NCJ Number
160651
Date Published
1994
Length
7 pages
Annotation
Children of alcoholic parents learn inappropriate and harmful ways of relating to others and carry these behaviors into adulthood.
Abstract
Children of alcoholics are not just reacting to the drinking of the alcoholic; they are reacting to the relational issues, the anger, the control issues, and the emotional unavailability of the addict. These traits are a response to the trauma of the abandonment and ensuing shame that occurs in alcoholic families. The propensity for pathological relationships is rooted in and set up by the parental abandonment. The author summarizes 24 common traits of children of alcoholics that bear upon their adult relationships. They include the tendency to marry addicts, delusion and denial, judgmental toward oneself and others, constantly seeking approval, anxious and hypervigilant, and low self-worth and internalized shame. The alcoholic family is essentially a compulsive family. Everyone in the system is driven by the distress caused by not being able to get his/her needs met. Because of the chronic distress in an alcoholic family, every person in that family attempts to adapt to the chronic stress. Each becomes hypervigilant, anxious, and chronically afraid. In such an environment, it is impossible for anyone to get his basic human needs met. Each person becomes co-dependent.