Daddy, Please Don't Drink

Video: Daddy, Please Don't Drink

Video: Daddy, Please Don't Drink
Video: John Denver ~ Please Daddy Don't Get Drunk This Christmas 2024, March
Daddy, Please Don't Drink
Daddy, Please Don't Drink
Anonim

Children who grew up in families of alcohol-dependent parents learn to rescue from an early age and have all the prerequisites to become codependent in the future.

What does it mean?

Saving a loved one, a child saves, first of all, himself. Tries to influence the drinking parent in some way.

But is it possible for a small person to take on such adult life tasks? … After all, you can “get bored” from the heavy weight of the burden of adult problems.

And alcohol dependence in an adult is a painful condition that is resolved by complex measures. And then, with great motivation of the patient himself. And reasonable, but not overprotective, support from loved ones.

Children are also psychologically actively involved in this process. They are in the family system, where everything is interconnected and affects each other …

In order to survive in such difficult and sometimes difficult conditions, a child develops special psychological defenses. Which in this life situation help him potentially survive in general.

There is a lot of control that helps to "curb" your own fear and your helplessness in the face of an unknown frightening future.

Parents are responsible for the child, protect him, develop and protect him. Nourish everything necessary for his intellectual, emotional and physical growth.

This is not the case in dysfunctional families.

There, children often become or try to become parents to their parents. There is a change of roles in the family.

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A child does not have as many inner strengths, experience, knowledge, and capabilities as an adult does. But he still tries to "cure" the sick family system, taking on the role of a rescuer and … a healer.

Such a child gives a lot of warmth and support to his ailing and dependent parents.

He makes them laugh, makes them happy with their achievements in studies, sports, if he can, cleans the house, learns early to cook and all other household skills to serve himself and his parents, if necessary.

He wants to be needed. Takes on a lot of responsibility, power and power without realizing his limitations. He also needs to survive at any cost …

Often a mental trauma develops inside a child - a breakdown, he becomes mentally disturbed.

The age-related tasks of his mental development are growing too rapidly.

While other children play a lot, grow up in conditions of warmth and care, psychological comfort at home, children of alcohol-dependent parents grow up in a deficit of all this and practically without the basic protection that only parents can provide them.

Why does the child try and want to prevent parental drunkenness? Because it is intolerable for him to live in conditions of constant conflicts between loved ones, in an atmosphere of irritation and destructive aggression, which is characteristic of alcohol addicts.

The child takes on the mission of rescuing the family system from its collapse, trying to prevent the final break between the parents.

In this state, the child has a lot of inner loneliness, unconscious "lost", rejection and personal uselessness … Often there is a depressive background. From powerlessness to change something radically in the most difficult life situation for him.

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Still, the father drinks more often in families. The mother is in the role of a codependent. She controls a lot and is also painfully dependent on her father's condition.

The child sees a constant threat to the relationship between the parents. Tries to reconcile and "reeducate" them. Sometimes it supports a psychologically weaker parent, feeding him with his childish affection, devotion and love.

If the mother becomes very distant from the drinking father, begins to live her own life and no longer controls her husband, then the child can become for the father - his "wife" or "mother".

He will take care of him, control, worry about his sober lifestyle and … ask him not to drink, falling into the cobweb of codependency.

The child grows up covered with an invisible "scab" of shame and worries from the fact that he lives in conditions that traumatize his psyche. He is ashamed of his parents and hurts that he cannot influence the impasse in any way and cannot change it.

All parental conflicts reflect on him and deform his fragile inner world, negatively affecting his personal self-esteem.

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The other side is that a child in such a family still loves his parents very much, is ready to protect and preserve them. Give them exactly what he lacks …

The child unsuccessfully struggles with the alcoholic "dragon", not seeing, nevertheless, due to his age restrictions, the complexity and depth of adult interpersonal relationships. He asks dad not to drink, trying to influence the symptom, not understanding the true reasons for this behavior in an adult. It's just that a child cannot do it … And this is not his responsibility, but a parental one.

Later, the child can learn from the parents how to deal with their inner difficulties and interaction with the world.

If the topic is interesting and relevant, then you can read about various kinds of addictions and codependent relationships in the family in my other articles:

"The origins of dependencies"

"Child in a family with alcohol addiction"

"Alcoholism as a form of self-destructive behavior"

"How do codependents live?"

"Do you want to quit smoking?"

Psychological help and support during acute crisis emotional states in person and online!

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