today-if not yesterday-we again urge you to slow down,
to take your time. Even in reading this book you can practice taking your
time. Learning is much more powerful and lasting when it1S sPre^
over time. You might decide that this is a good time to put the
^wn
to disconnect, to take a walk, or to do something different. The. plan you
might be making to improve yourself all at once can wait a while. Before
you go on reading, take a slow, deep breath and think about how far you
have8come. As you go forward, remind yourself to take time out to con
gratulate yourself on the distance already covered.
26. What is the best way to take care of myself at this stage?
First, you need to truly accept that it is legitimate; to take care of
making
vourself. You must take care yourself. You are in
in transition,
tra
changes, adding to your store of knowledge. Some thoughts and feelings
that you have not experienced for a long time might be coming into you
awareness. This is a vulnerable time. Do not deny this; you have done
that long enough. Taking care of yourself might involve taking breaks,
moving slowly? as well as thinking over the differences between what you
feel, what you think, and how you behave. Taking care of
means giving yourself permission to set new priorities. Your first priority
right now can be to take care of your recovery—not the recovery o you
family.
Be gentle to yourself. When you make a mistake, recognize it as a
sign thafyou are growing. Success is getting up one more time than you
fJl down Compliment yourself for starting on a new path. Give to yourself
his time to learn. Start with small steps, scheduling activities and time
with people who nourish you. Begin to s^ro^dt>'0Ur;2,W“havPeb°eP ae
can understand and who care about you. That in itself
y
behavior. Think about who is being responsive and supportive as you go
EMERGENT AWARENESS
34
35
RECOVERY
through your emerging awareness. This is really easier than it might sound.
All you have to do is to just mention, for example, that you are taking
a class or reading a book about adult children of alcoholics. Then simply
pause and observe. Notice how the other person deals with your state
ment; notice how he or she responds to you. Notice, too, how you feel
afterwards. If you feel diminished, foolish, or bad, you have learned
something very valuable about your interaction with that person. You have
learned that this person is not supportive of what is happening to you right
now If, on the other hand, the result of sharing some of your experiences
with someone else is that you feel a bit better about yourself, a bit safer,
understood and cared about, you might share a little more. Then once again
stop, look, and listen. Notice how you feel. If you feel diminished, or
bad, you may have reached the limit of what you can confide in this per
son.’ If, on the other hand, you still feel comfortable, you can continue
to share your thoughts and feelings.
Another very important way to take care of yourself at this point is
to start listening carefully to yourself. Listen to hear what you need or
want. Many adult children of alcoholics have been systematically taught
to ignore their internal messages. For example, one client we worked with
described how she had been sexually molested as a small child. She had
felt bad and guilty each time it happened. However, because her parents
knew about it and had ignored it, she concluded that there must have been
something wrong with her. After all, if there were something wrong with
the abuse, surely it would have been stopped. Years later, recalling the
experience, she felt confused and numb. She had never been allowed to
respond to her internal messages. Now is the time to begin listening again
to what is going on inside you. Begin to trust yourself again and use your
feelings as a barometer of what is working for you and what is working
against you. You have more resources now than you had as a child. Know
ing yourself better will make a difference now; it could not have then.
■
In Al-Anon you will hear how others have helped themse ves as they have
become more and more aware of their co-alcohohsm and paraalcoholism.30 Al-Anon can be another breath of fresh air for you.
It is important to realize that not all Al-Anon meetings are the same
If your first contact is not satisfying, we suggest that you attend at least
si/other meetings before you draw any conclusions. As with the process
we described for evaluating the support of your friends, begin by sharing
a little bit. Go to one meeting; see how you feel afterwards, a u
honor those feelings. Try again in another situation and see how that feels
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Another major resource at this point in your recovery could be any
workshop, seminar, reading material, or class that gives you more information on adult children of alcoholics, alcoholism, co-alcohohsm, or p
alcoholism. Utilize these various resources knowing that some> of the
formation may not quite fit. Take what is useful and leave the rest.
You may want to consider counseling or psychotherapy You may
find that initially individual psychotherapy, rather than group therapy, can
be very helpful Even if you have had therapy in the past, you. may be
better able to use it now. In the same way that you may have found an
Al-Anon group seek a therapist who is right for you. Interview prospective therapists, preferably over the telephone. That way it may. not cos^
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you anything. It is crucial that the therapist be thorough y familiar with
L ,Jes J aleohol™ and its impae. upon
,« ask may include the following: ■•What ts alcohol,sm? Does „ affect
the family?” “How does alcoholism affect the child in an alcoholic ho
.
“What is Al-Anon and how does it help?” and “Must 1forgiv®J"y-pare
right now to recover?” Listen carefully to obtain the information you ne^
If the answers are unclear, incorrect, or leave you feeling guilty and dumb
for even asking, look upon the therapist with suspicion. Not all therapists
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.
We particularly recommend that you seek a therap’St w o>ca
“SOB with a heart.” That encompasses two charactenstics that we jeg^a
as essential ingredients in any therapeutic relationship. SOB refer to
27. What resources are needed?
In addition to friends who are already in your life, one of the finest
resources is Al-Anon. Patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon
is for the friends and family of the alcoholic. Although there have always
been adult children in Al-Anon, this group is becoming increasingly
recognized as a resource for those whose lives have been affected by a
parent’s alcoholism. Registration of adult children Al-Anon Family Groups
at Al-Anon’s World Service Office has grown rapidly. Al-Anon is a place
to learn what it has been like for other people who have been close to
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qualities to you. The therapist’s responses to your questions, as well as
his or her knowledge and attitudes about alcoholism, are more important
than whether or not the therapist is from an alcoholic family. They are
more important than whether the therapist is a psychoanalyst, or a Jungian,
or a Rogerian, or a Gestaltist.
We also believe you need to become educated: it is important that
you learn about alcoholism34 37 40 52 and its effects on the family.22-54-57 Our
knowledge about alcoholism has been changing rapidly in recent years.
Already, many books written in the 1960s arid even in the 1970s are out
dated. We suggest that you gather whatever current information is available
to you. Books that we think are particularly valuable are listed in Appen
dix A.
However, most important is the cultivation of the attitude that you
are your primary resource. For some that will sound crazy because, at
this point, you may be experiencing confusion, anxiety, and panic. What
you need to know is that these feelings are appropriate and are indeed
indications of what you need and how you should take care of yourself
right now. These feelings contain valuable information and messages; do
not ignore them. As you begin to align yourself with resources outside
of yourself, you can use your feelings as guides. By paying attention to
what happens inside you after your interactions with an individual, you
can measure that person’s level of support for you at this stage of recovery.
Your internal experience is your best guide.
28. How much can I count on other people to be helpful?
You should be prepared for negative comments from others. They
may suggest that you are wasting time, or that you are blaming today on
yesterday. For those of you in Alcoholics Anonymous, this journey can
result in distance from a sponsor or from an A.A. friend with children
of their own. They may not be able to support your emergent awareness.
This can cause confusion and sadness as you continue on your new path.
Recognize the limitations of others and be aware that your journey may
also be scary to others. First and foremost, align yourself with yourself.
You do possess resources within yourself. And remember, as you go for
ward, it is not courage if you are not afraid.
29. How do I deal with my parents at this stage (whether they are dead
or alive, near or far)?
Deal with your parents cautiously, slowly, and thoughtfully if at all.
Again, the primary person to take care of is you—not your parents. As
we pointed out earlier, a common reaction to emergent awareness is want
ing to save your parents from alcoholism and/or co-alcoholism. That is
not your responsibility. This “flight into parental salvation” can be a way
to avoid dealing with your own problems. Do not rush to share informa
tion or literature with your parents. If they learn about your experiences
and education, do not expect them to be happy for you. Do not expect
them to acknowledge what you are doing or that there is alcoholism in
the family. Even if they acknowledge its presence, they might still deny
its effects.
You might feel that these comments do not apply to you and that is
fine. Everything we have said is true, except when it is not true! If your
overriding experience tells you that you need to deal with your parents
now, do so; but do it in a way that also allows you to take care of yourself.
When they respond to what you tell them, use this as an opportunity to
hear what they say. Understand beforehand, however, that it is not
necessary for them to respond in one certain way for you to be all right;
indeed, they do not have to respond at all. They can be supportive or not;
they can be validating or not. Your recovery is not contingent upon your
parents’ approval or disapproval. Nor is it dependent on their recovery.
If through the normal course of events you find yourself in the com
pany of your parents and other family members, use it as an opportunity
to gather information about yourself. Watch yourself to see how you in
teract. Pay close attention to your feelings and your responses to other
family members. This may be a good time to begin keeping a journal.
This may be the time to list your different feelings. This may be a time
to watch, to listen, to attend—not to judge, evaluate, or change.
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30. Is it necessary to deal with the past and dredge up all that pain?
a
There is an old proverb which says, “The truth will make you free,
but first it will make you miserable.” So, yes, it really is necessary, and
it really is safe to dethrone the tyranny of your past. No pain is so
devastating as the pain a person refuses to face, and no suffering is so
lasting as the suffering left unacknowledged.’112 Hidden pain becomes a
tyrant determining where you can go, what you can do, and when you
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are comfortable. As a child, it may have been necessary to bury certain
traumatizing experiences. If a child is being abused emotionally, physically,
or sexually and there is no one to turn to for help, she or he might think,
“It’s not really that bad. It’s no big deal. In fact, it doesn’t even bother
me that much.’’ Such denial can allow children to live through horrors |
which, if fully comprehended, might be devastating. To bury the pain was
to ensure survival as a child.
As an adult, however, far more resources are available, including the
ability to simply get out of a situation. Adults can pack their bags and
leave. Adult children of alcoholics have other people to turn to. They can
find a therapist, call the police, or ask a friend for help. Adults also have
more emotional resources. They now know for a fact that they can sur
vive. To be reading this book means you made it. You have survived.
You are in a position to fully learn the meaning and significance of your
early experiences-how they are still affecting you today. As an adult,
you can handle the challenge of facing the past and freeing yourself from
its bondage. To continue to repress the pain is to continue to tell yourself
that you are too helpless to deal with it. This in itself is a crippling belief.
Denial of pain takes great energy and requires the person to bankrupt
himself maintaining his fears.49
As children, many of the conclusions we draw are subverbal and im
plicit, based upon the realities of a child’s world. When these beliefs are
retained into adulthood, they continue to affect us until we have the op
portunity to examine and update them in the light of the adult’s reality.
Until that time, we are doomed to repeat past behavior—even though it
is no longer appropriate or functional.
For example, one of our clients continually went through difficult rela
tionships with men. It was not until her third divorce that she began to
realize that a pattern was repeating itself. She would fall wildly in love
with a man who in turn would fall wildly in love with her. After a brief .
period of time they would become lovers or spouses. Some time later she
would begin to notice his dependency—either on her, or on alcohol, or
both. She would begin to feel overwhelmed, smothered, then resentful.
There would follow a loss of respect and, ultimately, a need to get away.
Seeing it happen over and over helped her realize that, somehow, she must
be playing a part in these encores. As she floundered about, going from
therapist to therapist, workshop to workshop, she ran across an article
about adult children of alcoholics. Something connected. As she moved
through the stages of recovery, she began to see the connection between
her adult relationships with men and her early relationship with her father.
39
An alcoholic and a gambler, he would often disappear and rarely was
available when she needed him. As an adult, without any conscious in
tent, she had devised the foolproof way to avoid being abandoned again.
Unfortunately, it did not work very well. Once it was clear the man she
chose was unable to function adequately on his own, she lost respect, and
left him-but again felt alone and lost just like she did when she was a child.
Another majorpiece of information to be gained from examining
childhood memories in the clearer light of an adult perspective is learning
that it was the parents, not the children, who were responsible for the in
consistency and unpredictability in family life. The chaos in your family
was not your fault. It was not because of who you were. It did not happen
because you were bad, or because you were not good enough, or because
there was something wrong with you. It happened because of a disease
alcoholism. It was not even a question of whether or not your parents loved
you- most likely they did. But because of the sicknesses of alcoho ism
and co-alcoholism, that love could not be expressed in a consistent, healthy,
and nurturing way. If your parents sometimes accused you of causing the
problems, it was because they themselves were at a loss to understand
why everything was falling apart, why they were behaving the way they
were, or why they were drinking the way they were. By beginning to
gradually acknowledge your early painful experiences, you will be able,
perhaps for the first time, to find meaning for all those feelings. Then
you can begin to comfort yourself, knowing that you were not responsi
ble for what happened.
If you find yourself experiencing fear as you read this chapter, it may
be because you really are making a decision to change. Change—even
positive change-is frightening. You may worry that delving into the past
will overwhelm you or that you will get stuck in the pain and not be able
to move. We invent ways to hide from ourselves when we lack the courage
to grieve.49 Yet, there are safe and effective ways to go back and deal
with the experiences that adult children of alcoholics have endured_They
do not precipitate the profound devastation that is often feared To the
contrary, by going back and facing what happened, tremendous relief and
freedom can be gained as you realize you are no longer chained to the
pain of your past.
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31. I don’t remember much from my childhood. Is that common?
In our experience almost three out of four adult chiidren of alcoholics
report significant memory losses that extend over years of childhood. 1 his
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does not mean that memories were not recorded. It means that some kind
of repression has occurred. The subconscious mind will do what it needs
to do to protect you, to ensure your survival. We have found that in ap
propriate and safe settings, adult children begin to remember more and
more of what happened to them as they become freer and freer from fear
and denial. In fact, you may already have begun experiencing this spon
taneous access to previously lost memories as you have been reading. It
would not be surprising if a number of specific instances have been recalled
that you have not thought of in years. This is a natural part of the recovery
process.
EMERGENT A WARENESS
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32. Why is it important to acknowledge the alcoholism in my family?
History teaches us that if we do not acknowledge our past, we are
likely to repeat it. The shocking statistics for adult children of alcoholics
are that over half of them become alcoholic. Your alcoholic parents are
often themselves adult children of alcoholics. We invite you to break this
generational cycle by beginning to understand it. Children of alcoholics
grow up with large parts of themselves walled off in darkness, unavailable
tor learning or for enjoying. Until those walls are removed, life cannot
be fully experienced. And until those parts of yourself and your life are
acknowledged, you will not know who you truly are. Acknowledgment
of your past experience is a self-validation process essential to understand
ing and accepting yourself. It is time that there be meaning to the suffer
ing you have endured. The truth about growing up with alcoholism will
set you free. Without it there can be no daylight to illuminate your ex
periences. Without that illumination there can be no coming out. Without
coming out and the experience of emergent awareness, there cannot be
that shock of recognition and release of energy that will enable you to
deal with core issues in recovery.
li
You picked up this book because something has not been quite right
for you. So you started an exploration. You are already a seeker, aware
to some degree that it is important to begin acknowledging what has hap
pened to you. Recognition of familial alcoholism is the first step in that
process. As long as adult children deny their exposure to alcoholism, they
will tend to deny other aspects of themselves and the reality around them.
They will not be able to accept the wide variety of emotions, beliefs, at
titudes, or differences in other people. As long as children of alcoholics
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deny the pain and the needs resulting from being parented by an alcoholic
and co-alcoholic, they will be unable to utilize all the resources and op
portunities available for taking care of themselves in the present.
It is as if there is a small, scared, and abandoned child inside who
has been untended for years. He or she huddles in a corner, weeping but
trying not to disturb anyone, despairing of ever being taken up and held.
Acknowledging the alcoholism is to acknowledge the existence and suf
fering of this child. Only then can we take our own childhood self into
our arms, and give ourselves the love, parenting, tenderness, and con
sideration that we were denied in our early years and so profoundly need
today. As a passage in An Unknown Woman describes it,
. .there is
a little girl, kept a dwarf for 30 years by a need that has only to be said
out loud to be discarded. I grew up all around it, festering around a core
that I didn’t know existed.”35
Once your acknowledgment of parental alcoholism has begun, once
coming out has occurred, you are free to move forward. You can begin
looking at the effects your childhood experiences have had on your adult
life. Perhaps for the first time painful adult experiences will begin to make
sense in the light of your childhood. Here is where you can begin to iden
tify certain issues that you have continually encountered without satisfac
tory resolution. We have found that there are specific, identifiable, and
common problem areas that result from being raised in an alcoholic fami
ly. Recognizing these common core issues becomes the foundation for the
next step in the recovery process.
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33. What happens to children of alcoholics as they grow up?
Children learn what they are taught. So children of alcoholics enter
adulthood coping with life in the same ways which proved to be of value
to them as children. They take their childhood roles, survival strategies,
and rules with them into adulthood. Later, they discover that what worked
in a dysfunctional, alcoholic childhood home does not serve them well
in adult life. But there is a curious thing about us human beings. We tend
to do the same things over and over again even when our behavior no
longer pays off. The roles and rules of childhood, which once brought
a semblance of safety and sanity, now bring little of either. As with the
alcoholism of the parents, the roles and rules of childhood are progressive
and can encase the adult child in rigid, stereotypical behaviors.
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34. In what ways do childhood roles and rules later work against
adult children of alcoholics?
In adulthood, overly responsible children become overly responsible
adults. They tend to be overly serious, overly self-reliant, unable to trust,
unable to cooperate, and unable to relax. They find it difficult to let things
be. They always need to be in control and to be in charge. These respon
sible adults also find that the sense of responsibility and control weighs
very heavily upon them. Sometimes they shed this burden of responsibili
ty by taking a drink. Under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, they
find temporary comfort and peace. They can finally let up and let go of
the pressure.
When “adjuster” children grow up, they become “adjuster” adults.
Like adjuster children, they pride themselves on being flexible. Few things
seem to bother them. They do, however, continue to avoid taking charge
and cannot make decisions easily. They have little sense of direction, choice,
or power—except, of course, when they drink. Drinking or using other
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drugs gives them a sense of strength. Finding solace in the bottle, they
no longer feel detached. Frequently, they marry responsible adults who
are only too eager to provide the direction adjusters desperately want and
to assume control where adjusters feel incapable.
“Placater” children grow up taking care of others while ignoring their
own needs. With the skills they have learned—to be sensitive, to be able
to soothe—they become “people helpers.” When we look around at the
health professions, we find many adult children of alcoholics. Placaters
in their childhood, they grow up to become psychologists, psychiatrists,
social workers, or nurses. They find it very difficult to talk about themselves
or express concern about themselves—except when they drink. Using
alcohol helps them feel less constrained. It increases their self-esteem and
lets them forget about the needs of others—for a while, at least.
