The Payback Of Adult Children Of Alcoholics

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

In existential psychotherapy there is a concept of "payment" - as a complex of consequences that follows the implementation of certain actions, or choices.

The suffering of children of dependent parents can hardly be called a deliberate payment, since the choice to use was not their own acts of choice, and I propose to consider this suffering as a payment not for "their own", but for "someone else's."

A child is totally dependent on his parents, without them his chances of survival are rather negligible. This shows the vulnerability, fragility, vulnerability and insecurity of human existence. The abandonment of a child in families of drinking parents determines the process of their formation and development, and manifests itself in the limited range of options for their life choices.

So what do the children of alcoholics pay with? How do they organize their lives in the future?

Those who grew up in families of drinking parents either repeat the life scenario of their parents (choose the path of dependence and codependency), or follow the path of the so-called counter-scenario, a scenario from the opposite, which, in essence, is just another side, but the same coin, based on the attitude I don’t want it the way it was”. The main strategy of people who have chosen the path of the counter-scenario is defensive.

Polarity is also manifested in the social roles that children of drinking parents choose, and which are one of the important components of the personal construct (structure of the I) (according to E. Spinelli):

1) HEROES in their adult life, such people become Saviors, Decisions. These are the so-called prematurely matured children who had to take responsibility and perform duties that did not correspond to the task of their stage of development. These are children who have not played enough. Such people are hyperresponsible, often shoulder other people's responsibilities, are in a state of anxiety and excessive tension, suffer from neurotic spectrum disorders and psychosomatic diseases, and in the client's chair they talk a lot about their fatigue, the need to control everything and that they are " do not live their own lives. " They often suffer from workaholism, sometimes become addicted to sleeping pills and medications, as well as psychoactive substances (to relax). They often choose dependent individuals as their partners.

2) VICTIMS. These are unsuccessful people who experience their helplessness, inability to cope with life's difficulties, difficulties with concentration and activities associated with risk and decision-making, they have a poorly developed volitional component. Experiencing the inability to change something in childhood, they do not find such an opportunity in their adult life. Often they themselves become addicted to psychoactive substances and are characterized by deviant or delinquent behavior and promiscuity.

The experience of hopelessness, helplessness, total loneliness, their own uselessness of children who grew up in families of drinking parents often leads to the devaluation of their lives and contributes to an increase in the likelihood of suicide.

Also from the experience of my practice I want to note that in families in which one or both parents drink, incestuous relationships are often encountered. The consequences of incest trauma can be extremely damaging to the psyche.

Prolonged stay in a traumatic situation, limited ability, and sometimes inability to digest the experience contributes to the emergence of symptoms of complex post-traumatic disorder in such individuals.

The severity of the consequences of growing up in the family of drinking parents depends on the degree of the disease, the type of alcoholic parents and the child's individual susceptibility.

I have highlighted several features, the list of which is far from exhaustive.

1) One of the main characteristics is that they are in search of an answer to the question - what is the norm? In other words, they experience difficulties in determining the measure, and this is manifested in all dimensions of their being - biological, psychological, social and spiritual (the measure of their capabilities, the measure of their generosity, the measure of connivance at themselves and others, and so on). Forming in an atmosphere of uncertainty, insecurity and "double bills", they grow up extremely insensitive to themselves, it is difficult for them to answer the questions: "what is possible for me and what is not", "how is it possible with me and how it is impossible", it is difficult for them to determine priorities of their values (to separate the “main” from the “secondary”, “ours from others”, including one's own and someone else's responsibility).

2) All my clients, whose parents were alcoholics, have a broken sense of security, basic trust in the world. They grew up in an environment of unpredictability, hidden tension, anxiety, psychological and physical abuse. As a result, they experience difficulties in expressing themselves in the world, in building close trusting relationships, they are distinguished either by an extreme degree of suspicion, alertness and control, or by childish naivety, lack of sensitivity to dangers. These people often have difficulty with trust, relationships are not built out of love, but out of fear of rejection or abandonment. They are characterized by anticipatory aggression and provocative manipulations.

3) They also have difficulties in determining their own value. The self-esteem of such people is either underestimated, or overestimated, or extremely unstable.

4) It is very difficult for such people to differentiate their feelings, emotions and needs. They have difficulty in answering the question: "What do I want?"

5) ACA is extremely difficult to resolve internal conflicts.

6) Such people in adulthood are either overly loyal, conniving at themselves and others, or overly demanding and categorical.

7) In their manifestations, grown-up children of alcoholics are either extremely restrained (stopped spontaneity) or extremely impulsive, experiencing difficulties in controlling their emotions and behavior.

8) Adult children of alcoholics often lie because of a feeling of fear and shame, as well as due to the fact that they themselves grew up in an atmosphere in which lying was the norm, tend to fantasize, as a defense against a terrifying and difficult to bear reality.

