Adult Children of Alcoholics

Adult Children

Adult Children of Alcoholics is a term used to describe children, who are now adults, who grew up in a home with at least one alcoholic parent. It can also be the adult children of grandparents who were alcoholics. The multi-generational effects of alcoholism are more common than we may expect. Dysfunctional home life experiences can influence parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. The behaviors can be devastating and can turn into a “Generational Curse”.

Family Structure and ACEs

A family structure controlled by an alcoholic parent is tumultuous and erratic with unclear roles. Arguments fueled by irrational thinking are typical. Sexual abuse and violence may also be present. Ultimately, the children suffer from Adverse Childhood Experiences.  Having experienced genuine trauma, they can develop PTSD. If unaddressed, these ACEs and ACOA experience can be a life-long burden.

Overcoming a family’s experience with parental alcoholism can be difficult because of denial. Denial is the unspoken family secret. Keeping that secret becomes “the glue” binding the family together.

Home Life and Epigenetics

Beginning at conception, these parents contribute genetically to their childrens’ lives. After these children are born, parents create the home and family environment. Combined, the effect of epigenetics and home life on children born to these parents has a tremendous influence.

Alcoholic parents are selfish. They leave their children with the sense that there is no one in whom they can have faith. These unhealthy parents inflict so much pain on their families that children learn to “turn off” their emotions. The children shut down just to survive.

These parents are angry or violent. They deny their anger and violence along with their drinking habits. Traumatized children in such homes embrace the delusion and denial as well. After all, it is their “normal” lived experience. The children then grow up to deny the realities of life around them. They learn to tell a ‘different’ story. They resist communicating essential or significant aspects of life.

Typically, Adult Children of Alcoholics experience depression, anxiety and compulsions. They incorporate three rules: don’t trust, feel or talk.

Characteristics 

Those who have lived such an experience grow up to display typical behaviors or experiences including:

  • Guess at what normal behavior is.
  • Have difficulty following a project through from beginning to end.
  • Lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.
  • Judge themselves without mercy.
  • Have difficulty having fun.
  • Take themselves very seriously.
  • Struggle with intimate relationships.
  • Overreact to changes over which they have no control.
  • Constantly seek approval and affirmation.
  • Are super responsible or super irresponsible.
  • Struggle with “openness”; impulsivity. They tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences.
  • Feel isolated and uneasy with other people, especially authority figures.
  • Become people-pleasers.
  • Tend to struggle with personal boundaries.
  • Loss of self-identity.
  • Keep secrets.
  • Don’t talk or remain silent.
  • Often interpret critiques as a threat.
  • Have issues with control.
  • Struggle with healthy boundaries.
  • Tend to isolate physically or emotionally.
  • Became alcoholic (or engage other addictive behaviors) or marry an alcoholic -or both.
  • Marry an Adult Child of an Alcoholic. Marry a “weak” other.
  • Engage with other compulsive personalities such as a workaholic/ volunteer-aholic, to fulfill abandonment needs.
  • Live life from the standpoint of victims.
  • Experience feelings of guilt when standing up for themselves.
  • Having a hyper-sense of responsibility.
  • Live a “re-active” instead of a “pro-active” life, allowing others to initiate.
  • Dependent personalities, struggle with abandonment.
  • Struggle with intimacy.
  • Hold onto or stay in a unhealthy relationship in order not to feel emotionally abandoned.
  • Repeatedly choosing insecure relationships because they mirror the dysfunctional childhood family relationship.
Positive Strengths

However, these adults can also have positive traits:

  • Empathic
  • Resilient
  • Intuitive
  • Responsible
  • Optimistic
  • Persistent
  • Driven
  • Loyal

Healing begins in a support group or with a trusted counselor; by speaking with someone who understands.

Photo credit: Home page-pixabay.com/en/child-suffering-look-help-pity-1154951/

This page: Paul Klee 2013