The rules of childhood—don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel—often
become the laws of adulthood. Accordingly, adult children of alcoholics
typically do not share their innermost feelings, not even with those closest
to them. They have little faith in the value of talking, and situations in
volving emotion make them uncomfortable. Although they seldom fully
trust anyone, they can be excessively and inappropriately loyal.58 The in
junctions of the past invade the present. Adult children of alcoholics re
main bound by unspoken canons, which invisibly mandate their current
behaviors. Because denial is so pervasive, they seldom look beyond the
present to the roots of their difficulties.
The drinking behavior of adult children of alcoholics often becomes
a shock to them and a puzzle to others. After some horrible incident, an
alcoholic may say to his wife, with tears in his eyes and sincerity in his
voice, “That’s it! I’ll never drink again.” Similarly, the adult child of
an alcoholic declares with honesty and great determination, “It will never
happen to me! I will never drink like that.” He or she really means it,
too; yet may become alcoholic. The theme of “oh, poor me” becomes
“oh, pour me a drink.”
As they limp into adulthood, adult children of alcoholics begin to ex
perience a loneliness and a sense that things are not right. Their internal
dialogue centers around feelings of inadequacy. The thought “I’m not good
enough” is frequently in their mindsv They have learned to discount the
input from their own senses and often do not know what is happening in
side them. They have been taught that feelings can be very dangerous.
They know how to disconnect from almost anything or anyone, including
themselves. Life does not make much sense to them.
CORE ISSUES
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35. What are the main problems of adult children of alcoholics?
This is an interesting question because at first blush many adult children
of alcoholics seem to have it all together. Most of them look good, dress
well, appear successful, and are admired. Adept at pleasing, conforming
and smiling, many seem “picture-book perfect.” We have discovered,
for example, that when new members come into our psychotherapy groups
they think, “Oh my God, what am I doing here? I don’t fit in; all these
people are so together!” Part way through that first or second session,
when they gather the courage to say this out loud, at least one group member
says, “You looked so good, I was wondering why you came.” It is a case
of comparing one’s insides to others’ outsides—a very unfair comparison.
Adult children can appear to be so well adjusted that they do not seem
to need help. After all, they are survivors. You can see why the problems
faced by adult children of alcoholics may have been overlooked for so
long. However, those who work with alcoholic families agree almost
unanimously that there are no unaffected bystanders.7-28-53-57 Everyone in
an alcoholic family incurs some kind of physical, emotional and spiritual
damage. It might be as early as the first three months of pregnancy when
fetal alcohol syndrome can develop if the mother drinks too much.17 It
can be even earlier, at conception, when genetic vulnerabilities or suscep
tibilities to alcoholism may occur.2748- Indeed, statistics indicate the
greatest danger to adult children of alcoholics is their own alcoholism.
Fifty to sixty percent of children raised in an alcoholic family will become
alcoholic themselves.8 They are also at high risk of marrying someone
who is, or will become, alcoholic or shows other addictive behaviors—
and not just once, but sometimes three or four times.
According to the National Association for Children of Alcoholics, adult
children of alcoholics have frequently been victims of incest, child neglect,
and other forms of violence and exploitation.44 They are prone to learn
ing disabilities, attention deficit disorders, anxiety, attempted and com
pleted suicides, eating disorders, and compulsive achievement. A dispropor
tionate number of those entering the juvenile justice system, courts, prisons,
and mental health facilities are children of alcoholics, and the majority
of people served by employee assistance programs are adult children of
alcoholics!44
Alcoholism is an equal opportunity destroyer. Everyone in its path
develops problematic patterns of behavior in their personal and social lives
unless they attend to their own recovery. The tragedy is that many adult
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children do not recognize the source of this difficulty. They just feel the
pain and suffer without meaning. They appear in physicians’ offices with
complaints of tension, fatigue, malaise, or other stress-related problems
like migraine headaches, colitis, or ulcers.44 They appear in counselors’
offices, too, where parental alcoholism may be seen as a minor influence,
when, in fact, it is the major influence. Adult children of alcoholics make
up a large percentage of psychotherapists’ caseloads. In their contacts with
mental health professionals, adult children of alcoholics are often
misdiagnosed and unrecognized because their coping style tends to be
approval-seeking and socially acceptable, and they themselves do not
recognize the source of their distress.58
36. What are the most common personal issues with which adult
children of alcoholics struggle?
As we look more closely at these apparently well-functioning in
dividuals, we begin to see a constellation of recurring behavioral patterns.
There are certain personal issues which seem to touch nearly all adult
children of alcoholics. Certain characteristics may even be so pervasive
they appear to be personality traits.
Stephanie Brown and Tim Cermak at the Stanford Alcohol Clinic were
among the first to identify some of these characteristics.1416 Although
their ground breaking work was based on adult children who were in group
psychotherapy, our experience indicates that these issues extend well beyond
those who seek treatment.
The first and most central issue they describe is the issue of control.
Control is the one word that most characterizes the interactions of adult
children of alcoholics. A major source of anxiety, conflicts over control
are pervasive. Denial, suppression, and repression are used in attempts
to control the outward expression as well as inner awareness of thoughts,
feelings and behaviors. The fear of being “out of control’’ is almost univer
sal, and strong feelings are experienced as being out of control. Sometimes
called “hypervigilant, ” adult children of alcoholics automatically scan the
environment for cues, wanting to know what is in front, behind, to the
left and to the right of them at all times.
The second issue Brown and Cermak identify is trust or, more precise
ly, distrust—a distrust of others as well as of self. It is not difficult to under
stand how this distrust arises. Repeatedly told to ignore the obvious, children
CORE ISSUES
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of alcoholics learn to distrust the wisdom of their own organism, to distrust
what their own senses tell them. Father is asleep on the garage floor in
his three-piece suit, or mother’s head falls into a plate of spaghetti, and
everyone who is important is saying “nothing is wrong.” This leaves the
children misinformed, puzzled, and bewildered! Their stomachs may hurt,
their hearts may race, and the people on whom they are most dependent
for survival are saying, “Don’t worry, no big deal, everything is all right.”
This leads to a third issue Brown and Cermak describe: the avoidance
of feelings and the fundamental belief that feelings are wrong, bad, and
scary. In the alcoholic family the child’s expression of feelings is typically
met with censure, disapproval, anger, and rejection. Often the child is
told explicitly, “Don’t you dare say that to me; don’t even think it!” or
“Don’t upset your mother. You have to be more understanding.” In other
words, children of alcoholics aic taught very early that it is necessary to
hide their feelings. They soon learn not to even have any feelings. They
learn to repress, deny, or minimize them. What good are they? They just
cause trouble.
As if that is not enough, children of alcoholics also see how feelings
can lead directly to action. When a parent is drunk, they see feelings that
are unchecked because the first effect of alcohol is disinhibition and a loss
of judgment. Imagine children at five, six, or even ten, living in a situa
tion where they have an alcoholic parent, perhaps their father. Father comes
home drunk and angry. Before they know it, things are being thrown, people
are being hit. Anger is translated into immediate, destructive actions. In
this way, feelings become associated with actions. The very notion, the
very idea of having a strong feeling is equated with acting out that feel
ing. Instead of looking at feelings as a potential impetus to behavior,
children of alcoholics see feelings as a direct immediate cause of behavior.
In the midst of all this chaos and confusion, they may want to run to their
parents, throw their arms around them and weep, but they know that it
would not be safe. They cannot even talk about what happened! They know
that in order to live in this family—and a five or even ten-year-old cannot
say, “To heck with this! I’m going to pack my bags and find another family
to live with,”—they must ignore their feelings. Shock, anger, terror, or
guilt are so scary, so dangerous, so unacceptable, that the best way to
deal with them is just not to acknowledge them. Instead, they must be
buried deep inside.
Compounding all this is the self-centeredness of young children. They
see themselves as the center of the universe. Imagine what would happen
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if a parent is drunk and abusive and the child wishes that something would
happen to him or her. Then, for some reason, something does happen.
With their magical thinking, children automatically and unconsciously
assume their thoughts and feelings are so powerful they must have caused
that to happen. A child might lie in bed at night hearing the screams or
arguing of his parents and think to himself, “I wish Daddy would go away;
I wish he would die.” When eventually the alcoholic parent has an acci
dent, goes to the hospital, or moves out, the child readily concludes, ‘ It
is my fault; I wished it!” All of this is “forgotten” by the adult child.
Thinking back, he or she does not remember that this was somewhere at
the beginning of his extreme difficulty with feelings and guilt.
It is also the beginning of another issue that Brown and Cermak
describe—namely, over-responsibility. Children come to believe they are
responsible for what is happening in the family. After all, it is not uncom
mon for parents to say, “If you hadn’t talked back like that, or if you
hadn’t got in trouble at school today, then I wouldn t need a drink tonight.
This just feeds that normal capacity for self-centeredness. Even in the
' absence of physical or sexual abuse, and even when childhood is not overtly
traumatic, the child may still desperately and continuously feel respons
ible and try to remove the necessity for the parent's drinking by being
' a model child. He may be at the beck and call of the parents, serving as
the family counselor at the age of five or as the family chauffeur at the
age of twenty-five. Quite a load for anybody to bear, particularly a child.
Children do not know that the alcoholic drinks because he or she has lost
the choice to drink. Alcoholics do not drink because they have problems.
If that were true, we would all be alcoholics. Alcoholics drink because
they cannot stop.3740
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BecauseoFthese childhood experiences, adult children of alcoholics
grow up believing they are responsible for other’s emotions and actions.
We frequently see this, especially in group therapy. If someone is angry,
other members of the group immediately assume it is because of something
they did. Similarly, if a group member is absent, others believe it is because
of something they said.
The last issue that Brown and Cermak talk about is the tendency of
adult children to ignore their own needs. It is easy to see how that would
happen to children raised in a family in which their needs are typically
secondary to alcoholism. The family disease gets first billing. It has to
be checked out before anything else in the family gets taken care of. The
children continually wonder: “Is daddy drunk? If daddy s drunk, then I d
better not tell him what happened today.” “Is mommy drinking again?
If she’s drinking. I’d better not tell her about the parent/teacher conferen«
tonight because she’ll just get mad.” One particularly aware adult child
with whom we worked expressed it this way: “My feelings were not im
portant When a kid on the street said something mean to me and I felt
lousv all I really wanted was to crawl up on my mom’s lap, put my head
on her shoulder, and ask her to hold me for a while. But if mom was; si
ting at the dining room table with a drink in her hand, I knew I d better
find another way to be consoled. She couldn’t hold a drink in one hand
and me in the other. I felt so bad, so disappointed, that! decided I d d
really need to be held at all. When I came to believe that I couldn_t trust
anybody to be there to hold me, I decided I wouldn’t let anybody hold me.
Adult children may find that acknowledging their personal needs leads
them to feel guilty, because they have learned to regard their needs as
an imposition on others. They also frequently have a sense that if they
ask for something, the other person now knows somethmg•dangerously
important about them. To have needs is to be vulnerable and n the past
it certainly did not pay to be vulnerable. If they do not feel gull y or
vulnerable, they may feel dependent, less capable, or obligated to the person
who met their needs. These are all emotions contrary to feeling in con
trol Therefore, personal needs had best be avoided, ignored, or denied.
37. What other personal issues might result?
In addition to the five central issues that brown aim
these issues in adult children who are in psychotherapy as well as w
those who have come to public lectures, classes, and workshops. The m
prominent of these issues is what we refer to as ali-or-none
mg”: that is, the tendency to think, feel, and behave m an all-or-none
way. Everything is black or white-there is no m-between. Things are
either all right or all wrong, and since things are seldom all right,
y
are often all wrong.
,
Like the need to have control, all-or-none functioning pervades^other
issues. For example, adult children of alcoholics approach°f
trust from an all-or-none perspective. Lacking an appropr ate role
model for intimacy in childhood, they have difficulty establishing o
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CORE ISSUES
RECOVERY
maintaining personal relationships as adults. Bouncing back and forth be
tween extremes, they will either trust a person totally and tell their entire
history, or they will distrust so fully that they will not share anything per
sonal. Neither strategy is effective.
All-or-none functioning colors the way adult children deal with feel
ings. As we have already mentioned, adult children of alcoholics tend to
associate feelings with behavior and are, therefore, reluctant to deal with
emotions. If anger is expressed, for example, they are struck by fear or
panic, convinced that violence may follow, or that a relationship will be
severed. In their past, this may have been true.
The all-or-none approach can also result in adult children’s difficulties
in establishing adequate and useful boundaries between themselves and
others. This is particularly true in regard to their parents, where they con
fuse love with need or caretaking. They frequently confuse other feelings,
including intimacy with smothering, spontaneity with irrationality, and
relaxation with depression. This confusion of feeling states further con
tributes to their difficulties with personal boundaries and relationships.
The inability to function in terms of degree invariably predisposes adult
children of alcoholics to failure. Because of the all-or-none approach, they
are not able to utilize information from their environment very well as
experiences are forced to fit their black and white view of the world. This
all-or-none characteristic also obstructs adult children’s ability to take things
one step at a time, to break down a task into smaller and therefore more
manageable steps or pieces.
Like control, all-or-none functioning is a direct outgrowth of childhood
experiences. We often see this extreme black-or-white functioning in
alcoholic families. Many alcoholics, guilty after a drunken episode, ac
cept outrageous behavior from those they feel they have wronged. Then,
when drunk again, they may release the resentment that has built up, ex
pressing anger at everything and everyone. There may be a repeated series
of interactions with a parent who, for example, one day sits you on his
lap, pats you on the head, and with the smell of whiskey on his breath
says, “You’re so wonderful. You’re the perfect child. You make my life
so happy that I don’t know what I would do without you.’’ The next day
that parent has a hangover and is feeling irritable. You come home from
school, the door bangs, and suddenly you have someone screaming at you,
saying that you are a horrible child, that you are the cause of all his prob
lems, and that you never do anything right! In other words you are all
right or you are all wrong; there is no in-between, only extremes. That
is life in an alcoholic home.
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Another issue we have observed consistently is dissociation. Dissocia
tion is the separation or split in the wholeness of an experience—not unlike
an emotional anesthesia. An example is a person who describes a scene
of great pain from her childhood, crying as she talks; yet, when asked
what she is feeling, she will honestly reply, “Nothing.’’ Asked why she
is weeping, she will answer, “I don’t know.’’ She does not connect the
tears, the memory, and the emotion. It is as though a car started forward
as expected, but once moving down the street, the clutch was disengaged
and it continued in neutral. The outward manifestation of dissociation can
be described as “flattened affect,’’ and functions as self-protection.30
Dissociation causes many adult children of alcoholics to look “spaced out’’
or “tranced out.’’ It is as though they are in some kind of fog.
Many adult children of alcoholics describe absolutely horrifying situa
tions or events as though they were normal, everyday affairs. When at
tention is called to the outrageous quality of the events, there is often a
wide-eyed surprised response, “Oh, is that unusual? It happened all the
time at our house!’’ For instance, a client recently described how he would
stand nearby and listen while his folks were fighting—not to eavesdrop,
but to call the police or ambulance when it was needed. He went on to
say his brother had killed himself and now his sister was physically abus
ing their mother. All this was said in a calm voice with a slight smile.
Whatever his feelings might be, he had separated himself from them, as
if the story he was telling had no personal impact.
Another issue we have encountered is the tendency foi children raised
in the chaotic environment of an alcoholic family to become “adrenalin
junkies.’’ Accustomed to frequent crises and emergencies, adult children
of alcoholics may find themselves depressed or anxious when life is stable
and uneventful. It might take years before they recognize that every time
life is calm and relationships with others seem good, they feel uncomfort
able. At this point they often stir things up. With no other goal in life
than to survive from crisis to crisis, to go without a crisis is to go into
withdrawal. It takes another emergency, another adrenalin rush, for them
to feel alive and engaged. As a result, little energy is left over to build
for the future when most of it is spent coping with daily crises.
These issues lead to adult children’s extremely low self-esteem. Their
low self-esteem comes from not trusting themselves, from not knowing
their own feelings. It comes from having an all-or-none way of looking
at things, so they can rarely give themselves credit for what they have
accomplished unless it is perfect. It comes from a childhood in which Jheir
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RECOVERY
needs were subjugated, minimized, or ignored. And it comes from living
in a world of broken promises and the belief that they were somehow
responsible for the problems in their family. Since adult children of
alcoholics have a difficult time seeing themselves as valuable or worthwhile,
they have a difficult time realizing their right to be treated well, to set
limits on what they will and will not do, or what they will and will not
tolerate. All of this adds up to an adult who lacks a sense of personal rights.
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38. In what situations are these issues most noticeable?
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We have observed that there are certain types of situations, certain
events, which consistently trigger the core issues we have been describ
ing. By far the most frequent are those situations requiring trust, warmth,
sharing, spontaneity, flexibility—in short, intimate relationships. This may
be the one area where the child of an alcoholic knows something is wrong.
This is often the area that brings adult children into therapy or leads them
to seek help. They begin to see that over and over in their intimate rela
tionships they run into conflicting feelings or behavior patterns that do
not work. Maybe they have just been through their fourth painful rela
tionship and finally suspect a pattern. They repeatedly align themselves
with people who are unavailable or unsupportive, people who are alcoholic
or addicted to other drugs, or people who are very dependent and needy.
Because of the immediate distress in their intimate relationships, they fre
quently do not bother to mention to a therapist that there is alcoholism
in the family. Even if they do, too often the therapist says, “Tell me
something else about your mother or father,” and discounts the impact
of alcoholism. The adult child may not even be aware of or able to talk
about the alcoholism. As incredible as it may seem, up to 40% of adult
children of alcoholics leave home without acknowledging that their parents
are alcoholic. By now it should be clear why intimate relationships—which
require give and take, surrender of control, an ability to see oneself as
human, as changeable, as fallible, and to accept another person with similar
qualities—are difficult for children of alcoholics.
Other events that act as catalysts to trigger core issues are major tran
sitions in life. These are major life passages in which a person is undergoing
significant changes and encountering new situations which require a
reorganization of patterns from the past. Major life transitions include
changing jobs, moving, birth of a child, a death in the family, getting
CORE ISSUES
53
married, getting divorced, entering adulthood or middle age, starting col
lege, or graduating. All require accommodation to a new environment.
The rigidity inherent in the characteristics that unrecovering children of
alcoholics bring into their adult years makes smooth transitions difficult.
Instead, adult children of alcoholics are often resistant to change and get
“stuck” in old patterns, forgetting that even ink pens have erasers on them
these days!