9) Great difficulties for such individuals arise in the search for answers to the questions "Who am I?", "What am I?" (identity problem, often diffuse identity). Because of this, they are extremely sensitive to criticism, constantly looking for approval, praise, as confirmation of their importance. Self-affirmation of their worth in such people often occurs through earning the love of others or through manipulation of self-pity.

10) They are also often inclined to self-justify their irresponsibility by the irresponsibility of their parents, get stuck in resentment against them and the injustice of the world, have many claims to loved ones and the world in general.

Thus, growing up in a family faced with the problem of alcohol dependence is often associated with the development of specific psychological characteristics in a child that impede successful adaptation and socialization in adult life.

One feature I have noted of adults who grew up in families of parents dependent on psychoactive substances is the experience of the impossibility of living differently, in their picture of the world there are no other options for choices, scenarios, their role, they feel themselves captives, hostages of the current situation.

According to E. Spinelli, the self-structure is mobile and can change during life, as a result of any events or in the process of therapy. Such changes occur as a result of reflection, or rethinking of one's experience. For example, considering the past experience together with the therapist, the client can include in reflection some events from the past that were not previously accepted by him and understood as belonging to his I or characterizing it. As a result, a person can question the existing I-structure as incomplete or not reflecting the reality of his life, which will lead to the search and formation of a renewed I-structure. In cases where there is a significant change in the self-structure, the client may say that he feels like a completely different person, different from the one who was before.

A. E. Alekseychik defines mental health as the ability to perceive and reproduce the phenomena of the inner and outer world in a new way every time. The listed difficulties experienced by people who grew up in families of alcoholics indicate a significant violation of this health.

As a rule, such people turn for help during the crisis periods of their lives, when, as it was, they are no longer satisfied, it is impossible, but they don’t know how to do it in a new way.

How can you help such people?

In psychological assistance to such people, I rely on a resource approach, first I take an inventory of external and personal resources, including existential ones.

My friend and colleague, Elena Yuryevna Ryazantseva, in 2012 wrote a dissertation for the degree of candidate of psychological sciences on the topic: "Existential resources of persons in crisis." Analysis of psychological, philosophical and spiritual literature allowed the author to identify five key existential personality resources:

1) the given of freedom, choice, responsibility or determinism, dependence - "resource of freedom";

2) the given of semantic aspiration, value orientations or meaninglessness, existential vacuum - “the resource of meaning”;

3) the given feeling of openness to being, acceptance or rejection, isolation - "a resource of acceptance";

4) a given of love, human mercy or cruelty, heartlessness - "a resource of mercy";

5) the given of spirituality and faith or nihilism and destruction - "the resource of faith."

Existential psychotherapy proceeds from understanding the essence of a person not as given initially, but as acquired in the process of an individual search for his own individual identity, the ability to be in the process of self-determination.

One of the tasks of the work is to show the client these limitations, to return him to his subjectivity and activity, the ability and ability to choose.

A subjective feeling of a lack of freedom can be associated with a lack of understanding of the forces acting on him, with a limited or lack of value orientations, a feeling of low value of himself and his life, with weak supports of determination.

E. Fromm considers freedom as an act of self-liberation in the decision-making process based on a clear awareness of the situation, ethical aspects, alternatives and their consequences, their capabilities and true motives. I consider one of the fundamental directions in working with ACA to help replace the doom of one's life scenario and the role played by the doom to freedom.

First of all, to share responsibility, taking only your part, to appropriate the value of your life and your place in it, to revise and form a new system of value coordinates, to see the potential for the implementation of other choices, individual projects of the personality, based on the appropriation of your freedom and discovered new meanings, find new answers to the key challenges of the time (according to V. Frankl), such as: the challenge of responsibility, the challenge of uncertainty, the challenge of complexity and the challenge of diversity, Open for yourself the possibility of a different future, a different life perspective.

Disclosure of the resource of acceptance (as a respectful attitude to the diversity of the surrounding world) and the resource of mercy, as the ability for compassion and empathic experience, can help in releasing resentment towards parents and their Destiny, from destructive emotions, and contribute to the formation of a position of openness to new experience, close relationships.

The resource of trust, as a phenomenon of human interaction with oneself, the world and Others, is, first of all, a chance for oneself for another life.

Thus, with the help of existential resources, the client gains the opportunity not only to consider, but also to revise his picture of the world, he has new experiences; he begins to more often direct his gaze to the future; he ponders how to transfer the experience gained in therapy into his daily life.

Also, in the process of psychotherapy for such clients, I devote a lot of time to studying how changes in the client can affect his life and environment. Often this stage becomes a test for the client, who is faced with the fact that not all of his discoveries can be painlessly transferred to life. And one of his tasks at this stage is to help the client to better understand his loved ones and to help find a balance between old values and values discovered during therapy.