Yet another kind of trigger is any unexpected event. With no time
to anticipate a situation or prepare a response, adult children of alcoholics
will automatically fall back into their old, habitual behavior patterns
patterns which helped them survive as children but now interfere with their
happiness as adults. They get anxious, shut down, enter a flurry of activity,
or deny what is happening. Similarly, a visit with their family will often
reactivate old responses.
Situations related to a person’s performance will also act as a trigger.
When there is a standard or a performance level to be met, children of
alcoholics worry about their ability to meet that standard. They re
experience their anxiety, their ali-or-nothing thinking ( I m a failure ),
the sense of inadequacy, their guilt, and their lack of self-esteem. Even
if the situation involves a number of people, they might assume full respon
sibility. They believe, “Things aren’t going right at work. It’s my fault.”
If there is an important deadline ahead, they will tell themselves they are
not organized enough even though their performance might be excellent.
If everything is not in perfect order, they must be doing something wrong.
Indeed, the anxiety to perform perfectly may outweigh the importance of
the task. Even trivial tasks may be taken to represent a global statement
on their competence.
These events that commonly occur in a person’s life will frequently
activate the problematic core issues of adult children of alcoholics. It is
clearly understandable that they cause difficulty in light of the early train
ing received in the alcoholic family.
39. Why do I dread holidays?
As holidays approach, adult children of alcoholics tend to have
mounting feelings of anxiety, depression, and confusion. Often, they do
not know why. It is only after they sit down and sort through what holidays
were like when they were kids that they realize more and more clearly
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the kinds of negative experiences that Thanksgiving, Christmas or New
Year’s Eve brought. For many alcoholic families, the holidays provide
an opportunity for an extended binge. Alcoholics have more social per
mission as well as time to drink, and drink, and drink. As they continue
to drink, losing more and more control, they become increasingly abusive
and difficult to be around. Therefore, the child often sees the entire fami
ly going into crisis during holidays. Family fights occur at a much higher
frequency; parents are less able to cope; other alcoholic relatives may visit;
and more demands are made. This atmosphere is scary at best and physically
dangerous at worst. Adding insult to injury, the child starts feeling respon
sible and begins to think, “If only I did so and so, then mom and dad
wouldn’t drink or fight so much or be so unhappy.” Feelings of guilt are
reactivated during the holidays. It is really no surprise that with the “joyous
season” of the holidays approaching, adult children of alcoholics begin
to feel joyless.
Children of alcoholics are likely to compare what is going on in their
home during the holidays with the experience of other families. Their
friends are talking about exciting, happy, and wonderful times. Other
families seem to be getting along so well. Their all-or-none thinking con
vinces them that everybody is happy but them. This heightens their sense
of loss, separation, isolation, and difference. There are also countless
messages telling adult children how great everything is supposed to be
on this wonderful holiday. Television commercials and advertisements pro
claim the festivity of the occasion. No wonder so many adult children of
alcoholics feel crazy on holidays! They experience two opposing messages.
Their own nervous system is telling them they hurt, while everyone else
is telling them it is a happy time. It is just like when they were kids—their
parents were telling them nothing was wrong but they felt as if everything
was wrong.
The prospect of spending time with their parents during holidays puts
children of alcoholics in a no-win position. If they decide to spend the
holiday with the family, they are implicitly saying, “All right, I’m going
to put up with all this crazy, out-of-control, drunken behavior.” If, on
the other hand, they say, “No, I’m not going to do this. I’m not going
to go home and spend the holidays with my family,” they feel guilty. They
feel like a bad child again. A “good” child, of course, would go home
and suffer through all of the required indignities for the sake of the fami
ly. And, sometimes drinking is the admission ticket to the family; the only
way to be with the family is to drink.
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RECOVERY
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Unrecovering adult children of alcoholics rarely recognize all these
influences. They are pushed and pulled emotionally without identifying
the source of the pressure. Besides, feelings are not acceptable, and they
cannot talk about what is happening. Again they suffer without meaning.
For them, a holiday is often experienced as a holidaze\
40. What is the best way to take care of myself while I am confronting
core issues?
|
The answer to this question is similar to how adult children would
take care of themselves in any of the preceding or subsequent stages. But
it is especially important in the stage of core issues to realize and to really
appreciate that this is a very special period of time. Once adult children
of alcoholics acknowledge and accept the influence of the past, they are
ready to deal with the core issues which have plagued them as adults. If
the familial alcoholism is ignored or minimized, they will progress very
slowly or not at all. That is why many adult children who are in
psychotherapy and do not deal with their parents’ alcoholism seem to
flounder and get nowhere. Without a foundation, not much of a building
can be erected. Without knowing about alcoholism, without knowing how
alcoholism affects the family and everyone in it, there is no context in
which to understand what has happened.
Acquiring certain new attitudes toward yourself and toward others
is crucial in this stage; they pave the way for the changes that need to
occur. First and foremost, cultivate the attitude that it is better to explore
than to criticize. Be grateful when you discover a problem area. After
all, it was there all the time! Be open to new ways of seeing things, to
new meanings, new learnings, new associations, without being judgmen
tal. Make few conclusions about yourself or others until you have had
a chance to gather a lot of information. Know how deep the water is before
you jump in. Here again, it is important to slow down, take your time,
and develop patience. Remember, it took years to get to where you are
now; you cannot fix everything in a day.
While developing these attitudes, you may want to enlist the aid of
a guide or consultant. One of the things adult children of alcoholics
desperately need to learn is to reach out and ask for help. At this stage,
give yourself permission to say, ‘T think I need some assistance. You
may want to seek a therapist if you have not done so already. All the things
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that we have said about choosing a therapist apply at this stage. And, you
would certainly want to continue your education on alcoholism. If you
have not yet gone to an Al-Anon meeting, this would be the time to start
attending. See what this support group has to offer you. Since all Al-Anon
meetings are different, try attending several. Many communities have
special meetings for adult children of alcoholics. You have nothing to lose
and everything to gain.
If you find that you are isolated from others, let that be a sign—like
a red flag—which indicates you are in trouble. There are other red flags
during this stage that suggest this is the right time to get help: 1) feeling
overwhelmed with what you are learning, experiencing, or seeing; 2) not
having the foggiest idea about what to do next; 3) not having any friends
or family to talk to; 4) excessive criticism of yourself or others; 5) strong
feelings of depression and anxiety or insecurity and fear; 6) frequent bouts
of insomnia and 7) the big one, namely excessive alcohol or other drug
consumption. If you are not sure what kind of help you need, contact some
one you trust to get some feedback that will help you assess whether you
need help, and, if so, how to get it.
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41. What are the pitfalls at this stage?
We have pointed out in the previous question that there is a possi
bility that you will not take care of yourself, or that you may not
acknowledge needing to take care of yourself. Even knowing all that you
know now, you might still believe that you were not affected by the
alcoholism in your family. After all, your parents did not sexually or
physically abuse you. So, a major pitfall is continuing to minimize the
impact of parental alcoholism. You might tell yourself that your childhood
was not really all that stressful or traumatic. Perhaps you might experience
a flight into activity, thinking now is the time to fix everything, including
the alcoholic, the co-alcoholic, and all of the other family members. You
may plunge into educating all your friends with missionary zeal, watching
the ones who drink, evaluating their drinking, and diagnosing alcoholism.
All this does is direct your attention away from your own difficulties. On
the other hand, you might be so overwhelmed by all of the new things
that you are learning that you will just want to chuck it and say, “If s
too much; there is no way I can make my life better.” A feeling of g
hopelessness may take over for a while. That is a major pitfall.
57
Another pitfall is to again confuse your feelings with your behavior.
For example, while you might feel overwhelmed, you are probably still
getting out of bed in the morning. You still get dressed, comb your hair,
brush your teeth. You still go to work and get chores done around the
house. In other words, you still continue to function, although it might
be a lot harder. This is not unusual! When you begin confronting core
issues, regular daily tasks can become more of a chore. You have less
energy for them because you are spending more energy on understanding,
learning, and dealing with yourself as the adult child of an alcoholic. You
might berate yourself for not being healed, not being recovered, not be
ing totally all together right away. “After all,” you might say to yourself,
“now I know the issues. I should do better. I don’t have any excuses.”
You can avoid this pitfall if you are more kind to yourself and more
understanding.
Perhaps the greatest pitfail of all for adult children of alcoholics is
underestimating the pervasive, insidious effects of alcoholism and the depth
of the core issues they face. One result is an unrealistic expectation of
a speedy recovery. Then, if you are having a hard time, you may blame
yourself and feel that you have totally failed to “cure” yourself. Watch
out for this all-or-none tendency. It may appear as all-or-none thinking,
all-or-none feeling, or all-or-none behaving. It can be very, very subtle
and still devastating. When you have an all-or-none attitude toward your
recovery, you are not being fair to yourself. It takes a long time to heal
deep wounds. These are not easy issues to deal with. It has been suggested
that three to five years of active participation in Al-Anon and other treat
ment are needed for an alcoholic family to recover.56
Keep in mind, too, that taking time out from the learning process is
not a pitfall. This can be life-enhancing in a positive way and a sign of
your'own good judgment about what is right for you. For example, if you
find that you keep wanting to take a break from this book or from think
ing about the issues raised, do so! Recovery moves at your pace; you do
not move at recovery’s pace.
42. How do I deal with my parents in this stage?
Repetition is an essential part of learning for all of us. So, we want
to emphasize here, as we did in the last chapter, that you do not need to
deal directly with your parents or their drinking. You do not have to educate
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them, fix them, or confront them. You have more than enough to do just
dealing with yourself. When you have a strong impulse to deal with your
parents, it is important for your own recovery to ask yourself the follow
ing kinds of questions: Why am I so preoccupied with them now? Who
am I really trying to help here? What am I really trying to do? It is a mistake
to think that if you first “fix” your parents, then your problems will be
solved. That is not the path to recovery. Your recovery does not depend
on your parents* recovery! They do not even have to acknowledge their
alcoholism or co-alcoholism. It is not necessary for your growth that they
know what you are learning, that they approve of what you are doing,
or even that they care.
If your parent or parents are dead, it is still important to sort through
the messages that y cu received from them and the feelings that you have
about them. That is best done with professional help. There are sophisticated
and powerful therapeutic methods which can enable you to finish some
of your old business with them even if they are dead.
If your parents live nearby or you still live with them, you will pro
bably find increased discomfort as you proceed through your learning and
recovery. This is a positive sign. It means you are changing. Seek a sup
port group like Al-Anon. You may not be able to deal successfully with
your alcoholic parent or parents alone. It can be very painful, for exam
ple, to stop enabling your parents’ drinking because in doing so it may
feel cold or uncaring. Just to understand the term “enabling” is going
to take time. That is why it is so important that the people helping you
really know alcoholism. If you feel that your parent s life is in imminent
danger and it is essential he or she gets help immediately , an intervention
might be useful. An intervention is a loving confrontation of several peo
ple close to the alcoholic.33 To explore this, contact an alcoholism
therapist, agency, or hospital chemical dependency unit. They will help
you get the education you need and help facilitate your own recovery as
you prepare the intervention. Always remember that the first person you
need to give priority, time, attention, and love to during recovery is
yourself.
43. These issues seem to apply to a lot of people. Are they really
unique to adult children of alcoholics?
It is certainly true that these issues apply to other people as well. They
apply particularly to people who have been reared in a troubled or
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dysfunctional family. You may remember that Virginia Satir, a promi
nent figure in family therapy, identified general role behaviors that fami
ly members adopt when they are under stress.5 Family members work
very hard at these roles to save the family system even at the expense of
their own emotional and physical well-being. Satir identified four main
roles: the placater, who agrees with everyone and feels no self worth, the
blamer, who disagrees with everyone and feels lonely and unsuccessful,
the super-reasonable one, who is calm and logical but feels vulnerable,
and the distractor, who makes no sense and feels nobody cares.
While not every family in stress is alcoholic, every alcoholic family
is in stress.53 We find that the issues described in this chapter, while not
specific to adult children of alcoholics, are particularly marked and prevalent
among them. Thus, if someone is an unrecovering adult child, we know
that he or she probably has significant problems with control, all-or-none
functioning, trust, poor self-esteem, and so on. There isi nguhty, ar.in
flexibility, an inability to move out of these patterns of behavior that
characteristic of adult children of alcoholics. This is primarily because
of denial. While many troubled families engage m it, demal is the hallma
of an alcoholic family. This means there is little or no chance to talk about
what is happening. When there is denial of a problem like alcoholism,
there is no opportunity to deal with its effects, because those too must
be denied or attributed to something else.
44. What about the culturally different or the ethnic minority adult
child of an alcoholic?
As we noted earlier, professionals in the alcoholism field have only
recently focused their attention on children of alcoholics. Focus on the
adult child is even more recent. So, while little research «ists descnbrng
adult children of alcoholics in general, even less research exists identify
ing the issues and problems of minority adult children of alcoholics: There
is even relatively little information on alcoholism in Afferent cultu
although we believe that culture has a significant impact. The functions
S alcohol serve are different in different cultures/5 Different culmrn
groups do not regard alcoholism in the same way, and members of me
family and cultural community play different roles in the tre^™e"
prevention of alcoholism. In general, the greater the degree_of;tssimila
tion into the Anglo culture, the more likely the messages ofdhis book jppfy
to the minority adult child of an alcoholic. To understand the particu
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issues concerning alcohol-related problems that affect members of minority
groups, it is necessary to look at the political, social, and economic values
of the various groups and to see how these forces influence the thoughts,
feelings, and behaviors of members. Much more research has to be done
before statements can be made regarding the specific roles that minority
children of alcoholics adopt and the core issues they encounter as adults.
In the meantime, we encourage efforts to identify the kinds of issues that
ethnic minorities face in response to familial alcoholism.
Among native Americans, for example, alcoholism is a major health
problem. A recent National Council on Alcoholism position paper states
that 80 percent of native American college students and 50 percent of high
school students drop out because of family alcoholism.42 Children in
alcoholic native American families hear conflicting messages about alcohol
use. They see that the excessive drinking by male family members is ac
ceptable. Although there are almost 500 different tribes recognized by the
federal government, each with its unique cultural patterns, many native
Americans regard alcoholism as a disorder of the spirit, not a physical
disorder.43 It is often seen as punishment for wrongdoing by supernatural
forces. This view makes alcoholism difficult to identify as a disease and
to treat effectively.
Among the Hispanic populations of this country (the word Hispanic
is used in reference to persons of Spanish-speaking origin, including Mex
ican, Mexican-American, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Central and South
American), it is possible to note several general characteristics relevant
to the use and abuse of alcohol. Because of the traditional respect in Hispanic
families for elders, it is difficult to break the shroud of secrecy and denial.
The stage of emergent awareness will be especially difficult as these adult
children begin to acknowledge the reality of their childhood, make public
an issue generally considered to be a moral question belonging within the
family, and experience the “betrayal” of their family. Making personal
problems public is tantamount to bringing disrespect upon the family. There
is usually less opportunity for, or acceptance of, children confronting their
parents. As one Mexican man emphatically stated, “It’s none of my
business if my mother gets drunk! She’s had a hard life. She’s worked
all this time and raised all us kids. If she wants to drink in her last years—let
her!” Alcoholism is often not identified until the late stages of the disease
because heavy drinking is often tolerated until economic responsibilities
can no longer be met.21
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Moral weakness
seen as the origin of alcoholism in the
Moral
weakness is
is generally
generally seen
black community.43 The belief that alcoholism is a moral issue rather
than a disease has prevented many black families from seeking professional help. When drinking has interfered with family responsibilities, other
members have turned to their extended families and community networks
of churches and social clubs for assistance rather than to professional mental
health agencies.
Minority adult children of alcoholics need to be particularly sensitive
to their own needs, and extremely conscientious in building a group of
supportive friends during the recovery process. With this in mind the
minority adult child can make use of what does fit for him or her from
this book and other related literature. “After all,” as one minority col
league stated, “pain is pain.” Many of the basics will be the same.
45. How will I ever be able to get rid of all these problems?
We get some of our most startled looks when we state that virtually
every apparent liability that adult children of alcoholics have can also be
regarded as an asset in the right context. For instance, there are many
situations in which control and responsibility are wonderful assets. We
would want the proofreader of our book to be an adult child of an alcoho ic.
We are reminded of a woman in one of our psychotherapy groups.
Uy old car! It sat in front of her house
She had an old car. We mean a really
day in and day out because it no longer worked. Not only did it not run
but it was an eyesore. The paint had faded, it had dents, a flat tire, and
was covered with dirt. Oil leaked out the bottom onto the ground below,
The grass underneath was dying. The neighbors began to feel irritated
whenever they saw that old, beat-up car. They wanted her to change things.
She insisted that it was hopeless. One weekend, a classic car show came
through town. Shortly after, the neighbors began to notice that the woman
was working on her car. She had started taking a class on auto restoration
and was reading several books on the subject. Before long, she had the
engine running. She hired some experts to work on the transmission because
she was not able to repair it herself. Much to her surprise and re ic , i
was not damaged nearly as badly as she thought-even after all that misuse.
She just spent an hour or two each and every day working on the repair
project, took things one at a time, and kept at it. She started to treat that
car as if it needed care just like a person. She got around to restoring the
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62
RECOVERY
parts that had broken down. She painted it a beautiful bright color and
bougfo new ores. Eventually she created a valuable vintagTLtomob.le
from a previously embarrassing car that did not function
6
new wLT"^1 notV^ tha?°U b6gin t0 10°k a‘ y0Urself in some
new ways. Do not be too quick to throw out all those “neeative”
characteristics. Instead, keep them and transform them. See how they can
be valuable in your current life. With loving attention from you ancI a little
^co^ssueT wi± nan
ChangeS’ SteP by Step' Confrontwdl ak h
*
lnS‘ghtS lnt° the nature of your problems you
Transformations
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46. What is a transformation and how does the transformations
stage fit into the recovery process?
s"e”8“'s-
A transformation is a change. It might be as simple as experimenting
with one new behavior or it might involve a more complex alteration in
personality or character. Personal growth is always a process of change,
of transformation. For adult children of alcoholics, the journey to recovery
will take them through many transformations. They will take the
characteristics they developed to survive as children and discover how to
use them to better suit the circumstances of their adult life. New ways
of looking at old behaviors can be learned.
To foster the transformations stage of recovery is to make it a pri
ority. Give it your time. Give it your attention. Give it your energy. Seek
opportunities to put into effect some of the things you are learning. Dare
to talk about what is happening to you. Dare to trust at least one person.
Dare to feel your emotions. See what happens when you break the injunc
tions of the past. Above all, be patient with yourself. Patience could be
the hardest task of all. This chapter will describe a number of further steps
which you can take. Through transformations you start becoming part ot
the solution and not part of the problem.
And remember, you do not have to change! What you decide to do,
or not to do, is up to you. You can live with things as they are, but is
this what you really want?
47. How can I begin to work through what happened to me?
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You have already begun. Reading this book is one step you have
already taken. This step, in itself, is an accomplishment we encourage
you to acknowledge and to feel good about. Recognition makes it real.
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TRANSFORMA TIONS
tn
''u11 u°ld Pr°VSrb Wh'Ch says’ “The beginning of wisdom is
to call things by their right name. ” Calling things by their rfght name helps
bring about transformations. When core issues are recognled and iden-
When we use the word control, we are talking about the compulsive
need to be in charge of everything and everyone. It is much more than
a selfish desire to have things one’s own way. It is a compulsion to keep
tight reins on the expression and awareness of thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors. It is manifested in adult children of alcoholics’ need to direct,
lead, instruct, supervise, regulate, or legislate their own and others
behavior. The need to control is seen in their discomfort with surprises,
with criticism, with not knowing what will happen next, or with strong
feelings. Having gone through childhood with little or no control, it is
as if adult children have silently vowed, “Never again.” As they enter
adulthood, the need to control what happens becomes paramount.
During childhood the need for control was critically important.
Children need to believe they can exercise some influence over what goes
on around them. It is too frightening for them to consider that nothing
they can do will make a difference. They really need to convince themselves
that if only they did or were such and such, then their parents would stop
drinking or fighting, and everything would be fine. So they began playng
the “if only” game very early in an attempt to adapt the world, their world,
to their own safety and security needs.
When we discussed Brown and Cermak's work, we described the five
issues they identified—namely, control, trust, personal needs, feelings,
and overresponsibility.14 '6 They consider control so pervasive that it af
fects the other four issues. For example, to trust someone is to give up
some control, and this is felt to be dangerous, because it gives others con
trol over you. We have heard adult children of alcoholics say, “If I trust
you, I will have to let down my guard, and then you can hurt me. To
admit personal needs is seen as an admission of a loss of power, a loss
of control. Many adult children say, “If others know I need something,
I can’t depend on their giving it to me. It’s safer not to have needs; then
they won’t have the power to hurt me.” As children, controlling feelings
was necessary for survival. Emotions were like volcanoes which could
erupt both in the child and others. The need to control is based on the
fear that if feelings go too far, if they are not checked, another eruption
will occur. That is scary. Furthermore, feeling in charge of and in con
trol of all that happens leads to an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.
If someone is sad, for example, the adult child feels responsible and will
attempt to control or change the person. On the other hand, recovering
adult children of alcoholics look for opportunities to let go of control.
All-or-none functioning can be even more ensnaring than control. The
lack of a middle ground or a “gray scale,’ as one of our clients referred
i ie y adult children of alcoholics, more and more of their behaviors
an be seen in the context necessary to change them. Core issues provide
a new vocabulary, a new way to describe and understand current behaviors
rmed with the skill of acknowledgment, a tool for transformations adult
children of alcoholics have a way to label their own eternal yesterdaysthe todays shaped and fashioned by the past. Armed with this historical
perspecfive, meanings can be found and connections made between the
be disltereT
then
Ch°iCe beC°me P°Ssib,e and freedom
For years', core issues have been a dark umbrella under which
utilheT’ PrOblemat'C beh™ ^curred. Now there is the chance to
Bv esri
tO 3 ‘ife °f meaninS and joy
By respecting your genetic, physiological, and psychological vulnerabilities
and by watching your own attitudes, you place yourself in a position to
derive the benetits of being someone who could survive in spite of un
predictability inconsistency. arbitrariness, and chaos. Not everyone does
ot everyone knows how to make lemonade when life gives them a lemon
test ho f
e? Cltly acknowledge to y^rself, and someone else too'
ife not
r
6 C°me- Y°U C3n begin t0 l00k forward to en oying
hfe-not just surv.vtng tt. You, indeed, are on your way to recovety
48. Why are issues of control and all-or-none functioning so central
to adult children of alcoholics?
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65
face we fJd the
d t Vdn0US,personal lssues
children of alcoholics
r
C
C0Upled With a difficulty in seeing life’s
h h°
^°Ven throughout the fabric of their thoughts fellings'
and behaviors. Control and all-or-none functioning are crucial to undfr’
s anding how adult children organize their lives. They are at the heart of
cha ° repet'tlye’ self-defeating patterns of behavior which typically
characterize adult children of alcoholics. These two issues maniS
tioZmTvn mann SUbtle WayS' They frequent|y can be disguised as perfecanxietv' ,>pelV,glIdnce’ and unrelenting motivation. They masquerade as
is difficult ^oiT0"’
8l"1L
theSC behaviors are in
force, it
IS airricult tor recovery to proceed.
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RECOVERY
67
?
to it, is pervasive and insidious. For example, even after reading this book,
adult children of alcoholics might believe that since they are still making
mistakes and still succumbing to the core issues we have been discussing,
they have failed again. If they have not achieved full recovery by this
point, they feel they have not achieved anything. If everything is not all
right (which it never is), everything is all wrong! Thinking this way is
falling into the trap of all-or-none functioning.
All-or-none functioning strongly influences the issue of control. Control
is seen as either present (I am in control), or absent (I am out of control).
I am either on top of everything or on top of nothing. Over and over, adult
children of alcoholics admonish themselves not to lose control. Control
is guarded like a house of cards—if one piece is moved, the whole struc
ture might collapse. This leads to rigidity. All-or-none thinking thus
magnifies potential threats to control, like the occurrence of strong feel
ings. Strong feelings, negative or positive, seem to verge on loss of con
trol. If one feels anger, violence will follow. It is catastrophic thinking—
if this happens, something terrible will follow! In their childhood this may
in fact have occurred.
All-or-none responding also affects the issue of trust. The adult child
may trust somebody so totally that, for example, on a first date, he or
she will sit down and tell that person his or her whole life story-without
first considering the other person’s level of interest, caring, or gentleness.
When this happens, the other person is likely to be overwhelmed by the
onslaught of openness and will often “bow out,’’ either gracefully or
ungracefully, of the situation. The adult child then looks around, somewhat
perplexed and confused, not understanding what happened. As a result,
on the next date with somebody else, she or he will not trust at all and
will share nothing. This time the other person may back away in response
to an undercurrent of anger and mistrust. The adult child again feels re
jected and hurt. Unable to find a middle ground, she or he will often flip
back and forth, trusting completely or not at all. Since it is seldom ap
propriate to trust fully at first, just as it is seldom appropriate to distrust
fully at first, the adult child is engaging in a pattern of behavior which
does not allow relationships to develop. In fact, the very idea of a rela
tionship developing one step at a time is often foreign to an adult child.
Such ambiguity is extremely uncomfortable for someone accustomed to
thinking in all-or-none terms.
•
n°De ftinctioning also affects the issue of personal needs. For
the adult child there is
i no needing “just a little,’’ or “just for a moment.’’
h
Instead, he or she flip-flops back and forth between an unrealistic in
dependence (“I don’t need anything or anyone”) and the opposite stance
(“My needs are so overwhelming I can’t let anyone know,” or, I need
this person so much that I can’t live without him or her’ ’). Either extreme
leaves the individual s needs unmet.
In terms of the issue of responsibility, adult children of alcoholics
vacillate between feeling totally responsible or being totally irresponsi
ble If they decide they are totally responsible for something, they are also
overwhelmed with guilt, because it is usually something bad. They feel
horrible that someone missed a bus or that they did not get home in time
for some family event. The guilt is all-or-none and generalizes into All
I do is fail.” The result is chronically low self-esteem. Because of t e
rigidity of their thinking, they are either all right or all wrong, and the
latter predominates. They rarely accept total responsibility for a success.
49. How can I begin to come to terms with my all-or-none functioning?
Actually, it is a lot easier than you may think. The first and most im
portant thing is to become aware of this tendency. Then, using your hyper
vigilance, be on the lookout for any extreme positions in your thinking
feeling and behaving. When you are feeling boxed in or trapped, ask
yourself whether or not you could be reacting in an all-or-none manner.
Talk to yourself. You do anyway, so it might as well be productwe self
talk And listen to yourself. Only by recognizing your all-or-none func
tioning will you have the chance to break the reflex. Next, slow down
way down, and take the time to see what options there are, what different
ways to proceed are available. You may want to take time out before making
certain decisions. If other people are waiting for an answer from you tel
them you do not know right then and will get back to them later. There
is great freedom in saying, ‘T don’t know and,
need time,
give yourself permission to talk to people whom you trust and respec .
Get help sorting things out. You do not have to handle everything by
yourself. Reaching out is a sign of recovery, not of weakness.
Another way to fight all-or-none functioning is to begin making use
of a behavior that we call “chunking it down.” Chunking it down means
taking an issue or objective-such as trusting someone or accomplishing
a particular task-and dividing it into its component parts seeing it in
smaller pieces (chunks) rather than as the whole. For example, when you
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TRANSFORMATIONS
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RECOVERY
set a goal for yourself, try to identify the different and separate steps that
you have to take on the way to accomplishing it.
Suppose you want to be a lawyer. If you are 17 and a junior in high
school, achieving this goal will take some time. To serve as a guide for
action and to give you a sense of accomplishment along the way, you can
break your goal down into a series of steps. Step one is to plan your senior
year coursework. Step two is to prepare to take the college entrance ex
ams. Step three is to begin selecting a college. Step four is to get accepted
into a college. Step five is to complete each successive year of college.
Step six is to get into law school. And so on. Even the steps outlined here
can be “chunked down’’ further. Planning your senior year, for exam
ple, involves making an appointment with your school counselor, finding
out what classes are required for college, and then registering for them.
As each step is taken, it is essential for the child of an alcoholic to
learn to say, “Congratulations, self. You’ve done another part of it.’’ An
inability to appreciate and take pleasure in accomplishing the parts of a
task results in chronic feelings of failure and difficulty in completing longrange goals. Only by seeing each step as separate and valuable can a sense
of accomplishment be felt and new energy be made available for the next
step. Chunking it down helps break the habit of all-or-none functioning.
50. How do I begin to come to terms with the control issue?
This is more difficult. No one will relinquish control until he or she
feels it is safe to do so and senses some support. This is why it is impor
tant to grasp the all-or-none issue first. The stakes are lowered when con
trol is viewed realistically rather than in an all-or-none fashion. As long
as adult children of alcoholics view control as all-or-none, as something
they either have or do not have, it will be difficult to do the experimen
ting required to see what happens when control is relinquished, negotiated,
or shared. Seeing control in shades of gray makes letting it go less risky.
Before you can let go of control, groundwork needs to be done—not only
in terms of all-or-none functioning, but also in terms of building self-esteem.
It takes self-confidence to overcome the feelings of vulnerability and in
security that will initially accompany letting go of control, or acknowledging
that in fact you do not have control.
We have been given many unrealistic messages regarding how much
we can and should control. Popular psychology often perpetuates the myth
I
of control. We believe that while we can plan for the future, we cannot
control it. While there are many things we can control, there are many
more we cannot. Sometimes we can control our health, where we live,
what we eat, what we think about, or where we work, but we cannot con
trol the weather, the traffic, the economy, what our friends say to us, or
what the next words on this page will be. It is a matter of beginning to
see that the world really is operating on its own, without consulting us,
and people in it are making their own decisions, without our “permis
sion.’’ It is, therefore, necessary to more clearly understand which areas
we do affect.
Some self-help books stress gaining control of your entire life and
creating your own world. While there is some merit to this advice, it is
easy to take it too literally and apply it rigidly. Things do occur in our
lives that are totally surprising and which we did not call forth. While
we believe that it is not possible to control all that happens to us, we do
believe that we can control the impact events have on us. We can control
the way we view such events, how we respond to them, and how we deal
with them. For example, there is the fact that you have an alcoholic parent.
You did not cause that, you could not control it, and you cannot cure it.
But you can cope with it. So while you really have no control over whether
your parent or parents are alcoholic, you really can control how you re
spond to them. One situation that might be familiar to you is visiting your
parents’ home. If your parents begin drinking, you cannot control their
behavior. What you can control is how you respond. Rather than attempt
ing to get them to stop, you may choose to excuse yourself when you see
the bottle coming out and say, “Now that the drinking is starting, I m
leaving.”
Again, the issue of control is not all-or-none. It is not a question of
being so totally in control of yourself, others, and the environment that
you can determine what will happen; neither is it a matter of resigning
yourself to passively “going along with” whatever happens. Rather it is
to acknowledge that there are some things you can control and many things
you cannot control. A prayer often quoted in Alcoholics Anonymous and
Al-Anon sums this up well: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the
things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference.” You can also learn to exercise your right
to pick and choose which situations you want to deal with and which situa
tions you prefer at this time not to deal with. Let us highlight that. You
really do have a choice about where you want to expend your energy.
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If you choose not to expend energy on responding to your parents’ drink
ing, that is an acceptable choice. You may choose not to go to their home
at all or to stay only briefly. If you choose not to deal with being around
drunks, you can stay out of bars and refuse invitations to parties where
there is going to be drinking. Cultivating the wisdom to know the dif
ference between the situations you can change and those you cannot, as
well as exercising the choices you do have in dealing with events you cannot
change, are crucial in coming to terms with the issue of control.
I
51. I do not fully trust anybody. I believe others are somehow going
to hurt me. What does this mean? Is something wrong with me?
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Implicit in this question is the view that even though adult children
of alcoholics sometimes appear to give total, indiscriminate trust, in ac
tuality there is an underlying expectation that getting close and trusting
others will always bring hurt. In all relationships, there is the possibility
that the other person will hurt you, consciously or unconsciously, inten
tionally or unintentionally, even if he or she genuinely loves you. Adult
children of alcoholics often have difficulty dealing with this aspect of
relationships.
When adult children of alcoholics suffer a hurt, they tend to see it
as intentional. They have trouble believing that others did not set out to
hurt them and were only acting out of their own humanness. Expecting
to be hurt, they may experience another person’s actions as hurtful even
in situations that could be interpreted differently. They personalize other
people’s actions. The adult child’s all-or-none view and lack of appropriate
childhood experiences leads them to think that “normal” family life is
supposed to be perfect—everything always works out well and nobody
gets hurt. Real life is not that way! You cannot go through life without
getting hurt. By the same token, the hurts you experience as an adult do
not need to take on the same significance as the devastating pain you ex
perienced as a child when the people you loved the most hurt you the most.
There will always be certain situations in which someone you love
will let you down, because he or she does not have the knowledge or the
ability to deal more gracefully with that situation. Similarly, please
acknowledge the same thing about yourself. There will always be situa
tions that you will not be able to handle well either. That does not mean
that you are a bad person or that you do not love the other person. It just
means that you are human.
TRANSFORMA TIONS
71
52. How can I begin to work through my trust issues with others?
Change begins with recognition and acceptance. As the child of an
alcoholic, you have been exposed to an atmosphere in which you were
taught to trust neither yourself nor others. Recognize where your mistrust
came from. Know that it served, and can still serve, a valuable and pro
tective function. Understand, too, that you are not bad, sick, or crazy
because you find it difficult to trust. Trust is difficult for you because you
are an adult child of an alcoholic. Realizing this does not eliminate the
problem, but it does provide a frame of reference to help you, slowly and
step by step, minimize the adverse effects of mistrusting when you should
trust, or trusting when you should mistrust.
Learning a strategy for the development of trust is surprisingly simple.
First, you take a small risk. Venture out and say some'bing that is impor
tant to you. Stick your neck out a little. After you have done that, pause.
Close your mouth; open your eyes and open your ears. Watch and listen
to the other person and observe your inner response. Note what he or she
is doing and how you are feeling. Suppose, for instance, you have decided
to share with someone the fact that you are reading this book and that
you are the adult child of an alcoholic. Give the other person the informa
tion; then stop, pause, and wait for a response. Watch what the other per
son does, listen to what he or she says, and become aware of how you
are feeling. If you notice that you feel good because the other person says
something like, “How wonderful that you’re able to look at those kinds
of things in your life,” or “I can see that this is an area that’s important
to you,” you can draw the conclusion that this person is to some degree
trustworthy. Then, if you choose, go a bit further and say, “Yes, I’m
reading this book and one of the reasons that I am reading this book is
because I think I may have been affected by my parents’ alcoholism.”
Stop. Pause. Watch. Listen. What does the other person say? How does
he or she respond? How do you feel afterwards? If the other person now
says, “Oh, how foolish. Why don’t you just get on with your life and
not blame your problems on your family?” pay attention to that sinking
feeling inside. If you begin to feel as if there is something wrong with
you, or you are dumb, or you are copping out, you may want to stop right
there and not trust this particular person with any more personal informalion or feelings.
The example above shows how “chunking it down” can help you
build trust. Go step-by-step, checking each time to see 1what happens
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At this point, one thing that you have that you lacked as a child is
real choice. If you do not like what is happening in a situation or relation
ship, you can leave. As a child you did not have that choice. As an adult,
you do. Remember that. It makes a big difference. It means that now you
can choose to allow more intimacy between yourself and others.
To allow more intimacy, you need to remain aware of your all-ornone tendencies and your need to control. Intimacy does not happen all
at once. It is not an all-or-none phenomenon. It emerges in steps and is
an outgrowth of a mutual, reciprocal process where two or more people
learn not to relinquish control, but to share it. They learn not to give up
or grab control, but to negotiate it. At one point, it might be to the advan
tage of the relationship that person A is in control. At another point, it
might be better that person B is in control. At still another point, it might
be better if neither is in control.
Intimacy is closely related to trust. In the same way that you might
53. How do I begin to deal with my fear of intimacy?
trust a little and then see what happens, you can share something intimate
and see what happens. If you like what is happening, if it feels good, you
It is probably most helpful if we first define the term “intimacy.”
share a little more. If the results continue to be positive, you share more
Intimacy is the ability to be yourself—who you are, what you are—with
still. The basic strategy therefore, becomes share7check-share. This is
another person. The more you are able to be yourself, the more intimate
the appropriate context in which to utilize all those excellent people-sensing
you are. When you are intimate with someone and that person asks you,
skills. Watch, listen, and observe. Know how you feel with this person.
“How are you?” you stop and think and really tell him or her how you
Be hypervigilant. Listen to your nervous system. Begin to reclaim its power.
are instead of giving the perfunctory, “Fine.” Or you feel free to say,
Acknowledge your experiences and use your internal responses to help
“You know, I really don’t want to get into that now.” Or, you feel free I you evaluate what is good for you and what is not. Soon the whole pro
to say why you feel good, knowing that person will be genuinely pleased
cess becomes automatic, and you will not even have to think about it.
for you.
Using this strategy, you can reduce major crises in your life because
Self-disclosure is a hallmark of intimacy. The more intimate the rela
it is less likely that you will share too much too quickly and then be re
tionship, the more willing you are to reveal your innermost self. That is
jected. By taking it a step at a time and avoiding the all-or-none
why many people are what we call “intimacy-phobic.” In other words,
phenomenon, you can avoid situations where you have shared everything
they have a tendency to flee as they become more intimate. It is because
with someone who did not welcome it. While it is impossible to avoid
intimacy is the sharing of feelings, of values, of thoughts, of yourself.
being vulnerable when you are intimate, it is possible to greatly decrease
To the adult child of an alcoholic that can spell danger. When you become
the likelihood of being hurt, because you are only sharing a little at a time.
I
intimate with someone, feelings occur and control becomes an issue. In
By the same token, fear of rejection is minimized because all of you can
timacy can be very scary. It was not safe to be too intimate as a kid. If
not be rejected*, only the very small part that was shared that first or second
you became intimate, you might be ridiculed, mocked, or even abandoned. I time. If you are rejected, it is only a small piece of you.
If you cared too much, you got hurt. So as a child, intimacy was dangerous.
For some people, fear of intimacy increases with acceptance as well
But that no longer needs to apply. The resources and the experiences you
as with rejection. If your fear increases as intimacy increases, go slowly
had as a child are quite different from the resources, the experiences, and
enough so you will not stumble over your own fear. Create opportunities
the situations that you have as an adult. We cannot say that too often.
to work with yourself, and dare to share the very difficulty you are
you trust a little, and then a little more. That way you can safely and com
fortably assess how much, and to what extent, you can trust and be safe
with another person. As you “chunk it down,” using this step-by-step
method of trusting other people, you will need to trust yourself. When
you get responses from someone else and try to evaluate them, honor the
feelings you have inside. If you begin to feel good with someone or un
comfortable with someone, value that as important information. Regard
your feelings not so much as “right” or “wrong,” but more as sources
of information, ways of attaching meaning to a situation, and learning what
is good for you and what is not. Guard against thinking, in an all-or-none
way. that these feelings are your only guide, or that they will always lead
you in the right direction. Instead, consider your emotions as one very I
important source of information available to you along with others.
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having with some other person. Remembering the strategy, share-checkshare, watch his or her response, take a break, and then make other deci
sions about how much more you want to share, if at all. At this juncture
you might say to the other person, “I’m getting really scared. I am feel
ing that I like you an awful lot, but for some reason it makes me fright
ened to see you.’’ Then stop. Watch. See what the other person does. See
how you feel afterward. All of this gives you more information, more
data, more input for you to make your next decision. The feelings that
come with being intimate can be frightening. You have a right to experience
such feelings and to go at your own pace in dealing with them.
It is also helpful to keep in mind that intimacy is often confused with
sexuality. Some children of alcoholics believe sex is all they have to share
with someone or that sex is all someone wants. Some mistakenly believe
that acceptance of the body in sexual relations means that some major kind
of intimacy has been achieved, or that the only way to achieve intimacy
is to give themselves sexually. Actually, there can be sex without intimacy
and intimacy without sex. There can be a lot of confusion in this area for
some adult children of alcoholics who are already prone to confuse feelings.
54. Dealing with feelings is still scary for me. What are some guidelines
in dealing with them, especially with the new feelings?
After all that you have been reading, it should be no surprise that deal
ing with feelings can still be scary. After reading this far, you also have
some understanding of why this is so. At the same time, you have become
more aware of new ways to begin to deal with feelings safely, manageably,
and comfortably. We want to emphasize how normal and appropriate your
new, emerging feelings are, whether they be feelings of joy, excitement,
fear, or guilt. If you did not have them, it would be an indication that
you were not working anything through. No transformations would be
underway. Your emerging feelings are simply a validation of you as a
sensitive, growing person. They are a very natural, very healthy response.
Indeed, it takes great energy to block feelings.
Children in an alcoholic home train themselves deliberately, although
unconsciously, to be unaware of their own feelings. They survive by
denying them. That is what got them through childhood. However, the
feelings do not go away; they just build up over the years. As children
first learn not to express feelings and soon not to even experience them, they
i
75
learn to build a wall around their emotions. As a child, it might have real
ly been unsafe to express or experience feelings. Now, as an adult, you
have more options, more resources, more choices. Remember that. It is
easy to forget.
The overwhelming feelings that you have today will not stay with you
unless you invest tremendous energy in ignoring them. It is only when
feelings are suppressed and kept underground that they do not change.
When feelings are acknowledged, when you become aware of them, you
can begin to move beyond them. The very act of expressing a feeling begins
the process of transformations."
We must, however, offer a word of caution about expressing your
feelings. Just because you have a feeling, it does not mean you have to
tell everyone. Be selecti”0 about when and with whom you share your
feelings. When you share yourself selectively, you will increase your
chances of receiving a supportive audience.
It is also important to know that you do not have to do anything about
your feelings right now. You do not have to act upon them. That may
come as a surprise to many adult children who have learned to confuse
feelings with behaviors. Initially, just be aware of your feelings. First,
give yourself the freedom to be aware of what is going through your nervous
system, without changing the experience itself. After making yourself aware
of your feelings, carefully select someone to begin to share those feelings
with. Feelings can be dealt with in ways similar to trust and intimacy.
You do not have to deal with them in an all-or-nothing manner. It makes
good sense to begin to express your feelings slowly, and watch what hap
pens. Watch what the other person does. See how you feel, and continue
[ to use those cues to guide you in terms of whether you want to express
more feelings or look for a different person. Again we recommend the
strategy : share-check-share. Always give yourself time. For lasting change,
the process you go through needs to be done carefully and slowly.
While sharing your feelings you may cry or raise your voice. That
is human; give yourself permission to do that. At the same time, remember
there is a time and place for everything. When you begin to share your
feelings with others, choose an appropriate time. Check with the other
person to see if he or she is ready and available to hear what you have
to say. Sometimes, even though you have built a relationship of trust by
chunking it down and checking it out, it may happen that the other person
has so much going on that he or she simply is not available to listen at
76
RECOVERY
TRANSFORMA TIONS
i
II
■'•k;
this particular time. Resist the tendency to take this personally. When your I
spouse walks through the door after a long day at work, it may not be I■
the best time to share your feelings about the frustrations and disappoint
ments you have had. It might be better to wait until he or she has had i\
a chance to sit down and relax. We do not say this in order to protect
your spouse, but in order to protect you—so you can maximize the chance
that your feelings will be listened to in a manner that they deserve.
Talking to a professional counselor may also help. Select a therapist
with whom you can talk about the issues described in this book. Until you
can begin to find out what you are feeling, to accept what you are feeling,
and to express your feelings, you will not be able to complete the work
you need to do. Words spoken aloud are always more powerful than the
words uttered in silence. When a person speaks aloud to another person,
feelings are transformed. Communication opens the way for change. That
is why it is essential you find others with whom to share. If you have not
done this already, you may still be apprehensive, but if you carefully choose |
the right person and the right time and go slowly, you will discover that |
sharing your feelings is a very empowering and rewarding experience, f
It can also be fun.
It is also very important to realize that once you begin to acknowledge |
your feelings more openly, there will be times when you will, in a sense,
“overdose” and decide, “Whoops! That’s enough!” and pull back. There
is not one straight path to recovery. There will be times when you slip
backwards, and times when you just stand still, not sure of where to go
next or what to do next. This is normal and natural. If you do not expect
everything to fall into place all at once, you will not be disappointed with
yourself. Accepting where you are is one of the fastest ways to propel
yourself forward to where you want to go. Keep in mind, too, that par
ticularly at first some of the new feelings you are going to be dealing with
are really old feelings that you have not dealt with properly yet. Those
emotions might include rage, anger, loss, and intense hurt. Do not be
discouraged or misled if the first feelings you have to deal with are scary,
heavy ones. It is only by facing those that you will be able to get to the
more positive feelings of joy, happiness, closeness, and self-acceptance
that follow.
55. Friends and family are telling me I am getting self-centered. Am
I focusing too much on myself and my past?
This is one of those questions we hear repeatedly, particularly as adult
children of alcoholics move into their own recovery. They tend to listen
77
to this concern because of their childhood training to consider others before
considering themselves. Ironically, people who are truly self-centered and
overly focused on themselves rarely pause to consider this. The fact that
you even ask this question shows you are still responsive to others’ needs
and not just focused on yourself. However, it is essential that you take
time to look at your needs, your values, your directions, and your goals.
All through your childhood you were actively taught not to consider
yourself. Now it is time to realize how important you are. One of the main
things we would like you to have when you finish this book is a higher
level of self-esteem so you can look at yourself, know what you need,
and take care of yourself. If in the beginning you are spending more time
than usual on yourself, there is no other way that we know of to recover.
You must stop and spend some time considering where you have been
in order to make the connections you need to go forward.
You also might want to stop and ask the people who are making these
statements what they mean. Listen carefully, watch what they are doing,
and again evaluate how you feel after you have listened and been with
them. Not everyone will celebrate your new growth. When people are
involved in a relationship and one person begins to change, the relation
ship is disrupted.Sometimes that disruption does not allow for the sur
vival of the relationship. This is especially true when the other person in
the relationship did not seek the change. The other person gets caught up
in a change pattern without necessarily wanting it, or being ready for it.
If it throws him or her off balance, he or she might automatically reach
out and try to pull you back to the person you were before you started
this book and this journey of self-awareness.
If you are like many adult children, you typically do not think of
yourself. You are usually taking care of someone else, being responsible
for someone else, placating, adjusting, and believing that if someone else
is complaining, there must be something wrong with you. Therefore, it
should be no surprise that your efforts to reclaim your own boundaries,
your own needs, and your own values might be perceived by that other
person as a threat, particularly if the relationship is dysfunctional or
unhealthy. You might be accused of being selfish or self-centered if you
are no longer devoting all of your attention, and all of your time, to your
partner. We can only say that we see this as a very healthy, although dif
ficult, change.
One of the messages you picked up as a child was that you really did
not have any rights, that you really did not count. You were always
>
transformations
r
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78
recovery
second to alcohol. Very early you learned that when you had needs, they
would not necessarily be cons.dered by your parents. Your parents may
have been in a condition where they really could not attend to your needs.
Crises in the home related to alcoholism may have demanded first prion- |
ty If you took your needs to your parents and got rejecte , you
[
to hold back on those needs in the same way you learned to hold back ;
on your feelings. You learned not to share them and not to place impor- :
tance on them. In fact, if any needs were taken care of. you were the one
h
Ff
Bl
5
79
taking care of your parents needs.
What we suggest to adult children of alcoholics is that they develop
their own individual bill of rights. These rights include the right to per
sonal needs, including time for yourself, the right to your own feelings
the right to your own opinions, the right to decide whether you will meet
others’ expectations or not, the right to decide what to do with‘
ow"
body the right to say no as well as the right to say yes, the right to change
your mind, the right to succeed, and the right to make mistakes. You have
the right, too, to follow the suggestions in this book or to disregard
In other words, you have the right to express your own uniqueness.
Having rights is not the same as having a license to do whatever you
want to whomever you want whenever you want There is a■ d*fference
between “nonviolating expression” (assertiveness) and violating expres
sion” (aggressiveness). We are certainly not claiming that you have t
license to do whatever you think you want regardless of other people^ Wha
we are advocating is that you have the right to express yourself in ways
which do not damage other people. What you will find is that if you do
express yourself, if you ask for what you want,, then you significantly in-
crease the chances of getting it.
It has been our experience with adult children of alcoholics that they
have such an underdeveloped sense of their personal needs and rights tha
probably the last thing you have to worry about is becoming s
.
it feels selfish, it may just mean you are finally acknowledging you
and asking others to respect your rights. When a persor. has b'vepy
non-assertive, for example, it usually feels aggressive e
or she acts assertively. You might try out a few behaviors hat real y
selfish and consider the difference between them and what yo i actua^y
are trying to accomplish in recovery. By selfish, we mear.those^behaviors
which encroach upon and take advantage of others, which do object.vely,
concretely, and tangibly impact others in a destructive way.
Remembering the all-or-none phenomenon, it has also been our ex
perience that while some adult children of alcoholics are overly responsi
ble others are very irresponsible. Some adult children are at one end of
le’continuum and completely deny all their own needs, while others are
at the opposite end. Like the alcoholic in the family, they insist on havi g
J Xay They get easily frustrated and do not like it when others are
not paying attention. In fact, when these children of alcoholics are confroXd with someone else’s needs, they tend to either shut down or become
abusive The common denominator in both groups is a severe lack of
esteem. They really do not feel entitled. They either deny the entitlement
or pursue it aggressively for fear of losing it.
It is also true that there may well be times when you do overstate
vour case or when you do become selfishly demanding. On the road to
recovery you have the right to overstate at times and you have the right
to be wrong No one is perfect. Sometimes you are going to be self^en‘e^
anXus too much on yourself and your past. Let yourself make those
mistakes while continuing to validate who you are and exploring wha, you
Teed If you have been recovering for the last five years, and everybody
around you is still telling you, “. . . •
Tnon yourself,” you might consider whether their criticism is accurat .
itiallv as you begin the recovery process, as you begin to make the kinos
of changes we hfve discussed, do not let such reactions from others ho d
vou back You are not being too self-centered, you are not being overly
ZXn yourself. If anything, you are probably not being self-centered
enough.
,
,
We certainly hope that you will feel some excitement and enthusiasm
about your transformations, which are leading you to^talk about the pr
cess of recovery and share much of it with other people. Hold on to that
excitement If^ou are having difficulty finding people to share it wit
“e^.v«n„g .duU chiMren o.
.nd » »
your experiences and feelings. It is very unlikely that they will
are being too self-centered or too self-focused.
Y
56. What about this notion of self-esteem?
We
repeatedly said
said that
that many adult children
We have
have repeatedly
low self-esteem. This is not surprising, given their family backgrounds.
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TRANSFORMATIONS
81
RECOVERY
If you think back over what you have read in this book and the memories
it may have triggered for you, you will realize that all those experiences
of being neglected, of having no one to turn to, of having to be a premature
adult, of being told not to trust yourself or your feelings and perceptions
foster low self-esteem. As a child, your needs rarely came first. You prob
ably have been given a steady diet of broken promises.20 You may even
have been told that if it were not for you, mom or dad would not drink.
In an alcoholic family the child is not the important person. How can
children raised in that kind of atmosphere, with so many negative messages,
grow up feeling good about themselves?
So yes, unrecovered adult children of alcoholics have low self-esteem.
But, they can learn to be more accepting of themselves. The route to in
creasing self-esteem is epitomized by the title of this chapter, “Transfor
mations.” Challenging all-or-none behavior, looking at the issue of con
trol, beginning to re-establish a basis for trust and intimacy, caring for
and paying attention to yourself, all lead the adult child of an alcoholic
closer and closer to feelings of self-worth, self-trust, and self-esteem. Selfesteem is really the by-product of doing the things that we have been
describing. Simply reading this book is self-validating behavior. As a result,
you may at times have felt a sense of being more valuable, aware, or in
telligent. Take notice of these feelings. Take time to enjoy them. By nur
turing what at first are small moments, you can create the space for positive
feelings about yourself to grow. Remember that increased self-esteem will
be the natural outcome of your efforts to look at yourself and others in
new ways.
Keep in mind, too, that transformations typically involve two steps
forward, one step backward. What that means is that today you might feel
a trace of esteem and respect for yourself, only to have the props knocked
out from under you tomorrow. Then you might feel as though you have
not made any progress at all. When that happens, reconsider that allencompassing all-or-none conclusion. Resist the tendency to believe that
what is going on now is all that can happen. Remind yourself that yester
day you really did feel differently and later you will again.
You might also want to re-evaluate your current relationships in terms
of which people put you down and which offer you support. The relation
ships in which you seem to be getting nicked all the time are the ones
that are keeping you in a state of low self-esteem. When you are exposed
repeatedly to situations which diminish self-esteem, it is difficult to develop
and maintain it. Flourishing in an atmosphere of criticism is like trying
to get sober in a bar. It cannot be done.
A woman, who was working in group with us, told us a story that
illustrates how subtle negative relationships can be. She mentioned that
she always felt bad whenever she was around her sister. One day, when
she was sitting with her sister and a friend, our client finally began to under
stand why. The sister would ignore her consistently, cut her oft as she
spoke, order her about, and make cutting comments to her. All she knew
was that she just did not feel good around her sister. She made no connec
tion between what her sister did and how she felt. It was not until after
her sister left and the friend turned to her and asked, “Does your sister
always treat you like that?” that this woman began to finally see how blindly
she was caught up in a relationship that continually diminished her self-
esteem.
To enhance the possibility of increased self-esteem, we strongly
advocate that you surround yourself with people who are going to be sup
portive. In this way you can treat yourself to opportunities to build selfesteem you never had as a child. In fact, you have the responsibility as
well as the right to treat the child within you, your inner child, to advan
tages she or he never had in the past but can now have in the present.
57. How important is it for my own recovery to confront my parents
at this stage?
It is very important for you to understand that your recovery does
not depend on anyone else’s recovery or anyone else’s validation of you.
This point applies particularly with respect to your parents. You will never
see a clear image in a clouded mirror. Your efforts to recover from the
experience of growing up in an alcoholic family may be very difficult and
threatening for your family to hear about and accept, especially if t ey
are still in the midst of their own survival. Even for many recovering
alcoholics, their guilt can be strong enough to make them deaf, dum ,
and blind to their adult children’s needs.37 While you will certainly want
to acknowledge and address the feelings or issues you have with your
parents within yourself, the question of whether or not to confront your
parents is a whole separate issue. You will need to evaluate whether and
to what extent, talking with your parents about your feelings wou
e
a wise or usefill experience/^you. By now, you are beginning to develop
an arsenal of tools and skills for being able to assess whether it is appropriate
and relevant to discuss the issues raised in this book with your family.
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82
HI
I11’
bi
RECOVERY
Certainly, you would not lay this book down, get into your car, drive to
your parents home, sit them down, describe all the information you have
been learning, and tell them everything you feel. Instead, you would know
to slow down and go carefully, step by step. For example, you might men
tion that you have a special new book that has been very helpful for you.
Stop, listen, note the response you get; note how you feel. Use that infor
mation to decide whether you want to say the next sentence. If they ig
nore your comment and change the subject, the message is probably that
they do not want to hear about it. If, however, they indicate an interest
in this “very helpful book,” you might tell them it is on adult children
of alcoholics. Again, stop, listen, note the response. If you feel good about
the response, you might then ask if they would like to hear about what
you are learning.
As you learn more and more, iit may be quite tempting to try to help
your parents. Please remember that one of the most important things we
know about alcoholism is that you are not going to cure your parents. Your
recovery is not going to make them recover, You are not responsible for
your parents’ alcoholism. You did not cause it and you cannot cure it.
You do not owe them the information, and you do not owe them the con
frontation. If, for whatever reasons, you think it might be good for you
(and that is the key, it would be good for you), then you might consider
it. Take some time to carefully think over how to approach your parents
and why you want to do this. If it is for them, watch out. You are on
thin ice and the water is freezing. Your urgency to save them can misdirect
your energy. Right now you need your energy for your own recovery,
your own healing. That is the only place you can be assured of success.
The best thing you can do for your parents now is to attend to your own
recovery. If you later decide that you want to intervene on a drinking parent,
contact a local alcoholism agency for assistance. You may need profes
sional help.
58. How do I know that I anvworking things through or that transformations are really occurring?
TRANSFORMA TIONS
83
new insights? Are you feeling some excitement? Are you noticing that
you are less isolated? Are you noticing that you are more revealing of
yourself to some people? Or, for those of you who were too revealing,
are you finding yourself less revealing? Are you noticing that things no
longer appear quite as black and white as they once did? Are you noticing
that what has been going on in your life is beginning to make more and
more sense to you? Even though you might still be suffering, or confused,
and will certainly have backsliding days, are you beginning to see signs
of improvement? These are the kinds of questions you need to ask yourself.
We suggest you get out pencil and paper and begin to write down
the changes that you have noticed. Save that piece of paper. Display it
on your bedroom wall or on the refrigerator door. Do not let yourself lose
sight of the difference between where you started and where you are now.
It needs to be reinforced over and over. Hang that list up and jot more
things down whenever you think of them. Keep reinforcing yourself. Know
ing that you are indeed on the road to recovery will help you keep up your
energy and your hope.
As we watch adult children of alcoholics go through the transforma
tions process, we have frequently noticed that a new kind of fear begins
to enter the picture. While it is fear, it is quite different from the old fear.
It is expressed in questions such as, “When will the bubble burst? or
“When will the other shoe drop?” The person asking is looking for a crisis.
We often take this as a sign that a person is recovering. Life has been
getting more sensible. Life has been getting more steady. If you find
yourself with an increasing need to stir things up or to have a crisis, it
may be because things have been getting better and you are not used to
it. There might even be a sense that things are getting a little boring. Like
many recovering children of alcoholics, you may also have the fear that
since things have been getting better, you are somehow going to be punish
ed, and you will have to pay for it. It takes a while to accept the idea that
you do not have to “pay” for feeling good. As a matter of fact, you have
already paid the price. You have already paid your dues. And, an exorbi
tant fee it was! Now it is time to let yourself feel good and appreciate
the changes that are occurring.
How do you feel right now? What are you doing with your life right
now? Look back over the last several days, weeks, or months. What has
een c anging. What is different? What kind of messages are you getting
rom people? Are you finding yourself experiencing new feelings, having
J
7
Integration
59. What is integration?
The American Heritage Dictionary defines integration as “the organiza
tion of organic, psychological, or social traits and tendencies of a per
sonality into a harmonious whole.”3 Similarly, other definitions em
phasize the coming together, the joining, of separate parts into a unified
whole. By contrast, dissociation is a separation of parts. When parts are
separated from one another, a sense of completeness is missing and con
fusion is present. There is an internal chaos similar to the chaos in the
alcoholic home. When individuals are able to put together the various
aspects of their own experience—mental, emotional, spiritual, and
behavioral—they can respond to the environment in a more effective way
and have a stronger sense of well-being.
As adult children of alcoholics move through the stage of emergent
awareness toward core issues and then begin making those transforma
tions which restore meaning and joy to their lives, a very subtle process
is set in motion. Adult children rediscover and reclaim the wisdom of their
inner experience. Instead of perceiving feelings as treacherous undercur
rents in life, they see them as valuable messages. Their thoughts become
a gateway through which they can sample life s richness. Most impor
tant, an underlying unity develops among their thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors. What once were conflicting associations and separate processes
now merge into integrated experiences. There is a congruency among them;
there is a relatedness among them. It is no longer as if these adult children
of alcoholics think one thing, feel another, and do a third. Their feelings,
thoughts, and behaviors merge into a whole experience. A by-product of
this new connectedness is calmness and joy. This does not mean that prob
lems will disappear. However, it does mean that now they can be handled
with more awareness and effectiveness.
1
1
RECOVERY
INTEGRATION
87
i
Integration is ushered in with the development of a belief system which
legitimizes self-acceptance. When the concept of personal rights is
understood and adopted, adult children of alcholics are ready to confront
the central therapeutic issue-taking care of themselves. They move beyond
victimization and see themselves as architects of a new life.
As the concept of taking care of themselves becomes a part of adult
children’s emerging new behaviors, qualitative changes can be seen. For
example, these people may now begin to play and have fun without feel
ing overwhelmed by guilt. Limit-setting can now occur as adult children
establish appropriate boundaries between themselves and others, particularly
their parents. No longer tolerant of mistreatment, they find thoughtless
behavior in others unacceptable. They can now become appropriately
trusting, open to feelings, and are able to make long-term as well as short
term commitments. In group therapy for adult children, integration can
be seen when the adult child no longer apologizes for utilizing the group’s
time.28 Also, the adult child experiences the freedom—or “personal
right”—to answerer not answer another’s question, including those raised
by the group leaders. The quality of their relationships with others in the
group changes in other ways. As group members share themselves more
fully, they can allow others to do the same.
One woman’s comments during her final group therapy session cogent
ly illustrate the integration stage. All her adult life she had felt compelled
to participate in family rituals which had left her feeling exploited and
abused. As she put it, “I have spent my entire life being ‘the good daughter’
so my parents wouldn’t be upset by my behavior.” She went on to say,
I ve learned to be free. Last weekend, I refused to participate in a fami
ly activity that included the potential for a drunken scene. I became an
adult.”
I
60. Why is integation so important for adult children of alcoholics?
As detailed in previous chapters, the child raised in an alcoholic family
is systematically taught to disown his or her sensory experiences. Outer
events come to be separated, or dissociated, from their inner meanings.
The child is not “allowed” to acknowledge what he or she observes. Ad
ditionally, the parents convey the message that the child’s thoughts and
eelings are “wrong” or “bad.” Thinking becomes dangerous, feeling
becomes dangerous, and mistrust of one’s own judgment develops.
71
■
As a result, children of alcoholics are cut off from significant parts of
themselves. To survive the chaos generated by parental alcoholism, they
are forced to become strangers to themselves, without a sense of
“wholeness.” Integration is important to adult children of alcoholics
because it means they are able to recover parts of themselves that had been
lost, and use them to build a more complete identity.
61. I have been reading this book and feel frustrated and confused
because I do not seem to be feeling better. Is there something wrong
with me?
We have often seen important changes in clients and workshop par
ticipants long before they themselves became fully aware of them. There
are times when the conscious mind does not recognize its own changes.
A familiar example is when someone is drinking alcohol. The objective
observer often notices changes occurring in the drinker long before the
person drinking is able or ready to acknowledge them. To avoid drawing
premature conclusions, you might ask people you trust whether they are
aware of any changes or differences in you.
While confusion does not automatically lead to integration, it is
characteristic for people to undergo a period of confusion just before they
make changes. Confusion is usually a precursor to change and invariably
precedes integration. It is logical when you think about it. Before new pat
terns can emerge, old ones must be disrupted. So once again, slow down
and watch out for all-or-none functioning as you evaluate where you are
now. You might find it helpful to make a personal inventory, a balance
sheet, keeping in mind the information you have been learning in earlier
stages. Actually record your assets and liabilities, your strengths and
weaknesses. Your inventory may surprise you.
Perhaps your perception of no change and increased frustration may
be accurate. If you are this far in the book and cannot identify any signifi
cant positive changes, examine your own alcohol or other drug use. Ask
yourself if it could be interfering with your growth. Just as alcoholics cannot
make any meaningful changes until they stop drinking, we believe adult
children of alcoholics will not make any significant changes if they are
misusing or abusing drugs—be it alcohol, marijuana, or any other drug.
If alcohol or other drugs are not a factor in your life, further explora
tion is called for. Become curious; sit down with yourself or someone you
•*
88
trust and take stock. It is important to avoid taking an all-or-none stance.
You can choose not to conclude that being “stuck” proves you really must
be bad, sick, or crazy after all. Not making miraculous changes, not becom- j
ing noticeably more integrated, may only mean that this particular learn
ing mode—a book—is not suited to you. Different people have different
ways of learning. If you seem to be getting nothing from this book, you
have discovered something important about yourself—namely that the in
formation offered is not what you need at this point in your growth. You
might even congratulate yourself for acknowledging your frustration in
stead of engaging in denial. Your feelings are not without basis. If you
are frustrated or unhappy, your feelings are telling you something is not
working. Listen and use these feelings as an opportunity to learn, not as
a reason to give up.
If you are feeling discouraged, this may be the time to ask for help.
Consultation with a competent therapist, well versed in issues of adult
children of alcoholics, might help you if you are still hurting and not making
progress.
62. How can I maintain my progress and growth without creating a
crisis and without sabotaging myself?
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INTEGRATION
RECOVERY
In all probability you cannot, so do not even try! Yes, you read that
correctly. Not only will you be unable to prevent yourself from regress
ing, slipping back, but to do so would be a mistake. Emotional growth
characteristically moves two steps forward, one step backward. That step
backward provides important feedback. It can provide motivation and op
portunity to keep learning. So welcome a crisis here and there. If nothing
else, it will remind you what a good survivor you can be when necessary.
Life can be unpredictable, which is another way of saying crises are in
evitable. The Chinese have an interesting way of forming the word “crisis.”
It is composed of two symbols, one for danger and one for opportunity.
A crisis is indeed the juncture between danger and opportunity. If you
view it that way, you will maximize your ability to learn and grow. We,
however, are not advocating that you deliberately try to create crises in
your life in order to learn from them.
Y’ou will need to develop ways to minimize the negative effects of
such setbacks. Most important, do not isolate yourself from others when
you are in a crisis. To do so will cut you off from their feedback. At this
89
stage your behavior■ can be very subtle. Friends and family can provide
you with important information about your growth which you cannot see.
Beware of all-or-none functioning, be it in thinking, feeling, or behav
ing. When you find yourself taking extreme stands, seeing things as black
or white, and particularly when you see no options, automatically and
routinely ask yourself if you are in an all-or-none mode. It you are, search
for those shades of gray. If you cannot do it alone, find someone to talk
to who can help you.
Many adult children begin to get nervous at this stage because they
are not only successful in many of their undertakings but also feel moments
of peace. It is the combination of success and peace that can trigger a crisis.
Still unsure of your right to success, former negative internal messages
may return, saying, for example: “I don’t deserve this. Deliberately and
consciously replace that habitual message with, “Of course I deserve this! ”
Not used to the feeling of peace, it is very easy to misinterpret it as boredom
or depression. After all, when your adrenalin is not pumping and your
heart is not speeding, can you be getting the most out of life? Absolutely!
We all need periods of rest and calm.
Finally, make sure you allow for time to think and time to be alone.
This will give you the opportunity to consider changing patterns in your
behavior. As you spend time alone, also remind yourself, even as you
try to make each day count, that there will be a tomorrow.
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63. What are the pitfalls in this stage?
This is a very important question. Even in the integration stage, adult
children of alcoholics have a reflex toward perfectionism. As much as they
have progressed and grown, they find that all-or-none functioning and the
need to control fade very slowly. The ghosts of these old habits lurk silently
in the background, waiting to re-emerge when the adult child is overload
ed, exhausted, or stressed. Integration is not a stage of continual bliss.
While there may be moments of utter exhilaration and even ecstasy, the
world of the recovering adult child of an alcoholic is not a pain-free,
conflict-free utopia.29 Pain, conflict, and suffering are as much a part of
life as pleasure, harmony, and joy. There will always be occasions, no
matter how well integrated we become, when life hurts; when life is un
fair; and when it just seems overwhelming. That happens simply because
we are human.
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Many adult children erroneously expect that they should always be
able to deal with everything once they start to recover. They assume they
should now know exactly what to do with their lives and their relation
ships. Sometimes they fail to remember that there is no cure for life. They
believe they should be able to do anything. In the integration stage, these
expectations, assumptions, and beliefs are often very subtle. For exam
ple, adult children may make statements or have feelings such as: “Now
I know exactly what needs to be done!’’, “That will never happen to me
again!’’, or “Wonderful, now everything will be okay!’’ or, “I’m never
going to feel like that again!” High on their own sense of potency and
actualization, they sometimes forget that while they can plan for the future,
they cannot control it. Only by colliding, head-first sometimes, with a
limitation, do they understand that they are being unrealistic. However,
those who have reached the integration stage soon realize they are being
unrealistic, back off, and learn from it. By contrast, in the survival stage
they kept bumping into the same limit over and over again, ignoring their
experience and denying their feelings. Adult children of alcoholics can
get stuck in both stages, but the ways they deal with themselves and others
are radically different.
One of the most important pitfalls most adult children of alcoholics
face is the way they view the past. In earlier stages of the recovery pro
cess the past is seen as the enemy, the source of pain. The past is regarded
not only as something horrendous and regrettable but something to get
rid of, something to change. There is a big difference between letting go
of the past and disowning it." Letting go of the past, which is essential
in the integration stage, allows the adult child to move forward without
the burden of all those eternal yesterdays. Trying to disown the past, on
the other hand, is to deny reality. Denied emotions demand much more
energy than acknowledged ones. True integration comes from dealing with
both the positive and the negative aspects in life. Integration does not in
volve the removal of all pain or the elimination of the past. In integration,
the meaning and oppression of the past are transformed. As one woman
stated during the formation meeting of the National Association for Children
of Alcoholics, “This is the first time I have not been sorry to be the child
of an alcoholic. It has brought me to this moment in this room with you.”
In that moment, many different things came together—her past, her pres
ent, even her future. Consequently there was a new way to look at the
past. Victimization was transcended. Events themselves do not change,
but the sense of the experience does. Another adult child stated she never
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wanted to forget the past for fear she would forget how meaningful the
present could be. Only after seeing the tyranny of her childhood, she said,
could she appreciate the beauty of a sunrise or truly value being in an ac
cepting, warm relationship which is generally stable, usually predictable,
and seldom chaotic.
Another common pitfail in this stage is adult children of alcoholic’s
over-reliance on one type of experience to the exclusion of others. For
instance, feelings which once needed to be denied may now become the
primary and sole criterion for evaluating everything. If you feel it, it must
be so! Or, newly acquired logical thinking comes to be the sole criterion.
Thus, if your reasoning is sound, you must be right. In cases like these,
the person’s judgment becomes unbalanced. Information which is useful
as part of a whole becomes tyrannical and misleading when taken in isola
tion.
The greatest pitfall of integration is making it something it is not—
namely, the end of the effort. Recovery is an ongoing process, not a finished
product. Forgetting this leads to an all-or-none stance, to say nothing of
pain and frustration. Remembering it gives us the freedom to make
mistakes, allowing continued growth and learning. Adult children of
alcoholics, like other human beings, always have more to learn. As one
poet puts if.
The journey is never over.
To travel hopefully
Is a better thing
Than to arrive.45
64. What are some of the most important processes in the integration
stage?
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The expansion of one’s own abilities and potential requires the same
devotion of time and energy that we give to any other important project.
Nothing can happen unless we create a space for it. The first key ingre
dients to effective change, therefore, are desire and commitment. We must
male space and continue to expose ourselves to opportunities for growth.
We must make recovery important enough to devote our time, our energy,
and our thoughts to it. Recovery also requires a clear mind to sustain the
work involved. This means that we have to take time for pauses and deep
breaths, as well as be free from chemical dependency. The way out of
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an experience is through it, and our senses must be clear enough to record
the journey. We must cultivate the lost art of listening to ourselves. We
must learn to reclaim what we once disowned—our feelings, our thoughts,
our memories. Self-esteem is enhanced every time we stand up and honor
who we are.12 We must engage in continuous dialogue with ourselves and
maintain contact with others. That is how balance is attained, how integra
tion occurs.
Other processes in recovery follow naturally. When we place ourselves
in supportive environments, we almost automatically start to learn how
to be more flexible in our need to control and in our all-or-none function
ing. Our capacity to engage in the kinds of personal and interpersonal in
teractions that propel us forward grows. We learn the value of explora
tion and we find that it is much more profitable to investigate than to blame.
We learn that feelings are to be regarded as real and important, and we
become more willing to express them. We learn that a knowledge of the
past is crucial to understanding our present. We learn to share both the
positive and the negative, with ourselves and with others. Finally, we learn
that our increasing ability to engage freely and responsibly in these new
behaviors is healing.
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65. How can I continue the process of taking better care of myself?
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Continuing to take care of ourselves is a life-long job that only we
are uniquely qualified to perform. Clearly, if you have read this far, you
have some determination and ability to take care of yourself. Keep reading.
Keep learning. When you have finished the last chapter of this book, read
more. Go through this book again; review what you might have missed
the first time. Look through some of the other books recommended in Ap
pendix A or listed in our reference section. Continue to use other resources
like Al-Anon groups or psychotherapy or trusted friends. See these as gifts
to yourself.
This is a good time to practice reaching out to others. Reaching out
is especially difficult when you stumble and sense those old feelings of
being a failure again. Practicing reaching out when you feel good about
yourself can make it easier later.
Let yourself continue to make mistakes. Remember, every time you
make a mistake, you have learned one less way to do something. Make
mistakes and learn from them.
Playing and enjoying life are essential components in taking care of
yourself Many children of alcoholics are required to jettison childhood
in order to take on the responsibilities of adult roles. This might be an
excellent time to teach yourself how to be a child again and how to have
fun Borrow a kid for a day. Let him or her take you around. Be as silly
and curious as you like. Go to a circus, get a bicycle, build a castle or
a snowman. A man in one of our groups told us that he did not get a chance
to have a childhood when he was a kid. He felt he owed it to himself to
provide one for himself now that he could.
Begin to include exercise and a healthy diet in your daily schedule.
Exercise is an excellent antidote for depression. It offers emotional and
physiological benefits that add up to anew sense of well-being. Try swim
ming, jogging, biking. Find one activity that you really enjoy. Consult
your physician if you have been relatively inactive up to now and be sure
to start out slowly. This is an area where you can check your progress
on the all-or-nothing front. Is it all right to start off with just a brisk walk
around the block? Or do you have to compete in a marathon in your first
year of physical enlightenment?
Diet can also affect your moods in subtle but profound ways* Many
adult children of alcoholics are affected by sugar imbalances or sensitivities
which result in mood swings and “sugar blues.” Explore what foods make
you feel good and which make you feel bad. Practice some disciplme in
avoiding foods that are clearly not good for you. A phys.cian or nutritionist might provide valuable guidance here.
Integration is the period when healthy lifestyle habits need to be woven
into the fabric of your daily being. If you have been abusing drugs like
nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, or marijuana, stop! You do not want to weaken
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the foundation you have built.
Another crucial component to self-care is listening to yourself, trusting
vourself This has been emphasized throughout the book because of the
destructive early training children of alcoholics receive. You are the: one
and only expert on yourself. You can use others as consultants and books
as guides. Nonetheless, you remain the ultimate authority on what you
warn and need. One warning, however. There are certain areas m wh.ch
your emotions will lead you back into your personal history. F^exa^
nle many female children of alcoholic fathers and adjuster or placater
'adult children of alcoholics feel powerful and immediate attractions to men
^ addictive personalities. Be careful here. If you start dating a new person
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happens next. You may get stuck. To find these personal “blind spots,”
do an assessment of what particular decisions or directions have repeatedly
turned out to be painful for you. Those may be clues as to where you have
unwisely let your emotions override your better sense. If you get con
fused about this, ask friends who love you if they have noticed any areas
where you consistently fail to take good care of yourself. Listen and then
decide how to proceed. Requesting feedback in situations like this is one
of the ways of utilizing a support group. Surround yourself with competent, caring people who will nourish you.
Finally, we would like to remind you again that recovery is not
something attained then forgotten.29 Additional investments will be re
quired of you throughout the coming years in order to maintain your health
and cope with life’s continuing challenges. As in any major project, the
secret is to work at it one day at a time. Sometimes adult children of
alcoholics, like everyone else, tend to get lazy, letting their thinking, feeling
and behavior fall into the well-worn grooves of their old survival stage
patterns. When that happens, rouse yourself out of lethargy and put into
action some of the tools you have gathered from this book and from other
resources. Your well-being is much like an investment account. It grows
when you make deposits of energy and effort. Good investments earn high
interest, and you are your best investment!
66. What resources are needed?
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Your primary resource continues to be yourself. External resources
available to you include friends, Al-Anon, and various consultants such
as psychotherapists, educators, physicians, or even financial advisors. Other
resources discussed in previous chapters apply here too, so you might
review them now.
We also believe that a sense of humor can see you through a variety
ot difficulties and enhance your enjoyment of life in general. Consider
the drunk who was asked, “Are you trying to drown your troubles?” His
reply, “No, they learned how to swim long ago.” Such stories allow us
to laugh at the truth of our predicament. Adult children of alcoholics tend
to take life very seriously, often unable to see or appreciate or even believe
m the lighter side. Humor has a way of releasing tension and promoting
a more positive outlook. Begin to associate events and memories with humor
rather than pathos and drama. When you catch yourself in the middle of
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one of the core issues again, give a shake of your head and smile at yourself
saying, “There I go again! It’s another opportunity to learn more about
this issue in my life.’’
67. How can I avoid being “selfish”?
Reread previous sections (such as question 55 in “Transformations”)
on the issue of being selfish. Pause and take some time to discriminate
between “selfishness” and “self-caring.” Consider people you know who
really are selfish. What do they do? How do they act? Is that what you
see yourself doing? Usually, when they stop to consider, adult children
of alcoholics find that they are becoming more self-caring. Since they are
not used to caring for themselves, they naturally feel uncomfortable and
worry about being selfish. To check the reality of this issue, listen to what
your emotions and intellect are saying as you read this. Then request some
input from other persons you trust; evaluate what they say.
We have seen over and over that when an adult child of an alcoholic
finally stops always putting others first, he or she is uncomfortable. This
is due to the novelty of the situation, and it does not mean the new behaviors
actually are very selfish. Self-care is very important. Why not turn around
the familiar proverb and say, “Love thyself as you love your neighbor”?
A period of deliberate self-absorption is often a necessary prelude to growth.
For many people, coming out of years of denial, repressed feelings, and
suppressed memories, a time of turning inward is essential and nourishing.
Trust yourself!
68. What kind of relationships can I expect to have with others?
We once heard someone say that alcoholics do not have relationships;
they just take hostages. We find that this often describes the way the con
trol issue affects relationships of adult children of alcoholics in the sur
vival stage. Because of the need to control, the fear of feelings, and the
lack of trust, unrecovering adult children of alcoholics have relationships
that require other people to fit into certain strict patterns. As recovery pro
ceeds, relationships begin to allow much more room for individual self
expression. You can more fully reveal who you are in the things you say,
do, and share. You can tolerate more differences between yourself and
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another person in a relationship. The greatest challenge of intimacy begins
where the similarities end.
As the fear of intimacy recedes and you increasingly surround yourself
with people who respect you and treat you well, your relationships will
be fuller. You will hide less of yourself, express more of your thoughts,
feelings, preferences, and dislikes. As others reveal more of their thoughts
and feelings and as trust builds, you will find yourself more comfortable
with differences. You will know that you are not responsible for others
or solely responsible for any relationship. You can let others be themselves.
Still, sometimes you may feel scared when a friend tells you something
he or she wants or does not like. Perhaps you will shut down like you
used to do all the time. Such a response is only natural after so many years
of practice. It provides yet another opportunity to look at core issues, work
on them a bit more, and accept yourself as still growing, still changing,
and still learning. In a trusting relationship you can say, “I have to stop
right now. I need some time to figure out what’s happening with me.’’
In your relationships you will now also find that when a conflict arises,
negotiating occurs more and more frequently. Unlike the conflicts in your
alcoholic family, disagreements are typically resolved in a constructive
way. Your relationship with your parents or siblings may still not be all
you wish. They may not have chosen to recover. Confrontation is one
possible approach you might try, but first we would suggest you reread
earlier questions in this book about how to deal with parents. Do not set
yourself up to fail. You alone cannot determine or control the direction
in which your family relationships will go. You may need to let go of
your expectations at this point. Letting go allows forgiveness.
On the way to integration, adult children of alcoholics often find old
relationships unsatisfying. As they choose to spend less time with some
pre-recovery friends, they often fear they will never have any close, sup
portive friends. It seems to be true that if you are not happy within yourself,
every relationship is like a Chinese meal: you are hungry an hour later.
However, as you come to feel better about yourself, you have a better
chance of developing more satisfying relationships. If new friends are not
available yet, take a deep slow breath, pat yourself on the back for your
courage (remember, it is not courage if you are not afraid), and remind
yourself that good things are worth waiting for. Then plan an activity that
is likely to put you in contact with other people who share your interest
in self-understanding and a better life. You are ready for fuller, healthier
friendships and they are possible. Developing new relationships requires
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you to be thoughtful, considerate, and sometimes fearful. Relationships
take time and effort. Friends are grown, not found. You need to be free
to express what you really want and sometimes you will have to risk the
relationship to stand up for what is important to you.
It might be helpful to attend a class or workshop on interpersonal com
munication, or to look for models in your environment. If you know some
one who has a happy marriage or a friendship that appears solid and good,
watch and listen to what goes on in that relationship. Notice how the part
ners find the happy side and focus on the good times. Notice how prob
lems or annoyances are confronted, even when they seem scary or petty.
Notice, too, how special times, traditions, and private jokes are developed.
In good relationships you will see that the persons involved treat one another
as valuable, worthwhile human beings. Remember that most of your
previous relationships included uncertainty about whether you deserved
to be treated well, to be loved, and cared for. Watch out for internal
messages saying, “I’m not good enough.’’ Recognize them as traces linger
ing from the hurts and losses of your childhood. Stay alert to keep those
feelings of insecurity from negatively affecting your friends and/or mate.
Discuss them when they are in your way.
A scenario of a healthy relationship might go like this:
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You are introduced to a person with whom you are to work on a
special project. You begin to meet and as you consult on the work
issues, your comfort increases and you get around to mentioning a
few personal things. The other person responds by taking time to
listen to you, supports you in your concerns, and shares a bit about
himself or herself. One day you start a meeting by saying you have
something else on your mind and cannot concentrate on work—
perhaps it is what you are learning and feeling as you read this book.
He or she sets the work aside and listens without judging. Afterward,
as you reschedule time for the project, this person expresses gratitude
that you shared so much and perhaps tells you something personal
about his or her feelings.
One day, however, you meet for work and find you were respon
sible for a major error in the project plans. It will cost both of you
a lot of time. The other person tells you how angry it makes him
or her without telling you that you are a bad person. You probably
feel horrible. All those old failure-oriented, all-or-nothing feelings
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overwhelm you. You give in to these and maybe even cry. You tell
your co-worker you would like to discuss it later, not now. You take
the time alone you need to forgive yourself. When you sit down with
the other person again, you acknowledge his or her anger, apologize,
and together plan to repair the error. You notice that the relation
ship is still one of respect and caring. The other person still treats
you as a competent and valuable person. You have seen that you can
handle criticism and that the relationship can survive disagreements.
As core issues are increasingly resolved, through transformations and in
tegration, you will find yourself experiencing more situations like the one
described above. Enjoy them!
99
3. I have a right to relax and have fun in a nonalcoholic and a nondestruc
tive way.
4. I have a right to actively pursue people, places, and situations that
will help me in achieving a good life.
5. I have the right to say no whenever I feel something is not safe or
I am not ready.
6.
I have a right to not participate in either the active or passive ‘crazy
making’ behavior of parents, of siblings, and of others.
7. I have a right to take calculated risks and to experiment with new
strategies.
69. What are my rights as an adult child of an alcoholic?
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Your rights are the same as every other human being’s. Visualize the
person you most admire standing in front of you. Now tell this person
what his or her rights are. List them. Now consider the idea that those
same rights and those same human privileges are yours, too.
You have the right to seek a happy life, even if no one else in your
family understands what you are doing. You have a right to all your feel
ings. You have a right to be confused. You have a right to not know the
answer. You have a right to your privacy. You do not have to tell anybody
anything unless you choose. You also have a right to make choices.
In one of the first psychotherapy groups we led, a woman named Sue,
the oldest of several children, developed her own bill of rights and brought
it to share with others in her group. It was so liberating and powerful that
we include it here for -you to use as you choose.
PERSONAL BILL OF RIGHTS
1. I have a right to all those good times that I have longed for all these
years and didn’t get.
2.
I have a right to joy in this life, right here, right now—not just a
ihomentary rush of euphoria but something more substantive.
8.
I have a right to change my tune, my strategy, and my funny
equations.
9.
I have a right to ‘mess up;’ to make mistakes, to ‘blow it,’ to disap
point myself, and to fall short of the mark.
10.
I have a right to leave the company of people who deliberately or
inadvertently put me down, lay a guilt trip on me, manipulate or
humiliate me, including my alcoholic parent, my nonalcoholic parent,
or any other member of my family.
11.
I have a right to put an end to conversations with people who make
me feel put down and humiliated.
12. I have a right to all my feelings.
13. I have a right to trust my feelings, my judgment, my hunches, my
intuition.
14. I have a right to develop myself as a whole person emotionally,
spiritually, mentally, physically, and psychologically.
15. I have a right to express all my feelings in a nondestructive way and
at a safe time and place.
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16. I have a right to as imuch time as I need to experiment with this new
information and these new ideas and to initiate changes in my life.
17. I have a right to sort out the bill of goods my parents sold me—to
take the acceptable and dump the unacceptable.
18.
I have a right to a mentally healthy, sane way of existence, though
it will deviate in part, or all, from my parents’ prescribed philosophy
of life.
19.
I have a right to carve out my place in this world.
20.
I have a right to follow any of the above rights, to live my life the
way I want to, and not wait until my alcoholic parent gets well, gets
happy, seeks help, or admits there is a problem.
70. Is there a cure for adult children of alcoholics?
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No. But there is recovery. There is no cure because those childhood
experiences will always be yours. Those vulnerabilities—genetic,
physiological and psychological-will always be there. That is why it is
important that you continue to monitor your own drug use and your own
adult child issues. There is a human tendency to repeat habits and pat
terns. It is therefore likely that you will occasionally feel those old “I’m
not o.k.” feelings. You may also act out those old “Fm not gonna take
care of myself or tell anybody” behaviors. When these things happen,
rouse yourself again. Look into a mirror and say the things that have had
meaning for your recovery. Reread this book. Attend an Al-Anon meeting.
Reach out.
Self-monitoring becomes an integral, essential part of your life from
now on.2’ A major trauma might still cause you to isolate yourself, drink
every night, feel crazy, or become depressed. Watch for those thoughts,
feelings and behaviors that are signs of not coping well or not taking care
of yourself. There will be other times when things are going so smoothly
t at you really can just relax and enjoy the scenery on the journey. Take
emotional snapshots and create a mental photo album. Make a point of
enjoying those times. Trouble, crisis, and trauma are bound to come your
way again and worrying will not stop them. So you might as well really
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relax in the good times and find pleasure in them. They, too, will pass.
Then when trouble comes the next time, you can meet it filled with the
strength of past joy and happiness, armed with all the resources you now
have available to you. Remember—there is no hitchhiking and no short
cuts on the road to recovery.
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71. Where do I go from here?
You do not need to go anywhere from here, or you can go everywhere.
As your self-esteem and confidence continue to increase, you will begin
to undersiand-that the main limitations in life are those in your own mind.
We'do not know” whafspecial direction you might take'-YouHTfe is umque. We know that in general when adult children of alcoholics reach this
stage in their recovery, they say things such as: “I became my own per
son,” and. “I now have the permission to change and the opportunity
to direct my life.” They write such things as Sue’s Bill of Rights. A member
in one of our psychotherapy groups recently observed, “Since this group
started, three of us have gotten the jobs that we had been wanting for years.
Once you free yourself from the chains of the past, turning darkness into
light, you are free to go in new directions.
Where you go next is really up to you. You may want to start again
at the beginning of this book and slowly make your way through it once
more. Or, you may feel you have completed the arduous journey through
the first few stages of your recovery and need a break. Enjoy being where
you are. Look at where you have come from! Even as you sit reading
this page of the book, lean back a bit further, gaze away for a moment,
and reflect on all the changes. The next chapter can wait for years, or
it may not suit you at all. Either way is all right. It is your choice. As
Thoreau stated:
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If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and
endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet
with a success unexpected in common hours.51
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Genesis
72. What is genesis?
Genesis, in its most basic sense, is the expansion of the body, mind,
and spirit, and the developing awareness of a “higher self.” It enlarges
our vision to fully appreciate the positive, the creative, and the spiritual.
Mysticism, philosophy, theology, and now modem science all provide sup
port for the idea of a comprehensive awareness that transcends ordinary,
everyday states of consciousness. The promise of genesis is that we have
the potential to reach higher levels of consciousness and well-being. We
do not have to accept a limited reality; we can actively promote our spiritual
development. Through genesis a change in the overall quality of our sub
jective experience is possible, and a new and varied responsiveness to life
can follow.
Recovery from the disease of alcoholism is threefold: physical, men
tal, and spiritual. Alcoholics Anonymous, the first effective recovery pro
gram for alcoholism, has a clear spiritual foundation. We believe that a
spiritual side to recovery is applicable to children of alcoholics as well.
We want to share some of our ideas about the spiritual part of recovery.
However, we wish to acknowledge that we are, like you, pilgrims on this
journey. We also want to share what we have been learning without leading
you to believe that there is a specific time frame or pace for your recovery.
Neither do we propose a specific belief system. So we ask you to be par
ticularly aware of all it has taken for you to come so far. Remind yourself
now of all of the differences in your life today compared to the life you
were experiencing before you began the journey of recovery. You are a
good and worthwhile person. Your achievements are noteworthy. It is im
portant to start this chapter and the genesis stage knowing that.
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73. What can I do to cultivate genesis-like experiences?
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There are many paths to spiritual evolution. Those who walk the path
of the 12-step programs ot Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, or Alateen
travel the spiritual road and, as such, walk in genesis. For an extensive
description of the spiritual path to recovery, we recommend Charles Whitheld's thought-provoking and in-depth book. Stress Management and
Serenity During Recovery55.
Whitfield suggests the consideration of several principles. The first
principle involves ■‘living in the here and now." Living in the "here and
now is often difficult because our mind continually pushes us to live either
in the past (often with uncomfortable feelings such as guilt) or future (with
equally uncomfortable feelings such as anxiety). To enter deeply into the
present moment is to become immersed in a higher consciousness.
Another guiding principle recognized by Whitfield deals with the use
ot control. Accepting what is. relinquinshing control, surrenderins’ to the
inevitable, and detachment are techniques which enhance happiness
Alcohohcs Anonymous slogans which address acceptance and surrender
are: ‘Let go and let God"; "Easy does it"; "Live and let live"- and
Turn it over. ' Detachment involves letting go of expectations-the
negative or unrealistic expectations which lead to disappointment and pain
when they are unfulfilled.
H
hitfield also describes a series of practices which can be helpful
at all stages of recovery. Many of these have been suggested throughout
(hrs book. Expanding your sense of humor, listening to music, com
municating with others, being assertive, thinking positively, and taking
risks are a few of the techniques which Whitfield recommends. Some in
dividuals also find meditation to be an essential spiritual practice. They
find that meditation quiets the mind and opens the heart to higher levels.
Prayer and exercise are often combined in meditation.
Many techniques are supportive of spiritual evolution. The choices
are yours. As we have said for every stage of recovery—do what feels
right for you.
74. Does genesis embrace religion?
vvhile genesis does consist of a commitment to a power beyond one’s
tionTn ey°nd
V'S'ble’ observable wor,d- i£ does not require participaa particular, organized religion. Genesis speaks to universal
GENESIS
105
concerns and is non-denominational. People from all religious backgrounds
or from no religious persuasion are free to consider what genesis may of
fer as a stage of recovery.
If you have been atheistic or unsympathetic toward organized religion,
acknowledge your early pain or disappointment. Look at it. Discuss it with
those you trust. But do not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Genesis is analogous to the spiritual awakening spoken of in Alcoholics
Anonymous; you begin to be aware of a spiritual connection which unites
us all in the sense of being one with the universe. Occurring without
dramatic flashes of light, we have observed what the psychologist William
James calls the “educational variety’’ of awakening which develops slowly
over time.32
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75. Must I go through the stage of genesis? I feel like I am just getting
comfortable with everything I have been learning.
Genesis is meant to complement the recovery process, not compete
with it or supercede it. For some, genesis may best follow a period of
feeling comfortable with the gains of earlier stages. You do not have to
rush into genesis. You are the best judge of what is appropriate for you
now. If genesis feels good and right to you, this is a direction you may
take. And if you are doing fine as is, you may choose to continue what
you are presently doing. As the saying goes: “If it works, don't fix it!”
You do not have to explore genesis, but you may choose to.
If you do want to experience the genesis stage, it will take renewed
energy and commitment. It does not just happen. We invite you to remain
curious and open to the possibilities which genesis offers.
H!
76. If I experience genesis, will I finally get to be perfect?
Alas, there is no perfection even in genesis. While genesis is certain
ly characterized by deep calm, serenity and even bliss, it is not an all-ornone phenomenon or a continual state of mind expansion. Groceries need
to be bought; checkbooks must be balanced; and family and friends die.
We simply cannot control all that befalls us. Such a wish for perfection
is another example of all-or-none functioning and a common pitfall ex
perienced by many adult children of alcoholics.
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GENESIS
106
RECOVERY
77. What other pitfails might occur in Genesis?
i
107
Loss of faith and loss of patience are perhaps the greatest pitfalls.
The person who seeks a universal community and consciousness must af
firm and reaffirm his or her intent. Over and over the higher choice in
each action must be sought. Remember, success can be defined as getting
up one more time than you fall down. Persistence is required.
False pride is also a potential pitfall. People who experience genesis
are not “superior” to those who do not. They simply are more conscious,
more aware. Whitfield55 makes an important distinction between the
higher self (unity, compassion, understanding, and acceptance) and the
lower seif (power, passion, and survival). If one is preoccupied with the
higher self, the lower self may be neglected. The sages say, “Seek Allah,
but tether your camel first.” To be our higher self authentically, Whit
field states, is to be totally aware of our lower self and take care of it.
To avoid another pitfail, carefully assess your recovery to this point
to make sure that you do not jump into genesis in order to avoid the other
stages of learning to take care of yourself. It is essential that you have
already learned how to attend to yourself and your own needs before you
focus upon others and their needs.
It is important not to take this spiritual journey for granted. It must
be worked for every day. And when a plateau is reached, treat it as you
would any plateau—appreciate the distance you have already traveled and
maintain the action that brought you this far. Do not lose faith.
Genesis is a search which can lead you to a lightness that is difficult
to imagine until it is experienced. Genesis cannot be forced; you cannot
set up a timetable for achieving it. Like a delicate butterfly, if we try to
grasp it, we can crush it. To fully appreciate and enjoy it, we must let
it go its own way.
Wish them well, whether near or far, dead or alive. You may, of course,
choose to communicate this to them. However, as we have said before,
do not expect them to understand or appreciate what you are experiencing.
79. What now?
You will do so al a pace and in a slyle unique to you alone. There is no
X" Xl resting place in human growth. T. S. El.ot s.y. this so weh
that we end this chapter with his words:
What we call the beginning is often the end,
and to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.--
|
78. How do I deal with my parents in this stage?
This is the time that invariably your heart will signal a full forgiveness
of your parents. It will be a sense of lightness, freedom from an old burden.
Occasionally, this can occur earlier in the integration stage.
You do not need to convey this to your parents directly. You do not
need to say, “I forgive you.” Rather, begin to think of them gently and
K
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A Final Note
From the Authors
11!
What we said in the very beginning of the book is perhaps clearer
to you now. You already knew much of what we would say, although
you may not have known you knew. The human mind and spirit have many
more resources than you realize. They reign over a vast territory of un
discovered potential.
We would like to leave you with one last thought. When alcoholism
starts in a family, it moves through the generations. The person who
becomes the alcoholic marries the person who becomes the co-alcoholic.
Together they have children who themselves often become alcoholic or
marry an alcoholic. These adult children will also get married, often to
an alcoholic or co-alcoholic. They will have children, and so the cycle
repeats.
When recovery occurs, it too is carried through the generations.
Everyone has the potential to move through the stages of recovery. And
while we each move at our own rate, recovery itself becomes progressive,
once started, propelling us forward. You can start a new generation of
recovery in your family’s history. Know it. Feel it. Believe it. And you
can make it happen!
E
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Appendix A
Recommended Reading
Ackerman, R. J., Children of Alcoholics: A Guidebook for Educators,
Therapists, and Parents, (2nd Ed.). Holmes Beach, FL: Learning
Publications, 1983.
One of the first books on school-age children of alcoholics. An ear
ly consciousness-raiser.
Black, C., It Will Never Happen To Me, Denver, CO: Medical Administra
tion Company, 1982.
A classic on adult children of alcoholics. Must reading.
Brooks, C., The Secret Everyone Knows, San Diego, CA: The Kroc Foun
dation, 1981.
The simple heartfelt personal story of an adult child of an alcoholic.
L
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Cork, M., The Forgotten Children, Toronto: Alcohol and Drug Addic
tion Research Foundation, 1969.
One of the very first books to discuss the needs and issues of children
of alcoholics.
Drews, T. R., Getting Them Sober, South Plainfield, NJ: Bridge
Publishing, Inc., 1980.
A delightfully simple and helpful book for the family of the alcoholic.
Greenleaf, J., Co-Alcoholic—Para-Alcoholic: Who's Who and What’s The
Difference? Los Angeles, CA: 1981.
A classic on adult children of alcoholics. Must reading.
Milam, J. R., and Ketcham, K., Under The Influence: A Guide to the Myths
and Realities of Alcoholism. Seattle, WA: Madrona Publishers,
Inc., 1981.
One of the best books on the physiology of alcoholism. Essential
reading for understanding this disease.
Wegschieder, S., Another Chance: Hope and Health for the Alcoholic Fami
ly. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books, 1981.
Written for both the professional and layperson, this is one of the
clearest descriptions of the family plight. Must reading.
I
Mr
Whitfield, C. L., Alcoholism, Other Drug Problems, and Spirituality:
Stress Management and Serenity During Recovery. Preprint publi
cation available from P & T Book Sellers, 1-800-321-7912, Balti
more, MD, 1985.
Woititz, J. G., Adult Children of Alcoholics. Hollywood, FL: Health Com
munications, Inc., 1983.
An important book describing the problems of adult children of
alcoholics.
Woititz, J. G., Marriage on the Rocks. NY: Delacorte Press, 1979.
Possibly the best book available for the spouse of an alcoholic. Must
reading.
!
Appendix B
Where To Get More Help
Al-Anon/Alateen Family Group Headquarters, Inc.
Madison Square Station
New York, New York 10010
(212) 683-1771
Alcoholics Anonymous World Service0, Inc.
468 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10016
(212) 686-1100
National Association for Children of Alcoholics
31706 Coast Highway, Suite 201
South Laguna, CA 92677
(714) 499-3889
National Council on Alcoholism
12 West 21st Street
New York, New York 10010
(212) 206-6770
IIJr:
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National Clearinghouse for Alcohol Information
P.O. Box 1908
Rockville, Maryland 20850
(301) 468-2600
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References
1. Ackerman, R. J., Children ofAlcoholics: A Guidebook for Educators, Therapists,
and Parents, (2nd Ed.). Holmes Beach, FL: Learning Publications, 1983.
2. Ackerman, R. J., Children ofAlcoholics: A Bibliography and Resource Guide. In
diana, PA: Addiction Research Publishing, 1984.
3. American Heritage Dictionary, (2nd Ed.). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Com
pany, 1982.
4. Bach, G., and Deutsch, R., Stop! You ’re Driving Me Crazy. New York, NY: Berkley
Books, 1979.
5. Bandler, R., Grinder, J., and Satir, V., Changing With Families. Palo Alto, CA:
Science and Behavior Books, Inc., 1976.
6. Black, C., “Children of Alcoholics,” Alcohol Health and Research World, 23-27,
Fall, 1979.
7. Black, C., “Innocent Bystanders At Risk: The Children of Alcoholics,” Alcoholism,
1(3), 22-26, 1981.
8. Black, C., It Will Never Happen To Me. Denver, CO: Medical Administration Com
pany, 1981.
9. Booz-Allen, and Hamilton, Inc., “An Assessment of the Needs and Resources for ,
the Children of Alcoholic Parents,” 7VM/L4 Contract Report, 1974.
10. Bowden, J., and Gravitz, H.» “Clinical Issue for the Adult Children of Alcoholics,”
Unpublished manuscript, Santa Barbara, CA: 1982.
11. Brandon, N., The Disowned Self. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1973.
12. Brandon, N., Honoring the Self. Los Angeles, CA: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1983.
13. Brooks, C., The Secret Everyone Knows. San Diego, CA: The Kroc Foundation,
1981.
14. Brown, S., and Cermak, T., “Group Therapy With The Adult Children of
Alcoholics,” Newsletter From The California Society for the Treatment of Alcoholism
and Other Drug Dependencies, 7(1), 1-6, 1980.
15. Califano, J. A., Jr., The 1982 Report on Drug Abuse and Alcoholism. New York,
NY: Warner Books, Inc., 1982.
16. Cermak, T. L., and Brown, S., “Interactional Group Therapy With the Adult
Children of Alcoholics,” International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 32(3),
375-389, 1982.
17. Clarren, S., and Smith, D., “The Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: A Review of the World
Literature,” New England Journal of Medicine, 298, 1063-1067, 1978.
18. Cork, M., The Forgotten Children. Toronto: Alcohol and Drug Addiction Research
Foundation, 1969.
i H
116
RECOVERY
19. Cotton, N. S., “The Familial Incidence of Alcoholism,” Journal of Studies on
Alcohol, 40, 89-112, 1979.
20. Deutsch, C., Broken Bottles, Broken Dreams: Understanding and Helping the
Children of Alcoholics. New York, NY: Columbia University, Teachers College
Press, 1982.
21. Diaz, P., “Reaching Hispanic Children of Alcoholics in Their Own Community,”
Paper presented at the National Council on Alcoholism Forum, Washington, DC:
April, 1982.
22. Drews, T. R., Getting Them Sober. South Plainfield, NJ: Bridge Publishing, Inc.,
1980.
23. Eliot, T. S., Selected Poems. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich, 1964.
24. Erickson, M., Personal Communication, Erickson Foundation, Phoenix, AZ: 1984.
25. Fromm, E., The Art of Loving. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1956.
26. The Gallup Organization, Alcohol Abuse in America. Princeton, NJ: 1982.
27. Goodwin, D., Is Alcoholism Hereditary? New York, NY: Oxford University Press,
1976.
I
28. Gravitz, H., and Bowden, J., “From Survival to Genesis: A Recovery Guide for
Adult Children of Alcoholics,” Alcohol Health and Research World, Summer, 1984.
■
29. Gravitz, H., and Bowden, J., “Patterns of Therapeutic Strategies for Adult Children
of Alcoholics,” Unpublished manuscript. Santa Barbara, CA: 1982.
30. Greenleaf, J., Co-Alcoholic—Para-Alcoholic: Who’s Who and What’s the Difference?
Los Angeles, CA: 1981.
31. Hinderman, M., “Children of Alcoholic Parents,” Alcohol Health and Research
World, Winter, 1975-76.
32. James, W., The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York, NY: Penguin, 1982.
117
42. National Council on Alcoholism. A Position Paper on Alcoholism and Minorities.
New York, NY: The Council, June, 1980.
43. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. A Growing Concern: How
To Provide Service for Children From Alcoholic Families. DHHS Pub. No. (ADM)
83-1257, 1983.
45. Proust, M., Pleasure and Days: And Other Writings. New York, NY: Fertig, 1978.
46. Rogers, C. A Way of Being. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1980.
47. Satir, V., (from a poster) Celestial Arts. Berkeley, CA: 1975.
48. Schuckit, M., “Biological Markers: Metabolism and Acute Reactions to Alcoholism
in Sons of Alcoholics,” Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, 13(1), 9-16,
1980.
49. Shain, M., Hearts That We Broke Long Ago. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1983.
50. Steinglass, P.. “Alcohol, A Member of the Family,” Human Ecology Forum, 9(3),
9-11, 1978.
51. Thoreau, H. D. Selected Works of Thoreau. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1975.
39. McKenna, T., and Richens, R., “Alcoholic Children of Alcoholics,” Journal of
Studies on Alcohol, 42(11), 1021-1029, 1981.
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52. Vaillant, G., The Natural History of Alcoholism. Cambridge, MA and London,
England: Harvard University Press, 1983.
54. Whitfield, C. L., “Children of Alcoholics: Treatment Issues,” in Services for
Children of Alcoholics, NIAAA Research Monograph 4, 1979.
38. Martin, J. C., No Laughing Matter. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, Publishers,
1982.
i
44. The Network. A publication of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics,
Vol. 1, Number 1, Winter, 1984.
34. Ketcham, K., and Mueller, L. A., Eating Right To Live Sober. Seattle, WA: Madrona
Publishers, Inc., 1983.
37. Mann, M. Marty Mann's New Primer on Alcoholism. New York, NY: Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston, 1981.
I
41. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Services for Children of
Alcoholics. Research Monograph No. 4. DHHS Pub. No. (ADM) 81-1007.
Washington, DC: Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Of
fice, 1979.
53. Wegscheider, S., Another Chance: Hope and Health for the Alcoholic Family. Palo
Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books, 1981.
36. Lilly, J., The Scientist: A Novel Autobiography. New York, NY: Bantam Books,
1981.
I
40. Milam, J. R., and Ketcham, K., Under the Influence: A Guide to the Myths and
Realities of Alcoholism. Seattle, WA: Madrona Publishers, Inc., 1981.
33. Johnson, V. E., I'll Quit Tomorrow, New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1973.
35. Koller, A., An Unknown Woman. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1983.
A
REFERENCES
55. Whitfield, C. L., Stress Management and Serenity’ During Recovery: A Transper
sonal Approach. Baltimore, MD: The Resource Group, 7402 York Road, 1984.
56. Whitfield, C. L., Personal Communication, New York, NY: 1984.
57. Woititz, J. G., Marriage on the Rocks. New York, NY: Delacorte Press, 1979.
58. Woititz, J. G., Adult Children of Alcoholics. Hollywood, FL: Health Communica
tions, Inc., 1983.
59. Woodside, M., Children of Alcoholics. New York, NY: New York State Division
of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, July, 1982.
!
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Index
II
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I
Abandonment, 1,11,30
“Adrenalin junky”, 51
Al-Anon, 5,34-35,56-58,69,92,113
Alcoholic home
atmosphere, 2,9-10-19-20,59
roles of children, 22-26,43-44
rules, 3,9,21,44
Alcoholics Anonymous, 36,69,103,105,113
Alcoholism
blackouts, 9
definition, 8
disease, 2,12,17,39
statistics, 4,45
genetics, 12,15,29,45,64
All-or-none functioning, 49-50,57,64-70,80,89,105
Bill of rights, 78,98-99
Black, C„ 21,23-25
Boundaries, 11,50,86
Brown, S., 46-49,65
Cermak, T., 46-49,65
“Chunking it down”, 67-68,71-72
Co-alcoholism, 7,8,12,18,58,108
“Coming out”, 29-31,41
Control, 46,64-70,80
Denial, 4,9,17,19-20,25,32,38,46,90
Diet, 93
Dissociation, 51,86-87
Eliot, T.S., 107
Enabling, 58
Ethnicity, 59-61
Expanded states of consciousness, 103,105
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11
120
i
RECOVERY
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), 15,45
“Flight into parental salvation”, 37
Forgiveness, 106-107
Functional family, 10-12
“Higher self’, 103
Holidays, 53-55
Hypervigilance, 46,67
Intervention, 28-29, 82
Intimacy, 52, 72-74
Isolation, 17,27,30,54
James, W., 105
Meditation, 104
Memory loss, 39-40
National Association tor Children of Alcoholics, 2.7,45,90 113
Over-responsibility, 48,79
Performance anxiety, 53
Playing, 93
Proust. M., 91
Psychotherapy, 35-36,46,55,76.86
Satir. V., 22,59,85
Secrets, 14,17,29-30
Serenity prayer, 69
“Share-check-share”, 73-74
Spontaneous age regression, 4,40
Stanford Alcohol Clinic, 46
Thoreau. H., 101
T rust
developing trust, 71-72
trust-distrust, 46-47,66
Wegscheider-Cruse, S., 21,23,25
Whitfield, C., 104-106
About the Authors
Herbe,-1 h. Gra^z. Ph.D.. is a Clinical Psychologist in Santa Barbara
Cal'fornia. He is a founding Board Member of the National Association
for Children of Alcoholics (NACOA), and currently serves on the AdviBoard He was Executive Editor of “The Network,” a publication of
NACOA and authored the Children of Alcoholics Handbook.
Julie D. Bowden, M.S., is a Marriage, Family, and Child Psychother
apist in private practice in Santa Barbara, California. She developed the
first Alcohol/Drug Awareness Program for the University of California
system and has consulted on both inpatient and outpatient recovery
programs. She is a founding Board Member of the National Association
or Children of Alcoholics (NACOA), and its first treasurer. She currently
serves on the Advisory Board. She is the adult child of an alcoholic.
Together, they conduct recovery retreats, individual and group psy
chotherapy, and educational seminars for adult children of alcoholics as
well as other adult children of trauma and the professionals who serve
them They began the University of California’s first therapy group
specifically for adult children of alcoholics. They have authored numer
ous articles and are coauthors of an upcoming book. Genesis: The
P‘r't'-lal Dimension of Recovery for Children of Alcoholics and Other
Children of Trauma.
I
ALCOHOL AND THE FAMILY:
DEEPEN YOUR UNDERSTANDING
I
CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS
A Guide for Parents, Teachers, and Therapists
i
I
Robert J. Ackerman, Ph.D., a leading expert in the field of alcohol
ism and the family, explains how young children are affected by
parental alcoholism, and how to help them. This widely-respected
guide is packed with suggestions for helping children grow at
home, at school and with peers—despite their difficulties at home.
J
I
“Bob Ackerman's book, CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS, is must
reading for anyone involved in the well-being of children. His knowl
edge of the subject and leadership in the COA fields are wellknown.”
—Janet Geringer Woititz, Ed.D.
author of ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS
0-671-64527-7
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